Welcome to the weekend. The sun may or may not be shining, but you’ll always have the warm glow of your mobile applications to keep you company. And that’s all that matters after all, right? Here’s a few more friends to add to your ever-loyal gang.
Human Body: While most educational apps are generally intended for children, let’s be honest — anyone not in the field probably remembers next to nothing about how the human body works other than the fact that, you know, it does. Fortunately, The Human Body by Tinybop is just as fascinating for adults as it is for children, letting you explore every excreting, beating and oozing crevice of human biology, all at your own pace. $2.99.
YouTube: Google’s YouTube app just got a functional, stylish makeover this week. Along with an updated, Google Now-esque, card-based design, you’ll also be able to enable your ADD by playing videos while looking for others, and devouring whole playlists. In the new version of YouTube, all you have to do is swipe down on a playing video, and it’ll shrink down to a tiny version in the corner, leaving you free to do whatever other YouTube goodness you have to attend to. And if that includes searching for and/or watching playlists on your mobile app, you’re in luck for the first time ever. The app’s also getting a little tweak to help it play nice with the lovely Chromecast (or Google TV, PS3 or whathaveyou). Free.
KeWe by Taio Cruz: The first release from Cruz’s development firm Tourean, “KeWe” is a portmanteau of the noticeably rhyming non-phrase “key to the we” and is meant to act as one mega social network by combining functionality based on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Foursquare features. There’s a News Feed-style main screen, multimedia messaging, photo filters and a map like Foursquare’s Explore tab for checking who’s around. Free.
SoundFocus: SoundFocus is “the world’s first music player that tunes to your hearing,” according to its creators, led by SoundFocus CEO Alex Selig, who himself suffers from hearing impairment.First, you test your hearing acuity, roughly speaking, in three zones — lows, mids, and highs. In addition to everything on your phone and in your Apple iTunes Match account (although it can’t apply its EQ to the cloud-stored songs), SoundFocus includes artist radio stations using Spotify’s catalogue, if you’re a premium subscriber, programming the artist stations using technology from The Echo Nest (publisher of Evolver.fm). You also get access to all your Spotify on-demand tracks. SoundFocus can work its EQ magic on Spotify songs, just not on iTunes Match songs, so we recommend turning off iTunes Match in your iOS settings if you’re going to use this app as your main player. Free.
Emojify: Turns actual photos into emoji art. Upon opening the app, you’re prompted to either snap a new photo or choose one from your album, once you have a picture ready, you get to adjust the size of the emoji’s that make it up as well as the contrast levels. A best practices tip: make sure you’re using a solid, clearly outlined image on a (preferably) light background. You can then go on to share away, and they even allow for photos up to 16 megapixels — perfect for printing your posters full of smiley faces, snowmen, hypodermic needles and poop. $0.99.