If you are into reddit and Android, you have likely heard of baconreader. It’s made by OneLouder Apps, the same crew that produced 1Weather, SportCaster, and TweetCaster to name a few. Their reddit app though, is the go-to for the service. It received a mention-worthy update this afternoon that brought with it a scrollable and resizable widget, NFC Beam support, hardware acceleration, subreddit widgets that refresh depending on frequency, and more. It’s mostly Ice Cream Sandwich related, but you won’t complain, will you?  

Here is the full list:

1. Widget points to selected subreddit, and refreshes at selected frequency
2. Widget supports scrolling and resizing on Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich devices
3. Supports Beam on NFC-enabled Ice Cream Sandwich devices
4. Supports Hardware Acceleration
5. Posts, widgets, external images and gifs, and comments load more quickly due to component rewrites
6. Widget points to the appropriate story in the application
7. If you like what you see, please consider changing your rating in the Android Market!

Market Links:  Free | Premium ($1.99)

Cheers @Esteinberger!

Now that I have had some time to toss around this new Chrome Beta for Android, I thought I would share some of my initial thoughts and reactions to it. As a reminder though, this is definitely in a first edition beta which means there are some bugs and nuances that Google needs to work out for it to have the polish of the official Android browser. For the most part, it’s pretty damn awesome. Let’s get to it. 

Syncing

Other than some fancy UI tweaks, the coolest part of Chrome Beta for Android is easily its syncing abilities. The Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich browsers have had the ability to sync for the most part, but not on this live “real time” level. If you have your PC’s Chrome browser synced, you can view all of your tabs on your phone, access those same pages, etc. Firefox has been doing this for a bit now, but the sluggishness of that browser overall even after dozens of updates has made it not much of an option. For many of you, this is the first time you will have experienced real time syncing.

With that said, Chrome for Android so far has been finicky when it comes to syncing, but once it does, it works better than you would expect. Since it’s a beta, we will try not to be too harsh over the fact that it took almost an hour to get our device to sync. Now that it has, I’m impressed with it.

Also, it does a great job of syncing bookmarks, separating them into folders from Chrome on your PC and then allowing you to manage them.

Two Tips:  Transitions and Text Preview

Two things that I initially had been using for the last couple of hours yet managed to leave out of this review were pointed out in the comments as pretty major features, so I’m adding this quick section to make sure everyone is aware of them. The first is the ability to flip between your tabs by simply sliding your finger from the edge of your phone across either left or right. Again, you have to start your finger almost off of your screen and then onto it to activate the slide.

The second thing is to activate Chrome’s new zooming feature for small text areas. As you can see in the screenie on the right, I tapped in our “Recent Posts” widget which had 5 links in it. Since Chrome was unable to recognize or possibly didn’t want to guess which link I was trying to tap, it zoomed out on that area, giving me a close up look at the links. I was then able to choose the exact link. Cool, right?

UI and Polish

The look of Chrome for Android is an odd mix that we both like and dislike at the same time. It utilizes swiping gestures very well and includes beautiful transitions, but none of it reflects Ice Cream Sandwich whatsoever. Obviously Chrome is its own brand that is separate from Android, however, you get the feeling that this browser was made to eventually replace the stock Android browser. Now, there is time for them to work out all of the kinks in it and theme it to make it official or even steal some of the new features and bring them to Android, but for now, it feels like what it is, a separate product. Overall though, it looks as good as any other Android browser out there. Plus, the tilt scrolling is simply too awesome to not play with for a few minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

No Flash

Many of you noticed immediately that Chrome for Android lacked Flash support. It’s unfortunate, but with Adobe announcing the end of mobile Flash support a few months back, this is not surprising. They also released a statement this afternoon confirming that this product will likely never support Flash, as they have moved their focus on to HTML5.

Lack of Quick Controls

The lack of “Quick Controls” that are in the stock ICS and Honeycomb Android browsers is killing me already. We understand that this is an Android “Labs” feature, but how difficult would it be for one of these two teams to port it to Chrome. It could happen at some point, but that could be dependent on whether or not Chrome becomes the official Android browser.

Wrap-up

This browser is my new phone browser. It’s that simple. The fact that I can essentially manage my internet world from either PC or phone is something that I have longed for. As a first release, Chrome for Android has bugs and will annoy you at times, but the benefits of using it as a daily driver are outweighing those shortcomings. This is as fully-featured (aside from a lack of Flash support) a browser as you will find.

What are your initial impressions? Can’t survive without Flash? Or is fully-featured enough to get beyond that?

The folks at Motorola have announced that starting March 7, another update for MOTOACTV will begin rolling out. Included in the update will be the ability to set up WiFi directly to the device, turn on the display with a flick of the wrist, and the opportunity to host your own competitions with other ACTV users on their website. Additionally, Motorola is also adding 40 new activities for you to monitor and track online including yoga, Pilates, and even martial arts. Stay healthy, Moto.

Via: Motorola

Seesmic for Android has just received its first in update in what seems like forever. The update brings a few bug fixes, support for t.co links, and actually drops support for Google Buzz. You can use Seesmic as an easy way to lump all of your social networks including Facebook and Twitter together for easy management while on the go. Seesmic hasn’t seen any updates in a while – anyone still using it for their social needs?

Market Link

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you feel like you are the only person to notice that there hasn’t been a huge amount of CyanogenMod 9 builds for the vast amount of Android devices released, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. With previous versions of Android, you could see CM ported to practically any device you could imagine. From the newest blog update on the releases of CM9, we get the feeling that the CyanogenMod team definitely has their work cut out for themselves this time with Ice Cream Sandwich:

Since Android 4.0 is such a major change from 2.3, we started with a fresh codebase from Google and have been forward-porting features from CM7 with an eye on design and better integration. This is a somewhat time-consuming process, but it allows us to rethink everything. We’ve eliminated the CMParts app, instead choosing to add our custom features directly into the main settings. We are also taking a “just works” approach when it comes to configuration- CM7 had too many options that just weren’t widely used. We hope to achieve a good balance between tweakability and a great out-of-the-box experience. I want your phone or tablet to feel like it should have come with CM9.

So far, many owners of anything besides a Nexus handset or purely Vanilla device such as the Motorola XOOM, have not received CyanogenMod 9. I wouldn’t say there will ever be riots of people demanding its release, but you can most certainly sense the yearn for the custom OS in the development threads of various forums. The CM team has always said that as soon as they know, the users will know. We’ll keep you posted.

Via: CyanogenMod

Many people realized after downloading Chrome for Android beta that it did not support Adobe’s Flash. Should we be surprised by this? Well, Adobe doesn’t think so. Last November they did announce that they would no longer be developing Flash for mobile browsers. So any new browsers that come to the Market, we can expect there to be no Flash support:

Today Google introduced Chrome for Android Beta. As we announced last November, Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content. Flash Player continues to be supported within the current Android browser.

No shock here, folks. But could the lack of Flash support turn you off from the new Chrome beta? At least for now until something better comes along?

Via: Adobe

Now that we have figured out how to install the mysterious Google Voice update that appeared in the market within the last couple of hours, it’s time to dive into some of the new stuff we are seeing. The most noticeable change comes on the UI front. Google has introduced a new icon for the app that matches the color scheme for Ice Cream Sandwich as well as the overall look. All menu and action bars are now themed to fit the theme of other prominent Android 4.0 apps.

The other cool thing one of our readers noticed was on his tablet – there is now an option for “Click-to-Call.” If you click this button and then give it a number to call, it will send a call to your phone that will then connect to the number you requested. There has been a Chrome extension that worked in a similar way for a while now, but as far as we know, this is new to tablets.

*Note – The market lists stuff about prefetching and sending to multiple recipients, but that was included in the update back in November. The official full changelog is not out yet.

More pics below.  

Market Link

For folks who have been flashing ROMs and themes on their phones over the last few years, the name Brian “Bgill55″ should ring a few bells. Brian has some of the best known themes available under his belt such as Invertnito, Synergy, and Incognito. Now with the release of the unlocked Galaxy Nexus, it looks like he is back to bring us another great theme.

As far as we know, it still doesn’t have an official name, other than “un-blacked out.” Classy though, right? The theme is still in alpha phase, so you can expect a few things to not look right. If waiting for this sexy white theme is something you can’t do, then go ahead and try it out right now.

Most important is that you must be on a naked version of AOKP M3 in order to flash. Download here. If you’re already running a theme, you will need to re-flash the ROM so there are no themed assets. If you are already on an un-themed Build M3, then go ahead and follow the directions down below.

Instructions:

1. Download Un-Blacked Out Alpha zip file and place on phone’s internal storage.
2. Boot into ClockworkMod Recovery and create nandroid backup.
3. Navigate to zip file’s location.
4. Hit “Install”.
5. Reboot and enjoy.

If you have any issues flashing or need any other help, let us know down below and we’ll try to help you out. Happy flashing!

Click here to view the embedded video.

We love to tinker with apps, so whenever something new is released by Google, we almost always dive into the settings to look for developer options or new Labs features. Sure enough, Chrome for Android has just that in a feature called “Tilt Scrolling.” It’s not the most practical of all features, but the cool factor is too high to not show off.

When you are in your “stack view” of open tabs, Chrome can use your accelerometer to spread your tabs apart or close them together. Again, the day-to-day usefulness of this can be questioned, but I think the point is to show you what this browser and a mobile device are capable of. We’re officially impressed.

To enable this option, head into Settings>developer tools and check the box to “Enable Tilt Scrolling.”

Other tips that you would like to share?

On the heels of the release of Google Chrome for Android, it appears as if Google Voice is also about to get a bump. The market won’t let you actually update the app just yet, but we can see that a new icon will at least be introduced. Will keep an eye on it.

Update:  If your market will not allow you to update, try this trick from reader fallingd0wn:

Pull up Google Voice in the web market on a PC.  It will show installed already on your phone, but click “Install” anyway.  You’ll get the updated version.

Update 2:  We have comparison shots of the new UI along with a feature for tablets called “Click-to-Call.”

Cheers Wayne, Isaac, Tojo, and Adrian!