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Readers like you keep news free for everyone.
More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
EACH WEEK, WE highlight five apps that are worth downloading for your smartphone and tablet. There are a lot of apps released on a daily basis, but not all of them are worth paying attention to.
This week features personal podcasting, figuring out what to watch and drawing your own story.
Draw My Story
For: Android
Cost: Free
- The likes of Snapchat has brought drawing to the fore with emojis and other features in place. So it’s not surprising to see other apps base a premise around that very thing.
- Draw my Story allows you to, well, draw your story. Or draw anything really and turn it into a video.
- If you remember the game Draw Something, you will immediately know how it works. When you complete a drawing, the video will show it being created the way you drew it.
- You can then save it onto your phone if you want to post it somewhere else like Instagram or Twitter. You will have to pay if you want a video longer than 10 seconds but
- For those who would like to show off their drawing skills to the world.
Anchor
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- Maybe you listen to a podcast or two, but have you ever considered contributing to one? Or just giving your thoughts on a specific question?
- Anchor allows users to record their own questions or reply to ones by using their phones. Once you’ve signed up, you can jump straight into a number of topics by recording some audio.
- What normally happens is one person starts off a topic discussion (the max length for any posting is two minutes) and is followed up by another person contributing to it.
- It’s much like an audio version of the comments section. Once your response is live, anyone can respond to it.
- For those who would like to discuss topics in a different way.
JustWatch
For: iOS, Android
Cost: Free
- Finding good shows and movies to watch isn’t the easiest of tasks and in some cases, you can be overwhelmed by choice to the point where you’ll spend your time trying to decide what to watch instead of watching something.
- JustWatch highlights all of the shows you can watch legally on places like Netflix, Apple TV, and Sky Go among others.
- It organises them by most popular, but you can filter shows based on what you have access to, price, rating, and genre.
- If you regularly rent or buy films/shows, it will alert you to any price drops that may occur and alert you to new releases on each platform.
- If you’re having serious trouble deciding what to watch on Netflix, this could help you out.
Hello Weather
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- Weather apps tend to be minimalist, presenting what happening now over what could be coming up.
- Hello Weather just throws everything into the one screen with a breakdown of what’s happening and what’s coming up.
- The three sections are ‘right now’, ‘the next few hours’ and ‘this week’. On top of a temperature preview, ‘right now’ can be expanded to see wind speed, humidity, and sunlight.
- The same thing can be done with the other two sections, either skipping a little further in time or giving you a breakdown of what day is going to be like. It manages to fit in a lot of information into a small space.
- A colourful weather app that’s both simple and informative.
Tomb of the Mask
For: iOS
Cost: Free (€0.99 for no ads)
- Tomb of the Mask is a never ending game where you must climb a tomb as fast as possible. You’re able to climb walls so you find yourself zipping between them while you’re being chased by an ever-rising wave of colourful death.
- You control your character through simple swipes and you need to think fast. The first route you see might not be the best one to take and the pressure builds when you have traps and enemies to take into consideration.
- You do get used to it and the trigger-happy nature means you will move instinctively. There’s a bit of trial and error involved but the difficulty is balanced so most of the time, you’ll only have yourself to blame if you jump into a row of spikes.
- As you progress, you can unlock additional masks and improve your power-ups. There are in-app purchases for disabling ads or buying gold coins, but neither are as annoying as you might think.
- For those looking for an accessible and fun challenge that’s old school in both style and gameplay.
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