40Tech

Both the iOS App Store and the Android Market offer an abundance of camera apps. There are so many, that it takes either great functionality or a unique twist for an app to stand out. One that does so is Paper Camera, available as an Android and an iPhone/iPad app. Paper Camera lets you use your camera to output real time cartoon and painting effects that have to be seen to appreciated.

Producteev, one of our favourite  — and one of the best — to-do apps, has released a massive upgrade that includes some long-awaited features and platform updates. The web and iPhone apps have gotten a makeover, the much clamoured-for Android app has finally arrived, and there is now a Windows 7 desktop app to balance out the Mac version. Even the logo has been updated (bye bye Tasky the beaver)!

To top it all off, Producteev has added a few new features into the mix — and yes (drumroll), that does include sub-tasks…

Regardless of some cool input tools, like Swype, entering text and controlling your mobile phone can still be cumbersome. On Android at least, you have the option of controlling your phone right from your computer, using AirDroid. AirDroid won’t let you do access all of your phone’s functions, but the list of available features is pretty impressive.

When it comes to buying apps, trust the hive mind. I should have learned that long ago, but at times I need to learn from my own mistakes. My selection of a blogging editor was one mistake, where I could have just listened to the wisdom that I saw espoused all over the Internet. My selection of a Google Reader app for my Android phone was another. Shortly after getting my phone, I tried out the official Google Reader app, then dropped money on another app that I’ve long since forgotten. Finally, I surrendered and tried out NewsRob, the app that received everyone’s praises. I’ve been using it ever since.

Flurry posted the results of a recent study of app usage, taking a look not only at how Android stacks up against iOS, but also at app retention rate – the percentage of users that continue to use an app in the 12 months after acquiring it. The results are somewhat stunning, showing that the retention rate in the first month after acquisition is only 38%. That number then drops steadily, reaching 4% after 12 months. Do you find yourself discarding apps at such a fast rate?

As most of you will probably agree, 40 isn’t so old. In fact, nowadays 40 isn’t too old to raise a newborn. That’s what is going on in my household right now, as we raise a baby that is just a couple of weeks old. When Baby 40Tech was born, my wife and I knew that it was important to keep track of the baby’s feedings, diapers, and more. Naturally, I looked to tech for help with that.

Though the initial excitement of Google+ has worn off, millions of users are still using the service and more people connect every day. For its part, Google has been working hard at bringing the preview social network closer to a production offering, adding social gaming without annoying people, verified accounts for prominent users and famous folk, and ironing out their sign-up rules (the heavily debatedreal name only policy). They have also been paying attention to their mobile apps, finally adding post sharing into the Android app. iOS users had to wait a bit, as is per usual, but the much awaited update is now available in the app store.

But is development coming along too slowly to keep up interest?

Back in October, I wrote a short post about a father-son DIY project that sent an iPhone into the upper stratosphere. In December, the geeks at Google did the same thing, but with more of a mind toward data (and cool picture) collecting. Well, NASA one-upped them all by taking not one, but two Android Nexus S smartphones into orbit with the final space shuttle mission. They weren’t used to phone home or anything quite so cliché (but cool!) — nope, these little robot-bearing phones were actually used to control other, more sophisticated robots: SPHERE satellites.

I have a confession to make. If I follow you on Twitter, there’s a good chance that I don’t see any of your tweets. Twitter got so busy for me, that the only way that I could manage it, was to sort people into lists. I have several lists, but I have one super-special list for the tweets of users that I don’t want to miss. When I’m busy, that’s the only part of Twitter that I ever see. When I try out Twitter apps, therefore, list support is the first thing I check out. That’s why I use Plume . . . but I’m open to suggestions for an app that handles lists even better. If you know of one, let us know in the comments.

One of the much-ballyhooed strengths of Android is its openness and how much choice it gives users. Those strengths are illustrated well if you want to pick a podcast client for Android. The iOS landscape may have changed in the last few months since I switched to Android, but I always found the iOS podcast experience to be lacking. Not so on Android, if you use DoggCatcher, an excellent podcast client.