Adam Reineke

I have a Motorola Droid. I’ve been in love since November when I first picked it up. Here is a quick overview of my favorite apps.

Web Apps

Facebook (http://touch.facebook.com)

I hate the native Facebook app on Droid because it is missing so many features that the iPhone app has. Therefore, I placed a link to the Facebook web app on my home screen.

Google Calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar)

I also strongly dislike the native calendar app, so I went with the Google Calendar web app on my home screen.

Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader)

I’m a huge Google Reader fan. Sadly, there isn’t a native app for Reader yet. Add this one to your home screen too.

Native Apps

Twitter for Android

I tweet, and my client of choice is the official Twitter app. I don’t like the way it does photo uploads, so if I’m TwitPic’ing something, I’ll use Swift (my 2nd favorite). I also wish Twitter would let you scroll back to older tweets and load them, but it won’t (Swift does this).

MotoTorch LED

If you have a Droid, it has an external flash that is just an LED. This app lets you use it as a flashlight. Be sure to add the widget after you install that app for easy access to turn the light on and off.

WeatherBug

WeatherBug is a fantastic app for tracking the weather. It sticks the current temp in the status bar and alerts you of upcoming severe weather.

Movies

It’s just called Movies, and does just that. Look up movie times, recent DVD releases, and read reviews.

Dropbox

If you aren’t using this app, go to Dropbox.com and download it! Think of it as a virtual flash drive. You get 2GB storage free that you can access from anywhere. On PC, it syncs folders automatically across all the PCs you have installed it on. On Android, it doesn’t sync automatically, but it makes the files available on demand. Very nice to have another way to access my Dropbox files.

Advanced Task Killer

Think of ATK as the Ctrl+Alt+Delete for Android. It lists the apps that are currently running in the background and lets you kill them. Great for saving battery life.

Foursquare

You might not Foursquare, but if you do, get the official app. It’s beautiful.

AK Notepad

Need to take notes on your Android device? I love AK Notepad for it. Simple and straightforward, it does the job.

GPS Test

GPS not working quite right? Want to check your current speed or elevation? Grab this app. Just a neat little app to have.

Last.fm

If you scrobble your music plays to Last.fm, you want this app on your phone so you can scrobble your mobile plays too!

Listen

This app from Google Labs is a podcast subscription app. Subscribe to audio podcasts and download and listen to them on the go. Has a nice search feature for discovering new podcasts too.

Shazam

Shazam listens to music that is playing and tells you what it is. Great for listening to the radio or hanging out at the mall.

runstar

Runstar is a neat little app for tracking your runs.

Google Sky Map

Want to impress your friends? Get this map and identify any shiny dot in the night sky. I couldn’t believe how well it worked. Load it up, point your phone into the night sky, and watch your phone display the sky you are looking at — annotated! Such a neat app!

Goggles

Google Goggles uses your webcam to identify… well, anything. Point it at famous photos, books, food labels, logos, whatever and watch Google look it up.

That’s what I love on my Droid. What apps do you love?

With over 50 submissions, there were several great haikus, but one stood out in my mind.

Written by Redditor DanielDoh:

The steppes are quiet
What lies beyond the bushes?
Zealots pace, restless

Congratulations!

Some of my other favorites, in no particular order: (more…)

Google’s ad that aired tonight (shown below) covered a bunch of features in just 52 seconds. Here’s what I saw:

1. Auto-suggesting related searches
2. Spelling correction
3. Google Translate
4. Searching for local businesses
5. Google’s Dictionary feature
6. Clean, minimalistic interface
7. Tracking flight status

They did several more “search story” ads too: check them out at http://www.youtube.com/searchstories.

RSS What?

I was surprised how many of my friends don’t use an RSS reader. If you’re reading this, maybe you’re one of those friends and you don’t have a clue what RSS even stands for. (RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.”)

The RSS feed was created to provide a way for website publishers to easily share information about the content on their website that is updated frequently. Many websites and browsers indicate an RSS feed with an orange icon (pictured on the right).

An RSS reader is a program that organizes a bunch of RSS feeds from different websites and checks them for new information, creating a single, convenient place where you can look for new posts from your favorite websites.

So What’s Google Reader?

I’m glad you asked. As you might have guessed already, Google Reader is an RSS reader that Google makes. It is a free, web-based program that you can use from anywhere you have an internet connection (and a computer). Even better, if you already have a Google account, you can hop right into Reader! If not though, you’ll need to create a Google account quickly.

First step: Follow this link to get to the Google Reader page. If you don’t already have a Google account, click the big, blue “Create An Account” button. The worst part of this process is trying to read the CAPTCHA image they use to make sure you’re human.

I’m not totally sure what sort of welcome screen Google will give you since it has been forever since I signed up, but I’m sure you’ll manage your way to a screen that looks something like this:

Screenshot of my Google Reader homepage.

Whoa. So, where to start?

First, you’ll need to find some RSS feeds to follow. I’ll show you two ways: looking on a website for a link to their RSS feed, and using Google Reader’s “Add A Subscription” feature.

One of my favorites Michael Hyatt’s blog. He’s the CEO of Thomas Nelson and has great posts on the topic of leadership. We’ll practice finding an RSS feed on a website with his site. His website has a gray and white version of the RSS icon located on the right. Click on the icon, then on the next page, click the blue link that says “My Regular Posts.”

Screenshot of the Feedburner page. You want to select where the blue arrow is pointing.

That takes you to a fun page on Feedburner (see the screenshot above). That’s a topic for another day, but for now, click the link on the right that says “Google.” A blue arrow is pointing to it in the screenshot. It should pull the feed up in Google Reader and have a yellow message that says “You are not subscribed to this feed yet.” Click the “Subscribe” button at the bottom of the yellow message.

You’ve now subscribed to your first feed. Now let’s find the feed for Lifehacker, another one of my favorite sites, using Google’s “Add Subscription” button. This is located in the upper left of the Reader homepage. Click that, type “Lifehacker” in the search box, and click “Add.” It will bring up a list of possible matches for the site. The first one is what you want. Click the big “Subscribe” button under the description of the feed.

There you go, feed number two!

Three more of my personal favorites:

• “Seth’s Blog” — The blog of author and marketing guru, Seth Godin.
• “John Maxwell on Leadership” — The blog of leadership expert, John C. Maxwell.
• Gizmodo — a fantastic blog about cool tech stuff.

Go ahead and search for the sites that you frequently visit and start subscribing! Don’t forget to subscribe to mine too! You’ll need to search for this site address, not just my name: “http://adam.reineke.me”

In an upcoming post, I’ll explain how to organize your feeds and take advantage of the other cool features that are offered in Google Reader.