Android Social Media

On occasion someone will ask me, “Why? Why do I need a cell phone so that I can do the same things I am already doing from home while on the go from a 2 1/2 screen?” This post is to answer that question. Why should you invest in an expensive cell phone and pay the monthly fee for unlimited data service (mobile internet)? There are basically three HUGE reasons and here they are:

1. I am assuming that since you care at about Social Media Marketing that you must be an entrepreneur of sorts and have a desire for FREEDOM. The usual formula applies: TIME + MONEY = FREEDOM. Now here is the problem; if you are going to utilize social media and the internet to build your business how do you ever expect to acheive freedom while sitting in front of your computer? That would make for a great video on youtube as you sit in front of your computer for 10 hours a day and claim to live the ideal “lifestyle.” GET REAL!!!! Living a life of freedom requires leaving the computer desk and sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. The only way to live that true lifestyle of freedom as an internet marketer utilizing social media is via a good cell phone (Android of course) with mobile internet. ACCEPT IT.
2. Using your android device (or any cell phone for that matter) will cut the amount of time you spend “working” your online business in half. WHAT??????? Are these Android Social Media guys claiming that if I will just get a nice Android device and get away from my computer for awhile that the total time I will work will be 1/2? YEP, YEP, & YEP. Let me explain this from a different angle. Half of the things you do while sitting in front of your computer “working” are in fact non-productive and time wasting. If you instead made the decision to operate your online business from your cell phone you would in fact eliminate the wasteful, non-productive activities because frankly they just aren’t as entertaining from a 2 1/2 inch screen. Make sense? Wouldn’t you rather spend that time out on an adventure/vacation/trip/golf course?
3. Now, this is where you are going to have to really take my word for it. I PROMISE you that when you get your android device with unlimited internet access a whole new world will open up for you. Your life will change! It will be like the time when you got your first cell phone. It doesn’t take long before you start to wonder how you got along without it! You can scan barcodes to check prices of any item for sale locally and online. You have access to google maps with street view everywhere you go. You can use your own cell phone as a wireless router to connect with your laptop when out and about. Its not JUST social media. There is a whole world of endless exciting options waiting for you. Get plugged into it.

Jacob S. Paulsen

P.S. The image shows my primary desktop screen on my android phone. At my fingertips I have access to Facebook, twitter, myspace, friendfeed, linkedin, plurk, ping.fm, flickr, pixelpipe, delicious, google reader, google analytics, wordpress, & TONS more.

Ok, I know this site is all about Android + Social Media but sometimes as a team we have to bring you a few things that have nothing at all to do with Social Media or even a few things that have nothing to do with Android. We can’t help it. Today we want to do the first of those two. Departing from social media and online marketing lets venture into the subject of geocaching on your android phone.

What is geocaching? In few words, geocaching is a hobby where you go look for small containers of random stuff that are hidden all over in random places. Yep… sounds cool doesn’t it? We think it is. The hobby of geocaching has gained massive followers in the last several years. Mainly supported by www.geocaching.com there are currently 782,783 active hidden caches in the world.

There is a certain thrill that comes from finding one of these hidden containers right down the street from where you live. Knowing that people walk past it everyday and that you found it’s hidden contents is just… COOL. (Do people still use the word “cool” ?)

Well, now that the G1 has come out with a built in GPS antenna the possibilities of geocaching have been extended. You no longer need a Garmin or similar GPS device. Just grab your phone and go to it. There are several apps popping up in the android market for the purpose of geocaching but our favorite is Geobeagle. This FREE application does everything you need to do. You can access an online list of caches near your current location and browse by map or by list. Download the coordinates directly onto your phone from the browser and then go looking. The geobeagle app also works in conjuction with the radar app to help you find the hidden caches quicker than with Google maps alone.

After you find it you will be able to visit the webpage of that cache and log your visit right away. We are super pleased with the geobeagle app and its potential for this great hobby. We love it so much that we decided to get in touch with the developers to see what plans they have for future updates. While then don’t want to spoil all the secrets we did manage to get this much from Steve over at the Geobeagle development team. He did tell us, ” We generally do a release every two weeks with fixes and improvements.  In particular, we are moving to a new UI design which should make GeoBeagle easier to use.  We also plan to support cache logging from your phone in the near-term.” In addition Steve asked us to remind all of our site subscribers to contact them with any bugs or feature requests!  – Thanks Steve!!!

Just to give you a final insight into GeoBeagle and this great hobby Brandon & Jacob (“the team”) went out the other day to give you a demonstration. Here is the video.

Do you keep hearing the word “Cupcake” in reference to your Android phone and perhaps are wondering if there is a new app coming soon that will cook your baked goods? Sorry that is not the case. “Cupcake” refers to the development department at google and more specifically refers to the next set of updates being prepared for the android platform.

Recently Android developers publicly announced some of the things we can look forward to in the soon to be released Cupcake update

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS FOR THE MOST GEEKY OF ANDROID USERS. YOU NORMAL PEOPLE MIGHT AS WELL SKIP OVER THIS POST!

Here is a complete list:

Notable changes introduced in cupcake:

Applications

• MMS
  • New features
    • Save attachments from MMS.
  • Significant bug fixes
    • Faster conversation list scrolling

• Email
  • Significant bug fixes
    • Accounts that were marked “never check” are not auto-checked.
    • Date & time displayed using user preference (e.g. 24 hr vs. AM/PM).
    • cc: displayed in message view.
    • Relaxed POP3 parser rules so it works with non-compliant email servers.
    • Password quoting bugs in IMAP.  Makes it work for users with funny chars in their password (e.g. spaces).
    • Various sources of errors in auto & manual account setup.
    • Improvements on how we report various connection errors. Makes it much easier for user to diagnose failed account setups.
    • New-mail notifications for POP3 accounts.
    • Properly recover from POP3 connection failures, so that the next connection has a chance of working properly.
    • Remove automatic accounts setup entries that were broken or not testable.  Minor fixes to a few of the remaining entries.  Improvements to warning dialogs used for a few special cases.
    • New accounts are now set to check every 15 minutes (instead of defaulting to “never”).
    • Fixed a bug causing approximately 1 in 25 outbound messages to freeze up the IMAP connection (to a Gmail based server) when transferred to the Sent folder.  This broke the entire connection so new messages could not be downloaded either.
    • Unit test framework so Email can be extended & tested more reliably.
    • Fix IMAP manually-created accounts so message delete works properly.

• Alarm Clock
  • Significant bug fixes
    • Alert now plays audio/vibe directly, rather than through AlarmManager. AlarmClock alert starts playing audio/vibe in its IntentReceiver, rather than on activity start. These changes should prevent alarms from being blocked by modal dialogs.

• Camera/Gallery
  • New features
    • Video recorder mode
    • Share intent for videos
    • Video thumbnails
    • Local file playback

Download manager

• New features
  • Support for HTTP codes 301, 302, 303 and 307 (redirects).
  • HTTP code 503 is now handled, with support for retry-after in delay-seconds.
  • Downloads that were cleanly interrupted are now resumed instead of failing.
  • Applications can now pause their downloads.
  • Retry delays are now randomized.
  • Connectivity is now checked on all interfaces.
  • Downloads with invalid characters in file name can now be saved.

Framework

• New features
  • Support of touch events in WebView.
  • New JavaScript engine (SquirrelFish) in WebView.
  • Input method framework, for soft keyboards and other on-screen input methods.  Includes new APIs for applications to interact with input methods, and the ability for third party developers to write their own input methods.
  • Access to the raw audio data for playback and recording from application code.
  • New PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT option.
  • Support for top-level boolean resources.
  • Tactile feedback to the LockPatternView. Tactile feedback can be enabled/disabled by going to Settings > Security & location and then checking/unchecking “Use tactile feedback”. Note that this can be used independently of the visual feedback of the lines (“Use visible pattern”). Thus it gives users a middle ground between showing the lines on the screen and having no feedback at all.
  • PackageManager changes to support un-installation of partially installed applications. Added new flag PackageManager.GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES to include partially installed apps in all relevant PackageManager api’s. ManageApplications screen now lists such partially installed apps and the user can uninstall these applications completely.
  • Support third party updates of system applications. New menu options in Settings->ManageApplications to list updated system applications.
  • Framework support to list current running processes. New API in ActivityManager.
  • Framework feature to declare required configurations by applications. New manifest attribute uses-configuration in android manifest.
  • Hardware accelerated video encode (video recorder) in opencore.
  • Simplified SREC speech recognition API available.
  • Streaming audio I/O for applications.

• Significant bug fixes
  • Fixed issues with saving state in the view hierarchy, so that you can properly subclass from something like TextView and create your own state that inherits from that provided by TextView.
  • TextView now implements onKeyMultiple(), so that flinging the trackball will result in accelerated scrolling. This required some changes to movement methods, and included some improvements to the acceleration computed when flinging.
  • Framework bug fixes in PackageManager to share/un-share permissions for applications with shared uid’s.
  • Significant rework of Settings->ManageApplications Performance and UI enhancements.
  • A number of settings in android.provider.Settings.System were moved to android.provider.Settings.Secure. Only system software can modify these settings. Additionally, a new permission, WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS, is required to access these settings. The old constants in Settings.System have been deprecated.  It is possible to read settings values via Settings.System using the deprecated constants. However, attempts to modify these settings via Settings.System will result in a log message and the setting value will be left unchanged.
  • Many bug fixes in the media framework

Build System

• New features
  • The functions in build/envsetup.sh should be much more useful

Source: http://source.android.com/roadmap/cupcake

This is a two part post. First we need to discuss rss feeds. As you begin to network with others online you will begin to want/need to subscribe to other people’s blogs. This is how you invest in yourself in social media. Find the best people whom you can learn from and subscribe to their blogs.

The term RSS feed refers to a consistent feed of new information that can be subscribed to. Blogs, news sites, and twitter profiles are all in the format of RSS. There are lots of different ways to subscribe via email etc but the most effective way is by utilizing a RSS reader. The most popular of which is Google Reader.

If you have an Android phone (we have to assume you do) you will also find a HUGE increase in effectiveness by reading blogs from your phone. It will decrease wasted time in a big way!

NewsRob is the best program available for the android platform right now. It downloads content to your phone’s SD card. It syncs directly with your google reader account. It works fairly well and has some decent options. Newsrob has released two updates in the last 7 days and I’m more pleased than ever. It allows for easy reading of your blogs and I love that it syncs the statuses. It downloades new entries in the background so that when you open the program you are ready to start reading.

Newsrob also allows for you to share articles in google reader or by email. This program really is fantastic.

Remember that our overall goal is to maintain an online presence in social media without wasting a lot of time or becoming tied to our computers. This program is a HUGE part of making that happen.

Here are a couple of screenshots:

Source: http://newsrob.com/

Wordpress is quickly gaining popularity as a blogging platform and website creator. Wordpress offers a solution to people looking to start a website or blog that don’t have a lot of html or other coding experience. Wordpress is simple, versatile, and powerful when it comes to site optimization. (This site is a wordpress site)

So for us android geeks we have finally seen a wordpress app surface in the android market. WpTogo isn’t fantastic, and I would go so far as to even say it isn’t really that good. Just to give it a full try I am going to create and publish this post from the wpTogo app on my G1.

Most of the functionality is simple enough but it lacks a lot of key features! Basically you can write a basic post with any hyperlinks and attach a couple of pictures from your SD card. You can input tags and categories but that’s about it.

For now I guess it will have to do. The iphone (I know that’s like a cuss word) has released a complete, official wordpress app and so it is just a matter of time now.

What is this all about? Why social media plus mobile internet; or in this case the G1?  It is really simple actually. There are already about 10 gazillion (yes I invented that word) websites online talking about how to make money online, how to use social media to build your business etc. THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE SITES!!! The purpose of Android Social Media.com is to show people three things:

1. The Android platform is by far the coolest cell phone in existence! (Yes that means better than the iphone)

2. Creating and Maintaining a strong presence is Social Media via your G1 phone is 100% doable and its easy.

3. You can therefore make money all day long from your cell phone.

Allow me to expand on all three of these points:

The absolute #1 killer of online marketers today is wasted time. The social networks are designed to suck you in and make you spend as much time as possible on their sites. As every single person and their dog turn to the internet to market their product/service and to generate leads for their network marketing business a VERY LARGE percentage of these people will find quickly that they are spending a rediculous amount of time online with ZERO to little results. This can be changed by studying the things that make you most effective in internet marketing (via the gazillion websites previously mentioned) and by utlilizing a versatile and powerful mobile phone (the g1 duh) to take you away from the computer but not away from your online tribe.

Creating and maintaining a presence in social media is not only doable but easy! Recently a friend accused me of being a facebook nerd. I asked him how much time he thought I spent on the computer each day and he replied that I had to be logged into facebook for at least 2 hours a day. Man was he shocked when I told him 3-5 minutes was a lot closer to the truth. The Android platform is designed to allow you to access and utilize twitter, facebook, myspace, orkut, delicious, bebo, youtube, and whatever else you are into. IT WAS MEANT FOR THIS!!!!! If you are going to keep preaching a life of freeedom that comes from owning your own business I suggest you try out some of that freedom by leaving your computer desk every once in awhile.

Understanding the above two concepts you can understand why I tell people they can make money online from their cell phone! This website is dedicated to showing you how the newest technologies can truly bring you freedom…. even if its a sort of techy freedom ( I admit it; I’m a nerd).

Wow! Twitter is quick becoming the most popular/powerful of Social Media websites. There are a lot of different twitter apps out there for the G1, android platform but so far Twidroid is my favorite.

In looking for a twitter app it was important to me to find something would allow me to send and receive both @ replies and direct messages. It also needed to display new messages in the notification bar.

Twidroid does all of this. Here is a quick glance at all their twitter features:

• full-featured twitter client
  • postings, replies & direct messages
  • user detail information
  • follow/unfollow a user
  • auto-completion of your contact names
  • secured operation via SSL
  • option to use identi.ca instead of twitter
  • option to use twitter compatible APIs (e.g. laconi.ca)
• integrates directly with android’s browser & gallery for sharing
• GPS location support to update your profile or embed into photos
• location-based nearby search
• directly integrated photo-posting from cam or disk via phodroid and twitpic
• directly integrated search through all public tweets
• native url-shortening
• background notifications for replies & direct messages
• auto layout for landscape and portrait mode
• custom alert ringtones
• API to send tweets from your android application
• ‘buzz’ feature that allows you to view today’s most talked about stories on twitter directly in the app.

If anyone else would like to suggest a twitter app do so by making comment below or by visiting our suggested content page above! Here are some screenshots:

Source: http://twidroid.com/