Inspiration to explore can come from many different places — the need to quench your thirst (with a new, well-reviewed bar), an alert that you haven’t “tried something new” in a long time, someone’s perfectly-filtered, fomo-inducing pics of a hike with a view. The best apps of the week will inspire you (or your followers, hey girl) to do all that and more. Happy downloading, and (Bay Area) see you at the Taylor Swift concert tonight. Byyyyyye!
1. Wander Co: Turn your outdoor adventures into beautiful journals with this wanderlust-encouraging app that’s a rare breed of download that makes you want to go out and explore, like, rn. With both beauty and brains, Wander Co uses GPS to track hikes, camping trips, beach frolics and all of those adventures’ nice-to-know stats (distance, average pace, duration, elevation gained) to give you a map of your journey. Pair that with your beautiful photos and a text entry about your trip and share it to inspire others’ pretty paths.
DL It: Free on iOS
2. Quantified: Taking a more “real life” approach to the life tracker, this one will take inventory of all the things you need to track — from how much beer you drink to how many times you called Grandma to how many times you lost your temper. Which are hopefully all not done in the same span of time. Eeks. Use a list of trending items to add to what you’re tracking or choose your own according to habits you want to start or break.
DL It: $.99 on iOS
3. Microsoft Translator: Asking ¿Dónde está el baño? has never been easier than it is with this new smart gadget download from Microsoft that reeeally wants you to use it on your Apple Watch or Android Wear. (So much so, they refer to the iPhone app as the companion!) Speak directly to your wearable or phone and get help translating 50 different languages. Your device will talk back to you and show you the translation so you can easily communicate in any situation and hopefully learn the language along the way.
4. Bar Roulette: When I’m tasked with selecting a bar for a date or a hang, I rack my brain’s shortlist of favorites and then go to the web to see how my picks stack up in distance and current reviews. This week’s possibly most buzzed about app, Bar Roulette, flips that. Birthed from a hackathon, this web app connects to your Uber account and lets fate pick your watering hole of choice for the evening. You confirm your location and Bar Roulette uses it and Yelp reviews to drive you to your drunken destiny. In a perfect world, the app would have options: roulette or a list of suggestions based on where you frequent to encourage some exploration in your imbibing. But maybe when the smartphone version comes to town.
DL It: This one is just a web app for now, but look forward to the upcoming version of this in app form. We’ll keep you updated!
5. MSTY: I’m handing the mic over to our fabulous, beauty-confessing, Tex-Mex-lovin’ Editorial Intern Beth Wishnia for #5, a new messaging app. Beth says — What if your Snapchats could be synced up with a song of your choice to make them even better? That’s what MSTY brings to the table, people, and it’s seriously addicting. You take a Snapchat-like photo of something, add text (if you want) and then add a song to play over it.
Hmm, let’s think of a scenario. Picture it: Chipotle on a Friday night. It’s 9:58 pm. You snap a pic of you + your burrito bowl and add Ariana Grande’s “Best Mistake” to REALLY express what you’re feeling ;) Oh, and did we mention this nifty app has everything figured out with record labels and artists — yup, including Taylor Swift. They feature curated playlists (like the MSTY Hot 30) and have over 2,000 songs to choose from.
DL It: Free on Android and iOS
