Brent W. Hopkins

Iris is a direct competitor to Siri, the voice assistant that Apple introduced with the iPhone 4S. Currently in alpha status, Iris is far from being ready for serious use. In theory you can use Iris to send text messages, dial your contacts, perform Web searches, play music, check the weather, look up recipes, update your Twitter status, or find videos--but Iris still has a ways to go if it is to compete with Apple's virtual assistant.

Unlike Siri, Iris requires you to speak your queries in a specific syntax. For example, to update your Twitter status, you have to say, “Update my Twitter status,” followed by whatever words you want to tweet. Unfortunately, you may need to repeat yourself multiple times, because the app often misinterprets your words as gibberish.

I review a lot of Android apps: Many of them are junk, some are so-so, and a small number are great, providing functionality that should be included in every Android device. DroidWall (for rooted devices only) is among the elite few. Why? Because DroidWall allows you to specify which apps can access the Internet--giving you more control over your phone and enabling you to protect yourself against unauthorized data connections.

Unfortunately, many apps misuse their permissions in order to upload your contacts list without asking, report your physical location to third-party advertisers, or abet other invasions of privacy. DroidWall puts the power back into your hands. The app's simple dashboard controls how your installed apps can access the Internet. Each app is listed with two checkboxes: One is for Wi-Fi data access (useful for keeping apps that use a lot of data from eating up your cellular data), and the other is for cellular data. Check the box to allow access; leave it blank to deny access. When you're done, activate the firewall.

The days of cheap gasoline may be gone for good, but the free GasBuddy app for Android can help you find the best fuel deals in town. GasBuddy is very easy to use: The app uses your GPS location to search for nearby gas stations, then returns a list that you can sort by price or distance. The list is conveniently organized into tabs for Regular, Mid-Grade, and Premium gasoline, as well as Diesel fuel. Clicking on an item gives you more details such as the gas station's phone number, services offered, and directions (via the Google Maps app) to help you get there.

You can also switch to a view that shows the gas stations and their prices as thumbnails on a map, relative to your current position. Click a thumbnail to go to a page with more details about the gas station. I prefer the map view because to me it feels more visually intuitive than the list view.

Speaktoit Assistant is an Android app that in many ways resembles Apple's Siri for iPhone 4S. It acts as a virtual assistant that can respond to voice commands and perform Web searches and other simple tasks. You can use Speaktoit Assistant to launch apps, find contacts, compose email or text messages, create calendar events, give directions, and more.

Speaktoit Assistant uses Google's voice transcription service to understand your spoken commands. The app lets you choose from among several iSpeech voices, all of which sound a bit more natural than Google's robotic-sounding text-to-speech (TTS) service. I ended up settling on a female voice with a British accent that I found quite pleasant and easy to understand.

Voice-controlled "assistants" have been a hot topic since Apple introduced Siri with the iPhone 4s. Since then, Android users have been scrambling for their own Siri, with several apps attempting to fill the void. Evi is one such app, described by its developer as a "revolutionary artificial intelligence." A bold claim to make, but in my time with Evi I found the "revolution" off to only a slow start.

Evi is simple to use: Just press the on-screen microphone and speak your query. Evi uses Google's voice-recognition software to process your requests, and it can take several seconds for the app to figure out what you've said. Occasionally Evi choked up, and I ended up having to manually type my question before it could understand me. This didn't happen too often, and she normally understood what I was asking, so long as I didn't mumble.

Twicca is a Twitter app for Android that's loaded with features, such as support for Twitter lists, image-upload resizing, color-coded labels, and sharing to other apps. Among other helpful functions, it offers reply history, reply auto-complete, saved searches, recent hashtags, quoted retweets, GPS location geotagging, notifications, Bit.ly link shortening, and image previews. You can also use the app to edit your profile and change your avatar image, and you can adjust the font size in Settings.

One of Twicca's most interesting features is its support for a wide variety of third-party plug-ins that add functionality. Some of my favorites include URLy, a link shortener on steroids; Filckr, which helps you upload images to Flickr and embed the link in a tweet; the Tumblr plugin for uploading media or other files to Tumblr and embedding the link in a tweet, and the Image Download Plugin, which lets you download and save images embedded in tweets.

The free Privacy Inspector lets you take a closer look at the kind of data your phone's apps are accessing. It also provides a more informative explanation of the significance of that data than the Android Market does.

First, you need to have Privacy Inspector scan your phone to discover all the apps on it. The apps then display in a grayscale thumbnail grid. You tap a thumbnail to select an app, and press the crosshairs icon at the bottom of the screen to inspect the app. Privacy Inspector examines the app code line by line, so the process can take a little while to complete. When Privacy Inspector is done, the app icon will appear in color with a summary of the privacy issues discovered.

PAW Server turns your Android device into a password-protected Web server. It's a neat and useful little app that can transform your phone into a streaming Webcam or a remote audio recording device. You can also use PAW Server to upload files to your phone, download files, stream MP3s, and view photos located on your phone by using a Web browser on your PC.

You can also use PAW to locate your device if you lose or misplace it. You can even make the phone ring so that you can find it if you left it somewhere nearby. PAW allows you to make phone calls, view your call log, send SMS texts, send e-mail messages through the phone, view running processes, back up apps, install apps, share your clipboard contents, and more.

Many Android apps and processes can provide identifiable information--for example, your camera app may stamp photos with GPS location data, and your cellular-network provider also has various means to identify and track your device. ND Private Browser is one tool that can help protect your privacy, at least while you're browsing the Web.

ND is a text-only browser; if you need image, JavaScript, or Flash support, you should look elsewhere. ND does not support saving bookmarks or history, because those features are not congruent with the goal of privacy. ND also doesn't support cookies or JavaScript, since they can be used to track your online activities and pose a security risk.

So you decided to go ahead and root your Android device--now what? You might want to install a useful utility called ROM Manager to help in managing your rooted device. ROM Manager does two basic things: It installs ClockworkMod Recovery to back up and/or recover your phone's system, and it downloads and installs custom ROMs (versions of Android).

You can find tons of custom ROMs to choose from, including the popular CyanogenMod, Lithium Mod, cvpcs, Ihtfp69, JagerRom, Virtuous, Uncommon Sense, MIUI, and Berzerker, just to name a few. Each ROM brings something new to traditional Android. Once you have downloaded a ROM, you can use ROM Manager to install it on your device. Since the ROMs save to your SD Card, you can switch back and forth depending on your preference.

Rendezvous is an Android client app for the Meetup event-oriented social network. With Rendezvous you can monitor your Meetup Groups, RSVP to Group events, add events to your Google Calendar, check in to events, and upload photos to event albums.

To use Rendezvous you must authorize the app to interact with your Meetup account; afterward you will see a list of all the Groups you belong to. Click a Group to see details about it, upcoming Meetups, and Group photos. Click a Meetup to view details, RSVP, and add it to your Google Calendar.

LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network for professionals, is finally making a serious effort to satisfy the needs of its mobile users with the LinkedIn app for Android devices. LinkedIn is rather late to the Android party, as many other social networking apps like Twitter, Facebook, and TweetDeck are already well-established. But with this foray into Android territory, LinkedIn accomplishes the difficult task of providing a useful tool without sacrificing simplicity.

All the functions of this app are accessible from the Home screen and, perhaps more importantly, they enable you to do most of the things you'd want to do with LinkedIn on a mobile device. You can view the details of your Connections, message them, or browse their Connections list to see who they know. You can browse Reconnect to see a list of people whom LinkedIn thinks you might know, but who are not yet Connected to you. When you find a listing you recognize, you can Invite the person to Connect to you.