Blog — September 8, 2010 17:37 — 2 Comments
Tired but appy
Is there anything apps can’t do? Well, yes, it turns out there is. Quite a lot, in fact. App fever is sweeping the digital nation, but for this smartphone owner, app fatigue has set in, with all the inevitability of rain at a music festival.
But, in an effort to rekindle my app ardour, I’ve put together a list of ‘ultimate fantasy’ apps — inventions that could really put the X factor back into my X10 and the pop back into my iPad. Add a comment below to tell me your favourite imaginary app.
1. The ‘Where’s my nearest charge point?’ app
One app to rule them all. Smartphone batteries are like luck at a roulette table — always running out at the wrong moment. Being able to navigate around Mars is a fairly limited endeavour if you can’t leave the vicinity of a power source for more than ten minutes. What I really need to know is the location of the nearest coffee shop where I can covertly charge up my phone while, um, recharging my batteries over a latte. Seriously, cafe owners – never mind the free Wi-Fi. We just want phone juice.
2. The Nerdy Know-It-All Boyfriend app
Acting as a back-up in case of memory failure, this app remembers every piece of media you’ve ever consumed, along with key facts and related trivia. Like a personalised Wikipedia, it can recall pertinent information such as the name of “yer man who was in that film I liked, you know the guy — he’s really tall and used to go out with that supermodel”, along with the liner notes from all your CDs, the titles of all the books you’ve read, and the writers behind your favourite TV programmes. Uber-handy for pub quizzes. Also available with a ‘Girlfriend’ plug-in that remembers the birthdays and significant anniversaries of your friends and family.
3. The Tweet-erpreter app
Twitter users, not got a sense of humour? Do have a sense of humour but feeling grumpy? Fed up with the (T)witterings of your fellow followers? This app analyses tweets for tone, inference and context and rates rants and messages on a scale of ‘deadly serious’ to ‘trying to be clever’, with stops along the way at ‘blackly cynical’ and ‘whimsy gone awry’. Offers an essential insight into tweets that don’t end in LOL, ROFL or LMAO. Upside: Stops Twitter arguments arising from misunderstandings and bad jokes. Downside: Could lead to the death of the emoticon. :(
4. The Anti-Toby Young app
Do you dread the embarrassment of forgetting someone’s name? Do you have trouble recalling details about colleagues’ lives? Can’t for the life of you remember the name of your friend’s second child? The Anti-Toby Young app will ensure you don’t risk losing friends or alienating anyone. At the push of a button, the app covertly takes a photo of the person you’re talking to and, using image-matching technology, searches through correspondence and social media pages, compiling an FBI-style dossier on their identity. Then your mobile device calls you and a text-to-speech program delivers all the info you need to know. Social suicide averted, mission accomplished.
5. The Shush! app
The ultimate movie-goer’s accessory. Emits a loud ‘shush!’ sound. Can be programmed to work with the push of an external button on your device, and in airplane mode. Discreet ‘ventriloquist’ setting means origin of noise is difficult to detect. Also handy for gig-goers and librarians. If desired effect is not achieved, emergency ‘Christian Bale rant’ mode can be activated.
Developers, you’ve got a lot of work to do to make me appy again…
@SylviaLeatham
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If I was looking at how much each app on my phone gets used, the winner would be ‘Talking Tom’ the speaking cat (it works wonders on getting my children to listen), followed closely behind by the game ‘Angry Birds’
However, my favourite business app would have to be the ‘Mailchimp’ app – to be able to check a campaign from any location and feedback to a client on it’s status is so convenient and makes us look good.
John
John
If there was an app I now couldn’t live without it’d be BeyondPod [ http://www.beyondpod.com ] .
I couldn’t face going back to podcastess times. I can, of course, plug in the headphones and tune out the kids at a whim… that’s invaluable, even if, most of the time, I do try to resist the temptation. :)
Ralph
@ralphenn
http://ennclick.com