I have a Google Nexus One phone on T-Mobile’s network, so I can use the handy T-Mobile MyAccount app to keep track of how many calls I’ve made during the current billing period. The app also tracks text messages and lets me pay my bill. But that doesn’t mean there’s not room on my phone for an app that provides much more information about what my phone has been up to.

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PhoneUsage is a free utility that tracks phone calls, text messages, and data use and plots everything in a series of charts.

On the home screen, you can click the tabs for Today, This Week, last Month, or 2 Months Ago to see your information at a glance. But things get really interesting when you hit the Calls, Texts, or Data tabs. That’s where you can see detailed charts showing your incoming and outgoing calls plotted by day of month, time of day, or day of week. You can also see the top people you’ve communicated with by volume.

You can tap the “Period” button to adjust the time frame for the carts, and PhoneUsage also lets you tap on any chart to see it in full-screen, landscape mode.

My only complaint is that you have to use PhoneUsage for a little while before you’ll get the most out of this app. When I first loaded it, the app managed to track my recent phone calls, but it didn’t notice incoming and outgoing text messages or recent data usage. Once I started using 3G data after installing the app, the data chart started to fill in.

I suspect PhoneUsage also doesn’t know the difference between in-network and out-of-network calls, which means you might not want to use this app as your sole guide of whether you’re about to go over your monthly minutes. But it can definitely give you a pretty good idea of how you’re using your Android smartphone.

PhoneUsage is available as a free download from the Android Market. There’s also a Pro version that runs £1.49 (about $2.29) which will alert you when you’re about to break user-defined usage limits. The Pro version also includes Home Screen widgets.

Plex's main menu on an iPad

Plex is a media center application for Mac based on XBMC. The latest version, called Plex/Nine for the Mac was released this week, and in addition to the desktop software there’s also a new iOS app. The mobile app promises to act as a remote control for your desktop as well as a way to watch your videos. Since all the organization is done on the Plex desktop software, the iOS app doesn’t have to do much other than stream content.

First, I ran the Plex/Nine software on a Mac Pro using a library of under 100GB. The Plex Media Manager, when first loaded, goes online to get metadata about your collection so you can find movies or TV shows by director, year, genre, and more. It took about an hour to grab all the data for the library.

While the desktop software for Plex is free, the Plex iPad app costs $4.99. The interface is very basic – there are no left and right panes here. There is just one list that lets you navigate your videos, music, and other plugins. You can connect to multiple Plex libraries – so if you have files on different machines, you can access them all via the Plex app. Unfortunately, the iOS app does not create a master library, but if you can remember where your files are, you ought to be fine. It would also have been nice to see more controls on the iPad’s larger screen, instead of a single pane, but that is a minor quibble.

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Need to grab a file from your Android phone’s SD card but too lazy to plug in a USB cable? WiFi File Explorer is a free app that can help. Basically you run the app on your phone and it creates a simple web server allowing you to access your files from any computer connected to your home network.

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When you fire up the mobile app it will give you a URL you can enter in a web browser to access a list of files and folders on your SD card. From there you can download files, create ZIP archives of folders and download them in one fell swoop, or even grab a URL which you can use to stream audio and video files from your phone to a desktop media player.

There’s also a Pro version which runs about $1 which you can use to upload files to your phone. The free version also shows ads on the mobile app, while the Pro version is ad-free.

As the name suggests, you’ll need a WiFi network to use WiFi File Explorer. It doesn’t work over 3G at all.

via Lifehacker

There are plenty of media players for Google Android phones. Lazik isn’t exactly one of them. This app doesn’t control playback of media on your Android device. Instead, it lets you control media playback on your desktop PC.

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Here’s how it works. You install Winamp and the Lazik plugin on your desktop PC. Then you install the Lazik Android app and click the “Search server” button to locate your PC. Give the server a name and you’re good to go.

Now you can browse through files in your Winamp media library, create playlists, skip tracks, pause, or put your playlist in repeat mode — all without touching your PC.

Lzik is available as a free download from the Android market, but the free version includes ads. There’s also an ad-free paid version which goes for $1.69 euros, or about $2.15.

via Reddit

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Google Android doesn’t really come with an app switching utility. You can press and hold the Home button to bring up a list of recently launched apps, but it doesn’t let you know which are currently running, and it only shows icons for 8 apps at a time. Visual Task Switcher is a third party tool that addresses both of those issues.

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Once you install Visual task Switcher, you can press the Home button to bring up thumbnail previews of currently running applications. Up to 9 apps will fit on a screen, and if you’re running 12 apps, or 19, or 27, the extras will spill over onto additional screens. Just drag to the right or left to see more running apps.

You can switch to any app by clicking on the thumbnail. You can also close apps by pressing and holding their icons and selecting “Force Close.”

Of course, if you set Visual Task Switcher as your default Home app, that means single-tapping the Home button won’t bring up your Home screen anymore. But all you have to do is tap once to bring up Visual Task Switcher, and tap again to go home. A quick double-tap will pretty much bring up the Home screen without ever showing you the task switcher.

The full version of Visual Task Switcher will set you back $1.99, but there’s also a free, ad-supported version, pictured above. If you get tired of looking at the ads at the top of the app switcher, you can always pony up the two bucks for the full version.

Visual Task Switcher is designed to work with all versions of Google Android, although some users report that it causes problems if they have other third party Home screen apps installed.

via Android Police

When you want to switch between running apps on Mac OS X, you can use the Exposé tool to show thumbnails of all your running apps. When you want to switch between open apps on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, you get a little app drawer with icons. Which do you think looks better?

The thing about Exposé is that it’s not just attractive. It’s also pretty useful, since it doesn’t just tell you which program is running, but also what it’s doing, by giving you a live preview of what’s up on the screen.

While Apple didn’t see fit to bring Exposé to iOS 4 when it launched support for multitasking, there’s a third party app that works pretty much the same way. It’s called Multifl0w, and it’s pretty slick looking. Unfortunately there’s one big catch: It’s not available from the App Store. You’ll need to jailbreak your phone and download Multifl0w from the Cydia Store, where it runs $4.99. You can also purchase the app from Rock Your Phone.

You can check out a video of Multifl0w in action after the break. The app is designed to run on the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

via 9 to 5 Mac

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Ever wish the home screen on your Android phone looked more like the Zune HD launcher? Yeah, me neither. But there’s an app for that anyway.

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Zune Home is a $0.99 app available in the Android Market that replicates the basic look and feel of the Zune HD app launcher. Instead of a series of shortcuts and widgets, the Zune Home screen features a list of apps which you can scroll through to launch your most frequently used programs. The app is customizable, allowing you to pin any app to the home screen, or to choose any app you like for the default actions such as contacts, messaging, email, or Twitter.

At its core, Zune Home launcher is kin do f a one-trick pony though. It doesn’t actually bring the Zune HD media player to your phone, for instance. And it doesn’t include the same 3D effects when you actually launch apps. It just gives you a scrollable program list on your home screen.

You can check out a brief video demo from Android Central after the break.

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OK, technically, Apple didn’t remove Camera+ from the App Store just because it made taking pictures too easy… but rather because the way that Camera+ did it was a violation of Apple’s terms of service.

Here’s the deal. Camera+ added a hidden feature caller VolumeSnap to the latest version of its app. This let users plug in a secret code that would let you snap a photo by hitting the volume button on your phone. This makes it a lot easier to hold your phone steady and shoot a picture than it is when you have to actually tap the screen.

The problem is that Apple doesn’t allow any application to alter the behavior of the volume buttons. Apple’s explanation is that users expect the volume buttons to adjust the volume. That’s it.

Of course, the Camera+ VolumeSnap feature only works if users enable it — and only when the application is running. So I don’t think there’s too much chance that users who install the app would be horribly confused and start returning iPhones in droves because of broken volume buttons in this case. But them’s the rules, so Camera+ is currently not available for download from the App Store.

On the bright side, the developers say they will file a feature request with Apple, which could potentially lead to a rule change down the road.

In the meantime, if you have the latest version of Camera+ installed, it should continue to work, VolumeSnap feature and all. If and when an update becomes available, you might want to hold off on upgrading.

via Gizmodo

DVD rental and online movie streaming service Netflix hasn’t launched an Android app yet… but its competitor Blockbuster released one this week. The Blockbuster app for Android will let you browse through a list of a few hundred films and rent or buy titles that you can watch on your device.

Rentals seem to be stuck at $3.99, whether you’re looking at new releases or movies from the 1980s. Purchase prices seem to range from $15.99 to $17.99.

You’ll need to sign up for a free Blockbuster account using a computer in order to activate the mobile app. Make sure to visit blockbuster.com/activate/2 though, because if you just try to sign up for an account at Blockbuster.com, you’ll probably end up on a page trying to get you to pay a monthly fee for a subscription service.

Once you’ve activated your mobile device you should be able to download and watch movies — but I can’t say for certain because honestly I didn’t see anything in the catalog that I was willing to drop $4 on. Your results may vary.

The Blockbuster app works with Android 2.1 and up, and is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Update: Looks like BlockBuster hadn’t meant to release this app to the general public just yet. The company is working with phone manufacturers to optimize the software for many devices. But for now it’s only officially available for the Droid X.

via Android Central

SmartWiFi is a BlackBerry app that’s designed to help prolong your battery life by turning off your WiFi when you’re not using it.

Here’s how it does that. You set up one or more preferred WiFi hotspot locations, and once you wander out of the zone, SmartWiFi shuts off the WiFi on your mobile device. It determines your location by tracking your movements from cellular towers. When you come back to your preferred spot, the app will turn your WiFi back on.

For instance, you can set up your home and work wireless networks as preferred spots. When you leave the the house, your WiFi will shut down, helping you squeeze a little extra battery life out of your phone. When you get to work, it turns back on.

SmartWiFi supports up to 100 preferred locations. The app normally costs $4.99, but you can download it for free today only as part of Handango’s Free App Friday promotion.

thanks Dave!