1. Added card search (redirects to gatherer.wizards.com).
2. App now installs on SD card by default.
3. Screen should now stay on indefinitely when app is running.
4. Reduced apk footprint dramatically by removing unused images.

The update is available through the android market, which can be accessed using the QR code below:

Life Dial is a simple companion app for Magic: The Gathering players that tracks your remaining life as well as poison counters. It uses a dial control as the input for changing the life and poison totals, which I believe to be more usable than a slider, +/- buttons, or swipes/flings. All changes are made in a single gesture whether large or small. Big changes can be quickly approximated with fast rotations, but fine adjustments can still be made by simply slowing down.

The UI is as simple as I could make it. Life and Poison totals are displayed at the top left and top right respectively, and an extra gesture total appears to help you keep track of the current change you’re making. The menu button reveals a reset function that sets the totals back to the standard 20/0. I’m very happy with it as it stands, but I have plans to add a few extra features to track stats in special game-types such as Commander.

Life Dial on the Android Market

(This post is also available on The Flying Developer)

Run On reads out incoming text messages using the available text to speech engine. It’s designed as a simple, lightweight app instead of an all-in-one messaging center, working alongside your text messaging application of choice. The notification sounds Run On replaces are muted by default; instead, the sender and message itself are optionally announced, including the contact name instead of phone number.

If you’re busy running, driving or cycling and listening to music on your Android device, Run On can pause the music while it reads out messages. Messages can be specified to only be read out while headphones or Bluetooth A2DP headsets are connected, rather than all the time. To disable Run On entirely, a large toggle switch can be used on the main screen of the app.

The second release from the Inflatable Apps collective, Run On is available for free in the Android Market. Click or scan the QR code below for the market page. If you have comments or questions, I welcome the input in the comments here, on the market, or by email at runon@carsonbrown.ca. Enjoy!

Called Omnivore, it’s a simple app that revolves around maintaining a list of food items and notifying you when they go bad. As you can see from the screenshot to the left, the main view is simple: Food sorted by expiry date and colour-coded to draw attention to the most important items. All the data is immediately synced to Google Calendar so that it can be viewed from your desktop, laptop or any other internet-enabled device. Just like any other calendar, you can share it with your family, housemates or anyone else who has a stake in the contents of your fridge. Sharing set-up has to be done through the Google Calendar web interface for now, but I’m planning on integrating it into Omnivore in future.

Omnivore marks the first ‘proper’ app release from Inflatable apps, in that it is available right now from the Android Market. The link and QR code are posted below. Please take a look and let me know what you think, either in the comments for this post or on the Market page. Thanks!

Omnivore on the Android Market

The first of these is TumTum, which is already available on the site in a very early alpha state. Whilst the core functionality (posting text and pictures to Tumblr) is there, it lacks a lot of the ‘polish’ that you’d expect from an app on the market. Things like notifications, proper background services, custom icons and graceful error handling. All of these things (and probably more) will be implemented soon (ish) and hopefully I’ll be able to release TumTum on the Android Market by the end of the year.

That’s all from me for now. If you’re interested in TumTum please subscribe to the RSS feed as this will be the place that I’ll be announcing new releases.

TumTum is a simple, free Tumblr client for the Android platform. Want to know more about it? Check out the App page

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