Apps of the month
It’s been some time since we last reviewed our favourite latest apps. But with several new and exciting ones appearing recently, we at The Practice wanted to share our top picks.
Expresso sounds like the perfect app for content creators who are serious about producing the highest quality work. This new desktop app lets writers submit articles or copy, which are then scanned and analysed. Expresso then works to highlight key features relating to writing style, syntax, and other issues, such as poor grammar or verb usage. The app even allows the user to hover over highlighted sections, and view definitions of various linguistic terms. If content is king, we can see Expresso helping copywriters and creators to produce some stellar work.
Chariot is the travel world’s latest answer to Uber. The only difference is that it is solely a female taxi service, prioritising safety for women passengers.The app, due for release in Boston on the 19th April, was created by former Uber driver Michael Pelletz, who decided upon the premise after feeling threatened by one of his passengers. This led him to consider how many women around the world had experienced harassment and assault by male drivers, and that Uber simply couldn’t guarantee a complete level of safety. Chariot works differently so that both the driver and passenger receive a code once the journey has been confirmed. Upon pick up, both parties must check that their codes match before the ride. The other great thing about Chariot is that 2 percent of each fare will go to charity, while there won’t be any surge charge rates either- something that Uber currently has.
Another female-focused app, Bumble, (A Tinder rival in which women must make the first move), has just released it’s latest offering, BFF. Instead of enabling date matches, BFF allows users to find new friends, with the same “liking” and “swiping” movements. BFF is actually an add-on feature to Bumble’s main app, with users deciding whether they wish to turn on “BFF mode”, and see potential date matches replaced with friends. Whilst it might seem like an unnecessary concept to many of us, the update was actually requested by Bumble users, who had been using the app in order to make new contacts when moving to a new city, or travelling.
We couldn’t ignore the launch of Reddit’s first official app, which has been long overdue. Prior to this, the platform’s mobile edition was Alien Blue, an unofficial Reddit browsing app for iOS. Now, this will be replaced by Reddit’s new app, which will also be available to Android users too. The decision for an official app came when the Reddit team started rebuilding it for a faster and more user-friendly experience. The new app is simple and well designed, with a large home-feed display, and all the features its users have come to expect, such as the “Discover” function to find communities, with the most popular displayed on a one-page “Reddit Picks” list.
It it’s true that customers will do just about anything for convenience, then Domino’s new app hits the nail on the head. The pizza company’s latest app allows users to place an order simply by opening it on their phones. The app is intended to offer a “zero click” experience, and works by using a customer’s “Easy order” data. This is the information that users have on their dominos.com account, such as their favourite pizza, delivery, contact and payment details, so when he or she decides to launch the app, the company already knows what and where to send the order to. This move comes in the wake of Domino’s other endeavours, such as their “tweet to order” feature on Twitter, and ordering via a compatible Amazon Echo speaker. We think it’s set to be a popular concept, unless of course users find themselves accidentally opening the app. However, we certainly wouldn’t turn our noses up at unexpected pizza!
Which new apps have you been liking recently? Have you tried out any of the above, and which do you look forward to using? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.