From the Editor's Desk: More quick hits

It's another working weekend. Yeah, that's two in a row. For now, some more random thoughts:

• Go download the Android Central Forums app right this second! Don't read the rest of this column until you do. (It's also available from the Amazon Appstore, too.)


• We don't do April Fools jokes. For one, they're 99 percent not funny. (For reals. Look at the sites that try to pull them off today and tell me I'm wrong.)  For another, you can't do them as good as Google. Go ahead. Fake some screen shot. Pretend that some phone has some long-hidden feature. Whatever. You can't beat 8-bit Google Maps. (Which, by the way, should totally exist outside of April 1.) You can't beat Gmail Tap for Android  -- which, by the way, may be the greatest troll since some site tried to tell you every single phone released that year would get Froyo. (Yes, our bullshit meter goes back that far.) You can't beat the other ones Google's done today. To quote my Austrian/Russian/Brazilian/American high school soccer/Spanish/English/life coach: "If you're going to do something ... Don't."


• Lulz at SwiftKey, though.


• So we got an unconfirmed tip (never mind how other blogs might have misreported it) about what we might see Wednesday at the Sprint/HTC event event in New York City. On one hand, the prospect of something based off the HTC One X -- with a bigger battery and a microSD card -- sounds pretty good. That said, I'm not sold on the AMOLED screen we were told about, but stranger things have happened. We've had other people tell us it's a departure from the HTC One X. On one hand, that's cool. A bigger batter and expandable storage never is a bad thing. On the other had, that would mean a divergence from the HTC One line as we saw it at Mobile World Congress. So much for continuity?


• The FUD got a little ridiculous this week. Yes, you can securely wipe your phone before giving it away.


• Yes, Jerry posted a slightly NSFW video from MiKandi about its new "Adult Mobile Theater." Some folks got their panties in a bunch, and that's OK. Different strokes, consenting adults and all that. I rather enjoy that we're willing to do stories that others won't touch. If it offends you, if you don't want to read it, it's cool. Don't read it. (That said, there are a lot of crappy adult apps out there, if you'll recall.)


• Know what offends me? When a developer's apps are rehosted and shared outside the Google Play Store without their permission. Why is that considered OK? 


• If you didn't listen to the podcast yet, you missed out on a bunch of talk about why your phone might get a different version of Android than a similar phone.

[Quick Look] Network Monitor Mini Is A Small, Unobtrusive App That Monitors Bandwidth In Real-Time

There are many reasons why you may need to keep an eye on what's going with your bandwidth at any given moment, especially while on a cell network. Perhaps you need to monitor a download that's going on in the background, or maybe you just need to make sure that no apps are hogging data without permission. Whatever the reason, if you've been searching for an easy to way to address this issue, we've found the solution: Network Monitor Mini.

Network Monitor Mini is one of the simplest, yet most useful apps we've ever used - it displays both upload and download speeds on the screen at all times. it sounds like it could be obtrusive, but it's so minimal, you barely notice it's there (unless you look directly at it, of course).

 

See it there? It's up in the top right corner - just a small, convenient little monitor. Of course, it doesn't have to be in the top right corner - you have the option of placing it in any of the four corners. It also has four color choices, including white, green, blue, and yellow; there is even an option to change the transparency of the background.

Like I said, it's just an extremely handy app to have installed. It's small, easy to use, provides a decent amount of customization, and, best of all, it's free. Hit the widget to grab it for yourself.

View the original article here