Okawix

I upgraded my SD card and tried to get Okawix working so I can compare it to wikidroyd. I wasn't able to get anywhere. One of the problems is that it doesn't deal well with complete wikipedia. One feature is that it use images which is great, but apparently for wikipedia that's over 32gb so it won't fit on a phone. The main problem is that you can't clearly download the database files with another computer and put them to the phone (unless they are under 4gb).

Also, it claims to be open source but the sourceforge site is empty.

Japanese without a data plan

I was just on vacation in Japan and I found the JED app to be pretty solid for helping communicate. It has a dictionary of over 300,000 terms and it's pretty easy to search, most of the time I beat my girlfriend who was armed with a phrasebook.

Ted talks without a data plan

I recommend TED air for ted talks because it can download the talks to the SD card for later viewing. I was waiting for a TED app with this feature and I'm glad its here.

Tide charts without a data plan

Just like sunset and moonrise it's easy to predict the tides. All you need is location it seems. There is xtide that seems to that and a few websites and apps use it.

For android the best I found seems to be Tide Prediction. The only problem I have with it is that it uses over 7mb of internal memory space. It moves some data to the SD card but not the majority unfortunately. But yea, it's still pretty good, shows current time correctly and can find location based on GPS.

Android without a data plan

I have a nexus one that I bought straight from google. I didn't bother getting a data plan. I have wi-fi at home and at work, plus my girlfriend has a data plan on her phone. So I don't really need it much.

I consider it to be a full computer so I use it a lot without data to do many things. What follows is a list of free apps I find useful without a data connection. If you have a data plan you may still find these handy while travelling or if you just want data faster.

For maps I used to use OruxMaps a lot. You use Mobile atlas creator to download a map from the internet and then put it on the phone. I still use it for hiking and camping for tracking routes and satellite maps. It basically turns your phone into those car GPS units that have the maps internally. It's a bit annoying to download the maps but it's reasonably fast. Now that the newest google maps caches the map tiles it's not so important.

iTravelFree is anther great data free app that just recently added maps. It's main purpose is for storing and browsing wikitravel documents. It's a great idea and I'm glad Jon Evans made it. You just search for a city and it goes and downloads it to your phone.

A similar app is WikiDroyd, it's pretty cool - imagine having all of wikipedia on your phone! Well, not all of it will fit unless you remove images and sound and such, but the text is enough. I have a 8gb so I couldn't really fit in the whole english wikipedia so I just have the 10% most popular articles (~350,000). Just like the other apps above you just load in the data on a computer or via wifi on your device.

One neat app I like is the j2me compass app by Dana Peters. I'm guessing your android device has a compass already but if it doesn't it can provide that. It's pretty neat, it just uses your location and time to know where the sun/moon is. From there it knows North. To get it working you have to use the netmite and shut off screen animations in the netmite settings.

Google reader and the android news reader are ok for news but not great. I haven't looked around for better apps that can cache news. The android one has a habit of trying to connect to the internet and wiping out the news cache it had previously.

Google listen is pretty good for downloading podcasts while you have wifi and listening to them later.

I'm also tempted to write an app that loads in transit data. Here in Vancouver I can download 4 months of bus schedules. In that 50mb file it has all you need to know when the next bus is or nearest stop.

Update:
Seems Orux maps has a restricted set of map sources now. Legal trouble..
Also another wiki app is available - okawix, I haven't tried it out yet though.

How to bookmark a google maps transit route

So a common task I have is getting the bus times from one place to another. Local bus websites are usually not so good compared to google maps. It has autocomplete and such helps with that but still it's annoying to pick the start, end, time and transit choice on google maps.

The first thought that comes to mind is to bookmark it. Problem is, it's not so easy. If you just bookmark what you put into google then you would have www.maps.google.com. Following that bookmark would give you blank options.

I managed to work out how to do this the other day so I figured I would share it online.

It's pretty easy -

1. Set all your options, destination point, start point and transit as mode.
2. Set time box to "Leave now"
3. Click on the little "link" link at the top right, it's beside "send" and "print"
4. Copy the URL in the first textbox that appears
5. Paste that URL into your address bar
6. Check the result and if it's good add a bookmark, if not adjust the options and goto step 3
   
7. bookmark or favorite it like any other link

I hope this helps, I wasn't sure if this was worth putting online but I guess I can track how many people get here.

TIP: set the first bus/transit stop as your first location if it's bad at calculating your walking time. (I use something like UBC Bus loop 6)