The Daily Dot’s weekly app round-up brings you five new, or newly updated, apps for both iOS and Android that are well worth your time and attention.
Younity (iOS, Android)
iTunes
Space is an issue for every mobile user, especially since Apple continues it’s cruel delusion that 16GB is an acceptable minimum for a device without upgradeable memory. What’s a memory strapped user to do? The answer is get smart, keep your files on your computer, and embrace the power of Younity.
Younity is a media server that allows you to access files from your computer directly on your phone. Stream media from your home computer to your device, access photos, and even play those files over bluetooth. Best of all you can share files to social media directly from the app, allowing you to post a picture from your computer to Instagram from your phone without having to download the whole file to your phone first. You can even send files via email or SMS. Suddenly 16GB is a little easier to navigate.
Billy (iOS)
iTunes
Have you ever looked at your bank account in wonder, trying to figure out where all of your money goes? In a world where we’re encouraged to set up autopay it’s easy to forget exactly every service we’ve got linked to our accounts. Skype, Netflix, credit card, Hulu, Evernote; these things add up. Billy is an app that gives you a tally of exactly how much all your subscriptions add up to each month and notifies you whenever one of your subscription bills are paid. Best of all it puts all your services in front of you, allowing you to pinpoint things you’re paying for but not using.
Ananda (iOS)
iTunes
Meditation has many benefits even if you’re not a practitioner of any New Age philosophy. It helps you focus, find calm, reduce stress, and even sleep, but with a busy schedule it’s hard to find time to sit down and meditate. Ananda seeks to help fix that problem by putting a meditation studio in your pocket. Utilizing a timer, soothing chants, nature sounds, and music, Ananda helps create a space for you relax outside of the world around you.
The free edition includes settings for Increased Attention and Focus & Concentration, but the $4.99 full version covers everything from Deep Sleep and Lucid Dreaming to Deep Meditation and Waking Up. Both versions include notifications to help you schedule your sessions, high quality sounds, and the ability to block out sounds that bug you.
Smart Merge Pro (iOS)
iTunes
Thanks to all the social media services we’re connected with on our phones you might occasionally find yourself with duplicate contacts or, worse, contacts who don’t have a phone number listed. Organizing your contacts, especially if it’s been years since you did it, can be a nightmare. Don’t let your cluttered contacts win, give Smart Merge Pro a shot. For $2.99 Smart Merge Pro allows you to find and merge duplicate contacts, remove contacts without phone numbers or names, and backup your contacts with a single push of a button.
Smart filters allow you to sort contacts by job title, company, birthdays, and even creation date. For folks like myself with nightmarishly organized contacts Smart Merge Pro is a simple way to get back control over your device.
Colony FM (iOS, Android)
iTunes
Do you love podcasts but hate dedicating an hour or more to getting your bite-sized news? Colony FM might just be for you. Colony curates articles from around the internet and then records professional voice over artists reading them for your pleasure. Selecting hot articles from around the web, Colony FM helps you keep on the constant conversation of the internet without having to read each individual article yourself.
You can select articles from a wide range of genres like entrepreneurship, marketing, science, or even Reddit. Never get bored again at work. Never worry about your boss catching you reading an article when you’re supposed to be working. Let Colony FM do the reading for you, and give your favorite podcast a break.
Colony is well worth your time, if only for the gift that is professional voice over artists reading parts of Reddit. At the moment Colony FM is free but we look forward to seeing what they offer in the future, perhaps subscriptions to your favorite magazines or the AP newswire. As for now it offers a wide range of topics and talented voiceover talent that will keep you saying “maybe just one more article” over and over again.