Google+: The Missing Manual just entered the review phase, after months of effort by yours truly and O’Reilly’s very capable team. So now is a good time to peek above ground and look around. Scoping out the Android landscape, there’s a lot to see. Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.0, is on its way, promising a unified, simplified foundation for smartphones and tablets. As soon as I can get my head around it, an update to the Complete Android Guide should follow.

As a kind of warm-up, and as a way to clear the air, I thought I’d note the apps, features, and little tricks I’ve found to be essential to enjoying an Android phone since I first picked up a G1 in June 2009. More than just my latest obsessions, these Android bits have stuck with me a long time, or significantly changed my experience. First up, the apps, with other tricks to follow.

I’ve left out all the things that are more of a matter of taste–app launchers, to-do managers, Twitter clients, and so on. What’s left are the apps I think just about anyone using Android would find useful. Enjoy.

Apps

• Alarm Clock Xtreme: It’s a tough one for a self-aware Android fan to start out with, because the design is so full of buttons and settings and less-than-elegant transitions, but it’s a very good alarm app. I particularly dig having to do math problems to “earn” a snooze or dismissal.

• Amazon Kindle: Not enough people know that you can read anything you buy for a Kindle on an Android, and that the experience is pretty darned good.

• ClipStore: Ever had to juggle more than one copy/paste operation, or needed to call up something you copied a while back? ClipStore watches your Android clipboard, copies text from it every so many seconds, and makes it easy to call it back up. Really handy when you’re trying to pull off a good bit of writing or quick editing.

• Dropbox: On a standard desktop or laptop computer, you drop a file into your Dropbox folder, and it’s saved on the web, and then updated on all your other computers, too. On an Android (or iPhone), Dropbox is a great way to get at those files without having to connect with a cable, and also a simple way to share anything.

• Goggles: The stated purpose (take a picture and search for anything) is nifty, if truly hit-or-miss. I use it for the deeper features: barcode/QR code scanning, and scanning business cards for easy contact adding.

• Google+: I’m obviously partial. But even if you never used the social network itself, the Instant Upload feature is amazing, automatically uploading your smartphone photos to Google’s servers for easy sharing.

• PdaNet 3.02: If you want to use your phone’s internet connection as a regular connection for your laptop, buy a tethering plan from your cellular provider. If you need just a quick connection now and then, as a backup, grab PdaNet. The free version limits the sites you can connect to, so pay for PdaNet if you find yourself really leaning on it.

• RockPlayerLite: It’s the Android equivalent of VLC Player: an app that plays nearly any kind of media file you throw at it. Handy for plane or train rides where you don’t have time to convert a video for viewing.

• Shopper: Scan anything with a barcode, or snap a picture of any book, DVD, or video game cover, and Shopper will tell you how much it costs at a whole bunch of online and brick-and-mortar stores. Even better, you’ll see what stores nearby are selling it for, and sometimes exactly how many they have of that item in stock.

• Square: You go out to restaurants, bars, and other places you need cash, right? With this app (and the free card-reading device and bank account setup), you can take credit card payments, and so make settling bills and I.O.U.s really easy.

• Torch: If your phone has a decent LED-based camera flash on it, find a “flashlight” app for it by searching out your phone model and “flashlight” in the Market. It’s like the camera function itself–not as good as an actual flashlight, but good enough, and you always have it with you.

• Unlock with WiFi: You really, really need to enable some kind of lock-screen security on your Android phone. Left open to the wrong people, it has your entire Gmail life, and maybe even sensitive data right on the device. But unlocking your phone when you’re at home, or at the office, shouldn’t be a pain. This app disabled security locks when you’re connected to Wi-Fi networks you add to a list.

• Voice Actions Plus: This is pre-installed on some newer Android phones, but if you don’t see it in your main app list, you don’t have it. Hold down your Search button anywhere, and you can pull off a few neat tricks: text or email people with your voice, listen to music, get a map or directions, or write a “note to self” (email yourself). Nowhere close to the iPhone’s Siri in terms of recognition or versatility, but nicer than having to type everything.

Over a long weekend in September 2007, and right before I sent an overly earnest pitch letter to the editors at Lifehacker, I created this web site so that I might appear impressive, experienced, and engaged in the wider world of tech.

Once I’d made the jump to being actually engaged as a full-time, at-home, independent editor and freelancer, I made updates to the site so as to appear busy and important. Once I was busy, and at least self-important, I wanted to appear responsive, involved, and all kinds of quirky.

These days, I have no time to appear anything at all. Or appear most anywhere, unless it’s tangentially work-related or deductible from taxes. Free food, sure, but otherwise, no dice.

This is, as The Wire‘s Marlo Stanfield put it, “One of those good problems.” Still, I occasionally get time to look back over my shoulder and notice how much space I’ve put between myself and this site, and its original aims at being about me, my interests, the people who share my interests and earn my respect, and the place where I live.

Oh, well. This update mostly keeps the pace down that same, singular street, but let’s hope it’s the last block before I turn the corner again. Having pounded that extended metaphor into the pavement (meta!), let’s get to the new stuff about me, me, me:

Writing a book: The Complete Guide to Android. There is nothing to show at this point, and nothing’s ever certain. But I’m sure trying to get something done, in the vein of Gina Trapani’s Complete Guide to Google Wave, with the topic being the rising Android smartphone OS from Google.

This Week in Google: We all listen when Gina suggests something, and she was kind enough to suggest to the host of This Week in Google that I appear to talk about a Top 10 Android Apps post, and other topics related to Android. So I plugged in my webcam, sat my headset on my ears, and had more fun than I’ve ever had with a camera on me.

You can grab audio and (soon) video from that episode, “Perky Jerky,” at the site. If you dug the topics and talk, subscribe to This Week in Google from iTunes, or head to the show site for other feed options. I get through it every week, often while cooking or watching dishes. It’s like having some really nerdy, wonderful friends let you join them at their tech table.

Nickel City Chef:

As you might imagine, it’s a Buffalo-focused take on the Iron Chef (America) phenomenon, with two chefs–one a “Nickel City Chef” from Buffalo, the other a challenger–competing, on deadline, to imaginatively incorporate a secret ingredient into several dishes.

I was asked to represent Buffalo Spree magazine as a judge at the first regular season throw-down, and I gladly accepted, since tickets last year sold out before I could think twice about it. Adam Goetz from SAMPLE took on challenger Ross Warhol, executive chef at the Chautauqua Institution’s Athenaeum Hotel, with the secret ingredient being whole milk ricotta cheese from Sorrento, itself headquartered in Buffalo.

Via Nickel City Chef [Facebook].

The highlights:

• Learning that local NPR morning host Bert Gambini doesn’t look anything like he sounds. I’ve had similar “radio voice/image dissonance” revelations about folks like Brian Ibbott, but, seriously–Bert Gambini sounds like your toy-train-collecting uncle after enunciation lessons, but looks like he could lift your car if you dropped your wallet under it.
• Eating ricotta as a powder steeped in Earl Grey. Probably won’t ever get to do it again.
• Learning how to think fast, faster, fastest about what I’m eating, as the microphone lands in my face. Mention was made of “a chocolate bar left just a minute too long in the back of a station wagon,” though.
• Eating all that food, meeting the chefs, chatting with friends after, learning how hard it is to talk about food.

Artvoice’s 5 Questions With … Were asked of me. My dad later informed me that the “little brown device” he carried around was actually a signal emitter that let him use his own long distance service over AT&T lines. Which is kind of neat, to learn your dad dabbled in phone phreaking while you were wolfing down Honey Nut Cheerios.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Interviewed me for a feature, “‘Life hack’ aims to boost productivity in workplace.” Steve Twedt was great to talk to, and genuinely interested in learning about the roots, range, and regular uses of all kinds of things Lifehacker-ish.

CBS3 Philadelphia: Did a video Skype interview for a feature on resolution-keeping apps.

Yeesh. I feel like I’m about to drown in the internet equivalent of a very still pond. With all that What I’ve Been Up To out of the way, though, I aim to write something else next time. Something with cheese, perhaps.

Personal blogging is hard when you’re updating another blog at least five times per day, and often more. As I put it to my editor recently, it feels like my Who Cares Filter is completely closed up by the time I find myself with time to write in this space. I don’t have to write about software, productivity, gadgets, or time management here, of course; it’s just a vague feeling that I’ve linked and updated everything I need to on the net each day.

But! Now it’s way too early on a Sunday, and I’ve got a few things that need sharin’.

• The headline: Yep. Less than six months after moving to Rochester, the wife and I are moving back to our home of more nine years. I defer my feelings on this to an upcoming Roc/Buff open comparison chart I’ll be posting (seriously) later this month.
• Food Week at Lifehacker: That was seriously fun. I earned some experience doing solo video shoots, interviewing Art Rogers of Lento restaurant about slicing and dicing onions and fileting a fish.
  
  What did I learn? Per @jordanconway, I might find a bolt that fits in the tripod mount of my Zi6 and attach it to a lanyard for steadier shots. When shots go wrong (“Macro Mode” my butt), I’ll politely ask my subject to back up and re-explain, and I’ll keep the camera on the subject (food!) more often.
• Rockin’ the G1: Finally joined the realm of folks who can complain about two different kinds of cellular reception. I dig the open nature, the browser is pretty snappy when the bandwidth’s there, and certain apps are total killers (Locale, for one). Many reviewers and iPhone purists have knocked on the hardware, but I see a clear trade-off for the “bulk” and “design choices.” Namely, having 3.2 megapixels in your pocket at all times, to shoot ridiculously clear photos and video:
  
  
• Firefox add-ons for journalists: Titled Journalist Picks for now, and it’s a work in progress. Got an extension that would help with research, note-taking, or tracking beat subjects online? Drop them in the comments or hit me up on email.