TECH/ APPS SPECIAL........................... APPS FOR A BETTER 2014

APPS FOR A BETTER 2014 

Some fantastic apps that will help you plan 2014, record its highlights, and even make positive changes to your lifestyle…

Diary
    Flava is a simple diary app where every entry you make is recorded with the date, day and time. Posts can be made interesting with pictures, videos and audio clips. You can add keyword tags, location-based data, a smiley for your mood, an icon for the weather, and even the name of the song you are listening to.
    Imagine: you are sipping a cappuccino at a street-side cafe on a clear winter afternoon. You take the photo of your piping-hot coffee, chocolate doughnut, and the book you’re reading. You write a few words to describe the invigorating, cool brisk air; select your mood from the ready icons, tag the entry with your location co-ordinates, and save it. The time and date are added automatically. There, you’ve captured the Flava.
    The good part is that you can sync your posts to a corresponding account on the internet; simply visit .twwwakeflava.com and log in with your password. Android, iOS | Free
Planner
   At its most basic, Evernote is the digital equivalent of your leather-bound planner: You can type your musings, attach a photo, and even annotate the snapshot. You can record audio clips, lectures and interviews; create to-do lists (complete with checkboxes); store business cards and digital documents; and even set reminders using Evernote’s calendar and alarm function.
    The app lets you attach ‘tags’ and location-based data to all your notes, making it easier to search through them.
    You can sync your account across devices, including on your Mac or Windows PC, and you can even share entries with friends and colleagues via e-mails, social networks, and messaging services.
    The more you use Evernote, the greater number of uses you’ll find for it. In fact, it even works well with a bunch of other productivity apps and add-ons, so if you haven’t tried it out yet, you can always start this New Year.
Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Phone | Free
Scrapbook
   If you’re constantly taking pictures using your smartphone, you’ll know how hard it is to keep track of all the stuff you’ve shot; and how much harder it is to find a particular picture when you’re sifting through your humongous collection for it. Flayvr to the rescue.
    The app automatically organises your photographs and videos into interactive albums based on date, location, as well as titled with information from your calendar app.
    If you don’t have any calendar entries, the album will just be titled with the date that the pictures were taken. You can, of course, rename albums, and even add or delete photos from each collection. The snapshots are then displayed album-wise in a beautiful timeline on your phone. And users can also share these interactive albums with friends through social networks and e-mail. Android, iOS | Free
Resolutions
   New Year resolves are hard to keep. Most of us start with the best intentions, but a few days – or a couple of weeks – later, the will weakens, excuses are made, and best-laid plans amount to naught. Well, Lift – Daily Motivation is an app that helps you reach your self-set targets.
    After you sign up for an account, you are asked to choose your goal. The app lists these under different categories: Fitness, Health, Productivity, Learning, et al. Under Fitness, for example, you can find Jump Rope for Beginners, Six Weeks to a Half Marathon, 10k Squats, 3 Months to a New You...
    You can also search for specific plans by keywords like ‘smoking’ for steps on how to kick the habit.
    After you join a group, the app presents you with tasks and instructions – sometimes with tutorials – that you’ll need to follow in order to meet your goals. Lift even lets you set alarms to remind you gently when it’s time for your task. You are encouraged to post notes every time you work on your plan. The app records your progress, and you can also expect members in your group to laud your efforts and motivate you. Android, iOS | Free
To-Do Lists
   Any.do is a simple to-do app that lets you plan your day and post reminders for all the chores you have to complete. After you have keyedin the jobs at hand, you can set alarms for time-bound tasks – and even move them around to plan your agenda. Any.do lets you use simple actions like drag-and-drop to reschedule events – and when you complete a task, you can mark it as done by a simple swipe of your finger. The app recognises voice commands, and it includes a superb predictive text algorithm that can complete entries even before you finish typing them. Set a reminder to contact a person from your phone’s contact list – and at the stipulated time, you can access the phone’s dialler or messaging service from within the app with a single touch. Besides, it also lets you turn missed calls into reminders.
Android, iOS, Windows Phone | Free
Calendar
   Cal – made by the developers of Any.Do – is one of the most colourful and simple to use scheduling apps. Like a wall calendar, it uses vibrant images from art, fashion, food, landscapes, animals, design, cars, architecture and illustrations as backgrounds. Open it for the first time and it prompts to connect to Facebook so it can download and sync all the birthdays of your friends and family.
    Adding reminders to the calendar is simple, and you can even append notes and location data to each entry.
    Besides, Cal syncs with Any.do and automatically takes care of your everevolving to-do list without you having to plan for the same thing twice. So if you’re looking for a pair of apps that takes care of your scheduling needs, these two should definitely be it.
    And if that’s not enough, Cal can seamlessly cloud sync with all your existing services such as Google Calendar, Exchange, Outlook, Yahoo!, AOL, iCloud, etc. Android, iOS | Free
SOME GREAT ‘ORGANISER’ TOOLS IN YOUR OS
    Every smartphone OS comes with its own set of fantastic productivity tools that will help you plan your day. Android, BlackBerry OS10, iOS, and even Windows Phone, all come with their own calendar and note-taking apps that allow you to schedule and organise your events, meetings and to-do lists.
    For most part, you can seamlessly transition from one ecosystem to the next without any hiccups too. The Windows Phone Calendar app, for instance, can be set to sync automatically with Google Calendar. These productivity apps can also mine your social network accounts for birthdays so you never miss an important event.
    For your daily scribbles, Windows Phone comes with OneNote, where all your posts will be saved and synchronised to your default personal notebook on SkyDrive. Similarly, BlackBerry has a nifty todo list manager called Remember that syncs wonderfully to work in tandem with its Calendar app. When it comes to iOS, you might want to try Apple’s Reminder and Notes app too.

Javed Anwer and Savio D’Souza  TL140105