MULTIMEDIA

101 Recommended Apps (Part 13)

7/6/2013 3:26:15 PM

79.  Virtual Guitar

Price: Free

Everyone has dreamed of becoming a guitarist. It’s the coolest instrument in the band. So if you’re going to emulate an instrument on your phone, it’s bound to be the good ol’ axe.

There’s a fair few guitar emulators on Google Play but Virtual Guitar is probably the most fun. There’s a number of ways you can use it. In Solo Mode you can pluck any string you want and try to make a tune out of it. We tried and failed, but it was fun.

Virtual Guitar

Virtual Guitar

In Chord Mode you choose the chord you want, strum, then keep choosing chords until you make something that sounds like a song.

We had to tweak the settings to make the app work to our liking but once done it was decent to use.

80.  Voodoo Control

Price: Free

Voodoo Control

Voodoo Control

Before we begin, note that Voodoo Control is for the Samsung Galaxy S only. And it isn’t a game about raising armies of the dead. No, this an audio improvement tool for your phone.

The technology in Voodoo Control is pretty nifty - by tweaking the handset’s audio at processor level with some sprightly new code, you unleash the true volume capabilities of your phone’s headphone amplifier. Proceed with caution because this lifts all preset volume limits, and could melt ear wax if abused. Our advice is to set the analogue output volume at a moderate level, and don’t get carried away. There are other sonic benefits from the installation. Vocal clarity seems to improve a tad and you can boost the bass response from the integrated FM radio.

The app itself is tiny - just 15kb and the control screens are as simple to use as any standard part of the Galaxy S’s menu. If you want to make your mobile really loud and clear, this is worth downloading.

81.  Vignette

Price: $2.4

Vignette

Vignette

It’s crazy but some people use their phone camera for things other than sexting. If you are one of the few, you have probably found that your images come out more Bill Bailey than David Bailey. Lucky, then, that there’s a handful of apps on Google Play that claim to improve the quality of your images, by providing filters and overlays that turn mutton into lamb, and blurry shots into nicer-looking blurry shots.

Vignette is one of the best on the market, because it has a wide range of options. For a start, it adds to your phone’s camera capabilities. At its heart are the filters - there are 68 effects and 56 frames in all, which range from vintage to trendy LOMO style shots.

The quality of each one is decent but it is all dependent on taste if you like what you see. There’s even the option to add some cross processing to your shots, as well as double exposure and tilt shifting. You do need to have a photographic eye to make these work, though - adding any of these features to a crap shot will probably make it even crapper.

With megapixel counts going up, the quality of phone cameras are improving - and apps such as Vignette take your phone photography further.

Yes, you do have to pay, but if you are serious about using your cameraphone as a camera replacement, it is money well spent.

82.  UniQPass: Password Wallet

Price: $2.99

UniQPass: Password Wallet

UniQPass: Password Wallet

While we hope you changed your passwords after the PlayStation hack, we also hope you’ll take a look at apps such as UniQPass. Billed as a place to record all your “confidential account information and personal data such as credit cards and internet banking details, login password information for favorite email and chat accounts, insurance policies and club memberships” the app may sound like a breeding ground for hackers but it is the opposite. Offering 256-bit AES encryption, you can add your card info to a site in a matter of seconds, saving the hassle of retyping all the laborious account information.

If you opt for the free version of the app, you are limited to 10 cards. These can be anything from debit cards to your passport. You can even take a snap of your card and the app fills tn the information for you.

As we now live in a world where multiple passwords are a given, UniQPass is a decent way to secure all sorts of information, leaving your memory free to store up images of celebrities in various states of undress.

83.  Twitter for Android

Price: Free

Twitter for Android

Twitter for Android

It’s not surprising that the folk behind Twitter decided to release an official app for Android but the problem is that there’s a number of other great apps out there that let you access Twitter.

With this in mind, Twitter had to come up with something awesome. Luckily this app is a revelation for Android users - a functional yet fun piece of software.

The Ul will be instantly familiar to Twitter users. You can tweet, retweet, look at lists, your profile and what messages and mentions you have.

Drill into the options and you can set how often the app updates.

While tweeting and receiving work a charm, though, there are no multiple accounts and you can’t re-tweet and add your own comment. And the fact that it is only available for Android 2.1 and above is also a touch frustrating.

84.  StumbleUpon

Price: Free

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a lazy person’s dream. To make the service work, just add a bunch of categories that you are faintly interested in and the service does the hard work, stumbling upon site after site that it deems will be of interest.

The StumbleUpon app does this on your phone and more - it allows you to stumble your way through Google Play for apps you may like. This is a genius idea. Considering there are 500,000 apps on Google Play, this is a great way to look for ones that may not be in the Most Popular or Featured part of store.

Other things you can stumble through are images from Flickr, news feeds and YouTube videos. You can edit topics from the application and favorite things that you stumble on to.

With the sheer amount of info on the web and in Google Play, StumbleUpon is a simple yet innovative way to separate the wheat from chaff.

85.  Google Finance

Price: Free

Google Finance

Google Finance

Google Finance is the easiest and best app to jack you into the financial world. Even if you don’t use Finance on the web - the app does becomes more useful if you do - you still get a real ­time look at how stock exchanges around the globe are doing and a decent feed of news taken from the Finance section of Google News.

Another interesting feature is the Portfolio tool. If you want to follow a number of companies on the stock market, you can add a ticker and watch how well or how badly they are doing.

It won’t make you a financial guru overnight but it will help you keep track of whatever shares you may have.

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