by Amanda Huhman
Thanks to skilled developers and the advancement in technology, we now have an app for almost everything. Even a few of my friends got mobile apps from Vecro Tech and with the help of it have grown their business tremendously. Sharing a love for all things “app”, we are constantly sharing our latest downloads and discoveries here at the office. It becomes a competition of who can present the best new find. Being a team ranging from marketing and sales to content and design experts you can imagine the heated debates we get into. Loving everything old to new, here is a list of our favorite apps and what makes them so great (in no particular order – we could never come to a consensus on whose app “wins”):
- MyFitnessPal – Our fitness expert, Angie, endorses this one; it’s a calorie tracker that calculates your protein, carb, and fat intake. You can set weight-loss goals, connect with the community on the app, and log your workouts. It’s helpful being able to see your progress and hold yourself accountable. Angie says she adds a cookie before she eats it to see how it can throw off her whole day. It’s easy to say no to the second cupcake when you can see how quickly those calories jump up after a few sweet treats. (p.s. it’s free, no excuses!)
- VSCOcam – For the artsy individual, this is a step above Instagram. One of our interns, Kayla, was parading this one around the office. With more filters and photo editing options, this app has created a community ranging from amateur to professional photographers. You can take pictures within the app allowing you to adjust focus, light, and flash settings manually. Organize your photos on a “grid” for basic picture viewing or start a journal to provide details of your photographic endeavors. Bring out your inner photographer get weird, get creative, get VSCOcam. The best part is you can still export your edited pictures to your other social media channels.
- 8tracks – An old-school name for a new-school app. 8tracks is a music playlist app with a twist. Instead of Pandora approach of genre and band playlist only, these are organized by “vibes”, moods, locations and basically any other word you can think of. These playlists are created by other users on the app- playlists by the people, for the people. Once you create an account you can use it from any device including online. Now there’s a playlist fitting for any occasion, even for the office.
- Pocket – There’s never enough time to read those articles that pop up on Facebook scrolling across the screen on your lunch break. With no good way to save them for later, our camera roll consists of 20+ screenshots in hopes of searching the article to read later. But now with Pocket you can save those articles all in one place – even better – you can access it offline once it’s saved. Content writers and blog readers everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief now that we can save all our articles for later reading.
- IFTTT – For the developer in you, the app “If This, Then That” lets you create custom “recipes” for your everyday tasks. Want a text if it’s supposed to rain tomorrow? Program it. Getting the hang of it can be tricky. If you have problems think of any recipes yourself, IFTTT serves up premade concoctions to ease your life. It gives you suggestions like “Wedding Recipes” where you can program every picture with the same wedding hashtag to save to your Dropbox. Or put all your FitBit daily recordings into a Google spreadsheet, updated daily, automatically. There are endless ways to utilize this app, and that’s why we love it.
This is just a sampling of some of our favorite free mobile apps floating around the Internet. Try them out, and don’t forget to share your favorites with us. Here at Caledon we are always up for a lively debate or two, we’ll let you know what we think.
