OK, you got a new “smart” phone for Christmas and you want to know what to do with it. Chances are your phone came pre-loaded with some applications (apps). A long time ago there was a deadpan line “there’s an app for that”. They were right. Pretty much whatever you want to do with your new smartphone, someone (or many someones) has made an app to help you accomplish your task. You can try using the apps that came on your phone. They may be good apps. Or maybe they’re crappy apps that someone paid your phone manufacturer or cellular service provider (wait, do any of them really provide “service”?) to put on your phone for you. There’s good news – some of them really are useful. There’s bad news – you can’t get rid of the ones you don’t like without voiding the warranty on your phone.

So, how do you know if there’s a better app to do something than the one you’re currently trying to use? Ask your friends. Just remember a few things:

• We all have different tastes and preferences so your friends favorites may not be yours
• Most of us have different phones, with different operating systems, or different versions of the same operating system, or different manufacturer and service provider modificaitons.
• Possibly the most important thing to remember is that nothing is free. Nothing is even cheap. The people who write apps have your best interests at heart. No they don’t. They want to give you something just useful enough that you want to use it and give them something of value. That may be money in they case of apps you have to pay for. That may be access to all the email addresses, phone numbers, names and birthdays in your contact list. That may be your location. That may be your texting habits. Whatever. When you turned on your cell phone, you gave up your rights to anything and started giving away everything.
• If you don’t like what I said in the previous bullet, drop your smartphone in the toilet right now and don’t ever use it again.

OK, that said, here is a list of apps that I find incredibly useful in my daily life. If you find others that you think I should know about, please drop me a line and I’ll try them out. If I like them, I’ll add them to the list. Finally, if you find this information useful, please share it with others. Thank you.

My list: