2 new WordPress plugins within 24 hours?

Android App Share uses the excellent AppBrain service (website and app) to display lists of your Android Apps on your blog.

You can use both a function call and a widget to display your results.

Bloat free and simple, it’s perfect for showing off your Android apps

Today, T-Mobile finally announced that Android 2.1 (Eclair) was available for G2 Touch (AKA HTC Hero) owners.

If you’ve not received your “pre-upgrade” update already, you’ll need to do this – it makes various small changes in readiness for the Eclair update.

To get this, wind your clock on by a month and switch off wi-fi (it needs the data connection for the upgrade to be detected). It only takes a couple of minutes and doesn’t cause any data loss.

Once you have that, you can either wait for Eclair to be pushed out to your phone or go and get it manually. To do the latter, go into Menu -> Settings -> About Phone and you should now have an option to check for software updates. Go into this and follow all prompts.

Now, the Android update can cause data lose, although I found it to be minimal. I’d recommend backing up all your data – I used MyBackup Pro to backup all data and applications to my SD card, which I then copied into my Netbook.

The update takes a few minutes and, even when it appears to have rebooted, you might find that behind your lock screen is an HTC update running. Once this is done I found my date and time was incorrect and that my home screens had been reset – if you saved your layout as a “Theme” (which I hadn’t done) then I’m guessing you can easily restore it.

And that’s it.

From what I can tell the visible changes are minimal (even more so – animations are turned off by default, so you’ll need to switch them on for the full impact) – the main change is the improvement in speed. And, boy, is it noticeable.

Other than that, the biggest change to users will be the apps in the Marketplace that will now be available – Google Earth, IMDB, Google Goggles, Talk To Me, amongst many others.

Smaller changes include an improved Gmail App, a new pinch feature for viewing all the home screens and a Desk Clock app.

The problem with touch screen keyboards are that they, for one reason or another, slow to use. If you’ve never come across the concept of “swipe” keyboards, the idea is that that you don’t life your finger and simply drag your finger across the keys – it’s quicker but the software has to be smarter as a result.

There are a couple in the market, ShapeWriter being my favourite (the other is SlideIT, but I found the GUI horribly off-putting). However, Swype (which is now being bundled on some phones at launch) is now available as a free Beta to try out. It’s not in the marketplace, so you have to get it via their website.

Swype is quick, but seems to lack some of the features of ShapeWriter that I like – for example, not needing to indicate repeated letters and one key to change case. I’ll try both and report back