It is truly amazing to think how far technology has come. Whereas, not too long ago, electricity was a novelty, you can now use tiny handheld devices to manipulate it. I don’t know why I was shocked by my discovery of Control4 My House, but the thought of being able to operate most, if not all, household apparatuses with the touch of an iPhone was pretty mindblowing. Control4 My House operates by having an automation system installed in your house; then all you have to do is download the app and you can control everything from lights to your TV and sound system. It also gives you information about what you’re controlling (e.g. movie synopses, album details, etc.)! Now you won’t have to worry about leaving a light on or needing to set something from across your house, and the fear of misplacing or confusing your countless remotes is an issue of the past. All you need is your iPhone, and everything is under control.

This is a really fun and quirky app that gives you a daily deal, discounted activity or product going on in any of the 65 featured major U.S or Canadian city. The idea behind Groupon is to give information about a discount, a deal that is happening in your city. If you sign up to the groupon app  you can keep up with the groupons you buy and create a passcode for your account. However, you can still use the app without signing up. Once you choose your city, it will show you the deal that is happening and how many hours you have left to purchase it.

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Want to discover New York City? Do you have specific things to get done, businesses that you need to find? Well, here it is. NYC Way the ultimate, all inclusive app about New York City. The specific nature of the search criteria is what initially struck me about this app. There is a feature that will search for juice joints, for example, in the city and tell you which one is closest to you. This app stands apart from those of its kind because of that search criteria, you could look for a job, a juice joint and an apartment all in the same app. You also have the opportunity to save your “places” in the “My Places” part of the app in order to keep track of businesses that you don’t want to forget about.

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Here is an app that makes a lot of sense. The MoviesNow app for the iphone and ipad is so useful and easy to use it makes me wish I was more of a movie buff. For the small price of 1.99 you can get everything you need to be able to walk right into a movie theatre without worrying about long ticket lines. The MoviesNow app will tell you everything you need to know about an upcoming movie or one that is already in theaters. You can search through a list of top box office, just released, also in theaters movies to make a quick decision about what you want to see right away.

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Green Genie is an app that provides just about every green resource you could need. The main element of the app are the green projects it introduces to you that you can incorporate into your everyday life. These projects are sorted by complexity and by what area of life they fall into, and all show how much money they can save as well as what sort of impact they have have on the environment. Furthermore, if you think of a tip or project, you can submit it to the app so that it can then be shared with all the other Green Genie users. Read the rest of this entry »

The UpNext Cities app will make your life go a lot smoother, especially those like me who are incapable of following directions. The app is free and available for ipod touch, iphone and ipad. What makes UpNext a much better app than the alternatives in the same genre for example, google earth and APPCityLife is that it is the easiest of the three to use and offers up to date and accurate information. UpNext allows you to download cities that are then shown on a map that you can not only zoom in and out of but rotate and tilt. The rotate option is especially important for those who have a hard time following directions because you can view the city from whatever direction you are coming from.While it is important to use the tutorial to learn how the map functions, it is simple and easy to use and when you are finished you will know how to get the most out of the app.

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How do your purchases impact the environment and your health? GoodGuide is an app that is prepared to answer this question. It shows you ratings for how various products measure up to health, environment, and social responsibility standards based not only on the specific item but also on the company that produces it. The app currently supports 65,000 products and counting, ranging from household items to food. You can easily find products by conducting a search or by taking advantage of the awesome scanning feature, which allows you to scan the barcode of any product. However, the best part about this app is that it’s FREE — you can’t afford to miss out on this chance to shop smarter for yourself and the world!