Vacation time is over and now its time to get back to business. Some of you may recall that just before the Holidays I was lucky enough to get a HTC Hero powered by the great new mobile OS from Google, Google Android.

I have been using the Hero now over the holidays and has gotten quite familiar with the OS and I’m loving it to bits. The HTC Hero is not the only phone currently available in South Africa running the Google Android OS, there is also the HTC Magic, HTC Tattoo and HTC Dream.

There is also the OpenMoko any geeks dream when it comes to phones. Why you ask? Well just because its open source and you can basically run anything on it the cpu and memory is capable of. The OpenMoko works well with Google Android and now you can win one.

Rafiq from WebAddict(s) is now running a competition where you can walk away with a OpenMoko phone capable of running Google Android. All you have to do to win this Google Android phone is to follow the steps on WebAddict(s).

Gone are the days of typing your search queries into Google, Android users now have the ability to just take a photo and search the web with that.

Google Goggle is the latest hip among Android users, imagine you are in an unknown city having a look at landmarks and have no idea what the landmark is you are looking at. Just fire up Google Goggles, take a picture and it will tell you exactly what landmark it is that you are looking at. Same goes for books and art. Want to know some information about local businesses? You don’t even need to take a photo, just point to the business and Google Goggles will display information regarding the business on screen.

To get yourself a copy of Google Goggles, open up the Android Market and search for Google Goggles. Just note that it is only available for Android 1.6+ so no luck for South African Hero owners for now. Have to wait for Leaf to give us the latest Android firmware, scheduled for release somewhere in December.

Just saw that Chris over at iMod did a post about setting up MXit on your iPhone so I decided I might as well do one about setting up mxit on Android seeing that I just got my HTC Hero yesterday.

So for those of you using a Android based phone, here’s how to get MXit on it.

Open up your browser and head on over to http://www.mxit.com/wap

Follow the link to the Android Market where it will show you the MXit download

Choose MXit from the Android Market

Choose install and wait for the notification that it downloaded successfully then open it up.

Thats it folks, now enjoy MXit on your Android based phone.

Last week I got the news that I was eligible for an upgrade, at first I wanted to port to Vodacom to get the iPhone as I have played around with a few of them and love it, but after some consideration and a hefty price tag my attention turned toward the HTC Hero or iPhone killer as some say.

It was a mission to get hold of one, as everybody is either out of stock and only expects new stock in the next year or does not get the phone until next year. Lucky for me the guys at Durbanville MTN shop got hold of an HTC Hero in only one day, great service from them, and I picked up my Hero yesterday.

The phone is absolutely superb, I’m loving every aspect of it and can see why people are saying that it’s the iPhone killer. The HTC hero is lightning fast with applications and menus opening instant without any sign of hesitation. A nice feature is the Accelerometer, one example I tested was with Google Maps in street view. Enabling the digital compass feature and physically moving around with the phone in your hand made the street-view move around as if you where standing in the street and looking up, down, left or right.

Out of the box the Android operating system asks you for login details to social networking sites like Facebook, twitter and Flicker and integrates it into your home screens if you would like to. Importing contacts was a breeze specially since I had all my contacts in Gmail, Android just asked me to sync with my GMail account and voila there all my contacts was imported.

The Android market place is also a breeze to operate with all the apps you can think of, 99% of the kind of apps I searched for where free.

The 5 mega-pixel camera of the HTC Hero is also very nice, it takes very high quality images that is sharp and crisp. One downside of the camera is I would have liked a flash, but its not the end of the world.

I’m definitely a Android fan now, and won’t turn back anytime soon. The Hero is sure to give Apple iPhone a run for its money.

If you are due for an upgrade have a look at the Hero, I’m sure you’d like it. I’ll be writing more about Android and Tips and Tricks for the HTC Hero and Android marketplace from now on here.