You walk around every day with a tiny computer glued to your hand and yet the majority of us are only taking of advantage of 1/8 of the awesomeness our smartphones are capable of. Yes, I’m talking to those of you scrolling through your Instagram feed 4 times on the bus ride and seeing the same photos whiz by. (Nobody is uploading cool pics at 9:00 a.m., people.)
Check out a few of Gainesville Scene’s favorite apps (don’t worry, Tom, we already covered zerts):
Morgan’s pick – Urban Spoon
My favorite means of exploring a new place is through my taste buds. When it comes to traveling and just existing in general, they’re in control. And let me tell you, they like variety. Urban Spoon is my go to when it comes to grubbing my way through life. You’re in the mood for moderately priced Moroccan in the Lower East side of New York? Just input your culinary preferences into the app’s “Shake” feature and in seconds you’ve got a trendy spot to wine and dine for the evening. You can also access customer and critic reviews, location info, and often times, menu options. If you’re hesitant, just shake again for a new choice. Every foodie needs this app in order to survive. And no cost? Eat your heart out.
Alex’s pick – SoundHound
There are tons of “song-searching” apps out there like Shazzam or musiXmatch, but none of them do it quite as well as SoundHound. This free app allows you to record a song or piece of audio with your phone and it will tell you the song’s name. Unlike other “song searching” apps, SoundHound compares the audio sample to an actual audio library as opposed to comparing it to a text library in an attempt to find matching lyrics, meaning you’re going to look too smooth when a pal is only able to hum a song that he can’t find and SoundHound actually finds it for him just from the humming. It’s looking like Transloc isn’t going to be the undisputed king of apps in Hogtown for much longer.
Molly’s pick – Twitter (real original, I know)
True Life: I’m a habitual app ditcher. Vine? Deleted after two days. Candy Crush? I don’t have the time or data plan to support an addiction. I’m not an iPhone minimalist by choice, it’s just that Twitter has proven to be everything I need. Depending on who you choose to follow, this app can be your one stop shop for everything news, music, and culture related- it’s an app that’s completely tailored to your interests. I recommend CNN and The Huffington Post for real time news reports. Their tweets are concise and offer a direct link to the news article. Need a good chuckle? Diplo, Dillon Francis, and Tyler, The Creator will have your back. Twitter has also become a medium for instant publicity, so you’ll be the first to know about your favorite artists new releases and concert announcements. Crafting a satisfactory Twitter feed and persona takes dedication, but the effort is completely worth it.
Matt’s pick – Venmo
You’re out to dinner with your friend and you forgot your wallet. You casually turn to your friend and explain the situation and ask if he/she can spot you. Naturally, your friend says yes just like any good friend would.
Three weeks later your friend comes up to you and asks why you haven’t paid them back for the $40 tab you racked up at Swamp. Caught with your pants down and without your wallet again, you swear on your life you’ll pay them back – don’t even try to tell me this hasn’t happened to you. Well now, there’s a quick fix app to solve the ease of transferring money with NO cost to you AT ALL.
Venmo is a free application that allows for money to be transferred from one Venmo user to the next with no processing fee like Bank of America charges online or the square app does on every transaction. All you have to do is transfer X amount of dollars into your Venmo account and with the utmost ease you now have transferable money to any person in the world with the Venmo app with a click of a button. The money is derived straight from your personal bank account and is essentially your play and trade money so no more “IOU’s” or “I’ll buy your drinks tomorrow night,” you either transfer the money now or take a fuckin’ hike. With a $5,000 limit, this is the perfect app for all college students to snag up, today.
Luke’s pick – Hype Machine
There’s a lot of new music out there. I’m sure all of you have heard of hypem.com. Its a music ranking aggregator that gives you the most up to date and hyped up songs of the moment. They do this by keeping track of some of the most influential blogs on the internet and what songs they’re writing about.
When you open up the app, you’re greeted with a music chart that displays all the songs in order that Hype Machine has deemed to be popular. You’ll find everything from Drake to small unknown artists with 500 fans on Facebook.
My favorite aspect of the app is the genres tab. It allows you to pick one genre and see what songs are trending. You can press play on one song and it will play through all the songs available, which is quite a bit. Great if you want to put in your headphones and listen to the newest and most popular music without interruption.
Courtney’s pick – Flipboard
Imagine having a newspaper customized with articles of only things you cared about. With Flipboard, a free itunes app, you can get your news for the day in ten easy minutes. Flipboard essentially lets you customize your news for the day, while connecting you to not only your favorite subjects, but your favorite publications as well. That’s right, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and other publications can be posted on your personal board. As you quickly flip through each subject’s articles of the day, you can click on the ones you want to read or you can save them for another time. Possibly the best feature of this app is the ability to create your own personalized magazine through articles you find interesting. This app gives everyone an easy way to stay updated to the busy world that surrounds us. Flipboard’s subjects also venture out of the normal categories like finance, sports and politics to subjects like yoga, rock ‘n’ roll and Greek cooking! They have new articles in almost every subject so no matter what you’re into you can find something for you! This app makes it easy to stay connected and keep yourself updated. And if you ever find an article that’s just too boring, all you have to do is flip.
And for you rich and scholarly SOBs…
Daniel’s paid app recommendation – Notability ($2.99)
Paper is outdated. Be cool and download Notability. I use this for all my classes and I don’t know how I’d live without this app. Whether you like to type your notes or you’re the guy with the notebook and twenty different colored pens, Notability will condense your entire note-taking technique into one app. Too many features to even begin to describe, it has an option for every class and situation. One of my favorite features is having notes automatically synced to Dropbox, so I can study whenever I have a few extra minutes to kill. #productive
Photo courtesy of: DailyTech.com
