With the brisker air of autumn now around the next corner, but the somewhat lazier days of summer still lingering, maybe you'd like to spend a bit of your free time exploring smartphone apps in Apple's App Store or Google Play.
1. Cloud Storage: SugarSync
Crossplatform cloud storage services and apps are growing in popularity in leaps and bounds, for purposes ranging from sharing summer vacation photos from your phone to downloading office docs for school or work from a home PC.
The growing number of choices in this field includes SugarSync, Dropbox, Box, Apple's iCloud, Google Drive, and LogMein's emerging Cubby, just to name a handful.
For its part, SugarSync operates across Apple iOS and Android OS mobile gadgets, Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac desktops and laptops, and BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones.
SugarSync is in differerent versions on various OS, however, and feature sets still vary from one platform to the next.
Essentially, the service and associated apps are designed to sync folders and files from a computer first into the cloud, and from there with other computers that you designate.
2. Office Suites: DataViz Documents To Go
Microsoft is now planning a SkyDrive-enabled edition of Microsoft Office for future Windows Phone 8 smartphones. But where does leave users of iPhones and Android OS smartphones who want to be able to work with MS Office files on their current devices?
A number of vendors have stepped in over the years to fill this ongoing gap, including DataViz, Quickoffice, and ThinkFree, for instance.
On a basic level, DataViz Documents To Go does the same thing that other offices suites for Andoid do.
It allows you to create, edit and view Microsoft Office docs on your iOS or Android OS device.
Yet that's sort of like saying that a pickup truck and a Mustang sports care are both designed to move people and goods from one location to another.
Where the pickup truck outdoes the Mustang in some ways, the Mustang shines elsewhere.
3. Digital Photography: MacPhun FX Photo Studio
Although cloud services like SugarSync do allow for photo sharing, they typically require you to specifically invite other users to see your files, making the sharing sort of a one-to-one proposition.
In contrast, apps like MacPhun make it easier to share your pics widely. That's because they exploit social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr.
From the same 99 cent app, MacPhun FX Photo Studio also allows you to add cool and distinctive special effects, and to perform some basic editing tasks such as photo resizing. The app is currently available for iOS only.
4. Music: Sound Hound
Strictly for fun, you might want to check out a "name that tune" type of app like SoundHound. Apps of this ilk first came to fame a few years back with Shazam.
SoundHound, one of several imitators, has long been listed as one of the top 30 paid apps in Google Play. It's also a popular iOS app. So if you download it, you'll hardly be alone.
As one distinction from Shazam and all the rest, SoundHouse is also touted as "the world's only viable singing and humming recognition" app.
5. Cool Tool: Easy Voice Recorder Pro (EVRP)
Question: How can you turn your Android OS phone into a highly versatile voice recorder?
Answer: EVRP is one way.
EVRP will record just about anything you throw at it. Certainly, it's particularly well designed for voice notes, taking just a couple of taps to play back a quick recording that you made earlier.
Yet with practially no ime limit on recordings, this app is just as well suited to long projects: for recording classroom lectures, business meetings, brainstorming session, dictations to the office assistant, and things of that nature.
It'll even record in the background while you do other things with the device. (Just be careful, though, not to put your hand over the microphone!)
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