Friday, June 17, 2011

Essential Android Tools

I've been slowly migrating off of doing remote administration from a laptop, and moving almost exclusively to my Android device. I've got a screen in Launcher Pro set up exclusively for system administration related items.

This is what's on there:
  • Adao File Manager: Keep PDFs of documentation in a folder right on your system administration screen
  • Barcode Scanner: Use it to read those service tags
  • Bubble Level
  • Calculator
  • Calendar: You do keep a calendar, right?
  • Camera: Take snaps of screens with error messages on them, use it to note where things are plugged in before you take them apart.
  • CamScanner: Uses the camera as a scanner to create PDFs
  • Color Flashlight: Either use it to illuminate that hard to see part of that rack in that poorly lit closet, or turn it into a rave.
  • ConnectBot: Great little SSH Client, also lets you access the console on your phone
  • DNS Lookup
  • Evernote: Keeps any random notes on both your phone and the web
  • K-9 Mail: Best email client out there for IMAP on Android
  • LED Light: Turns on the LED flash on your camera. Great for nice bright light when you need it.
  • Maps
  • Messaging: Nagios notifications
  • Miren Browser: Best browser currently available for Android
  • Overlook Fing: Network scanner and port scanner
  • Ping
  • PocketCloud: Wyse is apparently still around. Free version allows you to connect to one host (either RDP or VNC!) and the Pro version allows multiple hosts.
  • Remember The Milk: Task list on both your phone and the web. You'll need to subscribe to get the Android client, but it is so worth it
  • Trillian: Multi IM Client. Most stable I've tried so far.
  • VPN Show: Just puts a shortcut to your VPN connection on the screen, so you don't have to go digging through the menu
  • Wifi Analyzer: Shows pretty graphs of signal strength. Useful for both analysis and explaining to users why they can't connect to the wifi from the Faraday cage that is their tiny office.
  • WoL Wake On Lan Wan: Send magic packets to turn on your (appropriately configured) computer