When you hop into Apple or Google's app stores on
your smartphone or tablet and literally have more than a million apps
enticing you, it's easy to get quickly overwhelmed. Of course, there are
countless options for the boring staples to handle email, maps,
weather, stocks, games and networking.
What’s new in the app world? Here are 10 innovative
apps that you might want to check out and add to your app arsenal.
(Note: My favorite is number 10. If you don’t download any others on
this list, number 10 is simply awesome.)
1. Send self-destructing messages
Email, text messaging and picture messaging are fast
and easy ways to communicate with friends and family, but they're far
from secure. Each one has weak points where hackers, snoops or the
government can see what you're sending and receiving.
Wickr
(Android, Apple; Free) creates an end-to-end encrypted communication
channel with no weak points. Even Wickr can't read your messages.
Wickr includes the standard messaging features like
contact lists, picture messaging with fun doodles and stickers, etc.
However, its showstopping feature is that you can choose to destroy
messages after you've sent them. You can also permanently shred the
messages on your gadget.
2. Remove swear words from eBooks
Have you ever had a perfectly good book ruined by
inappropriate language? It's a real bummer when you're in the middle of
an interesting story, and you come across vulgar words or phrases that
you'd rather avoid. Luckily, you can finish the story without reading
those words you don't like.
Just load up the eBook in Clean Reader
(Android, Apple; Free) and choose Clean, Cleaner or Squeaky Clean. As
you're reading your books in Clean Reader, you'll notice blank gray
spaces where an inappropriate word used to be. You can select to have a
cleaner synonym replace the word, so the sentence will still make sense.
3. Turn your phone into a DSLR
Thanks to smartphone and tablet cameras, everyone can
be a photographer at any event. In fact, many people don't even bother
with standalone cameras anymore. That's fine for candid shots, but if
you want real manual camera controls like you'd get on a higher-end
camera, you're out of luck. Or are you?
Both Apple and Android have third-party camera apps
that go way beyond the limits of the built-in cameras. A good one for
Apple is Manual ($2) and Android has Camera F5-V
($3.95). You can step back in time and manually set exposure, timing,
focus and white balance, as well as see live histograms of the scene and
more.
4. Know what information your apps are collecting
You probably have a bunch of apps to make your life
easier, but do you realize that many have access to your personal
information, including your contacts list and your GPS location?
MyPermissions
(Android, Apple; Free) scans major apps like Facebook, Twitter, games
and other services to tell you which have access to your personal
information and shows you what data they are sharing on your behalf. You
can then manage these over-sharing apps with just one touch.
5. Make fun videos with friends
Facebook doesn't just want to play you videos
anymore; it wants to help you make them. And it actually has an
interesting idea that isn't just a copy of Vine's 7-second videos.
Facebook Riff
(Android, Apple; Free) lets you record a short video clip and post it.
Then, your friends can add their own clips to it, and then their friends
can add to it, and so on. Basically it's like that game where you tell a
story but each person can only say one word or sentence at a time. You
have no idea how far your video will go or what it will end up saying.
6. Turn your gadget into a hassle-free scanner
Digital documents are a lifesaver for students,
business people and anyone else. They're easy to create, you can edit
them endlessly and sharing is simple. But sometimes adding real-world
items to digital documents is a hassle. You need a scanner and some
photo-editing skill, or you need to re-type the entire document.
Microsoft is fixing that with Office Lens
(Android, Apple, Windows Phone; Free). Simply use your smartphone or
tablet's camera to take a picture of a document, whiteboard or photo.
The app automatically detects the corners and shifts perspective,
resizes, crops and enhances receipts, documents and more for a perfect
scan.
Even better, Office Lens has built-in character
recognition that can turn text documents right into Word files. It can
add images to OneNote or PowerPoint, create contacts from business cards
and much more.
7. Get warnings about traffic jams
Few things ruin your day faster than cruising along
and suddenly grinding to a halt in a major traffic jam. Is it just a
phantom stop? Or are you going to be stuck for hours behind some big
incident? Is there a quick way to get around the holdup?
You can answer these questions in no time, or even avoid the traffic entirely, with the popular navigation app Waze
(Android, Apple; Free). It pulls information from other Waze users to
help you avoid the worst traffic jams, crashes and other obstacles. Waze
recognizes your favorite routes and can find ways to route you around
potential trouble spots before you even hear about them on a traffic
report.
If you do end up stuck in traffic, Waze has a new
cool feature called the Traffic Bar that gives you a countdown of how
long you'll be stuck in the jam based on where your destination is.
8. Find the cheapest place to park
After you use Waze to beat the traffic, there's still
the sticky problem of where to park. If you live in, or have visited, a
major city, you know that finding a spot isn't just hard; it's going to
be expensive.
BestParking
(Android, Apple; Free) takes care of that. Simply enter the city name
(it works in 105 and counting), your general location and when you'll be
in the area. It will then give you a map with parking spots, along with
how much they'll cost.
9. An activity-based dating app
Most online dating sites and apps have you make snap
decisions about whether you like someone based on how they look or their
interests. On other sites, a computer program tries to figure it out
for you. Do you remember the days when you found out if you liked
someone by actually meeting him or her face to face?
HowAboutWe
(Android, Apple; Free) is trying to revive that type of dating. It lets
someone post an activity they want to do, such as taking a hike or
going to a fun new restaurant, and if that sounds like fun to you, you
make a date with them. If you like the same activity, then you already
share something in common and you get to find out more about them
firsthand, rather than through carefully edited text or Photoshopped
profile pictures.
10. Help give sight to the blind
Just for a moment, I want you to close your eyes and
imagine that you are blind. Now, let's complete a few basic tasks, like
separating medications, using the right button on a microwave oven or
knowing which side of the street to catch the bus. Think of all the
questions you might have because you can't see.
There's a new non-profit app out that allows sighted
people to "lend their eyes" to those with visual impairments through
video chat. Simply put, it's remarkable.
The Be My Eyes
(Apple; Free) app was developed by a visually impaired man in Denmark.
It connects blind people to sighted volunteers through video chat. The
volunteer can answer questions because they can see the blind person's
surroundings using their phone's camera.
The other day, I connected with a young man who
wanted to know the expiration date of the milk in his refrigerator. He
positioned his phone’s camera to the top shelf. Looking at the image of
the milk carton on my phone, I said, "I wouldn't drink that if I were
you." He laughed, thanked me and that was the end of our call. If you
want to do something fun and help another person out, download the app.
