Wednesday, April 27, 2011

HD WALLPAPERS VS. BACKGROUND 10,000 WALLPAPERS


I love changing wallpapers. I change my desktop almost every day, and have begun doing the same with my droid as soon as I found these two snazzy apps.  HD Wallpapers has some gorgeous backgrounds for your droid, neatly organized by category.  Open the app, pick a category, and a beautiful screen full of eye-popping thumbnails will unfold before you.  There are many choices and you can be fairly certain that the image will be of excellent quality.  You can also mark your favorites for easy finding later.

Then you have Background 10,000 Wallpapers:  this is simply strength in numbers.  Unlike HD Wallpapers, you might need to look a little longer to find a background that is worthy of your phone, but eventually you will almost certainly find one.  Despite the many failures on there, there are lots of goodies and I have personally used several.  This app also has a favorite function and allows you to browse by category.

Hope you give them a try and enjoy your new snazzy Android wallpaper!

Monday, April 25, 2011

RELAX AND SLEEP

So... sticking with the topic of sleep (can you tell it's on my mind lately), this nice little app is basically a white noise generator.  I actually use it mostly for reading or working when I need to tune out other people in the room, the television, and/or other distracting noises--- but you can also use it to create a soothing sound to help lull you to sleep.

Relax and Sleep contains 49 different noises you can mix and match to create the perfect combination for you.  Noise categories range from nature (ocean, rainstorm, forest birds) to various humming appliances (running dishwasher, large fan, air conditioner) and everything in between.  You can also save your favorite combinations, generate a random combination, and set a timer for how long you want the noise to continue.  Pretty neat!

Sunday, April 24, 2011

SLEEP BOT


I am a sucker for data and any apps that are able to track these data with any measure of accuracy, display them in a neat format, and allow me to export them to my computer for further analysis are pretty much winners in my book. 

Sleep Bot tracks how long you sleep each night, with a nice little 1x1 widget with which you can punch in right before you go to bed and punch out when you wake up.  There are various settings that allow you to set your ideal sleep time, set up a "punch in" offset to more accurately match how long it takes you to fall asleep after you go to bed, and some alarm clock settings which I personally have not experimented with yet.

The really neat thing about Sleep Bot is that unlike most apps I find, you can graph your sleep data in a variety of ways:  hours per day, most frequent sleep durations, the distribution of your sleep time by hours of the day, and others.

Finally, Sleep Bot has a nice tab for sleep resources that gives you a variety of sleep tips, guides, and other handy information to help you get a good night's sleep!

Friday, April 8, 2011

GOWALLA



First up is Gowalla, a "check-in" social networking app similar to Foursquare.  This app allows you to check in to any location you happen to visit from restaurants to stores to universities or even doctor's offices if you are so inclined.  You can share this information with your friends (which I believe is more fun) and of course post it on facebook (which I personally find a tad creepier).  You can earn badges for doing certain things (such as checking in to several different locations) as well as find virtual items which you can keep forever, swap with other users, or drop in various locations. 

One of the big selling points for me is just how polished and pretty the app looks (which is why I prefer it to Foursquare which I am also using).  The badges, locations, items, etc. are fun to get and having a little visual record of where you've been is very fun.

MY ADVENTURES IN APP EXPLORATION

I just wanted to briefly introduce what this blog is going to be about.  As the title suggests, it will almost exclusively feature brief reviews of apps I enjoy on my Droid (and why you should get them too).  I will also be extremely interested in your feedback and experiences  with the reviewed apps or related apps which may be doing it even better.

Thanks in advance for following!
First review coming right up!