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Today’s Apps
- Smart Launcher [Automatically save shortcuts to your favorite apps in a folder for easy access]
- Android Pro Widgets [Widgets pack that comes with widgets for Agenda & Calendar, Contacts, Bookmarks, Messaging, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader]
- Meta Widget [Homescreen widget that parses and displays any content from a website]
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About Android Apps of the Day
Android has over 450,000 apps. With so many apps out there, app discovery (aka finding new and useful apps) is extremely difficult. With our Android Apps of the Day initiative, dotTech aims to change that. Everyday we post three apps, allowing our readers to discover new apps, daily. Enjoy! [Subscribe to our Android section to never miss an article: RSS Feed | E-mail]
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Apps for May 27, 2012
Smart Launcher
Smart Launcher is not a homescreen replace or apps launcher app. Smart Launcher is an app that automatically places your ‘favorite’ (most used) apps in a folder on your homescreen, allowing you to easily launch them whenever desired. The key here is “automatically”. Smart Launcher uses a “proprietary algorithm” (which, apparently, has a patent pending) that analyzes your app usage behavior and determines what are your most used apps. The algorithm updates in real-time as your app usage activity changes. The goal of this algorithm is to find and list your favorite apps in a folder making it easy for you to launch those apps from a consolidated Smart Launcher folder.
In addition to listing favorite apps, Smart Launcher shows ‘Recently Opened’ apps, a list that allows you to manually add apps, and a list that shows recently installed apps.
If you like using widgets, Smart Launcher has a 4×1 widget that displays the four most used apps of the day.
Take note the developer specifies it takes a few days for Smart Launcher to accurately note favorite apps, so give it some time before passing judgment on the quality of this app.
Price: Free
Version discovered: v1.4.4
Requires: Android 1.6 and up
Download size: 515 KB
Android Pro Widgets
There are many widget packs out there, with the most popular being Beautiful Widgets. Android Pro Widgets is a widget pack that differs from other packs. Instead of offering weather widgets, etc. Android Pro Widgets has widgets for bookmarks, calendar, Facebook, messaging, contacts, and Twitter, Google Reader, and a special ‘Timeline’ widget which requires purchase of APW License Key. The widgets come in varying sizes, ranging from 2×4 all the way to 4×4 and everything in between (by default only specific sizes are enabled but you have the ability to manually enable other sizes via Android Pro Widgets’ settings).
If you purchase APW License Key, you get the ability to theme Android Pro Widgets with free themes available on Play Store such as ‘APW Theme Halo’.
Price: Free, $2.42
Version discovered: v1.2.8
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Download size: 2.8 MB
Android Pro Widgets on Play Store | APW License Key on Play Store
Meta Widget
Meta Widget is an interesting, unique widget for Android. What Meta Widget does is it allows you to display any web page content in a widget (1×1-4×4) on your homescreen. The content can be text, images, charts, pictures, Facebook pages, etc. — you just need to point Meta Widget to the web page containing the content you want to parse and select that content. After that Meta Widget shows you a preview of the widget and allows you to customize widget settings, such as text alignment, background, widget title, etc.
Because of its nature, Meta Widget isn’t perfect — it won’t perfectly parse the content from every website. However, it is a very interesting concept that definitely deserves a try.
Meta Widget has a free and paid version. Free version has all features except automatic updates; Meta Widget Key (the pro version) adds the automatic update functionality.
Price: Free, $1.99
Version discovered: v1.0.2.6
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Download size: 617 KB
Meta Widget on Play Store | Meta Widget Key on Play Store
dotTechies: We have tested all the apps listed above. However, Android Apps of the Day articles are not intended as “reviews” but rather as “heads-up” to help you discover new apps. Always use your best judgement when downloading apps, such as trying trial/free versions before purchasing paid apps, if applicable.
