The world is becoming completely digital and it's time everyone starts to accept it. Sooner or later there's going to be no way to avoid downloading countless apps. You can find an app that deals with just about anything now. My dog's collar is connected to an app that will send me alerts when she strays from the house with her exact location.
Every night I can go on and check how active she was during the day. Is that not ideal for when no one is home? Something I've seen more and more of is people using apps on their phones to show their loyalty cards or coupons at stores at checkout. No more having to carry around a big keyring and shift through a bunch of small pieces of plastic to find the store you're currently in or rustling through a bunch of flimsy clipped out newspaper coupons.
1. Google Calendar will let you easily create color coded events. It gives the option to "repeat" an event, so if you're like me and you feel that it's necessary to have every class show on your calendar throughout the semester it's really convenient to do so. My favorite part of Google Calendar is that you can create multiple individual calendars and have them all show up on one master copy. This makes planning group projects easy. You can keep your master calendar private and create a separate calendar that only your group can see this way it's easier to plan a time to meet up.
Although there is an option to sync Google Calendar right onto your iPhone's own calendar, I choose not to do so. The set up of the Google Calendar app is extremely easy to navigate and it's easier to make amends to events through the app itself.
Of course an app isn't as appealing to the eye as a bright and fun patterned Lilly Pulitzer planner is, which is why I still carry mine around to jot down any ideas or assignments throughout the day. Having both a physical planner to carry around and this app have proven to be very effective when staying organized.
2. Keeping forth with the Google theme, Google Docs and Google Slides are another two must haves when group projects are inevitable. If anyone is unfamiliar with how Google Docs works, anyone with a gmail address (something everyone should have) can easily add others into an email where a document or powerpoint can be edited. This makes it super convenient to work on group assignments. There's no need to pass around a flash drive or constantly meet up and everything design wise will match from the start. Having these two apps on your phone will be good for when you're away from your computer or you can't connect to wifi and need to get some work done in order to avoid letting your group mates down.
3. I used to swear by Pandora. The idea of an app providing me with new music to listen to and taking my music taste into consideration when doing it was genius. However, about a year ago I discovered Spotify and how absolutely marvelous it is. Spotify will let you browse through playlists made up from numerous charts and genres of music. Adding any of these songs onto your own personal playlist is simple. You can even download an entire playlist to your own library if you wish.
Although you can listen to it for free with ads, there is also the option to pay $9.99/month and get rid of those ads AND you get the option to listen to music you have added to your own library when offline. This means you don't need to be connected to data or wifi to listen to your music, just as if you were listening to your phone's actual music library. For those of you who choose to acquire your music legally, it can become very expensive. Since I've downloaded Spotify and signed up for Premium I've saved a ton of money by paying $9.99/month opposed to $1.29/song on iTunes.
4. Textfree is a very important app to have, especially if you're too nice to turn people down in person. This app gives you a real phone number with your actual area code and you can use it to text and call people when you have data or wifi. Download this and memorize your fake number this way you can give that out opposed to your real one whenever you don't want someone acquiring your actual information. You can even respond right away when someone sends you a text to make sure your number is real.
5. 94% is a game where you get a prompt such as "Things you find in a pencil case" and you have to guess different items that would fit that criteria. It was given it's name because the idea is that you find 94% of the answers previously given by others. It's great if you have free time or you just don't want to take part in any of your responsibilities for a bit. Once the app is downloaded you don't need data or wifi to use it which is very convenient. It's educational, gets you thinking creatively and it doesn't use much of your phone's battery.
