Filed under: Fun Stuff, News & Trends
With more than 134,000 iPhone apps in existence, would you able to pick just one favorite? We asked our most well-connected friends and contributors to do just that. There is indeed an app for everything, it seems.By now, the catchphrase is everywhere: "Yeah, there's an app for that." In fact, the current number of iPhone applications (last we checked) is about 134,000 and counting! There are apps for choosing paint colors, measuring building materials, achieving a perfectly straight line -- anything a homeowner could possibly need (or want). But home-based apps are just the tip of the iceberg. You can make restaurant reservations, find out the name of the song you're listening to, buy a new house -- in fact, we're not sure what you can't do on your iPhone, iPad or laptop these days.
Clock Pro HD app. Photo: iTunes App Store
We asked some of ShelterPop's most well-connected friends and contributors -- and those of our sister site, DIY Life -- to name their absolute favorite apps of 2010, design-related, DIY-related or otherwise. Some couldn't pick just one -- in fact, one of our friends picked three! You may want to check out these apps, if you haven't already.
BOB WILLIAMS, designer and cofounder of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
I love Clock Pro HD for traveling. It has an alarm, so I don't have to trust the hotels for a wakeup call. Plus, it has a world clock, so if I'm overseas, I know what time it is there and at home. It also has a stopwatch, so I can time the distance from my home to my final destination: 40 hours and 36 minutes is the record to date.
MITCHELL GOLD, designer and cofounder of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
Open Table: My mother's idea of a cookbook. (Joke spoiler: it's an online restaurant reservation app!)
Craig's List app; Ben Color Capture app. Photos: iTunes App Store (2)
Being a connoisseur of all things old, decorative and one of a kind, I am, of course, a Craigslist junkie. By now I think most everyone in the U.S. is familiar with this great online classifieds community (and now it's even gone international). So how unbelievably stoked was I when I found the Craigslist Pro app?! I mean, it displays the pics right with the search results, so you don't have to click on every coffee table -- just the ones that you might actually be interested in. Now the only danger is... I CAN'T STOP!
GRACE BONNEY of Design*Sponge
As for design-related apps, I love Ben Color Capture; anything you see can be scanned and instantly matched with a paint color -- perfect! But if I'm going to keep it real, my favorite would be Angry Birds, the game. Sometimes my brain requires a little mindless entertainment.
JEFF LEWIS of Jeff Lewis Design, house flipper and star of Bravo's Flipping Out
My favorite app is Shazam, because I never know who sings the songs I hear at El Pollo Loco. (Jeff is referring to this music app's most unique feature: It can identify a song playing in the background. Pretty cool, right?)
Instapaper app. Photo: iTunes App Store
Instapaper: My latest app addiction is Instapaper: it puts all those articles you find on the internet into an easy-to-read format.
Evernote: I take notes about everything I like. Before apps, I wrote everything on paper or in notebooks. The problem then was that I never had them with me when I needed them. Evernote is a fantastic app for taking all sorts of notes (and photo references!). They're stored conveniently in your iPhone or iPad, or laptop, so they're always on hand when you need them.
LastPass: Who can remember all their passwords these days? This app is brilliant.
iHandy Level app. Photo: iTunes App Store
My favorite DIY iPhone app is: iHandy Level for a couple or reasons. Number one, it's free! And number two,
BRIAN KELSEY of Kelsey On the House
My absolute favorite app is Time Lapse. It takes a picture of your DIY project every second, every two seconds -- whatever interval of time you need. When you're done it plays back the entire sequence as a movie. I use it all the time to film my own projects; it's great for when I want to demonstrate an hour's worth of ripping up a floor, for example, squashed down to 15 seconds.