4 of My Favorite Apps

Both iPhones and Androids have incredble mobile apps. They  have great resources and tools for living wirelessly. Try some of our favorite apps out and see what difference they make your life.

top apps

Take a look at these four of our favorite apps below.

Drafts 

We all have ideas, questions, tasks and any number of random thoughts orbiting our brains every day.  Sometimes you need a tool to quickly record these before they fade to vapor.  I found myself sticking these in task managers, to-do lists and note taking apps only to find out they didn’t belong where I first saved them.  All I really needed was a place to silo that big idea until I was ready to act.  Drafts is that app.

It could not be more simple.  You are presented with a blank canvas and a cursor.  Just start writing and act later.

  • Is that paragraph you wrote last week perfect for a future blog entry?  Save it off to DropBox.
  • Do you want some feedback on that idea you had?  Tweet it and Message it to a few friends.
  • Ready to start that home improvement project? Add it to your Reminders or Calendar.

What you write is up to you and the app provides loads of possibilities for taking your next step.

Evernote

If something proves to be worth keeping, it ends up here.

  • Notes from a recent sermon,
  • Brainstorming ideas and scribbles,
  • Code for the next development project,
  • Scans of a colleague’s business card,
  • User Manuals for the next thing that breaks in my garage,
  • etc…

Evernote can save almost anything, is available on virtually every platform, and has built in connections with an increasingly growing number of apps.

Pocket

I love to read!  I love reading blogs!  The problem is that it can become quickly overwhelming.  There is just too much and I do not have the time to read it all when I first find it.

Enter this app.  The combination of a Google Chrome extension and it’s integration in Twitteriffic allow me to quickly save off any article that I do not have time to read now or want to keep for later.  The app also has hooks in loads of other places that may serve you and your workflow.

An added bonus is that Pocket will strip away all the ads and extra web content surrounding the article.  This leaves you with just the text to enjoy.

Next step…Create an app that gives me more time in the day to read.

Twitteriffic

If you are serious about Twitter, you owe it to yourself to look outside the stock Twitter app for 3rd party alternatives.  I have tried a bunch and none have reached my self-imposed app snob standards of features and design.

You’ll find all of the standard retweet, @ reply, favorite and list functions.

What sets it apart are a few extras that get thrown in:

  • Managing multiple Twitter accounts and seamlessly bouncing back and forth between them.
  • The user experience is implemented in ways that make the app playful and fun to use.
  • Muffling that guy you follow who decides to live tweet his second cousin’s Bat Mitzvah.  I love what you say much of the time, but tonight you are trolling my feed.

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Josh Quirey is a software developer in Indiana who also helps oversee social media for his local church. Find him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jquirey.

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