This past week, I upgraded my Motorola Cliq (stuck on Android 1.5) to a shiny new Samsung Vibrant (thanks Brendan for the nudge towards this phone). Of course step one with this new phone, was grabbing all of the appropriate apps. Some apps I had on my Cliq but didn’t use, got left behind; and some apps that didn’t run on 1.5 (but do on 2.1), I picked up brand new for this phone.

Here are my immediate download/installs. In no particular order:

• Advanced Task Killer – Crap runs in the background all of the time. This kills that crap.
• Shazam – Awesome, and awesomely useful app for tagging music you hear while out IRL (in real life). I use this a lot when I hear a song and want to remember to download it later.
• Foursquare – I am bullish on Foursquare. Anyone who knows me, knows that. You can even stalk me here.
• Twitter – My old phone didn’t run the native Twitter Android app. This one does. I am going to try this over Twidroid for a bit.
• Google Voice – I use my Google Voice number to handle all of my voicemail. Nice little app.
• OpenTable – I love the OpenTable app. I use this frequently when I am out somewhere already and want to make a quick reservation for later in the day/evening. So simple and so useful.
• Phone Flicks – Netflix doesn’t have a good native Android app. This is the next best thing for simple queue management.
• StickyBits- Just grabbed this. Haven’t used it yet, but I LOVE the idea of this and the possibilities.
• Delicious- I use this mainly for quickly bookmarking things I see on my phone, that I’d rather read on a regular monitor later.
• Yelp – Crossed up with OpenTable, I can find a place, and book a place, on the move.
• Pandora – Best streaming music app there is. I used to be a Last.fm guy, but I love plugging my phone into my audio jack in the car, and streaming Pandora.
• Bank of America – BOA’s Android app is fantastically simple. Check balances, make transfers, pay bills, all on the move.
• Facebook – Obviously. They just redesigned their app this week as well. Looks sharp.
• Starbucks Card Balance – This is a unitasker app, but I love it. One tap and I know my SBUX card balance before going into grab a coffee.

Anyone have any more suggestions?

I noticed this morning that OldSpice is being “promoted” on Twitter. The @OldSpice account has some real potential to be great, but it’s always a balancing act to try and keep a character like that interesting for very long. Not a huge shelf-life for super over the top commercial characters. I’ll be curious to see how they play this, and how long it will last.

One of the first thoughts I had upon seeing this account, was that this (Old Spice guy) is the new “Most Interesting Man” (from Dos Equis). The second thought I had, was to find the twitter account for the Dos Equis character.

What I found was…that it was really hard to find. It seems like the Dos Equis character had become so popular, that dozens of people have created phony twitter accounts for The Most Interesting Man, blurring the line between the brand controlled version of the character and the audience controlled version(s) of the character.

I don’t really have a fully formed thesis here, but maybe some of my other social media and marketing thinker friends do. Is this type of imitation the ultimate measure of a viral campaign’s success? Is this loss of control dangerous? Any thoughts?

And for what it’s worth, I never did find the “official” Twitter account for the Most Interesting Man. There is a Facebook page, but no Twitter account as best I can tell.

UPDATE:

Ok, so this is absolutely fantastic. Turns out OldSpice is doing customized Youtube video mini-commercials responding to Twitterers. Really well done.