(Continued from enTourage eDGe and Pocket eDGe Welcome Basket - Part 2)

Great Apps
Updated Apr 2, 2011 8:50 PM ET

While the eDGe, like every other non-phone Android device, doesn’t have Google Android Market access (yet…), there are lots of ways to get apps for your eDGe:
- the enTourage App store (in the Library, select “Store in the top left dropdown, then “Apps)
- from download links on websites (e.g. http://www.slideme.org/application/opera-mini) which you can often find by doing a Google search for “APK plus the name of the app you’re looking for. Another good source is http://www.4shared.com/ where people will upload free APKs for others without Market access (again, search for “APK plus the name of the app)
- from your Android phone (i.e., install the app on your phone, then find and copy the APK to your eDGe)

Some favourites from the enTourage App Store (all of which run on the LCD side) include:
- MaplePaint – essentially a colour version of the Journal
- Dropbox – for syncing files among your devices
- Pandora – for US users, provides streaming music
- Facebook
- PrinterShare – allows you to print from your eDGe to the printer on a PC
- Podkast - great search feature, can mark a site or a specific episode as "Fav", can download and play later
- Thinking Space – a great mindmapping tool
- BI Notes – an excellent note-taking app (along the lines of index cards rather than the Journal)
- Fring

Some favourites from websites include:
- RadioTime – stream live radio from around the corner and around the world, also an excellent podcast source
- museek - a "deluxe" music player that downloads album art and has a shutdown timer
- Sirius/XM
- Dolphin (particularly popular, features multi-tabs), Opera browsers
- also check out http://www.entourageedge.com/forums/...d.php?522-APKs

A note about website downloads. Internet Explorer will sometimes "Save As" with the "ZIP" extension instead of "APK". Simply rename the file after you've downloaded it.

Note there are a number of great third party marketplaces for Android apps, some of which include their own market app you can download to your eDGe for easier browsing and installation. For example:
- www.slideme.org (app: http://www.slideme.org/sam)
- http://andappstore.com/AndroidApplications/ (app: http://andappstore.com/AndroidApplic...ppStore_Client)

Here’s an interesting thread: http://www.entourageedge.com/forums/...s-for-Students.

Another favourite app among forum users is Calibre which does many wonderful things like convert ebook formats and compile newspaper/RSS digests into EPUBs you can read on the eInk side. Forum member mrspaceman has written custom software to better sync Calibre content with the eDGe, and as an alternative for accessing ebook content on the eDGe. This app is undergoing steady improvement, so be sure to watch the end of the thread for the latest updates.

Getting Books
Updated Dec 31, 2010 5:20 PM ET

For the eInk reader, the enTourage eDGe and Pocket eDGe use the non-proprietary Adobe Digital Editions format for eBooks (in PDF and EPUB formats). Because of this, you can get books for your eDGe from many sources, including borrowing books from public libraries. See http://www.entourageedge.com/forums/...p?1115-E-Books for a comprehensive post I made on this topic. Because of this flexibility, it pays to check a handful of sites before you purchase so as to find the best price (and you'll be surprised to find enTourage is sometimes the cheapest ), and in some cases to find an EPUB version that might work better than a PDF version. I imagine EPUBs will work better on the Pocket eDGe than PDFs as the latter are limited in their ability to resize to smaller screens.

For the LCD side, there are a number of proprietary book reader apps now available (and no doubt more in the future):
- Kindle (note the latest download link is in post #41)
- Barnes & Noble, although you can also read B&N books on the eInk side using this tip
- Borders

Forum member OncTech has provided copies of the 4 main reader apps in a zip file here.

There are also numerous other reader apps that run on the LCD, such as:
- Aldiko
- FBReader

Note that a huge number of newspapers are available on the eDGe via Libary – Store – e-Periodicals (see https://www.entourageedge.com/suppor...barticleid=163). The Sony Reader store also offers a limited selection of newspapers in Adobe Digital Editions format.

You can also view the eBooks workshop webinar.