Agility, Java programming, New technologies and more…
  • rss
  • Home
  • Management
  • Agile Programming
  • Technology
  • Linux
  • Event
  • Android app
  • Contact
  • About the author
  • English
  • Francais

List of my favourite Android apps

Fabian Piau | Thursday January 9th, 2014 - 08:49 PM
  • Print
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Pocket

 Version française disponible

Note
This article is getting a bit old and the list of applications I am using has evolved. For example, I no longer use Firefox, but a simplified and lighter version: Firefox Focus.

I want to share with you the Android apps that I’m used to using.

Don’t hesitate to post a comment if your favorite app is missing and… Happy New Year, all the best for 2014!

Google Play

Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader

The PDF reader by Adobe. Contains all the features to view and export your PDF.

Add this app from Google Play


Battery Doctor

Battery Doctor

An efficient power manager to extend your battery autonomy and life.

Add this app from Google Play


CamScanner

CamScanner

Turn your device into a scanner for intelligent document management (convert to PDF and OCR features included).

Add this app from Google Play


Chrome

Chrome

Chrome web browser.

Add this app from Google Play


Clean Master

Clean Master

Clean junk files, boost RAM memory by killing old process + other interesting features.

Add this app from Google Play


Coursera Companion

Coursera Companion

Take your favorite Coursera courses with you wherever you go. This app is not official, there is no official one yet.

Add this app from Google Play


DashClock Widget

DashClock Widget

A replacement lock screen clock widget to display information such as missed calls, unread text messages, new emails, your next scheduled alarm… You can add more items with many extensions available.

Add this app from Google Play


Dropbox

Dropbox

Access the Dropbox service from your device (read and manage your files).

Add this app from Google Play


ES File Explorer File Manager

ES File Explorer File Manager

File manager: explore directories, rename files, delete, unzip, etc. + many other features.

Add this app from Google Play


ES Task Manager

ES Task Manager

Battery saver, free memory, task killer, app uninstaller. Integrates with ES File Explorer and also a good companion with Battery Doctor.

Add this app from Google Play


Eventbrite

Eventbrite

Discover popular local events: concerts, festivals, classes, conferences, free event…

Add this app from Google Play


Facebook

Facebook

The Facebook app.

Add this app from Google Play


Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger

Reach your Facebook friends easily. Integrates with Facebook.

Add this app from Google Play


Firefox

Firefox

Firefox web browser.

Add this app from Google Play


Gmail

Gmail

Access your Google Mail.

Add this app from Google Play


Google Calendar

Google Calendar

Display events from each of your Google Accounts that synchronizes with your device.

Add this app from Google Play


Google Drive

Google Drive

Access the Google Drive service from your device (similar to Dropbox).

Add this app from Google Play


Google Earth

Google Earth

Fly around the planet with a swipe of your finger with Google Earth.

Add this app from Google Play


Google Keep

Google Keep

Post’it manager (improved) of Google.

Add this app from Google Play


Google Play Music

Google Play Music

Music player for the songs already on your device. You can also purchase new songs.

Add this app from Google Play


Google Search

Google Search

Search on Google without opening a browser. Search using your voice, proposed results based on your current location, etc.

Add this app from Google Play


Google Translate

Google Translate

Translate service from Google. Possibility to download dictionaries for offline use.

Add this app from Google Play


Google+

Google+

The Google+ app.

Add this app from Google Play


Feedly

Feedly

Feed/RSS reader.

Add this app from Google Play


Hangouts

Hangouts

Reach your Google+ friend easily. Integrates with Google+.

Add this app from Google Play


Instagram

Instagram

Capture, customize and share your photos with the world.

Add this app from Google Play


IMDb Movies & TV

IMDb Movies & TV

The largest International Movie Database: view movie trailers, rating and critics, information on celebrities, etc.

Add this app from Google Play


LinkedIn

LinkedIn

The LinkedIn app.

Add this app from Google Play


Maps

Maps

Route planner, Street View, GPS sensor use, offline capabilities…

Add this app from Google Play


Nexus Media Importer

Nexus Media Importer

Manage files from a USB flash drive or card reader connected to your device with USB Host support. Need a USB extra cable. NOT a free app.

Add this app from Google Play


Outlook.com

Outlook.com

Access your Outlook Mail.

Add this app from Google Play


Pocket

Pocket

Save interesting articles, video, or website you want to check out later (for an offline use for example).

Add this app from Google Play


QR Code Reader

QR Code Reader

QR Code reader.

Add this app from Google Play


Runtastic Running & Fitness

Runtastic Running & Fitness

Map your sports & fitness activities with the GPS, track your cardio workout progress (time, distance, elevation change, speed, calories & more).

Add this app from Google Play


Shazam

Shazam

Recognize music playing around you.

Add this app from Google Play


Skype

Skype

Make voice or video call.

Add this app from Google Play


Skyscanner - All Flights!

Skyscanner

Find best and cheapest flights around the world.

Add this app from Google Play


Snapseed

Snapseed

Make your photographs extraordinary with a quite fun user experience, right at your fingertips.

Add this app from Google Play


SoundCloud - Music & Audio

SoundCloud – Music & Audio

The SoundCloud app, one of the largest leading audio platform.

Add this app from Google Play


Guides TripAdvisor

Guides TripAdvisor

City guides for main cities (map, reviews, restaurants, attractions, hotels…). Works offline and GPS-based.

Add this app from Google Play


Twitter

Twitter

The Twitter app.

Add this app from Google Play


Viadeo

Viadeo

The Viadeo app.

Add this app from Google Play


VLC for Android Beta

VLC for Android Beta

Multimedia player with lot of advanced features.

Add this app from Google Play


Waze Social GPS Maps & Traffic

Waze Social GPS Maps & Traffic

A GPS navigation (route planner, speed, real-time traffic and road info, voice guided navigation, night mode, etc.) with a dose of fun thanks to the community. Offline is possible, but limited.

Add this app from Google Play


Wikipedia

Wikipedia

The Wikipedia app, the online encyclopedia. Possibility to save articles to read later or offline.

Add this app from Google Play


WordReference.com's dictionaries

WordReference.com’s dictionaries

WordReference.com’s dictionaries. No offline access, but is a great alternative to the desktop version.

Add this app from Google Play


Yahoo Weather

Yahoo Weather

Display the weather in any city in the world. In my opinion, widgets are the most useful feature.

Add this app from Google Play


Youtube

Youtube

The Youtube app.

Add this app from Google Play

Related posts

GoogleGoogle at JUG Google WaveGoogle Wave devoxxDevoxx UK 2018 – Day 2 android-devThe day I discovered Android
Comments
No Comments »
Categories
Technology
Tags
android, app stores
Comments rss Comments rss

Fosdem 2013 Impressions

Fabian Piau | Wednesday February 20th, 2013 - 06:15 PM
  • Print
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Pocket

 Version française disponible

As promised in my previous post, here is an overview of the Fosdem 2013 conference (Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting). As Sunday is the holy laundry day for me and also the best day to recover after a full week, you will understand why my report is limited to Saturday only.

The conference takes place at the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) campus. For one day, I feel younger and go back to college, which are very similar to French ones with dilapidated buildings and very nice brown/green decoration… At least some decades ago.


Fosdem Opening

I arrive just in time for the opening keynote, there are already a lot of people in this big auditorium and I am not surprised to see that I’m surrounding by men.

Fosdem Opening keynote

Fosdem Opening keynote

After an introductory speech, the Fosdem staff does not forget to introduce the video team and finish by some… dance steps! While the audience is invited to come on stage to participate in the choreography (I was not able to dance as I was taking pictures). This is the traditional “Fosdem Dance” that takes place every year. The dance is completed over the years with new moves if I understood well. You can watch the video. Sometimes I wonder what the organization has smoked! But it’s fresh and it’s goodwill, we love and who knows? Perhaps it will be the latest trendy dance after Ganma Style and Harlem Shaker.

Fosdem Dance

Fosdem Dance


The Jenkins community

In the same room, I continue with Kohsuke Kawaguchi’s keynote, the creator of Jenkins. I take the opportunity that some people are leaving to get closer to the stage. Actually, this is the main reason of my coming to Fosdem. After several years of using his continuous integration platform, I really wanted to see him.

Jenkins logo

His presentation focused on the Jenkins community with an intriguing title: how to collaborate without communication? Ultimately, this is what happens with Jenkins: hundreds of plugins, thousands of committers, for a successful software still widely used and rising. Kohsuke reveals his recipe for the magic potion.

Jenkins keynote

Jenkins keynote

There are two key ingredients: scalability and modularity. These ingredients have a cost in terms of development, but the return on investment is high. And regarding the success of Jenkins, we cannot disagree.

Scalability:

  • Give the “power” to plugins
  • Be able to do recursive extension (i.e. possibility to create plugins of plugins)
  • The Core of Jenkins itself is a set of “hidden” plugins
  • There are currently more than 600 plugins available

To give you an idea, here is the list of extension points of the Jenkins Core. Kohsuke did not lie to us!

Modularity:

  • Provide a clear and well-documented API
  • Implement the concept of Silo. A committer will always work on small portions of code. Working on 5 or 500 files will be completely different in terms of complexity
  • With Silos, we understand that the Core does not contain everything.

Scalability and modularity improve the readability, flexibility and stability of your application. Software become easier to use and extend.

After the ingredients, let’s talk about chefs. In fact, you, me, everyone can become a chef committer on Jenkins (Kohsuke jokes by telling us that there is an IRC bot that handle the creation of accounts). It is at the opposite direction of the Linux kernel policy where Linus Torvalds will always be the last person to validate and commit your changes (I’m exaggerating a bit, but it is something quite similar). That’s not to say that it is the complete anarchy on Jenkins! In the worst case scenario, if you break something, the scope is narrow (limited to one plugin). In addition, there is always the possibility to rollback your code to the previous revision. According to Kohsuke, there are very few cases because people are very careful when they have the “power” in their hands.

Let’s abandon the cooking world and let’s enter into space. What is the center of gravity of Jenkins, the little thing that makes sure the application will not collapse? Answer: communication. There are different ways of communicating: IRC, meetups, hackathons, events, twitter, blog, wiki, conferences. However, this communication is deliberately restricted in the sense that it is limited to specific groups organized by plugin. There are many committers, yes, but they don’t speak to each other a lot. Remember the old adage: No need to write documentation, the code speaks for itself! It’s a bit of that here. When there is too much discussion, the useful information is drowned in this huge stream of messages, and it quickly becomes chaos or black hole to continue our metaphor.

Let’s continue the relationship with the solar system, the Core of Jenkins is the sun and the planets are the plugins that gravitate around. The Update Center is the keystone of the sun. Thankfully, in the case of Jenkins, it is not an explosive one but a graphical interface that allows users to manage dynamically their list of plugins.

A final aspect of Jenkins that you may notice: self-reinforcing.
More plugins attract more users. More users supply a more active collaboration (more ideas, more needs, more committers). Thus it allows more committers to develop more plugins. And the circle is complete!

In conclusion, Kohsuke reminds us the watchword of his presentation: scalability, and also 3 elements you have to consider constantly:

  • Reduce the scope of developments
  • Reduce communication
  • Let people innovate

This first keynote was very interesting, I’m not disappointed at all! I still have some time before lunch, I decide to assist a presentation about the use of personas. This time, the format is short: 40 minutes, questions/answers included. Presentations are time-boxed in order to leave the room on time for the following session.


Using personas

I find myself in a classroom, I can find a pretty good place (disturbing at the same time some geeks with their Linux-boosted laptops). By the way, I could not help but smile when I saw Ubuntu booting on a Macbook.

Anyway, let’s go back to the main topic. Personas are fictional characters. However, they should be detailed enough to be real (a name, a photo, age, job and interests). It is a kind of profile.

Personas are the target audience of your application, they represent the users. They help by bringing debates and discussions within the team.

What are the steps to create a persona?

  • Conduct interviews and surveys of your users’ population
  • Make clusters to identify common characteristics (grouping together a sub-population)
  • Simplify groups to form archetypes

Be careful of the pitfalls, it is important to avoid caricature.

Personas help you to know your users better by personifying them and, as ultimate goal, to know your application better, in the sense of expected features.

Main benefits:

  • Better know users’ expectation
  • Happy users

End of presentation, I am a bit skeptical, but now it is time to eat. As I’m living in Belgium, I decide to avoid French fries, which allows me to escape the queue, classic triangular sandwiches will do. At the same time, I meet Tugdual Grall who now works at Couchbase. It is always a pleasure to talk about Nantes and take some fresh news!

We agree about the fact that this conference is oriented low-level development. I guess you won’t feel it by reading this report, as I carefully chose my program. Here are some sessions I could have chosen:

  • ARM support in the Linux kernel
  • Open ARM GPU drivers
  • Introduction to C++11 and its use inside Qt
  • A Continuous Packaging Pipeline
  • Bootstrapping Debian-based distributions for new architectures

This is a little bit (a lot) too technical for me. I use Ubuntu but most of the time I never open a terminal. By the way, if you use Ubuntu and Gnome Shell, here is the tutorial to customize your interface like mine. The fact of patching the kernel or get a kernel panic is scaring me like the title of these talks! About Kernel panic, actually I had this message once after updating of kernel version, which forced me to reinstall everything, needless to say I was a happy user.

Let’s avoid these compilo-assembler talks, we decide to assist to the presentation about the testing of MediaWiki. MediaWiki, you know? This is the wiki platform used by Wikipedia.


How MediaWiki project is tested?

The MediaWiki team uses Watir for the user interface automated testing, and more exactly Watir web driver which is based on Selenium. Some years ago, I wrote an article on Watin (a derivative of Watir). Watin is used with .NET, Watir with Ruby. Wat is the acronym for Web Application Testing.

MediaWiki Talk

MediaWiki Talk

In short, it allows you to run commands from your terminal and interact directly with your browser. You can search on Google without using your mouse… Awesome, isn’t it? Well OK, this not very useful in everyday life, but in the context of continuous integration, this is good. In addition, they use Jenkins!

They have different builds in Jenkins, one per targeted platform and browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE 6, 7, 8, 9, Android, iPad, iPhone). Just before, I had seen Kohsuke in the room, maybe he has a 6th sense to find topics that involve his platform!

The MediaWiki team has written a set of scripts corresponding to high-level scenarios. We’re a bit in the BDD world (Behavior Driven Development), the speaker takes the opportunity to talk about Cucumber. Then, he did a demo of the user login testing scenario. If a user is administrator, he/she can access additional buttons dedicated to administrative tasks. No demo effect, it works, the script has been tested and retested, for sure.

This talk reminds me one of my own experience with Selenium I had in my previous company. The experience wasn’t so good and I am not very convincing by this kind of testing. We always had failing tests due to timeouts or some other unknown reasons, while the same tests were passing the day before. At the end, we do not even look at them, even if they could indicate the presence of a defect. In addition, as soon as you modify the application (CSS, html structure of webpages), you have to review GUI tests, this process is very time consuming.

But the MediaWiki case is slightly different. The application is very stable in terms of functionality. To simplify, you will always have several profiles of user that will write articles. The application will not be deeply redesigned overnight. The application is lightweight and simple in the sense that you do not have complex and asynchronous processing like AJAX (it’s always hard to test). There are themes and tests are performed on the default theme. It will not change overtime because this is the final goal of the themes module. All that to say that there are minor impacts in MediaWiki concerning GUI testing.

Finally, I attend a last talk, which I have to admit, literally killed me. The title “Should we embrace the App Store?” seemed attractive, but the fact that it was part of the legal issues track should have aroused my suspicions. It did not.


Should we embrace App Stores?

No slides, 2 speakers, 1-hour of English discussion on App Stores and legal issues. I should have run away, but I was placed in front of the speakers, um, I stayed per respect for them. Some keywords that I have scribbled before losing consciousness: Copyleft, GPL License V2-3, Warrantly…

You have understood, I do not have enough material to make a summary of this subject. At least, it makes me think of an article I read some time ago, about App Stores. The fact that in the future, you will earn more money by distributing applications than by developing them. Apple has understood it by charging a fixed-percentage fee on each application sold and available on its App Store, Google does the same with Google Play. And it can be generalized to other media such as music with the Apple iTunes platform. This is something you have to think about.


One last tour before leaving…

Before leaving, I gather my strength to walk around in the stands area.

Part of the open source stands

Part of the open source stands

Fosdem is an open-source conference, this is the reason why there are stands for Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSuse, but also Firefox, Gnome, KDE, and so on. In passing, I pick up some goodies, especially stickers…

My stickers collection from Fosdem

My stickers collection from Fosdem

I also pass by the stand of Open Street Maps, the open source cartography. I wrote an article some time ago. As I sometimes add fuel to the fire, I started a little discussion OSM vs Google Maps.

OSM stand

OSM stand

Finally, apart from the App Store talk, the day has passed quickly. And I’m really glad I attended this conference, moreover free and open to all. I rather regret not being able to go on Sunday. I missed the presentation of Tug on Couchbase, a session on serious games and other NoSQL talks.

Make the appointment for February 2014 to learn some new steps of the Fosdem Dance (among other things)!

Related posts

hostingChoose the web hosting service that fits your needs GamificationGet the opportunity to start a course about Gamification devoxxDevoxx UK 2018 – Day 2 Fosdem 2013Fosdem, a truly open conference
Comments
No Comments »
Categories
Event
Tags
app stores, fosdem, jenkins, mediawiki, persona
Comments rss Comments rss
Page 1 of 11
Download CarmaBlog App

RSS feeds

  • RSS feed RSS - Posts
  • RSS feed RSS - Comments

Most viewed posts

  • Changing the language in Firefox - 116,375 views
  • Using Google Forms / Drive / Docs to create an online survey - 64,403 views
  • FAQ – Online survey with Google Forms / Drive / Docs - 56,247 views
  • Customizing Gnome 3 (Shell) - 30,809 views
  • The meaning of URL, URI, URN - 18,407 views
  • Java EE & CDI vs. Spring - 15,986 views
  • Open Street Map, better map than Google Maps? - 15,800 views
  • Comparing NoSQL: Couchbase & MongoDB - 14,693 views
  • API, REST, JSON, XML, HTTP, URI… What language do you speak? - 13,730 views
  • First steps with Apache Camel - 13,597 views

Recent Comments

  • Fabian Piau on FAQ – Online survey with Google Forms / Drive / DocsOui, dans Google Forms, vous pouvez empêcher les p…
  • BENECH Fabien on FAQ – Online survey with Google Forms / Drive / DocsBonjour, J'ai crée 1 questionnaire via Forms,…
  • SANKARA TIDIANE on Free online MongoDB trainingJ'aimerai suivre
  • Pauline on FAQ – Online survey with Google Forms / Drive / DocsMerci Fabian, mais le but étant que nos clients pu…
  • Fabian Piau on FAQ – Online survey with Google Forms / Drive / DocsProbablement mais ces options sont en général paya…

Recent posts

  • How to write a blog post? At least my way! - 2 years and 5 months ago
  • Bot Attacks: You are not alone… - 4 years and 1 month ago
  • Flagger – Monitor your Canary deployments with Grafana - 4 years and 10 months ago
  • Flagger – Canary deployments on Kubernetes - 5 years and 2 days ago
  • Flagger – Get Started with Istio and Kubernetes - 5 years and 2 weeks ago
  • Expedia CoderDojo in London - 5 years and 9 months ago
  • Volunteering at Devoxx4Kids - 6 years and 2 weeks ago
  • A Java 11 migration successful story - 6 years and 4 months ago
  • Tips to make your WordPress website secure - 6 years and 7 months ago
  • Devoxx UK 2018 – Day 2 - 6 years and 11 months ago
  • Devoxx UK 2018 – Day 1 - 7 years and 12 hours ago
  • Wise, Revolut and Monzo, a small revolution for travelers and expats - 7 years and 3 months ago
  • Autocomplete for Git - 8 years and 1 day ago
  • Swagger, the automated API documentation - 8 years and 2 months ago
  • Microservices architecture – Best practices - 8 years and 7 months ago
Buy me a coffee

Language

  • Français
  • English

Follow me!

Follow me on Linkedin
Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Stackoverflow
Follow me on Github
Follow me on Rss
Link to my Contact

Email subscription

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts.

Tags

.net agile agility android bash best practices blog cache cloud computing conference continuous integration css developer devoxx docker eclipse extreme programming firefox flagger google helm hibernate istio java job jug kubernetes london mobile computing overview performance plugin programmer script security sharing society spring tdd test tool ubuntu windows wordpress

Links

  • Blog Ippon Technologies
  • Blog Publicis Sapient
  • Blog Zenika
  • Classpert
  • CommitStrip
  • Coursera
  • Le Touilleur Express
  • Les Cast Codeurs Podcast
  • OCTO talks !
  • The Twelve-Factor App

Categories

  • Event (15)
  • Linux (3)
  • Management (8)
  • Agile programming (29)
  • Technology (45)

Archives

  • December 2022 (1)
  • April 2021 (1)
  • June 2020 (1)
  • May 2020 (2)
  • July 2019 (1)
  • May 2019 (1)
  • December 2018 (1)
  • October 2018 (1)
  • June 2018 (1)
  • May 2018 (1)
  • January 2018 (1)
  • May 2017 (1)
  • March 2017 (1)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • April 2016 (2)
  • March 2016 (1)
  • November 2015 (1)
  • May 2015 (1)
  • February 2015 (1)
  • December 2014 (1)
  • November 2014 (1)
  • September 2014 (2)
  • August 2014 (1)
  • July 2014 (2)
  • June 2014 (1)
  • April 2014 (1)
  • March 2014 (1)
  • February 2014 (2)
  • January 2014 (1)
  • December 2013 (1)
  • November 2013 (1)
  • October 2013 (3)
  • September 2013 (5)
  • July 2013 (1)
  • June 2013 (1)
  • May 2013 (1)
  • April 2013 (1)
  • March 2013 (2)
  • February 2013 (1)
  • January 2013 (2)
  • December 2012 (2)
  • October 2012 (1)
  • September 2012 (1)
  • July 2012 (1)
  • May 2012 (1)
  • April 2012 (1)
  • March 2012 (1)
  • February 2012 (1)
  • January 2012 (2)
  • December 2011 (1)
  • November 2011 (2)
  • October 2011 (2)
  • September 2011 (1)
  • July 2011 (1)
  • June 2011 (2)
  • April 2011 (1)
  • March 2011 (1)
  • February 2011 (1)
  • January 2011 (2)
  • November 2010 (2)
  • September 2010 (1)
  • August 2010 (1)
  • July 2010 (1)
  • June 2010 (1)
  • May 2010 (1)
  • April 2010 (1)
  • March 2010 (1)
  • February 2010 (1)
  • December 2009 (1)
  • November 2009 (1)
  • October 2009 (2)
  • September 2009 (2)
  • August 2009 (3)
  • July 2009 (1)
  • June 2009 (2)
Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Linkedin
Follow me on Stackoverflow
Follow me on Rss
Link to my Contact
Follow me on Github
 
Fabian Piau | © 2009 - 2025
All Rights Reserved | Top ↑