These are the apps I use every day, and games I play to and from work (or when ever I get a little time to spare). Some cost money, others are free, but I feel that if you enjoy the trial, buy the game! The prices on the Android Market are so cheap, that it’s well worth investing some money to get the most out of your Android device.

Here goes!

Applications

Tweetdeck

I have been using this app ever since i got my HTC Desire, and thinks this is by far the best Twitter client on the market right now. I know that some might disagree with me, but for me this gives me any and all updates both from twitter and facebook directly to my notification bar. It displays all updates in a nice way, and allows for custom columns for specific people or companies you would want to follow updates on. Posting updates has all the features you would need, like posting pictures, videos and updating location. It also integrates support for shortening of links directly when pasting an url or sharing it from another app.

FeedR News Reader

I have an account on http://reader.google.com that I have been using for quite a while, and is basically a collection of rss feeds from around the web that i follow and keep updated on.After looking for a decent feed reader for quite a while, I finally came upon this app. You simply log in with your google account, and the app pulls the feeds you follow directly into the app. You can specify update interval, and notification type. You can also use googles own mobilizer function to see pages that would otherwise would be heavy to load on your phone browser.

K-9 Mail

The cleanest, fastest and feature rich mail client yet (and the name + icon is a reference to Dr.Who, which is a huge plus of course). This mail client even has the ability to give you “push” mail to your inbox. Don’t ask me how they do it, but with this app you will get any mail that arrives to your inbox more or less instantly, instead of having to wait for the next update interval. (And yes I did borrow this screenshot from another site, as I did not want all my e-mails on display for everyone to see).

AppBrain App Market

This is a good one. I always cycle through a ton of apps and try everything I can find. The problem is, there is so much to sip through, I find it hard to find the really good gems on the Android Market. That’s why I simply use an app, to find other apps! With this app I can sort out what’s hot today, this week or all time and find good apps that other people enjoy using. It will also recommend apps based on what you have installed, so finding apps that are to your liking is really easy.

PowerAMP Music Player

(Unlock key)

The default music player for android is quite nice, but it lacks a good equalizer. With PowerAMP you can specify a whole range of specialized sound calibrations, that will increase the quality of your music tenfold. The bass & treble pre-setting is my personal favorite and makes the hardstyle and dubstep i listen to sound the way they really should, deep and thundering.

Games

BattleHeart

Here’s the most cutest RPG game I’ve ever seen. The concept is simple. You control small characters that each play their role in each encounter. You have a tank, a healer and DPS of various sorts, and you simply pull these characters around to attack enemies. As the encounters gets significantly harder, you gear up by either buying gear from a merchant, or by killing enemies and gaining loot from the end of each encounter. It’s great fun and a solid time-sink.

Pocket Legends (3D MMO)

I was looking for an online game to play on my way home from work, and found this 3D online MMORPG. The graphics are great, and the characters are cute. You can play a warrior, enchantress or archer, and you run around, do quests, raid dungeons and kill bosses with other players from around the world. All while you sit on your buss on your way home. Amazingly enough, this works flawlessly on 3G, and the graphics are very smooth. Further more, they keep adding content to this game. The latest I’ve seen is crafting of your own gear, and PVP, which is all pretty amazing. As with all free online games for cellphones, you are able to pay real money for extra in-game currency etc, but it’s is not necessary in order to enjoy the gameplay.

Millionaire City

This is one of those games that practically plays itself. It’s like sim city without the constant interaction. You start off with a couple of buildings and some currency, and from here you start hiring out buildings to various classes of society, which in turns takes x amount of real-time minutes, hours or days to give money in return. You can also decorate to increase amount of money earned, and extend your city to become a huge metropolis. It’s a simple game I start when I feel like it and collect rent, build some buildings and close again.

Trial Xtreme

Here’s a game with great 3d graphics, enjoyable gameplay and a simple concept. Get from one side of the track to another, and along the way you have to get over various obstacles. The tracks of course increase exponentially in difficulty, which is just the way it’s supposed to be. I highly recommend this game as a game just to play for some minutes just to get a few tracks done.

MX Moto

This game is very similar to Trial Xtreme, but more like the old Elasto Mania. You have a 2D map with a motorcyclist and a track with various difficulties. You use the gyro on your phone to control your cyclist, and gas and brake with left and right side of the screen. What I enjoy most about this game is the fluid graphics and neat CG animations.

Honorable mentions

Order & Chaos

I wanted to add this game as well, It was released not too long ago, and is the next generation in online gaming. It’s basically an exact replica of World of Warcraft, except it’s for your cellphone. It’s got amazing graphics, character customization, quests and interaction between players. The only requirements is a Gameloft live account. They will give you 3 months free subscription before you will have to pay $0,99 each month, which is the only real downside about this game. It does make sense that they have to charge for it, but sadly I don’t it will be something I will subscribe to just yet. It might be ok to play on a tablet, but on a phone it will not be sufficient.

QuickPic

I really feel the gallery 3D app that is included in Android these days is really bad, and was looking for something a bit more minimalistic. Turns out this application was perfect. It’s simple, fast as hell and scans through my SD card like a bat out of hell. It’s well worth changing to if you feel the default gallery app is too chunky and bloated.

Installing homebrew channel

The first step will be to have access to the homebrew channel on your Wii. This can be accomplished by several ways. I used the Twilight hack described here http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Twilight_Hack however, this has been fixed in later updates of the Wii firmware. However the Indiana Pwns hack explained here http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Indiana_Pwns currently works with the latest 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 system menus.

You can also use the BannerBomb hack which is explained in this article http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Bannerbomb

I am however not going to explain in detail the software hacking of the Wii, as this was something I did when I first got the Wii, by going out and buying The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, so I could load the hacked save game and start installing home brew. This is all explained in the links I posted and should be enough to get you started.

Installing the latest IOS package cIOSCORP

In order for the system to be able to load the latest games without having to update the system itself, we need the latest IOS packages. These packages can be installed in numerous amounts of ways, but I found it easiest to use a package installer called cIOSCORP. This installed all the latest IOS packages, patched with whatever it needed to have patched, and as many as needed to run any game available on the market. More info and download of the package can be found here http://cioscorp.com/

Simply explained is that you download the package, place it under apps/ on your SD card and start the install through the homebrew channel. Some basics about how you do this here http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/how-to-use/homebrew-channel

Making a WBFS USB stick with wbfsmanager

In order to play games from an USB stick, the file system on the USB stick have to be altered to use the WBFS system the Wii uses to read the game DVD’s etc. This can be accomplished by using a simple application called WBFS Manager, and can be downloaded here http://wbfsmanager.codeplex.com/ Simply follow this guide http://adewii.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/howto-wbfs-manager-for-windows-basics/ and you will have the USB stick converted to WBFS in no time. This guide also explains how to transfer the ISO files onto your USB stick.

Scrubbing Wii game isos and adding to usb stick

It is also possible to do a “scrub” of the ISO images for games you backup. This makes them smaller, which is what we want when we are storing games on an USB stick. You can download the Wii scrubber here http://wiiscrubber.com/ Once the game you have scrubbed is done, transfer it to the WBFS USB stick as shown in the link above.

Installing an USB loader

I’m currently on a slight experimental stage with this, but right now I’m using an USB loader called WiiFlow which is working quite well. Download it here http://wiiflow.wiitdb.com/ Simply place the package inside the apps/ folder on your SD card to run it from the homebrew channel. If everything is working as it should, you will be asked to insert the USB stick and the games placed on the stick will show up!

I know there is another launcher available, enabling you to launch games directly from the channel menu explained here http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/backup-launchers/usb/loadstructor which I’m going to try out, but I just managed to boot up Super Mario Galaxy, and my girlfriend has now claimed the Wii for the evening ;)

Disclaimer:

I take no responsibility for the use of pirated games with this walk through. This guide is strictly for information use only (and as my personal reference). I also take no responsibility for any damage to your Wii caused by this guide, neither do I take responsibility for any harm made to other hardware.

Also, there are probably several errors in this guide. If you wish to correct my post, please leave a comment and I will do the necessary updates.

This game is just amazing. It’s got mind-blowing graphics (especially for being on a phone), and it’s actually got a pretty decent storyline.

What’s really fun though is the way this game is controlled. You tilt your phone left, right, up and down to aim with the crosshair, right side is for shooting, left for dodging fireballs, plasma balls and whatnot, and you change weapon and reload with the top left and right controls.

Here are some screen-caps and a video showing how the game-play works.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t67QravCrbE[/youtube]

I can highly recommend you spend the few kroners it costs for this app and play it through. I’ve been playing for several hours in total, and from what I understand of the storyline, there’s still quite a bit to go.

Finally on Sunday I recieved a mail from Blizzard with a request for a password reset. It didn’t explain why I recieved a mail about this, but I thought not much of it and reset my password to a new one.
With this I managed to log into my account. Well, when I then logged in my first character, Cloudhoof, I was in for a suprise. He was located in Hellfire Peninsula (while as I left him in Shattrath), with his bags full of major healing and mana potions, 3000 gold and his bags full of various rare BoE lvl 70 items. You could say I was pretty damn shocked, and my first thought was of course that my account had been hacked over the weekend, and that Blizzard somehow had realized this and managed to get me my account back.

Well, by having all this stuff on my character, of course I couldn’t help but feeling that this was what the hackers had to pay for hacking my account, so I claimed the items and gold as my own.
After clearing out bags, picking up all the stuff the hacker had sold of my character, that Blizzard had sent me, sending some stuff to various alts and putting some of the rare items up for auction, I logged off.

Then the next day, on Monday, I recieved the following mail:

To: Me
From: WoWAccountReviewEU@blizzard.com
Subject: Permanent Account Suspension

Greetings,

We are writing to inform you that we have, unfortunately, had to cancel your World of Warcraft account:

Account Name: EQU
Type of Violation: Involvement in online trading activities
Investigation Concluded: 25/08/2008
Consequences for Account: Account Cancellation

It is with regret that we take this type of action, however, it is in the best interest of the World of Warcraft community as a whole, and for the integrity of the game, that your access to the World of Warcraft servers be cancelled.

Online trading refers to the exchange of in-game content for real world money, and includes, but is not limited to, the sale or purchase of gold, the sale or purchase of experience in the form of powerlevelling, and the sale or purchase of honor points, reputation or items.

Account access is the responsibility of the account owner and account sharing is against our Terms of Use (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/termsofuse.html). Therefore, should you believe someone other than yourself (the account owner) has committed this violation of the Terms of Use with your account, these sanctions would still apply, as our action is taken against the account, not the individual.

If you wish to review our current Rules and Polices, they can be found at:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/

Regards,

Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe

Man was I put out by that one…. Turns out they accused me of participating in gold trading activities, because I had the items and gold left from the hacker on my account! I was not sure what to do, as I really felt this was not my fault, but they clearly state that even thought there is someone else that has used your account, we can still hold you accountable for what happens with it.
Basically, a hacker can access your account by getting your password, do some goldfarming, you can get the account back and get screwed over by Blizzard for what the hacker did to your account.

I sent a long and detailed mail to the Blizzard accounting departement explaining everything, but has yet to recieve an answer. And seeing as they use about 3 days to give a reply, I’m not really expecting it any time soon.

So either this is a sign that I should not have started playing in the first place, or I’m just really unlucky.

I will probably try to get my account back, but seeing as it is a permanent suspension, I kind of doubt I’ll have much luck, unless I call them and explain everything.