Best new apps

Hope Corrigan reviews the most interesting new apps for iOS and Android.

Symptom Tracker, Allergy & Food Diary - MoodBites LIMITED MENU.

Android, Free

I often find my guts to be unhappy with me but rarely can I decipher the cause. When I stumbled across this app, I was actually pretty excited. Maybe I could finally work out what food is setting me off, or at least start to nail it down. To do this you enter your data for every meal, including what you ate and how it made you feel. It has a bank of auto-filling foods it will pull from that will automatically also highlight allergens for you. It’s a neat idea, but unfortunately the list isn’t particularly robust. For example, I can’t tell the app that I had lactose free milk, rather than regular milk. I also couldn’t tell it about my pepperoni pizza as a whole, and had to settle for listing the ingredients - which would have been fine but things like pepperoni, pizza base, dough, etc were not present. I think when this gets fleshed out I see potential.

Meals of Mercy CURE FOR APPATHY.

Android/iOS, Free

If, like me, you’re not having much luck with food for yourself, perhaps try food for others. Meals of Mercy is an app set up by the Muslim Australian Aid charity and lets you make microdonations to help feed those in need. You can choose how many meals you can afford to provide at the time, and all donations are tax deductible. I like the idea of having an app on my phone where I could give a few dollars here and there while having my own meal to make sure someone else gets one. It’s also easy to use, fairly nice to look at, and has helpful extra info for both tax and religious purposes. My one caveat is I have a general mistrust of charities. I did some research and didn’t find anything outlandish but I always recommend checking out who your money is going to. Not all charities are created equal. Additionally if you can convince one billionaire to give up a percent of their wealth you’ll be doing immensely better work.

Last Time - Activity timeline manager WHEN DID I…?

Android, Free

Hey, do you know your car needs a service, you’re due a pap smear, it’s been months since your last haircut, and you should really go to the dentist for a checkup. I mean, when was the last time you did those things anyway? Yeah, that’s basically my life and I think this app might help with it. You enter these tasks into the app, as well as when you did them and any notes you want to add. You can also add tags, so I have things like ‘mowed lawn’ and ‘changed sheets’ under home and can view these lists exclusively. Or you can just search for tasks if you’re looking for something specific. It’s a quick easy way to find out the last time you did something you probably need to do again without trying to search through a cluttered calendar. I think it could be very useful for those tasks that just slip to the sides, but only if you remember to use it.

Flexcil Notes & PDF Reader

FREE FOR NOTHING.

Android/iOS, Free/$13.99

PDFs are a fairly common file type but can be a bit of a pain to deal with. Even just getting reader software that you like can be a bit tricky, let alone something that lets you annotate as well. That’s why I thought Flexcil Notes looked really cool, and now that it’s on Android as well as iOS I wanted to give it a proper look. The downside is, I basically couldn’t. Flexcil has a paid variant called Standard, and I can see why they named it that because it feels like you can’t do much without it. I could highlight, but then if I wanted to note down text, that wasn’t allowed in the free version. It wouldn’t even let me take notes, even though I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be able to. That being said, if I was studying or had another reason to want a quick easy tool for PDF viewing and annotating, I’d still consider this app as it’s pretty reasonable. I’d just want a good reason to pay the price.

Fontise Font Maker Keyboard Tips

FRONT MAKER. iOS/Android, Free

This app is a straight up scam, and it’s rated 4 stars atm so be warned. The good news is, it isn’t super harmful. Loading this app will take you through a bunch of text screens that are presented like a tutorial. Each is short, with some fairly useless information and contains an ad. Then you have to watch more ads to get to the next screen. At the end, it asks you to rate before using, but there is no using. I’m sad because I like the idea of having a font maker app on a phone. Making my own cool lettering now and then would be really neat but this certainly isn’t the app for it. If you like looking at green screens with comic sans font and lots of ads, who am I to stand in your way? If not, don’t get this app.

WifiNan-Scan

FANSCAN.

Android, Free

This app is incredibly niche and may only be truly helpful for developers, but I think it’s something interesting for anyone tech-curious to play with. What it does is allow two phones with the appropriate chips to connect, and relay information. One acts as a publisher, putting out the service, and the other subscribes to it. While the app is working, both users can send messages to each other. The subscriber can view cool information like how far away the other phone is. That’s basically all this app does, so it’s mostly useful for developers who need that info but I like that there’s basically no risk of messing something up. It’s a small peek into the window of a very specific tool our phones can be used for, as well as a bit of warning for how easy this information is to see. Worth it for anyone curious about this tech.

What it does is allow two phones with the appropriate chips to connect, and relay information. One acts as a publisher, putting out the service, and the other subscribes to it.