Had a great concert at SFSU as part of San Francisco State's Poetry Center. We had special guests Eric Vogler on bass and Howard Wiley on drums. They may have a video of the concert later. More pics and updates to come soon...

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Photos by Donna Tung.

http://healingragas.posterous.com/

We go on at 1pm. Hopefully the rain will subside!

Come on out with your umbrellas!

Edit: It finally did and the sun came out too.

Creepy coffee...

I've been using Android for about 2 months since I got back from our long trip to China and India. So far it has been a mostly positive experience. The Android Market can be a little hairy for new users. It isn't very good at helping you find good apps. A good way to find useful apps are lists. So here is mine - not in any particular order.

I might go into more detail with reviews, but for now here are the apps I currently have installed, some with mini reviews. Free unless otherwise noted. I hope this is useful if you do have an Android device. If you don't have Android, most of these apps are also available for iOS and some for Blackberry.

Also note that by going to settings --> manage applications, you can move many applications to your sd card so you will have more space. My phone has a pretty skimpy onboard storage.

Quick Settings - The first thing you should install. This utility lets you do a ton of useful things. I use it without thinking several times a day. It lets you manage all your phone's essentials like, wi-fi, 3g, volume, brightness, ringer settings, gps, bluetooth, sync settings, auto rotate. The kicker is that you can turn your phone into a wifi hotspot with the touch of a button, allowing you to have internet access on your laptop on the go if you really need it. Another nice touch is when it finds a preferred wi-fi hotspot, it will turn off your 3g data for you automatically. Great and free.

Amazon App Store for Android - An alternative app store from Amazon that features a paid app for free every day. Some of them are excellent, some can be skipped. But its worth taking a few seconds to check once a day to see what's new. App management is not as slick as the Android Market, but it's worth it for the free apps.

Advanced Task Killer - Do you feel the battery runs out too quickly due to background processes? Install this app and it will kill background processes and save battery. This wont affect crucial background processes like sync and uploading. This boosted my battery life to the point that I use the phone however much I want and it never runs out during the day. Go to the settings and set it on "crazy." Some people are adamant that you shouldn't use a task killer, but it works for me from a battery standpoint. Ad supported but they aren't loaded unless you open the app, which you rarely have to do. It also has a small little widget you can add to your home screen. Whenever you press it, it kills any apps you aren't using.

Amazon.com Offical App - Super useful. I'm a somewhat heavy Amazon user. I've found their prices are very competitive on a range of products. This is my go-to app for price checking while in a bricks and mortar store like Best Buy or Barnes & Noble. If I see a book or something that I'm interested in, I just fire up this app, scan the barcode and it shows me how much it would cost on Amazon. You can also access key Amazon stuff, like your wish list, account, search amazon, track packages and I guess the most important to them: you can buy directly on the phone. I tried it once and it worked without any problems.

Amazon MP3 - This is a decent app from Amazon, which recently got a huge boost with Amazon's Could service. Basically you get 5GB of storage in the cloud and it syncs over the air. You don't need to store that music on your phone - it will just stream it like Pandora. It works flawlessly for me. I'm not a heavy user, but I think its a good implementation. Also, if you buy any album on Amazon (I got one for 99 cents) you get 20gb of storage. Also any music you buy on Amazon doesn't count towards your storage quota. I think its great to foster competition with Apple and ultimately the consumer wins. The iOS music player app still feels more like home to me though.

Google Shopper - An app from Google that is useful for price comparisons. You can do voice search and scan by barcode etc. I was excited to install this, but find that I don't use it as much as I expected.

Google Docs - Google recently came out with a native Android app. It works well enough to access your documents and finally lets you edit, but that takes you to the mobile browser version. Needs more work, but it's worth installing.

Evernote - The famous cross platform capture app. If you haven't heard of Evernote, just sign up. It's free and amazing. Makes images searchable etc. The android app was recently updated and I think it's pretty great. It launches fast, syncs fast and works when I need it. A lesser known but cool feature is that you can geotag a note and later refer back to notes by location or by checking nearby. It's like have a personal location aware journal of your activities or notes.

Springpad - This is sort of a new-ish Evernote competitor in my mind but with a different angle. More geared towards lists, recipes and sharing. Definitely has potential. It has a nice web interface as well. Their back end is smart so when you feed it something like a movie name, it will look up movie timings, reviews and find where it is playing etc.

Skype - You know the drill. Works well over wifi. Save your minutes.

Google voice for Android - An absolute must have if you have a google voice number. If you don't, get one. Very useful. I don't hesitate to give my number out anymore, because you can block anyone from calling you (ie: telemarketers). The app includes a useful widget that lets you toggle using your google voice dailer or regular dialer with one tap.

Compass - Like a real compass. It also lets you also save places you have been via gps and refer back to them by location. I just used it when I was researching some Feng Shui and Vasthu stuff for my home, but I'm sure you could use it more adventurous ways. The developer, Catch, makes a few good Android apps, which I haven't had a chance to try yet.

Chrome to Phone - A companion app for the Google Chrome browser extension. It sends anything you are looking at in Chrome on your computer directly to your Android's notification bar. I mainly use it when I am out the door and I want to send a maps link or an article to take with me.

Skyfire - Another web browser that lets you play flash videos in the browser..for those times you are on the go and absolutely need to see a flash video or flash based site someone sent you. Also a good browser overall. I think it's good to have an extra browser on hand. Also check out Opera and Miren Browser -- I've heard good things about those.

Angry Birds - It's hard to avoid hearing about this game now. I don't particularly like it, but I suppose it is worth mention. Sometimes Amazon has it for free.

Google Sky Map - Just drop dead amazing. Superimposes the solar system and stars on the sky when you point your phone using gps. It will amaze you and give you a "technology moment." Good for entertaining your friends/family, or yourself.

Yelp - Search reviews by location and 'check in' to places and get discounts. Find places nearby. You can't post reviews to Yelp though, only draft them.

Foursquare - The most prolific 'check in' app. Find your friends and then you can 'check in' anywhere you go and your friends will know if you want them to. Then people can follow you around and stalk you. Only no one actually will, so it's ok. Its like a game, you get points. You can also get discounts and occasionally free stuff at stores when you check in there. I used to think it was a silly thing to do, but now I use it sometimes. It's also useful for telling you what's nearby.

Gowalla - Foursquare competitor with a nice looking UI and a more "explore the area" kind of angle. Nice, but how many of these can a normal person really use?

Google Places/Maps/Latitude- Comes preinstalled on your phone, but technically has the functionality of Google Maps, Foursquare, Yelp to some extent in one, plus navigation. The whole maps suite is excellent on Android. Everything in the os just works together. The navigation is great to have too.

Dropbox - Works with the super useful and excellent Dropbox service. Access your Dropbox on your android phone.

Amazon Kindle for Android - Amazon's kindle reading app for android -- get old books free and of course buy them. It works well enough. Syncs your page place with other Kindle devices too.

Google books - Like kindle basically. Haven't really used it much.

Soundcloud - Android app for the Soundcloud service. It's a good start, but could definitely improve. I recently used it to review comments from my band while I was in the studio mixing our new album.

Swiftkey - I got this free on Amazon App Store but I would gladly pay for it. This app has really improved the typing experience on Android. My phone came with Swype, which lets you swipe your finger around the keyboard in one motion and type very fast, but in practice not all words are faster with this method. I ended up using a combination of two thumb iOS style typing and swipe technique. Between the switching back and forth and fixing incorrect words that come out it just ends up slowing things way down. Swiftkey is the best. It works just like a regular old touch keyboard, but it has a rich language database and also learns what you write and what you type. It predicts the words you will type next. The more you use it, the better it gets. You barely even have to type, and when you do its just a few letters. I would say if there is one app I would actually pay for again, it would be this one. At $1.99 it's reasonably priced and it will save you tons of time.

Soundhound - The fierce competitor to the mainstay of song recognition, Shazaam. Soundhound has better UI and works faster at recognizing songs. The free version is just fine, but there is also a paid version. You can also check out Shazaam, it still works ok.

Pandora - Internet radio. Pandora's official app. It works well enough, again ad supported. The trend seems to be that they keep adding more ads, but I usually just turn off the screen once the music starts playing. Works fine over 3g in the car too.

Tune In Radio - An excellent radio app that lets you get real radio stations from all around the world as well as web radio. You can also record the radio (pro version) and organize your stations. Got the paid version free on Amazon app store, but the free version is great as well.

Tanpura Droid - Yes! A tambura app for Android! It's good to have in a pinch. It has decent sound, but not quite as good as the similar offering on iOS.

NY Times for android - Good app, but ad supported. I finally uninstalled it, but thought it deserved mention.

Feedly - A beautiful RSS reader that works with your Google Reader account. It loads very fast. The UI is well thought out and allows for a free flowing user experience. This replaced the google reader official app on my phone, which kept slowing down for some reason. I've also tried Pulse Reader, which was great, but Feedly is better right now.

Jewels - Free and addictive simple game.

Doodle Jump - 99 cents. It is one of my favorite games from iOS. Very simple, great for playing for just a few minutes. It used to be #1 until Angry Birds came along and sat on everyone's head until they downloaded it.

Twitter for Android - Twitter's official app. It's a decent app. My phone came with the highly rated Twidroyd app installed, but because Twitter decided to block out the 3rd party developer community, I can't even use the app, nor uninstall it. Phooey. So I am pretty much stuck with this one.

Facebook - You probably already have this...not as good as the iPhone/iOS version. Facebook is really missing an opportunity. This is not as good as many other free android apps from smaller companies and it's pretty slow to load. But right now, there isn't really any other way to get a native fb experience on Android. The recent update did improve things somewhat. One thing that is done well is the contact sync with the Android contact app -- totally seamless and works behind the scenes.

Posterous - As you can see, I currently use Posterous for this blog. They have their own app. In real world use, I haven't found it essential for posting. Android's built in sharing is already so good. I still have it installed though. Note, this does not install to sd -- please fix this Posterous team! I would use this app more if it used the notification bar for upload progress. The interface feels a tad slow and unresponsive.

fxcamera - Lets you add effects and filters to your camera shots on the fly. Out of the free camera apps, I think fxcamera is among the best, if not the best.

IMDB - the imdb app. A must have when you want to find who that actor is. It's also worth mentioning that the IMDB mobile website is very good too.

Movies - By flixster and rotten tomatoes. Very nice UI and easy to use. Watch trailers, see ratings and box office info, find movies and see where they are playing near you. You can also buy tickets right in the app, but I haven't tried it. Though it is ad supported, the implementation is decent and doesn't hinder the experience too much.

Adobe Photoshop Express - Edit photos on your phone, works pretty well.

Picsay (Pro) - There is a free and paid version - both have good reviews on the market. This app is excellent for post processing of your photos and quick sharing. You can add filters and effects, color correction as well as fun captions. This one was also featured free on Amazon's app store.

QuickPic - This is a free alternative to the stock Android Gallery app. Apparently it is faster and leaner at loading up your photos. It is pretty fast, but since most camera functions hook directly in the stock gallery, I end up not using it as much.

Barcode Scanner - This simple, lightweight app lets you scan barcodes and QR codes. QR codes are those odd looking box shaped barcodes you see everywhere that carry info and url's. I don't use it that much but it's good to have on hand.

ES File Explorer - This app lets you browse your file system like you would on a desktop computer. Another one that you wont use much, but good to have on hand in case you want to copy, move, rename or delete files on your sd card. It has a ton of features if you dig in.

Youtube - Last but definitely not least. I like the current incarnation of the Android youtube app more than iOS. Along with Maps it is probably one of the best Android apps by Google. It is incredibly fast and the interface is slick and simple to use. All the important functions are easily exposed to the user. I like how you can glance through comments, related videos etc. while watching the video or choose to watch it full screen. It reflects the functionality of the full website while still having the focus of a mobile app on the small screen.

The only app I am really missing on Android is *any* app from 37 Signals to use with their suite. There are a couple third party apps that have abysmal reviews. Come on 37 Signals, give us one for Highrise and Basecamp at least! The iOS Highrise app is pretty decent.

At last, we are at the end! Well, that was long, but hopefully useful for some new users out there. Let me know what your experiences have been with these or other apps.

Going well so far...

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