More to a smartphone than Facebook. My top 10 apps...
- 1 Year with an iPhone, 1month with an iPad, 250 apps later and here I am writing a post about 10 game changing apps. Hope they help;
1. EVERNOTE - Your second brain in the cloud.
Imagine you go to a restaurant and you love the food & wine. Now imagine an app that allows you to take a photo of the menu & wine bottle (Both GPS tagged), save these in the cloud with personalised tags in specific folders, then be able to search for these at any time on your PC or smartphone either by your tags you used when saving the note, by searching the text in the photo you took of the menu or even searching by the location at which the photos were taken. Imagine meeting a client and taking a picture of his business card, saving this in the cloud (In a specific Evernote file with tags) from your iPhone/PC & then being able to search for the contact using text in the business card anywhere anytime. Imagine you go to the fridge and the ketchup bottle is empty. You take a picture of the ketchup on your iPhone, store this in a file in the cloud called shopping that either you or your wife can then access from their iPhone when they go to the supermarket. Imagine reading something on the internet at home and wanting to clip part of an article & storing this for retrieval later either from your PC or smartphone...This is Evernote. Think of it as your second brain in the "cloud" (Information that you store remotely in servers i.e not locally in your phone or PC memory). Notes can even be encrypted for additional security or even stored locally on you PC/Smartphone memory rather than being sent to the cloud. Unbelievably its free albeit the paid version will give you bigger monthly storage limits & priority search and server access. Its a must.
2. INSTAPAPER - Never miss a story.
This is so bloody brilliant. Whenever you find a story on the internet but don't have time read it there & then (from your PC/Smartphone/iPad), save the story into Instapaper app which allows you to store & access the story for reading later with on your smartphone, PC or iPad. You simply add a button to all your internet browsers which when hit immediately uploads the story (Simple text format only but original link also saved) to the cloud (Instapapers remote servers). So simple yet so brilliant.
3. PULSE & FLIPBOARD - Making news & networking an artwork.
Very simply these apps allow you to view several news sources & networking sites on one page in a format that can only be described as beautiful genius. Once you have seen Facebook or Twitter on these apps its unlikely you will ever use the Twitter & Facebook apps ever again at least not to view peoples updates. Whilst both have limited news sources both apps allow you to add sources from RSS or Google Reader. At end of day if you only want to look in one place for all news & social network updates then these are the places.
4. YADAHOME - Family Organizer.
For anyone with kids and a busy social & work calendar this app can be a very useful. It incorporates a task list, grocery list and calendar all of which are synced across any members of the family who have the app downloaded onto their smartphone. Not perfect but its the best I have found so far & given the slightly high cost we can hope the developers keep improving it...
5. SPOTIFY - All the music you could ever want anytime or place you want it.
For GBP9.99/month this service allows you to play millions of tracks (Haven't not been able to find one I wanted so far) & stream them directly to your iPhone over 3G or on your PC. You can create playlists similar to iTunes & allow these these to be played even when your phone is not connected to either 3G or Wi-Fi i.e. for listening on a plane for example. The streaming is quick and seamless and for anyone who loves music and buys 1CD equivalent a month this app is a must. No more clogging up your smartphone with music & no more worries about losing your music collection if your hard drive blows up. Brilliant!
6. POSTEROUS - Blogging for dummies!
Until this year I have to admit I didn't really know anything about what a blog was let alone how to write one. Basically Posterous makes blogging easy. A blog is essentially somewhere you can post anything from text, photos, websites, video etc for others to be able to search & view on the internet or if you prefer just a group of friends. Posterous is an app that downloads to your smartphone and allows you to post directly from your phone without even touching your PC. It's very easy to set up, relatively cheap & quite rewarding and fun once you get into it. Enjoy.
7. SHAZAM - Whats that song?
Seems like this is one of the first apps most people download after facebbok these days but still had to mention it. Launch the app & press the listening button whilst listening to music. The app within 15 seconds will tell you the artist, song & album and even offer you options to buy it from iTunes or share it on Facebook, Twitter etc. Genius.
8. LATITUDE - Where are you!
Google latitude lets you see where your friends are on google maps. You need a google email account and you have to invite or be invited to see/be seen on the map. For obvious reasons you can hide your location or stop GPS tracking whenever you like. This may sound like a vast intrusion of privacy but to follow kids who are old enough to have a phone or to avoid making those calls "where are you, shall I put the pasta on" this is just simple and intriguing.
9. GOLFSHOT GPS - Feels like cheating!
This is one of those apps that when you read about it you think sounds amazing but must be a catch (Ex the price) and no way it will work. Thing is when you buy this it not only works it surpasses all expectations. Its truly incredible. You start off by searching for a course and then on each hole it will tell you how far to each major landmark and to front/middle/back of green. It allows you to keep score and also tracks statistics of your round. It is incredibly accurate and a must for any golfer who needs a little help. Golfers should also check out V1 Golf app whcih allows you to video your swing and then play it back frame by frame in comparison to many of the worlds greats. You can make annotations on the screen i.e. for swing planes and is really just amazing considering this is on a phone.
10. Google App - Voice search and now with google goggles!
Google app is a must. Allows voice searches on internet and with addition of google goggles which will search internet from a photo you take and even translate text within pictures into multiple languages its definitely worth a place on your phone.
