The fact that Google has launched a new service - Android Experiments. This is the site where the most creative applications for Android devices appear. At the time of this writing, 20 services have been published on it.
The CPU learned which apps were ranked first among the "most creative" apps by Google.
Android Experiments is a project similar to Chrome Experiments that was launched in 2009. On the site, users can demonstrate the applications they have created for devices based on Android. To get on Android Experiments, the service must satisfy several conditions: for example, its code must be placed in open access, work on gadgets with Android 4.4 and higher, and so on.
Once a developer submits an application, the Google Developers team checks it against the criteria and evaluates how creatively the service unlocks Android's capabilities.
At the time of this writing, 20 different projects have already been published on the site. The CPU has learned what these services are.
1 Grove
Grove is an application with which the user can create their own "forest". As the developers note, due to the complex elaboration of the algorithm, the forest always turns out to be different - even if it is created by the same person, trying to reproduce a certain sequence of actions.
"This is a creative experiment that will help you relax and explore procedurally generated landscapes - as well as try to create them yourself," the developers of the project explain.
2. Tilt
3. Tunnel Vision
An application that allows you to apply unusual effects to pictures or videos.
4. Time Mesh
Launcher for smart watches based on the platform Android Wear, which reacts to the movements of the watch owner's hand - and changes its appearance according to these movements.
5. Kintsukuroi
Kintsukuroi is a "calming" game in which the user has to collect 3D puzzles - "broken" objects. Among such objects are vases, sculptures and so on. The creator of the project admits that he tried to bring to the game everything that he himself likes in games: a calm pace, elements of creativity and exploration.
The name of the project symbolizes the ancient Japanese art of Kintsukuroi, a method of restoring pottery using enamel and resin mixed with gold, silver or platinum powder.
6 Ioio Rover
A robot controlled by two Android mobile devices.
7.Elements
An application that creates unusual images using automatic algorithms for generating drawings and camera shots mobile phone. The system "averages" the indicators from the camera, calculates the "average" color - and with it draws new lines on the created image.
8.Inkspace
Service for creating 3D drawings. Management is carried out using motion sensors smartphone and touchscreen. You can draw at different angles to make the image look "3D".
9. Selfie x Selfie
An application that uses the smartphone's motion sensors, the phone's camera, and graphics algorithms to create an "infinite reflection of the user's soul."
10. Boo!
Boo! - an application that uses facial recognition technology to front camera determine whether the owner of the smartphone is looking at its screen. When the virtual creatures discover they are being watched, they "scatter" - and disappear from the screen.
11. Landmarker
A navigation application that informs the user about what is directly in front of him at a certain distance. If the smartphone owner wants to visit a particular place, he can open Google Maps and find out how to get there.
12. Muzei
Muzei is an app from a Ukrainian developer based in the US that updates the background on your smartphone every day. As background images the service uses famous works of art - works by Van Gogh, Santoro, Shishkin and so on. If desired, the user can configure the application so that every day it picks up a new image from the smartphone gallery.
The app also has a version for Android Wear.
13. FORM Watch Face
Another application from a Ukrainian developer is a watch face for Android Wear devices, which uses the FORM font, presented at the Google design conference of the same name.
14. Space Sketcher
three dimensional graphics editor, with which the user can create images "in space". Unlike Inkspace, this application allows you to select a brush, its size, and set other drawing parameters. Management is also carried out using motion sensors built into the smartphone.
15. Coubertin Rings
Watch face for devices based on Android Wear, which reflects the number of steps the owner of the gadget passed per day. The more steps you take, the larger the rings on the watch screen become. Each type of ring symbolizes a certain number of steps - for example, 10 steps are indicated by a small orange ring, and 10 thousand steps by a large yellow one.
16 Gaze Effect
Watch face for Android Wear from the same developer. The application uses gaze recognition technology to find out when the wearer is looking at the watch, which is when the watch begins to "look" at the wearer. If the user does not pay attention to the gadget for a long time, virtual eyes begin to disappear from the screen.
Modern smartphones are able to perform much more tasks than it seems at first glance. Vivid confirmation of this is our selection of curious software solutions, allowing you to find the most unexpected application for mobile devices running Android
Each of us uses the capabilities of our smartphone in different ways: it depends on the type of activity, the range of tasks to be solved, interests and other factors. Some, in the old fashioned way, are content only with the telephone capabilities of the device, others combine voice communication with communication in in social networks, web surfing and games, others use gadgets with might and main for taking photos and videos, navigating, banking, reading books. There are also many who use a smartphone or tablet in business activities: to work with electronic correspondence and documents, operational communication with colleagues and partners, and business development. The scope of mobile technology is huge, but few are aware of the existence in the app store Google Play products that allow you to look at familiar devices from a completely different perspective and fully reveal their potential. Interested? Then we turn to an illustrated overview of the twenty most unusual applications for Android!
Our TOP 20 opens with a couple of applications that have the same name Smart Tools and are available for download at this and this links on Google Play. With their help, it will not be difficult to turn a smartphone into a “Swiss army knife” and use it as a sound level meter, range finder, vibration meter, metal detector, light meter, thermometer, radar for measuring the speed of moving objects, level, magnifying glass, metronome, tuning fork, cardiograph and a dozen other useful household tools. For the full operation of both programs, support is needed in mobile device a whole bunch of sensors: illumination, proximity, accelerometer / gyroscope, magnetometer ( digital compass), barometer and others. Of course, you should not count on the accuracy of measurements made by Smart Tools, but in some cases such a set of software assistants can do a good job. For example, it can be useful for searching on hastily flush wiring in wall or leveling washing machine along the horizontal plane.
Since we are talking about measuring tools, Planimeter can be a great addition to the applications mentioned above - a tool for determining distance, area, perimeter, angles on the ground with using Google Maps and built-in smartphone GPS/GLONASS receiver. Such a program can be used in various fields: field and agricultural work, planning, construction, travel and entertainment. It can also be useful for real estate agents. To calculate the perimeter or area of any object (for example, a land plot), it is enough to set the starting point on the map, enable route tracking, and then walk around the object. Planimeter will automatically perform all calculations and give you the measurement result. Similarly, you can measure the distance between two points on the map and the angles between lines.
More progressive in terms of measurements is the Radioactivity Counter program, which allows you to seriously use your smartphone as ... the simplest radiation dosimeter! To monitor the radiation situation, a photosensitive matrix of a mobile phone camera is used, the lens of which must first be covered with a dark film - for example, from a floppy disk or an x-ray. After that, you will need to calibrate the application according to the instructions on the developers' website, and you can start measuring the background radiation. The link also presents various research materials, results of experiments using professional equipment and demonstration videos confirming the practical value and performance of the Radioactivity Counter.
High school students and students of technical universities will definitely be pleased with the PhotoMath application for solving mathematical problems using a smartphone camera and optical recognition technology for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tests. The principle of working with the program is simple, like everything ingenious: just point the camera at a mathematical problem, and PhotoMath will immediately give an answer and provide detailed information. step by step solution. The capabilities of the application allow you to recognize not only printed, but also handwritten text, as well as make edits to scanned formulas and equations. In fairness, we note that such a mobile assistant can be useful not only to students, but also to parents - to check the correctness of children's homework.
The review would be incomplete without mentioning Im2Calories - pilot application Google, which allows you to determine the calorie content of food by photo. developers involved in the technology program artificial intelligence and machine learning allow it to determine the type of food, its ingredients and serving size with high accuracy, and then, based on the information received, infer the number of calories in the dish. At the same time, it is absolutely not necessary that the picture be of high resolution - even a photo from Instagram is enough. Unfortunately, not yet known, when exactly will the full release of Im2Calories take place. As soon as the application sees the light, we will definitely tell you more about it.
Another noteworthy creation of the Google team is the PhotoScan application for creating digital copies of memorable and dear paper photos. According to the creators of the program, it does not just take a picture of the image, but transfers it to digital media from high quality. Using artificial intelligence technologies, PhotoScan independently determines the boundaries, aligns the image, changes its orientation, and removes unnecessary glare. As a result of scanning, copies of the correct rectangular shape with corrected perspective are obtained, which can be saved in the smartphone’s memory or in the cloud. Google service photos.
Do not lag behind and domestic organizations, including state. One of them is federal Service for the regulation of the alcohol market (Rosalkogolregulirovanie), which created the anti-counterfeit Alco application, which is relevant for lovers of "take on the chest", which is designed to determine the authenticity of alcoholic products. Using the phone camera, the program reads the excise stamp (or the barcode on the check), checks with the Unified State Automated information system(EGAIS) and displays the results of the check on the screen. You can immediately report a violation found to Rosalkogolregulirovanie and notify the department about an illegal point of sale of alcohol. Also in the application there is a map of stores that have a license to sell alcohol. In the light of cases of mass poisoning of the population with methyl alcohol and counterfeit alcoholic products It is definitely not worth writing off AntiCounterfeit Alco.
For motorists, our selection includes three programs at once: Auto Acceleration, Car Alarm and MeteoMoyka. The first allows you to turn your smartphone into a device for measuring the acceleration time of a car up to 100 km/h, the second into a simple alarm to protect against theft, damage or evacuation of the car, the third into an assistant that suggests the most successful day for car washing and automatically builds a route to the nearest car washes. The fundamental difference between the Auto Acceleration application and its competitors is the use of information from two sensors: a GPS receiver and an accelerometer. They are also involved in Car Alarm, which controls the location of the vehicle and, in case of an alarm, notifies the owner by a call or SMS. A feature of MeteoMoyka is a system for analyzing meteorological data and evaluating the weather forecast for several days in advance. It is she who determines the most suitable time for washing vehicles.
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A good addition to the set of mentioned programs for motorists is the Nexar application - AI Dashcam, which turns a smartphone into an advanced DVR that can simultaneously record video from the front and rear cameras, analyze the traffic situation on the fly and inform the driver about emerging dangers.
Thanks to the ABBYY FineScanner app, an Android smartphone can act as a pocket scanner for documents and books. The product created by a Russian developer allows you to create PDF or JPG files from any printed documents (invoices, certificates, contracts, personal documents). The program has built-in OCR technology that recognizes texts in 193 languages and uploads results in 12 popular formats, including DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, while maintaining formatting. Ready documents can be transferred to any of the eight cloud storage, print, email, open in another PDF application. To scan book and magazine publications, ABBYY FineScanner provides the BookScan function, which automatically splits a photographed spread of a book into two pages, straightens line bends, removes defects, and makes a scanner copy that can be recognized and an edited file can be obtained.
IT system administrators should bookmark the aptly named Web Monitor for monitoring and diagnosing servers on TCP/IP networks. The program periodically, with a specified time interval, sends requests to the sites set in the settings, captures the responses received from them and generates detailed statistics operation of network nodes. When using such a mobile tool, it will not be difficult to find out if the server is functioning, whether it “hangs” and when it was unavailable, as well as analyze the quality and load of the communication channel. In fact, Web Monitor is an improved version of the Ping diagnostic utility included with all modern operating systems and designed to check connections in networks based on TCP / IP.
A more perfect and technologically advanced analogue of Web Monitor is Pulseway - a software package for comprehensive monitoring of workstations and servers running Windows platforms, macOS and Linux, as well as virtual environments Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware and XenServer, MS database management systems SQL Server, IIS, Exchange, Active Directory and other enterprise-level services. With it, you can remotely monitor the operation of devices and tasks performed, view screenshots, analyze equipment performance, receive information about the status of services and services, as well as errors and failures in the systems. Pulseway allows you to send commands to remote machines: reboot them, suspend processes, send messages to authorized users, and perform other operations with complete list which can be found on the pulseway.com product site. The collection of necessary information and management of computers is carried out through special software clients installed on workstations and servers.
Well, the WiFi Analyzer mobile tool closes our selection, allowing you to use your smartphone as a network scanner. The program scans the air for Wi-Fi signals, determines the signal strength of each of the detected networks, as well as their characteristics (SSID, channel, encryption method, MAC address of the router, etc.) and, based on the information collected, draws visual graphs that reflect a clear picture wireless networks. WiFi Analyzer supports working with different frequency bands and can be used to determine the optimal settings and location of Wi-Fi devices in order to improve the quality of signal reception and correctly build wireless networks. local networks In the organisation. The application can serve well when conducting a network security audit and troubleshooting network equipment.
⇣ Comments
The developers have created many interesting, useful and relaxing applications for mobile gadgets: from physical activity indicators to a mountain simulator. But sometimes in Play market there are programs that stand out against the backdrop of a variety of tools for Android.
An app for learning swear words in 68 languages. You enter the desired word, and the program gives a translation into the built-in languages. Audio files are loaded into the application, voicing all the words of the selected adverb. The accent and pronunciation follow the rules - the voice acting was recorded by native speakers.
- Size: 14 Mb
- Developer: DGM
- Download on Google Play: $0.39
WATERBALANCE
Application that helps to calculate the rate of water consumption per day. There are several on the Play Market similar applications, but they are more like alarm clocks / reminders and call for drinking on schedule. In Waterbalance, a person indicates the amount of alcohol consumed at any convenient time.
In addition to water, other types of liquids are also built into the application: tea, coffee, soda, alcohol, milk, etc. It is taken into account that some drinks remove water from the body.
- Size: 4.8 Mb
- Developer: Waterbalance
- System requirements: Android 2.2 or higher
- Download on Google Play: Free
An application for turning on unpleasant sounds: scratching glass and a blackboard, the screech of a poorly tuned violin, the squeak of a mosquito, etc. The developer recommends using the program to prank friends and advises you to check the volume before turning it on.
- Size: 4.7 Mb
- Developer: Valup Technology
- Download on Google Play: Free
GROVE
Landscape painting game. In the application, you can choose the time of day, grow trees, set the level of hilly terrain. No two landscapes will ever be the same in Grove, even if you use the same tools. The resulting landscape can be saved as an image and put on the desktop wallpaper.
The difference between the game and other relaxation apps: if you turn your smartphone, the landscape will move with it, as if a person is looking at a picture through a camera.
- Size: 1.4 Mb
- Developer: Simon Geilfus
- System requirements: Android 4.4 or higher
- Download on Google Play: Free
CAROLINA
Song navigator, used as a colorful addition to the player. The application draws a landscape and a route based on the music playing in the smartphone. For each element of the drawn landscape, the individual components of the song are responsible: vocals, basses, guitar, keyboards, etc.
- Size: 40 Mb
- Developer: jonobr1
- Download on Google Play: Free
The app adds sounds to phone conversation: the howl of wolves, the noise of cars and a moving elevator, the sound of hospital gurneys, etc. There are 45 sounds in the program in total, you choose any one you like - now the interlocutor hears extraneous noise, which can help you quickly end an unwanted conversation.
- Size: 12 Mb
- Developer: Excelltech
- System requirements: Android 1.0 or higher
- Download on Google Play: Free
POKERSTARS
An application through which you can play several types of poker. The player chooses the format of the competition, the size of bets (limit) and the table. There are always a lot of players on the site of the room, so the tables fill up quickly.
From other simulators card games The extension features access to real sports poker tournaments. Having won one of the prestigious competitions, the participant receives the title of Cyber Poker Champion.
- Size: 68 Mb
- Developer: PokerStars
- System requirements: Android 4.0 or higher
- Download apk directly: Free
Application for repelling mosquitoes. A person experiments with the sound frequency of the program and chooses a working option. Unlike other anti-mosquito applications, Anti-Mosquito works and has a large selection of frequencies.
For the program to work, you need to set a high, inaudible sound (from 19 kHz and higher) and turn up the volume. Some smartphones do not reproduce ultrasound, the developer recommends clarifying the characteristics of the gadget's speakers before starting the program.
- Size: 3.3 Mb
- Developer: Kofey Studio
- System requirements: Android 2.3 or higher
- Download on Google Play: Free
Application for determining the maturity of a watermelon by the sound of tapping on it. A smartphone with the program turned on is placed on a watermelon, then tap the berry twice with an interval of three seconds.
The program may give different results on the same watermelon, so three checks are recommended.
- Size: 1.3 Mb
- Developer: lzn1007
- System requirements: Android 1.6 or higher
- Download on Google Play: