Tag Archives: apps

What’s the perk to owning a iPhone… Apps!

One of the best things about owning an iPhone is that you get a lot of the newest apps first before they arrive on Android. It may not be fair, but it’s a great perk for iPhone users. That means there’s always something new to try. You can enjoy exclusive apps from Instagram, cutting-edge photography apps, and even an app that will tell you the exact minute it’s going to start raining.

Manual ($1.99) lets you open up the hood of your iPhone’s camera, giving you full independent control of advanced settings like shutter, ISO, white balance, focus, and exposure compensation.

You don’t have to pay any commission fees when you use Robinhood (Free), a stylish new trading app that’s backed by Marc Andreessen and Snoop Dogg. You can access market data and quotes in real-time, and Robinhood makes it easy to stay on top of your portfolio with its Apple Watch app and iPhone widget that you can check from your lock screen.

Fresh Air (Free) is a stunning new weather app that emphasizes visuals with its minimalist weather graph. You can scroll forward in time to see how the weather will be in the future, and it also connects to your calendar app to give you forecasts on upcoming appointments.

Vesper ($9.99) is a note-taking app that takes a lot of the hassle out of organizing your thoughts. You can easily tag each entry so you can search for a specific thought by keyword later, and all your notes will be synced to your Vesper account, free of charge.

Until recently, to create smooth time-lapse videos, you needed expensive tripods and stabilization gear. Luckily, Hyperlapse (Free) from Instagram uses its image-stabilization techniques to smooth out shaky footage, and the results are impressive. It’s great for capturing sports moments, car rides, weather, crowds, and journeys on foot.

Product Hunt (Free) has evolved to become Silicon Valley’s go-to list of rising startups and apps, and there’s now a games category as well. The app allows you to follow startup founders, view curated collections, post new products on the fly, and download apps directly while browsing.

Litely (Free) is a powerful photo app for adding subtle filters to your photos, giving them a film-like tone. You can tap the screen with two fingers to see what your photo looked like before adding any presets, and the app’s non-destructive editing features means you never have to worry about losing your original.

Dark Sky ($3.99) does one thing very well: It tells you exactly when inclement weather, like rain or snow, is going to happen. The app is beautifully designed and features a precipitation timeline that lets you know minute-by-minute predictions for when you can expect rain.

Timeful (Free) is an intelligent calendar app mixed with a to-do list. The app’s algorithm learns how you get stuff done and smartly suggests ways to build new habits and get things taken care of, all on your own terms. Google recently acquired Timeful to incorporate its technology into new products, but you’ll still be able to continue using the app.

Clear ($4.99) is one of the simplest ways to keep track of what you need to do. You can easily drag and re-order your to-dos, and adding a new item is as easy as pulling down your list and typing it in. When you’re done with a task, just swipe right.

Pedometer++ (Free) is perfect for viewing your daily activity and fitness goals with a quick glance. There’s two quick ways to check your daily progress: You can swipe down and see the Pedometer++ widget in your iPhone’s Notification Center, or you can check the tiny red badge on the app icon, which displays your current steps.

Reddit, the so-called “front page of the internet,” is an ever-changing ecosystem of interesting articles, pictures, and discussions, but it’s notoriously messy to browse on your smartphone. Alien Blue (Free) fixes that, wrapping Reddit’s content into an eye-catching design that brings to focus the essentials information like photos, post titles, and comments.

Storehouse (Free) makes it easy to snap pictures and format them into a beautiful and smart layout that lets you tell a story. The Storehouse Newsfeed also features great curated content, and it’s a great place to discover picture-based narratives from talented photographers.

Moleskine’s new calendar app, Timepage ($4.99), is both beautiful and simple to use. The app organizes your appointments in list — there’s no month view — and it also incorporates weather forecasts and lets you quickly hail an Uber right from within the app.

Los Angeles hottest startups that you want to watch

In today’s ever changing word new companies can “pop up” and change the way we do simple tasks in business extremely fast. The key to constantly be on the lookout for the latest and greatest startups. In this article I’m going to talk about some of Los Angeles hottest startups that you may want to watch.

Launching first in Los Angeles, Workpop hopes to target the 76 million hourly workers in the U.S., most of whom don’t have detailed resumes or work histories online. For them, the platform is designed to simplify the process of creating an application by importing education and work info from Facebook and LinkedIn, setting up a profile and recording a video introduction to help employers screen them. They can even provide hourly availability if they have child care needs or work another job.

On the hiring side, Workpop provides tools to enable businesses to easily create job listings by filling out requirements, job descriptions, and information about the workplace. Since many of these jobs have a high turnover rate, businesses can reuse listings after they’re taken down if a similar job becomes vacant again.

The platform is designed to improve the process for both sides. Businesses can see how many applicants they’ve received for each jo b, as well as where those applicants are in the process of hiring. The platform is also designed to help with onboarding if a hire is made, and if not, recruiters can give honest feedback to applicants.

honk HONK is an on-demand mobile app for tow, tire change, jump start, fuel and lock out services from more than 20,000 tow trucks nationwide 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. HONK’s faster ETAs and “Guaranteed Never to Exceed” prices, which start at just $49 without membership fees or limitations, offer motorists an alternative to outdated membership-based motor clubs. The HONK app is free to use and available on iOS, Android, or the web. HONK was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.

HONK connects drivers in need with the right level of roadside assistance at the best price, which helps keep service costs down. The app helps drivers get fast, reliable service for automotive issues like 365 emergency response, car accident response, dead batteries, flat tires, flatbed tow, and vehicle lock-outs.

When you drive, you know that things can go wrong at any time. It’s smart to have a plan in place for accessing help with major and minor auto problems. Up till now the existing model for getting help does not work very well for drivers some drivers. The current system is arguably slow, has not adapted to new technology, and makes drivers wait a long time for needed assistance. With HONK’s pay-on-demand model, you only pay for the services you use when you use them. This app has the potential to put their competition in a challenging spot.

acorns Investing is complicated. Acorns is not. The app from California-based father-son team Walter and Jeff Cruttenden aims to take the anxiety, deliberation, and intimidation out of investing by boiling it down to a matter of cents. The company, which just released its app on Android in addition to the existing iPhone version (available in the US only), was founded in 2012 and has raised $9 million in three rounds of funding.

Here’s how Acorns works: You connect as many debit or credit cards as you’d like along with a checking account, and the app rounds every purchase made on those cards up to the next dollar, investing the difference in low-cost exchange traded funds. For example, if you spend $10.49 on lunch, that remaining 51 cents is invested. It doesn’t sound like much, but Acorns says that its current users invest $30 to $180 a month in “round ups” alone. Acorns Users can invest their round-ups manually or automatically.

You can also choose to invest larger sums of money directly from your checking account, or set up automatic deposits on a regular basis. No matter how much a user invests, they can use the app to estimate how much their money will grow in future years. This app looks to appeal to the millennial generation, an age group that is mostly untouched in the investing area which could should to be very profitable.

Spring Cleaning for your smartphone?

Spring cleaning is for more than just your home. Even mobile devices can benefit from an annual cleanup. In this article I will talk about how clean out those “cobwebs” in your phone increasing productivity, security, and time management.

It is extremely important to make updates and upgrades to your mobile devices. When it comes down to it if you are behind on your operating system in your phone you are missing out on a lot of security opportunities and enhancements especially if you are an iOS user. iOS typically releases an update every few months which are small and have smaller features. Without downloading these upgrades and updates you really lose a lot of the functionality on the device as they continue to upgrade and release new features. With Android phones if they were purchased more than two years ago they may have a difficult time being able to run the latest Android version. Samsung and some other third party smartphone may not even support the latest Android operating system. These are great things to think about and insure you are taking care of at least periodically and spring is the perfect time to do that.

In today’s market were apps and information can be downloaded in the click of a button and easily left in the “back of the closet” it is important to use this time of year to delete unwanted apps and clear junk data from your devices. Insuring the only things you have on your device are apps and information that you access on a daily basis can dramatically improve the performance on your phone. Each of these apps especially with Android can or could be running in the background which will take up CPU, memory and storage space on both Android and iOS. This can also drain your battery faster and leave you with a “brick” instead of a useful device. Here are some questions you should ask about the unwanted apps on your mobile devices:

Are they constantly communicating to the outside world?
Are they asking for updates?
Are they running advertisements?
Are they excessively using up my data?
What documents have people taken onto their device with the app? What exposure do they open up for the company?

It is a good idea for anyone who uses there phone business and pleasure to organize it. For many business people the whole point of their phone is so they can use them for everything in their life. A great way to separate work from pleasure is to secure and isolate your corporate data from your personal apps and information. For example if you are a user of Dropbox, you do not want your personal account taking your corporate information and moving it over to Dropbox. You do not want your corporate emails accidentally sent through your personal Gmail or other personal email account.

It is important to use the very best apps to increase productivity. Apps are increasingly becoming sources of corporate security weaknesses due to poor data storage practices, malware, unauthorized access, lack of encryption, and data leaks from syncing. For corporations it is important to use Mobile Application Management system. With a Mobile Application Management system you can receive protection for your corporate apps. You reduce the risk of sensitive data leakage, you’re provided with on-device access control and compliance, you can perform selective wipe on apps, provided with administrative controls and graphical reports. If this is not a viable option for you, here are some tips you should you when downloading apps for business use:

Avoid questionable apps
Research, research, research
Make sure the App offers user support

Keeping mobile operating systems and apps up to date is easy enough for even non-technical consumer users. It just has to be made a habit, much in the way spring cleaning is a habit in many homes. Now use this time to go clean up some mobile devices.