Free last.fm radio for everybody everywhere: CoboltFM fixed, KLastFM updated

Update 1: CoboltFM and KLastFM are dead. Last.fm changed things for the worse and pulled the plug on free streaming for almost everyone. Believe it or not, most of the planet can't stream anymore even if they pay. Last.fm refugees can still stream custom radio stations from Grooveshark with Dood's Music Streamer.

Update 2: Liquid Bear still plays last.fm radio on Android.

The music mafia industry is a strange beast. You'd say they'd be happy with last.fm as free advertising for their artists and music, but they want money in addition to publicity.

Problem: last.fm has to get the money from subscription fees or advertising, and they only manage to get enough income from advertising in Germany, the USA, and the UK. I don't know why they don't team up with Google's advertising program instead of reinventing the wheel, but the ugly result is that you can only listen to streaming last.fm radio if you're located in one of the three lucky countries. Even if you're a paying subscriber in one of the other 200 countries the official last.fm app won't play music on your Android phone. That sucks, because music and the internet shouldn't be locked up behind borders.

The good news: there are two Android apps that fix the problem. Both are based on the alternative last.fm client aLastFM.

Update: CoboltFM and KLastFM are dead. Last.fm changed things for the worse and pulled the plug on free streaming for almost everyone. Believe it or not, most of the planet can't stream anymore even if they pay. Last.fm refugees can still stream custom radio stations from Grooveshark with Dood's Music Streamer.

KLastFM

KLastFM plays last.fm radio everywhere on the planet, no matter if you are a paying last.fm subscriber or a freeloader. The interface is ugly, scrobbling is often erratic, and if you don't use an ad blocker the banner is very annoying, but it delivers your last.fm radio fix for free.

The latest update squashes some bugs and cleans up the user interface a bit. It's still not a beauty, but it works. And if you don't like it there's CoboltFM.

• KLastFM (Opera Software)


CoboltFM

CoboltFM plays last.fm radio for free anywhere on the planet. The app is open source, it doesn't have the freezes and missed scrobbles of KLastFM, it precaches tracks so you don't have to wait so long between songs, and there's a direct link to your last.fm profile page when you hit the menu button. It doesn't have any ads either.

Old versions would often fail to load your radio stations, but so far the latest edition of CoboltFM always connects on my phone. If CoboltFM works for you it's a better app than KLastFM.

• CoboltFM (Google Play Store)

Update 1: CoboltFM and KLastFM are dead. Last.fm changed things for the worse and pulled the plug on free streaming for almost everyone. Believe it or not, most of the planet can't stream anymore even if they pay. Last.fm refugees can still stream custom radio stations from Grooveshark with Dood's Music Streamer.

Update 2: Liquid Bear still plays last.fm radio on Android.

AirCalc floats a calculator on top of other apps

If you need to calculate something and use the result in another app, you can switch back and forth between your calculator and other apps by long-pressing the home button.

But AirCalc gives you another option.

AirCalc is a calculator that floats on top of other apps. Your office suite, your web browser, your email app, whatever you like. The basic functions (+, -, *, /) are on its main screen, and a handfull of other options (sin, cos, tan, log, pi, etc.) are a swipe away.

It doesn't have too many mathematical functions, and if you switch from portrait to landscape view you may lose the bottom half of the calculator, but it does the job for quick'n'dirty calculations when you don't want to switch between screens.

• AirCalc (Android Market)

Offline maps and some offline navigation: Locus, OsmAnd, and Route 66

Google Maps can store maps for many locations on your phone for offline viewing, but only in small blocks, which may not be enough for you. It doesn't have true offline navigation either, because you need to connect with Google to calculate your route.

Enter the alternatives: Locus, OsmAnd, and Route 66.


Locus

Locus can show maps from many different sources with the Map Tweak addon. Google Maps, Nokia Maps, Bing, Yahoo, Open Street Maps, MapQuest, and many more. It doesn't do true offline navigation, but it lets you calculate routes online and save them for offline use. Unfortunately that only works in the paid version.

What makes the free version of Locus unique is that it lets you download maps from all its online sources to your phone for offline browsing, with a limit of 10.000 map tiles per day. This is nowhere near enough to cover a city like Paris or London in sufficient detail, because you really need the maximum zoom level for all those tiny little streets and alleys. However, if you manage to grab an old copy (v1.9.4 or older), the limit is 25.000 tiles which covers cities like Amsterdam or Lisbon, and Paris within the Périphérique. If you want the suburbs as well you'll have to finish your download the next day, but that's still better than grabbing the bits and pieces over a week with the new 10.000 tile limit.

I run the latest version of Locus, but whenever I want to download a map I load up my old Locus v1.9.4 from my Titanium backup. When I'm done downloading I restore the new version. You don't need Titanium, you can use MyBackup too.

The free version of Locus has a very annoying ad banner on the map screen that's easily tapped by accident. When the ads can't be downloaded because there's no internet connection or if you run an ad blocker like AdAway they are replaced by an advertisement for the paid version of Locus, but not in all versions. Sometimes the screen stays fully free of advertising.

Locus has vector maps too, but they come from Open Street Maps and they're only useful with a paid addon. They render real slow too.

• Locus (Android Market)
• Locus Map Tweak addon (Android Market) to get more maps sources
• Locus v1.9.4 for the old 25.000 map tile downloads (let me know if you're interested and I'll share the APK)


OsmAnd

OsmAnd uses vector maps from Open Street Maps. Too bad if your region of interest is outside the USA or northern Europe, because in the rest of the world OSM is often full of blank spots outside the major cities. On the bright side, OsmAnd has true offline navigation. You'll need to pay if you want all the features of the latest version, but downloading maps for offline use and offline navigation works pretty well in the free older version of OsmAnd+ on the xda forums. Just don't expect navigation to work as well as in Google Maps, Navigon, etc.
Update: offline navigation works in the free version from the Android Market Google Play Store too.

• OsmAnd and OsmAnd+ for free


Route 66

It took Route 66 ages to build an Android version, but now that it hit the Android Market it's worth a try. The maps in Route 66 are usually way better than Open Street Maps, and its vector maps size is quite friendly to your SD card limits. You get a month of free offline navigation too, and it works very well. After the free trial runs out navigation becomes very expensive, but if you don't pay you get to keep the free offline maps to browse. My advice: install Route 66 before you go on vacation to get the maximum out of your free month.

• Route 66 (Android Market)

Comodo joins the Android antivirus club

Whether antivirus apps for Android phones are useful or not is still topic of debate. If you're of the "better safe than sorry" type, if you shop outside the Android Market, or if you want to use the extra features that most Android security suites throw in it makes sense to pick the right weapon.

Comodo makes the best free firewall and HIPS program for Windows, but not the best antivirus app. Comodo for Android lacks a firewall, doesn't do HIPS, and the rest of the app doesn't lead the pack either.

As far as virus detection goes, Lookout versus Comodo versus avast doesn't make any real world difference yet. In the current Android world, the extra features are what matters.

And that's where Comodo is no match for the competition.

The task manager in Comodo doesn't add anything to Androids built-in app control panel, and both are nowhere near as fast as the task manager in AirDroid. Not that I want to fire up the task killer debate, but sometimes it's nice to kill apps like Google Maps or WhatsApp without having to wait for Androids own slow native task manager.

Comodo doesn't have any "find my phone" or remote lock and wipe features. Avast wins, because they have a pretty good way to find, lock, and wipe missing phones and unlike Lookout avast gives it away for free.

So what's in Comodo that you might want to use? The task scheduler is very limited. It may be useful to auto-switch to flight mode at night, but there is no shortage of better task schedulers on the Android Market and many of them are free. Call blocking? Plenty of superiour options out there. Which leaves the "private space" of Comodo. This lets you password-protect contacts and messages. A useful feature, but there are plenty of other apps that do it better.

Comodo is a work in progress, but in its present state it's un unfinished product that doesn't compete with avast.

• Comodo (Android Market)
• avast!