Widgets – Women With Droids

Gauge Battery Widget

Renee — Wed, 04 May 2011 04:40:43 +0000

I recently saw some screenshots of Android phone homescreens online that had hidden status bars, and I really liked the cleaner look. I already had a date and time widget on my homescreen (which I will tell you more about in a future post), and I use LauncherPro which has an option to hide the notifications bar, so all I needed was a nice battery indicator widget and I wouldn’t need the notification bar displayed all the time anymore.

I already had the geekyouup “Battery Widget“, which was accurate and served its purpose, but it looked like… well… a battery, and it wasn’t customizable.

I searched the market for something different (i.e. prettier) and found “Gauge Battery Widget” by Tomas Hubalek. I thought it had a distinctive look and was happy to find there were several versions of the gauge to choose from.

The free version also had some color schemes to choose from and came in several sizes, so I downloaded it and put it on my homescreen to see if I liked it.

Gauge Battery Widget developer screenshot

Now that I’ve had it for a few weeks and I know it works well and I’m OK with having my status bar hidden (it can still be accessed by pressing the menu button), I decided to buy the “donate version” of Gauge Battery Widget both to support the developer and to access the full customization options. The donate version has the same options that the free version has, but also allows you to customize the color of each component of the gauge widget. You can see in the screenshot below that I chose colors to match my morning glory background.

Do you have any widgets on your homescreen that you can customize to match your background? Tell us in the comments!

P.S. The only time that clock widget looks “off kilter” is on Wednesdays during 4-digit times. Of course that’s when I chose to do this post! Oh well. I’ll catch a better time when I post about it!

P.P.S. Ladies, you can upload a screenshot of your Android homescreen to our flickr group here!

Gauge Battery Widget for Android on AppBrain

Gauge Battery Widget Donate for Android on AppBrain

Female Faves: Productivity

Renee — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:48:31 +0000

We started a new series here on Women With Droids earlier this month 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!

So for our 2nd Female Faves series post, we’ll take a look at Productivity apps. Here we go!

Thinking Space Pro for Android on AppBrain

handyCalc Calculator for Android on AppBrain

ASTRO File Mgr Pro (key) for Android on AppBrain

Quick Settings for Android on AppBrain

Android Agenda Widget Plus for Android on AppBrain

Parcels for Android on AppBrain

Dropbox for Android on AppBrain

Again, these are some of the highest-rated apps in the category 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!

Renee’s Homescreen Makeover: Audio Widgets

Renee — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 01:19:22 +0000

This will be my last post in the current “Renee’s Homescreen Makeover series“, I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

You saw this screenshot in my Launcher Pro follow-up review, and I promised to feature the widgets at the bottom in a later post.

It always bothered me that there was no easy way to tell what the various volume levels were on my phone or set them easily, so I sought out some widgets to help me with that. As a disclaimer, I’ll say that I installed these apps months ago and there’s a possibility there are better ones in the Market now, but these have served their purpose well and I haven’t had any major problems with them.

The widget on the left is Audio Manager, which gives a nice overview of all of the different volume levels on your phone. You can spot when you’ve turned your ringer down but your media volume is still up – which helps prevent that Angry Birds theme song from blasting out in a quiet place accidentally

When you click on the widget, the full Audio Manager interface opens up and lets you adjust all of the sound levels.

The widget on the right is the cVolume Next widget, and requires some setup. When you run the app, you can create pre-set volume profiles for various settings. For instance, I have a hard time hearing my phone ring when I’m shopping in a crowded place and my phone is in my purse, so the “Store” preset has a loud incoming call volume. When I’m sleeping, the only sound I want my phone to make is the alarm clock, so the “Sleep” profile has all other sounds off.

Of course, I could manually set these volume levels using Audio Manager, but the cVolume Next widgets are little buttons that offer one-click sound profile changing, so when I go to bed, I just click the “Sleep” button in the widget on my homescreen and I know all sounds are off but my alarm is still audible.

These handy widgets have made me feel like I have complete control over my volume. Do you use any audio widgets? What do you like about them?

AudioManager Widget for Android on AppBrain

Volume setting[cVolume] next for Android on AppBrain

[Add-on]cVolume next Buttons for Android on AppBrain

Renee’s Homescreen Makeover: LauncherPro follow-up

Renee — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:49:18 +0000

So, as long-time readers of this blog know already, I’m a fan of the highly-rated LauncherPro and wrote about its basic features when I re-did my homescreen last year. (If you aren’t familiar with LauncherPro, you should read that article first since I’m not going to mention the main benefits again here.)

I have since paid for LauncherPro+, mainly to support the amazing app developer Federico who constantly improves the app and adds neat features, but also to have access to the paid features. Now that I’ve been using it for a while, I wanted to highlight my favorite new features since the last time I wrote about Launcher Pro.

Virtual Looping – Since you can add extra homescreens with LauncherPro, you may get tired of swiping all the way from the first to the last homescreen regularly. The new version solves that problem by creating an option to pop to the first homescreen when you scroll past the last and vice-versa! It’s a simple feature, but a good one.
Dock Pop-Ups – One of the best features of LauncherPro is the launcher dock, which has recently been made even better. Now, you can long-press on a dock icon (and remember, you can fully customize the icons and apps on the launcher) and create a “swipe gesture action”. You can set it up to launch a certain shortcut, open notifications, or several other options, but my favorite is the pop-up.

For instance, when I swipe up on the App Drawer Icon, I now get a quick-list of recent apps – and more than you get when you hold down the Home button! You can also set pop-ups to show missed calls, texts, and more.
Widgets – The paid version, LauncherPro+, has a bunch of great widgets to choose from. I use the calendar widget, which comes in 3 sizes, and can display monthly calendar view or current agenda view.

You’ll have to wait for the next edition of Renee’s Homescreen Makeover to find out about those volume widgets at the bottom!

Here are some of the other widgets that are available:

If you have photos of a lot of your contacts, you could use this beautiful “People” widget!

Image from launcherpro.com

If you don’t already have a launcher that you’re impressed with, I encourage you to download the free version of LauncherPro and give it a shot. Then, if you fall in love with it like I did, upgrade to the full version and support the developer! The latest cool update he put out? Transitions! And another feature is supposed to come out very soon… can’t wait to see what it is!

LauncherPro for Android on AppBrain

P.S. It has been 1 year since we launched Women With Droids! Thanks for a great first year, everyone – looking forward to many more! See our top posts from 2010 here.

WomenWithDroids Must-Have Apps

Renee — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:33:43 +0000

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

Note: The icons, QR codes (to scan with a barcode scanner app) and Android Market links (to click if you’re reading this on your phone) are from androidpit.com. Please let me know if I mixed any up or if one doesn’t work!

App Review: ColorNote

Renee — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:15:06 +0000

In the poll we took a long time ago, you all voted that you wanted us to write an article about something that helps you get organized, and a widget for your homescreen. ColorNote is both!

There are more sophisticated task list apps out there, but if all you want is a simple widget that can remind you of something the way a Post-It note can, try ColorNote. First, you can use the intuitive interface to add a note, which can be in either simple text or checklist form. If you choose checklist, it allows you to add and remove items from the list, as well as cross them out with a click as you complete them.

You can also set up a list reminder to go off at a certain time, which will show up in your notifications, or make the list always show up in the status bar until you remove it (see the green list notification icon above).

The part I like the best, though, is being able to pick a color and put a little icon-sized “sticky-note” on your homescreen as a reminder. You add it the same way you add any widget, by long-pressing on your homescreen background, selecting “Widgets” in the pop-up, then selecting ColorNote and choosing which list you want to “stick” on your desktop.

ColorNote is a simple app, but it fulfills the sticky-note need and has a simple and intuitive interface, which is essential for this type of “quick app”. Let us know in the comments if you already use it or what you think if you try it out!

Here’s the QR Code, find ColorNote with your Barcode Scanning app!

Pandora Radio on the Droid

Renee — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:59:30 +0000

Pandora Radio is an online streaming music service that uses the “Music Genome Project” (like DNA for songs) to find new music you’ll like based on songs & artists you already know you like. You enter a song or artist, it finds music for you, then as it plays you can give each song a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” so the station gets more tuned to your preferences the more you listen. If you haven’t used it before, here’s an example of a tuned station:

Upbeat Instrumentals for Work & Study

I have used Pandora radio online for a long time now and always wished I could listen to it while driving. Now that I have a Droid, I can! I just use an auxiliary audio cable to connect the Droid’s headphone jack to the “AUX IN” in my car stereo. I drive a basic pickup truck without many features, but had the stereo I had purchased for my previous car installed, so I’m lucky to have an auxiliary input! Most new cars come with it standard.

Droid connected to my truck's stereo, playing Pandora Radio

As you can see in the photo (forgive the reflections), while the song is playing from the phone, you have access to the Pandora feedback icons at the bottom of the screen, so you can even thumbs-up and thumbs-down songs on the go! It is all synchronized with your account online, so Pandora stations and preferences you add online will be available on the phone and vice-versa.

To add the Pandora Player widget to your homescreen, long-press on the background, then choose "Widgets", then "Pandora"

You’ll also see a fast-forward icon to skip songs, but since Pandora is a free streaming radio service, you can’t skip too many songs (I believe it is currently 6 skips per hour). They also had to add some commercials to cover the cost of the song royalties, but there are generally few commercials per hour and they are short. The free version of Pandora allows you to listen to up to 40 hours per month – to listen beyond that you’ll need to upgrade to a Pandora One subscription for $36 per year.

Pandora Stations Display

A note of caution: Streaming music from the internet while driving around town does drain your Droid’s battery life pretty quickly. It probably depends on your stereo and charger, but I can’t use my car charger while listening to music on my phone because it generates an audible buzz, so I always make sure my phone is fully charged before leaving home, and make sure I fully exit the application (quit from the menu) when I’m not listening to it so it’s not running in the background.

Do you listen to Pandora on your Droid or do you use a different music player? Let us know in the comments!

Renée’s Home Screen Widgets

Renee — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:24:10 +0000

For my first “real” post, I’d like to introduce you to a few widgets I find useful. When you install an app on the DROID, it often comes with a widget that can be displayed on your home screen by doing a long press on the background, then selecting it from the menu that pops up.

To the left is a screenshot of my home screen, and to the right is my “right home screen” (accessible by swiping right to left on the home screen), where I chose to put my widgets.

The widget in the top right corner of my right home screen is called “Battery Widget” and conveniently displays my current battery charge level. I decided to add this widget since the standard battery icon at the top is small and only gives me a rough estimate of the remaining battery life.

In the middle of the screen you’ll see two widgets. The left is the “Weather Channel” widget, which detects my location using the Droid’s GPS and tells me the current weather. The red exclamation point denotes a weather warning, and an alert is also sent to my phone’s notification area when the weather service issues a warning. I can click on the widget for full weather information, including detailed current weather and hourly, 3-day, and 10-day forecasts.

On the right is my “Google Calendar” widget. This conveniently displays today’s events right on my home screen, and I can click the widget to bring up the full Google Calendar app.

On the bottom is the “Power Control” widget. This provides a quick way to determine which services are on (WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Google Sync, and Backlight Brightness), and you can toggle these services with a click on the icon to easily turn off any you don’t need that are sapping your battery!

These are the widgets I’ve found useful so far. What are your favorite Android widgets?