Oh boy!  Looks like Skype was updated recently to allow calls over WiFi.  Oh the joy!  The innovation!  The convenience!  The … wait wut?  This had the potential to be huge.  <Sigh>, now for the fail detail.

You still need to have a cellular signal just to login to Skype.  If you are in the basement of a 16 story building that doesn’t get reception, this update probably doesn’t do you any good … Even if you “has the WiFis” down there.  It still needs a cell signal to authenticate who your carrier is and your phone number.  You might be able to get away with running outside to authenticate then run back into the building … might … but I doubt it.

Second fail I noticed.  Even though you are calling through “the WiFis”, It’s still counted against your regular minutes according to your plan.  That awards the new and improved Skype android app for Verizon a “Double Failbow” in my book.  Full on double failbow all the way.

Source: androidcentral.com

Here’s a fabulous app that I stumbled upon while sitting in California traffic this afternoon.  I play games … MMO’s, FPS’s, RTS’s … everything.  I’ve wondered if there was a ventrilo application for android phones.  So many times I wanted to listen in on how a raid was going or how someones 2v2′s were hashing out … Wanting to hear the guild douche scream that theres an aimbot on the server or just chatting with friends.

Well my friends we have such an app and its called Mangler.  Its surfaced back around when the moto droid launched and its still in its alpha release.  In my honest opinion, its a solid working beta to me.  The only issues I’ve seen is that I had a force close once after configuring to connect to my vent server … But after relaunching, it went right in.  Another issue is that it doesn’t like being navigated away from.  It will FC if you go to another app with it running.  It works in standby as you can put it an and bring it back out of standby w/o issues.  Other than that, it works great for my froyo’d moto droid running BB v0.4.

direct download

Source: Mangler.org

This is going to be just a quick screenshot review of our beloved SetCPU.  Looks the the dev of SetCPU finally got around to responding to the beta requests  he asked for  No worries.  As I was getting this post ready he already sent out a beta2 update.  Wowzers.  He’s working fast.  Since this is a paid app that everyone should gladly pay for, I cannot post the link or apk.  This isn’t a warez blog.

For the most part, in his email, the major change will be the UI.  You can see it looks a great deal better from the screenies below.  My main concern was will it work with my droid running a froyo rom (Kanerade v1.1) with a 32 kernel … yes my friends … It does. =D

Well, I thought it was time to revisit the other big home screen replacement app called ADW.  I remember way back when it first came about, you needed to have root permissions to install it.  Now it’s available via the android market.  Originally, this was a decent replacement launcher.  It was better than stock and was pretty zippy once you configured it right … Then LauncherPro came out and I’ve been hooked and even blogged on it here.  Well, It seems that even LauncherPro has sacrificed speed and performance for a few added features … I’d rather take speed and performance.

With this in mind and my disappointment with the road LauncherPro was heading, I decided to give ADW another shot.  Last time I used it, was about a month ago and there weren’t any improvements.  What caught my attention to retry ADW was that cyanogen was making it his default launcher for his CyanogenRom.  Knowing cyanogen, that speaks volumes.  I downloaded it from the market and was most pleased.

• We have speed again.  Minimal to no choppiness in desktop screen transitions.
• Pinch zoom now available to preview all available desktop screens.
• Adjustable widget sizes.  Resize any widget … May not look good for all widgets though
• Adjustable desktop space from 4×4 up to 8×8 … (well …8×8 doesn’t look so good but the 5×4 is what I wanted anyway)
• Adjustable app drawer.  (I took out the so called galaxy side scrolling thing.  Reminds me too much of an iFail)
• Drag to uninstall … (looks like it was inspired by LauncherPro)

I’m sure there is lots more, these are just the few I’ve been tinkering with that I thought deserved to be mentioned.

Android Market Link

I wanted to get this last bog in tonight.  This video shows my Droid running Quake3.  Nothing special right? … RIGHT?  Well this time I’m playing it with a wiimote and a nunchuck.

• First you need to download kwaak3.  Big thanks to thunderbird2k for making this nice little app.
• Second you need a PC copy of Quake3.  You can download the demo from ID Software.  I used my Q3 cd.
• Third, download Wiimote from the android market.

Ill revisit this post again tomorrow with better instructions on how to set this up for those that are interested.  I’m sleepy.

This review is on an app that I absolutely love.  It’s a free app in the market called OS Monitor.  This has been a huge help is detecting performance hits on the many custom roms that I’ve loaded.   It’s able to break down and display the processor and memory usage of processes list and much more.  It even has a CPU load graph option that sits right up top of your notification bar.

I’ve learned that every time that I reboot or just boot up my phone, the Gallery3D application is running and updating the cache for about 2 minutes before it settles down.  This has been the case with any rom that has Gallery3D.  =D

It even has the ability to kill those processes that are causing problems.  Now I’m not fond of those auto task killers at all.  Although, I see a real need to kill certain processes if it’s causing issues … Especially when I’m downloading so many apps from the market that might be problematic.  I advise that you don’t use those auto task killer apps at all.  Just manually kill the processes with OS Monitor if you know it’s causing problems.

Just as I was taking screen shots of the process list, I saw something that got my attention.  I use LauncherPro and it’s been my default launcher.  It was actually the first thing I installed when I loaded up froyo.  So why is Launcher even loading?  Well this is my preference … I deleted the Launcher2.apk from the /system/app folder and rebooted.

Android Market Link

There are so many good applications being developed for the android OS.  One of my favorite apps is the home screen replacement app called LauncherPro.  It’s in beta right now but don’t let that fool you.  This is a high quality app … One that I would gladly pay money for.

First thing you will notice when you install this is SPEED … It is fast.   Now I’ve tried a lot of launchers, even paid for a few in the market.  I am convinced that this one tops them all.  It’s very simple and light weight.  Not too many confusing settings to adjust that you lose track of what you did.  It imports the feel and functionality of HTC’s Sense UI with pinch zooming to see all your screens.  The screen transitions and animations are all smooth.  Even the app drawer is smooth like butter.

Now this is also the first launcher that I’ve seen that allows you to add an additional row on your screen size.  Standard was 4×4 … There’s an option to increase that to 5×4 … Holy smokes!  That’s huge in my book.  You can also adjust how many rows of apps you want in your app drawer.  Lastly there are 4 customizable dock slots at the bottom.  Other launchers only allow you to put applications in there.  LauncherPro lets you put a lot more.  You can set it to a bookmark on a page like android-zei if you really wanted to

This app keeps getting better and better.

**EDIT**  Looks like this app looks like its having issues in the market.

Android Market Link