January 13, 2015

The Hottest Apps For 2015 (And Some That Will Just Make Your Life Easier)

By Erica Hendry

From tracking hanging picture frames to tracking your steps,  there’s an app for just about anything these days.

So where should you start? We asked the experts joining us for our Jan. 13 show on the future of apps to weigh in. Here are their suggestions, along with others from the Kojo team:

  • Evernote and Scanable: You thought you mastered note taking. But then again, you haven’t downloaded these apps.
  • Hiku: If grocery shopping is a chore, try this: A bar-code scanning tool to create shopping lists
  • 1Password: We know: Too. Many. Passwords. This app keeps them in one place.
  • Mailbox App: If your device’s native email app doesn’t do it for you, this is a highly-rated alternative.
  • Avocado: Texting was so 2014. This is a two-person messaging app.
  • Photomath: Also known as a cheaper tutor, the app allows users to upload a picture of math problems and then cranks out step-by-step solutions.
  • 2048: Finally, a mashup of Sudoku and Candy Crush.
  • Heads UP : The game, created by Ellen DeGeneres, is more or less modern-day charades: There’s a word on your phone that you cannot see, but others act out for you.
  • Afterlight: Beyond the Instagram filter, this can fix your pictures in a giffy.  Go one step further with Facetune, the auto tune of photos: It’s a kind of airbrushing app to “perfect” portraits by whitening teeth, removing blemishes and even filling in bald spots.
  • 7 Minute Workout Challenge: Work out anywhere with a coach in your pocket: This app generates workouts for you.
  • Monument Valley: Turns the impossible 3D structures of Escher into a real world that is beautiful, mind-bending, hard, and fun all at the same time.
  • Sky Force: A traditional top-down “shooter,” but executed with perfect interaction, highly responsive, beautiful retina graphics, and tremendous number of levels that make it fun to start and challenging to linger.
  • Alone: A “twitch” game that lets you fly through a “cave” — and all you do is drag your thumb up or down to steer your ship up or down. But again, executed perfectly. So much better than Flappy Bird, but no more meaningful.
  • WordLens: (iOS and Android – free) – Real-time augmented reality app that lets you use your phone camera to point at text in the world (on a menu, store sign, etc.). The text is instantly replaced with the translated text in the context of the photo. Completely mind-blowing.
  • VizWiz: Lets visually impaired people take pictures of the world around them and get crowdsourced help to describe what they see.

What are your favorite apps? Share in the comments below (and tune in Jan. 13 for more even suggestions).