Manage your Social Network with Google Android
Android mobile applications and Web-Based-Apps for all Google Android Mobiles to manage your social network — Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, Meebo, Google.
Image credits via web 2.0 futures
The new Android Mobile OS from Google has very quickly been accepted into the mobile phone market. It has some features that dominate other mobile operating systems, the primary one being the easy-to-understand Software Development Kit that has allowed a large number of computer programmers make Android applications that you would usually have to buy on an iPhone, or would simply be unavailable anywhere else. All of the gloss and shiny parts the android has to offer are really quite useless if you can’t use the phone for connecting to friends. The GPS system that automatically integrates with Google Maps is awesome, unless you don’t know where your friends are hanging out.
That’s where the fun part kicks in.
The first thing I wanted to do when I got my Android phone was tell all my friends on Facebook about it. Forget telling them from my computer, I wanted to tell them from my new Android phone. I had to search for the right app to do it with, and I found several options. The first one to catch my eye was the Bloo project. Bloo is simply gorgeous, and is so much like the Facebook site in layout and scheme that I had absolutely no problems posting new information to my account or telling my friends how much luckier I was than them to have an Android Facebook app. Granted, Bloo is not the only way to connect to Facebook with Android. Babbler is just as good features-wise, and has quite a following of its own. It boasts of being a native droid app, versus being a simple web-based-app, and it can do pretty much everything the real Facebook site can. One of the areas that makes Babbler really shine is when you want to upload an image you’ve taken with your camera to Facebook. Seeing that it works on a slick mobile phone while you’re bored on the city metro only makes it that much more awesome. (browsing from your phone, you can open Android Market directly.) After all that the best Android phone Application for Facebook may still very well be “Facebook for Android”. As simple as the name seems, the app integrates with Facebook so seamlessly, it seemed as if I was on the original site myself. The crew at Next Mobile Web have really gone beyond the call of duty. They not only have a respectable Facebook droid app, but they’ve made an app each for Wikipedia, Craigslist, Netflix, dating services, and even for Careerbuilder and Monster. They are almost a one-stop shop for Android Apps. Definitely check them out. At the rate they develop applications for the droid, by the time you get to their site, they’ll probably have a few more that are even more invaluable.
Youtube
One of the things I’ve always wanted to do with a mobile phone is watchYouTube videos. I know that most of the YouTube videos aren’t really all that long, and so a mobile phone should really be able to handle the bandwidth easily, especially on a speedy interface like the droid. I’ve always wanted to be able to kick back on the subway and watch some cool moves on WOW. It’s always seemed like the perfect way to unwind. So after a quick search for a slick YouTube droid app, I found I was just being plain silly. There is no need for a YouTube App, since YouTube functionality is built right in to the Android OS. Sweet cinnamon on a stick, that’s perfect. If I ever want to upload videos to YouTube, I’d have to get an app for that, but if all I want to do is watch a cat fall over, I’m set from day one. Browsing the web is quite simple without any apps helping along the way. Searching Google really isn’t that much different using Android than it is with a regular computer and hard line Internet connection.
Flickr
Flickr is one of the social networking sites that I was pretty excited about using in conjunction with an Android phone. Being able to takes pictures and post them immediately to Flickr should be an absolute must on every mobile device ever created, but right now we’ll just have to see how the Android handles it. BettrFlickr is a joy to use, and it posts pictures taken by the Android to Flickr very easily. Since BettrFlickr was designed precisely from the Flickr site it incorporates features like automatically adding Flickr tags on upload. If all you want to do is Flickr, BettrFlickr seems to be the best option. One project that both surprised and pleased me, was PicUp by Aqris Software. If you try to Google it, they’ll have a hard time figuring out what you mean, but PicUp is quite a clever droid application. It can interface to Flickr, Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitpic. If you have several social networking sites you like to use, PicUp is irreplaceable. What is does, is upload images. That’s all it does, and that’s all it need to do. It’s fairly simple and unbelievably useful.
Socialbookmarking
Digg
We can’t pass up Digg. Where would we be if we couldn’t digg things on the way to work? There were two Digg projects that really caught my eye. Digg Droid was an excellent product. It’s got the Dugg, it’s got the comments, and it shows up great on the Android smart-phone. Another option is the simple m.digg.com site. If you don’t mind a couple ads, try it out. There is no need to install any sort of Android app for it, and it actually works with every web-enabled mobile phone out there.
Reddit is another social networking site that a mobile phone should be able to access. Andreddit is a simple Reddit viewer that works on the Android. There are several limitations, the main one being the inability to actually log in to Reddit. Without the login feature, posting comments is out of the question. So andreddit is a read-only version for browsing Reddit. A better option seems to be the project “reddit is fun“. Apparently, the project is three words all in lowercase. That note aside, it allows you to login to Reddit and use the site in all its glory.
Communication
Twitter has a handful of Android apps available. Coupling its micro-blogging nature with a smartphone only seems natural. Even though there are many ways to connect to Twitter, Twidroid has seriously dominated the Twitter Android Application market. There is a free version of Twidroid, which is suitable for most cases. It will notify you when someone mentions you on Twitter, it will allow you to follow or unfollow someone, and it will let you post entries and upload photos and videos. The only thing the professional version gets you is the ability to manage several accounts, which doesn’t make sense for most people, and it lets you set up some cool color themes. On the other hand, it also has native bit.ly support, and will refresh on “shake”. The shake feature is massively cool, so you might want to spring the five bucks and get the pro version on that merit alone. If for any reason Twidroid doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you could also check out NanoTweeter and Twitli. they are both handsome alternatives toTwidroid, and handle the twitter aspect of Android Mobile life fairly well.
Instant Messenging
This list would not be complete without a representative of the Instant Messenging community. Meebo stands head and shoulders above any other IM client in the droid world. It can connect to most networks, from Yahoo and AIM to Jabber and IRC. It is honestly one of the most useful apps I’ve seen Meebo developed for the Android Mobile Phone. What could be better than talking about the finer points of software development on IRC as you ride the bus home?
The final conglomerate of Android Applications comes, not surprisingly, from Google. Since it was the giant Google that developed the Android in the first place, it only seems right that they would come out with some seriously whip bang apps to show us how it’s all done.
Google Voice has an Android App, and if that doesn’t get you excited, you probably don’t spend much time on GMail. You can make outgoing calls right from your contacts list like Skype. It completely free to use, as long as you have a Google Voice account.
Locale is right out of this world. It let’s you change Android setting based on your GPS location. You can set it up so that you use your vibrate ringer at your office, your ring-tone alarm at home, and a plain ring anywhere else. you can also set it to shut off your ringer when you go to the movie theater.
While SkyMap isn’t hooking up to a social networking site or sending an IM to your friends, it just has to be mentioned on a list covering Android Apps. The basic notion is that you can read the name of which planet, star, or constellation you are looking at just by pointing your phone into the night sky.
There are several social networking sites out there, and they all have bunches of ways to integrate their sites directly with Android applications. For every major social networking site, there’s a handful of neat and clever ways to connect to your friends using slick Android-apps.
When you are looking for Tweets about the latest web-based-apps news read the tweets (via @webbasedapps) on Twitter
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