With 1.6 million apps available for iPhone and Android, deciding which ones are worth your time can be a daunting task. Sometimes I download new apps that are supposed to change my life after recommendations from friends and coworkers. A couple months down the road, however, my phone starts to resemble a messy room—overloaded with dozens of apps I hardly ever touch. So what rises to the surface in the mighty ocean of apps? Which apps will you use week in and week out, and might actually make your life more efficient? Here are five apps I have found to be useful, convenient and best of all, free to download.
Uber:
The go-to app for getting around without a car, Uber is geo-aware and lets you summon a car close to your location, perfect for out-of-town business trips. No more hailing cabs and inflated tourist rates. With Uber, you pay in advance and can select your driver based on user reviews to ensure a stress-free experience.
Venmo:
If Facebook and Paypal had a baby, it would look something like Venmo. Instead of splitting hairs over how much everyone owes during lunch with your coworkers, simply foot the bill and have the rest of your group “Venmo you” what they owe. It’s a quick, easy way to pay people back for dinner, rent and everything in between. Make Venmo fun by adding your favorite emojis in the memo line.
Evernote:
Like a collaborative grocery list, use Evernote for brainstorming, organizing notes and saving snippets from webpages. Evernote features a single workspace that can be accessed at any time from any location. Evernote’s note-taking capabilities allow users to take a page from the app’s elephant logo and “never forget.”
Google Translate’s Word Lens:
What if a pair of glasses could instantly translate everything into English? Wouldn’t that help you navigate a foreign country during a business trip? Bought out by Google Translate, Word Lens uses your phone’s camera to automatically translate signs, menus and more. It even matches text size, font and color. The menu you’re reading will look exactly the same, except now you can magically read it.
Dropbox:
Offering easy-to-manage cloud storage and file sharing, Dropbox lets you access documents, photos and videos from any device and even acts like a time machine, allowing you to undo mistakes and undelete files. A simple solution for backing up, syncing and sharing your files, it’s no surprise that 4 million businesses use Dropbox on a daily basis.
Which apps have made your life easier and more productive? Let us know in the comments!
