One of the really interesting things about technology is watching the unexpected side-industries which crop up.  You never know what is going to catch on and become the next big thing, but it is fun to watch and predict.  One of these side industries that I really never saw coming is ringtones.  I can remember when ringtones were preprogrammed on your phone, and you were lucky to have half a dozen annoying chimes to choose from.  Then, things shifted a bit, allowing you to edit mp3 music clips and set them as ringtones on your phone.  The big jump came, however, when mp3 quality audio clips started to be recorded and even sold specifically as ringtones (buy the song and get the ringtone for free).  Since then, several apps have cropped up  to help manage these ringtones on your phone.  One such app is Ringo Pro, and the folks at Electric Pocket were kind enough to send over a sample for me to review on my HTC Hero (Android) device.

What I really liked about Ringo Pro is the extremely simple interface, which you can see above.  These ringtone managers can get extremely complex, but Ringo Pro makes this clean and simple.  The main screen consists of two tabs: default and contacts.  In the default tab, you can change your default ringtone and SMS tone.  These are the tones which you will hear for any caller unless you specifically assign that contact a different ringtone.

To assign a ringtone to a specific contact, just select the contacts tab, and then scroll through your list of contacts until you find the one you wish to assign.  Like I said, this is a really easy app to use.

To assign a ringtone or SMS tone, just use the appropriate menu option to open the list of available tones.  From here, you can scroll through any of the music or audio files on your device.  The cool thing here is that anything in your mp3 music collection is going to be compatible with Ringo Pro, and can be selected as a ringtone. 

From here, you can also choose to take a preview listen of any ringtone before selecting.  This is a nice option, because there is nothing worse than finding out how annoying your ringtone can be only after your phone rings. 

The app also allows you to add some advanced controls, including vibration and LED blinking.  You will find all of these settings under the advanced alert styles button.   Or you can choose to silence your phone directly from the main screen.  It would be nice if this phone silencer could be added as a standalone widget, though, so I could simply silence my phone with a single tap, instead of opening the app just to find the silence button.

In addition to managing your ringtones, though, Ringo Pro will also allow you to add ringtones to your phone.  Just select Get Ringtones to download exclusive (and free) Ringtones from Ringo Pro.  I thought this was a fantastic feature, as it could save some time (making your own ringtone clips) and money.  So, I was disappointed to find only a handful of ringtones available for download.  Hopefully Electric Pocket will work on enhancing this library soon.

I have to admit that I have never been terribly involved with custom ringtones, but this program makes adding ringtones so easy, that I feel like I should start adding custom ringtones for all of my contacts.  Pretty much the only thing I did not like about it was the price.  At 4.99 UK, Ringo Pro pretty expensive, especially considering the number of free rington managers in the Android Market.  Notwithstanding the price, though, I loved using this app and its clean and easy interface.  Now, I wonder what ringtone I should use for my wife…

Ringo Pro was developed by Electric Pocket, and is available from the Android Market for 4.99 UK.

If you read pdf files on your iPhone, then you have probably heard of GoodReader already.  It is one of my favorite options for pdf documents.  It just does a fantastic job of formatting the documents to fit the iPhone screen, which not a lot of apps can do well.  One of the problems I have had, however, was moving my documents into the app from my computer.  That trouble is over now, though, as GoodReader (which is still only 99 cents) has now added DropBox support, making it easy to grab any documents and review them quickly and easily on your iPhone or iPod Touch.  Read on for the full announcement.

Good.iWare has released a new version of its GoodReader file viewer for iPhone that includes “server-style” support for DropBox. Now users can upload files and even entire directories to Dropbox from GoodReader, and are also able to delete files just like they could with a normal file server, such as FTP.

The most recent version of GoodReader offered a web-browser connection to DropBox, which enabled users to browse DropBox accounts and download files into GoodReader, but did not enable users to reverse that process and upload files from GoodReader to DropBox.

GoodReader is known as the top document reader for viewing and navigating large PDF documents on an iPhone. Besides its text search capability, other key GoodReader features are active hyperlinks, which enable users to more easily navigate within the document or launch a linked document or website, and PDF Reflow, with which text is extracted from a PDF page (stripping out pictures) and displayed as a simple TXT file in its own viewing pane. These features make GoodReader an even better choice for those who browse large technical documents.

GoodReader is available from the iTunes App Store for 99 cents.

If you were wondering what the hardware was going to look like for Windows Phone 7, here is a quick look at the three phones which have been introduced so far (thanks to engadget for the picture).   From left to right, we have the Samsung Slate, unnamed Asus phone, and LG slider phone.   While I am glad to see Windows Phone become ever closer to reality, I have to say I am a little underwhelmed by the offerings  so far.  Then again, there is still no word from HTC, dell, or any of the other hardware partners which Microsoft announced last month.  I am sure there will be plenty more to come before Windows Phone 7 becomes a true reality later this year.

Not a lot is known about the specifics of these phones, though we can see the standardized hardware requirements which Microsoft’s hardware partners will have to follow if they want to use Windows Phone 7:

• a capacitive touchscreen with at least four points of contacts
• a minimum resolution of 480 by 320 (though many devices will have higher resolution)
• accelerometer
• compass
• assisted-GPS
• light and proximity sensors
• ARMv7 Cortex/Scorpion or better processor
• DirectX 9 graphics processing unit.
• 256 MB of RAM and 8 GB  of flash memory (though, hopefully we will see considerably more than that)
• at least a 5-megapixel camera with a hard button to snap photos.

This all sounds pretty impressive to me, and a great start, and I think it is great to see Microsoft taking control of the hardware.  Hopefully, they will be able to stave off the problems they faced with Windows Mobile and the runaway hardware designs.  I would still like to know more about the battery life of these devices, and I truly hope that the memory will far exceed these minimum requirements, but this is more than enough to make my mouth water.   Plenty more to come later this year, I am sure.

[via engadget and intomobile]

It is hard to know where to start talking about OddBlob…except to say that it is very aptly named.  Just look at the main character in the above picture…that is one odd blob.  Aside from that though, this is a very familiar gaming concept, in an unconventional unique package.  In other words, it looks and feels like nothing you have played before.  Astraware was kind enough to send me a copy for review, and I have not been able to stop playing it since I loaded it from the iTunes App Store.  Let me show you what I found.

The gameplay in this one is should feel pretty familiar.  It is a standard paradigm, which will find you hopping through a tiled maze, making your way from one end of the board to the other.  Now, this would be pretty easy, if not for the fact that there are plenty of obstacles along the way, including bounce tiles, walls, fruits, and disappearing tiles, to name a few.

Right about now, you are thinking, if this is just another game in a crowded field, then why are we even here.  What’s the point of this review?  Well, this is where Astraware shines…as always.  They have taken a familiar game and flipped it upside down.   Rather than the expected fancy, hi-res graphics, Astraware went old school on this one…Claymation.  Yup, that’s right.  The graphics on this one utilize the same technology that brought you Gumby…and so much more.  I have always been a huge fan of Claymation films, and was pleasantly surprised to find it cropping up (for a second time for those of you who remember Platypus) in an Astraware game.  The use of claymation graphics brought a fantastic refreshing change to this popular game style.

Adding to the excitement are the four levels of difficulty and two gameplay modes.  Play in strategy mode to try to gain the highest number of points by hitting bonus tiles and collecting fruits.  Switch to panic mode for even more heart stopping fun.  In panic mode, you will only be given a brief head start before the tiles start falling away behind you.  Better move fast or those tiles will fall right out from under you.  

Regardless of which mode you select, I would be remiss if I did not mention one of my favorite components of the game: CAKE!  Whenever you see a slice of cake sitting on a tile, you know you are in for a bonus, jump on it, and you will be brought to the Cake or Doom mini-maze, in which you must wind your way to either a bonus cake…or certain disaster. 

Finally, as with most Astraware games, there are plenty of in-game awards, not all of which require you to win in order to earn them.  You can even go online with the OpenFeint network in order to compare awards and scores with users from around the world.

Games like this are one of the reasons I was so happy recently when Astraware spun back off from Handmark and became an independent studio again.  Only the creative and slightly warped designers at Astraware could possibly have devised this one.  It is the perfect combination of unique and familiar, which means it feels like a whole new game, but has very little learning curve.  Toss in the ninety-nine cent price tag in the iTunes App Store, and you really have no excuse for passing by this one.

OddBlob was developed by Astraware and is available for $0.99 in the iTunes App Store.

One of the things I love about the Android interface is the use of widgets on the home screen.  Widgets allow you to put virtually any information right in front of your face where you need it most.  My only complaint is that not nearly enough companies utilize widgets effectively.  Fortunately, aniFree is out there for all of your widget needs.  You probably remember them from my recent view of their previous offering, aniAgenda.  Now they are back with the extremely flexible aniWidget app.  They sent me a copy to check out for this review, so let’s go ahead and take a closer look.

AniWidget is a fantastic little tool which puts all the power of eight widgets one tiny space.  You can choose to display:

• a clock
• current date and time
• monthly calendar
• daily agenda
• notepad
• weather
• newsfeed
• tools (including flashlight, radio toggles, and more)

What is nice here is that the standard aniWidget module takes only a quarter of the screen, meaning you can fit up to four independent widgets on the screen.   In addition to that standard widget, there is also a larger (1/2 screen) widget, which includes a larger version of the weather widget, larger newsfeed widget, and several different combinations of the remaining standard widgets.

Once you have setup the widget, toggling between the various options is easy.  There are two hidden buttons on each widget.  One on the lower right will flip to the next widget in the cycle.  If that is too slow for you, however, just tap the tools button on top (it is centered on the standard widget, but in the upper left corner on the large widget).  This will open a new panel, which allows you to set any widget in that space, access the settings, toggle any of the tools, or seek additional assistance from the help screen. 

There is also a third hidden button in the upper right hand corner, which allows you to interact with the widget.  This button changes, based upon the widget you have activated.  For example, from the daily agenda view, it will jump to your agenda.  Tap the same button from the notepad widget to create a new note.  Weather and news will find a refresh feed button in that space.  And, well…you get the point.

Now that you know how these widgets are going to work, let’s go ahead and take a look at how they look.   I have to admit that while I was impressed by the functionality in this one, I was a little disappointed by the look of some of these widgets.  Not that there was anything wrong with them, they just felt a bit plain. 

Sure, you can customize the face of the clock widget, but I was really hoping for a little more razzle dazzle out of these widgets, something that would really “wow” the people who glance at my phone and see them running.  For the most part, what you got was a translucent white background with some text or icons.   No fancy borders, graphics, or other animation.  There is a bit of a tradeoff here, as fancy graphics and animation could clutter your screen or slow your device.  Nonetheless, it would have been nice to have seen a little more attention spent on the lock and feel of the widgets, making them a little more attractive on the screen.  The clock is a great example of this.  With several different faces, you could add a little customization and flair to the widget.

I really think aniFree is onto something with this one.  It allows eight widgets to take the space of one.  And each is useful in its own way.  I was really quite impressed overall by the functionality and flexibility of this one.  I would have liked to have seen a little more attention on the look and feel of the widgets on the screen.  That being said, I think the functionality of a widget like this far outweighs any concerns I may have had with the look or feel of the interface.  This one functional spectacularly well, packaging some of the most necessary features into a single flexible widget.

AniWidget was developed by aniFree, and is available in the Android Market for $2.99.