The Wall Street Journal Android app is heavy on news
— as long as you're a member of the club

Fans of the Wall Street Journal -- WSJ is what the kids call it these days -- take note: an Android app is finally here. And with it you can get all of the stories, video, photos, podcasts and stocks info you've come to rely on in more traditional (ie: old) formats like computers and that ancient newspaper thing.

And the WSJ app is a pretty darn good one. It's easy to navigate, with the sections clearly labeled. Stories are easy to read, though we'd prefer to see some spacing between paragraphs. (Yeah, we're picky about our formatting.) And photos are vibrant, with easy-to-read captions.

One catch: If you're not a WSJ subscriber, you might as well go elsewhere. You're basically dead in the water if you're not logged in, and even then there's a mountain of content you still can't access without some higher-level subscription -- and possibly a secret handshake.

So that's that. A nice news app from a great news organization -- just make sure you're a subscriber. The app itself is free; download links are after the break.

Maybe I should be productive in some way on my Android tablet.  I could take notes about upcoming phones, or use the browser to pay the bills, but I don't.  Games are way too fun on these things for all that jive.  And since I'm a sucker for all things undead, GRave Defense HD is right up my alley!  It's a tower defense game, but a damn good one.  The graphics are amazing, and instead of fighting off endless strings of enemy vehicles or balloons, you must protect yourself from the hordes of zombies and assorted nasties using weapons ranging from machine guns, to lasers.

There's also a storyline if you're in to a more immersive experience -- you work your way through the ranks of the "Brotherhood of Steel" and you can follow and share your progress through Scoreloop.  Killing zombies is fun, and apparently is social, too.

The most stunning part are the visuals.  The levels are diverse, with things like a rainforest scene, the Bermuda triangle, even outer space -- you're not stuck in the same graveyard for the 20 levels of gameplay.  Of course, all this comes at a cost.  You will need a fairly high-end device to display this content.  The developers recommend a device with over 384 MB of free RAM, and a minimum display of 800x480.  Most phones sold this year will be just fine, but some of the more mid-range offerings just won't handle this one.  All things said, GRave Defense HD rocks on any Honeycomb tablet

You can find GRave Defense HD, currently on sale for €0.70 (about $1.00), in the Android Market.  It's for phones and tablets running Android 2.1 and higher.  We've got more pics, a video, and the download link after the break.

File Manager is one of the first Honeycomb-optimized file managers for Android.  It's one of those utilities you have to have on your Android 3.0 tablet, no questions asked.  With Android, you're not forced to use a separate program on your computer to add or move files around, so a file browser of some sort is awful handy.  You can use it to keep track of and sort all your pictures, videos, documents, and anything else you can think of that you're keeping around in your tablet's storage space. 

With File Manager HD, you really don't need to ever hook up the cable to your computer.  It has a built-in LAN browser, so any shared files or folders from your computer (Windows, Mac and Linux) are available right from the comfort of your easy chair.  It's full of other great features, too:

• High definition (1280x800) support
• 3 sets of commercial icons for 60+ different file types, toolbar and menu items
• Cut, copy, paste and cancel progress dialogs
• List and grid view for file browsing
• Compress and decompress support
• Search and share files
• Multiple selection and sorting support
• Thumbnail for photo, pictures and apk files
• Built-in text editor and swf player

The developers have fully tested File Manager HD on the Motorola Xoom, and I've been using it on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for over a week with zero issues.  The best part?  It's absolutely free.

You can find File Manager HD in the Android Market, for devices running Android 3.0 and higher.  We've got a couple pictures and the download link after the break.

There's no shortage of music apps out there these days but a new one called Ghosttown has just hit the Android Market and is looking for a new audience. Having tested it out a bit before writing this up, it's looking pretty promising for the most part. Use of Ghosttown is free, with ad support but in case you don't fancy ads it's just $0.99 for the full version without ads.

The concept behind Ghosttown is a simple one. Fire it up and search for music you wish to hear. Be it by song, artist or album. It'll go out and scour the web for you to bring you the best results possible and present them to you. From the music it finds, you can create playlists as well mark songs as favorites so that they are always easily found and ready for your listening pleasure.

Not all is perfect in Ghosttown though, since it uses the interwebs to track down music, I did find that once or twice it simply just found samples of songs I was looking for rather then full versions. No big deal but worth noting for those of you who may be looking to give it a go. Jump on past the break for some more screenshots and the download link.

Apps, apps and more apps! It's an appapalooza! And appstravaganza! It's appstronomical! OK. We'll quit while we're behind. But we're back with another week's worth of app picks, so slide on past the break and see what we've chosen this week.