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Download Squad contributor Mark Bowytz decided to go freestyle with this rundown of Android apps -- please enjoy his geeky thriller ... and the apps, of course!

Agent McCormick is to meet an informant who has some secrets to share about his Android phone...but will they make it out alive?


The air in the Imperial Palace restaurant was a pungent mixture of fried dumplings and chemical fumes wafting in from the nearby industrial park.

Though the room was dimly lit and cast in a red glow from the Chinese lanterns and other East Asian chotchkies hanging from the walls, Agent McCormick found the informant who had called him the week before; he was a bookish young man who nearly knocked over his bowl of wonton soup upon being discovered.

"I was never here, got it?" asked the informant.

"Sure, sure, but why are they after you? What do you know?"

The informant nervously glanced around and withdrew a slender, dark, and shiny object from his coat pocket.

"This phone...," he began while sliding a finger to unlock the screen, "... this Android phone. Sure, it does phone calls, messaging, and social networks, but it can do more ... LOTS more."

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If you're an IT Administrator (or even a developer who's lucky enough to "own" the server your apps run on), you've seen this go down before - you're out and about, having a great time when the phone rings. Something is horribly broken and needs your magic touch right away. Surely it's as simple as bouncing a system process - 2 minutes tops!

Unfortunately, you're nowhere near a PC to type in the10 keystrokes to repair any damage done to the corporation's bottom line.

But wait! You have your trusty Android phone and with it being the 21st century and allyou should have the power to get the help desk off your back on the go, shouldn't you?

Yes, you should - but you'll need some apps and here's five to get you heading in the right direction:

AndFTP

If you need to move files around between servers while on the go AndFTP is a great tool for the job. Sporting both a device file browser and a FTP file browser, this free app supports not only regular FTP uploads and downloads, but also the SFTP and FTPS protocols and resume support.

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When it comes to making web pages, I can whip up a rounded div or add a splash of gradient for a nice fade effect successfully with little trouble, but like many, when trying to deduce out why some stupid DIV is misbehaving, I can waste an entire day spinning my wheels.

Checking out the various blogs and forums are of course a great resource, but probably my most useful and productive help comes courtesy of my favorite Firefox add-ons.

Like many, I have Firebug, Greasemonkey, IEView, and the like at my disposal, but here's a list of what I would consider five lesser-spoken but certainly "must have" additions to any web developer's little bag of tricks.

• View Source Chart - I'm sure some might disagree on this, but aside from simple DOM structure, for me, trying to mentally visualize HTML boundaries can be really freaking hard, even if the code is well formatted. To make the job easier, View Source Chart is a godsend. When run, it blocks off boundaries, color codes them, and presents everything in lightning speed no matter how munged up the code is! Also, as an added bonus, you can take advantage of the built-in Ctrl + and - zooming features to help decoding even the most complex nested DOM structures. Indeed, when it comes to navigating HTML source, View Source Chart further proves that a picture is worth a thousand words.

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