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App Cache Cleaner

| FREE | INFOLIFE LLC

Five... friendly, free Android apps • reghardware - The Register: Sci/Tech News for the World

Simple utilities you shouldn't be without Android App of the Week Each too simple to warrant a full App of the Week write-up, these five dinky free programs caught my eye over during the past 12 months and have since taken up permanent residence on my Desire HD. Does exactly what the title suggests and takes a broom to all the guff stored by your apps in their caches. After six months of not bothering to do this, I discovered that I was losing just shy of 300MB of space to cache files, which came as a shock. ACC’s killer feature is an auto-clear setting that can be programmed to run at anything from every hour to every three days. Reg Rating 95% Size 490KB App2SD Yes A blindingly simple little app that at a glance shows you how much wireless data you have used so far today, this week and this month as well as in the last seven full days. Numbers are shown for both your cellular and Wi-Fi connections and there are no ads, no alerts, no option to restrict data when a limit is hit or any other intrusive nonsense. It’s just a data counter, simple as that. Reg Rating 85% Size 1.5MB App2SD No Simple utilities you shouldn't be without Improved recognition of new media files is one of the advances contained in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich but the rest of us are still occasionally left wondering where the heck those files we just added to our media library have got to. To solve the problem, just tap the Rescan Media icon and in less the blink of an eye all your pictures, videos and music files will appear. Reg Rating 90% Size 36KB App2SD No For reasons best known to itself, HTC installs its Read More

Angry Birds

| FREE | Rovio Mobile Ltd.

Angry Birds struggle to take on Androids • The Register - The Register: Sci/Tech News for the World

Angry Birds developer Rovio is mulling creating multiple versions for different Android handsets, as fragmentation of the platform causes headaches for anyone not using Adobe's Flash. Angry Birds is hugely popular on iOS, and was eagerly anticipated for Android, but the fragmentation of the Android platform has prompted Rovio company to post a list of 17 handsets on which Angry Birds just won't work. It also announced that it's working on a lightweight version for the differently-able handsets. No such problems over at the BBC, which has pulled the iPlayer streams used by third-party android app myPlayer, claiming the cross-platform capabilities of Adobe's Flash make platform-specific versions redundant - excepting iOS, and BlackBerry, of course. It's true that with Froyo installed and the latest Flash client downloaded, iPlayer does indeed work on Android without the need for a native application; and the BBC reckons that supporting the fragmented Android platform would be impractical without having Adobe's technology. But that's what Rovio is being forced to do as users continue to expect every Android application to work on every Android handset. Rovio reckons that by creating a lightweight version it's "doing a favour for [its] fans", which is very altruistic of the company. We can only hope the additional advertising revenue will go some way towards rewarding Rovio's commitment to the fans. Still, the fragmentation problem is only going to get worse, especially as Android devices spread into the tablet space. The 24-hour trial period offered by Google's Android Marketplace helps; but the Marketplace is going to have to evolve to provide more compatibility information, and developers are going to have to spend more time understanding the limitations of the hardware if we're not going to return to the arcane technical requirements that used to adorn the sides of software boxes. ® Read More

Archos 5 Android - Gadget Help

| £1.25 | TMTI Limited

Archos users celebrate Android app access • The Register - The Register: Sci/Tech News for the World

Users of Android-based tablets from Archos can now get the Google applications the rest of the Android community takes for granted, and seem blissfully unaware of the illegality of doing so. The apps include Gmail and Google Talk, though it‘s YouTube and the Android Marketplace client that most Archos users seem to want. They can now have these thanks to an anonymous pirate under the pseudonym m4rk3 who‘s provided a downloadable package containing all the necessary applications in the ArchosFans forums. Users don‘t seem to understand that these are just as legally protected as any other application/film/music. Google might provide Android for free, but the search giant charges phone manufacturers for its applications including Google Maps and Gmail. Manufacturers are under no obligation to pay, and Google doesn‘t like to license its apps for tablet devices (such as those marketed by Archos) as it was hoping those would be based on the next version of the OS: code-named Gingerbread. So Archos didn‘t pay up, or wasn‘t offered the option (neither company is saying which), and the Archos range of tablets don‘t have the Google apps on board - and Archos runs its own application store. Unless one installs the pirate software, that is. Archos isn‘t alone in eschewing Google's closed-source applications - some Asian and Indian phone manufacturers are using part, or all, of Android and providing their own applications and store, but in the west Google has managed to get its commercial packages so closely associated with the free operating system that handset manufacturers are obliged to pay up - perhaps the revenue stream to which Eric Schmidt was referring when he said that Android development was already in profit. And Google does care. When Augen Electronics left the Google applications installed on the launch version of the tablet the Read More

LogMeIn Ignition Beta

| FREE | LogMeIn, Inc.

Jobsian remote access app comes to Android • The Register - The Register: Sci/Tech News for the World

LogMeIn has released an Android version of its popular remote PC-access tool, LogMeIn Ignition. Ignition was originally built for the iPhone, providing remote access to your PC or Mac from the holy Jobsian handset. And naturally, it's now available for the iPad as well. Like the iPhone/iPad incarnation, the Android version carries a $29.99 price tag. The app has been wildly successful for the Massachusetts-based LogMeIn, raking in more dough during its first week in the Apple Store than the company expected to make in the first year. According to Apple, it ranks as the store's seventh-highest grossing application. In the spring of 2008, before the opening of the App Store, LogMeIn hoped to provide an iPhone incarnation of its LogMeIn Rescue tool, which would allow IT outfits to provide technical support for Jobsian handhelds. Whereas LogMeIn Ignition provides remote PC access from a phone, Rescue provides remote iPhone control from a PC. But since Apple didn't allow third-party background apps on the original iPhone, this was a nonstarter. You can't start a remote control connection unless there's a background app waiting for your call. So, the company developed LogMeIn Ignition instead. No word yet on whether it will build an Jobsian version of Rescue now that the iPhone allows multitasking. The new Android app — now available from Google's Android Market — runs on version 1.5 of the OS and later. As on the iPhone, it lets you navigate remote desktops using typical touch gestures, including pan and zoom. And it provides full remote keyboard access, including PC and Mac key combinations and shortcuts. You can see it in action here: The app is now available in Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. And it speaks Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Read More