Catching up with the rest of the world...

So for about 3 months now I've been the proud owner of an Android phone.* Before September I'd been very happy with my old reliable, a Samsung that did nothing but call and text. Okay that's a lie, it took pictures and I think I could have used the internet on it, but if it did these things I didn't want to know about it. But I'd found myself playing with friends' iPhones and then feeling sad when it was time to hand them back to their impatient owners. Long story short, I figured it was about time for me to stop living in the dark ages and accept that doing EVERYTHING on your phone was actually a really good idea!

3 months in, I'm still discovering really cool things I can do. Like today, I downloaded the Gmote server on my laptop, and now I can use the Gmote app to turn my phone into a remote for my laptop! WAY cool. I've been sat right next to my laptop for the last quarter of an hour playing with it and I can see myself doing that for quite a while longer!

Google Goggles seems like another nice app to play around with. Taking a picture of a Lee Mack DVD brought up the DVD no problem. Same with a Converse logo on my shoe, it came up with Converse. (Whether or not it would have been quicker to type Lee Mack or Converse into the search engine is a different point altogether!) I was feeling quite impressed with this, but then taking a picture of Daniel Radcliffe from the cover of the Radio Times came up with this:

 Hmm.


So maybe there are still a few kinks to iron out with that one. But by far and away the most frequently used apps are the twitter and facebook ones. What did I do before I could check twitter on my phone?! (Admittedly being on one side of the room with the laptop at the other side of the room and checking twitter on my phone instead of walking across to my laptop makes me feel a *little* lazy, but nevermind!)

This being a blog about me being a trainee librarian, I should say that I've installed LibraryThing's Library Anywhere app, although so far Keele University is the only representative of the UK on there. Looking at the US though, you can let the app find your location for you, or browse by state, and find libraries nearby, then do things like view their opening hours, log in to view your account, and for some libraries use their "Ask a Librarian" feature. I haven't seen any libraries that have a mobile catalogue up there as the LibraryThing website suggests you can do, but still it all seems pretty useful and user-friendly, so will be nice when more UK libraries appear on there!

So those are the new toys I'm playing with at the moment. Are there any other really useful or fun apps that you love? Please tell me about them!





*Proud that is, except the time it was broken, when I was a filled-with-rage-owner of an Android phone. Oh and that other time it was broken. But we're past all that now, me and the phone are good friends once more.