Give those Android apps some love
I love my Android phone, absolutely love it. I also love free apps, but at the same time I want to be able to give something to the people behind it. There’s an abundance of them out there and some I can support with extra money through just a simple click.
Beem is a chat client for Jabber/XMPP on Android. The app is free and developed together with the community. They are currently working their way towards a version that will be submitted to the Android Market. [Flattr]
Who really likes ads? Adaway helps you to get rid of those on your phone. It’s an open source project and they are currently seeking help to translate the app. [Flattr]
An open source app for the open source version of Twitter? Great! Mustard gives you your status updates from identi.ca/status.net (and Twitter if you want to) to your phone. It supports tags, groups and public timelines, favor/disfavor notices, subscribe/unsubscribe users. Personally I could not live without this. [Flattr]
SMS Backup+ helps you back up your text messages, MMS and call log backups to Gmail or any IMAP server. Currently the app is free, but they are planning a paid version for the market as well. [Flattr]
Want to block unwanted calls? V-block is an app (hack) that can help you with your problems. There are quite a few apps that already allow Android users to block calls from unknown numbers. The upside of this particular solution is that it allows users to share the numbers through Google docs, so that it can be shared and crowdsourced with other people. [Flattr]
The TouchOSC application allows to remote control and receive feedback from software and hardware that implements the OSC protocol such as Renoise, Pure Data, Max/MSP/Jitter and many more. What it It lets you send and receive Open Sound Control messages over a Wi-Fi network using the UDP protocol. [Flattr]
Tinkering with your phone can be really fun. Some of us even go so far as to flashing our ROM. CyanogenMod is a popular option among Flattr users. Based on the Android Open Source Project, CyanogenMod is designed to increase performance and reliability over Android-based ROMs released by vendors and carriers such as Google, T-Mobile, HTC, etc. CyanogenMod also offers a variety of features & enhancements that are not currently found in these versions of Android. [Flattr]
If you want to get an overview of FOSS applications available for Android I’d recommend FDroid Repository. See it as an market for Free and Open Source Software apps on your phone. It contains details of multiple versions of each application, and the Android client makes it easy to browse, install them onto your device, and keep track of updates. [Flattr]
Android vCard is a project created out of desperation that there was no decent Java vCard library. It’s building on another vCard related code out of Google Android project now presented as a standalone library. [Flattr]
aCal is a calendar application which you can use if you have an account on a CalDAV server. CalDAV Calendars can also be used with common clients such as Apple iCal, Mozilla Lightning, EmClient, Evolution, and more. [Flattr]
I bet there’s more out here, help me find them!
First photo from Android.com Goodies, via EricaJoy
Second photo cc-by Johan Larsson.
