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!

I was surprised to find that most of the highest-rates news apps were local news apps. Most areas have them, here are the ones that were listed as most popular:

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!

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!

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!

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

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!

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.

This is the first in our series of guest-posts this month from ladies that would like to join on as WomenWithDroids regular contributors. If you are interested in becoming a one-time guest contributor or a regular contributor, please email renee at womenwithdroids.com.
Thank you for being our first auditioning contributor, Jill!
-Renee

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!

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

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!

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!