YouTube video courtesy of Android Apps

The folks over at Android Apps have a good video review of...

DoggCatcher

...which is a free podcast downloader for Google Android. They gave it a 4 star (out of 5) rating. Android Apps points out that some podcast RSS feeds may be hard to find. And, I'd add the following caveat: Since most T-Mobile USA areas are still limited to slow EDGE data connections, you may want to use DoggCatcher only when connected to a WiFi hotspot.

I read about the...

Phoload Android free software site

...over on the Android Guys blog. Phoload, which launched just recently on Sept 3., describes their site like this: Phoload is a new community website based on the idea that it should be simple, easy, and fun to discover and download free mobile phone games and applications. Users of the website can rate, review and recommend the software they download. We also aim to provide a great service for mobile software developers. Phoload is designed to make it easy for developers to distribute their software through the website, directly to users who have compatible phones.

I should note that Phoload is not focuses solely on Google Android software. Free software for other other platforms such as Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 can also be found there.

YouTube video courtesy of i4unews

Well, so much for my theory that having Adobe Flash might allow Windows Mobile to stay in the game until Windows Mobile 7 arrives in 2010. CNET reported...

Adobe bringing full-fledged Flash to phones

...which notes that Adobe demonstrated Flash 10 running on a T-Mobile G1 (Google Android) phone. This is great for Google Android based phones, of course. But, it means that Windows Mobile phones with their so-last-century native web browser (Internet Explorer) is back in last place again. And, unfortunately, the Internet Explorer 6 browser Microsoft is developing for Windows Mobile will not be available for currently available WiMo smartphones.

EAmobile site on Windows Mobile (left) and iPhone (right)

I've written about EA (Electronic Arts) Mobile here before. But, I don't think I ever noticed or noted that if you point your smartphone browser at...

eamobile.com

...it auto-detects whether you are using Google Android (T-Mobile G1), RIM Blackberry, Apple iPhone, or Windows Mobile Professional Edition (touch screen). It then displays games available for that platform. You can see that the site looks quite different when displayed on an HTC TyTn (Windows Mobile Professional Edition smartphone) on the left or an iPhone 3G on the right.

Note that when I visited the site using a non-touchscreen Windows Mobile Standard Edition smartphone (T-Mobile Dash), I was presented with a web page that said no games were available for that platform. So, EAmobile games appear to be available only for touchscreen Windows Mobile devices.

YouTube video courtesy of WeatherBug

I noticed that WeatherBug launched an app for Google Android (T-Mobile G1) (via Android Community). WeatherBug's 7 minute 30 second video demo (see above) may be the most complete product demo I've seen a vendor provide. You get a good sense of its features (including video reports, animated radar maps, etc.) and user interface (e.g., just type a ZIP code to get weather for a particular area).

Nice to see more apps for Google Android becoming available. I'm looking forward to trying another Android based phone when one becomes available.

Web view of WikiTap

vtap's WikiTap is an attempt to build a knowledge base, somewhat similar to Wikipedia, for and by mobile users. vtap provides free apps for both iPhone and Google Android that lets you both view and edit (including photos and videos) from the iPhone or T-Mobile G1. The web view of the site is pretty hard to read on my iPhone (see above). But, the app view looks pretty good based on screenshots from their site.

vtap has an interesting idea and vehicle. But, for some reason, unlike everything else in the tech world, Wikipedia seems like a monolith that should remain, well, monolithic. I'd like to see something like WikiTap for Wikipedia itself.

The Apple iPhone visual voicemail service on the AT&T Wireless network was touted as one its key features when the iPhone was first introduced. Oddly, it is rarely mentioned now despite its obvious appeal to anyone who has had to triage voice mail using conventional audio cues and keypad controls. I was a little surprised that Google, HTC, and T-Mobile did not create a similar service for the T-Mobile G1 when it was released last month.

However, IntoMobile reports...

Visual Voicemail Coming to the T-Mobile G1 via PhoneFusion’s Fusion Voicemail Plus App

I'm sure this would be a welcome feature to many T-Mobile G1 owners The vendor's website does not have this information on it at the moment. But, I presume it will eventually be available at:

PhoneFusion.com

CNET's Stephen Shankland gathered the details about the Google Android RC29 and RC30 updates for the T-Mobile G1. You can find the article at...

Google details 'reboot' bug, Android security fixes

RC29 fixed the browser vulnerability we read about a week or so ago. It also fixed a hole that let someone bypass Android's boot sequence controls and get into a safe mode (presumably some kind of root level shell access).

RC30 fixed the root-console bug I mentioned recently. This is the bug that echoed everything directly to a shell with root access that could do thing like reboot the T-Mobile G1. Two Webkit browser problems were also fixed in this patch: A buffer overrun problem and a Javascript hole that allowed access to information in web cookies.

Image courtesy of CompanionLink

Google assumes that syncing with Google Calendar and Gmail's Contacts is all you need for your Android phone. I found Google Calendar sync worked great with the T-Mobile G1. But, oh my, Google Contacts is a giant mess that I want to avoid as much as possible. Fortunately, CompanionLink has a $29.95 app that lets you sync contacts, calendar, and tasks on Google Android phones with Outlook, Lotus Notes, and other client-side PIMs (Personal Information Managers)...

CompanionLink for Google Android

There is a 14-day evaluation available if you want to take it for a test drive.

Via Talk Android

The Android Community blog mentioned a person named Jay Freeman had successfully installed and run Debian Linux on a T-Mobile G1. So, I followed the link over to read...

Debian & Android Together on G1

Sidenote: Debian is probably the best known true community version of Linux. Other Linux versions (usually referred to as "distros" - short for distributions) are chiefly maintained by corporate entities. For example, you might be familiar with Red Hat Linux or SUSE Linux (owned by Novell). Ironically, one of the best know Linux distros is Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu itself is a "fork" of Debian Linux but if chiefly funded and maintained by Canonical.

Jay's blog entry provides a detailed description of where to get the Debian image and how to install it on a microSD card (you probably want to get one larger than the 1GB microSD T-Mobile ships with the G1).

This is a very interesting development. But, I think the real win will come when some kind of emulator or virtualization hypervisor becomes available to run other operating systems such as Palm OS or Windows Mobile on the G1 without touching the G1's native OS.