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EACH WEEK, WE highlight five apps that are worth downloading for your smartphone and tablet. There are a lot of apps released on a daily basis, but not all of them are worth paying attention to.
This week features Google’s answer to your photo woes, a guide to getting you started with exercises, and a rather classy way to organise your day.
Google Photos
For: iOS, Android
Cost: Free
- This is a strange one. If you already have an Android device, you will have photos already (it’s an update), but it’s a pretty significant update so we’re placing it here.
- If you’re familiar with the layout of photos on iPhone, you’ll know what to expect here in terms of presentation, but there’s more to it than that.
- It’s able to recognise photos so you can search for them, even if it doesn’t have a description, and will detect what photos you’ve saved online so your phone always has space free.
- For those using only their phones to shoot photos, there’s unlimited storage for normal photos. Original photos (those from DSLRs) have 15GB of space to play around with.
- It’s far from perfect, but if you’re on Android, it’s a much-needed improvement.
Pinpoint
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- Find yourself screenshotting your phone and sending them onto other people for whatever reason? This adds an extra layer to that concept.
- Pinpoint is a newer version of an old app called Bugshot but the concept is still the same, add extra annotations to any screenshots you take.
- Taking all of your screenshots together, you can add text, draw arrows and boxes and, blur out certain aspects before you save or send it.
- When you’re finished, you can get rid of the old screenshot so it doesn’t take up space.
- For those who want to give their screenshots more life.
Moleskine Timepage
For: iOS
Cost: €4.99
- There’s something about Moleskine’s notepads and journals that are classy, even if they aren’t necessarily better, and while that’s difficult to recreate on a smartphone screen, that isn’t stopping it from releasing its own app.
- Moleskin Timepage is a calendar app which is both minimalist and gorgeous to look at. Everything is bright, clear to look at and cleanly presented.
- It only displays a list of upcoming days, even days where you have nothing planned, which may put some people off, but for those who like to focus on each day as it comes.
- If you can get past that, it integrates weather, maps and contacts to create a more comprehensive scheduler.
- It’s expensive, but the benefits are worth it if you’re all about day-to-day management.
Perfect Workout
For: Windows Phone
Cost: Free
- Although summer hasn’t exactly arrived yet (in weather terms), it’s as good a time as any to start exercising more and get a routine going.
- Perfect Workout is all about that and provides more than 100 exercises included so you’re not stuck with the same routine.
- All exercises come with their own animations to show you how to perform them, taking the confusion out of them.
- If you need to focus on a specific area, there are twelve exercise packs to help you get started and you can keep track of all your activity through weekly graphs.
- For those who are unsure what exercises they should do, this is a good place to start.
Sword of Xolan
For: iOS
Cost: €0.99
- The app stores are awash with pixel art games, but good looks do not equal a good game. It’s something many similar games falter with.
- Sword of Xolan, on the other hand, is a great action platformer which combines both style and gameplay effortlessly.
- The controls are precise, and it’s easy to pick up and play. There’s also a nice combination of virtual buttons and swipe gestures to help you navigate each level.
- The levels and obstacles you face show a lot of imagination and keeps things varied, yet the same can’t be said about the boss fights. Still, that’s a minor blip on what is an accomplished game
- One of the best action platform games you can get for iOS.
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And don’t be leaving rubbish and empty boxes at the bottle banks ye Muppets
Maybe if card board and paper recycling bins were placed beside the bottle banks instead of a usual little tiny bin it wouldn’t be a problem.
Unsupervised Cardboard compactors at bottle banks would be impractical and people would throw domestic waste into them..
Are there still people out there who do NOT recycle?
Re-cy-cling? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that term you adorable little ragamuffin.
I live in an apartment block. There is a ‘rubbish’ room in the basement car park. There are large green bins and large black bins, practically side by side. There’s another one for glass. Posters everywhere make it crystal clear what items should go in what bin yet I always see cardboard, plastic bottles, glass etc in the black bin. Everytime. It’s free and it couldn’t be easier yet many of my neighbours just cannot be bothered…..
The exact same in my apartment block, I even sometimes find myself moving plastic and cardboard from the normal bins to the recycling ones, like an absolute eejit. I don’t know if it’s because some of the residents come from countries that don’t have organised recycling facilities, or if people are just being lazy baxtards, maybe I should get a sash and observe my neighbours, but it’s very cold down there this time of year.
Lol, love it. Reminds me of Marino church. A few more men in sashes and we’ll get the place sorted in no time.
Haha yes I have also moved the odd piece from black to green. And yes, I too suspect it’s because many of the residents hail from places where recycling isn’t common. Nevertheless, a trained chimp could understand the instructions on the posters that are, again, everywhere in the building so I can only put it down to sheer indifference.
Dublin, yes. Travellers, no. It’s not dirty, messy, ‘this is why everyone hates us’ littering. The bins are being used. Just not correctly.
I put my empty bottles in the black bin . If I have to pay to have them collected, bottlbanks and recycling are a non runner, not wasting time, effort, petrol so government can meet recycling targets and look good in europe.
Ignorant, lazy, self-serving pig. What an attitude to be proud of, “it’s someone else’s problem.”
I feck them into the river
Johns right. There’s no incentive to promote recycling in this country. It costs the consumer more to be green. The likes of Germany pay 10cent a bottle. And you bring it back to the supermarket. This country is a joke when it comes to recycling. You get charged to dispose of food waste which is composted down bagged and then sold back to you. Typical irish ways. Charged twice.
Oh , the tree huggers are after me. Well I m off to harpoon a whale, while wearing my fur farmed coat and driving my 5 litre hummer.
I have seen people throw their refuse bags into the river in the town I live. Dirty lazy ignorant people. Most of the waste could have been recycled. The most common thing found are overflowing refuse bags of cheap imported lager cans. In most cases they are left only a short distance from recycling banks. Pure laziness!
But you pay for your black bin so you’re not saving money.
Your paying anyway
Yea i live near a river too and find it very convenient
Some people do not have the brains to crush a can or cardboard box and prefer instead to leave the bin overflowing. You can take a donkey to water etc. etc.
I didn’t know you could put glass in the black bin. No more trips to the bottle bank then. Thanks.
The environment would be a good incentive, and the fact that if you do a weekly shop, at a shopping centre, or infact any stretch of retail, there will be most likely recycling bins there.
Lazy and selfish mentality.
As recyclers for many years we dont wait for the binmen to shiw up
Always makes me laugh when people get wound up by comments made by the likes of mocca Mack.
Don’t feed into people like macca mock they have nothing for doing but only trying to get a reaction from people. Ignore their stupid comments and they will go away.
Some years ago I returned to Ireland and climbed Bray Head….it was like a rubbish tip….I did hear later that the community did something about it….I do hope that Ireland has improved in caring for the environment… It is not good to be remembered as environmentally irresponsible?
Macca mock even
The glass that you all lovingly sort and pack all ends up in one big truck and is sent over the border. We have no glass making left remember? As folks are mostly too idle to recycle properly all rubbish should be dumped in the same bin and mechanically sorted which would make more sense financially and the recovered material used as is done elsewhere such as mixing glass and old tyres to make road surfaces.
You tell us where you would get a mechanical sorter which could separate curry leftovers from paper.
@Alan Lawlor, familiarise yourself with the subject and drop back later.
If your green bin is full and u still have stuff to recycle put them in white plastic bags so that the bin men can see that they are recyclable we try to recycle everything and our bin is always full and with the bags the drivers have no problem collecting them!!
I am also amazed by the number of people who think that recycling somehow discharges all responsibility we have as humans to preserve conditions on earth conducive to continued life on earth! The motto is: reduce, re-use, recycle – in that order!!! So in Germany when people return glass bottles for money, it is hopefully for re-use rather than recycling. We used to have the same here…
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