Tag: Lifestyle »

Want to sell something but it's too impractical to ship far away? What you need is a Yardsale! The app, that is, rather than the traditional yard sale which can prove limited.

Yardsale promises that listing anything for sale will only take a matter of seconds, it's so simple. Take a photo and add it to the listing, set a price then put the item up for sale. It's easy to share such listings with friends and family via Facebook and Twitter, but the app also allows you to list items to other Yardsale users.

It's all free and available across the US, with items listed according to distance. For keen buyers, users can turn on New Item Alerts to see exactly when new items have been posted nearby, as well as save keywords to get alerts for relevant items.

Even better, it's all entirely free to list with!

Yardsale is out now.

For those in the Northern hemisphere, Spring is here which means sun, less rain and snow and more plant growth out in the garden. This makes it an ideal time to round up our favorite four gardening apps. Each is an app that will help keen gardeners keep their land in check, whether it be by providing guides to fruit and vegetables or by helping users plot out their garden.

iVeggieGarden
Aiming to be an all round solution for gardeners, iVeggieGarden offers reference and planning tools as well as a means of tracking things. There's even a means in which users can enter their own notes and photos of how things are progressing. Over 50 different vegetables and over 500 different varieties are catered for with a plethora of information from appropriate temperatures and planting depths to harvesting tips. The app should cover all the key questions that both novice and experienced gardeners may have and it's all done in a very attractive format.

Vegetable Garden
Similar to iVeggieGarden but for those on a budget, Vegetable Garden offers growing tips, soil preparation advice and a schedule chart for vegetables. It's geared towards the UK market in terms of growing times but everything else is universal. A plot planner helps users plan out their garden, no matter how big or small.

Gardening Toolkit HD
An iPad exclusive, Gardening Toolkit HD uses the extra screen space to create an appealing way of tracking everything to do within the garden. A notes section helps users keep track of what they need to do and when. There's a colorful and photo-packed encyclopaedia of more than 1000 plants. For the US users, they can enter their zip-code and be informed of how hard their soil is, plus there's information on suggested plants for the area. It's an all round attractive reference tool.

Harvest - Select the Best Produce
Harvest provides a guide to how to pick the best produce by offering tips and techniques of exactly how to look for the ripest and healthiest fruit or veg. It'll be ideal once keen gardeners have already grown their crop. A large variety of different produce is catered for, each with their own bunch of tips and tricks that are impressively educational. The app follows such tips up with information on pesticide residue levels which can help those who still buy from stores, but why would you want to do that once you've finished growing your own, anyhow?

It might not be the start of a new year but it's never too late to start making a change to one's life. LifeSpicer goes some way to facilitating that ideal.

The app offers 365 different ways to spice up life, with challenges ranging from going commando for the day to donating to charity or memorizing a Simpsons quote.

They might not be all life affirming or revolutionary but they're bound to give the day a bit more of a kick and make things more interesting. Some will push users to step outside of their comfort zone, others will be randomly silly. All will be worth trying.

Throughout, users can track their progress and check the tally to see how they're doing. Each day a random Spice of the Day is offered by the app so there's no guessing what's going to come up next!

LifeSpicer should prove to be a great way of getting more out of life and doing something fun and different each day of the year. Let us know how things go with the LifeSpicer plan.

The app is $0.99 and it's out now.

Got a garden or lawn? I have and it's amazing how fast weeds grow and bugs appear to eat away at things faster than I can plant them. Spectracide, known for its many weed and bug killing products, has just released an app to help identify what's going on and how to fix it.

Bug & Weed Identifier by Spectracide® is free to download and offers some key features. First of all is the Pest Guidebook which tells the user how to figure out what bugs and weeds are involved. There's then Capture & Compare in which the user can take photos and place them side by side with those in the guide, or even email an expert for help.

Identifying isn't all that the app offers, however, with the ability to provide advice of what treatment to use to eradicate them, and also which retailer to go visit.

It's simple yet useful for the keen gardener, quickly giving them a way of defeating the scourge of weeds and pests.

Bug & Weed Identifier by Spectracide® is out now.

I'm not quite at the wedding planning stage of life but I know plenty of people who are. It's a stressful time but also a hugely enjoyable experience. One of the latest wedding apps to hit the app store, Vera Wang on Weddings, intends to hit the spot in both upping the excitement quota and reducing some stress.

Free to download, Vera Wang on Weddings offers Vera's personal style advice for the occassion and the ability to select a dress from the Vera Wang Bridal Collection. Alongside that are tools in which the user can organize wedding guests including invitations, RSVPs and seating arrangements, along with the ability to manage contact details for everyone involved in the event.

A Wedding To-Do list as well as Inspiration Boards, allowing for new and creative designs as well as the option to view existing gallery images, completes the app.

For anyone planning a wedding at the moment, Vera Wang on Weddings is clearly worth a look.

Junk mail. Yuck. Not only is it annoying, it's also a terrible waste. All those circulars about sales no one cares about involving products nobody wants... At least those unsolicited emails from Nigerian princes don't waste any paper. Well now there's this neat little app that will theoretically put a stop to most of these unwanted advertisements.

PaperKarma is so simple in its execution it almost sounds like magic. All a user has to do is snap a photo with their iOS device's camera and the app will (read: should) find the company responsible and take care of the rest. The rest referring to getting users off of the mailing list. It's a mind-bogglingly simple concept, really.

Anyone with an iOS device and a thinning patience for junk mail should definitely check out PaperKarma. It's on the App Store right now, and it's on sale for free for a "limited time." What's the harm in giving it a try, right?

In life, everyone needs a moment of clarity and calm in their day, no matter how brief it may be. An Ordinary App: Ordinary Words ~ Extraordinary Power has recently been released in order to facilitate that.

For $2.99, users are given a fresh insight every day through the app. It's simple philosophy but offers some great inspirational quotes that are worth paying attention to. As an added bonus, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the insight comes bundled with a link to an article or exercise that sets out to enhance a particular area of the user's life.

On Saturdays, An Ordinary App: Ordinary Words ~ Extraordinary Power goes one step further by including a link to a short inspirational video that uses song, entertainment or commentary to help the user take in the moment of wisdom.

With a quote for each day of the year, plus 148 unique articles and 52 videos, it's a satisfying inspirational package that will hopefully give its users some wise words across the rest of the year.

There's not enough cheer and positivity in the world today so new app Chee.rs has set out to change that.

Described by the developers as "the 'like button' for the world around you," Chee.rs gives users the opportunity to express their satisfaction with people, places or things that they love.

Connecting up with friends via the app, the user can share all the great things going on in their life from a great restaurant visit to a new movie, or just someone that's made life that bit more pleasant. Users can even take a photo of what they 'like' so much, to give an idea of what's so great about it.

The more the app is used, the more Cheerfluence points can be gained to show which users influence the Chee.rs world so much. It's a pretty neat idea with some great potential.

Chee.rs is out now and it's free.

Regardless of the location, there's bound to be something interesting going on somewhere. AroundNow seeks to provide an easy way of seeing exactly what's going on locally at any time.

Using Twitter as a notification system, AroundNow offers news of interest depending on the area the user happens to reside in at the time. That news can range from all manners of things from entertainment events such as concerts or celebrity spottings to parties or demonstrations. Traffic information such as road works or traffic jams can also be provided as well as something as regular as a good sale in a local store.

As it's partly a social networking app, AroundNow relies upon user participation to truly be great but it's an excellent idea. In a busy and bustling city, it's easy to miss out on something exciting so this app could be the ideal way to get involved in local events.

AroundNow is out now and it's a free download.