Women With Droids » Tips & Tricks

Quick Post: Green Robot

Renee — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:56:37 +0000

All of you GMail users, I have a fun tip for you! You may already know that there are a lot of fun features you can enable in GMail Labs, like Multiple Inboxes, additional colored stars, and one I just found – Green Robot!

Have you ever IMed someone with GChat thinking they were home sitting at their computer, when their “dot” was actually green because they were logged in via their phone? Well now you can tell whether they’re available via their mobile device or desktop computer!

Log into GMail and click the “Settings” link (or the green “labs” beaker if you see it)
Click on the “Labs” tab
In the “Search for a Lab” box, type “Green Robot”
Click the radio button to Enable the feature, then click the “Save Changes” button

Now go back to your Inbox, look at the Chat section, and you’ll see:

ISN’T IT CUTE??? Haha I just love the little robots that indicate the person is on GChat mobile!

The only reason I can think of that more people don’t use Green Robot is that it was developed before Android “hit the big time” and lies hidden far down the list of Labs features.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

Android Market – now with web availability!

Liz — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:26:37 +0000

You heard me correctly, folks. Google launched the official Android Market website today. Through the new site, you will be able to search for, purchase, and install apps available in the Market. Currently, feature roll-outs are currently occurring in stages so there is additional functionality that will be available in the near future.

Each app’s page provides separate tabs for the App Information (including a QR code to scan with your phone as an alternative to the install link), User Reviews, What’s New (notes on the recent app updates), and Permissions (what the app will need to access on your phone).

Tip #1 – Links shared through the Market website will convert to market links if clicked on from a mobile device. (via @androinica). What does this look like for you? Let’s say you click a link shared via Twitter through the Twitter app on your phone:

First, you’ll receive the standard browser prompt/loading screen. BUT, before you end up in a browser window on the website, you are prompted to select a new app: Browser or Market. Selecting Market will take you straight to the app page in your Market app, all ready for you to hit the install button!

Stay tuned to this post! We will be adding more information regarding the recent market revamps, with some handy how-tos and tips to make your Android life that much better.

Quick Post – Not Call Log

Renee — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 03:32:19 +0000

Soon we’re going to write up some cool accessory reviews, but I didn’t want to go too long between posts, so I thought I’d write up one of my must-have apps that’s almost invisble, but super-handy. It’s called “Not Call Log“.

The reason for this app is simple – when the phone defaults to the Call Log after you hang up from a call, all kinds of bad things can happen, like accidentally calling someone from work in the middle of the night after chatting with a friend because your hand brushed against the phone icon for a call you made earlier that day. Yeah, annoying.

I was tired of accidentally auto-dialing people, and also just rarely needed the call log after making a call and always had to hit the home or back button, so I searched for a solution. Not Call Log is it. All it does is exit to the homescreen after you hang up the phone.

The only time it gets in the way is when you call someone at one number and they don’t pick up, and you want to immediately open their contact and dial another number, but your phone is now set up to exit instead of having the log stay open. However, when that happens you can just hit your phone icon to get back into the phone interface, so it’s not a big inconvenience. [Edit: It appears the new version allows you to set a lag time so the call log will stay visible for a few seconds before exiting in case you need to access a contact, so yet another problem solved!]

I wish the Android Settings menu had the option to direct the phone what to do after hanging up, but since there’s no obvious built-in way to do it, we have a need for simple but effective workaround apps like Not Call Log. Check it out!

Not Call Log 2 – free (NO ADS) for Android on AppBrain

Kindle for Android: Making Kindle Ownership That Much Sweeter

CraftLass — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:15:43 +0000

App Type: e-book reader
Price: Free
Get It: Yes if you like reading, definitely if you own a Kindle.

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.

This it does admirably. I am particularly fond of the sepia tone for reading in bright light and black for dark reading. Sepia seems to reduce eye strain as compared to white. I do wish it had brightness adjusting like Aldiko (where you can slide along the right side of the screen to adjust it on the fly) as well but the adjustment bar is pretty nice and easy to access.

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.

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, colors, and brightness. The “Go To” menu option lets you go to various locations in the book, including typing in the numerical location. You can also bookmark pages, navigate, search and sync via the menu while in a book. To highlight a section, just press and hold until a menu comes up then you can drag the highlight as far as you want and click “Highlight” to just highlight or “Note” to add a note to it. If you highlight just one word you can click “More” to search for the term in Wikipedia or find the definition. Being able to refer to your notes and highlights is especially handy when you’re in the middle of a heated discussion and want that quote you recently read that proves your point.

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.

Kindle for Android on it’s own is a good reader that may someday be great but it’s strength is, obviously, access to Amazon’s immense selection of titles. For Kindle owners, though, it turns your Android phone into a full-on branch of your personal library that just happens to fit in your pocket. What could be cooler than that?

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.

Kindle for Android for Android on AppBrain

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!

Froyo Alarm Shortcut with LauncherPro

Renee — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:46:18 +0000

I’ve heard some people lamenting that they can’t get a shortcut to the standard Alarm in Froyo/Android 2.2, and they have to click through the Clock app to get to the alarm settings. However, if you have LauncherPro, there’s a workaround! Here’s how to do it:

Long-press on your homescreen and select “Shortcuts”
Then pick “Activites”
Then click “Clock > Alarms”

Shortcutting to activities isn’t always a good idea, since some apps require you to do activities in a certain order and they pass data to one another, and linking directly to one activity may cause an app to crash. However, in this case, you can link directly to the Alarms functionality of the Froyo Clock app with no problems, so the Launcher Pro feature saves the day!

Android 2.2 “Froyo” Preview: Sweet and Subtle

Taylor — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:41:05 +0000

Guest-contributor Taylor from Autostraddle got her hands on Froyo early and offered to give us a sneak peek of what’s in store! Enjoy.

With Android 2.2 rolling out to more devices any day now, let’s take a look at what to expect. Thanks to HTC’s Froyo leak (whoops!), I managed to manually install the update before it officially hit, so here are a handful of my favorite changes.

1. Speed:

Froyo is zippier across the board. This is probably the centerpiece of 2.2, but it’s also the change you’ll take for granted the soonest. Apps open instantly, browsing is faster and doing just about anything results in instant gratification. Benchmarks indicate that 2.2 is at least twice as fast as 2.1.

2. Scrolling:

Stemming from my dark days with the iPhone OS, one of my only complaints about Android is the (relatively) jerky scrolling. Android 2.2 doesn’t rival the scrolling experience of the iPhone yet, but things do feel noticeably smoother. Especially when flipping between homescreens.

3. Update All Apps:

At last! You can now update all of your apps with one click in the Android market. This cuts down significantly on time and the annoyance of clicking a button over and over (and over) again.

4. Rotation:

You can now rotate many apps 270 degrees. If you’ve got one of the new mega-screens, like the Droid X, it only makes sense to stay in landscape when you can, especially in Gmail and other app mainstays. 2.2 still doesn’t support homescreen 360 degree rotation unfortunately, so you’ll have to look into a mod like Launcherpro if you’d like to rotate to the max.

5. Volume Adjustment Tone:

This may not have bugged anyone else, but the super-shrill tone that played whenever I toggle sound up or down using the volume rocker is a thing of the past. The new tone is much, much easier on the ears.

Other Android 2.2 updates:

- Flash support!

- Video recording in low-light conditions using the LED flash

- 8 most recent apps when holding down the home button (up from 6)

- Numeric pin passwords to unlock the phone (you can still trace a pattern, if you prefer!)

- Wireless and USB tethering (Note, word is that tethering won’t be supported on Droid 1 -Renee)

- Ability to store apps on SD Card

Check out even more Froyo updates over at Android Central.

Overall, while I’m loving 2.2, the update serves to enhance the Android experience without radically overhauling it. I’ve been cruising around on Froyo for two days now, and the changes seem to have already melted into the background for me. Some changes are biggies, like the ability to store apps on SD and the native tethering support, but most are pleasant little tweaks. That’s not to say 2.2 isn’t a noticeable step up: it’s a subtle upgrade that becomes second nature quickly, raising the bar for the future of Android by smoothing out the experience we know and love. Keep an eye out for Froyo on your own Android device– it might hit any minute now!

How To: Filter Contacts to Phone Numbers Only

Renee — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 05:46:49 +0000

The first “wow” moment I had when I bought my Droid was when I turned it on for the first time, logged into my Google account, and all of my GMail contacts all showed up on my phone automatically. (I had never had a smartphone before and I had been looking forward to being able to read emails on it.) Fast forward many months and…. I can’t believe that since I bought my phone last year, I’ve been scrolling through all of my email contacts unnecessarily every time I need to find a phone number.

I realized that I never email people from my contacts interface – I always do that from the GMail app – so I started to seek out a way to filter out the people from my contacts list that didn’t have phone numbers. I was a bit embarrassed at how easy it was and I wondered what took me so long to make this simple change!

1. Go to your contacts list.

2. Open the Menu > Display options.

3. Check “Only contacts with phones.”

That’s it! So easy! No more scrolling through the names of every person in my email address book when I just want to make a phone call! Duh!

What “duh moments” have you had with your phone? Tell us in the comments!

Troubleshooting: Remove “Stuck” Voicemail Icon

Renee — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:27:20 +0000

If you have a voicemail icon in your Android notification bar that won’t go away even if you clear all notifications and reboot your phone, and you have a 3rd-party voicemail app like Google Voice, here’s what probably happened and how to fix it:

Applications like Google Voice are set up to actually bypass your cell phone carrier’s built-in voicemail. When that bypass fails for some reason (and it’s only happened once to me over several months), someone may be able to leave you a voicemail on your carrier’s voicemail box, which is rendered inaccessible to you by the 3rd-party voicemail app, so your phone continues to notify you of the new voicemail.

Here’s how I fixed mine, which uses Google Voice:

Go to https://www.google.com/voice#inbox and click the “Settings” link at the top. Then click the link next to your phone number that says “Deactivate Google voicemail on this phone” and follow the deactivation instructions.
Dial your standard voicemail by dialing *86 or using the voicemail button to the left of the green phone icon in the phone interface. (You will have to remember your old voicemail passcode if you had one!)
Listen to the message and press 7 to delete it. You’ll notice the notification disappears at this point.
Don’t forget to reactivate Google Voice! Do the same thing you did in step 1, but this time the link will say “Activate Google voicemail”.

That’s it! Now you’ve gotten rid of that pesky notification icon and you can move on with your life

If this happens to you often or you just want to avoid it ever happening again, you can call your carrier and ask them to deactivate your standard voicemail entirely.

Swype Beta Updated

Liz — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:09:37 +0000

Note: This post was written on my Motorola Droid, using the newest Swype beta release for Android as the input method and the WordPress app. The only addition is this header and the picture. Enjoy!

Swype has updated their existing beta release effective today, June 16th. If you are an existing beta user/tester, you will need to log in to the beta site to obtain the updated version – your current version WILL expire soon. New users accepted into the beta should receive an invite starting today (mine arrived a little after midnight), complete with instructions on the installation process, a FAQ link for troubleshooting, and introductory videos on how to get the most out of Swype.

Please remember that this is a beta release and bugs may still be getting worked out for your device. I recommend you read Renee’s post on her experiences with the Swype beta for tips on how to use (and get accustomed to) this new Droid input method. Check out the video where she demos Swype on her device for our Droid Women community.

Tell us about your beta experiences in the comments below!

Quick Tip: Recent Programs Shortcut

Renee — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:11:52 +0000

A friend of mine found an Android shortcut – long-press on the Home button, and your most recent 6 programs will pop up!

I can’t believe I’ve used my phone for this long and didn’t know about it. Am I the only one?