AppBrain App Market

These are the best, the most amazing, the cutting-edge, pick-of-the-crop, Android apps available on the Market.

Many men died to bring us this information. We must honor their memory and celebrate the freedom they died to protect… by enjoying all of the free apps we can get our fingers (or thumbs) on. We must go forth and start customizing their configurations, tweaking their settings, and rating them in the Market!

1. LauncherPro - Best replacement Home application for Android
   Runner Up: ADW Launcher
2. Google Maps – GPS-enabled maps, step-by-step voice-guided navigation & directions
3. mVideoPlayer - best video player app for Android
4. Pandora - Internet Radio that plays what you like
   Runner Up: Last.fm
5. Google Voice – Google Visual VoiceMail, SMS and more
6. Gmote 2.0 – Touch Pad, Keyboard and Media Controller for your PC over WiFi
   Runner Up: RemoteDroid
7. EStrongs File Explorer – Best file manager and file explorer for Android
8. EStrongs Task Manager – Absolutely the best task manager/task killer for Android
   Runner Up: TaskPanel Lite or TaskPanel X
9. MySettings - Quick toggle settings on your Android
   Runner Up: Quick Settings
10. AppBrain App Market – Best way to search, sync and manage your beloved Android apps – also use Fast Web Installer
11. Shazam - Music Discovery Engine
12. Awesome Drop (File Sync) – Drag and drop to sync files to your phone from a web browser
13. myRemote - Best WiFi remote control for Windows Media Center
14. Boxee - WiFi remote media controller for Boxee
15. RoMote- Roku DVP remote control over WiFi
16. Personal Finance by PageOnce – Track all your bank, credit cards, bills, and other accounts on your phone
17. Dropbox - Synchronization and cloud storage across all of your PCs and Android devices
    Runner Up: ASUS WebStorage
18. PayPal - PayPal is now powered by Bump!
19. QuickDesk Beta – Enhancement to Home Application
    Runner Up: Launch-X
    
20. Toggl Timer - Track your time on the go with the official Android app for Toggl.com
21. Skyfire Browser – server-assisted video pre-compression and streaming services
    Opera Mini - server-assisted webpage pre-compression – save money on bandwidth
22. Facebook for Android- updates your status, view your News Feed, upcoming Events, and friends, upload photos, read messages
23. PdaNet Free Edition – USB Tether and Bluetooth Internet connection sharing
    Runner Up: EasyTether Lite
    
24. WYSE PocketCloud RDP/VNC -Beta – Very fast Remote Desktop Connection over RDP/VNC protocols
25. AppMonster - Backup, restore and manage your apps
26. Mobile Banking - Do virtually everything you can at a Bank of America ATM or branch
    Runner Up: Wells Fargo Mobile
27. Bump - BlueTooth powered contact info and file sharing
    Runner Up: BlueTooth File Transfer
28. RingDroid - Make ring tones by taking samples from audio files on your phone
    
29. Google Gesture Search – Search your phone contacts, apps, emails, messages and more with gestures
30. Google Goggles - Augmented reality browser/camera, Android barcode scanner and more
31. WordPress - Write new posts, edit content, and manage comments with built-in notifications

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Google has officially announced it will not be support IE 6 browsers on a few of their major services, such as Google Apps (letter below), YouTube and Gmail.

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

I feel like this movement has been long awaiting the support of a giant such as Google to back it. Microsoft has not supported or even accepted any responsibility for the IE 6 browser quite some time and it is non-sense to continue to apply hacks and work-arounds to perfectly legitimate website code to support it.

However, as website developers and owners, I also believe we should make the initiative to instruct our visitors using IE 6 that they need to change their software before we just cut them off completely. Implementing User Agent detection and displaying messages to these users on every page they view might be a good start. Offering them their choice of downloading IE 8, Firefox 3.6, Safari 4 or Google Chrome 2 would also be a great way to encourage them to upgrade.

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Ringdroid

Rings Extended

1. HandscentSMS
2. SuperDial
3. RingDroid
4. Dolphin Browser
5. RingsExtended
6. RemoteDroid
7. ASTRO File Browser
   ES File Manager
8. Facebook
9. SwiFTP Server
10. wpToGo

Locale ¹ has been removed.

¹ – Locale is no longer free… plus I’ve had some major issues with it since their last update(s).  I was happy with it before, but they’ve lost my vote for top 10 after I saw it listed at $9.99 on the market…

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I received this (awesome) letter from Google today and thought it was cool enough to share:

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There are three commonly supported methods for instructing/requesting internet indexing spiders/bots/robots what to scan and what to skip. Each of these methods are complimentary in usefulness to each other, but none are not equal in effect.

1. robots.txt
2. Robots Meta Tag
3. .htacess and mod_rewrite

Summary:

To really protect and enforce rules for any specific user agent that is visiting your website you will have to constantly analyze website traffic analytics, bandwidth reports and visiting IP addresses and geographic locations, known pubilc or private proxy servers, and the specific methods and tactics of EVERY unwanted program and visitor and be able to implement new means to thwart their new methods on a regular basis.

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Blocking visitors by IP address filtering in .htaccess file:

# deny specific IP addresses, and allow all others
order allow, deny
deny from 123.45.6.7
deny from 123.45.6.8
deny from 123.45.6.9
allow from all

Block specific UserAgent using mod_rewrite

   # Block Google Images Bot from Indexing your Copyrighted Images
   # Hopefully someday Google will publish a "supported way" of
   # Disallowing the Google Image Bot when necessary, but until then...
   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Googlebot-Image
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://images.google.com/

The catch-22 with this method is that “sneaky” program developers can simply masquerade as “normal” visitors by using common web browser user agent strings. Reinforcing the fact that all three of these methods are USEFUL, but in no way a complete or secure solution even with the precise use of all three.

Also see:

1. robots.txt
2. Robots Meta Tag

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Use an embedded meta tag on a specific page to instruct search engine spiders and robots what to index and disallow:

1. Pages including “noindex, nofollow” indicate that they are NOT to be index, NOT to be included in listings, and NOT to be scanned for reciprocal links.
2. Pages including “index, nofollow” indicate that they are to be indexed and listed, but not scanned for reciprocal links.
3. Pages including “index, follow” indicate that they are to be fully index and scanned for all reciprocal links and included in all applicable listings.

DO NOT index, DO NOT include in listings, and DO NOT follow reciprocal links

<input name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />

Index, include in listings, but DO NOT follow reciprocal links

<input name="robots" content="index, nofollow" />

Index, include in listings, and follow reciprocal links

<input name="robots" content="index, follow" />

Also see:

1. Robots.txt
2. .htacess and mod_rewrite

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Here are a few examples of robots.txt file (plain text):

Ask all search engines to NOT index or follow links on the entire website:

#asks all search engines to NOT index and NOT follow any pages or links on the entire website
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Allows all search engines to index and follow links on the entire website by Disallowing nothing:

#allows search engines to index and follow all pages and links on the entire website by Disallowing nothing
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Disallows specific folders and files from indexing and following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /uploads/ # since this folder may contain secure, private, cached or temporary files, we should disallow this entire folder from being indexed.
Disallow: /tmp/ # since this folder may contain cached or temporary files, we should disallow this entire folder from being indexed
Disallow: /page.php

Also see:

1. Robots Meta Tag
2. .htacess and mod_rewrite

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer.” Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted by the heading “Sponsored Links“) as well. Advertising with Google won’t have any effect on your site’s presence in the search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in the search results, and it costs nothing to appear in the organic search results. Free resources such as Webmaster Tools, the official Webmaster Central blog, and the discussion forum can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search. Many of these free sources, as well as information on paid search, can be found on Google Webmaster Central.

Additional Resources for Webmasters, Developers and Search Engine Optimizers:

• Check out Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
• Read more on the Google Help page:  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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• Enarion phpSitemapsNG (PHP)
• Google Sitemap Generator (Linux or Windows, 32/64bit, open-source)
• GS Master (Polish, PHP/Perl)
• Outil en PHP (French, PHP)
• Perl Sitemap Generator (Perl)
• Python Sitemap Generator (Python)
• Simple Sitemaps (PHP)
• SiteMap XML Dynamic Sitemap Generator (PHP) $
• XML Sitemap Generator (PHP) $

CMS and Other Plugins

• ASP.NET – Sitemaps.Net
• ClickCartPro $
• Coppermine
• DotClear (Spanish)
• DotClear (2)
• Drupal
• ECommerce Templates (PHP) $
• Ecommerce Templates (PHP or ASP) $
• LifeType
• mnoGoSearch
• OS Commerce
• PHPNuke (German)
• PHPNuke – NukeSEO Sitemaps Generator
• phpWebSite
• Plone
• RapidWeaver
• Textpattern
• vBulletin
• Wikka Wiki (PHP)
• WordPress

Downloadable Tools

• CoffeeCup Sitemapper (Windows) $
• Devintelligence SitemapGenerator (Windows)
• GSiteCrawler (Windows)
• GWebCrawler & Sitemap Creator (Windows)
• G-Mapper (Windows)
• Inspyder Sitemap Creator (Windows) $
• IntelliMapper (Windows) $
• KeyLimeTie Sitemap Generator (Windows) $
• Map-IT Sitemapper (Windows, Mac) $
• MediaCET Diadematus (Windows)
• Microsys A1 Sitemap Generator (Windows) $
• Rage Google Sitemap Automator $ (OS-X)
• Site Magellen (Windows)
• Site Map Pro (Windows) $
• Sorrowmans Sitemap Tools (Windows)
• Vigos Gsitemap (Windows)
• Web-design-pros.ca Sitemap.xml.gz Generator (Java Webstart Application)

Online Generators/Services

• AuditMyPc.com Sitemap Generator
• AutoMapIt
• Autositemap $
• Enarion phpSitemapsNG
• Free Sitemap Generator
• Neuroticweb.com Sitemap Generator
• Safe Area SitemapGenerator
• ScriptSocket Sitemap Generator
• ResourceSEO Online Sitemap Generator
• SitemapDoc
• Sitemapspal
• Smart-IT-Consulting Google Sitemaps XML Validator
• XML-Sitemaps Generator

Code Snippets / Libraries

• Java library
• Perl script
• ASP script
• PHP class

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