noteworthy apps - page 5

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a self-improvement program that wants to save you time, a guide to how to properly brush your teeth, and a timer with a beat.

Here you go:

Better Every Time — Productivity — Free

The App Store is full of things to help you set goals and keep you accountable, usually by making everything visible to your friends so they can goad you into persevering. Better Every Time takes a different approach, offering no social media connectivity whatsoever. Instead, it turns your quest of betterment into a journey to the top of a mountain and leaves it to you to check in along the way. Doing so just takes a few seconds, leaving you free to improve yourself.

So it’s basically an app that doesn’t want you to use it too much, which is an interesting angle.

Better Every Time

Swear Jar — Lifestyle — Free

In these troubled economic times, we don’t really have the luxury of putting real coins into a jar every time we drop a bomb in front of Grandma. Luckily, we have Swear Jar, a virtual container you can drop change into so you can quantify your dirty mouth. You can use any denomination of change you want, and it’ll keep a running tab of your blue streak. It even has motion controls so that you can jingle the coins around.

Because you have to do something between curses, right?

Swear Jar

Simple Additives — Health & Fitness — $0.99 (lite version available)

Food labels can be scary places. Reading the ingredients of whatever you’ve just crammed into your gob can be confusing or even the worst decision you’ve made all day. I don’t know how to keep the stuff in your food from terrifying you, but for those perplexing moments, try Simple Additives. It’s an app that will tell you what those unpronounceable things in your snack do and also whether or not they’ve been linked to cancer or harmful side effects.

I don’t know if I’m really doing you a favor by pointing you toward this, though. Everything’s tasted like poison for like three hours now.

Simple Additives

MyTeeth — Education — Free ($1.99 unlock)

It’s important for people to learn proper tooth-brushing techniques, and not just because toothpaste and floss are way cheaper than root canals and fillings. Brushing is just an important part of fitting in with society because society is full of people who will notice if you have broccoli stuck in your teeth or if your breath smells like the inside of a garbage disposal.

MyTeeth is here to help with a selection of slightly creepy-looking children who will brush along with your kids — or you — to ensure that your chompers get nice and clean. Just don’t stare into their beady little eyes too long. I think I saw Cthulhu in there.

MyTeeth

Humming Timing — Utilities — Free

I’ve featured timers here before, but this is one you should definitely check out.

Humming Timing looks at other time-keeping apps and wonders why they have to be so quiet. Its solution: to make a countdown using music from your iPhone’s library. So for example, you’ll put your cake in the oven, set the app for 35 minutes, and it will craft an exactly 35-minute-long playlist from your tunes and tell you which song to listen for for the end.

It’s basically a timer you can dance to. If that’s something you’ve been looking for.

Humming Timing

Humming Timing — Utilities — Free

I’ve featured timers here before, but this is one you should definitely check out.

Humming Timing looks at other time-keeping apps and wonders why they have to be so quiet. Its solution: to make a countdown using music from your iPhone’s library. So for example, you’ll put your cake in the oven, set the app for 35 minutes, and it will craft an exactly 35-minute-long playlist from your tunes and tell you which song to listen for for the end.

It’s basically a timer you can dance to. If that’s something you’ve been looking for.

Humming Timing

MyTeeth — Education — Free ($1.99 unlock)

It’s important for people to learn proper tooth-brushing techniques, and not just because toothpaste and floss are way cheaper than root canals and fillings. Brushing is just an important part of fitting in with society because society is full of people who will notice if you have broccoli stuck in your teeth or if your breath smells like the inside of a garbage disposal.

MyTeeth is here to help with a selection of slightly creepy-looking children who will brush along with your kids — or you — to ensure that your chompers get nice and clean. Just don’t stare into their beady little eyes too long. I think I saw Cthulhu in there.

MyTeeth

Simple Additives — Health & Fitness — $0.99 (lite version available)

Food labels can be scary places. Reading the ingredients of whatever you’ve just crammed into your gob can be confusing or even the worst decision you’ve made all day. I don’t know how to keep the stuff in your food from terrifying you, but for those perplexing moments, try Simple Additives. It’s an app that will tell you what those unpronounceable things in your snack do and also whether or not they’ve been linked to cancer or harmful side effects.

I don’t know if I’m really doing you a favor by pointing you toward this, though. Everything’s tasted like poison for like three hours now.

Simple Additives

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include something to keep you up-to-date on late-night TV, a creepy virtual boyfriend, and an app to help you randomly name your baby.

Here you go:

Late Night Talk Show Review — Entertainment — Free ($0.99 Upgrade)

If you missed your favorite late-night talk show, and you’re jonesing for a monologue, a Top 10 List, or whatever the hell Jay Leno does, you might want to pick up Late Night Talk Show Review. It collects video clips from 11 shows (and an assortment of things from Comedy Central) and updates them regularly. So if people are still gathering around water coolers these days, you will be all set to discuss that funny thing that Conan said.

I don’t know — my office just got a water cooler recently. I don’t really know how this whole thing works yet.

Late Night Talk Show Review

PocketBoy — Entertainment — Free

PocketBoy was the developer’s idea to keep his girlfriend from feeling lonely when he was away. It’s a blank virtual “doll” that you can slap your loved one’s face on and listen to it say adoring things in a not-at-all creepy robot voice. It’s endearing in a way that I can’t quite figure out, and the different “play” modes are pretty cute. I’m not sure what the whole “Frog Mode” bit is all about — “There is no Frog Mode, silly” — but even that’s pretty cute.

This app is cute. I admit it.

PocketBoy.

Name My Baby! — Lifestyle — Free

Unless you have some amazing relatives you were close to and to whom you want to pay tribute, naming a baby is hard. And not just for the reasons outlined in this amazing Saturday Night Live sketch where Nicolas Cage reveals that cruel schoolchildren can make fun of any name you can come up with. Name My Baby hopes to take the stress out of the whole ordeal by randomly generating first and middle names for both boys and girls. And even if you aren’t expecting, it’s kind of entertaining to see some of the combinations it comes up with.

Name My Baby!

Swear Jar — Lifestyle — Free

In these troubled economic times, we don’t really have the luxury of putting real coins into a jar every time we drop a bomb in front of Grandma. Luckily, we have Swear Jar, a virtual container you can drop change into so you can quantify your dirty mouth. You can use any denomination of change you want, and it’ll keep a running tab of your blue streak. It even has motion controls so that you can jingle the coins around.

Because you have to do something between curses, right?

Swear Jar

Better Every Time — Productivity — Free

The App Store is full of things to help you set goals and keep you accountable, usually by making everything visible to your friends so they can goad you into persevering. Better Every Time takes a different approach, offering no social media connectivity whatsoever. Instead, it turns your quest of betterment into a journey to the top of a mountain and leaves it to you to check in along the way. Doing so just takes a few seconds, leaving you free to improve yourself.

So it’s basically an app that doesn’t want you to use it too much, which is an interesting angle.

Better Every Time

Goalability — Productivity — Free

A lot of people say that if you want to stick to a goal you set, the best thing you can do is tell other what you’re trying to do. If you keep it inside, you’re only accountable to yourself, and guess what? You lie.

Goalability aims to add that missing piece by making your goals public and putting them out where all your Facebook friends can see them and check in on you.

And you can do the same to them because karma is very real, and we are all of us its agents.

Goalability

Big Questions? Short Answers! — Entertainment — Free ($2.99 for full unlock)

This strange little app contains 400 questions of varying philosophical value and only gives you 140 characters with which to answer them. The idea is to let you browse through other people’s responses in order to discover varying viewpoints and share your own. It remains to be seen whether this project will live up to its potential or if “lots n lots of candy” is the norm, but you throw caution and cogency to the wind when you ask anonymous people on the Internet to think seriously.

Big Questions? Short Answers!

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include something to help you make good choices, a simple flight locator, and instructions for keeping your hands really super clean.

Here you go:

Smart Decisions — Productivity — Free

I clearly have a lot on my mind — I can’t even decide which pants to wear. Luckily, Smart Decisions exists. It’s an app that breaks up your major (or minor) quandaries into their component parts and helps you reach conclusions simply and methodically. First you identify the problem, and then you list out the alternatives. After that, you figure out the most important factors to consider and rank them in order of importance. The app then has you compare two options at a time based on the factors you listed. After you’ve exhausted all combinations, it tells you what your best choice is.

Apparently, I want cereal more than pancakes. That was a surprise.

Smart Decisions

Hand Wash — Health & Fitness — Free

Cold and flu season is upon us, and you might not know this, but that thing where you just hold your hands under the water for a second before wiping them off on your pants? That’s not doing a darn thing.

If you’d like to know a better way to wash your hands, Hand Wash is here for you. It trains you in the World Health Organization’s Five Moments method, and it even contains a little game that will grade your mastery of washing technique and duration.

Now, stop using your hand as a tissue and go clean up. I want to sneeze just looking at you.

Hand Wash

Where Is My Flight — Utilities — Free

Where Is My Flight is a pie-simple tracker with a single box. You put the flight number in there, and it tells you where and when to find it. If you’re the one flying, you might find it helpful that the app tells you which terminal you’ll be in so that you can plan your overpriced airport meals accordingly.

If you’re not the one flying, you’ll find the landing-time estimates handy so you can time your pick-up accordingly. It’s just a simple, useful app, and anything that removes any of the annoyances of air travel is worth checking out.

Where Is My Flight

Thyme — Utilities — Free

Here’s an app that might come in useful for any big meals you might be planning.

Thyme lets you set individual timers for each burner of your stove and your oven so that you can see at a glance how much longer everything has to go. It sure beats my usual method of setting one timer on the microwave, one on my phone, one on the back of the stove (which never works, anyway), and then just watching the clock.

We’re all about simplifying here, people.

Thyme: A kitchen timer for your culinary arts

Billy: The Bill Samurai — Utilities — Free

So you go out to dinner with a bunch of your friends, and when the bill arrives, you decide to save time and just pay the whole thing yourself. But you’re a little obsessive-compulsive, so you insist that your friends pay you back exactly what they owe. But how do you figure it out? That’s a lot of math to fit into one head.

This app has you covered. You just enter in the menu price of every item, tell it who ordered what, and enter in the tip and tax percentages, and it gives you the exact amount each person needs to pay you back, to the cent. And nothing screams “friendship” quite like making change.

Billy: The Bill Samurai

Billy: The Bill Samurai — Utilities — Free

So you go out to dinner with a bunch of your friends, and when the bill arrives, you decide to save time and just pay the whole thing yourself. But you’re a little obsessive-compulsive, so you insist that your friends pay you back exactly what they owe. But how do you figure it out? That’s a lot of math to fit into one head.

This app has you covered. You just enter in the menu price of every item, tell it who ordered what, and enter in the tip and tax percentages, and it gives you the exact amount each person needs to pay you back, to the cent. And nothing screams “friendship” quite like making change.

Billy: The Bill Samurai

Thyme — Utilities — Free

Here’s an app that might come in useful for any big meals you might be planning.

Thyme lets you set individual timers for each burner of your stove and your oven so that you can see at a glance how much longer everything has to go. It sure beats my usual method of setting one timer on the microwave, one on my phone, one on the back of the stove (which never works, anyway), and then just watching the clock.

We’re all about simplifying here, people.

Thyme: A kitchen timer for your culinary arts

Where Is My Flight — Utilities — Free

Where Is My Flight is a pie-simple tracker with a single box. You put the flight number in there, and it tells you where and when to find it. If you’re the one flying, you might find it helpful that the app tells you which terminal you’ll be in so that you can plan your overpriced airport meals accordingly.

If you’re not the one flying, you’ll find the landing-time estimates handy so you can time your pick-up accordingly. It’s just a simple, useful app, and anything that removes any of the annoyances of air travel is worth checking out.

Where Is My Flight

Hand Wash — Health & Fitness — Free

Cold and flu season is upon us, and you might not know this, but that thing where you just hold your hands under the water for a second before wiping them off on your pants? That’s not doing a darn thing.

If you’d like to know a better way to wash your hands, Hand Wash is here for you. It trains you in the World Health Organization’s Five Moments method, and it even contains a little game that will grade your mastery of washing technique and duration.

Now, stop using your hand as a tissue and go clean up. I want to sneeze just looking at you.

Hand Wash

Smart Decisions — Productivity — Free

I clearly have a lot on my mind — I can’t even decide which pants to wear. Luckily, Smart Decisions exists. It’s an app that breaks up your major (or minor) quandaries into their component parts and helps you reach conclusions simply and methodically. First you identify the problem, and then you list out the alternatives. After that, you figure out the most important factors to consider and rank them in order of importance. The app then has you compare two options at a time based on the factors you listed. After you’ve exhausted all combinations, it tells you what your best choice is.

Apparently, I want cereal more than pancakes. That was a surprise.

Smart Decisions

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a way out, the coolest app name ever, and some intimidating cakes.

Here you go:

Official 100 Pushups — Health & Fitness — Free

Recently, I realized that I didn’t even want to look at myself without a shirt on. So I downloaded the new official 100 Pushups app, and it claims it can do something about this whole … situation I have going on here. It’s a six-week program with three sessions per week, and it will send you reminders so you don’t “forget” to exercise. First you show it how many pushups you can do, and then it assigns you to a Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced program. Somehow, I’m not so out of shape that I didn’t qualify for the Advanced tier.

…ladies.

Official 100 Pushups

Cake Ideas — Food & Drink — Free

Sometimes the name of an app is a woeful understatement.

Cake Ideas doesn’t contain “ideas” so much as the most complicated baking projects I’ve ever seen. Some of the recipes contained within include lists of things you must pick up at a hardware store because the cakes in question are so badass that they have freaking skeletons. It won’t show you how to make all of them — instructions for the one shaped like a wedding gown would probably melt your phone — but if you’re planning a wedding or just like looking at fancy cakes, prepare to be impressed.

Cake Ideas

Emergency Exit — Utilities — $0.99

If you’re like me, you never go into a new building without knowing how to leave as quickly and safely as possible. I usually apply this skill at parties, which is why I don’t get invited to very many of them. But Emergency Exit wants to use that same thinking to get people out of airports, casinos and other public buildings in case the worst happens. It uses Indoor Google Maps and your own location to show you all the ways you can get out, including those on other floors. The app already includes 100+ sites in 12 countries and the developer plans to keep adding more.

Emergency Exit

Verticon — Productivity — $0.99

If you need to know how how many inches are in a meter or talk to your non-American friends about the weather, Verticon can help you out. It’s a quick conversion tool that you can use to easily calculate equivalent values for weight, speed, length, time, temperature, and pressure, and it all happens inside a super clean and uncluttered interface. You just pick your units and enter a number for the starting figure, and it spits out the converted number at the bottom. You can also switch between the two with a single tap.

Plus, its name sounds like a Bond villain’s evil supercomputer or a new kind of Transformer, and that’s just straight awesome.

Verticon

Shops! — Utilities — Free ($1.99 for full unlock)

I have reason to believe that some of the people reading this have some shopping to do. And if you’re looking for a way to organize what you need to buy, Shops! is here to help. It’ll let you set up individual lists for different stores, and then you can check them off as you pick them up. And if you’re feeling especially tech-crazy, you could even use it alongside BestRoute Free to make every part of the trip as efficient as it can be.

Other than that part where you have to park and be around all those people. We don’t have an app to make that suck less, yet.

Shops!

Shops! — Utilities — Free ($1.99 for full unlock)

I have reason to believe that some of the people reading this have some shopping to do. And if you’re looking for a way to organize what you need to buy, Shops! is here to help. It’ll let you set up individual lists for different stores, and then you can check them off as you pick them up. And if you’re feeling especially tech-crazy, you could even use it alongside BestRoute Free to make every part of the trip as efficient as it can be.

Other than that part where you have to park and be around all those people. We don’t have an app to make that suck less, yet.

Shops!

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Verticon — Productivity — $0.99

If you need to know how how many inches are in a meter or talk to your non-American friends about the weather, Verticon can help you out. It’s a quick conversion tool that you can use to easily calculate equivalent values for weight, speed, length, time, temperature, and pressure, and it all happens inside a super clean and uncluttered interface. You just pick your units and enter a number for the starting figure, and it spits out the converted number at the bottom. You can also switch between the two with a single tap.

Plus, its name sounds like a Bond villain’s evil supercomputer or a new kind of Transformer, and that’s just straight awesome.

Verticon

Emergency Exit — Utilities — $0.99

If you’re like me, you never go into a new building without knowing how to leave as quickly and safely as possible. I usually apply this skill at parties, which is why I don’t get invited to very many of them. But Emergency Exit wants to use that same thinking to get people out of airports, casinos, and other public buildings in case the worst happens. It uses Indoor Google Maps and your own location to show you all the ways you can get out, including those on other floors. The app already includes 100+ sites in 12 countries, and the developer plans to keep adding more.

Emergency Exit

Cake Ideas — Food & Drink — Free

Sometimes the name of an app is a woeful understatement.

Cake Ideas doesn’t contain “ideas” so much as the most complicated baking projects I’ve ever seen. Some of the recipes contained within include lists of things you must pick up at a hardware store because the cakes in question are so badass that they have freaking skeletons. It won’t show you how to make all of them — instructions for the one shaped like a wedding gown would probably melt your phone — but if you’re planning a wedding or just like looking at fancy cakes, prepare to be impressed.

Cake Ideas

Official 100 Pushups — Health & Fitness — Free

Recently, I realized that I didn’t even want to look at myself without a shirt on. So I downloaded the new official 100 Pushups app, and it claims it can do something about this whole … situation I have going on here. It’s a six-week program with three sessions per week, and it will send you reminders so you don’t “forget” to exercise. First you show it how many pushups you can do, and then it assigns you to a Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced program. Somehow, I’m not so out of shape that I didn’t qualify for the Advanced tier.

…ladies.

Official 100 Pushups

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a map of the moon, a big green button, and a diary for your dog.

Here you go:

Dog Diary — Lifestyle — Free

Dog Diary is an app that helps you keep track of all the people and events in your canine friend’s life. You can store important, pet-related contacts, expenses and photos. You can also create entries for multiple animals to keep everything organized. It’s an address book, a photo album and a bookkeeping program all in one. You can also track measurements like body temperature, provided you’re not shy about pulling out your phone as soon as the vet pulls out the thermometer.

I’m still waiting for an app that will walk the little guy for me once it gets snowy out, but we might need a robot for that.

Dog Diary

Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free

Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page.

It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari and it covers information for TVs, computers, cameras, software and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.

Mobile Support by Sony

Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99

If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.

Moon Chart

TimeStamp — Productivity — Free

I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.

My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.

TimeStamp

TimeStamp — Productivity — Free

I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.

My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.

TimeStamp

Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99

If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits, and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.

Moon Chart

Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free

Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page. It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari. It contains information for TVs, computers, cameras, software, and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.

Mobile Support by Sony