These days there are applications, it seems, for every single facet of a person’s life. Many of them are fun, many are addictive and many are relatively useless. Over the course of the last year or so, I have stumbled across a few apps that I have found truly useful and interesting; the kind of apps that could be useful to anyone. So why not share the existence of them with the lovely BTSB audience? 

Splitwise 

Imagine a scene: you’re traveling together with a bunch of friends and eating out a lot. The restaurants refuse to let you pay separately and a mathematics hassle ensues. Doesn’t sound appealing? Well, Splitwise has got you. The app lets you form groups for different purposes and events and it will count how much each person owes to others. You just need to feed the numbers from the receipts to the app and it will do the rest. The app will simplify everything; if person A owes person B €2 and person B owes person A €3, the app will simply make B pay €1 to A. The more people in the group and the more individual debts within it, the easier Splitwise will make it for you, and save you from the tedious counting process. Having used this app a few of times for different occasions with my friends, I can heartily recommend it!  

Headspace

Don’t we all feel like sometimes needing a little bit of extra space in our heads? Headspace is a mindfulness and meditation app full of meditation sessions for different situations in life. The sessions are guided by founder Andy Puddicombe’s pleasant and calm voice. The app offers a wide number of themed packs of 30 sessions ranging from “Finding Focus” to “Managing Anxiety” to “Self-esteem” among others. Additionally, the app also offers single sessions with themes ranging from “Early Mornings” to “Frustrated” to “Fear of Flying” and so on. There are also a few “minis” of only 1-3 minute length. The length of the regular sessions, though, isn’t long either; you can often choose to do either 5, 10, or 15 minutes. That’s not a huge chunk of your day, so it isn’t too difficult a commitment. I’ve personally found Headspace calming and the coping strategies it offers helpful in dealing with different mentally difficult situations. However, unfortunately, Headspace is not free; they will let you have a very limited free trial covering the basics of these types of meditation sessions, but after that you will have to pay for full access to the app (you can pay for a month, a year, or a forever access). But if you have any extra money at all, I can definitely recommend Headspace! 

Think Dirty

Ever thought of how many toxic chemicals you might be consuming while using beauty and hygiene products? Think Dirty will tell you and help you make your beauty habits healthier. You can scan the barcode of your products with the app, and it will tell you all the ingredients in the product, and what health impacts each of them has. All ingredients get a score of 0 to 10. Ingredients with the scores of 0-3 (green) are considered clean, 4-7 (yellow) are “half n’ half” and 8-10 (red) are dirty. You can click on each ingredient and the app will tell you its name, usage, health impacts and a further explanation of the ingredient, along with the sources used and possible warnings from regulatory agencies. Think Dirty will make you really understand what the ingredients used in various products are; how many of us really knows (unless you’re a chemist) what, for example, Ceteareth-33 really is? Think Dirty will give you the facts in clear, everyday English. The app has got the information on a wide variety of products in international and North American use. They haven’t got products from, for example, very small brands or Finnish brands. However, when you scan a product and the app hasn’t got results for it, you can add the product to the app.