Got yourself a brand new Android smartphone? Here are 10 apps you should download straight away.
1. Google Goggles price: free
Here's the scenario: you're casually strolling through the Louvre, as you do, and you come across a magnificent painting. You can't remember for the life of you who painted it, but you don't want to reveal your ignorance by looking at the information card. Instead, you whip out your Android smartphone and load up Google Goggles to take a photo of it. Within seconds, the app tells you that it's the painting of St John the Baptist by Leonardo Da Vinci. Of course! Google Goggles is a visual search engine that can give you information on logos, landmarks, book covers and even barcodes, and the results are remarkably accurate.
2. Layar price: free
Remember those old sci-fi flicks where robots like the Terminator had enhanced vision that displayed information on whatever they were looking at? Layar gives you that same functionality through your Android phone, only better, as it taps into the wealth of information available on the internet. Layar is an augmented reality browser that uses the phone's GPS and camera to display information about places and landmarks that are close by. If you're in an unfamiliar place, simply look at it through layar, and you'll see all the points of interest appear as text bubbles over each location, as well as Wikipedia information, and even nearby Twitter updates.
3. Twitter price: free
Twitter apps can be found by the dozen, but the official app has lots of appeal for being fast, free, and very intuitive. All of the standard features are within easy reach like retweeting, labelling particular tweets as favourites, embedding location data and sending direct messages, and the app also lets you upload photos and shorten URLs to make the most of your 160-character limit. If you haven't jumped on the Twitter bandwagon yet, you're missing out; as well as helping you keep up with the minutiae of your friends and colleagues, you can get an inside look into the daily lives of celebrities as diverse as Katy Perry, Stephen Fry, Al Gore and Shaquille O'Neal.
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