Ladies and Gentlemen of the Android Community, I have a confession to make: I am a Capital Beltway driver. Those of you who understand what I mean are probably nodding or wincing. For those who do not, let me explain. The Washington, D.C. Capital Beltway was ranked #3 in The Daily Beast’s “America’s 75 Worst Commutes” and I drive a portion of it as part of my trip to work on a daily basis. I, like most of my compatriots in driving, would LOVE to find a way to make it...

I first heard about the Congress app from AndroidAndMe blog, where they wrote: Sunlight Labs, an open-source community of developers and designers aimed at opening up government to make it more transparent, accountable, and responsible, released an Android application entitled Congress, which is aimed at getting Android users more involved in government. Currently in version 2.2, Congress allows users to find and call their elected officials using their location and read the latest bills and...

I don’t play games on my phone often, but I like this quick cute game: Abduction! When I first tried it, I liked it as an app to show off the Droid’s accelerometer (since I had never had a phone with motion interactivity before). I believe the story behind abduction is that you are a cow and all of your cow buddies have been abducted by aliens, and you have to get up to the UFO to save them before the aliens take them to space. (Of course.) Here’s how it works: The cow is...

Adobe recently announced that they released a Reader PDF-viewer app for Android. Of course, Droid phones could already view PDF files with the QuickOffice viewer (or other PDF apps): The QuickOffice viewer’s menu makes it easy to fit the document to the screen and to jump to any page. However, I find myself wanting to zoom in often (because it’s hard to read a whole page of text on a small screen) and QuickOffice doesn’t make use of the Droid’s pinch-to-zoom...

We’ve already told you about Listables!, a great way to share and save a list of your Android apps – but even more full featured is AppBrain, which is part website linked to the Market and part Android app that helps you search for Android apps online, make lists of the ones you want to add to your device and sync lists of apps between phone and web application. Once you’ve logged in with your Google account, you’ll want to add AppBrain to your device using the QR Code...

One of my favorite features of Android is the ability to change your wallpaper (backgrounds) to whatever your heart desires. Backgrounds makes this task easy, even if it is a little daunting to go through hundreds of photos to find that ONE perfect one! Backgrounds is broken down into dozens of categories, so you can narrow your search to things like trees, stars, buildings, technology, flowers, etc. Once you start searching through a category, you’ll see four (4) photos at a time. use...

I love storing my photos online in the Picasa photo album. It makes it easier to share with friends and family since I already use Gmail and it is so tightly integrated with other Google services. There is no native Picasa client for Android, but Picasa Tool Pro is perhaps the best Picasa app out there for Android. Picasa Tool Pro makes it easy to view your online albums from your phone, share photos via Facebook, Twidroid, email, etc. and search the public archives for interesting photos you...

It has come to my attention that some people with Android phones aren’t yet using Google Voice! This really surprises me, because Google Voice is one of my favorite things about my Droid. If you haven’t made the switch yet because you’re used to your “regular” voicemail and haven’t felt the need to try visual voicemail, I strongly urge you to just try it out – you can always switch back if you don’t like it. However, once you can read your...

doubleTwist is like iTunes for Android; browse the Market, search for podcasts, buy music and sync to your Android device and even sync playlists between iTunes and Android. My favorite feature includes being able to view photos from your device on your computer’s screen. It’s a lot more simple than searching the SD card for saved photos. Download doubleTwist desktop app from its website. This is one app that is not installed on your phone and can be used via an app on your...

Have you ever had one of those “My Droid doesn’t work right” days? Sometimes a hard reboot, restoring your Droid to the factory defaults, can make a world of difference when you start experiencing force closes or unstable apps that you can’t uninstall fully. The only apps saved in your Market will be those that you paid for – but what about all of those great free apps you’ve installed and can’t live without? Put away that notepad and pen, and use...