I’m a big Instagram user mostly because I think it’s a cool way to share what’s going on in your life and is a breath of fresh air from reading statuses all the time. I actually just created my Vine account recently, and think it’s great for those who like to make things come to life. I’ve seen some pretty creative stuff on there like mini flipbooks or origami – all animated.

If you haven’t heard of Vine, it’s an app that allows users to record 6-second videos about, well, anything. I’ve seen inanimate objects moving from point a to b and drawings that comes to life. If you’re a public figure, you can also do a “day in the life of ___” to give followers an insight into your life. Vine is currently an age-restricted app, available to those older than 17 years old only. This is due to inappropriate videos found throughout the app. Vine is also currently available only to those on team iPhone.

Other recent apps assist us with everyday tasks like navigating, finding the latest news, or discovering new food spots.

Navigation
Waze is unlike typical GPS programs. Waze is real time traffic information posted by real people. This app will help you avoid traffic backups or accidents that other Waze users have seen or passed by, which is pretty cool in my opinion. I mean, how many times do we get stuck in traffic but we have no idea what’s holding everything up?

Music
My favorite is Shazam, which tells you what music is playing. Gone are those days where you have to Google the lyrics (that probably aren’t even accurate) just to find a song. Also, all of your “Shazammed” songs are stored as “tags” in the app, which is convenient when you’re listening to the radio for example. Other cool music apps are Spotify, which connects to the desktop software and Facebook, and of course, there’s the classic Pandora. Both are great for listening to you like and discovering songs based on what you already like.

Food
Grubhub and Seamless allow you to order food from nearby places AND have them delivered to you. How cool is that? If you want to try something new – Foursquare and Foodspotting are great apps to use for that. Not only will it show you nearby places, it will also provide you with reviews from other users so that you can have an idea of what to expect.

Daily Tasks
If you’re anything like me, you need to write down anything and everything just so that you won’t forget. Most smartphones come with a pre-installed notepad or reminder app, however if you want something a little more personal, Any.do is the way to go. It’s a task based app where you can list all of the things you need to do. They can be as general as “Organize room” or specified like “Pick up clothes from cleaners at 5pm”. Best part is the “Any.do moment” where the app goes through your list and you can change dates or cross them off as finished. Another task many of us do is gas up the car, and in these current times, many of us dread the day. But thanks to GasBuddy, it’s possible to find the cheapest gas around your current location.

With the number of apps growing on a daily basis, it’s impossible to cover them all in just one blog post. However, to give you an idea of what else is out there, you can find apps to help you with daily tasks, schedule or remind you of appointments, customize your news, and even remember where you parked your car. To find them, just check out the App Store, Google Play, or the Windows store to see which apps will work with your device.

What’s currently your favorite app?

Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester based NY web design firm specializing in SEO, social media, web and graphic design and much more.

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Here are some of our favorite cloud-based applications.

Evernote

Simply put, Evernote is the best way to keep track of and store notes on the cloud.

And because Evernote is a cloud-based application, when you save a note on one device — your iPad — and open it up on another — your Android phone — you’ll be able to make changes on the fly, add pictures or other content without having to manually update each note. So if you take a photo using your smartphone, you can then add links and other content to that note later using your desktop. Or a sound clip. Or whatever you want.

Yes, the cloud is awesome.

Do

As Do describes it, “do and it’s done.” Do is a great application for keeping track of a wide variety of tasks, from simple ones like reminding yourself to get milk, or more complex ones like tracking individual tasks on a large project across multiple users. 

Though Do is positioned as a ‘social productivity app for teams’ — it was recently purchased by Salesforce, the massive CRM-cloudware company — it is also a great tool for individuals and families.

And because it’s free, it’s simple for groups of friends or colleagues to easily communicate basic tasks between one another. Sent someone out shopping but forgot an item? Send the task to them via Do and they’ll get it on their smartphone.

Spotify

Spotify has quickly become one of the best ways to access music from your Internet-connected device, and  those who have signed up for the premium subscription service — $10 a month — have unlimited access Spotify’s massive collection of music from their mobile phone.

And it’s also a great tool for discovering new music, and listening to old classics regardless of where you are. Certainly, it is missing a few significant artists — namely, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin — but for the most part it generally has anything that you’re looking for.

And having all of that music at your fingertips is far more convenient than uploading songs individually to an iPod, and having to update it every so often in order to get new music. Not to mention the fact that the application looks beautiful in all forms — desktop, iOS, Android.

Gmail

Because of Gmail’s versatility, its cross-platform integration, and the fact that Gmail is integrated with seemingly every application ever developed, this one is easy: Gmail is the all-encompassing mail application that, more often than not, just works.

And regardless of whether you’re reading mail on your desktop, then responding to it from your smartphone, Gmail keeps track of all of those conversations for you seamlessly. (Although that’s pretty standard affair for email these days.)

Mint

Managing finances has always been a daunting task, but Mint helps simplify the entire process by allowing individuals to aggregate all of their accounts — checking, savings, investments, etc. — into one easy to manage online portfolio that they can access anywhere. Sure, it might be scary to entrust one single source with that much information, but the amount of time saved managing your different accounts and paying bills is easily worth that initial scare. (Not to mention the fact that Mint’s online database is no less secure than any bank’s online account management alternatives.)

Once you’ve started using Mint to manage your accounts, you’ll wonder how you ever managed your finances without it. The app allows you to easily update budgets, find out where you’re overspending, and to set aside money for savings all with a few clicks of the mouse, or a few taps of your finger.

Cloud computing is quickly becoming an integral part to any successful application that wants to run on a variety of different platforms, and all of these apps are great examples of how that execution should look.

What are your favorite cloud-based apps?

Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester NY web design firm specializing in SEO, social media, web and graphic design and much more.

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But it can still be a very convoluted, and often confusing place. News feeds are still full of updates and other information that I couldn’t care less about. News seems to come in torrents, and the like button often isn’t expressive enough to reflect what I often feel in regards to peoples updates.

Enter Path. Described as the, “smart journal that helps you share life with the ones you love,” in almost every way does it appear to be simpler, easier and more useful social network than Facebook. So, as opposed to sharing your information with, well, just about everyone you know, Path focuses on just those who are close to you. You can share anything from where you are, to recent photos of you and your friends, what you’re listening to and any other information that you might find pertinent to share. And although Path is mostly intended to complement Facebook and other social networks, it also might make some people forget all about them. Here are a few ways that Path aims to improve upon your social networking experience as a whole:

By Making it Simpler

On Facebook, I have over 400 friends. Not a lot, for sure. Compared to some, a pittance, even. Still, the average Facebook user certainly has over a hundred, and the average ‘power-user’, someone that attends college and is relatively socially active, easily has a few hundred.

But if you asked me how many of those people I actually communicate with on a daily basis, that number would drop down to the tens. In fact, some of my Facebook friends I probably haven’t communicated with in months and even years.

Path aims to cut down, rather significantly, on your social network by only allowing you to connect with a maximum of 150 of your friends, and ideally less. Why 150? Because that number reflects Dunbar’s Number – the maximum number of connections that any one person can maintain at one time is 150, according to anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

Path, by narrowing down your social network to the bare necessities, forces you to focus more on the quality of sharing, commenting and reflecting on your memories and ‘moments’ much more than the quantity. It is about providing a better, more finely tuned experience by minimizing the clutter that often makes it difficult to weed through the interesting and the boring on Facebook.

By Making it Smarter

Similarly, where Path has improved in overall clutter compared to Facebook, it has also significantly improved upon theuser interface. Compared to the likes of most other mobile social networking apps, especially Instagram, Path relies on a much smarter and more intuitive UI design that makes it far more conducive for sharing. In the bottom left corner is a simple button that, when clicked, introduces a host of sharing options for the user. It’s simple, looks amazing and, best of all, is remarkably intuitive (and it looks exactly like this).

By Making it Fun Again

In the years since Facebook’s conception, it seems to have lost much of the luster and flair that caused it to become such a successful and important part of the digital world to begin with.

Of course, people still use it. Partly because it is and has always been reliable (privacy issues aside), but also because all of their friends have already succumbed to the pressure of joining it. They became members back when it was new, when it was cool and when Facebooking was the talk of the town(that’s a very, right?).

But the shiny coat that initially covered Facebook and hid all of its glaring flaws has seemingly all but faded. And now, what we are left with in its wake is an old, boring way to communicate with friends. Or at least that’s the half-empty version of it.

Path aims to make social networking and communicating with friends ‘new’ again. Through its attractive UI, Path encourages users to embrace and indulge in sharing their ‘moments’. Whether those be birthday parties, a date with a significant other or just a fun time with friends, Path wants users to recall the days in which they were more concerned with sharing quality times with their close friends, than with establishing massive quantities of friends.

Path also takes Facebook’s ubiquitous ‘like’ button and injects a double-dose of awesome into it by instead changing its version of ‘like’ into emoticons. In Path, users can indicate a variety of different emotions by using one of the several options available.

The Facebook for Your Phone

But Path isn’t aiming to replace Facebook by any means. Instead, it hopes to become the go-to application for mobile communication. Whereas Facebook primarily takes place on the desktop, Path is (currently) only a mobile application. You can’t access it on your desktop, and Path wouldn’t want it any other way.

Path just wants to make your mobile sharing experience smarter, and more meaningful. After all, the mobile phone is the ideal medium through which people communicate with their close friends, so why not create a social network that reflects those connections?

And yet, there still lies the question of whether or not Path will ever catch on with mainstream users. Sure, it’s different and disruptive and cool — well, for right now it is. But it has yet to prove that people actually need a mobile social network. For now, it appears that most are already perfectly content with Twitter and Facebook.

Still, while it’s important and different, just share with me this ‘moment’. Here’s to Path.

Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester NY web design firm specializing in SEO, social media, web and graphic design and much more.

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