Articles and reviews about excellent apps

Articles and reviews about excellent apps

Apps | the 12 best travel apps

A travel pro takes you to the best apps which will make your journeys easier and more enjoyable.

By Stephanie Rosenbloom

Monk pathRecently I deleted dozens of travel apps from my iPhone. Many are great. They allowed me to research unfamiliar places, listen to audio tours and turn my photos into postcards. But travel is about tapping the world, not a screen, so I’m ending the year with an app purge. I’ve kept only what I use often. An app didn’t have to be new (most weren’t) to make the cut, but it had to make travel easier or significantly more enjoyable. Below are a dozen that have earned a spot on my smartphone heading into 2016.

monk walking down path
© photo by Gregory Mancuso

Bravolol This app brand puts basic phrases and vocabulary — “Thank you,” “How much?,” “A table for two, please” — at your fingertips. (more…)

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Apps | TED’s best apps to make your everyday life easier

You’ve likely heard about those smarties at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).  I’ve enjoyed their fine podcasts for years and now their staff has come up with the 25 best apps to help make your everyday life easier.

TED's best apps to make your everyday life easier - VSCO Cam appI’ve been using a few of the selections here and have indeed found them quite useful. The app selections cover four categories: For random life stuff, For getting around, For staying organized, For computer and email ease.

 

 

Apps to make your everyday life easier – by TED staff

At our small, fast-moving nonprofit company, everyone does a couple of jobs — and productivity apps help us manage roles that shift between coding, writing/designing and running a full-scale conference twice a year. We asked the TED staff what apps they can’t live without. And beyond the classics—Instagram, Google Maps, Spotify, Uber, Seamless—we found some great apps that might help you too.

Waze GPS, Traffic Navigation, Map – video tour

http://youtu.be/R8WKW0xeBxU

For getting around…

CityMaps2Go Pro
This app downloads offline, zoomable, searchable maps of major cities, so that even if you are roaming around Tokyo and can’t read any of the signs, you can still find your way around. “It’s good for people like me who travel internationally but don’t like to get data plans,” says Thu-Huong Ha, of our editorial team.

TED's best apps to make your everyday life easier - Couch to 5k app
TED’s best apps to make your everyday life easier – Couch to 5k app

Word Lens
Another great app for travelers, Word Lens visually translates printed text into your language in real time. When you snap a photo of a sign or document, it shows the image to you in English. “It’s crazy,” says Kyle Shearer of our Events Workgroup. “The translations are not always 100%, but it’s good enough to get by on.” Hello, food menus. (more…)

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Apps | better smartphone typing is a tap away

Touch-screen phones have become very good at some tasks but there is one feature that they still struggle to get right–the keyboard. Here are some apps and some setting tweaks to assist your fingers.

Apps, tweaks, techniques to make smartphone typing easier, faster, more accurate

Touch-screen phones have become so astonishingly good at some tasks they have all but replaced landline phones, pocket cameras and printed maps. But there is one feature that they still struggle to get right — the keyboard.

The flexibility of the full touch screen has won out over tactile, physical buttons, leaving us with a keyboard that is just an image on glass and small keys that sometimes get cranky around big thumbs.

Fleksy App – features video

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Apps | 8 excellent apps to make you a better reader

Eight excellent apps that’ll help you improve your reading ability and become a better literary citizen, while simultaneously boosting your brain function.

Apps to Make You a Better Reader - InstapaperHow many books did you read last year? If your answer is more than one, congratulations: you’re more well-read than about 25% of Americans over age 16, according to a 2012 Pew Internet survey. Ironically, as we become more surrounded by words in the digital age, less of us are finding time to actually read them. The good news is that your smartphone or tablet can help.

Trying to stray from the obvious reading apps, like e-readers, we’ve gathered eight excellent apps that’ll help you improve your reading ability and become a better literary citizen, while simultaneously boosting your brain function. Whether you’d like to read more, faster or some combination of the two, these apps will light your path to wisdom.

by Max Knoblauch

1. Instapaper

Apps to Make You a Better Reader - Instapaper
Apps to Make You a Better Reader – Instapaper

Similar to apps like Pocket, Instapaper allows you to save and download web text for offline consumption. The app reformats the text you give it, giving it a cleaner, easier-to-read lay out and allowing you to focus on the important part: the words.

2. Syllable

Apps to Make You a Better Reader - syllable
Apps to Make You a Better Reader – Syllable

Try reading this paragraph while repeating the ABC’s out loud. You’ll find that you’re reading much faster than normal. This is because you’re suppressing your natural subvocalization, or the internal repetition of words you’re currently reading. In short, Syllable helps you learn to speed read. You choose the text and it does the rest for you, leaving your pacing and grouping fully customizable. (more…)

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Apps | Facetune easily improves your look in mobile photos

The Facetune app lets users remove blemishes, diminish dark circles, smooth skin and create many effects that normally take considerable Photoshop training to master.

Apps-Facetune for iPhone, iPad, iPod improves mobile photos easily with pro-like tools,tFacetune by Roy Furchgott

One reason celebrities look so polished in photos is that there are Photoshop artists to smooth every wrinkle, minimize every pore and erase every blemish. The rest of us? We have to live with poorly lighted mobile phone selfies. An app called Facetune helps you look your Hollywood best, even in photos taken on mobile phones.

Facetune app how-to video


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