79. Virtual Guitar
Price: Free
Everyone has dreamed of becoming a
guitarist. It’s the coolest instrument in the band. So if you’re going to
emulate an instrument on your phone, it’s bound to be the good ol’ axe.
There’s a fair few guitar emulators on
Google Play but Virtual Guitar is probably the most fun. There’s a number of
ways you can use it. In Solo Mode you can pluck any string you want and try to
make a tune out of it. We tried and failed, but it was fun.
Virtual
Guitar
In Chord Mode you choose the chord you
want, strum, then keep choosing chords until you make something that sounds
like a song.
We had to tweak the settings to make the
app work to our liking but once done it was decent to use.
80. Voodoo Control
Price: Free
Voodoo
Control
Before we begin, note that Voodoo Control
is for the Samsung Galaxy S only. And it isn’t a game about raising armies of
the dead. No, this an audio improvement tool for your phone.
The technology in Voodoo Control is pretty
nifty - by tweaking the handset’s audio at processor level with some sprightly
new code, you unleash the true volume capabilities of your phone’s headphone
amplifier. Proceed with caution because this lifts all preset volume limits,
and could melt ear wax if abused. Our advice is to set the analogue output
volume at a moderate level, and don’t get carried away. There are other sonic
benefits from the installation. Vocal clarity seems to improve a tad and you
can boost the bass response from the integrated FM radio.
The app itself is tiny - just 15kb and the
control screens are as simple to use as any standard part of the Galaxy S’s
menu. If you want to make your mobile really loud and clear, this is worth
downloading.
81. Vignette
Price: $2.4
Vignette
It’s crazy but some people use their phone
camera for things other than sexting. If you are one of the few, you have
probably found that your images come out more Bill Bailey than David Bailey.
Lucky, then, that there’s a handful of apps on Google Play that claim to improve
the quality of your images, by providing filters and overlays that turn mutton
into lamb, and blurry shots into nicer-looking blurry shots.
Vignette is one of the best on the market,
because it has a wide range of options. For a start, it adds to your phone’s
camera capabilities. At its heart are the filters - there are 68 effects and 56
frames in all, which range from vintage to trendy LOMO style shots.
The quality of each one is decent but it is
all dependent on taste if you like what you see. There’s even the option to add
some cross processing to your shots, as well as double exposure and tilt
shifting. You do need to have a photographic eye to make these work, though -
adding any of these features to a crap shot will probably make it even crapper.
With megapixel counts going up, the quality
of phone cameras are improving - and apps such as Vignette take your phone
photography further.
Yes, you do have to pay, but if you are
serious about using your cameraphone as a camera replacement, it is money well
spent.
82. UniQPass: Password Wallet
Price: $2.99
UniQPass:
Password Wallet
While we hope you changed your passwords
after the PlayStation hack, we also hope you’ll take a look at apps such as
UniQPass. Billed as a place to record all your “confidential account
information and personal data such as credit cards and internet banking
details, login password information for favorite email and chat accounts,
insurance policies and club memberships” the app may sound like a breeding
ground for hackers but it is the opposite. Offering 256-bit AES encryption, you
can add your card info to a site in a matter of seconds, saving the hassle of
retyping all the laborious account information.
If you opt for the free version of the app,
you are limited to 10 cards. These can be anything from debit cards to your
passport. You can even take a snap of your card and the app fills tn the
information for you.
As we now live in a world where multiple
passwords are a given, UniQPass is a decent way to secure all sorts of information,
leaving your memory free to store up images of celebrities in various states of
undress.
83. Twitter for Android
Price: Free
Twitter
for Android
It’s not surprising that the folk behind
Twitter decided to release an official app for Android but the problem is that
there’s a number of other great apps out there that let you access Twitter.
With this in mind, Twitter had to come up
with something awesome. Luckily this app is a revelation for Android users - a
functional yet fun piece of software.
The Ul will be instantly familiar to
Twitter users. You can tweet, retweet, look at lists, your profile and what
messages and mentions you have.
Drill into the options and you can set how
often the app updates.
While tweeting and receiving work a charm,
though, there are no multiple accounts and you can’t re-tweet and add your own
comment. And the fact that it is only available for Android 2.1 and above is
also a touch frustrating.
84. StumbleUpon
Price: Free
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a lazy person’s dream. To
make the service work, just add a bunch of categories that you are faintly
interested in and the service does the hard work, stumbling upon site after
site that it deems will be of interest.
The StumbleUpon app does this on your phone
and more - it allows you to stumble your way through Google Play for apps you
may like. This is a genius idea. Considering there are 500,000 apps on Google
Play, this is a great way to look for ones that may not be in the Most Popular
or Featured part of store.
Other things you can stumble through are
images from Flickr, news feeds and YouTube videos. You can edit topics from the
application and favorite things that you stumble on to.
With the sheer amount of info on the web
and in Google Play, StumbleUpon is a simple yet innovative way to separate the
wheat from chaff.
85. Google Finance
Price: Free
Google
Finance
Google Finance is the easiest and best app
to jack you into the financial world. Even if you don’t use Finance on the web
- the app does becomes more useful if you do - you still get a real time look
at how stock exchanges around the globe are doing and a decent feed of news
taken from the Finance section of Google News.
Another interesting feature is the
Portfolio tool. If you want to follow a number of companies on the stock
market, you can add a ticker and watch how well or how badly they are doing.
It won’t make you a financial guru
overnight but it will help you keep track of whatever shares you may have.
