The Appy Awards are all about acknowledging creativity and excellence in app design. READ MORE>>
The Appy Awards are all about acknowledging creativity and excellence in app design.
The Appys were created to acknowledge extraordinary Applications, whether they be mobile, social, or Web-based Apps living inside another Web site. The Appys do not discriminate by format, platform or device; instead, they focus on honoring the best Apps in a diverse range of categories, from Games and News, to Health & Fitness, Social Networking, Photography and many others.
The official Appy Awards judging will take place in early 2012, and the Winners will be announced on March 19th 2012 at 5:30 PM, at the Appy Awards Reception, at the conclusion of MediaPost's biannual OMMA Global Conference & Expo in San Francisco, CA.
Tickets to the event are available on our Tickets page. <<CLOSE
The Appys were created to acknowledge extraordinary Applications, whether they be mobile, social, or Web-based Apps living inside another Web site. The Appys do not discriminate by format, platform or device; instead, they focus on honoring the best Apps in a diverse range of categories, from Games and News, to Health & Fitness, Social Networking, Photography and many others.
The official Appy Awards judging will take place in early 2012, and the Winners will be announced on March 19th 2012 at 5:30 PM, at the Appy Awards Reception, at the conclusion of MediaPost's biannual OMMA Global Conference & Expo in San Francisco, CA.
Tickets to the event are available on our Tickets page. <<CLOSE
The second annual Appy Awards are getting close, and today we are happy to welcome all fifteen members of the 2012 Jury. Our newest additions are Macworld.com Lead Editor 
Martha Stewart has long been my muse when it comes to the obsessive-compulsive organization of my kitchen drawers. I look to her for guidance on Halloween costumes, Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas tree trimming and how to make a flag look cute on the Fourth of July. So with the swift dismissal of St. Valentine, I will now force my loved ones to get down and dirty with egg dying a la Martha Stewart and her team of creative bunnies – just in time for spring!
Martha Stewart Living’s Egg Dyeing 101 brings all of the elements of dyeing eggs into a clean, functional and attractive app. The gallery features 101 examples of eggs and techniques used, from dipping and marbleizing to decoupage and glitter. For those of you who never leave the office, you can dye eggs in a variety of innovative ways using rubber bands and stickers. If you’re less inclined to utilize office supplies, try the finger painting technique which produces adorable lady bugs and flowers.
Martha Stewart Living partnered with McCormick, known for their spices and food dye, to create color wheels and dye recipes. Despite what you might believe, it is a science to know how many drops of yellow food coloring make bright yellow.
I’m a sucker for an app that’s free and simple. There’s nothing to lose. If I don’t like it, or never use it, I just delete it. No loss. In the interest of full disclosure, outside of the financial and social categories, I end up deleting most free apps. They typically waste time and space. TrashSmart flips the tendency. It helps find time and spaces to eliminate waste responsibly.
Properly labeled recycling bins are provided throughout Manhattan, and the city has the largest, most ambitious recycling program in the nation. When I travel, it becomes much easier to give in to temptation by tossing unwanted items in the nearest receptacle. With TrashSmart – which isn’t fancy or trendy, just practical – you can quickly locate the best places to recycle any item within five miles (or up to 50 if you’re super-committed). You just use your current location or zip code, enter the name of the item you’d like to recycle (batteries, plastic shopping bags, toner cartridges, children’s toys, you name it), and you’ll see all the best and nearest locations, in map and list display. Each location comes with full info: address & phone number, directions, and a full list of everything the location will accept as a recyclable item.
As one of over seven and a half million users of Mint.com, I was excited when their incredibly popular iOS app, appropriately called Mint, appeared on the list of this year’s Appy Awards entries. It felt like seeing an old friend, both because I also use it daily, and because its previous version already earned the finalist distinction in the 2011 Appys. Having followed their progress over the years, it’s great to see that they’ve never stopped improving and growing. 
True to the popular convention that mobile devices are best used for consuming content, and full featured PCs – for creating it, the Mint app for iPhone is more of a companion to the Mint.com website than a complete stand-alone money management tool. For starters, you need to create an account on Mint.com to be able to use the app in the first place. As another example, the app offers a simple visual way to stay within your budgets with color-coded progress bars, but you have to set those up on Mint.com website first. One feature I’d love to see ported from the website over to the app is the insanely simple tool is has for tracking your earning and spending trends. While the app does have a simplified version of this feature which keeps tabs on your bottom line since the beginning of each month, I find the omission of the website’s more sophisticated analysis tool from the mobile app unfortunate.
As any reality television aficionado will understand, I feel a deep and meaningful connection to crazy attention whores whom I will never actually meet. My latest obsession is Drita D’Avanzo of VH1′s Mob Wives fame. Maybe it’s her Staten Island accent, her acrylic nails pointed at close range in other wives’ faces, or her tumultuous relationship with behind-bars hubby and former drug dealer Lee D’Avanzo – whatever the reason, Drita has a certain je ne sais quoi that keeps me hooked to the VH1 hit.
Enter VH1 Co-Star. The entertainment app is designed for both addicts and casual viewers to use while watching VH1 shows. The scrolling activity stream “WatchWith” allows VH1 programmers to insert contextual bonus content like photos, factoids and polls that coincide with everything happening on the show. Features also include trivia, blogs and bonus videos, as well as tweets and Facebook postings from the show’s followers. I’m as addicted to trivia as I am to Drita’s name-calling antics, so VH1 gets extra points for stimulating my mind and finger tips. All I need to do is sit back, relax, and move my eyes rapidly between the show on TV and the scrolling comments on my iPhone.
The first thing you notice about The Daily, is it’s not simply a re-purposing of print content. It seems to defy conventional categorization. News Corp has wisely eschewed the convention of pretend page turning or flipboard-like page flipping for simply sliding between pages. Is it a newspaper? A magazine? It’s as immediate as a newspaper, actually as immediate as the Web, often updating and adding stories throughout the day. It’s as slickly designed as a magazine. Copy is well-written and beautifully presented and illustrated. Videos are placed like photos, waiting to expand and play. Pages often expand downward with additional content, polls and interactive charts invite you to touch and animate them, and sudoku and crossword puzzles invite you to sign into the Game Center to share the interactive game with friends.
Sharing content doesn’t end with game scores. Touch the share icon and a transparent screen slides up, post your comment to The Daily, Facebook, Twitter or email, or record a voice comment. When I posted to Facebook, the Facebook comment interface carried the icons from Facebook mobile, with red badges indicating two messages and four alerts. Very helpful.