I use my phone everyday, so my picks here a based on that usage. There are many awesome apps available, but I don’t use them every day, so they are not on this list. First, let’s throw out the obvious. Yes, I’m addicted to social media, so Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook are a given. I use the native apps for all three. I use these three apps more than any of the others aside from Gmail. Another set of obvious picks are Gmail, Google Talk & Google Voice. Come on. It’s not called a Google phone for nothing. Okay it’s not really the Google phone, but close enough.

With the obvious out the way, here are my top 10 Android apps by daily usage.

Soul4real’s Top 10 Android Apps

9 total, 9 free (100%), 0 paid (0%), 7MB total size, $0 total price

• Aldiko Book Reader : Great app for reading ebooks in the epub format. Organizes the books and has lots of features to make reading easier on the small device.
• Barcode Scanner : Handy app for getting more information about something on the web. Just scan the bar code and the web page pops up. Great for downloading new apps.
• Dolphin Browser : Great alternative to the native browser. Allows for pinch and zoom, bookmarking and more.
• PdaNet free edition : Need to connect your laptop to the internet? This is the app for that. Works great. Connect via usb or bluetooth. Pretty fast speeds once connected. This is a must have app.
• RunKeeper Free : Great app for tracking your athletic activities. Uses the GPS to track your every move and then creates a great map to review. Very accurate and keeps track of pace, distance, altitude, speed. Integrates with Google Earth too.
• Pixelpipe Post & Upload Pro : Awesome app for posting to multiple social networking sites. Take a photo and send it to Twitter, Flickr and Facebook at once. Easy to set up pipes and easy to use. Integrates will with all services on the phone.
• PRO Paint Camera : This camera app is far superior than the standard camera app. You can really tell the difference in quality, especially in bright areas. The picture viewer is really cool too once you figure out where it is.
• Dropbox : If you need files from your computer on your phone, this is the app for you. It works great. Let’s you view just about anything you can put in your Dropbox. Must have app.
• YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus : Replaced my Verizon voicemail years ago in favor of YouMail. The Android app works great. Records voicemails and then transcribes them (fee)and sends a notification and an email with the transcript. Excellent visual voicemail.
• Car Home: This app comes standard on your Android phone (except for AT&T), so you won’t find it in the Android Market. It is very cool. Use Voice Search to tell it to navigate to McDonald’s and it uses the GPS to locate you and then finds the closest McDonald’s and gives you turn by turn navigation. When you arrive at your destination it shows a Google image of the front of the location so you know you’re in the right spot. Totally awesome. It does more, but that’s the coolest part for me.

View this app list on AppBrain

Turns out the Nook as a few features that are better than the Kindle, but this is not a comparison. I chose the Nook because it was less expensive. But now that I own one, I really do appreciate the SD card expansion since I can listen to music on this thing too. I like that it has a replaceable battery and reads epub files, which all of my current books are in the epub format. And it has wifi, but I probably won’t even use that. But with a built in browser, you never know.

I love the size of the Nook. It really feels like I’m carrying around a paperback novel when I have it, especially with the leather cover I bought for it. It took a while to get used to no back lighting on the screen. I had to keep turning on lamps and sitting next to a light source. After read ebooks on my Blackberry, iTouch and Droid for the past two years, it was hard to get used to no light.

Getting the Nook up and running was a breeze. I wouldn’t say that this is a great tool for textbooks, as the notetaking and bookmarking features are a bit tedious, but for straight up reading, this thing is a winner. And with the use of Calibre, a free and open source e-book library management application, it’s easy to get your own content uploaded to the Nook. Calibre can convert files and send them directly to the device once it’s connected to your computer.

I’m happy with my purchase. My Nook will gets lots of use, but unfortunately with this new device and my Droid phone, I really have no use for my old iPod Touch.

Have a look at my new Nook:

• Stanza for PC/Mac/iPhone/iPod
• Kindle for PC/Mac/iPhone/iPod
• Mobipocket for PC/Blackberry, Palm, Windows & Symbian devices
• eReader for ALL devices
• B&N eReader for PC/Mac/iPhone/iPod/Blackberry

I quickly learned that Kindle and B&N eReader would not work for me. They are proprietary readers created solely to be used for reading their copyright protected material (DRM). I needed a reader that I could use to read my own created content. So I settled on Mobipocket reader and Stanza for iPod Touch. And I’ve been using Calibre eBook Manager and Aldiko reader for Android. Calibre works with every known ebook reader and format that I’ve seen and also works with the Stanza reader for iPhone/iPod, but Mobipocket has it’s perks too. I like both.

One of the reasons I initially chose Mobipocket reader, also a desktop application, is because the books I like to read that I buy directly from the publisher come in this format (mobi). Also the mobipocket reader lets me read pdf files as well. There is not a Mobipocket reader mobile app for the iPhone/iPod, but the Stanza reader will read all the same files. Mobipocket only has a mobile app for Blackberry, Palm, Windows and Symbian devices. When I switched to the Android phone and discovered there wasn’t a reader for .mobi files for my Droid, I started using Calibre to convert all my books to .epub files so I could read them on my Droid. Stanza also has a Stanza Desktop program for the PC that can be used to convert files, but I have not tried that.

There are lots of different file formats to deal with, but I mostly find myself dealing with pdf, mobi and epub. Here’s a list of all the others: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC**, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TCR, TXT. Of course Amazon and Barnes & Noble have their own proprietary formats for the Kindle and Nook. This means you can only use those devices to read their content, but you can read other open content on the devices. (i.e. mobi files on the Kindle; epub on the Nook).

Check out the Features & Hardware Tables on Wikipedia to see which devices use which format and what features you get with each format. You’ll see why Mobipocket (mobi) is the best even if you won’t be able to read mobi files on the iPad or Nook.

eBook Creation Tools

Calibre is a free application for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux that manages your library and integrates with Stanza iPhone over your local wireless network. It can be downloaded for free from http://calibre-ebook.com. You can learn how to share books with Stanza iPhone over your local WiFi network on Windows, Mac, or Linux in a discussion of how to use Calibre. You can also learn how to share books to your other ereaders and devices.

Mobipocket Creator is a free application for Windows to create personal content to take along with you, distribute or sell ebooks to others, or design more advanced content and applications, the Mobipocket Creator products enable to easily create ebooks from a variety of sources to be viewed on all the PDA and smartphone platforms where Mobipocket Reader is supported.

• Mobipocket Creator 4.2 Home Edition -FREE- enables you to create your ebooks, photo albums, personal databases and much more with a simple and intuitive user interface and expandable templates.
• Mobipocket Creator 4.2 Publisher Edition -FREE- allows publishers to create their ebooks with an easy-to-use content authoring tool, and target customers who read on their PDA, smartphone or PC. This software also includes Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word & Text File Import wizards.

Creating your own content to read on mobile devices is as simple as creating a Word file and converting it. With Mobipocket you can simply Import Word and Text documents or Import Adobe® PDF files into your publication with the powerful PDF to HTML built-in converter. Calibre does not directly convert .doc files from Microsoft Word. However, in Word, you can save the document as HTML and then convert the resulting HTML file with calibre. When saving as HTML, be sure to use the “Save as Web Page, Filtered” option as this will produce clean HTML that will convert well. There is a Word macro package that can automate the conversion of Word documents using calibre. It also makes generating the Table of Contents much simpler. It is called BookCreator and is available for free here.

Free Audio Books

• LibriVox if you don’t know it already, is the king of free audio books. You can use the catalog to search through their library of nearly 1000 works, all part of the public domain. If you’re feeling generous, you can even contribute wiki-style by recording audio of your own.
• LearnOutLoud.com is your one-stop destination for audio and video learning. Browse over 20,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos.
• Free Classic AudioBooks. Digital narration for the 21st Century. Free classic audiobook downloads in mp3 audio and ipod audio book format.
• Project Gutenburg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. They also have audio books, both human-read and computer-generated.

Buy Audio Books:

• iTunes Music Store
• Simply Audiobooks
• Jiggerbug
• Amazon
• Audible

The site provides a brief summary from Wikipedia and links to:

• Gutenberg e-text
• Wikipedia – D. H. Lawrence
• Wikipedia – Women in Love
• LibriVox’s Women in Love Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book – 729MB
• RSS feed · Subscribe in iTunes

Total running time: 25:19:21
Read by Ruth Golding

LibriVox makes reading or listening to a novel on your mobile device super easy, especially with the quick and easy “Subscribe in iTunes” link. With one click the book can be added and ready for sync with your iPhone or iPod. If students have trouble listening to audiobooks, they can visit the About Listening to LibriVox page for help.

Here’s a link for more help with downloading and listening to audiobooks on LibriVox.

• Introduction to Mobile Learning Blog (5 min)
• Current Mobile Devices and How Best to Use Them (10 min)
• Creating Course Content for Mobile Delivery(10 min)
  • WordPress Blogs
  • iTunes U
• Accessing Course Content Using Apps (10 min)
  • iTunes U
  • Academic Sync
  • eReaders (Stanza)
• Engaging Students in Course Content (10 min)
  • PollEverywhere
  • Posterous

Respond via Cell Phone Using Gabcast: Answer the following question by calling 1.866.282.2457. When prompted enter the channel number: 9070 and the channel password: 3341.

Questions: What would be the most challenging part of your course to adapt to learning or what would be the easiest?

Follow-up post to: Creating Course Content for Mobile Delivery

• Introduction to the current research on mobile learning and sharing of a list of resources available on the workshop blog

Mobile Learning PowerPoint Presentation

• Overview of a course designed for mobile access using WordPress MU, iTunes and Blip.tv. An updated version using WordPress 3.0 will also be shown.
• ENG101 Online is a Freshman Comp I course designed in WordPress MU, or multi-user, a blogging platform designed to run hundreds of thousands of blogs with a single install of WordPress. The site is optimized with plugins to help mobilize the content provided on the site. The first essential plugin used is WP Touch plugin that optimizes the site for viewing on mobile devices. The video below showcases the site on both the iPod Touch and the Blackberry Storm.

• ENG102Online.com is another mobile optimized course created in WordPress 3.0. All of the same features from WordPress MU are now built into WordPress 3.0, so they are essentially the same thing now.

This is a quick overview of some of the features of a mobile course developed in a WordPress MU blog. I cover assignments, forms, quizzes, and private discussion, viewing on both the iPod Touch and the Blackberry Storm.

Below is a quick look at the mobile course in traditional blog form on the web – what it looks like not on a mobile device. This is the same website that is shown in the Mobile Learning Course Overview (Mobile Gadgets) video above. The site is built using WordPress MU.

• Participants all choose their current mobile devices to research. They will fill in a matrix online to share the features, pros/cons for mobile learning for each device. Discussion about which devices are most appropriate follows.
• The New Generation of Smartphones
• Comparison and reviews of currently available smartphones
• Comparison chart for netbooks
• eBook Reader Comparison Chart
• Choose your current smart phone/pmp/netbook/mp3 player/cell phone and on the handout, write the name, cost, service provider, features, pros/cons for use in education for that device.
• Fill out your form here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG1BSTMyX0FCRDFBLUw2MnZuSml3NWc6MA

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