20 Best Apps : Must-Haves for Everyone With an iPad or iPhone | SaveDelete

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20 Best Apps : Must-Haves for Everyone With an iPad or iPhone Posted: 11 Oct 2012 10:10 PM PDT We see a lot of iPad and iPhone apps here. Some of them we try for a bit, check out what they have to offer and then discard. Other apps hang around a little longer; those are the ones we actually decide to review. Then there are the apps that really stick, the apps we use day in and day out, year after year. Those aren't necessarily the apps that earn the highest rating, however. Sometimes it takes a while for an app to grow on you. So, we came up with the following list of  20 terrific apps (most of them optimized for the iPad, with one that's definitely best on the iPhone alone). You've no doubt heard of all of these apps before. But do you have them installed? Are you using them? If not, we'll tell you what we'd tell our family and friends: these are the apps we really use, the ones we think everyone should have. Books 1. Kindle : The iPad has changed the way we read. I spend as much (if not more) time reading news, lon-form journalism, and books on the tablet as i do on paper. But the free kindle iPad app has changed not only my reading habits but also my buying habits. The best part is the text is searchable, i can find the information i need quickly. Because it's so portable, i can reach that information whenever and whever i want. That's not to ay the app is perfect: The labels on its bookmarks are marvels of obscurityl i use notes instead. Search results are equally hard to parse. And sure i could use iBooks just as well but Apple can't yet match Amazon's selection. Yes i could export Amazon books to ePub format and then import them to iBooks. But Apple's app isn't any better than Amazon's so why? I know plenty of people who have abandoned paper and do all of their book reading on kindle (in one form or another.) 'm not there yet, but like any really good app, Kindle can do as much as you need it to. And for me, it does that very nicely. Entertainment 2. IMDB : The internet movie database is older than the web itself. It began as the Usenet group rec.arts.movies, where zealous film buffs complied a searchable list of movie credits. From there it evolved into the massive website it is today, containing listing for more than 2 million movies and television shows and more than 4 million actors, directors, and crew members. After all those mutations, the database may have found its perfect form on the free IMDB iPad app. 3. Netflix : I purchased my first iPad for two reasons: to sketch on it, and to watch seasons of my favorite TV shows. It was made possible by the free Netflix app which allows you to view any item in the company's Watch instantly catalog on your iPad (or, if you must your iPhone ). Although the app isn't quite as full-featured as the Netflix website, it still offers more than enough to keep you satisfied. You can search the catalog by little or genre, rate films and TV shows you've seen, add a movie to your Queue, and of course watch TV series and movies until you eyes cross. App works on Wi-Fi or 3G so you can stream everything to almost anywhere; and if you want to watch Netflix on the big screen, you can use Airplay Mirroring. FINANCE 4. Mint : My third-grade teacher ran a competetion to help us leatn about managing finances: We each received $100 in school buks, along with ouur every own checkbook, we could earn more by doing homework or partipating in activites. With those bucks we could buy things such as half-hour of reading time, an hour for art, or an extra bathroom break. But all that came at a price. We had to prove that our checkbooks were balanced before we could spend a dime. Today, the notion of balancing a checkbook seems as archaic as an hour of art class in public school. That dosen't stop Mint.com from trying to help users make sense of their finances. The free online services offer a breakdown of my spending and saving across any account i've lined with it. I can see exactly how much i've been spending on a monthly basis, set and adjust budgets, and track my money habits, Mint intelligently categorizes most transactions  though i can manually rename and categorize line items as well as enter cash transactions that may not be represented online. This free Mint.com app is the perfect companion to the site. Like so many other iOS essentials, it's handy because it's there when i need it most-such as when i'm about to purchase something and want to know whether i can afford that item. the app also makes managing finances a lot less painful; if you can do it from the comfort of your backyard hammock, you're much likelier to do it in the first place. MUSIC 5. Pandora Radio : Anyone who hasn't been in a decade long sleep knows that Pandora is one of the most popular- and one of the best- music streaming services. Sign up for a free account, enter any artist, song, or composer, and Pandora creates a "station" of music that it believes complements your choice. It's a brilliant idea, and the free Pandora iPad app is nearly as brilliant. On the app's screen are all the basic Pandora controls i'm accustomed to namely  Play, Skip, and Thumbs ip and Thumbs down. With my stations listed on the left side, it's easy to select the station I want to listen to. I can just as quickly add new artists, songs, or composers to the list, merely by tapping in the appropriate field. But wait, there's more: When i'm listening to a track, Pandora offers an extensive biography about the currently playing artist. Better yet, the app maintains a history of the tracks i've listed to – a most welcome connivence when i hear something i like but the next track starts playing before i can discover who the previous artist was. and much much more. NEWS 6. Instapaper : Save web pages for later offline reading, optimized for readability on your iPhone or iPod touch's screen. Featured by Apple and critically acclaimed by top blogs, newspapers, and magazines! Great for long articles and blog posts that you find during the day and would like to read, but don't have the time when you find them. Save with Instapaper, then read later when you're commuting, in a meeting, or waiting in line. Need something to read? You can browse articles that your friends posted on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. Or browse the Editor's Picks, curated by hand from the Instapaper community's most-saved stories. 7. Clear : Life is messy. Keep it together with Clear, an amazing new app for list-keeping that is unbelievably simple, quick and satisfying to use. "Clear's interface is elegant and clever…" — The New York Times "Clear is quick, simple, intuitive, and perfect for busy people" — Gizmodo "If you're regularly turning to a simple to-do list app… Clear is definitely going to wow you." — TechCrunch Clear is designed with simplicity and flexibility in mind and works great with any list you throw at it! 8. Reeder : PRODUCTIVITY 9. Dropbox : 10. Elements : 11. Evernote : 12. GoodReader 13. Pcal RPN Calculator REFERENCE 14. Google Search SOCIAL NETWORKING 15. Facebook 16. TweetBot 17. Yelp UTILITIES 18. 1Password Pro : 19. Screens WEATHER 20. Dark Sky

Coding Horror-Yet Another To-Do Application

Coding Horror

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Todon't Posted: 04 Oct 2012 03:04 PM PDT What do you need to do today? Other than read this blog entry, I mean. Have you ever noticed that a huge percentage of Lifehacker-like productivity porn site content is a breathless description of the details of Yet Another To-Do Application? There are dozens upon dozens of the things to choose from, on any platform you can name. At this point it's getting a little ridiculous; per Lifehacker's Law, you'd need a to-do app just to keep track of all the freaking to-do apps. I've tried to maintain to-do lists at various points in my life. And I've always failed. Utterly and completely. Even turning it into a game, like the cleverly constructed Epic Win app, didn't work for me. Eventually I realized that the problem wasn't me. All my to-do lists started out as innocuous tools to assist me in my life, but slowly transformed, each and every time, into thankless, soul-draining exercises in reductionism. My to-do list was killing me. Adam Wozniak nails it: Lists give the illusion of progress. Lists give the illusion of accomplishment. Lists make you feel guilty for not achieving these things. Lists make you feel guilty for continually delaying certain items. Lists make you feel guilty for not doing things you don't want to be doing anyway. Lists make you prioritize the wrong things. Lists are inefficient. (Think of what you could be doing with all the time you spend maintaining your lists!) Lists suck the enjoyment out of activities, making most things feel like an obligation. Lists don't actually make you more organized long term. Lists can close you off to spontaneity and exploration of things you didn't plan for. (Let's face it, it's impossible to really plan some things in life.) For the things in my life that actually mattered, I've never needed any to-do list to tell me to do them. If I did, then that'd be awfully strong evidence that I have some serious life problems to face before considering the rather trivial matter of which to-do lifehack fits my personality best. As for the things that didn't matter in my life, well, those just tended to pile up endlessly in the old to-do list. And the collective psychic weight of all these minor undone tasks were caught up in my ever-growing to-do katamari ball, where they continually weighed on me, day after day. Yes, there's that everpresent giant to-do list, hanging right there over your head like a guillotine, growing sharper and heavier every day. Like a crazy hoarder I mistake the root cause of my growing mountain of incomplete work. The hoarder thinks he has a storage problem when he really has a 'throwing things away problem'. I say I am 'time poor' as if the problem is that poor me is given only 24 hours in a day. It's more accurate to say… what exactly? It seems crazy for a crazy person to use his own crazy reasoning to diagnose his own crazy condition. Maybe I too easily add new projects to my list, or I am too reluctant to exit from unsuccessful projects. Perhaps I am too reluctant to let a task go, to ship what I've done. They're never perfect, never good enough. And I know I'm not alone in making the easy claim that I am 'time poor'. So many people claim to be time poor, when really we are poor at prioritizing, or poor at decisiveness, or don't know how to say 'no' (…to other people, to our own ideas). If only I had a hidden store of time, or if only I had magical organisation tools, or if only I could improve my productive throughput, then, only then would I be able to get things done, to consolidate the growing backlogs and todo lists into one clear line of work, and plough through it like an arctic ice breaker carving its way through a sheet of ice. But are you using the right guillotine? Maybe it'd work better if you tried this newer, shinier guillotine? I'd like to offer you some advice: There's only one, and exactly one, item anyone should ever need on their to-do list. Everything else is superfluous. You shouldn't have a to-do list in the first place. Declare to-do bankruptcy right now. Throw out your to-do list. It's hurting you. Yes, seriously. Maybe it is a little scary, but the right choices are always a little scary, so do it anyway. No, I wasn't kidding. Isn't Hall and Oates awesome? I know, rhetorical question. But still. Look, this is becoming counterproductive. Wait a second, did I just make a list? Here's my challenge. If you can't wake up every day and, using your 100% original equipment God-given organic brain, come up with the three most important things you need to do that day – then you should seriously work on fixing that. I don't mean install another app, or read more productivity blogs and books. You have to figure out what's important to you and what motivates you; ask yourself why that stuff isn't gnawing at you enough to make you get it done. Fix that. Tools will come and go, but your brain and your gut will be here with you for the rest of your life. Learn to trust them. And if you can't, do whatever it takes to train them until you can trust them. If it matters, if it really matters, you'll remember to do it. And if you don't, well, maybe you'll get to it one of these days. Or not. And that's cool too. [advertisement] How are you showing off your awesome? Create a Stack Overflow Careers profile and show off all of your hard work from Stack Overflow, Github, and virtually every other coding site. Who knows, you might even get recruited for a great new position!

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