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!

I know – long time no post! I hope to increase the frequency of posts on WomenWithDroids in the near future.

I logged back on today to share a giveaway with you. The makers of the MyFlare safety app have offered to give five WomenWithDroids readers free full versions of the app (normally $2.49)! This is an app that you will likely want to install on the phones of all of your loved ones.

MyFlare is a “Personal Emergency Response App” which can automatically text up to 10 contacts with a predefined message and your GPS location if you are in an emergency and need someone to be able to find you. It will update your contacts with new GPS coordinates every 3 minutes, and can even send video clips taken by your phone’s camera. Optionally, you can choose to have it blast a siren sound when activated as well.

I like that it just takes one tap of the icon to activate the distress calls and turn on the tracking – no fumbling around with your phone to make a call and explain to someone where you are if you think you may be in danger.

Here’s a promotional video for the app:

Developer’s website with additional usage tips:
http://www.myflareapplication.com/about

and the Android Market link – check out the positive reviews!
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.Myflare

The first five readers to post a comment below will win a free download of MyFlare! (Please don’t leave your email address in the comment text, I’ll contact you using the email address you use to post.) Once you use the app, leave another comment telling us what you think of it!

A few times in my life, people have given me book journals as gifts. I do love to read, and the journals seemed like a great idea, but somehow they never got used. So now I’m trying it a new way: on Android, of course, with MyBookDroid.

A virtual bookshelf: In the past, after reading a book, you would put it on a bookshelf in your house, giving you a nice visual reminder of what you’d read over the years. Now you might download the book, or resell it online, or check it out of the library. (Yeah, I know, that last option was always available.) Instead of keeping books on your shelves, you can enter them into MyBookDroid, and your list is always with you.

Adding books: If you have a physical copy of a book, use the built-in barcode scanner to scan the ISBN, and the app quickly displays the title, author, cover, publisher, number of pages, and date you added it. If you don’t have the book in front of you, you can search by author, title or keyword, or manually enter the ISBN. Or, if your daughter “published” this particular book in her kindergarten class and she hasn’t gotten around to obtaining an ISBN, the “Create book” feature lets you add all the information manually.

Handy features: Tag each volume as “Have read,” “To read,” “I Own,” “Reading Now,” “Favorite,” or “Want to Buy/Own.” (You can select as many of these as you like.) You can also assign the book a rating, compare prices at online booksellers, find it on Goodreads or Google, or get a list of similar books. Goodreads reviews and ratings are integrated into the app, and you can also add your own notes or quotes from the book.

Goodreads integration: If you’re already a fan of the website Goodreads, then MyBookDroid is a perfect mobile companion. You can import your Goodreads books into the app, and you can use the app to add books to your Goodreads account.

Ease of use: Overall, I’ve found MyBookDroid to be quite easy to use. Even with my tiny keyboard, keeping track of book information and my related notes is definitely easier than it ever was with pen and paper. The barcode scanner has worked every time, and the search function works well too. The only thing that sometimes trips me up is waiting for the Goodreads reviews to load, which can take a while. Overall, if you’re a book lover, I definitely recommend that you check this one out.

DietPoint has approached us to offer WomenWithDroids readers a special giveaway!

According to the publishers, DietPoint app (formerly Diet2Go) has the largest number of diet plans to choose from: 140 plans in 15 categories, complete with meal reminders and grocery lists. There is also a social aspect of the app via forum discussions. Downloaded by over 1 million users on multiple mobile operating systems, DietPoint is designed to help users live a more healthy lifestyle and lose weight.

The free version of DietPoint comes with basic features and 55 of the diet plans. To unlock remaining diet plans (such as low cholesterol or zone) and other premium features (such as diet plan exporting), a Premium purchase is required. The Premium app is also ad-free.

DietPoint is available in the Android Market and has a rating of 4.2 stars.

The makers of DietPoint would like to give five of our readers permanent Premium membership of the app, worth $11.99 each! All you have to do is commit to trying it out (no long-term commitment required, use it as little or as much as you feel like), then write a short review of the app and describe your experiences with it in about a month. We will publish your 5 user reviews here on the blog as an update to this post.

To enter to win a Premium version of DietPoint, leave a comment below explaining why you want to try DietPoint and committing to trying it in July and letting us know what you think. I will choose 2 comments that I like the most, and also 3 random commenters, to win a premium copy of the app once we get enough entries. Good luck!

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!

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

You know you’re supposed to unplug your phone when it’s done charging. Like any appliance, it keeps drawing energy as long as it’s plugged into the wall. But do you really notice when it’s done charging? And how often do you actually remember to unplug it?

Eco Charger is a simple app with a simple mission: It reminds you to unplug your phone once it’s fully charged. It will also let you know if you’ve got a problem with high voltage or an overheated battery, but for the most part, it’s there to stop you from needlessly overusing electricity.

Does what it’s meant to: As soon as I installed Eco Charger, it put itself to work. I didn’t have to open the app or do anything else. I plugged in my charger, and a short time later, I heard the audio notification letting me know that it was fully charged. And then, without so much as a pause, I heard it again. And again. I was across the room, in the middle of another task, but by the time five or six consecutive notifications had gone off, I had dropped what I was doing and run over to pull the plug. Eco Charger had definitely done its job. And yet….

It’s just a wee bit annoying: Granted, this isn’t the first time I’ve gotten annoyed by eco-friendly technology. In my home office, all the ceiling lights are compact fluorescent bulbs, and whenever I walk in there and flick on the lights at night, I groan in agony over how dim they are for the first five or ten minutes, as they slowly come to life. A truly devoted environmentalist would no doubt be glad to make such minor sacrifices. Be that as it may, the relentless audio notifications quickly turned me against the Eco Charger.

Check those settings: But there’s another twist to this tale! Just as I was about to uninstall the poor app, I realized that I hadn’t actually opened it to check the settings. And sure enough, it turns out that the audio notifications can be turned off altogether, or they can be set to go off just once, with no repeats. When you choose either of these settings, you still get a visual reminder in your notification bar—a little green leaf reminding you to unplug the phone. (Although this is arguably not much different from seeing your phone’s built-in notification showing a fully charged battery.) And you have the option for the phone to vibrate.

My recommendation: Eco Charger is a small app that doesn’t take up a lot of room on your phone, and if you turn off the relentlessly repeating notifications, it becomes very innocuous. Of course, if you’re only getting the one notification, you could easily miss it. I wouldn’t call this a must-have app, but if you’re trying to cut back on unnecessary electricity use, it certainly can’t hurt to give it a try.