I’ve had my HTC Hero now for over a month, and have already settled on a number of apps, after much installing, trialling and uninstalling. I therefore thought I’d share my results, all neatly categorised.

I haven’t linked to any of the apps, as they should all be searchable in the Android Marketplace.

Oh, and I haven’t listed games (they’re a lot more of a personal choice, I find).

Information

The BBC news widget is particularly useful, providing easy access to the various BBC news feeds.

Movies, by Flixster, uses GPS to good use by displaying nearby cinemas and listing for their current shows. However, when viewing other information, such as trailers, it does appear to have constant network issues and this feature therefore doesn’t appear to work. A shame.

Google Sky Map is a fascinating educational tool that lets you point your phone heavenward and view the stars and planets whilst moving around.

ShopSavvy is a barcode scanner that will then look the product up to try and find prices. Useful for when you’re out shopping.

WikiMobile provides a mobile interface to Wikipedia.

Media

Until an official BBC iPlayer app appears, beebPlayer will help – it will let you view iPlayer TV content, along with listening to live Radio. Sadly, there’s no iPlayer radio content available.

Amazon MP3 provides access and purchasing capabilities for MP3 tracks from the Amazon website. They also have free tracks, although it’s best to look these up on the main Amazon site and then search for them on the app, as there’s no option on the app to list free tracks.

Last.fm is a streaming music player for the popular website, whereas Simple Last.fm Scrobbler will send details of all the music you’ve listened to, to the very same site for statistics purposes.

And for those who haven’t come across Shazam before, it may come as a bit of a revelation. The next time you’re at the pub and can’t identify a piece of music, simply use this app and it will work it out for you.

Lastly, I come to Podcasts. I initially used Google’s own Listen app but that simply failed to pick up new episodes of subscribed “shows”. I’m now trying out BeyondPod, which is only free for the first week. So far, it seems to work nicely.

Messaging

Meebo is a good, all-purpose instant messaging client.

And, if you find the default text messaging software a little bland, you could try Handcent, which includes speech bubble style conversation threads and is generally, well, a little more inspiring.

By default, reminders on Android are a bit lacking – you get a text or a missed call and you don’t get to hear about it after the initial reminder. Missed Reminder will keep nagging you and has a plethora of options, from LED colours to flashing the trackball.

Network

3G Watchdog is an excellent way of monitoring your data usage (you just need to know what your data usage  limit is and when it runs to/from).

In an attempt to preserve battery power, the phone will automatically drop wi-fi connection when the phone is in standby. This option can be changed via the settings, but you may want to be able to switch this on/off as required. Wi-Fi Lock is a useful widget to do just that.

Office

AK Notepad is, well, just that – a useful note facility. However, if you want to stick a note on your screen, then I’d recommend Sticky Note.

Integrating with my existing online services, Quick Save will add a facility to quickly add links to Read it Later, and Astrid will synchronise and allow me to update my Remember the Milk to-do lists.

A more recent find is cloudList which allows you to create “tick lists” which can be accessed on both your phone and on their website.

WordPress have released their own app, WordPress for Android, which allows the quick editing of posts.

Sadly lacking is an app for Google Reader.

Social Networks

Facebook have their own App and, for eBay, Pocket Auctions works well.

I’m not mentioning a Twitter client right now, as I’m in the middle of reviewing a number – more on that in a later post!

Tools

Advanced Task Manager provides quick lists of running apps and ways to quickly “kill” them. There’s even a widget to perform an instant kill.

For file management, I’d turn to ASTRO which, erm, does just that.

Profilechanger is not very pretty but does exactly what I want – allows me to change profiles at certain times of the day – in my case, it goes silent overnight.

One the facilities sadly lacking in Android is the ability to backup your data and your apps. MyBackup Pro does just that – both onto your SD card and online. However, unlike most of my other recommendations, this isn’t a freebie. Give the trial a go though!

Early December, I came across a company that was hand knitting and supplying Harry Hill Knitted Characters. I thought it would be ideal for my 7 month year old daughter.

Sadly, although I paid for a guaranteed “before Christmas” delivery, it never turned up.

Unfortunately, and you only find out when this situation arises, the only way to contact “BMG Burp” is via an email address. But I did and received no response to my enquiry. I emailed them again and, this time, my email bounced with an error.

Their website is still taking orders and, indeed, they’ve updated the site today with their latest “testimonials”.

And I’m not the only one – there’s a blog and Twitter account for those people who haven’t received theirs yet. The author ordered theirs the same day, but appears to have had a bit more of a response from the company than myself.

Now, I’m not reporting this to stop people buying – I don’t think the company is dodgy. My older daughter received one from them, and it was ordered the same day. However, when ordering online, it’s always worth checking the process for if problems do occur – just an email address is not sufficient. I’ve tried “Googling” for a phone number, but I can’t find one.

All I’m left with now is to attempt, via Google Checkout, to get a refund.

Update #1: Google Checkout contacted BMG Burp and they immediately updated my order status to say it had now been despatched. I wonder how I now go about getting a refund on the “guaranteed for Xmas” postage?

Update #2: I got home a few hours after writing the above to find it had been delivered. Strange that the status had only been set to “despatched” after it had turned up. None-the-less, and if you read the comments for this post, you’ll find that it was not send until the 31st December and the postage was a lot LESS than what I paid. I, and many others, have been taken for a ride!

The Simple Twitter Data plugin is relatively new, but I’m already releasing version 1.2. That’s progress!

This version includes a new data type of “image73″, which will return a 73 pixel version of a Twitter users profile picture, and a way of embedding Twitter data directly into your posts and pages.

As always, details are on the official plugin page.

The Simple Twitter Link plugin has been updated.

First, and foremost, you can now pass various options to the URL shortening options. Secondly, a workaround is in place for a reported, known error.

Over the last few days I’ve released new versions of 3 of my WordPress plugins.

Flu Pandemic Level – updated to version 1.1. Re-tested and code tidied up, but no major changes.

Simple Wakoopa List – updated to version 2. This is a major update which introduces a new caching system, a new method of passing parameters, along with a slew of new switchable options.

Simple PayPal Donate – updated to version 1.2. Re-tested and code tidied up. New parameters to allow a target to be specified, and for the button image ALT text to be modified.

There’s more to come, including a brand new Twitter plugin.