Android crowd, green and gold…five apps to start with

Of course, once the golden dust around my new shiny Desire HD had settled a bit, I immediately proceeded to pull off some essential apps from the market, and so a little review might be in order here. Things I do all the time on the phone while out in the wild are reading feeds, ebooks and listening to podcasts. So tell us all about those apps there, and break them down in sweet little categories while you’re at it.

First off, feed readers.

This is my primary news source, my newspaper, and the primary way I access web content. So this better be solid.

One remarkable app in this category is alphonsolabs’ pulse reader. It is by far the best looking and wets your mouth to read more just by looking at it. It’s free, but it does have some drawbacks, at least on android: It is limited both horizontally and vertically, meaning you can add only up to 25 news sources (oi! I got 81 at the moment, and I need them all!), and once you read the first dozen entries, that’s it. You need to go to the website to access more content. Finally, this thing keeps crashing on me on seemingly random entries. Those are the reasons I can’t use this one as my primary reader, and only keep it around as a sort of gadget.

Next up it’s time for Feedsquares. We talked about this cute way to read your feeds a while ago, and it got an android version around that time as well. It’s usage is seemless, it let’s you use the day/night themes, and organize your stuff into folders, for all the Monikas out there. Get it here:

And of course, for anybody who wants the whole real deal, without compromising, you’d need the native Google Reader app. It’s on the market, and while not being among the prettiest looking apps out there, it does offer nearly everything the web application has.

Second base: eBooks.

This one, even more than the other categories, is an ongoing quest for me. I do read the occasional ebook, and I liked the quasi-paper look they gave the screen on the kindle. So I have been looking for an app that offers some comfort and looks, but most importantly, let me display my imported, free ebooks. On that account, I failed, and haven’t been able to find an ebook app that just does that. Meanwhile, I went with aldiko, which features a nice interface, good choice of different reading methodes, and an overall good handling. I was able to get the free ebooks I wanted to read from the built-in shop, but was lucky, I guess. Still looking for that simplest of things, a state of the art ebook reader that is able to display my own ebooks And now that version 2-oh is out there, I can do just that. Case solved. That’s right. Buhaa.

Aaand count three – podcasts.

I tried three promising podcast clients this far.

PodCat (lol witty appnames galore): Looks like a simple, clean catcher and player, but it isn’t: I just keeps crashing. So, not suitable for use in this version.

Hapi Podcast/xuluan android: This one features a pretty awful design and interface. The first thing in order would be to import your existing podcast list, which in my case is quite long, similar to the RSS feeds up there in category #1. This only worked after a stubborn few dozen tries, and only after realizing you had to rename your *.OPML in a certain way and put in a certain place, whereas this podcast client wouldn’t tell you this by itself. Also, at a random point, your podcast list would be erased, and look at your face when you skipped the *.OPML importing step and punched in the RSS feeds of your wished for podcasts by hand. Lord, what a terrible app. Finally, after deleting this thing, it leaves its own sort of permanent footprint on your system, as a sort of reminder of what you dealt with here: An unerasable folder in your system’s garbage bin.

This sometimes happens on my work Mac OS too. I sincerely hate that.

Enough of this, let’s get to the good stuff: BeyondPod. This one finally is the stuff. It lets you import your ‘casts seemlessly and without a fuzz. You can than sort them into folders, download the latest shows, schedule for automatic updates anytime, keep certain entries from updating or getting deleted, and so on and so forth. It just works perfectly. And I mentioned that before, but you do not need iTunes anymore. Thank you very much, some more bloatware finally gone! I even just updated to the paid “PRO” version for $5, without really getting where the difference was, but anyway in order to support the perfect standalone podcast app on android.

Smoking podcasts.

Nanausicaa wants to take you to her own little podcast world. I’ve always liked it when big, author-focused sites point you a little bit in the way of their favorite podcasts. So here we go, as a nearly non-existing site, with my little list.

1. A first little dip and fresh start into a new week is the albeit short New Yorker political scene podcast. It is hosted by one Dorothy Wickenden and usually covers a few interviews on one current topic. The obvious question would be, why should you listen to people talking about the inner workings of far away US of A? Maybe a strange affection to foreign countries alongside the sometimes thick american accent. However, it takes you nicely into the week and sometimes makes you ponder problems that do not concern you. Nice.
2. Let’s go for the seriously best documentaries of the world, be it as podcasts, radio or TV shows – the BBC documentaries. Never topped in terms of professionalism, you often have your correspondent talking to an actual Taliban who just beheaded eight people and got imprisoned by the Pakistan government, or ask the right questions to the wrong people, like a central-african corrupt minister who is not used to somebody insisting on getting to know the actual truth.
3. Now, for a little mental travel in your ears: The Economist’s short podcast on how each and every major city of the world feels like when travelling there, from the airport to the hotels to when to try and seal a deal. This is one thing I like, especially the part where they describe the locals. If you’re stuck doint your job, you can always load up this podcast and at least feel like traveling a lot abroad. Check it out at http://audiovideo.economist.com/ – “Doing business in…”
4. On a lighter note, and with the only german language ’cast inna dis selection, we have the Spieleveteranen podcast, out now for the twentiest time exactly. It features old school 80ies gaming journalism “veterans”, many of which where good company at school back in the days and the talk of the schoolyard for many of us. They tend to make fun of things more than actually give out real information, and especially Heinrich Lenhardt’s f*ck Nintendo stance is quite annoying at times, but it’s got a lotta heart! Even when they seldomly play any games at all anymore, choosing to visit facebook or do iPhone games instead. …and even with all those better-than-ever-killer-games out there now!
5. Now for the classic gaming podcast, Major Nelson’s weekly selection of interviews and different little features about the 360. This one does surprisingly well, being paid for by Microsoft, and more than often containing the phrase “…which I cannot talk about”, prompting the thought, “…so why do you mention it and bring it up in the first place?”. The major is a real nice guy and features a good sense of humor and a Cicero-esque voice inside your ear. So, this one isn’t really about information and hard news (things we aren’t that interested in anyways), but a few laughs and entertainment in its own sense. Highly recommended.
6. A younger podcast, having started only this year, comes from a handful guys from the US’ east coast: Joint Operations monthly. It’s all about “guys’ favorite franchise”, Modern Warfare 2, discussing news, weapons, maps, and playmodes, while at the end naming their favorite “Player of the month” and throughout quoting various 12 year olds caught playing a mature game. I really had to LOL several times through the first issue alone. All cool guys, good voices, good humor, you name it. If you ask nicely, they even send you their own starting music via gmail.



And, nearing the end of my little journey through the podcast world, I would like to leave you with Go Nintendo’s “Go Nintendo Radio”. This musical spin-off from the original podcast is made by Touchfuzzy and should be listened to for the sake of its authors name alone. Really though, while I hate the orinigal Go Nintendo podcast, as it contains all elements of a bad podcast I ever knew, and even adds a few new ones, Touch quietly leads you through each show’s selection, while spilling all the data there is to know and ending with a little quiz. He stopped doing regular updates for now, but says he will return someday. And that mustn’t even be a bad thing, considering that the now-for-a-few-months-current issue is a special walkthrough through Nobuo Uematsu’s body of work, namely the first ten Final Fantasys. So, go grab it while it’s still up, it’s the perfect Videogames music mixtape. Search for “Go Nintendo Radio” on your aggregator.

Flüsse, die im Quadrat fliessen

Nun ja, wie jedermann so seine Feeds konsumiert, bleibt wahrscheinlich noch markt-zu-erforschen. Ob auf dem Mobiltelefon, Laptop, Arbeit, zu Hause, ob eingebettet in Google oder Yahoo homepages, stand-alone-Lesern oder dem Web, es hat inzwischen wohl jeder seinen eigenen Ansatz. Fest steht nur eines, ohne geht’s nicht. Für diejenigen unter euch, die den Google Reader benutzen, und zu den glücklichen Chrome usern zählen, gibt es jedoch eine wirklich gute neben-der-Spur: Feedsquares.

Dabei handelt es sich um eine Erweiterung für Chrome (Apple, ubuntu, Win), die inzwischen sogar gefeatured wird auf der Erweiterungenseite. Installiert, erscheint ein kleines Feedsquares-icon neben der Adresszeile, welches offenbar die Feedsquares Darstellung aufruft. Eure RSS-Feeds werden horizontal dargestellt, links nach rechts, oder rechts nach links; ihr könnt oben die Kategorien, in der Mitte die einzelnen Feeds in Form von Quadraten, und unten dann schließlich die eizelnen Einträge konsumieren. Das mach Spass, und das ist es eigentlich auch schon. Für alles darüber hinaus gehende wie zB. gesternte Angelegenheiten, gesharete Einträge, oder die superben Statistiken vom Reader, müsst ihr weiterhin die eigentliche klassische Readerseite aufrufen. Aber wie sprach schon der große Dirk Diggler dereinst – “there’s nothing like a little double traffic around here”.

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Die Schultern der Giganten:

Das Google Reader Advantage Programm – http://www.google.com/googlereader/reader-advantage.html

Weiter geht’s hier:

Feedsquares – http://blog.rocketinbottle.com/search/label/FQChromeUpdates