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Android apps

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I really do try to keep things simple. On my Android phone, I don't use all that much. Browser, email, Gtasks (to put tasks on my Google calendar), and Evernote for miscellany, some ebook reading software. But today I found two apps that are really kind of amazing.

The first is called Pocket. It's like Instapaper -- a utility to grab a website and send it to a location where you can read it later. But it's all cleaned up - stripped of ads and multiple columns. You just scroll through it in a preset type size. Brilliant and simple. You can also download the app to your browser on a desktop. Available in Android and iOS.

The second is called Swype. It was already right there on my phone, a separate "input method" that allows me to very quickly enter text just by swiping a single finger across the keyboard. It seemed a little weird, but I found after just a few moments practice that I could input both more quickly and more accurately this way than by using both thumbs. Then, after watching some of the videos on the site, I learned how to get to a long document editing mode that lets me page up and down, delete forward, delete backward by word, and more. Just astonishingly useful. This one isn't available for iOS (or Windows Phone).

Who comes up with this stuff? But thank you!

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