Review: DigiCal

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What is it?
DigiCal is a calendar application by Digibites that adds functionality and multiple viewing options wrapped in a Holo interface.

What does it do?
DigiCal looks to be your go to calendar app. It features a great interface, and multiple viewing options including: Day, Week, Week Agenda, Month, Text Month, and Agenda views.

As you can see DigiCal differentiates itself by how it presents your calendar entries. I especially love the month and Week Agenda views which are pictured in the screenshots above. The app also works great in both portrait and landscape modes, and scales up beautifully on tablets.

The “light” version of DigiCal is ful featured, but if you purchase DigiCal+ you’ll receive an ad-free experience and unlock additional widget and configuration options.

The developer also calls out some of the specific highlighted features as well via the Play store description

✓ Six unique calendar views (day, week, agenda, month, text month and list) including landscape mode
✓ Available in stylish Holo Dark and Light theme
✓ Four beautiful and fully customizable widgets (list, grid, day, day list).
✓ Stylish and intuitive user interface consistent with the Android Holo theme
✓ Fully compatible with any device running Android 2.2 or higher
✓ Smart action bar for quick editing, moving, copying, pasting and deleting events
✓ Built-in location search to quickly add locations to your events
✓ Support for Google Now (Android 4.1+), enabling it to notify you when it’s time to leave for your appointment by planning your route, checking traffic and calculating your travel time
✓ Event pop-up makes it easy to go through your individual events
✓ Gestures like pinch to zoom and swipe to navigate are supported
✓ Improved notifications with shortcuts for snooze, map and navigation

Design Highlights:
- Clean and functional design that utilizesView Control to switch between calendar views.
- Use of the Action bar that properly follows the Android Design Guidelines.
- Holo icons throughout the application - Holo Light theme
- Holo Dark theme
- Left and right swipe to navigate months
- Proper use of the Contextual Action Bars (when selecting calendar events)
- Expanded Notifications for event notifications

Design Requests
- Removal of the right caret and instead replace with single tap to open and tap and hold to bring up the contextual action bar.

Feature Requests:
- Removal of the excess widgets that are able to be resized. Instead I’d prefer to see one resizable widget listed.

Final Thoughts:
DigiCal took me by surprise in that it was one of the few apps I have used that truly replaced a Google created application on my device. It is beautiful, functional, and wrapped in an easy to read, clean design. DigiCal is a design tinkerer’s dream. You can customize it a hundred different ways, and even if the initial look doesn’t suit you, there are an endless number of options to satisy your design preference.

This app is highly recommended, and is already becoming one of my must-haves on every device.

Design
8
/10
 Function
10
/10
 Stability
10
/10
 Tablet Support
10
/10
Design
8
/10
Function
10
/10
Stability
10
/10
Tablet Support
10
/10

Holo Score: 9.5/10 “Highly Recommended”

Alt text DigiCal Calendar & Widgets // Free
Alt text DigiCal+ Calendar & Widgets // $4.95

By admin Mar 29 in Review | Tagged , Comments (2)

Review: AntennaPod

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What is it?
AntennaPod is an open-source podcast application by Daniel Oeh that is used for downloading, listening, and managing your podcasts.

What does it do?
As a podcast app, AntennaPod provides users with the ability to add, download, and listen to their podcasts. As an open source applicatio, the entire source is available on GitHub. AntennaPod allows you to import feeds from OPML files, by URL, or by browsing through the Miro podcast directory. I did find that the Miro directory to be missing some lesser known podcasts, but a majority of the major podcasts were listed.

The app has the basic features you would expect from a podcast app such as: the ability to stream or download podcasts, Shownotes (pictured above), and the ability to queue episodes for easy listening.

The developer also calls out some of the specific highlighted features as well via the Play store description

AntennaPod is still in beta and might lack some advanced features or have bugs. So far the following features are implemented: – Downloading and Streaming of episodes
– Support for Atom and RSS feeds
– OPML import and export
– Flattr integration
– Player homescreen widget
– Search
– Automatic feed updates
– Sleep timer
– MiroGuide integration
– Supports MP3 chapters, VorbisComment chapters and Simple Chapters

Design Highlights:
- Beautifully designed player, that is clean and functional (and utilizes Categories view
- Use of the Action bar that properly follows the Android Design Guidelines.
- Holo icons throughout the application - Holo Light theme
- Holo Dark theme

Design Requests
- Use of a Drawer/Slide-Out Menu to replace some options hidden in the overflow menu.
- Expanded Notifications when playing a podcast (allow stop/pause/play)
- Further optimized tablet UI (although it looks great on the Nexus 7)

Feature Requests:
- Ability to import feeds from Google Reader
- Add additional playback options to widget (currently can only Pause/Play)
- Ability to auto-download podcasts

Final Thoughts:
I love apps that are great at performing a single task, and especially one’s that perform the task as well as AntennaPod. The app is beautiful, functional, and simple to use. I have found many of the currently available podcasts apps to be lacking in some way (usually in design and ease of use), and that is where AntennaPod stands tall. The app closely follows the Android Design Guidelines, while still maintaining a clean UI and fucntional approach to its users. Oh, and did we mention it’s OPEN SOURCE and FREE meaning the development possibilities are endless…

While I would like to see some minor/additional features added, the overall experience with AntennaPod was top notch and therefore comes with an easy to give high recommendation.

Design
9
/10
 Function
9
/10
 Stability
9
/10
 Tablet Support
8
/10
Design
9
/10
Function
9
/10
Stability
9
/10
Tablet Support
8
/10

Holo Score: 8.75/10 “Highly Recommended”

Alt text AntennaPod // Free

By admin Feb 20 in Review | Comments (2)

Review: 7×7

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What is it? / What does it do?
7×7 is a game by Kiip, Inc. that features a simple, yet addictive goal, and continues to look beautiful while you play.

The object is straight-forward, but the game is incredibly addictive. The goal is to create lines of 4+ same colored blocks to keep the board clear for as long as you can. The more lines of 4+ blocks that you clear, the higher your score. You receive points for consecutive lines cleared (Combos), and can reach higher levels after you hit a set number of cleared lines.

Design Highlights:
- Use of the Action bar that properly follows the Android Design Guidelines.
- Holo icons throughout the application
- Clean Roboto font throughout the game
- Holo toned color for the blocks in the game
- Looks fantastic on 7″ and 10″ screens

Design Requests
- A dark theme for playing at night

Feature Requests:
- Ability to play multiple games at the same time
- Abilty to change difficulty levels
- Ability to share scores

Final Thoughts:
Games are something that we have never covered previously at Holo Everywhere, as most don’t follow the Android Design Guidelines closely enough to mention. 7×7 is obviously an exception as the developer incorporated a beautiful holo theme, that still made for a cleanly designed, addictive, and fun game (that also happens to be free).

Design
9
/10
 Function
7
/10
 Stability
9
/10
 Tablet Support
10
/10
Design
9
/10
Function
7
/10
Stability
9
/10
Tablet Support
10
/10

Holo Score: 8.75/10 “Highly Recommended”

Alt text 7×7 // Free

By admin Feb 10 in Review | Tagged Comments (3)

Review: Notif / Notif Pro

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What is it?
Notif Pro is an application by Eric Carboni that is used for creating notifications that can be used for Shopping Lists, mental notes, and picture/text reminders.

What does it do?
The main function of the application is to serve as a quick way to create persistent reminders (that sit in your notification pane) that can be swiped away or remain ongoing. You have the ability to choose particular icons for reminders, and create notifications that have text, pictures, or lists.

If you are anything like me, then you frequently ignore your to-do list, and only pay attention to the notifications sitting at the top of your screen. Maybe it is my annoyance with icons cluttering my notification bar, but I’ve found Notif to consistently work as a great immediate reminder. Also, if you’re on Jelly Bean, then you have the ability to quickly swipe down your notification bar and see the reminder without leaving your lock screen (I find this particularly handy).

With the Pro version of Notif, you also get the optional dark theme, picture notifications, and the ability to edit the current notifications.

The developer also calls out some of the specific Pro highlighted features as well via the Play store description

Notif Pro features:
– Notification editing
– All 200 custom icons!
– Create notifications from other apps through the share intent
– QuickNotif – create and clear notifications anywhere on your phone from your notification drawer
– Lots more to come

Design Highlights:
- Use of the Action bar that properly follows the Android Design Guidelines.
- Holo icons throughout the application, (the additional “Pro” notification icons are very well designed and very clean, while they all retain the “Holo” look)
- Holo Light theme
- Holo Dark theme
- Beautiful use of extended layout notfications (introduced in Jelly Bean)

Feature Requests:
- Ability to check items in a list so that they are cleared from the list (without having to manually delete)

Final Thoughts:
Notif is an app that is simple to use for the creation of beautiful, expandable, and customizable notifications. The best part of Notif, is that once you start using it for persistent reminders, you’ll wonder how you ever went without it.

The app features a beautiful look that follows the Android Design Guidelines, and is functionally straightforward to use. Notif has already become a part of my workflow at home and at the office and I highly recommend you check it out. The free version is fully functional, but the optional Pro features (noted above) are certainly worth a look.

Design
9
/10
 Function
10
/10
 Stability
8
/10
 Tablet Support
8
/10
Design
9
/10
Function
10
/10
Stability
8
/10
Tablet Support
8
/10

Holo Score: 8.75/10 “Highly Recommended”

Alt text Notif // Free
Alt text Notif Pro // $0.99

By admin Jan 17 in Review | Comments (8)

A Look to the Future

Where we have been:

Holo Everywhere has been somewhat deserted in the past couple of months. This is in part due to holidays and my job (which I love), but NEVER lack of interest. For those that do not know, this is currently a single author run site, and lately life has taken over my free time.

That being said, the world of Android Design and the Holo Everywhere approach is continuing to evolve. For example, go ahead and look around Google Play. Not only have developers begun to heed the advice and guidelines for Android Design, but many have begun to expand or further push the definition. As more and more applications switch to Holo or Holo-inspired designs, it has become harder and harder to keep up the site to reflect all the changes (and to pick and choose apps to feature). I’m not trying to say that this isn’t a wonderful problem to have, but it does make things a bit more complicated.

Where we are:

Right now my first and foremost concern is getting content back up onto the site. I have a several apps that I’d like to review, as well as continuing with Round-up type posts. I still want to run the post on Holo-themed Twitter applications (I swear it’s not vaporware!) and at this point we are nearing a dozen that are available and the number continues to fluctuate.

Where we are going:

In the future you should expect more editorials, more round-ups (Specifically the Holo IV series), and less in-depth application reviews. The application reviews that will be posted will be for applications that I feel are less well known or major overhauls of popular applications.

Tl;dr : More content is coming. Expect more editorials and round-ups.

By admin Jan 14 in News | Comments (6)