Android Apps: Angry Birds & Cache Cleaner NG

I know, I know, I'm a bit late to the party on these "App" things for your personal productivity and phun on your phone. But hey, due to the cost of these silly devises I had to wait till it was upgrade time. Admittedly I have been  drooling a lot over the HTC Evo for months and finally in January 2011, it was my turn at the latest and greatest "Smart Phone".

I hear you iPhone Phone-atics out there, just drop it. I don't have one, and I ain't gonna get one. Sprint is my cell provider, has been for 13 years or so, and I'm not changing anytime soon. Besides in all the comparisons I've seen between the iPhone and the Evo, Evo wins. The only advantage the iPhone has over the Evo is screen resolution and the sheer number of apps available. Evo, powered by the Android operating system, surpassed the 100,000 apps magic number back in October of 2010. With an estimated 10,000 apps added every month, it's catching up fast. The iPhone has over a year head start with approximately 332,000 apps currently available.

The thing that can be a little scary is the Android apps are not scrutinized as closely as the iPhone apps. To get listed in the iPhone App Store, new Apps have to go through an approvals process, Android apps do not. So be very careful of what you download, and always make sure you know what Permissions you are agreeing to before you accept them. Read everything.

Now, enough of the stuff and on with the fluff!

Game of the Week:

Angry Birds - I don't think I've been this addicted to a stupid little game since the original Mario Cart for my son's Nintendo DS. There was some quality bathroom time spent with that little game I'll tell ya. Angry Birds starts off as just a destructive "shoot-the-bird-across-the-screen-and-knock-down-buildings-and-crush-the-piggy-heads" little game at first, but the further you get into it, the challenge is on. You get fewer birds, and they have to do more damage to more things. I know you might find this hard to believe, but this goofy game is actually pretty brain stimulating after a while. So if you're just looking for a great little time-waister, or something a bit challenging, in a 3-Stooges sort of way, I highly recommend "Angry Birds".

By: Rovio Mobile Ltd.

Practical App:

Cache Cleaner NG 1.10 - From time to time you'll notice things are slowing down on your phone, you tap the screen and nothing happens for a while. This is usually caused by too many apps open and running at the same time. That means they are running in the background and eating up your Android operating systems resources. The first thing you should do is close a few apps, the next thing is free up some of those resources. The best way I have found to do that is with a cache cleaner. Even though you have closed an application, that doesn't mean it's not still taking up room in your system's cache. Almost all computer operating systems need to be rebooted every now and then otherwise the system starts acting just plain goofy. It's like your brain and body needs rest, that's why we sleep, to sort-of reboot our system. Think of a cache cleaner for your phone as a power nap, run the application once a day and it keeps your system performing better until you can shut it all the way down and give it a rest. By the way, it is an electronic devise, it doesn't need 7 hours of sleep, just you do. Being off for about a minute is all your phone needs.

It's FREE from L. Sartory.