Apps
Apps are no longer a fashion. There are thousands of new apps launched in App Store every day. It is pretty common that you download a fancy app, try it for a few times and find it useless, and then delete it forever. These apps come and go easily and rather quickly.
Eventually, there are only a few apps that survive and stay in my home screen. These apps have become my routine. They don’t have fancy design or amazing features. Instead, most of them are simple and only doing one thing really well. The most important thing is, they’re reliable - never let you down.
- Music: Spotify Spotify is amazing! It’s one of my favourite apps nowadays and I even pay for the service! If you think about it, Spotify is just a music streaming service that allows you to explore all kinds of music free or with a low cost. There are many services have already done that before. What attracts me most is the large pool of music and how easy you can discover new (indie) music. It is frustrating if you cannot find a song or have to find it in another platform (happened to me before). It is a delight when you discover even more great musicians/songs while hunting a particular one. On Spotify, you can find new music by genres, moods, or certain themes. You can listen to what your friends have been listening to. Ever week, Spotify recommends customised new playlist based on your taste. Every year, Spotify even gives you a good summary for a year of music! How cool is that!!! Spotify Run is awesome too, I tried it a few times! I don’t know why they decided to turn it down now :(
- Photo: Instagram I’m one of the early adopters of Instagram. It’s my photo diary ever since then. I use hashtags to organise my photos so I can easily look back. All the good memories are archived there!
- Reading: GoodReads If you ever wonder people still read books nowadays, this is the place to discover! I’m not a bookworm. However, reading has become a habit after I joined GoodReads. There are several reasons that will make you stick to it: the hidden reader community, reading progress tracking, book reviews, annual reading challenge. Reading is fun when you truly dive into it!
- Communication: Gmail, Telegram and WeChat There’s no WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger in my phone, because they’re Facebook!! I’ve already given Facebook way too much data via Instagram. I’d better divert some traffic to other companies, like Google or Tencent =)
Gmail is nothing fancy but functional. Though it looks very normal, Gmail’s UX design is subtle and exceptional! Email is such a routine that we use every day, and Gmail has made the flow so smooth that you don’t have much to complain about - not like Outlook, which is mind-blowing in the worst sense!
Telegram is cool! The fact it’s open source makes it sexier! All of my cool tech friends are using it, so am I! Telegram is probably the first app that supports end-to-end encrypted chat (https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end). WhatsApp is a copycat, unsurprisingly.
WeChat is powerful. If it isn’t for keeping in touch with my Chinese friends and families, I wouldn’t consider WeChat. However, I cannot deny that it is a great app - it has everything inside. At first glimpse, it looks simple and straightforward. But man, this is a way too complicated app with a lot of hidden features such as micro blogs, chat translation, official channel subscriptions, in-app games etc. You can even transfer money and pay bill! There is a concern though… I wonder if the chats are under the government’s surveillance.
- Everything else: Evernote Many people don’t get Evernote. My first attempt was a failure too. Evernote is a simple notebook that you can take everything in. It is so general that users can define their own ways of organising notes and notebooks. But that is also a problem - because most of time we struggle with organising stuff and Evernote doesn’t really provide a feature called “auto organisation”! Then forget about the organising part! Enjoy taking notes and - do a quick search! The search function in Evernote is pretty awesome and it kind of changes the way I organise my notes. Just make sure you have the right keywords in your notes, and you will always be able to get them!
- Lifestyle apps There are some lifestyle apps to recommend too. For example, Lumosity and Headspace. One is to train your brain, the other is to relax your mind. Both are well designed! (Ok, I don’t feel like going on now...)
说来说去，发现其实我就是有整理收集癖。哈哈哈哈哈哈!