I'm they type of guy who can easily blow a half hour reading articles from magazines like Fast Company or Popular Mechanics, and barely realize it. I'm no guru, but in the spirit of those periodicals, I present my own list of most useful / coolest, free apps or websites that I think people should know about and consider using. Click on the section titles to visit each website / app's page.
No. 5: 'My Verizon' app
Yes, I know this is specific to Verizon smart-phone customers. But, given the fact that nearly 100 million people use Verizon, more than any other carrier, this is still pertinent to a lot of you. The app, despite being a bit clunky, allows you to easily see how much of your plan you've used so far in the month.
You can do other stuff too, like bill-pay or make changes to your plan, but really, the main value seems to be in instantly seeing if you're about to run out of minutes or data. No more texting a code to get your usage sent back to you - you can actually use your smart-phone like a smart-phone and see the data in a nice little bar-graph on your screen. Novel idea, huh? And, somewhat surprisingly, the app is free from from the app store.
No. 4: Onavo Extend
Anyone with an iPhone or Android who has to pay for their own data plan ought to have this free app. The app stretches your data plan by routing all your 3G and 4G data through its servers and compressing it. This means more GPS, more streaming video, Pandora, Facebook, and anything else you use your phone's internet connection for without worrying about going over your plan and getting charged extra.
I've had the app since mid-January and have saved about 20 MB. For as much as I use my iPhone 4S's web-based apps (~700 MB in the same time period), that's not tons, but it certainly is nice knowing I'm that much less likely to go over my allotted 2 GB (2,000 MB) and have to pay extra data fees. The other nice thing is that I haven't ever noticed a difference in quality or speed.
As for security, PC Magazine had this to say in their glowing review,
"Onavo's system runs on Amazon's EC2 cloud servers. Its servers are protected by multiple layers of security, and nothing is actually stored on them except for aggregated and anonymized metadata, such as what types of apps are being using. That information is used to help illustrate your data usage and savings, as well as for research to help improve the service."
Sounds pretty safe to me.
No. 3: LDS Gospel Library app
Getting over 60,000 reviews and having a 4+ rating on iTunes is no small feat (8,300+ reviews for the current version). Admittedly, this iPhone / Android app is targeted at members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but even if you're not Mormon, you should still check it out (I'll get to that in a minute).
The app puts the King James Bible, Book of Mormon, and other standard works, as well as nearly every single Sunday-school manual, General Conference talk, hymns (except a few that have copyright complications), those seminary videos you know you miss, and other resources like Preach My Gospel into the most easily navigated and easily studied format I could imagine. Not only can you easily access all this material on your phone anytime, you can also highlight, take notes that are as long as you like and can be edited later, and add hyperlinks to other verses, manuals, or talks.
As well, the app syncs with your LDS.org account and tracks all of your highlights and notes from LDS.org and your Gospel Library app into a study notebook. This takes your study of the gospel to a whole new level. Besides all this, the search functionality is quite good. For a guy who only remembered his Sunday-school manual once and might have found his leather bound scriptures more often in the meetinghouse lost-and-found as a kid than in his own lap, this app is simply awesome.
If you're not Mormon, first forgive my enthusiasm, but let me explain why this app is still worth downloading. If you are Christian and want what is arguably the best Bible app available - this one's free. The rest of the 'good news' for you is that you only download what you want. So, if all you want is the King James version Old and New Testaments, that's all you download. They still come with all the hyperlinked cross-references and the app is still well laid out and searchable. No, those guys in white-shirts and ties will not track you via the app and try to baptize you. If you are not Christian, then check it out for the sake of seeing how well put together it is. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
No. 2: Trello.com
Great apps and websites have two things: great content and great functionality. In the case of Trello.com, the free organizing website and smart-phone app, the content is your life (or your organization's life) and the projects you're working on. The functionality is one of the easiest to use interfaces I've come across in while.
Although the best way to understand Trello is to try it (see the link in the title), I'll do my best to explain it here. Say that hypothetically you're a really busy person who works with more than one group (classes, work, church, volunteering, etc.) at once. Within each of those groups, you probably have more than one project going at once, and within each of those projects, there are tasks and subtasks that you have to remember and complete. Sound familiar?
Trello makes it easy to organize it all by letting you make "boards" (for each organization, per say), and then lets you list each of the projects and tasks as either "to-do's", "doings", or "dones" in an at-a-glance format that is easy to look at. You can add detail to each by clicking a given task and adding check-lists, due-dates, comments, and more.
When I posted this, I'd been using Trello for about two weeks. It has become a near permanent tab in my browser and the more I use it the more I like it. The only function I haven't used so far is the group collaboration portion which allows you share your boards and lists with other Trello users so your groups and teammates can stay on top of projects better. Of course, the effectiveness of any tool like this is whether or not you actually use it, but so far, Trello has made it really easy for me to keep using.
No. 1: Mint.com
Stress over financial issues is the number one source of stress for Americans, according to the American Psychological Association. That, and the fact that this website's functionality and content are superb put Mint.com at the top of my list. Banks, credit-card companies and others let you manage your accounts with them online, but that only offers a fragmented picture of what's going on with your finances. Mint safely allows you to paint the full mural of your personal or family financial situation on one easy to see and understand canvas and then gives you the tools and help necessary to improve it.
The free service works like this. You sign up and create a strong password (more on security later). Next, you enter your credit card, banking, checking, and investment account information. Mint establishes a read-only connection to your various accounts and reads in the information from each. Every time you buy something with a credit card, debit card, or check, Mint records and tries to automatically categorize the expense and does a surprisingly good job of getting it right (if it does mess up you can easily change it). You can easily see with various charts and graphs where your money is going and whether you're spending more than you make or not, what your net worth is, etc. Based on those facts, you're encouraged to set up budgets and make goals for cutting spending in some areas and (possibly) increasing it in others.
What happens next is the real magic: The site, of course, wants to make money, but it does so by saving you money. It uses the information you've provided to pick companies and ideas that will help you do things like get out of credit card debt, set and work towards savings goal, find a better interest rate, etc.
Companies like Ally financial, CapitalOne, and more pay Mint to have the website suggest options that will save you money and help you achieve the goals you've told Mint you want to achieve. Talk about a win-win. It's in Mint's best interest to save you money, putting the big companies where they should be - serving you. Site users get pinpoint advice and tools to take control of their financial situation and achieve their goals and companies get to offer catered options to people who are more likely to use their services. Isn't capitalism great?
For example, say you want to stop renting and buy a house sometime in the future. In the "Goals" section, "Buy a Home" happens to have a template, and based on your annual income Mint explains how much of a house you can probably afford and then explains how you'll have to take into consideration insurance, interest rates, a down-payment, and property taxes and gives you information about national averages and best practices for estimating these expenses. Based on your situation, Mint then gives you a suggested goal that you should start saving towards and presents you with options for starting to save, like a high interest savings or money market account from a couple different reputable banks. There are similar templates for buying a car, paying off loans, or creating a custom goal. Mint then tracks your progress on each goal and allows you to adjust your goals as your situation changes.
Security, of course is a concern with anything like this. Some will not like the idea of putting information about all of their different accounts in one place online. Remember though that Mint can only establish "Read-only" connections to your accounts, meaning it can only see what's going on, it can't actually make transactions. You will still have to go to your bank or credit-card's websites and enter those user-names and passwords to move money around (hopefully you're not using the same password for all your online accounts. If you are, change them.).
I've been using Mint for about six months now and have a hard time thinking about what I would do without it. Sure, there are other options, but none that I know of are as convenient and easy to use.
That's all!
So, what do you think? Are there sites or apps that I totally missed that blow these ones out of the water? Will you start using any of these or check them out? There were several that were close, but didn't quite make the cut, like grovo.com, carbonite.com, and more, so let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks!
