Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

LinkedIn

| FREE | LinkedIn

LinkedIn app for Android now available - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

LinkedIn, the 'professional' social network, has finally launched an Android app. The app has previously been available in beta for a while. The final version includes support for messages, as well as a new Reconnect button, which suggests people you may know based on your profile and current connections. LinkedIn for Android obviously has all the features you'd expect, making it easy to connect with fellow LinkedIn users from your smartphone. The app lets you post status updates, view updates from your contacts, view your contacts' profiles, add new contacts, search for LinkedIn users (this can be either limited to your contacts, or it can go through the entire user base), and respond to invitations. LinkedIn expects to improve its Android app in future versions by adding some features that "have been heavily requested during the public Beta". Download LinkedIn for Android for free from the Android Market, from LinkedIn directly, or just point your Android smartphone to Read More

Songbird

| FREE | POTI, Inc.

Songbird 1.1 for Android brings lock-screen widget and Honeycomb support - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

The Mozilla-powered rapidly iterating media player for Android, Songbird, just got updated to version 1.1, bringing with it both bug fixes and new features. Top of the list is Android 3.0 Honeycomb support, so now you can get Songbird on your Honeycomb tablet. Also included is a new lock-screen widget that allows you to control music playback right from the lock-screen. Speaking of widgets, the Songbird team have been working on increasing widget stability and responsiveness, so if you thought it was a bit of a sloth-like affair before, perhaps this will be the fix you need. Bluetooth car audio support has also been added along with better bluetooth headset disconnection handling. Songbird 1.1 may be out the door, check the source for full release notes, but the team are already hard at work on the next iteration, which should feature landscape support among other things. Head over to the Android Market to get your free Songbird 1.1 download. Read More

LauncherPro

| FREE | Federico Carnales

LauncherPro for Android adds Gmail widget and new home screen transitions - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

LauncherPro, one of the most popular third-party launchers for Android, has just received an update, taking it to version 0.8.4. This update brings two new features, and lots of fixes. First off, users of the paid LauncherPro Plus have gotten a new LauncherPro widget, this time for Gmail. This widget matches the style of all the other LauncherPro widgets (for Contacts, Calendar, Twitter, and Facebook) that are only available if you've bought the app. The new Gmail widget lets you quickly glance at your Inbox, and tap on any received email to view it. The viewing action will happen using a LauncherPro-specific viewer, because Google apparently doesn't allow external apps to trigger viewing a specific email conversation thread. Replies, however, will happen inside your phone's Gmail app, since that event can be directly accessed from third-party applications. Since one Gmail widget only displays one Gmail account's emails, if you have more accounts, you can set up a different widget for each account. Also for LauncherPro Plus buyers, the Facebook login procedure (for using the Facebook widget) has been changed, hopefully eliminating all problems people with low-res displays have had. A change in the Twitter implementation for the Twitter widget should also fix issues people have seen with status updates. For every LauncherPro user, including those with the free app, two more home screen transitions have been added -- 'Flip' and 'Rotate 2'. Those should give you a solid number of transition effects, if you're into that sort of thing. Also coming to all users are fixes and improvements for Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Most notably, the 3D drawer now functions as intended in Gingerbread, and you should see dramatically improved graphics performance and perceived smoothness as well. Because of a recent change in the Android Market's terms and conditions, you'll soon be Read More

Quickoffice Pro (Office & PDF)

| $14.99 | Quickoffice

Quickoffice Pro for Android gets cloud storage, improved document editing - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

Quickoffice has updated its paid Pro app for Android yesterday, bringing it to version 4.0. The company says this is the biggest update of its Android application yet, and many new features have been added. Perhaps the most notable is the added ability to save files in the cloud. This works Box.net, Google Docs, DropBox, Huddle, SugarSync, and MobileMe accounts. Additionally, Quickoffice Pro now has better editing features, it loads files faster, and scrolling and zooming have been made seamless. Contextual search has been integrated throughout the app, and the overall performance of Quickoffice has been improved. You can also easily share files via email or Bluetooth now. All three of the app's integrated editors -- Quickword for text documents, Quicksheet for spreadsheets, and Quickpoint for presentations -- have received support for text cut/copy/paste and undo/redo actions. Quickword has also gotten a floating contextual toolbar, the ability to insert images into documents directly from the camera or from the gallery, paragraph alignment, and a find and replace feature. Quicksheet now has shortcuts to math calculations, and lets you insert and remove rows and columns. You can also add, rename, and remove worksheets, as well as follow and edit hyperlinks. The new find and replace feature has also made its way into the spreadsheet editor. Quickpoint now lets you insert, remove, and rearrange slides, edit text inline on a slide, insert, remove, and resize images, move or resize shapes, edit speaker notes, follow hyperlinks, as well as select and format text. Quickoffice Pro 4.0 works on devices running Android 2.0 or newer versions, and costs $7.99 for a limited time (the normal price is $19.99). You can download it from the Android Market. Read More

Kongregate Arcade

| FREE | Kongregate

Kongregate Arcade for Android gets a new UI, Honeycomb tablet compatibility - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

Kongregate Arcade, the one-stop shop for Flash games on Android, has been updated with a new welcome screen and Android 3.0 Honeycomb compatibility. Every screen in the updated app supports landscape-mode, the welcome screen sports a "hot new games" carousel and huge buttons that allow quick access to just about every part of the Arcade, and users can now earn badges in games without signing in (and save them once they do sign in). Other changes in the update include bug fixes, performance increases, and notifications for new badges or games. A cleaner look and easier access to sections of a somewhat sprawling app are nice, but the biggest news here is Honeycomb compatibility. Android tablets are quickly rising in popularity, but most apps have been slow to update for the new UI guidelines. With the impending release of a Honeycomb-compatible Flash player, Kongregate Arcade is about to become one hot item for Android-loving, slate-happy early adopters. You can update or download Kongregate Arcade right now at the Android Market. Read More

Songbird

| FREE | POTI, Inc.

Songbird Beta 3 for Android now available for download - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

by Samuel Gibbs on March 7, 2011 at 05:00 AM Songbird, the Mozilla-powered Android media player, has just hit its third beta release. The free application has gotten better and better with each beta release, and now comes packing a few decent features. Apart from a plethora of bug fixes, here are the changes from beta 2: Playlist support has been built-in via context menus for press and hold gestures for songs, albums, and artists; while the side-dragger lets you re-order the list of tunes to your liking quickly and easily. So, if you've been looking for an alternative media player, check out the free Songbird beta 3 on the Android Market. Read More

DropSpace

| FREE | Sungjin Han

DropSpace adds real Dropbox sync to Android - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

Dropbox offers a lovely client for Android, but it's lacking true "sync" functionality. You can merely browse your Dropbox, pull files into the device, and manually upload specific files. DropSpace is a little Android app that makes Dropbox on Android work like Dropbox – that is, you get real folder synchronization in the background. When you run the app you're prompted for your Dropbox credentials. After logging in to Dropbox, you get to select which device folders you'd like to sync to the cloud. It's a straightforward mapping process: You select a folder on the device, and then specify where in Dropbox it should go. The interface is rather clunky, at least for now. The biggest annoyance is that you can't edit your "sync list": if you add a folder and then wish to remove it, you must delete the entire list of folders and start over. In terms of functionality, it works quite well. I tested it with the camera folder, and it was nice to be able to take my photos using the lean default Camera app and have them sync up to the cloud instantly. Read More

N64oid (N64 emulator)

| $5.99 | yongzh

N64oid for Android completes the retro Nintendo emulator trinity - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

Yongzh, the same developer behind NESoid, SNESoid, GameBoid, Ataroid, and more (!), has finally released the last and most important Android retro emulator: N64oid. N64oid looks and feels like Yongzh's other emulators, and like NESoid it has the option of using hardware keys (if you have them!) or an on-screen gamepad. We won't lie: gaming with an on-screen controller is nothing like the real thing; it works, but pulling off combos, like those required in fighting games, is not . There's an option to use your Android device's accelerometer as the N64's analog stick, however, which could make RPGs like Zelda a lot easier to play. Also, all told, Yongzh's emulators have been downloaded around 5 million times, so the on-screen gamepad is obviously not that bad. Game compatibility is apparently very good, and if you have a high-end device like the Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy or Droid, games should run very smoothly. As far as finding games to play with N64oid, if you still have your old N64 cartridges in a cupboard somewhere (who doesn't?), you can find ROM backups with a quick Google search. We'll hopefully have a hands-on review of N64oid later today, so we'll be able to tell you first-hand just how good (or bad) it is. N64oid on the Android Market - $5.99 Read More

Adobe AIR

| FREE | Adobe Systems

Adobe AIR for Android updated to 2.6 supporting tablets - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

Adobe has just released an update for its Adobe AIR runtime for Android bringing it to version 2.6. The update adds support for Android 3.0 Gingerbread, meaning AIR on tablets like the Motorola Xoom is a go, plus a series of performance improvements. Highlights include up to 20% faster scrolling, H.264 video decoding at 30FPS, and GPU-accelerated animation or gaming at up to 50FPS. Greater gesture support has also been rolled in, plus Bitmap Capture for StageWebView for tighter HTML and Flash visual integration, and Asynchronous Bitmap Decoding, for improved image transitions. The AIR 2.6 SDK is also on target for a H2 2011 release, but apps developed with the 2.5 SDK will of course run fine with the AIR 2.6 runtime. Overall, not a bad and timely update, bringing AIR support to the incoming Honeycomb tablets. If you haven't installed AIR on your Android device yet, considering there are loads of Android apps that require AIR to run, perhaps now is the time to see what it can offer you. A list of Android devices that support the requirements of AIR can be found here. Read More

Evernote

| FREE | Evernote Corp.

Evernote for BlackBerry gets Android-style home screen and better search - Download Squad - Gadgets, Gizmos, Reviews and Downloads

Evernote has updated its app for BlackBerry smartphones, rolling numerous bugfixes and improvements in to the new build. Among them is an updated home screen, which now looks much more like the Evernote app for Android. The search bar has been removed from the bottom of the screen and a shortcut to all your notes has been added. The new version also brings a much more powerful search feature, which is why Evernote chose to swap the bar for an icon. The new search displays suggestions as you type and also allows searches to be saved for easy scroll-and-click (or tap, if you've got a BlackBerry with a touchscreen) execution later. Download the new Evernote for BlackBerry from AppWorld -- the QRCode is after the break. Read More