Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Apps, Apps, Apps
Apps are all the rage these days, right? Of course they are! Mobile devices are rapidly becoming the primary mode of communication (who has a home phone these days), computing (when was the last time you popped open your laptop at a starbucks to connect to their WiFi and check your email) and even social interactions (you know you just updated your status while reading this.. don’t lie to yourself). Of course this leads to the ever present argument of who’s phone is doing it better than the other… which will continue to be a never ending argument for as long as we live (which I’m fine with, as it’ll keep driving competition, right?). But lets get back on track here. Apps. Ah yes, today’s biggest marketing buzz word. At first, just being in the game was enough. Every brand and their mother had some sort of branded app out there, whether it was actually worthwhile or not (Target’s Snow Globe anyone… hey, at least they got in the game early). Then things changed, and for the better. Now people actually expect your app to DO something for you, and rightfully so.
So that leads me to today’s point (finally… get on with it): Android and its home screen. Now Google’s approach has always been one of “Let the users have at it,” which is all fine and good, but what about the folks out there who just want a clean, organized, precise home screen. Something that just delivers what they want in a concise manner? This whole notion was rumored on the iPhone about 4 months ago, but we all know it’ll never come to life as Apple will never approve an app that alters its user interface (both a good/bad thing. There’s some great things in the iPhone UI, but there are a handful of downsides, too), but Larva Labs has actually taken the initiative to make it happen on the Android platform. Their newest app, SlideScreen, does exactly that. After completing the setup, SlideScreen ties into much of the Android core, by bringing calls, SMS, email, weather, twitter, Google Reader, Stocks, etc to your home screen in a nifty little slide up/down interface. Soft clicking opens the item either in the SlideScreen interface (in the instance of tweets, also allowing for native retweet/reply/share functionality) or in the phone’s native app (in the instance of Calendar events and email). Long clicks allow you to add new items to the list in their respective category. The menu button now serves as a device to trigger the old menu drawer and brings up the apps you otherwise had stored on your home screen in a neat little overlay.
Larva Labs offers both a free and paid version of the app. So far we’ve only played with the free version, but will be upgrading to the Pro version shortly to get a feel for what additional features it bring to the table. Either way, its pretty impressive so far and seems to work nicely on all the different devices we have floating around here.
More over on TechCrunch: http://svns.in/6c
