Leo, Jeff and I jawed about the new Android App Inventor, Picnik in Picasa, mobile local search, my 23andme results, and iPhone 4 in this week's episode. My tip of the week: setting up a rich text signature in Gmail.

Jeff and Leo and I chatted about Droid X, Prince, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and the iPhone 4 in our latest episode of TWiG. Also, listeners are helping send an Android phone into space! My tip this week: Chrome to Phone, which pushes your open Chrome tabs to your phone with the click of a button, for browsing on the go.

This is a faster way to punctuate and/or add numbers than tapping the ?123 key or tap-and-holding the period key. However, as seguetonowhere points out, parentheses aren't included on the two extra rows of keys in the extension.

It took me a few tries to get the swiping motion just right, and this doesn't work with my favorite alternative swipey keyboard ShapeWriter/Swype/SlideIT. But definitely a must-know for Froyo users who use the default keyboard.

Other keyboard shortcuts: You can swipe to start voice input, configure multiple languages and swipe across the Spacebar to switch between them, tap and hold the dot and .com keys to reveal more choices (like .org, .net, .tv), and tap and hold the : -) key to choose from other emoticons, too.

Thanks, seguetonowhere!

Great conversation today on TWiG with our guest Chris Messina, who dropped knowledge on the history and differences between OAuth and OpenID--which in an age of "Facebook wants to own all your sign-ons," is an important discussion. My tip this week: to grab the Android Swype beta within the next couple of days while it's still available, as previously-recommended ShapeWriter is no longer in the Market.

Twitter was down, the news didn't have anything yet, but I remembered Reto Meier, a Googler who did an Android talk at I/O had demo'ed an earthquake detection app. It's called Earthquake!, and it's got some very useful features, especially when you're worried about the earth cracking open and swallowing your home whole.

More screenshots inside--click to enlarge.

The default app view is a list of earthquakes by location, magnitude, and date. This is a pretty long list--a LOT more quakes and aftershocks happen around the world than you realize. (I believe the data comes from the USGS.) You can see that after last night's SoCal quake, the list is littered with aftershocks.


I set my magnitude filter to 5, because even the "can be felt" and "can cause damage" filter level makes a long list.

I also like the homescreen widget, which shows you the latest earthquake on your list.

At Google I/O, Meier did a talk about the best and worst practices for Android developers, which I watched with interest, as I hope to be an absolute angel while creating Todo.txt Touch. Aspiring mobile developers, this is definitely worth a watch.

In the meantime, my working list of Android apps is continually updated on the excellent AppBrain. Here's every Android app I've currently got installed.

Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4 yesterday in his WWDC keynote, and it's a gorgeous device with software upgrades that include multitasking, a video chat app called FaceTime, and more. I'm still a happy Android user, but I have to hand it to Apple. They continue to school the industry on aesthetics and marketing. Case in point: the FaceTime demo video.

First, some background. I got a Sprint EVO at Google I/O which has a front-facing video camera, and presumably the ability to do video calls. So far, I haven't tried it. My general feeling about video calling is "Why?" I hate talking on the phone, so giving someone else the ability to see me while I talk on the phone seems like a yawner. I can't imagine walking around holding my phone out in front of my face to do a video call.

Then I watched the FaceTime video from Apple, which features babies, people in love, grandparents seeing their grandkid in a cap and gown on graduation day, girlfriends showing off new boots, deaf people signing to one another, and the one killer scene that sold me. A soldier, presumably in Iraq or Afghanistan, sits on the edge of his bunk, holding out his iPhone, video-chatting with his pregnant wife/girlfriend at the hospital back home, who is getting an ultrasound. His eyes well up when he sees his kid for the first time.

Maybe it's because I'm a woman in my child-bearing years, but that scene--even as contrived as it was--laid me out. That's the thing about Apple marketing. They don't talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.

Contrast this with the Droid ads, which actually scare my friend's two-year-old daughter away from the TV when they come on. The dark, rainy background, the spinning globe of glowing apps, the robot hands poking at them, nary a human in sight.

Droid does. Does what? Show, don't tell.

I'm really glad the new iPhone has been officially announced, and that Apple continues to set the bar for beautiful software and clear communication about the intersection of technology and life.

Update: I didn't fully address the "aesthetics" part of my thesis in this post, but in short, it's that the iPhone operating system has a polish and level of design quality that no other mobile OS has. I haven't tried iPhone 4 myself yet, but the crazy-high resolution retina display and the multitasking/folders demo especially left me green with envy. I'd love to be able to switch between running apps so beautifully on Android.

Android 2.2 has three marquee features: built-in tethering/portable hotspot capabilities, Flash support, and noticeably sped-up JavaScript performance in the web browser. (Update: Oh yeah, there's Microsoft Exchange support, too.) There are several more subtle interface improvements as well. Perhaps my favorite is the most simple: a revamped homescreen dock, which you can see at the bottom of the screenshot here. (Click to enlarge.) It gives you one-tap access to the three things you want to get to on your phone quickly: the dialer, your apps, and your web browser. Compare this screenshot to Android 2.1's homescreen.

Come on in to see more screenshots of my favorite Froyo features.

Click on any image to enlarge it to full size.

Portable Hotspot and USB Tethering

Froyo obviates the need for an application like PdaNet or rooting Android to use your phone's data connection to get online with your laptop. You can get your laptop, iPod touch, or iPad online via Android 2.2 by turning your phone into a portable hotspot ala the MiFi. Enable your portable hotspot in the Wireless settings area. Name your access point, optionally assign a WPA2 PSK password, and any Wi-Fi enabled device in the area will be able to see and connect to it. I'm not sure what any provider-imposed limitations on this are, but up to 8 devices can connect to the Froyo access point.

USB tethering--that is, using your phone as a modem to get online--is available on Windows and Linux (not the Mac). Windows XP users have to download a driver; Windows 7, Vista, and Linux users are good to go by just enabling tethering on the phone and connecting it via the USB cable to your computer.

Select Text on Web Pages, in Email

While it's not as well-implemented as the iPhone OS's select text feature is, in Froyo you can now select text that's not in a text field and copy it to clipboard. Gmail and the browser are the only two apps I've seen this available in, but hopefully there will be more to come.

On either a web page or in email, to select text, hit the settings menu and tap "More." (Yes, already it's too many steps.) Choose "Select text" from the menu, as shown.

You'll notice a little mouse pointer on screen. Tap and drag your finger around the text you want to select, which will turn pink, as shown. When you're done, text gets copied to the clipboard automatically.

This process is too buried in the Settings menu and involves too many steps right now, but it's better than nothing.

Flash Support

A beta of the Flash 10 browser plug-in for Froyo is available in the Android Market; search for Flash there to download it. It works just the way you'd expect. With the plug-in enabled, you'll see Flash-based ads and embedded video and be able to play games. I played Google's homepage Pac-Man on my N1, and with the Flash plug-in enabled I could hear the game's music (which is the only part of it that involves Flash). I could play YouTube videos on-page. However, despite some tinkering, I couldn't get a Hulu or Vimeo video to play. On Hulu I got a "your device isn't supported" message, and Vimeo told me I needed to download Flash 10. So, Adobe's Flash 10 plug-in for Android 2.2 is indeed beta.

If you don't necessarily want to see every Flash bit of every web page, you can change your settings to enable Flash on demand. To do so, in the Browser's Settings panel, tap "Enable plug-ins." There, if you choose "On demand," when you visit a page with Flash content you have to tap it to activate the Flash plug-in. I haven't done much Flash testing yet to get a handle on battery usage and performance, but I imagine the "On demand" setting will be a battery-saver for Flash users.

Gmail Auto-Advance

In the native Gmail client, you can easily move to older or newer conversations using left and right arrow buttons at the bottom of an open message. You can also configure Gmail to auto-advance to older or newer conversations when you delete or archive a particular message. To do so, in Gmail's settings, tap on "Auto-advance."

Drop-out Menus

The Android Google search box--which I use constantly--now has a menu that drops out from the G logo which lets you narrow down your search results by type. Android 2.1 introduced this visual style of menu on people inside Gmail and in the contacts list; nice to see it extend to other UI controls.

Improved Application Manager

Froyo's Application Manager (Settings>Manage Applications) has a nice new tabbed interface which lets you see apps by what's been downloaded, installed, what's running, and what lives on the SD card.

Better Camera Controls

The camera controls in Froyo are much easier to get to and they flip based on the phone's orientation. In 2.1 you had to slide out a panel to change camera settings. In Froyo small icons always line the side of the frame and give you one-tap access to zoom, focus, exposure, location, flash, and white balance settings. Zoom isn't available for the video camera, just the still camera.

Android Market "Update all" Button

Like a hangnail or a few grains of strategically-placed sand in your bathing suit, a little tiny thing can cause a whole lot of pain and chafing. The fact that you had to update apps from the Android Market one by one prior to Froyo was really annoying. Happily there is now an "Update all" button.

JavaScript-Heavy Webapps Work Well

I was thrilled to discover that Google Wave actually works on Froyo--well! In Android 2.1, after warning you to use a better browser, Wave would invariably crash your browser 60 seconds into usage. On Froyo, you no longer get the "use a better browser" message, and long, involved waves load without crashing. Hallelujah! Most likely this is a happy result of Froyo's much-improved JavaScript performance.

Update: Froyo also offers Microsoft Exchange support but I don't have an Exchange setup to test it with, sorry!

Update #2: Removed Twitter integration from my original list since the official Twitter app adds it, it's not a Froyo-specific update. Sorry!

The more I use Froyo the more new stuff I discover. What'd I miss? What's your favorite improvement? Let me know in the comments.