In an effort to better serve her non-paying clientele, Life in the Boomer Lane has made an exhaustive, as well as exhausting, survey of some of the 10 billion apps that are now available on smartphones that enable people to live healthier, more stress-free lives. This research was done between the end of one cup of coffee and the trip to the kitchen to refill her cup. For that reason, she is limiting the list, and not including the following:
- Health apps telling you how many calories you are consuming, how many steps you are walking, how many beats your heart is beating, how high your blood pressure is and how many brain cells you are losing per minute as you go about your day. The answer to the last item is "a lot." You seriously don't want all this information.
Instead, she now presents some apps that will actually help you navigate the tsunami of life:
1. Find My Car: LBL has spent the better part of her waking hours in an often unsuccessful attempt to locate her car. While she appreciates the classic design of most underground garages and the orderliness of most outdoor parking lots, she is becoming increasingly aware that she may not have enough years left in her life in which to pursue this fun pastime. This app allows you to actually find your car, leaving plenty of free time to lose other items of importance in your life.
2. Tile: If, like LBL, your car is merely the tip of the Lost and Found Iceberg of Life, Tile allows to tag all precious items with actual tags. These actual tags emit some kind of space age rays into your phone, which then finds your item. Anything can be tagged, including the phone itself as long as you have an iPad. Other useful items to tag include car keys, the TV remote, the land line phone, the cat, one's coffee mug and one's spouse/children.
3. Eye Reader: This dandy app is actually a magnifying glass for pesky restaurant menus or whatever else one wants to magnify beyond all reason. A note of caution: Do not use this on your skin, especially that of your hand. Aside from getting a manicure every once in awhile, looking at hands should be avoided entirely.
4. Parkmobile : Forget having to use your credit card on a smart meter. Forget putting in too little money and then forgetting to go to the meter and then you run out and you already have a ticket because the cops are spending all of their time watching your meter and not arresting known felons. This app connects to your credit card. Punch in the meter numbers, get the time you want and, when you are running down on minutes, your phone alerts you. Of course, if you are in the movie theater and have turned your phone off, we wish you the best of luck.
5. LevelUp: This allows you to pay for store purchases via iPhone, using the square thingy symbol on items. LBL wants to call it a G Spot, but it's actually called a QR code.
6. Evernote: This app allows you to capture whatever you want to on your phone: notes, anything written, photos, anything anyone tells you that you want to remember. Of course, EverNote has no ability to remind you of all the wonderful things you have stored, so this may not be as helpful as one would assume.
7. Life 360: This app enables you to stalk everyone in your life, as long as they are on the same network. Personally, LBL doesn't care where her friends and family are during the course of a day, unless they are approaching her door and she isn't wearing a bra.
8. Easily Do: This allows you to keep all of the data from your life in one handy place. LBL avoids anything that reminds her of everything going on in her life. She prefers to take things one at a time, especially if those things are limited to Eat. Repeat.