Android applications for developers

When I am traveling, I usually carry my netbook to check the statuses of my servers, check log files, upload files and very rarely to edit too. Ever since I got my Nexus one, I have been trying to do as many things as possible on my android phone Nexus one. There are great free applications to achieve all these and probably more.

1. AndFTP is a FTP/SFTP/FTPS client for Android devices by lysesoft. You can use device menu to rename, delete, copy, set permissions and create folders. As well you can upload and download files. You can even upload/download complete folder. Its easy to setup, remembers the settings and works really well.
It can also list the files by name, size or date of creation. It can also open files (HTML, MP3, Text, Video, ...) on device or you can send files (as email attachment, bluetooth, ...) for device browser.
It provides FTP (File Transfer Protocol), SFTP (SSH's secure File transfer protocol) support and FTPS (Explicit FTP over TLS/SSL). It supports both active/passive FTP mode support. Its FREE.

2. AndroidVNC is a Google Project available for free on android market. Its a fork of tightVNC viewer. VNC is an open protocol for remote controlling computer devices. If you are on Ubuntu (just enable the Remote Desktop in System-> preferences) others can run any possible VNC server. Once you connect, you can control your desktop from your phone.

You can zoom in to any area using buttons on the screen (no multi touch support) to act on it. Its very useful when I am in a meeting and I want to access my computer. I even use it while giving presentation as a remote control or wireless mouse. It works perfectly fine when you are on same WAN or LAN. When you are on edge its slower (well Internet connections in india are slow). Google code site also has a comprehensive user documentation and also FAQs.

3. ConnectBot ConnectBot is a Secure Shell client for the Android platform. It can connect to any server securely.

You can also telnet to any server and connect to localhost (android shell) easily. Get more info by reading the FAQs.

4. AndExplorer is a free file manager for Android devices. It allows browsing files and folders stored on device and sdcard. It can sort by name, size and date. Copy/Paste, rename, delete, create folder, send file as email attachment features are available. It is able to uncompress ZIP, GZIP and TAR files too. It can be used by normal users not just developers.

5. DropBox is a file sync service. You can sync files across multiple machines (lin, win and mac) and mobile phones. I use it keep my scripts and code. It can be used to store any kind of files. The free version is 2GB. Android application is simple and clean. It can download and upload the files (sync).

6. BucketUpload s an application for Android Google phone. It allows uploading files to an Amazon S3 bucket, Flickr , any web/FTP server. You can use file browser capability to list folders from local file system, sd card and shared content providers. I mainly used it with Amazon s3. End-user can setup S3 parameters (bucket name, key identifier and secret key).You can edit ACL too.You can select among "private", "authenticated-read", "public-read" and "public-read-write". Default is "private". It provides options to ZIP file before upload and automatically retry up to 5 times on transfer failure.

7. Txtpad lite is a light weight text editor. It can open multiple file types and multiple encodings. It has Find/Replace functionality too.

8. Yaaic (Yet Another Android IRC Client) is the best IRC client available for Android. Its free and open source. It can do everything that your desktop IRC client can do.

9. DNS Lookup helps you to lookup any kind of DNS records like A, CNAME, MX records etc. It also has whois lookup.

10. GTech Net Tools provides network tools required on the Go like IPConfig, Ping, HTTP Header checker, Host to IP etc. Its a must if you run your own servers.

I am looking for a git explorer application. I am looking for read capability if not write. Even though I am not fully unhappy with the Txtpad. I need an editor with more functionalities. Suggest me if you know any and also let me know if you think I should try any other application.