This MoneySupermarket car insurance comparison thing has been floating around on Apple’s iTunes servers for months, now it’s on the Android Market for us to have a fiddle with. It’s BIG BOAST is that you can just stick in a number plate and see insurance quotes using data pulled straight from the DVLA’s files, so it’s easy to ponder quotes while walking around car parks and imagining yourself owning certain cars.

That sounds like a fun hobby, eh? The app claims to include all the quotes and suppliers from the desktop site, telling users it’s possible to “switch your insurance in just 3 taps.”

MoneySupermarket Car Insurance is so on the Android Market here. And if you want a guaranteed way to save money on your car insurance, just get old and move to the countryside and drive a V-reg diesel Peugeot 306 estate.

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Good old PC goliath Microsoft has once again released another app for Android, this time bringing its OneNote Mobile app to the Android Market for Google-powered phones running Android 2.3 or higher.

What you’re getting here is a fairly familiar note-taking, sharing and syncing tool, which lets you create media-rich notes built from text and images, plus there are “to do” lists with little tick boxes and full syncing through Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud servers for easy access on desktop.

It’s free, but here’s the disclaimer about that part:

With the free version of OneNote Mobile for Android you can access, create and edit up to 500 notes. Once you reach this limit you can still view, delete, and sync your notes. To continue taking and editing notes, you can upgrade OneNote Mobile for Android to unlimited use through an in-app purchase

And that in-app purchase will cost you £2.99 to unlock access to the full thing for life.

What exciting lives Microsoft employees lead. If you also lead an exciting international playboy lifestyle and are therefore always having to remember about places, events and things, OneNote Mobile is on the Android Market here to make it all easier.

More facts can be had over on the OneNote Blog.

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Mr Legs is one of those endless scrolling/running/collecting games, only the action is presented in an unusual 1930s B&W (plus the odd explosion of colour) animated style. It’s like if Walt Disney actually made his name developing Android games. It’s created by I Like James Games. Everything about this appeals to us.

In fact, this may well dethrone Winter Walk as out current favourite mobile release.

Mr Legs is a paid game, costing 99p on the Android Market. Given how bonkers and original it looks, we’re prepared to take a chance on that being a rather sound investment. Bucketloads more of this sort of thing, please, James.

There’s a video of it in action below…

…because we’ve just remembered how important it is try to cover things properly.

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There’s some mega-exciting news out for fans of Google’s excellent desktop browser, with the Chrome development team finally launching an official version of Chrome for Android. It’s a beta right now, bringing Chrome-standard features like bookmark sync, the “omnibox” and an incognito mode for special late night internet doings, plus on Android we now get support for “unlimited tabs” and the ability to send pages to mobile Chrome from PC.

The one rather enormous disclaimer is the OS requirements – you need to be running Android 4.0 or higher. Which means it’s rather limited in appeal at the moment. But still. Chrome! For Android! With proper tabs when used on a tablet and everything:

But no Flash support. That’s interesting. Android Chrome Beta is on the Android Market here. It’s available in the UK, too, so if you’re a Galaxy Nexus owner there’s a very nice new thing to play with. Read more over at the Chrome blog.

A couple of Android Chrome demo videos are embedded below…

…plus Google’s put a list of countries in which Android Chrome is currently available online here.

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Be wary of an app going by the name of Instagram and published on the Android Market by a developer calling itself App for Android. It is NOT the long-awaited arrival of Instagram on Android, it’s a fake. The app forces users to give it a 5/5 rating in order to access its features, then fills your phone up with malware.

The five-star ranking thing is a clever tactic, as one of the visual clues we use to identify if an app is safe and genuine is a high Android Market user feedback score. Thanks to this fake feedback boost, the Instagram fake has racked up over 1,500 highly positive reader reviews in less than 24 hours.

This is a very embarrassing and high-profile attack, especially as Google only just announced that its Bouncer auto-scanner would be able to put a stop to such shameful practices. The fake app’s here [hooray, it's now been deleted] if you’d like to have a look – just don’t install it.

Thanks to reader Mr Perkins for the tip.

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It looks like we’ve attracted the attention of the Live Wallpaper crowd after yesterday’s thing about PlanetScapes, as here’s news of another rather sweet animating Home screen design. This is the Tree of Life, which sticks a big tree in the middle of your phone’s display, then changes lighting patterns and introduces random wildlife events during the day.

It all looks very nice…

…and if you’re not against the idea of paying 66p for a Home screen wallpaper that’ll take up 16MB of your mobile’s memory, Tree of Life is on the Android Market here.

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Bouncer is a new Google product the company describes as an “automated scanner” designed to automatically check all content uploaded to the Android Market for malicious code, like spyware, trojans and all the other DANGER WORDS associated with recent high-profile Android malware headlines.

There are no additional steps involved for users of apps or the app developers, with Google’s Bouncer simply going about it business, checking apps all by itself as soon as they hit the Market. Here’s a little idea of how it works:

…once an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google’s cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior. We also analyze new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back.

Reassured now? Sleep better tonight? Read the full explanation of how the Bouncer security bot is making the world a safer place, one app at a time, over on the Google Mobile blog.

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…that’s the promise that comes alongside Android app PlanetScapes HD, which brings a selection of high-res fantasy Live wallpapers for the background of your Android device’s screen. There’s a free trial version and a full paid app, both of which have the ability to make you phone look all Lord of the Rings-y and colourful – with two more wallpapers in the paid release.

Two examples:

If the evidence on offer over at the developer’s site is anything to go by, this will soon be a series, including all sorts of HD images and wallpapers.

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Gameloft has just announced a completely reworked standalone app version of its Gameloft LIVE! tool, which creates what it claims to be a “social gaming experience” on your Android phone. It’s sort of a combination of chat room, social network and game shop, letting you buy stuff, manage your “XP” pretend money points, stay on top of its endless sales and multi-buy promotions and more.

You also get the chance to create your own little 3D avatar and put clothes on it. We imagine that may be fun for some people.

It’s not on the Android Market – you can get the Gameloft LIVE! Android app direct from Gameloft here, from where it can be sent direct to your mobile.

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Cartoon Wars is an immensely popular tower defence kind of thing, which has been available on iTunes for Apple telephones since last year. And now, as you might be able to guess because it’s here on this bit of the internet, it’s out on the Android Market for us to have a go on.

Mega-publisher GAMEVIL has taken responsibility for bringing the game to Google phones, fiddling with the accounts to release it for free. Here’s what it looks like:

Cartoon Wars is on the Android Market here. We suspect there may be advertising on some of the screens, as GAMEVIL is not a registered charity last time we looked.

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