The vast majority of us are daily users of apps, whether that be for pure productivity or to kill time on our lunch breaks, to cut it short our digital world has been swamped by apps and has got to the point where if you want something and look hard enough, there is an app to do it!
So over the last couple of weeks the team here at Blue Horizons have been compiling our favourite apps both in a practical sense within work and also in our lives out of work and we managed to bring it down to 10 so in no particular order here are our choices:
Our Picks
WhatsApp is well known throughout the smartphone world for its simplicity of use and practicality and the fact is just keeps on growing, adding new features all the time. The prospect of making calls and sending texts for free has enticed a whopping 800 million people onto the Facebook-owned app at last count. There is an abundance of features to find within WhatsApp, but these are just a few we love; It’s super for quickly sending images to your friends or colleagues, arranging to meet a group of people through the use of the group chat function, whether that be a casual client meeting or a social with friends after work, it is perfect.
Download: https://www.whatsapp.com/download/
For all the fitness fanatics out there Strava is for you. If you enjoy running or cycling this app is perfect for monitoring all those crucial elements to personal development. Along with the purchase of a GPS watch you can begin the road to reaching those targets and smashing records. Strava uses a GPS system to track your routes, and within this you can explore the details of a specific element of a run per say, whether that be your average speed, estimated calories burnt or even the distance travelled. Strava's system can deliver all of this...and more.
Download: https://www.strava.com/mobile
Third in the list we have an iOS app called WordSwag. Despite the slightly cheesy title we found WordSwag to be a highly beneficial app when wanted to overlay text onto an image. It’s very easy to use and can create images of a high quality which can then be shared directly to your social media platform of choice, emailed to someone or if you are using it on an iPhone, you can text it to a contact. It does come at a small cost, however we would strongly recommend it for anybody who likes to create motivational images for example as it has a whole library of free images and fonts to use.
Download: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/word-swag-cool-fonts-typography/id645746786?mt=8
In at number 4 is Instasize, an app favoured by Instragrammers worldwide, however does it have a use outside the world of Instagram? And in answer to that, very much so! Instasize allows you to crop, edit, place filters on a photo and even create collages of a day or out for a birthday Facebook post. Despite the purpose of the app being to process images for Instagram, you can however save them to your gallery instead of posting them onto a social platform, which personally I find a really good feature.
You can download it here for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/instasize-post-entire-photos/id576649830?mt=8
Here for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jsdev.instasize&hl=en_GB
For all artists who also love their Apple products Paper 53 is a brilliant app for creating original artwork, mind mapping ideas and even sketching an object. Even without the specially designed pen you can still manage to create a pretty good piece of artwork with any universal stylus or even your finger. Paper 53 allows you to do a multitude of things through the well built and programmed interface.
You can download it here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/paper-by-fiftythree-draw-sketch/id506003812?mt=8
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it’s useless.
Next in the list is Pinterest, which is photo bloggers’ best friend. For those who haven’t heard about Pinterest before, in summary Pinterest allows you to ‘pin’ images onto a board (Same ideology as a physical pin board except this is virtual) of which you can create as many as you like for all different subjects such as; ‘Dream home’, ‘dream driveway’ or even ‘motivational quotes’. Pinterest is perfect for bringing images together into one place and then for others to find as not only can you browse Pinterest but you can follow people's ‘boards’ and when they upload or ‘re-pin’ a photo onto it you can be notified! You can check our Pinterest account out here: https://uk.pinterest.com/bhmarketing/ and download it here:
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/pinterest/id429047995?mt=8
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pinterest&hl=en_GB
The next one has approx. 30 million users per month, and transfers approximately 400 million messages every day and whose users aged between 13-17 sits at 32% and 18-24 at a much larger 45%...it’s Snapchat! Snapchat is in our top 10 as it can be used as an instant messaging service, a photo sharing service and even can be used as a face to face calling platform. Since being created in September 2011 in the last 4 years it has certainly hit the ground running and it now a part of many people’s social live, businesses are now even using it as a way or promoting special offers and products to an exclusive audience (people following them on snapchat).
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapchat/id447188370/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.snapchat.android&hl=en_GB
The next one in the list isn’t so much an application as the others but our favourite browsing application. At Blue Horizons we find Chrome a quick and responsive browser which is especially efficient for social media related tasks as you can integrate extensions for apps such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter allowing you to quickly share things. Chrome is definitely on of the more customisable browsers available to the technology world. https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/mobile/
In terms of photo editing apps we would highly recommend Pixlr as a favourite for both the mobile app and the desktop site version. We favoured Pixlr over other photo editing applications as the mobile version is relatively easy to navigate with many options to utilize whether it be cropping the photo, resizing or removing skin/object blemishes it is very well designed to allow you to do these things. Personally I have used Pixlr to edit an image, I have then imported it into Instasize created a collage then sent it to a friend on Snapchat. So the joy of all these apps are that they work together very easily. In terms of the desktop version is it very easy to download an image from the internet an open it within Pixlr. Download it here: https://pixlr.com/mobile
Finally we have a game recommended by many, Crossy Road. Surprisingly, the sole objective of this game is to simply get your character from one side of the level to the other by crossing roads, rivers and train tracks! But don’t think this is a simple walk in the park, because it is in fact a walk across many roads and with a high level of addictiveness but undeniably a great way of killing time!
If you have any favourite apps both on a personal or business level, then do let us know (comment below or email kelsey@bluehorizonsmarketing.co.uk) and we'll put together another piece based on our client favourites!
