What’s new in the app world? Here are 10 innovative apps that you might want to check out and add to your app arsenal. (Note: My favorite is number 10. If you don’t download any others on this list, number 10 is simply awesome.)
1. Send self-destructing messages
Email, text messaging, and picture messaging are fast and easy ways to communicate with friends and family, but they're far from secure. Each one has weak points where hackers, snoops or the government can see what you're sending and receiving.
Wickr (Android, Apple; Free) creates an end-to-end encrypted communication channel with no weak points. Even Wickr can't read your messages.
Wickr includes the standard messaging features like contact lists, picture messaging with fun doodles and stickers, etc. However, its showstopping feature is that you can choose to destroy messages after you've sent them. You can also permanently shred the messages on your gadget.
2. Remove swear words from eBooks
Have you ever had a perfectly good book ruined by inappropriate language? It's a real bummer when you're in the middle of an interesting story, and you come across vulgar words or phrases that you'd rather avoid. Luckily, you can finish the story without reading those words you don't like.
Just load up the eBook in Clean Reader (Android, Apple; Free) and choose “Clean,” “Cleaner,” or “Squeaky Clean.” As you're reading your books in Clean Reader, you'll notice blank gray spaces where an inappropriate word used to be. You can select to have a cleaner synonym replace the word, so the sentence will still make sense.
3. Turn your phone into a DSLR
Thanks to smartphone and tablet cameras, everyone can be a photographer at any event. In fact, many people don't even bother with standalone cameras anymore. That's fine for candid shots, but if you want real manual camera controls like you'd get on a higher-end camera, then you're out of luck. Or are you?
Both Apple and Android have third-party camera apps that go way beyond the limits of the built-in camera apps. A good one for Apple is Manual ($2) and Android has Camera F5-V ($3.95). You can step back in time and manually set exposure, timing, focus, white balance, as well as see live histograms of the scene and more.
4. Know what information your apps are collecting
You probably have a bunch of apps to make your life easier, but do you realize that many apps have access to your personal information including your contacts list and your GPS location?
The MyPermissions (Android, Apple; Free) app scans major apps like Facebook, Twitter, games, and other services to tell you what apps have access to your personal information and shows you what data the apps are sharing on your behalf. You can then manage these over-sharing apps with just one touch.
5. Make fun videos with friends
Facebook doesn't just want to play videos for you anymore – it wants to help you make them. And it actually has an interesting idea that isn't just a copy of Vine's 7-second videos.
Facebook Riff (Android, Apple; Free) lets you record a short video clip and post it. Then your friends can add their own video clips to it, and then their friends can add to it, and so on. Basically it's like that game where you tell a story but each person can only say one word or sentence at a time. You have no idea how far your video will go or what it will end up saying.
6. Turn your gadget into a hassle-free scanner
Digital documents are a lifesaver for students, business people and anyone else. They're easy to create, you can edit them endlessly and sharing is simple. But sometimes adding real-world items to digital docum
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