I don’t normally post about individual phone updates, but this one is particularly exciting to me personally because I have a Droid 3 with front-facing camera, and according to this PDF on Verizon’s support site, the large software update my phone is downloading now includes Google Talk Video Chat!

There are other improvements and fixes included, such as improved call audio and improvements to specific apps. Check out that PDF for full details.

I’ll update when my phone finishes downloading the full update and I have a chance to try it out!

UPDATE: It works!! >(:] )=

After the update installed, I opened the (Google) Talk app, and noticed that my friend, who also had a Droid 3, had a video camera icon next to his name. I clicked it, and it started a phone-to-phone video call! He didn’t want to be pictured here for our demo (why not? I showed my tired-late-night-hair!) so we used Zoe Saldana on the cover of Ebony Magazine as a stand-in!

Here’s how it looked on my phone:

It shows you (me w/camera) in the lower right-hand corner, and it shows the person you’re talking to as a large video. The video was slightly blurry, but pretty good quality over all.

Since the Droid 3 has a camera on both sides, you can also switch to your back-facing camera! This will be useful when you’re shopping and trying to show someone what you’re looking at, or when you want to still see your friend’s reaction when you switch the camera to show your dog doing something cute.

Don’t have any friends with Video-Chat-enabled phones? No problem! If they have a webcam and a Google account, you can also do this from GChat in GMail. Just click video chat like you’re doing a webcam-to-webcam call, and if the person is available on their phone, it will ring them there! As my friend and I found out, sometimes it has trouble deciding which device you’re currently active on – his Motorola XOOM started ringing!

Here’s a screenshot of me on my computer webcam and my friend (aka Zoe) on his Droid 3 camera:

Now you don’t have to be jealous of your friends with FaceTime on iPhone anymore.

Do you have a phone that has Google Talk Video Chat? Tell us about your experiences in the comments!

Related posts:

• What to Expect from Android 2.1 Update
• News on your Droid
• Ask The Droid Women Issue #1: Phone Shopping Advice

This post is part of our series called “Female Faves”, where we pick a category of apps and feature the ones that are highest-rated and most-downloaded by women according to AppBrain’s “Popular Among: Women” filter. Since it would be difficult to fully test all of the apps, we won’t review all of them, but if you have or try any of them, please chime in in the comments!

Again, these are some of the highest-rated apps that are most popular among women according to AppBrain – we don’t pick them! If these aren’t your favorites, tell us what yours are below!

Related posts:

• Female Faves: Puzzle Apps
• Female Faves: Travel & Local Apps
• Female Faves: Productivity

Women With Droids reader Whitney used her Android when planning her own wedding and wanted to tell you about the apps that helped her the most. Enjoy her guest post!

Wedding Plan-It Lite

Despite a thick layer of cheese—including but not limited to a heavy dose of emoticons—this is the easiest planning app I’ve found. You can include guests from your email and phone contacts and set up vendors and your budget. If you need to send an email to your caterer, simply go to the ‘actions’ tab and select their name. It will format an email for you with a subject and salutation. If you need to see if those new Louboutins will fit into the budget, check out the budget report. It will tell you your total vendor costs and then break it down further into each vendor’s cost.

WeddingWire

If you’re already a member of WeddingWire, downloading their app is a great move. You’ll be able to track your checklist, budget and vendor. The vendor reviews are cleanly formatted and easy to use. If you’re midway through planning, I would skip this app, though. Most of the items must be set up from a PC, which really diminishes the value of the phone app if you’re not interested in WeddingWire’s main website.

Living Social and Groupon

LivingSocial is the Valpak for a new generation. There are coupons for honeymoon destinations, manicures, dance lessons and wedding favors. Check it daily to make sure you don’t miss out on anything it has to offer. While you’re at it, sign up for Groupon, which includes everything but the vacations.

Etsy for Android

Etsy, the shopping mecca for brides who want the DIY look without the hassle, now has an Android app. Etsy for Android is more intuitive than the site’s web design itself. The homepage has a large text bar and a magnifying glass for a search button. Before you link to your Etsy account, the page features one other item—a large padlock that allows you to link. Once you do so, the app takes you back to the homepage, where a heart indicating your favorites appears in place of the lock.

Results are neatly listed, and images are easily expandable. You can’t purchase items from the app itself, but with one touch, you can get to the item on Etsy.com and buy from there. Another flaw is that you can’t search for individual sellers or narrow your search by vintage or homemade items.

Wedding speeches for the bride

Did you forget to write a speech at the last minute? For under two dollars, Wedding Speeches for the Bride can save you. Choose speeches based on whether they’re an ice breaker or if you want them to be funny, sentimental or a combination of both. Glance through the text before you start reading, though. There are some grammatical mix-ups (conscience replaces conscious, for example), and some of the ‘funny’ speeches are too corn-laden to use.

Wedding dresses

This simple free app is worth downloading until you find your dress. You can search by category, which has simple beach, princess, edgy, and natural labels, or by designer. Once you find one you’d like to use as an inspiration picture, you can sign up and add it to a scrapbook, which you can use to show retailers the style you’re going for when you dress shop.

Thanks for sharing your quick reviews with our readers, Whitney, and Congrats on your wedding!

Wedding dress photo “First in line” by Lori Grieg on Flickr

Related posts:

• Guest-Post: Android Needs Disney Love Too
• Guest-Post: App Review: CardioTrainer
• “Women With Android Apps” Series: Dora

This is the 3rd post in the “Female Faves” series, where we pick a category of apps and feature the ones that are highest-rated and most-downloaded by women according to AppBrain’s “Popular Among: Women” filter. Since it would be difficult to fully test all of the apps every week, we won’t review all of them, but if you have or try any of them, please chime in in the comments!

This time, we’re taking a look at apps in the Health & Fitness category. Check them out!

Check out Sonya’s review here

Check out Ellie’s review here

Again, these are some of the highest-rated apps that are most popular among women according to AppBrain – we don’t pick them! If these aren’t your favorites, tell us what yours are below!

Related posts:

• Female Faves: Communication Apps
• Female Faves: Productivity
• Female Faves: Puzzle Apps

I have been an Android user since the original Droid from VZW. When the Droid X was released I was there on release day working a deal to change my original Droid for the X. I am now a certified Android addict and I think Google should rule the world.

The only problem I have with Android is the lack of love the Disney Company shows the Android platform. Next to my Android obsession I am a Disneyphile (a person who is obsessed with all things that do with the Mouse). I have an iPod Touch and love and use many Disney apps. Including games, WDW park reference guides, park maps and wait times.

I was hoping that even though the Disney Company has Steve Jobs on their board they would be an equal opportunity company and publish their apps in the Android Market Place. This is not the case.

Don’t get me wrong I do searches for Disney related apps all the time in the Android Market. I have found a few third party apps that are cool, but for the most part I find a lot of apps that have nothing to do with Disney show up in the search.

One of the best apps I have found is WDW Lines. This app was developed by Henry Work over at touringplans.com. These are the guys responsible to the Unofficial Guide to Disney a.k.a the Disney Bible by many in the community.

The Lines app reports real time waits for all the attractions, lets you know when parades are, what the crowd level is for each of the 4 parks,  and also when fast pass times are and when the fast passes are gone for the day. Why do you need such an app you ask? Well as most people know Disney can be daunting and if you don’t have a good plan (like one from Touring Plans) it is extremely helpful to plan your attack so you can get the most out of your magical vacation. The app itself is a free download from the market place. However, in order to get all the functionality you need to subscribe to www.touringplans.com. This subscription is $10.95 for the year. This can be discounted if you own the Unofficial Guide Book. The subscription also gives you access the all of the on-line information including plans and long range crowd calendars. If you are planning a Disney Trip whether be it your first trip or fiftieth trip this is a must app.



Besides the WDW Lines app there is not a lot in the Market Place for my fellow Disney peeps. I have found some matching games, picture games, wallpaper, a couple sound boards and themes to work with DxTop, aHome and Panda Home. Nothing has been officially put out by Disney yet and I can only hope that with the increased popularity in Android we will see something sooner rather than later.

Related posts:

• Guest Post: Best Android Apps for Wedding Planning
• Guest-Post: App Review: CardioTrainer
• Quick Post – Not Call Log

I’ve never been a user of StumbleUpon, but I’ve heard good things about it. I decided to take the plunge and sign up when I heard their new app gave good app recommendations based on the apps you already have installed on your phone. Here is my review, in screenshots.

When you launch the app for the first time, you get a sign up/log in screen. Unfortunately, the birthdate dropdowns weren't working on my phone, so I had to register online, then log in here.

Once you set up topics, you can click on them to 'Stumble' (i.e. view random web pages they think you'll like based on past likes), but the app recommends stumbling Apps, Flickr, News, and YouTube from their mobile interface. As you can see, the Apps area is considered to be in Beta.

Before the app would allow me to Stumble anything, it required me to select topics I wanted to 'Stumble'. I think there should be an apps-only mode that doesn't require topics, since it's supposed to be able to use your installed apps to generate recommendations.

After I allowed it to access my installed apps list, here are some of the first apps StumbleUpon recommended for me. I like games and have several installed, but I'm not a fan of 'shoot-em-up' games, so I thumbs-downed RoboDefense. I didn't install either Voice Recorder or Quadrant (I have to be picky about what I install because my Droid is low on app space), but I thought they were decent recommendations for me. I also was happy to see that all 8 or so of its first recommendations I previewed were apps with high star ratings. No 'Crapps' (cheap backgrounds, ringtones, etc.) were recommended.

One of the apps it recommended was Ringdroid (one of Ellie's favorites). I decided to dive in deeper and see what other information was offered about the apps via this interface. I was disappointed that no large previews of the app screenshots were available, only a small hard-to-read screenshot of the app review page was visible.

This view showed which other StumbleUpon users liked RingDroid.

The Reviews page was quite sparse. StumbleUpon either needs to offer more incentives for users to write reviews, or display Android Market reviews along with their own. Not very helpful.

The other sections of the StumbleUpon app (other than 'Apps') let you stumble web pages, flickr photos, news, and youtube videos based on your entered topics and thumbs-up likes.

The last feature I'll cover here is the StumbleUpon share button. This is nice because if you stumble upon any web page, video, or app that you want to share with friends, you can pull up sharing options right from within the app or open it in your browser to bookmark.

Overall, I think StumbleUpon is a great app for anyone that has a lot of app space to try out its recommendations, or for anyone that already has a StumbleUpon account online that’s configured with likes & dislikes. It would also be a good app for someone that turns to their phone when bored and enjoys the ’stumble’ style of finding content.

I personally will be uninstalling it to make space, though. I can’t wait until I’m eligible for a new phone with more space allocated for apps!

Related posts:

• App Review: doubleTwist
• Renee’s Homescreen Makeover: Apps Organizer
• WomenWithDroids Must-Have Apps

Just wanted to collect some of the top-rated Christmas, holiday, and winter wallpapers, ringtones, and themed apps for you all. Click on the AppBrain widget links to read full descriptions and see screenshots, or click on “QR Code” and scan with your phone to download. Enjoy!

Wallpapers

Live Wallpapers

Apps

Ringtones

Related posts:

• Quick Post – Not Call Log
• Quick Post: Green Robot
• Geeky, Functional, and Fun Live Wallpapers

Hello, I’m known as CraftLass and I am a Droid accessory addict. I have the dock, a spare battery, an external charger, so many charging cables I can’t even figure out where one of them came from, and even a car charger despite the fact that I don’t own a car. I would have the car dock if I did, of course. I may get it anyway for when I rent cars or ride along on road trips, it’s pretty darn cool.

I got a Kindle for my birthday this past July. I already had downloaded Kindle for Android and liked it, even though I had only downloaded a couple of public domain books and samples to try it out. When I set up my Kindle those appeared in my “Archived Items” and I was already impressed. I downloaded my first e-book purchase and started reading. A few days later I was out with only my Droid and wanted something to read so I opened the Kindle app. It synced right up, I downloaded my new book, and next thing you know, I was reading the same page I’d been on. Just like that.

The homescreen for Kindle for Android showing the books I've downloaded to my Droid.

The tables have turned and the Droid has become an accessory to another device.

Now, I’m not madly in love with the app. I would really like more Kindle features, like highlighting, notes, and collections integrated into it and would pay for them, even. However, I don’t carry my Kindle unless I expect a wait or a longish train ride or something, so what matters most is I can read my books anytime, anywhere.

A page in a book in Kindle for Android in sepia tone at darkest brightness setting. Notice the dog-ear in the upper-right, it shows the page is bookmarked.

The best feature is the orientation lock, especially since I got Froyo and the screen flips to landscape in both directions. See, I’ve found that my Droid at lowest brightness in black tone is a lot dimmer than reading lights with the Kindle (or an actual paper book), so if I want to read in bed without waking my boyfriend it’s best to use the Droid while lying on my right side. If I don’t lock it into portrait the text is sideways to me.Reading is intuitive, just flick from left to right for the next page and right to left for the previous one. View options are accessed via the menu and include text size, color schemes, and brightness. The “Go To” menu option lets you go to various locations in the book, including typing in the numerical location. This is also where it’s nice to have a Kindle, you may not be able to add notes in Android but you can access the ones you have created.

A highlighted passage.

All the highlights, notes, and bookmarks you have created are easily accessed.

Shopping is, of course, dangerously easy, just as it is on the Kindle itself. A click on the “Kindle Store” button in the menu on the homescreen will take you right to the Kindle mobile store where you can browse or search for what you want and buy it in just a few clicks. If you download a book through the app you just go into “Archived Items” on your Kindle and it will download and sync, it works exactly the same in both directions.

N.B.: I have to look into if this is okay or may hurt the battery lifespan, but I found that my Kindle charger works on my Droid and vice-versa. The cables also work fine as USBs for both. This could be very handy for traveling! If you know anything about the safety of doing this, please let us know in the comments.

Note from Renee: If you buy a Kindle, accessories, or eBooks using this link, a small portion of the sale will help support Women With Droids!

Related posts:

• Android Market – now with web availability!
• Guest-Post: Android Needs Disney Love Too
• Evernote for Android

If you’re a fan of the stars then you’ll want to check out Google’s Sky Map for Android.

Self-described as a “window to the night sky,” this app does a great job of rolling together a telescope, the Hayden Planetarium, and your phone into one. Just launch the app and instantly your phone kicks into a kind of telescope-mode with six visible layers of astral information. A handy dis/enable feature allows you to view any combination the Stars, Constellations, Messier Objects, Planets, RA/Dec Grid, and Horizon layers.

Curious as to what stars are directly above you? Just point your phone towards the sky and voila! The app tells you. Feel dizzy as the stars whirl around your screen? Switch from automatic to manual mode and better control the view. A great zoom feature enabled me to enlarge Jupiter to about the size of a quarter on the my homescreen. Sure enough there it was in all its beige, brown and orange-striped glory. Wild.

While astronomy was one of my most painful subjects in college, Google Sky Map excels in bringing you the subject in a fun and interactive way. Enjoy!

Related posts:

• On the Move? Car Home
• Adobe Reader for Android
• Renee’s Homescreen Makeover: LauncherPro follow-up

I am often asked in real life and on twitter what Android apps everyone should have. So, we did a little experiment here at Women With Droids to see which apps were found most often on our contributors’ phones, and we wanted to share the results with you! Participating contributors were: Ellie, CraftLass, Liz, Deb, Taylor, and myself. You can read more about us on our About page (I will update it with our recently-added contributors soon!) and see recommendations from each of us below.

So, this post contains a list of all non-built-in apps that at least 3 of us have on our phones (plus a couple only 2 contributors had that I promoted to the list). I’ll call them our “must-have apps”! “Must-have” is a bit of a misnomer because we don’t actually recommend you download every app here (read the advice here), just the ones that would make YOUR life better! Some of them have already been reviewed on this blog, and we will continue to come back here periodically and link the app names to new reviews as we write them.

Without further ado, here are our top picks and the rest of the Women With Droids must-have apps!

• Ellie’s Pick: Ringdroid
  Ringdroid is a necessity for anyone who loves changing their ringtone to their new favorite song or an old classic! This free app allows you to select songs from your SD card and clip them to bite sized segments to use as ringtones or notification sounds. There is a slight learning curve to this app, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you made it without it! Ringdroid saves the ringtones to your SD card and automatically adds them to your list, so you can quickly select the tone you want to use.
  Market Link
• Deb’s Pick: My Verizon Mobile
• My Verizon Mobile’s not only a must-have, it’s a no-brainer. In the past, a two-second question regarding my account would take me half hour to answer. I’d have to go online, spend time digging up my username and password, then reacquaint myself with my carrier’s website all over again. Exhausting! Well sweat no more, as this app typifies everything we efficiency hounds seek. One press and instantly your minutes, text and data usage are displayed. Another flick and up comes your latest bill including current balance, total charges, and payment due date. Sure you’ll need your My Verizon password for some functions, but lots of helpful info is accessible within seconds without it.
  I’m continually amazed how certain apps take the “chore” out of past habits, and My Verizon Mobile is one of them.
  Not in the market for everyone (carrier-specific). Verizon users can find it in the market under the Verizon apps tab.
• Renee’s Pick: IMDb
  The IMDb.com website is a treasure for both serious movie buffs and casual info-seekers. It has lots of data about every actor, movie, and anything affiliated with movies – and it’s organized in a way that makes it fun and easy to use. Similarly, the IMDb app for Android is a well-implemented interface to the Internet Movie Database. You can still get all of the standard actor info and movie ratings from the menu-button search, plus the app homescreen gives you quick access to movie showtimes, box office results, top 250 movies, new on DVD, and more! Whether you’re trying to figure out the name of that guy in that one movie, solving a dinner dispute about whether a movie won best picture, trying to decide which DVD to rent, or planning when to meet your friends at the movies, the IMDb app will come in handy more often than you expect!
  Market Link
• Taylor’s Pick: Google Listen
  As an NPR junkie and a budding podcast afficianado, Google Listen is perfect for filling in the dull little gaps throughout my day. Search for your favorite podcasts, queue them up and subscribe to them in a clean interface separate from your other RSS subscriptions, which keeps things sweet and simple. The streaming’s always proven very smooth for me over 3G, and moving through a podcast or audio stream is effortless and intuitive. While Listen can’t cache podcasts for offline listening yet (that would be amazing), it’s a solid little app that does one thing very, very well.
  Market Link
• Liz’s Pick: Skype
  Skype Mobile should be a requirement for anyone that loves to stay connected! As free tie-in to the popular Skype, this little application gem keeps you fully available for last-minute conference calls from the train, playing catch-up with family across the country, or just unwinding to a friend – all for free (with another Skype member) or extremely low rates (when calling phone numbers). This is *especially* handy for those who have a solid footprint in the digital arena and want to be reachable through VOIP technology without needing any special setups – calling you could be as simple as clicking a button you’ve added to your website! Currently, the Android version is limited to calling features (Skype to Skype, Skype to Land) and Instant Messaging other Skype users. I see this going a long way, and I want to be along for the ride!
  Website Link

Advanced Task Killer Free	Forces selected running applications to close.
	Market Link
AK Notepad	Simple text/notepad app. Set reminders, share notes, password protect notes, etc.
	Market Link
Amazon	Find items on Amazon using a barcode or photograph, read reviews, shop.
	Market Link
App Monster	View and manage the apps on your phone.
	Market Link
Barcode Scanner	Look up items online by scanning their UPC, ISBN, or QR barcodes.
	Market Link
Battery Widget	See your battery level percentage on a 1×1 widget.
	Market Link
BBC News	World news articles in multiple feeds, plus a small headline widget.
	Market Link
Beautiful Widgets	Skinnable clock and weather widgets, network toggle widgets, etc.
	Market Link
Congress	Find your representatives and contact them right from the app, view voting history & bills.
	Market Link
Dolphin Browser HD	Tabbed web browser with advanced features.
	Market Link
Dropbox	Auto-sync files between computers and your phone.
	Market Link
Google Sky Map	Find or identify constellations and planets by holding your phone up to the sky.
	Market Link
Google Voice	Read voicemails as text or listen from within app. Call & text from your Google number.
	Market Link
Jewels	Puzzle game – slide jewels into consecutive rows to make them disappear and get points.
	Market Link
Last.fm	Build radio playlists by artist or genre, learn about artists & concerts.
	Market Link
LinkPush	Use a browser extension or bookmarklet to send links from your computer browser to your phone.
	Market Link
Listables!	Generate a list of apps on your phone and share it by email. (We used it to help create this list!)
	Market Link
Movies	View movie trailers, read reviews, find local showtimes.
	Market Link
My Days	Track menstrual periods, ovulation, and birth control on a calendar.
	Market Link
Pandora	Create streaming radio stations based on an artist or genre, and Pandora tunes the station to your preferences based on your feedback.
	Market Link
PayPal	Make or receive payments on the go. New features such as split-the-bill and “bump” integration.
	Market Link
Quick Settings	Quickly access your phone’s Brightness, Volume, Ringer, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and Data Sync settings, Battery meter and more.
	Market Link
Seesmic	View, search, share photos & videos, and get notifications for Twitter & Google Buzz.
	Market Link
Shazam	Find artist & song names by holding your phone up to the music! Encore (paid) edition allows unlimited usage. P.S. This is the only app that all 6 of us had on our phones
	Market Link
Starbucks Card	Check your Starbucks Card balance with one click.
	Market Link
Startup Auditor	Task killer/manager which allows you to disable apps from starting on boot up.
	Market Link
Swype	Only occasionally available for download, Swype is a replacement keyboard which allows you to drag your finger through the letters to type, making text entry much faster and easier!
	Website Link
The Weather Channel	Local weather, radar, and forecasts from The Weather Channel. Includes widget.
	Market Link
Tip Calc	Quickly calculate tips when you receive your restaurant bill.
	Market Link
Toss It	Just toss crumpled paper into a trash can! Various modes and challenges.
	Market Link
Twitter	Twitter Android client from the makers of Twitter.
	Market Link
Urbanspoon	Shake your phone for local restaurant suggestions.
	Market Link
WordPress	Create new posts, edit posts, and approve & respond to comments on your Wordpress blog.
	Market Link
Zillow	View real estate for sale in map or list view by search or GPS location. Photos, prices descriptions, and more. Contact an agent directly from the app.
	Market Link

Related posts:

• Renee’s Homescreen Makeover: Apps Organizer
• WomenWithDroids Top Posts (Year 1)
• WomenWithDroids News 3/17/10