Android apps of the day [June 14, 2012]

Today’s Apps

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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 June 14, 2012

VirusTotal

VirusTotal is a very popular multi-engine virus scanner that is accessed via the web at http://virustotal.com. VirusTotal (the Android app) is the official VirusTotal app for Android; it allows users to scan their installed apps (user downloaded and system apps) with 40 antivirus engines.

Using VirusTotal is very easy. After you install and download the app, you login to your VirusTotal account (you need a VirusTotal account to use VirusTotal because it requires a public API to work — you can register an account for free, if you don’t have one already); once logged in VirusTotal automatically grabs your accounts public API key. Once the app has your public API key, you can scan your apps with VirusTotal. Apps are scanned one at a time (you can’t batch scan or queue up apps to be scanned, primarily because VirusTotal’s public API system only lets users scan X number of times every X minutes — I can’t remember the exact details) and VirusTotal first searches its database to see if the app has already been scanned. If an app has already been scanned you are shown the scan results from the previous scan. If an app has not already been scanned you are given the option to upload the app onto VirusTotal and have it scanned, after which you are shown the scan results.

Scan results are shown in two formats, quick and detailed. In quick you are simply told how many out of 40 engines found malware/virus in the app with the option to open the full information page on VirusTotal’s website; in detailed you are shown the list of engines that scanned the app and the results of each individual engine.

Please realize that the antivirus engines VirusTotal uses are primarily designed for Windows protection. However, many (most?) of the engines have their own Android apps (e.g. Kaspersky has a Kaspersky Mobile Security app) so presumably the VirusTotal versions of these antivirus engines provide the same detection capability as their Android apps, in terms of detection rates.

Price: Free

Version discovered: v1.0

Requires: Android 1.6 and up

Download size: 492 KB

VirusTotal on Play Store

Darts

Darts is a simple darts game for Android. In Darts you play against the computer, turn by turn. Each turn you have three darts and are given a section of the dart board to hit. If you hit the section you earn points and the selection changes to another section for you to hit. If you miss the section then you get no points and you must keep trying until you hit that section. You play until you get tired or until someone beats the whole board.

As already mentioned, Darts is fairly simple. There are no options or settings to the game and you can only play against the computer — there is no capability to play against a human person nor is there the ability to computer the difficulty of the computer. Worry not, however: I promise you the computer will give you a run for your money — it has excellent aim.

Price: Free

Version discovered: v1.0.0

Requires: Android 1.6 and up

Download size: 1.4 MB

Darts on Play Store

NBA 2012 Live Wallpaper

NBA 2012 Live Wallpaper is a basketball (NBA) live wallpaper for Android. The wallpaper displays a court with interactive basketballs on it; tapping on the basketballs makes the basketballs bounce and knock into each other while tilting your device also moves the balls. You have the option to have anywhere between 1 to 5 balls on the court; the balls can be any of five types (‘NBA Official Ball’, ‘Team Ball Black’, ‘Team Ball Two-Tone’, ‘Red White and Blue’, ‘All-Star’). The court can be ‘Home Court’, ‘Team Clubhouse’, ‘Blacktop’. The free version of this wallpaper displays a generic NBA logo on the court. If you want to have the logos of any specific team on the court, in place of the generic NBA logo, you can make $1.99 in-app purchases for each team desired. If you want to save yourself some money, you can make a bulk in-app purchase of $4.99 which unlocks all teams.

As an added bonus to this wallpaper, the app has the ability to install official team ringtones. However, you need to purchase each ringtone for $0.99; alternatively, if you purchase that $4.99, it unlocks all ringtones, too.

Price: Free, $4.99

Version discovered: v1.21

Requires: Android 2.1 and up

Download size: 6.4 MB

NBA 2012 Live Wallpaper 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.

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