Tech @ FuryTech

While the stock messaging app on Android is ok, there is definite room for improvement. This is where Handcent comes in. It adds multiple themes and layouts, customizable notifications on a per contact notification, and various other options.

If you like the iPhone way of displaying messages, there is an option for that, complete with the chat bubbles. Or, if you prefer the default android look, you can do that too. Since everything can be toggled on and off, you can have almost any mix of a theme that you’d like.

There is an option for a popup notification of new messages that lets you reply to them without even having to open up the app. It also includes a widget that displays the number of unread messages, however I’ve not found much of a use for that as I use the notification bar for that.

Stability is not a problem, as I’ve yet to have any crashes or lost messages in the 3 months that I’ve been using it.

I would recommend Handcent to anyone who uses Android for messaging a lot, as it gives much more stability and control to your messaging.

Astrid is an amazing task management application for the Android. It handles virtually everything task-related task you can think of. It lets you set priorities for your tasks, deadlines, and even keeps track of how long you spend working on the task, which makes billing much easier.

For those of you who use it, it can sync with Remember the Milk, which makes it much more convenient to keep track of things on your computers as well. It also has a widget for the Android background that works pretty well too.

Astrid is free, and you can find more information about it here.

I found the Android Bluetooth Remote on the Android Marketplace, and decided to give it a try, as I have bluetooth on my computers and thought it’d be a fun program. It claims to be a remote control for your computer, and it fulfilled that claim beyond my expectations.

It acts as a remote control for most media programs, with start/stop/next/previous and volume buttons. It also lets you lock your computer, and handle shutting down and restarting.

Now, the coolest feature is that it lets you use your Android phone as a keyboard and mouse for your computer. If you have a phone with a physical keyboard (like the droid) you can use the screen as a touchpad and the keyboard as a keyboard at the same time, otherwise you have to bounce between the two applications. It’s pretty responsive and very quick at updating on the screen. There’s a fraction of a second of lag on the keyboard, but it’s not too noticeable.

It connects to your computer via bluetooth, and requires a small helper application installed on the computer. It’s pretty useful if you want to control a computer that’s not easily accessible or watch movies across the room.

I’ve been looking for a good, affordable office application for the Android for a while. A few days ago, I came across Documents to Go, and gave it a try.

It’s without a doubt, the best mobile office application I’ve ever used. It handles Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF documents, including Office 2007 filetypes. Not only does it view them, but it can also create word, excel and powerpoint files.

The editor is full-featured, handling tables and formatting well. I didn’t notice any glaring errors with its handling.

About the only issue that I’ve got with it is that it doesn’t link in with any of the online document storage services. Having Live Mesh or Google Docs support would be amazing, and hopefully a future version will support them.

It’s currently on sale in the Android Marketplace for $15 (normally $30), so I’d recommend picking up a copy. There is a free demo version that views files without creating or editing them if you want to get a feel for the program before you commit.

Android already has a great contact sync feature with both Facebook and Gmail. It’s fast, effective, and doesn’t seem to mess up very often. However, the people who use Outlook and Android are pretty much out of luck out of the box if they want to sync their contacts or calendar events.

Fortunately, there is a cheap solution for this. Gsyncit, which I believe I have mentioned in the past, will sync your contacts and calendar events to gmail, where they will then be picked up by your phone, and vice versa. This saves a lot of time, and makes it much easier to keep track of your schedule and contacts on the go.

Aldiko is an amazing freeware ebook reader for the Android. Not only can it read your own ePub format books, but it can also download free books from feedbooks, and paid books from o’Reilly.

Reading books on my Droid is great. While the screen is not as sharp as an e-ink screen, it’s still much better than most mobile screens for reading. Changing pages is accomplished by flicking the screen, or using the volume buttons. There is an inverted mode for night reading. Additionally, you can change the font and font size options to your preference.

For converting your currently owned ebooks to ePub, I’d recommend using Calibre.

This is probably old news for most of you, but I just got a Droid phone and discovered a port of Angband for it. It uses the keyboard, and all the controls work as you’d expect them too.

You can download it here.