Buzz
As you gather with family and friends this holiday season, ensure you're ready for anything by stocking your iPhone (or iPod Touch) with essential apps. From capturing unforgettable photo memories to handling unexpected emergencies, our curated list has you covered. Brace yourself for a holiday adventure filled with challenges and triumphs!
1. Save Grandpa's Life
Picture this: the family is gathered around the table for a festive feast. Wine is being poured, the turkey is being carved, and kids are running wild in the next room. Suddenly, Grandpa starts choking on a piece of turkey! What do you do?
First, call 911 immediately. But let’s add a twist: the phones are down due to a holiday ice storm! No one knows how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver! Meanwhile, the kids are busy forming their own little society in the next room, and Grandpa is turning blue. What’s your next move?
Solution: Grab your iPhone and open the Pocket First Aid & CPR Guide ($1.99). This app offers a wealth of first aid resources, including step-by-step guides for the Heimlich Maneuver, emergency CPR, handling bites and stings, and managing seizures. While it’s not intended for real-time emergencies—the creators recommend using it for preparation—the straightforward instructions could be a lifesaver for Grandpa.
The Pocket First Aid & CPR Guide also features a "My Info" section where you can store personal medical details, such as allergies, directly on your phone. This comes in handy if you accidentally eat something you’re allergic to, like shrimp. Just point to your phone as your throat swells; the paramedics will understand.
2. Shop with Amazon’s Freelance Workforce
With Grandpa breathing normally again, the family decides to calm down. Your sister pulls out a book you’ve been curious about and starts reading. You ask to see it, then use your iPhone to open Amazon Mobile (free) and take a photo of the book using the "Amazon Remembers" feature.
As you relax with a glass of wine, Amazon processes the photo through its Mechanical Turk system, which assigns small tasks to freelancers. You pay nothing upfront, and within minutes (assuming the freelancers can decipher the book title), Amazon identifies the book and offers it for sale. Pretty impressive, right?
While exploring the Amazon Mobile app, you’ll find it conveniently suggests items from your Amazon Wish List. Be cautious—spending too much time here might lead to impulsive purchases. It’s time to move on to the next app.
3. Donate to a Worthy Cause
After spending money on a new book, you feel a pang of guilt for turning the holidays into a shopping spree. Why not give back and share your blessings? You’re fortunate to have a great phone and a healthy Grandpa, while many others aren’t as lucky. Open the Songs of Love (free) app, dedicated to supporting the Songs of Love charity.
The Songs of Love charity creates custom, uplifting songs for children facing illnesses. Each song is professionally crafted to reflect the child’s favorite things and musical preferences. The app features sample songs across genres like Country and R&B, videos about the charity’s work (including a clip of the 10,000th Song of Love recorded at a Black Eyed Peas concert), a simple puzzle game, and links to donate.
After donating, you feel a warm sense of fulfillment—or is it your shellfish allergy acting up? No, it’s just the holiday spirit. A sip of wine, and everything will be just fine.
4. Create Nostalgic Vintage Photos
You’re on a roll—saving a life, buying a book, and donating to charity. Now, take it up a notch with OldBooth (currently $1.99), a fun photo app that transforms your family’s faces into vintage portraits. It’s hilarious. Snap a photo of yourself, and OldBooth seamlessly blends it into an old-fashioned picture, producing results like the one shown below. (Check out the original here.)
(Also worth seeing: Steve Jobs reimagined with OldBooth.)
5. Dive into Classic Literature (On Your iPhone)
Remember your sister engrossed in her book? She’s now fully absorbed, and the room has gone quiet. You’re eager to read the thriller/romance/techno-thriller you picked up at the airport, but it’s gone missing. Blame the kids—they’ve likely snatched it to fuel the roaring bonfire in your backyard. As you admire the festive flames, open Classics (currently $0.99), an excellent app featuring timeless works like A Christmas Carol, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and many others.
As you swipe through the elegantly illustrated pages, you feel both intellectual (these are, after all, Great Books) and thrifty (you snagged them all for under a dollar). It’s a proud moment, watching the kids prance around their makeshift bonfire. What are they even doing out there? No matter—you’ve got Robinson Crusoe to dive into.
6. Take on the Role of a Creator
The kids’ new society is expanding rapidly. They’ve claimed multiple rooms inside the house, dominate the backyard, and are eyeing the front yard next! A thought strikes you—their society isn’t just growing; it’s evolving. To distract yourself from the unsettling implications of their territorial conquests, you open Spore™ Origins ($7.99 or free demo).
Spore™, the latest creation from Will Wright (the genius behind SimCity, The Sims, and SimEarth), is a groundbreaking life simulation game. (Learn more about its origins.) In Spore™, you start as a simple "spore," a basic multicellular organism, and guide it through various stages of evolution. As the intelligent designer, you help your spore grow, gain abilities, and thrive. While the full game is available for PC and Mac, Spore™ Origins offers a mobile-friendly version focusing on the early stages, where your tiny organism battles for survival in the ocean.
You spend a thrilling half-hour in Spore™, devouring other creatures and evolving new features like spikes, mouths, and fins to create the ultimate predator. Maybe your creation can rival the kids’ chaos? "Nonsense," you reassure yourself. "Those kids are harmless." Right. Absolutely.
7. Tune into Weather Radio
The snowstorm intensifies, blanketing the ground. The kids’ backyard bonfires flicker but persist, fueled by old tires—wait, those are from your car! But it’s too late to intervene; their power is unmatched. You can only hope they spare the adults or perhaps revere you as a deity (after all, you’ve just mastered Spore™).
You reach for the weather radio, only to find its batteries dead—or maybe the kids removed them to cut off your communication. Thankfully, you have Wunder Radio ($5.99), which streams live radio from across the country, including local weather channels. Using the iPhone’s GPS, Wunder Radio finds your nearest station. The forecast is dire: you’re snowed in. With your car immobilized (thanks to the missing tires), your iPhone’s warmth might be your only hope for survival tonight.
8. Calm the Wild Child
A kid has entered the room! You must tread carefully to avoid startling them—gender is unclear, as their new society has adopted bizarre haircuts that mask their identities. The child growls, and the situation worsens. Slowly, you open Bloom ($3.99), a unique music app by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers. With gentle taps, you compose soothing ambient music—no musical knowledge required. High taps create high notes, low taps produce bass tones. You adjust the "Mood" settings, hoping to pacify the wild child eyeing you hungrily.
It works! The kid calms down and wanders off, responding to guttural calls from another room. You’re left in peace—for now. You didn’t even get a chance to explain why Brian Eno is a legend. You briefly consider pulling out your Remain in Light LP, but exhaustion and adrenaline drain take over.
9. Dive into a Trivia Challenge
After a grueling day, you decide to relax with some trivia. But disaster strikes—you’ve left all your mental_floss games at home! Grandpa’s board games are useless, missing half their pieces (likely repurposed by the kids for their mysterious rituals). Unwilling to risk your life investigating, you turn to your iPhone and launch Big Fat Lies ($2.99) from mental_floss.
Big Fat Lies tests your ability to identify falsehoods. You’re presented with two trivia statements—one true, one false. Can you spot the lie? Your family’s sharp minds make for a fun challenge. To keep everyone happy, you disable Sports & Games (your sister’s nemesis) and Science (Grandpa’s disbelief). With a 3-player game set up, you laugh your way through fascinating trivia and clever lies, proving truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
10. Relax with White Noise
As the night draws to a close, you head to bed in the guest room, where your old stereo still sits. You connect your iPhone to the stereo and open Ambiance ($0.99), selecting from a variety of high-quality ambient sounds like ocean waves, rainfall, whale calls, and waterfalls. Set the sleep timer to fade the sounds after an hour, ensuring you drift off peacefully.
Sleep well, dear reader, and dream of more iPhone apps. Soon, the holidays will end, your iPhone will recharge, and you’ll need a fresh batch of apps to tackle January.
