I hate running.  In fact, as a sport I despise it and always have.  Recently, however, I was challenged by a family member to run a 10k, and given that my dislike of running is outweighed by my desire to show this person up as often as I can, I’ve been forced to take the vile exercise up.

Thus began my search for a way to make running palatable.  Things have improved a lot over the years.  I have access to all of my music, and a number of mobile apps have evolved that at least make things interesting.  Endomondo tops the list on Android.

That’s actually not saying a whole lot.  The app is good, but not great.  I often find myself frustrated with using it.  Most of the time I find myself almost loving it but getting caught between features intended for the individual and features targeted at a social group.

As an overview, Endomondo does all of the basics that you would expect.  You can track your exercise sessions using GPS, and the app allows you to indicate the type of exercise for rough estimation of calorie burn.  The auto-upload to endomondo.com is really cool, allowing me to track my history either in the app or on the web site.  Graphing and mapping are what you would expect, and I actually find the lap indicators very helpful.

Goal setting is also pretty complete, allowing me to set distance, time, or calorie goal, in addition to some more exotic features such as “Beat a Friend” and “Compete on Route” among others.

The UI for Endomondo is very clean and easy to use.  There are a few things that drive me absolutely nuts though.  First and foremost, is the lack of a way to keep the screen on when exercising.  When I’m staggering down the trail wondering how much further I have to go, the last thing that I want to do is fumble with my phone trying to unlock it to see my distance.  Screebl seems to handle this for me for the most part, so it’s not a show-stopper, but it seems like an easy and obvious thing to add.

I also wish that there was a very basic interface to my music from within Endomondo.  For example, 80% of the time what I want to do with regard to music is skip to the next song in my playlist.  For some reason, hearing She Bangs when I’m running just makes me want to kill someone, even though I’m supposed to like it.   Big buttons for the next/previous song right on the status screen would be great, rather than having to click five times.

Finally with regard to the UI, the history graphs that indicate distance, speed, and elevation on a map are very cool, but seem to be quite inaccurate.  For example, samples within a mile that took 9:15 to run are all over the place, but all of them are significantly above a 9:15/mile pace.  Something’s off on the math, and that makes what could be a very useful report just plain frustrating.  Interestingly enough, the web site version of this graph seems to be accurate.  As a general rule, the stats and graphs on the web site are way more useful than the ones on the app.

My last minor annoyance is centered around the TTS audio coaching that is included.  This is a very cool feature, but there is almost no control over it.  For example, I would like to have the app notify me every time I’ve completed a quarter mile, and notify me of my time, but there’s no way to adjust this.

A perusal of the comments on the market indicate that some users have had issues with the GPS dropping signal, but I’ve not experienced that on any of the devices that I use.

Overall, I’m happy with Endomondo.  I’ve found it to be the best balance between polish, ease of use, and functionality that’s available on the Android Market to date.

Download Endomondo Free Download Endomondo Pro

And now for an entry from the WTF category — CrazyCat HD.  I thought this app was a joke when I stumbled across the description on the Android Market.  Seriously?  An app for cats?  It seems so.  In fact, this deranged developer wasn’t even the first one to think of the idea.  There have been several apps written for pets on the iPad, and there’s more than one written for the Android platform too, but this app seems the most polished by a long shot.

The idea here is that you set your $500 tablet down on the floor, start CrazyCat, and let your cat chase “critters” that run around on the screen.  I was skeptical, but believe it or not this actually worked with my neighbor’s cat.

I was a bit concerned about the cat scratching up the screen, but I didn’t notice any kind of marks after the fact.  I sent an email to the developers asking them if this was an issue.  Hey, who the hell else am I going to ask?  There don’t seem to be a large number of experts when it comes to cats using mobile devices.  Here’s the response from Keyes Labs:

I suppose that makes sense.  The thought of getting cat shit on my tablet freaks me out a bit, but I suppose its something that people with cats are used to.

The game comes with three different critters that your cat can play with — a mouse, a butterfly, and a lizard.  The animation is actually pretty good, and movement of the critters seems natural.  The sound effects are another story though.  I’m pretty sure the developer just made those up using his computer microphone.  Then again, what the hell does a butterfly sound like anyway?

Finally, I should mention the one thing that actually surprised me with this app.  It seems that you can control the critters using a second mobile device.  I can’t believe that the developer spent the time to create such an advanced feature on an app for cats, but I must say, it’s really pretty cool.  By moving your finger around on the screen of your phone, you can control the movement of the critters on the tablet.  Connection is done via Bluetooth, and there is a slick connection wizard that makes pairing the two devices surprisingly easy.  Cool.  I found a link to a video on the dev’s YouTube channel that demonstrates how this all works.

The app is free.  There is a pay version, but the dev has made the free version fully functional as long as you are willing to check out an advertisement every so often.  I actually like how they’ve done the advertisement support in the app.  It’s not ridiculously annoying, and feels like a fair trade-off for a fully functional free app.

Overall, if you have a cat and don’t mind risking stepping on your tablet, this app is worth a download.

Download CrazyCat HD Free   Download CrazyCat HD Paid

Generally I don’t write reviews when I’m drinking, but I had a good excuse for Swirl.  After all, if I’m going to try to figure out how good the ratings and recommendations provided by this app are, what better way than to sample a few dozen wines?  So screw you for judging me.  Salut.

Swirl is the best of a handful of wine apps available on the Android platform.  I’ve been following this app for a while, along with a few other drinking apps.  Trust me, they all have room to improve, but Swirl offers an advanced set of customization features that set it apart, and perhaps more importantly the app is very actively being developed.  Swirl comes in a functional free version, but I recommend Swirl Pro, as it gives you valuable sharing and cellar features that are not available in the free version.

Information abounds in Swirl, probably to a fault.  The detail screen for a wine, however, is well done.  I like the compact form that gives me easy access to a detailed description of the wine, along with reviews, pairings, and my own tags.  Nice.

Snooth provides the backend data feed, along with your own private entries which you can freely create (in the Pro version).  Snooth is community-driven, and consequently you may find some fairly unsophisticated reviewers mixed in with the more traditional high-brow drinkers.  I find this endearing — it’s a market-based approach to wine rating.

I’ve also really enjoyed the custom tagging features of Swirl.  I tend to categorize everything, and the ability to create my own tags is really useful.  So far, I have eleven wines in my tastes like ass tag group.

I find it incredibly annoying that Swirl doesn’t support bar-code scanning yet.  A quick perusal of the comments on the Android Market make it abundantly clear that other users want this too.  I asked the developer of Swirl about this, and he actually responded:

The varietal information in Swirl is disappointing.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s actually very complete, and comes with pairings as well.  It’s just ugly as hell.  No videos, no pictures.  No ability to lick your phone and taste the grape.  Lame.  There is a convenient link to search for wines of each variety, and also a pointer out to wikipedia for further info about the type of wine.  This whole aspect of the app could be taken so much further though.

The UI is very easy to use and functional, but could still use some significant polishing.   This aspect of the app has evolved significantly over the past year, however, and things are quickly getting better.

Overall, this is a really good app. If you like wine, or want to pretend like you know the difference between a Cabernet Franc and a Sangiovese, Swirl is the right place to start.

Download Swirl Free   Download Swirl Pro

Most apps suck.  Some suck a lot.  At AppRoasters, we’re all about pointing out what’s not good in mobile apps.  Sure , we’re glass-half-empty kind of people, but it’s OK because we’re funny too.

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