It’s summer, you’ve finished university for a few months and you’ve played Candy Crush and 2048 to death. Need something a little more exciting to perk up your gadgets?
Never fear, Kettle has found you four scorching new apps set to make you fall back in love with your iPhone.
MyLaddr
Felt like all you’ve done since starting the summer is sitting refreshing your Facebook page? MyLaddr has found a solution to social media stagnancy by turning your social life into a competition.
It forces you to go outside and take part in real-life events with your friends in order to earn points. You enter Facebook events into MyLaddr from quiet meals out with friends to society socials and huge bar crawls. Your friends enter photographic evidence to prove you attended the event, and this will earn you points and take you up the ladder.
Not only does MyLaddr provide you with a fun new way to experience social media as a game, but also gives you a ‘personality’ and recommends future possible events for you to attend. A must-download for university socialites! Get it here.
Inkvite
If you’re less of the social and more of the curl-up-and-write type, then this app is totally for you. And it introduces a new genre of writing to the mix in a world where the Kindle is growing and print is dying: collaborative flash fiction.
It allows you to sign in easily with Facebook or Twitter, and ‘inkvite’ up to four friends to write with you (or if you would rather, you can write alone). You can write up to 280 characters of text (the length of a double tweet) and then send it on to your friends for them to add to. When the story is finished, you can publish it to a library and let others rate it.
If you’re a natural writer it’s great practise, and if you want to get started with writing and need some ideas, or just have writer’s block, it’s perfect for you too as it comes with an automatic title generator if you wish to use it. Get the app here.
MagiCam
If you love taking photos but are completely bored of Instagram, then this app is worth trying out. Sometimes uploading photos and working out the correct exposure can be a little too time-consuming, so MagiCam simplifies everything right down for you.
No editing focus, no fixing exposure, it just cuts straight to choosing a filter once you snap a photo then instantly shares it. This app is perfect for the summer; it ensures you spend as little time as possible on your phone whilst allowing you to record your memories simply and quickly. The filters are great, too: nine clear ‘moods’, such as cheerful and innocent, are included in the mix. Previews are clearly displayed and the app also allows you to switch the viewfinder to a square shape like Instagram.
Want to snap but don’t have the time to edit whilst you’re having fun all summer? Download MagiCam here.
Note: Possibly the only bad thing about this app is that the advert is terrible.
Business Secrets
If you can’t quite bring yourself to relax over summer and want to prepare yourself just a little more for your degree, make sure you download this app by Dragon’s Den entrepreneur James Caan. Also if you want to brush up on your interview skills without it interrupting your summer too severely, Business Secrets is perfect for you because it delivers short clips of advice through media clips.
Topics covered include marketing and leadership, hiring and firing, and straight-talking advice through small anecdotes from the entrepreneur himself. As Caan knows the challenges that face a businessman on a day-to-day basis, the app is perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs as well as established ones.
If you can’t get away from work even during the summer holidays, this fun and bitesized-app can be downloaded here.
Give these a download, and I promise you won’t be bored this summer!
What are your hottest apps for summer 2014? Let us know in the comments below.
Photo: Jason Howie / Flickr
