Facebook's messaging service has been grown up and left home,
becoming a stand-alone app that can be downloaded by itself, without
the need to go through Facebook. With Messenger you can message
friends and family: and even make calls and chat using your mobile
data so that no other charges are incurred. You can even include as
many of your friends in a conversation thread as you'd like, so that
you can stay in touch with the whole office, class or hobby group at
once, enjoying camaraderie and making plans effortlessly.
2. Signal
If you are security minded and value your privacy, why not
invest in Signal, a communication app that keeps you protected with
end-to-end encryption even as you make calls, send texts and
otherwise stay in touch with your contacts. In order for the app to
work, all parties must have the app installed.
Signal is free from the Apple Store.
3. Wolfram-Alpha
Taking a page from many science fiction books and films,
Wolfram-Alpha aims to be more than a search engine, rather, it aims
to be a computational knowledge engine. This means that any enquiry
fed into the search bar will come back with complete answers, rather
than a list of results which the searcher has to further narrow down
in order to arrive at the answer they seek. Search queries which are
ambiguous will prompt Wolfram-Alpha to offer several refining choices
to aid the program in arriving at the correct response. The program
may offer similar topics or related themes as additional search
parameters too. The answer format is a series of facts and
informational nuggets which can be expanded by hovering the mouse's
cursor over each item.
Wolfram-Alpha costs US$2.29, while Wolfram-Alpha Pro is
currently available for US$4.99 (with a discount for students). This offering from Touch Type is the answer to all those
embarrassing and cringeworthy autocorrect fails that are a minor
plague to modern living. SwiftKey saves you clicking away to type out
lengthy messages by offering personalised predictive text that learns
from you. Not only does the app learn your favoured words and
phrasing sequences, but it can even understand words from a finger
dragged over the relevant letters, adding spaces as needed, and even
recognising the need for an emoticon where relevant.
SwiftKey Keyboard is free from the Apple Store, but there are
some in-app purchases that customers might want to invest in.
5. Device
6
A blend of detective fiction, suspense and gameplay, Device 6
leads the player mainly through a text-driven narrative. The player
reads through and makes choices, following clues and hints to solve
the mystery, with fresh information being released as progress is
made through the game. Perhaps a better way to describe the game is
as an interactive novel: no matter the description it promises to be
an absorbing and fascinating game – one that will leave you wanting
more.
Device 6 costs £2.99 from the Apple Store.