Ten Apps That Make Your Life Easier

We’re more mobile and we want apps. And now massive numbers of them are available, mostly for free. But which will be most useful to you?

With millions of apps available, no one can honestly assert that any 10 are the very best. But these apps, which have stood the test of time and been updated again and again, certainly can make almost anyone’s life much easier.

Dragon Dictation instantly translates your speech into text—much faster than typing on keyboard. While you’re on the move, you can use it to draft an article, send notes to yourself, even update your Facebook status.

HealthTap. Ask a medical professional a question and get an answer in 24 hours.Free if you don’t mind others reading your questions and answers. For $9.99 you can ask in private and get a follow-up question answered by the same person.

Runkeeper & My Fitness Pal package. Runkeeper is like FitBit but on your phone. It keeps track of how much exercise you’re doing and credits the calorie loss onto My Fitness Pal, which tracks your diet and calorie intake.

Google Maps. Type in your destination and you get directions, including how to get around traffic.

Mint shows you where your money is going. And enter your financial goals and Mint will give you steps toward getting there, advice, encouragement, and a chart that reveals all.

Evernote synchronizes text notes, voice memos, and pictures, and makes them all highly searchable. Great way to organize all that stuff and make it accessible. Most users swear by it.

Awesome Note (+Todo/Calendar) $3.99
A combination note-taker and to-do list maker, including calendaring, including syncing with Evernote and GoogleDrive.

Dropbox lets you upload your videos, pictures, and documents to the cloud where you or anyone you authorize can access it on their desktop or mobile device.

Google Play Music (Android) helps you find, play, and share your favorite music. Plus get expert picks. And unlike Amazon’s CloudMusic, GooglePlay Music is free.

Threes! ($1.99) and Cut the Rope! ($0.99 Android, $2.99 Apple) I couldn’t decide which game I like better, so I list both. Like all addictive games, both are easy to learn, hard to master. In Threes!, you move tiles on a 16-tile grid to make 3’s and multiples of threes, as high as possible. In each of Cut the Rope!’s 400 levels, you use ever tougher physics principles to cut a rope to feed candy to a little green creature.

Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.