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I love movies. In fact, I used to write about movies all the time on my personal website before that writing started landing me freelance work. As a single male and an aspiring screenwriter, I love movies so much that I’m practically dating my film collection. (Note to self: That could explain why I’m single. I should look into that.)
My problem is that my film watching has always been inherently isolating. I tend to watch movies alone because most people I know don’t share my taste: I enjoy hidden gems like Brian de Palma’s Blow Out more every single viewing, but I could skip movies like Pain & Gain altogether (and do). It’s hard for me to find people with similar taste, but Limelight has a solution: it’s making my movie watching social. (more…)
Collaboration is a tough nut to crack. Even on the web and the desktop, frictionless collaboration with a team hasn’t come to fruition yet. It isn’t because of lack of trying though. There are many different collaboration and team communication solutions that have tried to help people communicate, share and stay productive together.
Still, there is no silver bullet for effective collaboration, but a combination of tools can help you get things done. When it’s an uphill task to ensure easy collaboration over desktop and the web, one can understand the difficulties of achieving the same on a smartphone. Kibits promises to help you interact and work with your team on the go. Let’s take it for a spin! (more…)
There was a time when I found productivity to be a laser dot gliding along the floor and I was the cat bounding after it, desperately hoping to catch my prey. I’m never as productive as I’d like to be, but I’m much more productive today than I was even a year ago, which is the result of embracing the much lauded Things. However, Things is an app with a single focus on getting things done. To cover my productivity bases, I also use Evernote in concert to keep notes on my various projects.
While I find comfort in utilizing this approach, productivity works differently for each individual and often requires a different approach. For instance, instead of relying on multiple apps to create notes, lists and to-dos, some individuals prefer using a single app for all three tasks. If you find yourself in this camp, Listacular may just be the app you’re looking for. (more…)
I’m a man of simple tastes, which is precisely why I’m pretty much married to my iPhone. I love its simplistic design, its fantastic range of apps and the fact that whatever I want to access is only a couple of taps away. And it’s precisely this love of simplicity why I fell in love with Moneywiz. There’s a whole range of money management apps out there on the App Store, all with a huge variety of features, but sometimes I don’t want to spend a couple of hours learning about an app before I actually start using it. My ideal app is one where I can just pick up my iPhone, launch it and immerse myself in it.
Moneywiz, from the developers Silverwiz is a personal finance app available for iOS devices and OS X. It’s not a universal app (boo!), unfortunately, however the different versions do keep in sync with one another thanks to their Sync Everything! service (which is free) and for personal finance apps, it’s well worth checking out. (more…)
Job searches are tough, man. Not just the searching, because you know what — I’m a whiz at Google, but it can be hard finding anything that pays reasonably well for decent work. That’s disheartening as all get out. Once you do find a handful of jobs to which you want to apply, you still actually, you know, have to apply to all of those jobs. Without a good system, that’s not an easy task.
Proven is an app that tries to cut through all of the headaches that come with a job search, connecting you with more job sites and putting some pretty nice tools in your phone. It’s a given that anything has to be better than those forty Craigslist tabs you have open, but we’ll take a look and see just what Proven has to offer. (more…)
I’ve often joked with my buddies about the social etiquette required when using a men’s room. You have lines of urinals, but you don’t want to stand right next to someone else if you can avoid it for multiple reasons. Then there’s the stalls, which is a whole other ball of wax and requires certain other considerations. Long story short, there’s a lot going on when a guy has to relieve himself, and it can be quite humorous.
Which is why when I discovered Men’s Room Mayhem, I knew I had to buy it. Would this game be able to provide the male bathroom experience as I know it, or would it just go down the drain? Let’s find out. (more…)
Supporting local environmentally conscious and sustainable businesses has never been easier, thanks to inBloom: The Eco App. At the touch of a button, discover restaurants and coffee shops serving organic fare, stores stocked with eco-friendly clothing and more. You can also view every business’ location on a map, its Yelp rating, pricing and other details, plus customize your search results based on what’s most important to you.
Oh and here’s a fun fact: inBloom was built by Andrew Ross of the band OK Go, and Eytan Oren of Eytan and The Embassy. So, after you finish table-drumming your favorite song by either band, click “more” to take a closer look at what this app can do. (more…)
One of the things I love about having my iPhone on hand is that I’ve always got a calendar with me. But I’ve always felt like using the stock Calendar app was similar to using a public restroom: I’m in and out and doing my thing as quickly as possible. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in there. It got a little better with the iPhone 5′s taller screen, but it’s still not great.
There are a lot of great calendar alternatives available in the open market. In fact, we’ve reviewed some great ones here at AppStorm, including the popular Fantastical, which blew our minds with its natural language processing. Recently though, I’ve had the opportunity to test Horizon, a great calendar app with a gorgeous interface that combines weather, natural language processing and your upcoming events. Read on to find out why this app could be giving Fantastical a run for its money. (more…)
There are foodies and there are people who take it further — the food geeks. If you’re like me — waiting eagerly for your favorite produce to arrive in season, spending hours reading old books on the history of cooking and fascinated by the minute differences between cooking techniques like braising and poaching — you might be a food geek. We take food seriously, with a need to know the story behind the dish, to honor the ritual and tradition. Foodies love the Food Network channel, while food geeks prefer PBS. If you’re a food geek, you’ll appreciate the Eataly app. If you’re a foodie, you’ll probably hate it.
From the folks behind the famous Italian market in New York City by the same name, Eataly is an ode to the Italian osteria, where local foods are prepared with love and traditional Italian cooking is preserved. The app includes 1,000 recipes from inns recommended by Slow Food, as well as detailed information on Italian wines. Though Eataly is beautifully designed, it’s a simple app and there are no photos of the recipes. Serious food geeks don’t need photos, though, and will be inspired by the authentic Italian recipes.
Interested in geeking out on Italian food and wine? Keep reading. (more…)
While conversing with a friend they recommend a new movie they’ve seen, an album they recently downloaded, or a restaurant they really enjoy. What do you do with this information? Some individuals will attempt to make a mental note, while others will immediately whip out their iPhone (or perspective smartphone) and enter the information into an app of their preference.
If you find yourself in the latter group, I bet dollars to doughnuts that most of you use the first-party Notes app for this function. Others will make use of a third-party notes app such as Evernote, Catch Notes or Simplenote. While all of these apps are useful for jotting down a quick word or twelve, a more customized approach may be better for managing a list that include items of this nature. Enter Thinglist, an app solely dedicated to such a task. (more…)
