10 Must-Have-Apps for Work and Play

(For PC World Pakistan)

Gadget apps have come a long way indeed.  From essentials to games, the apps we’d like to recommend are sure to keep you bound to your smart phone and make your day a little lighter. The topper on our list most definitely has the month of February to credit!

Wish Your Valentine

Just can’t think of the most innovate way to wish your hubby valentine’s? At least there is one option.  Unlike other apps, you can a lot more with this app. Wish Your Valentine can show your compatibility with your loved one or another couple. Additionally, you can select and send eFlowers to your love from a variety of bouquet options available in the app. People can even express their love by sending love anecdotes and funny quotes. Last, but not the least, this app provides consultation to couples facing relationship difficulties – whether it’s in the early blossoms of romance or for a married couple. The app is available for free on the Android market.

Viber

Viber is an economical app for all those with smart phones. This amazing app lets you call and text others without spending a penny. However, it also requires the other person, to whom you are calling or text, to have this installed in his/her phone. Once synced with people in contacts, who have Viber, a separate list of people can be generated for direct penny-saving calls. It requires a WiFi or a 3G network to connect. Therefore, with 3G network on its way, this app can be very handy for iOS and Android users.

Skype: The ultimate communication tool

After romance and shoe-string budgeting, the only one to follow immediately on our list is Skype as it has the gift of bringing worlds together. It is definitely a must-have whether you are a professional or a student. Skype is a free video and audio chat client that is available for many different platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Google Android. One reason Skype has been so successful is that if offers high quality online audio and video chat.

Angry Birds

Up for a game anyone? Angry Birds is undoubtedly the most widely played app on any platform. Angry Birds features challenging physics-based game play and hours of replay value. Each of the 300 levels requires logic, skill, and force to solve. The scenario is silly, use your catapult to fire the birds at the fortresses built by a gang of evil pigs, but the game is astonishingly addictive.

Awesome Currency Calculator

How can we forget the hardwired on-the-go Executive? Awesome Currency Calculator is a great tool for people, especially business people, who travel more often. The app features a combined currency converter and calculator, to help you track and convert your expenses. It can convert 160 currencies, and is even able to find out and add the sales tax where applicable. The app is on Apple App store for just $ 1.99.

Fruit Ninja

Following Angry Birds, the second most-downloaded game on any platform is this fruit slicing app. Users of this app have a fair idea of how addictive this app is. Fruit Ninja is a juicy action game that tricks the player into swinging across the screen and slashing fruits like a true ninja warrior.

Dropbox

This app takes us back to work. Dropbox is an excellent synchronization tool. In fact it is one the most effective tools to sync and backup files and other important data, ranging from photos to docs. Dropbox can seamlessly sync your files across multiple computers on shared and public folders. The folder option allows users to share/sync only the content they want to be sync with the other computer. Because of its increasing popularity, the app was initially available for Apple users but it is now easily available on all OS.

Need for Speed Shift

Need for Speed Shift is where app meets perfection. NFS Shift is a monument of what gaming can be; graphically polished, easy to learn, and fun to play for two hours or ten minutes. The race types are just diverse enough to keep you interested for a long period of time. Because of its popularity, the free version has not been released anywhere yet.

Evernote

It’s the simple things in life that are understood with maximum difficulty. Evernote makes it easy to remember things, big and small from your everyday life using your computer, phone, tablet and the web. With Evernote, all of your notes, web clips, docs, pdfs, files and images are made available on the device you use. It is downloadable on all platforms.

LiveProfile

How can one ever forget the social networking bug? LiveProfile is a 100% free and an easy to use smart phone messenger for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry. It allows you to share status updates, upload profile photos, set your display name and profile details, integrate with Twitter and Facebook, and much more. LiveProfile puts real-time communication in the palm of your hands.

For iPad enthusiasts, here is another option.