More good Android apps

It's been a few months since my previous post on good Android apps and since then I've discovered more great apps.

First, WhatsApp. WhatsApp is an instant messenger that feels just like sending free SMS messages. It's a cross-platform software, so you can communicate with your friends even if they are using iPhones or Windows Phones. You register to WhatsApp using your phone number, and the software finds everyone else who is using WhatsApp based on the numbers in your phone book. In addition to text messages you can also send images and videos. WhatsApp is free for the first year, then it's $0.99 per year.

Then, Pocket -- formerly known as Read It Later. The former title actually tells you what this app is about: it's about saving articles from the web to be read later. Sounds simple, and it is, but Pocket does it really well. Once you register to the service, you can start adding articles (or videos, or anything else) to your Pocket. There are bookmarklets you can install to your browser for saving any page with just one click. In Android, Pocket registers itself as something that shows up when you select "Share" from any application. Pocket strips ads, menus and side bars from the web pages and only shows you the article main content in a really clean way. Pocket even handles seamlessly those multi-page articles where you'd normally need to click "Next" every few paragraphs. You can also adjust the text size, screen brightness and such features easily when reading the text.

Finally, BaconReader for Reddit. Reddit is a "social news site" to where users submit links and the best links get voted up and show up at the main page. By default, the main page consists of links that mark the lowest common denominator between all Internet users, i.e. 75% of the links direct to funny images. But Reddit contains hundreds of sub categories, or subreddits, for every imaginable topic. Whether it's astrology, programming, bicycling or cooking, there's a subreddit for it. The TrueReddit subreddit contains long, serious articles, whereas the lolcats subreddit contains cute pictures of cats. With BaconReader you can choose which subreddits to follow and always get the newest links to your Android device easily.