12 Open Source Android Applications

According to Gartner, Android is all set to become one among the most preferred mobile phone OS out there and burgeoning Android Market is a sign of things to come. Already some 100,000 apps and growing. But how many of these applications are open source after all? There are no reliable statistics. Here is a quick list of 12 useful and open source android applications you might be interested in.

[image via android wallpapers]

12 Open Source Android Apps Worth Checking Out
There are Android users who don't have the vaguest idea of what open source is or what it stands for. Then there are those open source evangelists who bought Android phone primarily because of the reason that it is open source and based on Linux. This post is especially meant for those who are included in the second category.

Amazed

Amazed is a simple yet addictive accelerometer-based marble-guidance game available in the Android Market. In this game, your goal is to guide the white ball through the maze and reach the green end zone. The game may be simple, but it can give you a good feel of how your phones accelerometer works. Please do check out this collection of open source Android apps included in the apps-for-android package.

K-9 Mail

K9 is an open source email client based on the email application shipped with the initial release of Android. K-9 Mail is equipped with features like search, push email, multi-folder sync, flagging, filing, signatures, bcc-self and more. K9 is focused on making it ever more easier to manage large volumes of email in Android. More info here.

Say My Name

SayMyName is a simple application that speaks the name of the person calling. It uses Text-To-Speech Library to call out a name during a phone call. Detailed review here.

Android SuperGenPass

SuperGenPass is an open source password manager for Android. Instead of randomly generating and storing passwords, SuperGenPass combines a Web site's domain and your master password to generate a unique password for each web site you visit using a strong cryptographic hash. More info here.

Astrid

Astrid is a todo list/task tracking system for Google's Android based mobile OS platform built with your enhanced productivity in mind. Astrid's goal is to be simple to use with the features you need to stay productive and get things done. More info here.

Pedometer

Pedometer counts your steps by using the sensors in the phone. It even calculates your pace (steps per minute) and can help you maintain a desired pace by speaking to you. It will ask you to install the Text-to-Speach library if you enable this option. Pedometer runs as a service, so it keeps counting when the display is off. More info here.

Milege

Milege Android application tracks car mileage, gas costs, etc. It even allows importing and exporting of data in various formats and makes it a lot more easier to sync with your existing logs. More info here.

Count Down Alarm

CountDownAlarm is an Android application that provides a basic countdown timer that plays an alarm when it reaches zero - for use with things like cooking, laundry etc. More info here.

Secrets

Secrets for Android is an application to securely store and manage passwords and secrets on your Android phone. It uses techniques like strong encryption and auto-logout to help ensure that your secrets remain safe. Context-sensitive tips guide you along through its operation, making it easy to use. More info here. [image via]

Beem

Beem is a feature rich and easy to use Jabber client on Android. Beem is free and contains no ads. Been is an open source software and is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3. More details here.

Four Squared

Foursquared is a simple open source Foursquare client for Android. Foursquared is distributed under an Apache 2.0 License. More info here.

Open Sudoku

OpenSudoku is a simple open source sudoku game. It's designed to be controlled both by finger and keyboard. It's preloaded with 90 puzzles in 3 difficulty levels, more puzzles can be downloaded from the web and it also allows you to enter your own puzzles. More info here. Thanks to this wiki listing of android applications.

Lock Your PC

1. Right click an empty spot on the desktop, point to New and click Shortcut. 
2. In the Create Shortcut dialog box, copy the following into the 'Type the location' of the item text box:
"rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation" remove quotes while typing. 
3. Click Next. 
4. In "Type a name for this shortcut", type LOCK and Click Finish 
5. Now just double click on the icon, your desktop will be locked.

Auto Shutdown or programmed poweroff

There are some times when you need to turn automatically your PC off, there can be a lot of examples when this is necessary.

I usually do this when I left some torrent downloading, let’s say some Linux isos to test a new Linux distribution, so I leave my PC downloading the ISO at office over the weekend, and program my PC to turn of, some two or three hours after the estimated time when the download is suppose do finish.

I do not have too much bandwidth so a whole DVD can take some 26 hours downloading. Specially because I limit the usages of bandwidth to 50% of the available to leave room for other tasks.

Well, let’s see how to do it.

sudo shutdown -h -P [hour]:[minutes]

This is only useful, if you need to shutdown the computer on the same day you are, or the next one, let’s suppose it is noon, and you want to shutdown your computer at 17 hours.

sudo shutdown -h -P 17:00

But if you need to shutdown your computer the day after tomorrow, or even later, use this commands.

sleep 2d 3h | poweroff

You need to run that command as root, or using sudo, but you need to be in thesudoers file, and not required to enter passwords.

That command is going to shutdown the computer after 2 days and 3 hours from now

I am sure there are some other ways to program the shutdown of a Linux computer, and I will be glad if you can post alternatives in the comments.