Block Samurai Lite is a sliding block puzzle game where you need to slide ninja blocks out of the way to get the Samurai out of the gate. According the game description "A noble samurai must make his way through a legion of dastardly ninja. Block Samurai is a puzzle game based on Nob Yashigahara's classic Rush Hour puzzle - slide the ninja blocks around such that you can slide the samurai block out of the gate."

The graphics are nice looking, and the gong sound effects and music make it a cute game to play. The game is operated by the touchscreen, and controls are smooth.

It comes with options to Reset the board for when you've got your Samurai thoroughly stuck and need to start at the beginning of the level, and you can move to different levels if you need more/less of a challenge.

The Lite version comes with 10 introductory puzzles, which actually go quite quickly once you sit down to play. It currently has 4 out of 5 stars in the Android Market.

Bottom-Line

The LEET - Good for a quick brain exercise.

The Lame - Once you beat all 10 levels, it's no fun going back and playing again. The levels weren't horribly challenging, making it a quick playthrough. Either uninstall to save some space or buck up the £0.99 for the full version.

Version: v1.0
Developer: AppWolf
Size: 1.7MB

You can download from the QR code below by using the Barcode Scanner or your Google Goggles (1.6 or higher).

Reviewed on Motorola Cliq.

The Android Market has a huge assortment of apps to make your every day life easier. From all of your entertainment and shopping needs, to apps that just make your life easier like a places directory or recipe app. All of the apps listed below are FREE.

Entertainment

TV-Guide USA - Enter in the zip code and select the cable provider to see the TV Guide list! I found this especially useful in a hotel out of town without a channel listing, or a guide channel.

v1.2.6 by Jersey Productions, 590.2 KB

Movies - This a Flixster app that also coordinates with Netflix accounts. You can view Box Office, what's opening this week and top movies, location-dependent Theaters and the movies they're showing, Upcoming movies and their release dates, DVD new releases and coming soon, and save movies to your Netflix Queue, movies you want to see, movies you've rated, friend ratings. You can read information on movies, see trailers, and their Rotten Tomato score.

v2.7 by Flixster, 1021.7 KB

Pandora - Pandora radio takes your favorite songs and builds a station with other songs it thinks you will like.

v1.2.1 by Pandora, 644.8 KB

Shazam - "OMG what IS this song?" Shazam listens to recorded songs and identifies them. (You can't sing into it and have it recognize the song). You can save the tags as well. It doesn't work well if you're trying to identify songs on TV shows or movies, if there's talking over the music it'll say it cannot find the song. It's simple to operate, simply open and select "Tag Now" to listen to the song. View the "My Tags" option to see what songs you've identified in the past. When you select one of your tags it will tell you the song name, the artist, any subtitles, the album it's on, the record label and the date you tagged the song on. You can also scroll down to choose to "View the Artist's MySpace Page" (if they have one), "Search Amazon MP3" to download the song or "Search YouTube" for videos. Once on the Tag Details page you can swipe side to side to scroll through your other Tags.

v1.3 by Shazam, 296.0 KB

Live Scores - You can set live scores to any of the major sports. I found it especially useful monitoring football games for other teams. You can choose multiple sports: MLB, NFL, NCAAFB, NBA, NCAABB and NHL. You can also view Standings and News.

v1.3 by Sportacular, 949.8 KB

Shopping

WootWatcher - Shows you daily what is on Woot, Shirt.Woot, Sellout.Woot, Wine.Woot and Kids.Woot. It will also give you messages when a new item is listed. You can edit the types of notifications, specific ringtones or vibrate, select Woot Off notifications, and select Notification Colors (not available on all devices).

v1.009 by Ben Tobin, 98.6 KB

Pkt Auctions eBay - Keeps track of all of your eBay auctions and sends notifications when one is about to end, and also lets you search eBay.

v2.08 by Bonfire Media, 1.2 MB

Discount Calculator - An easy to use discount calculator for when you're trying to figure out if you can afford that sweet sweater with your 30% off coupon. Simply input the price and the discount % and hit calculate.

v1.0.5 by Pablo Verd Gallego, 16.0 KB

Food, Drinks, & Fitness

BigOven - Recipes galore! You can create a free account and save recipes, which you can access on your phone and on the internet. Search recipes using the search function or by food type.  Use the Random Recipe function if you're feeling experimental
10001 Cocktails - Scour the drink list A to Z, Browse by drink type, or Search for your favorites. You can save your favorites and write reviews for the drinks you find.

v4.2 by Red Droid Software, 173.9KB

Organization

OI Shopping List - Organize yours shopping list, add prices and it will total up how much your shopping trip will cost you. An easy check system lets you deselect things from your list that you've already gotten.

v1.2.1 by Open Intents, 261.1KB

Ease of Use

Ultrachron Lite - For all your stopwatch needs. Can also be used as a timer.

v1.7.2 by The Spinning Head, 447.8KB

Bluetooth - An easy toggle on/off widget for Bluetooth. This saves you the hassle of having to go into the Bluetooth menu under Settings.
Barcode Scanner - For downloading information from QR codes. If it's an Android app it will bring up the download screen.

v3.21 by ZXing Team, 361.9KB

Time-Killers

Jewels - A free version of the Bejeweled game. Keeps tracks of high scores, and lets you play in Normal Mode, Timed Mode and Infinite Mode. You can also save games to resume at a later time.

v1.19 by MH Games, 1022.7 KB

Travel

Places Directory - Location-dependent search for attractions, banks, bars, coffee, gas stations, hotels, medical, movie theaters, parking, restuarants, and taxis. A handy search bar lets you search for specific places (ex. McDonald's)

v1.0.20 by Google Places Directory Team, 429.9KB

Kids Entertainment

Kids Paint - Very basic touchscreen paint. The color changes when contact with the screen is broken. Great for kids just to doodle.

v2.1 by Virtual GS, 51.3KB

Random Cool Stuff

Google Sky Map - a map of stars, constellations, and planets. Hold the phone up and move it around to figure out what's what in the sky. You can adjust the settings to show Sky Gradient, Stars, Constellations, Messier Objects, Planets, RA/Dec Grid, Horizon, and Planet Images. You can also set it to always use GPS, to set a location manually and to Use magnetic correction. Toggle night mode to make everything on the map red. It also comes with the Sky Map Hubble Gallery which has pictures taken by the Hubble telescope of planets and formations. When you select a picture from the Sky Map Hubble gallery you can choose to locate that particular image object in the sky. It would be neat to save directly from the gallery to use some of these amazing pictures as a phone background, but that doesn't appear to be a feature. You can also search for your favorite star, constellation, planet, etc using the "Search" feature.

v1.4 by Google, 432.2 KB

Pandora - This Pandora app allows you to take photos and videos from your phone's gallery and make them private. They are hidden and password protected! A password is required to log in and from there you can select Photo Manager, Video Manager, and there's even a feature to report bugs which will collect data from your device log. If you open your photo manager you will see options for Public Photo and Private Photo. If there's a picture in your Public Photo you'd like to make private, simply touch select it to "Hide Photo as Private", "View Photo" or "Delete Photo". Select the Private Photo option to see what's all hiding on your phone. Videos work the same! You can also change your password after logging in

v1.2 by since2006, 115.2KB

If you're looking for an instrument tuner that's easy to use and goes everywhere with you: check out the free app, gStrings. Its description is as follows: "gStrings is a chromatic tuner application for android. It will let you tune any musical instrument, such as the violin, viola, violoncello, bass, guitar, piano and wind instruments."

Version 1.0.1 is the latest version. When you load the app it brings you to the tuner screen. Notes are scrollable along the top, and there are three options along to the bottom to "Sound" "Tune" and "Tune Auto". Once you select a note from the top, you can select "Sound" and it will play a loud tone in that key. "Tune" to that note lets you watch as you tune the instrument to get to your desired note. Tune auto lets you auto tune. This is actually pretty easy, even for a beginner. I had never tuned a guitar, but with this app I've got it nearly pitch perfect.

Settings let you adjust Microphone Sensitivity and Optimize frequency range for a variety of instruments (i.e. Violin, viola, guitar, etc). Advanced settings give you an option for Orchestra Tuning, apply HPS (harmonic Product Spectrum), set the number of evaluated harmonics in HPS Depth option, FFT Rounding, Tampering Function. There is an option under GUI to select Markers @13.7 (display markers 13.7 cents from target). 

There is also an option in the app to change the skins from the default grey to bluish, greenish, apricot (IMO makes the numbers difficult to read), red, blue, and redtint.

There is also a paid version of gStrings for 3,00 € ($4.46, £2.72).

Use your Barcode Scanner on your Android Phone to download this app using this QR code.

When perusing the Android Market, Advanced Task Killer is an app that is consistently one of the top downloaded. There's a reason for that.

If you're an app fiend, you may notice your Android phone can easily get slowed down. The Motorola Cliq gets bogged down very easily, especially if there's a lot coming in on the Happenings widget. There's no easy way to accomplish app killing by using the phone settings. (On the Moto Cliq - Settings --> Applications --> Manage Applications --> Filter --> Running then each individual task and Force Close)

Advanced Task Killer does just as the title suggests: it allows the user to "shut down" various tasks that are running in the background. It's very simple to install and use, and sits up in the notification bar for easy access. It provides a checklist of all the apps that are running (and others that aren't) and you can de-select apps you'd like to kill with a single touch. I've found this especially useful for closing apps that don't have an "exit" feature. There is an ignore feature for applications you don't want to kill (i.e. email, voicemail).

It runs very well, and has never force closed or bogged down the usage of the phone.

Like most apps, the settings are a little bare, but you can choose to set it to auto-start when the phone is turned on, to show on the notification bar, set item height (by pixel), create an ignore list, and set default actions for a short press and long press.

It weighs in at 168kb, it's free, and it comes highly recommended.

Advanced Task Killer is available in the Android Market, or it can be downloaded by scanning the QR code below (must have Barcode Scanner on your Android phone). Developed by ReChild.

Robo Defense FREE is the lite version of a tower defense game available on the Android Market (the full version is also available for $2.99). It's your run of the mill tower defense game; the object is to build units to defend your base from an onslaught of enemies both on land and in air. As you play you gain reward points which can be spent on upgrades, and achievements, which just make you feel good (and adds in-game bonuses!).

Once it's downloaded, players can choose different difficulty levels (1-10 on the FREE version), and the only option for maps is the Basic one (others are included in the full version).

Those familiar with tower defense games will probably find the Level 1 difficulty pretty easy. The is quite a difference between Levels 1 and 2, so even experts might want to start off on 1, if nothing else just to see how the AI works. For levels 1 and 2, the AI is pretty simple. Mobs of guys, robots, airplanes, helicopters and tanks go in a straight line from their entrance point of your base. Building your tower line-up is a simple drag and drop process on the touchscreen. (I'd recommend the "maze" defense, forcing them to zig zag across the map to your base, that way they're surrounded by towers)

The Gun costs $5 and works against land attacks. It can be upgraded to a Medium Gun for $4, a Flame Tower for $70 or an Antiair Cannon for $20. The Medium Gun can be upgraded to a Heavy Gun for $6.

The Slow Tower can be purchased for $10, and works against air and land, can be upgraded to an Upgraded Slow Tower for $10, Advanced Slow Tower for $10.

The Rocket Launcher tower can be upgraded to a Medium Rocket Launcher for $30, Mortar for $50, and Surface to Air Missile for $70.

Reward Points can be spent on different levels, for:

Stronger Bullets
Stronger Explosives
Faster Rocket Reload
Faster Antiair Relod
Faster Artillery Reload
Longer Flame Burn
Longer Slowdown
Health Reward
Starting Cash Reward
Unlock Teleport Tower
Unlock Mine Tower

All in the FREE version.

There are also options to Pause gameplay, accelerate enemy advancement (good if you have a lot of firepower and need some money) and Save games.

Robo Defense FREE should come with a warning that it's highly addictive.

Robo Defense FREE (v1.2) is available in the Android Market under Games - Arcade & Action, or it can be downloaded by scanning the QR code below (must have Barcode Scanner on your Android phone). It's 1.2MB in size, developed by Lupis Labs Software.