Free website Widgets and Apps | Widgia

A look at Beautiful Widgets for Android

Beautiful Widgets is for anyone who wants to populate their Android mobile or tablet with a bunch of beautiful yet useful widgets. The set of widgets contain a weather widget which incorporates a nice forecast option, weather animation such as for storm or rain etc, and two skinned clocks. Beautiful widgets also sports a number of layouts and over 140 skins which means there is something for everyone.

Feature

While the main selling point of Beautiful Widgets is the fact that they are beautiful there are quite a few features built into this widget. However, one of the things you’ll notice first is the fact that the rather impressive looking UI actually looks quite similar to HTC Sense’s UI which is available on the HTC Hero model. The Widgets include a larger clock measuring around 4×2 and a smaller clock measuring 4×1. The weather widget here comes with the option to set your current location. All you’ve got to do is to tap directly on the weather icon which opens a rather cool looking tray animation of all present and predicted weather conditions. The weather display will give you a four day forecast, the lows and highs of the day in addition to the temperature. You get to chose between the 12 hour and the 24 hour time format and also set the temperature scale as Fahrenheit or Celsius. There are also other quick settings which you can toggle in between for Silent mode, GPS, Bluetooth, Airplane modes, Brightness and Vibrate.

The designers of the widget wanted to make sure that you were never bored with your Android device’s UI so they added hundreds of weather skins which can be downloaded directly and used. You can also chose from hundreds skins for the overall look of Beautiful Widgets which quickly and easily changes the look of your UI. You can choose from styles such as grunge, clean, Éclair etc.

The latest update to Beautiful Widgets also now supports live weather wallpapers. The wallpaper by default resembles the Grass live type wallpaper with its wavy animation of grass, with additional animation for cloudy, rainy, and sunny etc. This helps gauge what the weather will be like at a glance.

Conclusion

If you’re bored with your Android phone and are looking for something fresh then the Beautiful Widgets widget is a great choice. Costing just €1.49, this will really make your phone or hand held device stand out. This is also just a onetime cost so most people will find this pretty handy, plus given the fact that you get off to a great start with tons of customizable styles, colors and options you will not need to pay for any downloadable content any time soon making it a worthwhile investment.

AirDroid helps you control your Android Device from your computer’s web browser

To someone who first hears about AirDroid the concept of connecting and controlling their android device via a web browser can sound rather crazy. However, the fact is that this is a hugely popular widget for all Android devices since it helps you manage everything from your email to your SMS via a computer’s web browser. Most of all the widget is 100% free!

AirDroid is a very easy to use tool for any Android device. The whole setting up process is also easy and quick:

Step no. 1: You start with opening up AirDroid, it will prompt you with a password and IP address.

Step no. 2: You then visit the IP address from your computer’s web browser.

Step no. 3: Enter the password… and you’re in!

Once you have entered into the widget you get lots of control over your phone. You have 10 icons to begin with for Music, Ringtones, Messages, Market, Clipboard, Photos, Contacts, apps, Market and Files. Every one of these icons can be clicked on and will help you search for even edit your files via a small window containing a number of editing tools. On the right side you should find a tab which contains various information such as the file types, storage etc.

For instance the contacts icon when clicked on will open up a list of contacts and give you the ability to edit them from your computer. If you click on the ringtones icon you’ll be presented with a list of ringtones and you can select the ones you want. The music tab helps you browse through your phone’s music library, and even use the built in music player to check out your sound files.

The home screen of the widget looks very similar to your regular computer desktop. Right along the left you’ll find options to create a new SMS and create new contacts both of which can be done right from the app with an intuitive and fluid design. The widget will sit on your phone and allow for on the go file management a lot like similar file management widgets allowing you to move, edit, and view.

Overall Usefulness

This is a really useful app because some things are just much easier to do on your computer or laptop than to do on your device’s touch screen, this is especially the case with items relating to file management. For instance inputting a loan of brand new contacts can take a lot of your time not to mention being frustrating since you’ve got to type them out on a small touch screen. Using the app makes things much easier as everything will feel intuitive. The clipboard is another feature not mentioned above which lets you put more stuff on your device’s clipboard by just pasting them. For someone who needs to add a few contacts a week or update his music files every now and then AirDroid is a must have widget.

Integrating communications on your Android phone with the pure messenger widget.

One of the best features of the HTC Sense is its unquestionably easy to use and helpful custom skins something which you cannot find anywhere else. The stock Android looks nothing like what HTC has done for the sense and so if you have any other Android phone which does not integrate all your messages into one neat and tidy conversation then check out ‘Pure Messenger’

Thanks to Android’s ability to be customized beyond recognition the creative minds behind ‘Pure Messenger’ were able to come up with something which up until today only HTC Sense users could enjoy. However, Pure Messenger does not just take HTC Sense’s concept of messaging and bring it to non HTC Android phones but it has also improved considerably on the core idea of the widget.

Pure Messenger allows users to create a stream of message information collected into one compact package. This widget allows you to view your Facebook, email, Googlemail, Twitter messages and your SMS as one continual flow which saves you from having to open your phone’s own dedicated messaging application for each of the above services. This will save you a lot of time and effort especially if you have a busy social life with tons of friends sending you messages using different mediums.

Pure Messenger also allows you to turn off text chats if you’re not interested in them. In addition you can fiddle around with the widget to customize the way it works. For instance, you can configure it so that it only shows unread messages and you can even chose the max number of messages it can show and how far back it can go into its database.

Pure Messenger also offers a number of different layout options which means that you can have either one message displayed at a time or you can have a list trough which you can tap. If you currently have Launcher Pro as your home screen replacement app you can also add a scrolling widget which makes it easy to check your inbox. However, there are a few bugs associated with the scrolling widget as it can be a bit unpredictable at times, plus it’s very easy to swap home screens by mistake when you just want to move down or up your mail stream.

Another bug we discovered is when you’re trying to read your email i.e. it can take a few seconds for the widget to register, so it may be a good idea to turn off the message notification service built into Android and just use Pure Messenger to compose your reply, if you do not do this you will continue to see the unread mark / symbol.

We also figure that there is room for improvement in terms of speed, this is even if you’re using a broad band Wi-Fi connection since it takes a while to open up. Despite its somewhat cumbersome bugs this widget is a time saver and a must have for the busy social addict.