An App Idea, an App Endorsement, and an Unrelated Music Endorsement

I'm sitting in Starbucks, whiling away some time, as is my Tuesday ritual, and want to listen to some music, probably via Spotify or Google music, and I had an idea.

The Awesome App of AirDroid

I've linked up my phone to my laptop via AirDroid, an app I cannot recommend strongly enough for those who like to links their various devices, transfer files between them, etc. It's not a new app by any means, so a ton of people probably already have it, but I've only recently come to appreciate several of its uses.

I'd originally found it while searching for an Android equivalent to AirDrop (like I expect many people did, and was its original purpose, given the name). I have a lot of drive time so like to transfer audiobooks and other large files. AirDroid does this splendidly, allowing one to connect computer & phone on the same WiFi network, but pointing a browser to a specific IP & port, or (even easier) just be snapping a photo of a QR code with the phone.

What I've come to appreciate all the more its functionality allowing control of the phone from the laptop: texting with a full keyboard, file management on the phone, and about most everything else. It's come in extremely handy.

While I'm broke and unemployed now, I've added AirDroid to the list of apps I'm happy to purchase or donate to once I have an income.

An Awesome-r App (Idea)

I've got plenty of data on my cell plan, and hate to suck bandwidth away from the other WiFi users (I'm not one to play along with the tragedy of the commons!), but I need the phone on WiFi to use AirDroid. So I thought it would be pretty damn useful to have an app that could specify which network connection to use for certain apps. I want to be able to tell Spotify to use the 4G connection, while letting AirDroid use WiFi. I'm not sure to what extent that's possible though, should the OS itself not distinguish the separate network connections well, but I seriously doubt that would be a problem, since Android is Linux-based. 

Perhaps something like that already exists, in which case I've got to get searching. If not, someone should make it! This blog gets a pageview or two most days, so perhaps if I laden it with keywords like "app idea" and "android app developer", I'll get the right person to find it. ;-) 

An Incredible Cello Artist

Finally, I decided to play Zoë Keating (Wikip), a cellist with a twist. I first heard of her on an old Radiolab episode, which discusses her unique method of making music, recording herself, looped digitally, and creating incredible songs as a result, consisting solely of her & her cello. Having enjoyed her music from time to time for years, I now recognize the snippets of her songs that NPR tends to play between stories. A good choice!