Messages

Hello old friends.  Bad news: I forgot about you.  Good news: I remembered!

You are not limited to licensing your copyrighted material with just one license.  If you like both BSD and MIT (both are great, MIT is a little simpler) feel free to license it is as both.  We occasionally use open source software libraries that are licensed as GPL.  In the case that we need to use it in a product that we cannot open source, we have asked the copyright owner to release it under a more permissive license as well.  Some entities choose to do this even with commercial licenses.  A good example of an entity that dual licenses is OFED.

[Tasker]

I can't give you any S3 specific ideas since I don't have the phone (not for lack of wanting, mind you).

Here are some apps that I use heavily on my phone/tablet, both running ICS.

Tasker - amazingly powerful way to automate settings, actions, etc.  The sky is the limit here though it does have a little bit of a learning curve.  There are lots of ideas on the product website/wiki.

PureCalendar widget - I have a calendar widget running fullscreen on one home screen that shows the calendars I choose (in my case, just my work and primary google account).  It integrates well with tasker (for example: my ringer gets automatically silented when I am in a meeting).  Speaking of which, if your workplace uses Exchange 2007/2010 and has ActiveSync enabled... the integration with Android is excellent.  One downside if integrating your work exchange account though: you have to use a PIN or Password to unlock your phone, not just a swype pattern.

Google Authenticator - combined with 2 factor authentication on my google account, this is a must for any apps that wan to integrate with my google login.

SetCPU - requires root.  I use it to replace the default CPU governor to get better battery life.

Any.DO - great todo manager, also has a chrome plugin

Out of Milk - decent shopping list type app.  Not amazing but I haven't found anything better.

Chrome or Dolphin - Chrome works great on my tablet but seems slow on my phone. Dolphin is a great alternative and is very zippy.  My only complaint with Dolphin is that it doesn't support text highlighting nearly as well and doesn't have the nice phone type integrations such as recognizing when I long press a phone number.

Google Reader - RSS reader.  'nuff said

ScoreMobile - easily the best sports score app

Talk - I use this more than SMS.  I tried several different apps in an effort to include Skype or AIM accounts in a single messaging app, but frankly its the protocols themselves that result in either crappy battery performance or crappy responsiveness/multiple notifications so now I just use Talk and resort to only communicating on AIM or Skype through the native applications when I choose to run them.


Random Apps that I have found useful occasionally
----------------------------------------------------------------
IMDb
Yelp
Dropbox - auto picture upload is great, but I think the S3 might come with something comparable built in
Zedge - ringtone library
Redmine
Subdroid
GreatClips
Netflix
Manger - ventrilo client
Dice - its a dice app, so simple but so useful
Timer
Pandora
QRDroid
TVListings
IPcam Viewer - if you have any IP cameras
Navigation/Maps - pretty solid google apps, haven't had a reason to try to look at alternatives
Superuser - superuser manager (requires root)
WiFi Tether - better than the native tethering
BubbleUPnP - best UPnP capable browser/player that I've found so far, the S3 might have something integrated
MxPlayer - hardware aware video player
ConnectBot - ssh client



Games
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World of Goo
Game Dev Story
Androminion
Jelly Defense
Sentinel 3
Angry Birds


Apps I recommend avoiding
------------------------------------
Facebook - battery hog, current HTML5 version has crappy performance
Lattitude - battery hog
Skype (running all the time) - very load intensive.  Fine for loading when you want it and then exiting but still kinda annoying.  Talk has support for video chat now, which I prefer.
IRC clients of any kind -  trying to use IRC in any way over a mobile connection is just silly. The protocol is to blame, not the clients.

Are you looking for some Android app suggestions in general or something specific to the S3?

This got me thinking, what blogs everyone here subscribes to/ regularly reads, including any sites like Slashdot?

My RSS feeds:

Slashdot (though I skim the headlines and only end up reading about 10% these days)
Hackaday
Lifehacker
Engadget mobile
XDA
TheDailyWTF
<a couple deal sites>

And I have some google news sections set up for local & tech.

I prefer FedEx.


Bazinga!

I'm going to be in Madison, Wisconsin this Saturday (16th) through the 25th.  I will have the wife and kiddo so I think Minnesota would be too far for a day trip, but I'd love to meet somewhere closer if it works out!

I wouldn't mind, but it makes it incredibly difficult to add friends without talking to them at the same time over some other medium, or looking up their email address (and possibly guessing which one to use). 

There is no good equivalent, that I've found so far, to /b a Maide   :(

I'm interested.  Should I start at season 1 or whatever season is the first US season?

Get the older gen Transformer.  I don't have any performance issues that make me feel like I'm missing out on the Prime.  They're still quite popular and the price is reflective of their continuing demand (~$350-400 + $150 keyboard).  If see them drop under $300, I will probably grab another.

Happy Birthday Ergot!

You forgot the "I couldn't care less" option.

It's here

I wouldn't call it my favorite part of going somewhere new, but I also go out of my way to try to find good local merchants/cuisine.

Sounds exciting!  Do you know any japanese at all?

I've been watching http://sparkleshare.org with eager anticipation.