My earlier rant about Android aside, searching the Android marketplace via recommendations on tech blogs (as opposed to searching the Android Marketplace with keywords via my phone) has turned up some real gems. Can’t wait to try them out when I get home tonight.

The best one by far is “Locale”. Locale is a location-based application that creates profiles based on conditions. For instance, your phone can recognize your office’s GPS coordinates and Locale will make the phone switch to vibrate mode every time you’re in that area. You could also configure it to fire off an sms or update information in another app based on your geographic location – imagine if every time I was hanging out in the city around lunchtime it changed my status on Google Talk to invite people to come eat lunch with me.

Okay, that example could get annoying, but the possibilities intrigue me… THIS is why I was interested in Android in the first place…

Also, someone has made a NES and SNES emulator. Gotta love that.

So it seems to me like Android will become far more palatable once I’ve placed a few more of these jigsaw pieces into the mix. I just wish they provided a little extra basic functionality first before making me turn to apps.