Technology Guides

With the year coming to a close I thought it would be good to update the my list of some of the top apps you can get for free at the Apple App Store.

Productivity

For productivity there are a ton of different apps you can get for free that would be useful. There are three that I’d point out and one that is under productivity but not as useful as you may think (still it’s a neat app so it’s worth a mention).

Expense2Go

This app is great because I can easily enter a few of my expenses as I pick them up and easily track it. I find it comes in even more use for students like me who have to borrow money and keep track of how they spend their own money. All you do is create different reports for various things and enter each expense including the date, type of expense, amount of expense and any notes that may accompany that expense.

Evernote

After registering on the site, Evernote, you can easily add notes that can be viewed on your device, your desktop or the internet. You are allowed to create text, camera, or voice notes that can be emailed as well. It is a very versatile application and I highly recommend it.

Awesome Note Lite

This app is also a note taker but it also has other features that make it a good download. It separates your notes into: My Ideas, Study, Shopping and To-Do List. I like this because it combines a to-do list and a note taking device that also includes a shopping list because I always forget to stop and buy the milk.

Writepad

If you can master this app it may be a savior if you have bad handwriting like me. It is like a small tablet PC as you just write with your finger and it translates it into text but you only write one word at a time and there is a bit of a lag so it’s not really the most practical thing.

Games

I like strategy games so I chose a couple other than Sudoku.

Airline USA

This game involves directing the different forms of aviation from their origin to their destination and making sure each of their routes don’t crash. So at the beginning you have regular planes, then you get jumbo jets which travel slightly slower, and then blimps and then jets. It’s harder than it sounds . Let me know if you beat my high score of 69.

Traffic Rush

If you can’t tell by now my love for all things transportation then this will solidify it for you. This game also involves trying to make sure the cars don’t crash. The games setting is an intersection and the cars come from all sides and you speed up and stop them to make sure they don’t crash with one another. My high score for that is 129.

I don’t spend too much time on these games so I wouldn’t at all be surprised if you beat me.

Utilities

Flashlight

By far the best app in this department is the flashlight app. It is just as bright, if not brighter than the flashlight that comes on the Sony Ericsson phones and just as good as a regular flashlight. It’s very handy and has helped me in numerous situations.

Communication

Ping

This would be my favourite app if I knew more people in my area with Apple iPod Touch’s or Apple iPhone’s. Regardless I know many people will find pinging other Apple users for free very useful.

Popularity: 42% [?]

I have been on various trips and many of them involve the airplane. I have heard of horror stories where people lose their baggage and either don’t get it until a lot later or never get it all. I remember watching the movie, Meet the Parents, and Ben Stiller loses his luggage for most of the trip. Well I too worry about that very same thing happening to me every time I go on a plane trip, those painful moments waiting to see whether your luggage is going to enter the conveyor belt. ReboundTag approached me to do a product placement and I graciously accepted because I wanted to see how it would work and if it would solve my problems. They sent me their featured product, the Microchip Bag Tag accompanied with a 3 year membership.

Now I haven’t been able to use it yet because I have yet to be on a plane trip just yet and so this is just an initial review. Now whatever the company may say, airport security in various airports across the world have a mind of their own and so when they see this tag, they may just snip it just like they did to one of our pieces of luggage because they didn’t recognize our lock. They also snipped the zippers which makes no sense but that’s airport security for you.

The basic overview of this product is you receive the tag, register it on their website and change the description of your luggage that it will be attached to and your travel itinerary and this can be updated on the go on their website. You can also choose to be anonymous which means that airlines or other people can only send you messages about where your luggage is.

Later I will update you on how this product fairs when I put it through its paces.

Popularity: 15% [?]