FREE APP : 5 TIME-SAVING
GEMS FOR
YOUR SMARTPHONE
SPEND
A LITTLE TIME TO SET UP AND USE THESE APPS; SAVE A LOT OF TIME IN THE
LONG RUN.
No
matter how well you manage your time, there never seems to be enough
of it. And time is like money: sometimes you've got to spend it to
make it. Here are a handful of apps that are worth the time spent to
set them up. We'll leave money out of the equation, though: These are
all free.
1. IF YOU WANT TO SPEND LESS TIME IN THE CAR
Waze
(Android, iOS, Windows
Phone, Web)
is a must-download. The social GPS navigation
app slurps up real-time data as you're commuting and combines it
with data from other Waze users around you. You'll catch wind of
upcoming speed traps, get notified of accidents and—Waze's killer
feature—you'll be automatically rerouted to your destination along
the quickest path. There's community-sourced gas
pricing,
too, so you can fill up on the cheap.
2. IF YOU'RE BURIED IN PAPERWORK
Take TinyScan
(Android, iOS)
for a spin. It turns your smartphone into
a pocket-sized scanner, automatically detecting the edges of a
document you'd like to digitize. It'll then capture it—easy as
snapping a photo—and save it as a PDF file
on your phone, at which point you can email it to yourself (or
others), or save it to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, or Box. The
app is free but is limited to two scans kept on your phone. Delete a
document after you've emailed it or sent it to an online
drive,
though, and you can scan another.
BONUS APP!
Let's
do a 180 and go for a total time-suck. That'd be Imgur.
Home to viral pictures of the funny, cat, d'awww and animated GIF
varieties, Imgur has been app-ified in countless ways across
numerous operating
systems,
so find one you like and fire it up. You'll be stuck swiping for
hours.
3. IF YOU FIND NEWS TOO NOISY
Grab
Circa (Android, iOS).
It shrinks the day's most important stories down into phone-optimized
chunks and presents things in a straightforward, context-rich tone.
Bigger stories that take longer to play out are corralled update by
update and organized intuitively, which makes it easy to get a
bird's-eye view of a particular event if you jump in mid-stream. You
can set the app up to alert you to breaking news items, and choose
the topics you care most about to show up when you open the app.
Take an easy five minutes or so each day, and you're all caught up.
4. IF KEEPING EVERYONE IN YOUR LIFE ON THE SAME PAGE IS A FULL-TIME JOB
Make
sure your entire tribe is using Cabin (Android, iOS).
You can set up a private
social network for,
say, your family. You can live-chat one on one or with the entire
group, and quickly hone in on everyone's location so you
don't have to keep calling and texting for updates all day. And
speaking of location, you can set up location-based to-do lists.
Whoever's nearest to the dry cleaner next will get a pop-up reminder
when they get close to the store, for instance. Once the dry cleaning
has been picked up, the task can be marked as completed for all to
see. "All" being only those invited to your private
network,
of course.
5. IF YOU CAN'T KEEP ALL THOSE PASSWORDS STRAIGHT
Or
if you use the same password for everything (don't do it!), check out
Dashlane (Android, iOS, Web).
It's a password manager for mobile
devices and
desktops that keeps track of all your logins, automatically entering
your credentials as you surf. The app will automatically generate
new, super-strong passwords for you and can lock itself down if you
lose your phone. Best of all, you'll get notified of security
breaches that get reported at sites where you have accounts, and an
upcoming feature will allow you to automatically change all of your
passwords at once with a few taps.
BY DOUG
AAMOTHhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3040127/app-economy/free-app-friday-5-time-saving-apps#4?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=featured&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=12192014
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