Untappd
iOS, Android, Blackberry
I’m not judging you if you’re a devoted Bud Light fan – actually, I am – but if you’re ready to take the leap into the world of craft beers, it helps to at least sound like you know what you’re ordering. The transition can be intimidating, after all.
Untappd lets you “drink socially” by combining a Facebook-esque news feed with a Yelp-like rating system. The feed is split into three categories: friends, global and nearby. If you’re joining some friends for a night out, use the app to find out what they’re drinking. If you don’t trust your friends’ judgment, go with a tried-and-true beer reviewed by the global Untappd community (and maybe consider making new friends.)
Untappd is also great if you’re travelling for the weekend and want to know what’s popular in [insert destination here]. For example, I was in Revelstoke over the reading break, and I found out that Mt. Begbie Brewery’s “Tall Timber Ale” is trending in the local pubs there. Speaking of local breweries and pubs, Untappd also helps you find them, although I’m pretty sure this task already comes easy to the average college student.
If we all start tapping into the power of this app, does it still warrant the name “Untappd?” I’m not sure but you should try it anyways.
Trivia Crack
iOS, Android
This is one of the latest games to blow up the app stores. Trivia Crack pits you against your Facebook friends and other randoms from the internet as you race to outsmart each other.
The main interface is a wheel that you spin – it wouldn’t be out of place in a board game – and stops on one of six categories: geography, science, history, art, entertainment or sports. You land on a category and answer a related multiple choice question. These questions are all user-submitted – this feature keeps the game fresh and is a good idea in my opinion.
Unfortunately, Trivia Crack overzealously asks you to rate the questions after you answer them. Every. Single. One. An otherwise rapid-fire trivia spree becomes slow and choppy as a result. Worse yet are the ads if you’re too cheap to buy the “no ads” version. They will interrupt you occasionally and slow your experience even further.
Trivia Crack also integrates aggressively into Facebook and your phone’s operating system. It tries to publish your scores to Facebook unless you opt out, and I found I got a lot of unnecessary notifications on my phone until I disabled them.
The concept behind the game is great, but I feel the user experience needs to be refined. It’s still playable though, and it’s a welcome, intellectually stimulating change from mental junk food games like Flappy Bird or Crossy Road.
Autodesk 123D Catch
iOS, Android
The idea behind this app is ambitious and seems like something out of a sci-fi film. You use your phone to take a series of photos of a subject – ideally revolving around your subject – then this app stitches them together into an interactive 3D model that can be shared online and even 3D printed!
Or that’s what it promises to do. When I tried it, I snapped about 25 photos then spent the next half hour waiting for my phone to stitch them together before getting impatient, realizing I had better things to do with my life and giving up.
As it turns out, the app sends these photos to a cloud-based server that does all the heavy lifting so your phone doesn’t have to. This makes sense in theory, as our phones probably aren’t ideal for the heavy-duty computing associated with 3D modelling, but you better have a Wi-Fi connection if you use this. It will waste a lot of data!
There’s also a PC version of this app, which might work better. I’m not sure, but the mobile app doesn’t seem to be worth it, not on Android, anyways. Maybe it works better on iOS.
