The 1st app of Christmas that Sonja Thompson\r\ngave to you is a shopping app called Grocery iQ.
For those of you who know me, it should come as no surprise\r\nthat my all-time favorite app is Grocery iQ. I’m a foodie, and I use it more\r\nthan any other app on my Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD. You can download it on\r\nyour PC, Android\r\ndevice, or iPhone/iPad.\r\nThe best part is that it’s absolutely free.
\r\n
Here are some of Grocery iQ’s features:
\r\n
\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n
\r\n
The ability to synchronize lists across multiple devices and\r\nshare lists with other users is what makes Grocery iQ especially useful in my\r\nhousehold. If you check \u201cmilk\u201d off the list and then sync the update, you can\r\nfinally avoid duplicate shopping efforts and having to make room for two\r\ngallons of milk in your refrigerator. Likewise, if you’re at the store,\r\nchecking off items on the list as you place them in the cart, you’re able to\r\nimmediately receive new entries from other users you share a list with. That\r\ncertainly helps avoid holiday disasters, like finding out after you’ve already\r\ngotten home that you’re running low on peppermint mocha coffee creamer.
\r\n
I used to make actual grocery lists, with a pen and a piece\r\nof paper, but Grocery iQ has simplified my shopping life with this one little\r\napp. Don’t wait to find this app in your stocking. Download it on your device\r\ntoday, and see if it doesn’t immediately become one of your main go-to apps.
The 2nd app of Christmas that Deb Shinder gave to you is a fitness app called RunKeeper.
I try to keep my eating under control, but I don’t want to\r\nsit around crunching carrots while everyone else is indulging in eggnog and\r\nseven-layer chocolate cake. I’ve found the best way to minimize the holiday\r\nweight gain is to increase my exercise quota. And naturally, being the techie I am, I turn to the latest technology to\r\nhelp motivate me to do that.
\r\n\r\n
One of my favorite ways burn some calories and at the same\r\ntime spend some quality time with my \u201cbabies\u201d — my three Japanese Chin \r\ndogs — is to go for walks through the neighborhood. And my Galaxy Note 2\r\n (soon to be\r\nreplaced by a Note 3) with its built-in GPS is the perfect gadget to \r\nkeep\r\ntrack of how far and how fast I’ve walked and how many calories I used \r\ndoing\r\nit.
There are a number of Android apps that you can\r\nuse to track your workouts. I picked RunKeeper because it’s simple yet offers\r\nmany features that I wanted. It’s available for both Android and the iPhone. The app and\r\nbasic service are free, but you can also upgrade to \u201cRunkeeper Elite\u201d for $5/month or\r\n$20/year. Elite gives you extra features, such as\r\nmore advanced reports and the ability to broadcast the activity in real time on\r\nsocial media (with the free service, you can share the activity report after\r\nit’s completed).
You’ll need to set up an account and configure a few\r\nsettings first, including language (English, French, Japanese, German,\r\nPortuguese, Italian or Spanish), distance units, display options, sharing\r\nsettings, and a few more. One of the most important is audio cues. The nice\r\nthing about the app is that it talks to you — telling you when you’ve gone a\r\ncertain distance or have been walking for X number of minutes. You can select\r\nexactly what the it tells you and how often. I have mine set up\r\nto report every 10 minutes and tell me the time I’ve been walking, distance\r\nwalked, and my average speed.
Another important setting is Auto-Pause. If you turn this on\r\n(it’s disabled by default), when the GPS shows that you’ve stopped, it \r\nwill\r\npause the time count. This is useful if you stop for a few minutes on \r\nyour walk to chat with a neighbor or let your dog do its business. \r\nWithout Auto-Pause, your time keeps\r\naccumulating so that your overall average speed will fall and be \r\nincorrect in\r\nregard to your actual walking speed. You can also pause the app manually\r\n at any\r\ntime.
\r\n\r\n
RunKeeper allows you to connect your account to Facebook and/or Twitter and\r\nset sharing settings to control who can see the maps and reports of your\r\nactivity that the app generates. You can make these visible to everyone,\r\nfriends only, or just yourself.
\r\n\r\n
You can use the app for many different types of activities,\r\nfrom the most mundane (walking, running, cycling) to the more exotic\r\n(cross-country skiing, mountain biking, snowboarding).
If you choose walking or running, you can then select a\r\nsaved route or just start walking without one. Touch Start Activity and start exercising.
You can log on to the web site with your computer to access\r\nyour activities and settings and also to interact with other RunKeeper users.\r\nYou’ll see a news feed there of your RunKeeper friends’ activities that they\r\nchoose to share, and you can edit your profile and set exercise goals.
With the Elite service, you can also get reports showing\r\ngraphs of activity duration and calories burned over a time frame, as well as\r\nadvanced fitness reports that track your nutrition, sleep, strength, weight, and\r\nbody fat percentage.
\r\n\r\n
I’ve been using RunKeeper for almost three years and have\r\nfound the free service to be all I need. It’s reliable, keeps track of my walks, and helps motivate me to stay in shape.
The 3rd app of Christmas that Donovan Colbert gave to you is FlightTrack by Mobiata.
If you travel by air a lot or coordinate with family,\r\nfriends, or business associates who do, FlightTrack by Mobiata for Android and iOS smart\r\ndevices is an essential app to add to your library.
\r\n
With FlightTrack, you simply enter the airline and flight\r\nnumber you’re interested in, and you’ll be provided a nearly live stream of\r\nall the pertinent data you might desire on any given flight.
\r\n
I use this app most often to track my wife when she flies on\r\nbusiness, because I’m a nervous flyer, even when I’m not the one in the air.\r\nThe real time flight info shows altitude, airspeed, and even if the plane is\r\nencountering inclement weather or diverting around storms.
On a recent flight with Wi-Fi, I was able to connect and track\r\nmy flight’s position in the air. I find comfort in knowing where I’m at \r\nrather than looking out of a window and guessing what state I’m\r\nseeing below.
It also takes a lot of the guesswork out of being ready to meet\r\nan expected traveler on arrival at the airport. Although the FCC \r\nsupposedly\r\ndelays the feeds by as much as 15 minutes, I’ve found that when I see a \r\nplane\r\nland on my device, my wife generally calls me almost immediately to let \r\nme know that she’s arrived. I spend far less time in \u201cCell Phone Parking\r\n Lots,\u201d waiting in\r\nthe dark for an expected arrival to land and call me to pick them up.
\r\n
Additional features of FlightTrack include a menu that allows you to find\r\nalternative flights, call your booking airline, and log a journal of your\r\nexperiences on the flight. You can save frequent flights and have them ready to\r\nview as soon as you launch the app.
FlightTrack is by no means the only app in this crowded field — and Mobiata\r\nincludes a Pro version with even more features — so, I’d encourage you to\r\nexperiment to find the app in this category that works best for you. Personally, I’ve been\r\nvery happy with the performance and features of FlightTrack.
The 4th app of Christmas that Bill Detwiler gave to you is a business app called CalenMob.
As a Google Apps for Business user who carries a personal iPhone, managing my mobile calendar has always been problematic. Google Sync will link my iOS and Google calendars, but using this method has a few known bugs.\r\n I can use Safari to access my Google Calendar, but again, this method \r\nhas several drawbacks, most notably the lack of pop-up, visual, and \r\naudio meeting alerts. That’s where CalenMob steps in.
CalenMob (free) and CalenMob Pro ($6.99\r\n USD) from Blue Tags gives you the functionality of the Google web \r\ncalendar and on-screen meeting alerts (along with SMS and email \r\nnotifications) of the native iOS Calendar. It can also be used offline.
The free version of CalenMob is ad supported. Because I use the app \r\non a near daily basis, I decided to purchase CalenMob Pro that doesn’t \r\nhave ads.
The interface is clean and navigation is intuitive. CalenMob provides a variety of calendar views, including month, week, day, list, etc.
The processes of creating a new meeting, editing an existing meeting, and scheduling recurring events are relatively straightforward. If you’ve used other calendars and mobile apps, you should have no trouble with CalenMob.
The 5th app of Christmas that Teena Hammond gave to you is MyFitnessPal!
One\r\nof the best apps, particularly for the new year with its plethora of diet\r\nresolutions, is MyFitnessPal. This free app is available\r\nfor Windows, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android.
\r\n
I’ve\r\nbeen using MyFitnessPal online for four years, and I added the app to my iPhone\r\ntwo years ago. The app is one of the best ways to keep track of food intake and\r\nexercise, and I use it much more frequently than the full online version. MyFitnessPal\r\nhas a database of the nutritional value of more than 3 million foods, so you\r\ncan either type in a food by name, or you can scan a barcode of the item you’re\r\neating to automatically plug it into your daily journal.
\r\n
Every\r\ntime you log in, it shows you your weight loss or exercise total since your\r\nlast visit. Admittedly, there is a guilt factor involved, because if more than\r\na few days have passed since your last log in, it notes the absence.
\r\n
There’s\r\nsomething about knowing that everything you eat must be accounted for that\r\nmakes losing weight easier. And does it work? It definitely does. I’ve lost 85\r\nlbs. since I started using MyFitnessPal. That’s an entire fifth grader. And the\r\napp makes it easy to keep weight off — every dieter’s Achilles’s heel — since,\r\nagain, everything is easily tracked.
There\r\nare options for entering body measurements and weight, and reports are\r\navailable to see how you’ve done over the past week, month, year, or longer. It’s\r\nalso ideal for setting goals, and your daily intake can be customized with\r\nspecific amounts, such as whether you want to increase your protein or reduce\r\ncarbs and fats.
The 6th app of Christmas Will Kelly gave to you is the champion app called Evernote.
Evernote is a very popular app that’s available for Android, the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone. They offer both a free version and a Premium product that costs $5.00 a month/$45.00 a year. I’ve been using Evernote\r\nsince the early days, and I’ve watched it transform from just a note-taking app\r\ninto a product line tailored to help people collect and remember information.
\r\n
Since getting my first PC, I’ve always been better organized\r\nelectronically than with hardcopy, so I truly fit the Evernote user\r\ndemographic. Evernote is where I keep ideas, notes, and research for my\r\nTechRepublic posts, corporate client work, and my personal projects.
The Evernote Web Clipper and Clearly make it easy for me to capture articles and\r\nblog posts for later reference. I especially like being able to drag-and-drop\r\nWord documents and Adobe PDF files into Evernote.
Because I’m a Premium user, I can search inside PDFs, Word\r\ndocuments, and even screen images I save in Evernote. Another bonus is being\r\nable to create offline notebooks so I can refer to information on my iPhone or iPad on\r\nthe rare times I’m not on Wi-Fi.
\r\n
Evernote lets you set up notebooks to better organize your\r\nnotes. I use synchronized notebooks for client work, so I can access the\r\ninformation in the cloud and across my devices. I create notebooks to organize\r\nnotes for particular projects. I then use notebook stacks (an Evernote feature\r\nfor grouping notebooks) across various parts of my professional and personal\r\nlife.
\r\n
Recently, I’ve been relying more on tagging to organize the\r\ncontent I capture and my notes, because I found myself creating too many\r\nnotebooks over time.
The Evernote app is running on all of my Macs, PCs, iPhone,\r\niPads, and Android tablets to ensure that my notes and research are \r\nalways accessible. I regularly take notes using Evernote on the Mac \r\nduring client meetings.\r\nMy preference is to keep the formatting in my notes simple. However, \r\nEvernote\r\nlets me format notes using bold, italics, and other options you’d expect\r\n to\r\nfind in a word processor. Using Evernote on my iPhone lets me take \r\npictures of\r\nwhite board drawings and save them directly into Evernote for later \r\nreference. Evernote\r\nhas allowed me be a paperless note taker after years of jotting down \r\nmeeting and\r\ninterview notes on yellow legal pads.
\r\n
I highly recommend Evernote if you have project notes spread\r\nout across folders, cloud accounts, and apps, and you want to centralize all of your\r\nnote-taking for sanity sake and easy reference.
The 7th app of Christmas Erik Eckel gave to you is a social app called Twitter.
Whenever I purchase a new gadget — be it a desktop, laptop,\r\ntablet, or smartphone — Twitter\r\nis inevitably the first app I load.
\r\n
Am I so narcissistic that I must Tweet, without delay and upon\r\nevery device I wield? No. The ability to post status updates for friends,\r\nfamily, and followers isn’t that overwhelming. Let’s be honest. I don’t live\r\nthat exciting a life or one that prompts others to remain riveted to my Twitter\r\nmusings. I’m just not that compelling.
\r\n
Instead, Twitter’s attraction is contained within its revolutionary capacity to immediately and concisely disseminate information. The app has\r\nreally changed my life and the way I consume news and information that I can’t\r\nthink of a more important technology, other than email, that possesses a greater\r\nimpact on my life — that is, since I replaced my Smith Corona Coronet XL with a word processor.
\r\n
From empowering technology solutions in the workplace to assisting first responders to playing a pivotal role in historic events, Twitter has changed the way news and\r\ninformation flow. Twitter proves the old mantra, \u201cinformation wants to be\r\nfree,\u201d is true. The social media platform essentially enables instant\r\nmessaging to an unlimited number of followers from a myriad number of locations\r\nwherever someone with a Twitter account might be present.
\r\n
Twitter communications, themselves simplistic 140-character\r\nmessages, receive an extraordinary distribution assist due to two factors. The\r\nfirst is re-tweeting, which enables members to distribute others’\r\ncommunications to one’s own collection of followers. The second is hashtags,\r\nwhich permits users to associate communications around topics and\r\nevents using specific keywords. Hashtags then make it possible to search for\r\nand identify all communications occurring worldwide that focus on a single topic\r\nor event.
\r\n
My son and I were among the first of tens of thousands of\r\nNASCAR attendees to learn the event was being postponed, thanks to Twitter.\r\nWhile tens of thousands stood confusedly in a prolonged rain shower, we headed\r\nto the parking lot, secure in the knowledge that the event was being\r\npostponed until the following morning.
\r\n
I’ve received critical weather information updates, followed\r\ncountless breaking news stories, collected much industry-related \r\nknowledge, won\r\na helpful O’Reilly Knoppix Linux guide, saved considerable sums from \r\nlearning about targeted flash sales, discovered a favorite band was \r\ncoming to town (enabling\r\nme to obtain seats to the sold-out show), and more using Twitter. The \r\nsocial\r\nmedia app has also helped me stay in touch with colleagues as they move \r\nto new\r\npositions and cities, service my clients, and obtain seeming inside\r\ninformation for a number of hobbies.
\r\n
Best of all, Twitter is free. No for-pay subscription\r\naccount is required. Further, the service is infinitely customizable in that\r\nyou can follow Tweets from a vast variety of accounts however you wish and\r\naccess it whenever you want, catching up on missed Tweets as time permits.
\r\n
Whether you leverage the service’s web site, which enables\r\nreviewing and searching Twitter feeds as well as posting tweets, or Twitter’s iOS,\r\nAndroid, Nokia, BlackBerry, or Windows phone apps, corresponding tablet\r\niterations, or Mac, Windows 8, or TweetDeck apps, the programs are free. The apps can\r\nbe found on Twitter’s web site and within most every vendor’s respective app store.
\r\n\r\n
\r\nSo, what are you waiting for? If you don’t have a Twitter account, now is\r\nthe time to try it. And if you already use Twitter, take a moment to really\r\nstop and reflect. What passions, interests, and topics truly motivate you? Have\r\nyou taken time to search Twitter and follow corresponding Twitter feeds that you may\r\nhave overlooked? When considering the accounts to follow, think of the past\r\ntimes, sports, products, beliefs, charities, books, films, art, authors, manufacturers,\r\nmagazines, web sites, radio broadcasts, podcasts, newspapers, travel\r\ndestination,s and services that bring you the most joy and fulfillment, then get\r\ncracking. You may just find new accounts to follow that begin changing the way\r\nyou live your life too.
The 8th app of Christmas Jason Hiner gave to you is a handy app called TripIt.
I love Tripit. This free app is available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7 — and it’s by far the best\r\napp I’ve found for keeping track of travel itineraries.
TripIt is powered by some\r\nexcellent backend systems. You simply forward your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com (or use the Gmail plugin to\r\ndo it automatically) for your flights, hotels, rental cars, and more and it\r\nautomatically organizes them into trips.
The TripIt app is one of the most useful travel tools that I’ve used, as it stores all of your flight details and confirmation\r\nnumbers so that you have that information right at your fingertips.
The 9th app of Christmas Jack Wallen gave to you, the Nova Launcher Prime home screen.
Whenever I get a new Android device, one of the first things\r\nI do is install the Nova Launcher Prime for $4.00 (USD) — and it’s worth every penny. Why? First\r\nand foremost, it’s one of the cleanest Android launchers you’ll find. If you’re\r\na big fan of a minimalist home screen (that still offers plenty of features),\r\nyou’ll love Nova.
The Nova Launcher Prime feature list includes:\r\n
And much more.
The 10th app of Christmas Mary Weilage gave to you is a useful app that’s simply called Zite.
Zite is the app I\r\nhave recommended most to others. Why? Because this free news app is an\r\nefficient way for me to peruse the latest content from a vast array of sources\r\non topics that I choose or that falls under one of the Zite preset categories,\r\nsuch as Arts & Culture and World News, in one handy list.
When you select and look at a piece of content\r\nfrom Your Top Stories stream, you can vote it up or down; you can share it via\r\nemail, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Evernote, Instapaper, or\r\nPocket; you can copy it; and you can open it in a browser.
The vote/up down action triggers the app to display related topics as suggestions that you can choose to add to your stream. In most stories I’ve seen, you also have the option to increase or decrease the text size and block that particular source.
Zite’s other nice features include the following:
\r\n\r\n
The folks at Zite claim this personalized\r\nmagazine-style app learns from your reading choices to better match what\r\ncontent to serve you. I have never seen content in my feed that doesn’t fit my\r\nchosen preferences, so this functionality appears to work as advertised.
\r\n
My only very minor frustration in previous\r\nversions of the app was that I couldn’t access content in multi-page articles\r\nbeyond page one from within the app. It appears this issue has been resolved.
\r\n
I think the fact that I only have one quibble to\r\nreport after using it for a year and a half speaks to the quality of the app.
Zite is available for the iPhone and iPad (iOS 6.0 or\r\nhigher), Android (Android 2.3 or\r\nnewer), and Windows Phone (7.5 and 8).
\r\n
If you haven’t already tried Zite, I encourage\r\nyou to download the app — consider it a free gift to yourself.
The 11th app of Christmas Matt Nawrocki gave to you is an iOS app called DeskConnect.
By design, iOS devices do not have a mass storage device mode that \r\nallows you to easily copy files back and forth between your iPhone and a\r\n Mac. Fortunately, an option exists to lower the walled garden a bit \r\nwith DeskConnect.\r\n After downloading this free app, you simply sign in and pair your Apple\r\n devices together for easy content sharing, including documents and \r\nphotos.
In addition to simple file transfers between Apple devices, you can push\r\n web pages you are reading on Safari to another Safari session \r\nseamlessly, send phone numbers from your Mac to your iPhone, a street \r\naddress to Apple Maps, and so much more. Functionality is also fully extensible via AppleScript.
The 12th app of Christmas Nicole Bremer Nash gave to you a selfless app called Charity Miles.
Charity Miles is the real spirit of giving. So, if you’re looking to give an app to a friend or loved one\r\nthis holiday season, you can’t go wrong with Charity Miles. Snag their Android or Apple smartphone and\r\ndownload it for free! It incentivizes people to get moving by turning their\r\nworkouts into corporate philanthropy.
Charity Miles uses GPS tracking to measure how far a person\r\nwalks, runs, or bicycles — and then it turns that activity into charitable giving.\r\nIt’s so simple. Create your account and connect it to your favorite social\r\nnetwork. Before you head out, start the app, and select your activity and the\r\ncharity you want to donate to.
When you’re done, select Finish, then Accept\r\nSponsorship. Charity Miles posts to your connected social network account with\r\nhow far you went, a relevant message, and a “thank you” to the corporation making\r\nthe donation on your behalf. It’s just one post per workout, and it turns every\r\nworkout or jaunt to the corner store into an opportunity to give without\r\nopening your wallet. Not to mention the mega-bragging rights it creates on\r\nFacebook.
\r\n\r\n
The Android or Apple device must have a network connection in order for the app to\r\nwork. It doesn’t use many resources — I run it right along Map My Run and Zombies, Run, and my music app, and I usually have plenty of battery life leftover on my Samsung Galaxy Note II, even after long workouts.
Since the app is free, you might also consider\r\ngiving the recipient an athletic phone holder that attaches to their arm or\r\nwaist, so they can be sure to have the device with them while they go.
My name is Sonja Thompson. I've worked for TechRepublic since October of 1999, starting with the enewsletter team, then with the Premium Products group (creating books and CDs), as well as programming some of the elements on the site. After leading the Tech News team on TR, I jumped at the opportunity to switch gears and try my hand at video editing, podcasts, and other forms of multimedia on the site. I'm currently the host of the Smartphones blog, plus I edit the TR Dojo video series. \ \ I graduated from the University of Louisville. Since then, I've also completed several technology related courses from SmartPlanet. My goal is to learn about the TR community, interact with members on the site, and hopefully encourage more people to participate - and more often.
