Everybody knows how great technology is and how fast it is growing and developing and changing. The Internet and computers have changed the way we do just about everything. If you don’t believe me, consider this: this year’s high school graduates have never had to plan around a television show they wanted to watch. Yep: the kids graduating from high school this year are just barely older than TiVo. Now a DVR comes standard with most cable television packages…for the few people who still buy those.
Slowly but surely, technology has changed everything about the way we live. Today people prefer texting to calling. The only time non-bill or promotional materials arrive in the mail is at birthdays and during the holidays but even then, most greetings are pixel-based. Heck, when was the last time you actually expended mental energy to figure out what song you were listening to in the grocery store instead of just Shazaming it?
Speaking of which, remember when Shazam seemed revolutionary?
That’s how it happens, though. The technological changes in our lives aren’t always as huge as the cell phone. Some of the most important changes technology has effected in our lives are smaller and app based. Shazam is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some of the latest revolutionary apps that are going to change how we do even the most ingrained things in our lives.
App.Net
A few weeks ago Twitter caused an uproar in its own community by announcing that the company would be changing it’s current timeline setup from simple chronological order to something more curated, like what users get when they log in to Facebook. Immediately people started searching for Twitter alternatives and App.Net was one of the leaders in the pack. This is a bit ironic, since the developers of ADN recently announced that they were shifting from active development to a maintenance only mode but with a new influx of users all securing their usernames early “just in case” who knows what will happen–especially since ADN offers 255 characters to Twitter’s 140, allows users to store files and photos locally and let’s users see and play with the platform’s code and use it to build third party apps that integrate with the ADN system (Riposte is particularly beautiful).
SuperFish
Do you remember that episode of the Big Bang Theory when the guys created an app for equations and Penny decided she wanted to make an app that would allow her to shop for deals on shoes? She envisioned a time when you could see a shoe, take a picture of it and then be presented with a list of places to buy that shoe and others like it. Guess what. That exists now, but it isn’t limited to shoes! SuperFish is a new “visual discovery platform” that allows users to search for photos and products based on the content of the image instead of tags and keywords input by the image’s uploader. The app isn’t just for shopping, though. It can also be used to find pets who are available for adoption, decorating help and a lot more.
SwiftKey
While we all love to hate autocorrect, the few Android users who have already been able to test out SwiftKey swear by it. The app has finally been integrated into iPhones via the release of iOS 8 and the response has been tremendous…and a little bit freaked out. Swiftkey is a predictive text algorithm that tracks the things you type and text and then figures out what you’re probably going to say almost before you can. Users have said that it is eerily accurate but love that they have way fewer autocorrect clarifications to explain.
Have you discovered some software or an app that you think is going to change the way we live and communicate? Tell us about it!
Featured image credit: Creative Light Bulb /ShutterStock
