Gadget Update: freeware

Indispensable Network Applications for Android phones

After flashing and re-installing my phone so many times, I found that a few Android applications were worth reinstalling each time. You probably know some of them:

ES File Explorer: not just an explorer, it can contact your PC through Wifi using SMB or FTP. FTP also helps with some car hand free kits that cause pairing troubles.

Penetrate: scans for nearby Access Points and reports the weakly protected routers (WEP, factory password, …). Comes handy on travel when a free Internet access is needed. Note that it requires the huge (200Mb) Thomson dictionnary for cracking some passwords, but this goes on your µSD

Overlook Fing: scans the lan you're connected to and shows a detailed network map. Absolutely brilliant!

APNDroid: a life saver for any user with a pre-pay SIM, allows you to disable the Internet Data traffic. To keep those hungry automatic Internet updates under control. Appears as a Red/green widget push button on your home screen.

Traffic Monitor from RadioOpt GmbH. Beside the included speed test is not yet as good as the Speedtest.net app, its main purpose is to keeps track of exactly what quantity of data is used by each application/service.

Shark: a wireshark compatible wlan sniffer!

TextDroid: while connected to Wifi, will send free text message through the Mobile operator web text engine, the nice thing about it is that it integrates with your phone book.

KeepassDroid: Allows using the Keepass database on your phone (all your logins and passwords strongly encrypted in your pocket)

Android System Info: System, Task and App manager, even system log (for rooted phones)

Anti-Frustration Freeware

I came across this new system optimization software aimed at reducing the boot time of a Windows computer.
It first needs to add itself to the boot sequence in order to analyse how long each application take to launch at boot.

The program will then interact with an online database and retrieve the most common users practice for each application: pause it (don't load), delay it (load it after the boot sequence when system is idle) or keep in boot). There are safety categories to distinguish the application that can be safely removed from the more sensible ones.

The comparative count of applications in the boot process is updated along with an estimate of the updated boot time. Of course, at the beginning, the Soluto application will itself take its share of the overall boot time.

In its beta phase, the "PC Genome" (application usage database) still needs to be populated but it is already very promising.