Instead of wading through the massive amount of new app releases searching for a few diamonds in the rough, just let us be your guide. This is a collection of our favorite new apps for both iOS and Android for your downloading pleasure.
AmpMe
No party is complete without music, but getting whole house audio for all your guests to enjoy can be tedious or downright expensive. AmpMe solves that problem by syncing all your phones together to create one massive speaker system. One host controls the Soundcloud, Songza or local tracks that play through all the phones, and all your guests need to join the party is an invite code. iTunes Android
Cortana
Every “digital personal assistant” that’s available, or pre-installed, on your phone has issues. If you’re not happy with Siri or Google Now for one reason or another, Microsoft’s Cortana is finally available for both iOS and Android. You can do all the things you’d expect from a personal assistant (set reminders, take notes, get sports scores, etc.), but Cortana truly shines if you use a Windows 10 PC because the sync allows advanced features like text replies to missed calls. Android iTunes
Google Arts & Culture
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but Google has a Cultural Institute that uses technology to make arts and culture from over 850 historic institutions available to the masses. Google’s Arts & Culture app accesses all that information and presents it to you with the ability to zoom in for incredible detail, take a 360 degree panoramic tour and learn about iconic artworks. It’s the next best thing to actually being there. Android iTunes
Air Pencil
In 1949, Picasso worked with an electric flashlight and photographer Gjon Mili from Life Magazine to create light paintings on a canvas of thin air. Adtile Technologies is bringing light painting to the 21st Century with Air Pencil, a web app that uses the technology built into your phone (magnetometers, accelerometers, gyroscope, etc.) to allow you to capture and record freeform movement in space. The app is currently in closed beta, but you can request an invite here. Link
The Room Three
The Room series of games by Fireproof Games is one of the most-awarded, best-selling, highly creative games in the history of mobile devices. The highly anticipated latest release, The Room Three, is here in all its puzzling glory. The seriously gorgeous interactive puzzler takes you to “Grey Holm,” a mysterious mansion located on a remote island where your puzzle-solving skills will be put to the test in the trials designed by “The Craftsman.” The Room Three is the best puzzler game we’ve ever played. iTunes
Listomatic
Twitter lists are a great way to stay organized with the sources, friends and influencers that you follow, but they’re a huge pain to manage once you get into double or triple digit followers. Listomatic makes the entire process easier by grouping like accounts that you follow based on tags and content. When you’re ready to look at your new lists, Listomatic will launch the list directly in Twitter so you don’t have to dig around trying to figure out how to get to Lists. iTunes
Roger
Roger is a new app from some of the people behind Spotify that bills itself as a walkie-talkie style communications tool. Load the app. Add your friends phone’s numbers. Push the big red button to record and then send a voice message. They receive it and listen when they want. Functionally, it works a lot like recording audio in iMessage, but Roger is much prettier to look at and easier to use. iTunes
Filtron
No New Apps piece would be complete without a photo-editing app filled to the brim with all kinds of filters you can use to stylize your photos, but Filtron takes it one step further by crowd sourcing the entire filter creation process. Rather than simply selecting the filters that the app creators think you’ll like, Filtron allows you to use filters created by others or create your own and share them with the community. There’s even a Before / After slider in the selection box so you can see how the filter will change your photo—without having to click on every available option to decide what works best. iTunes Link
