Today’s free apps offer everything from watching your weight, to watching out for hazards in the workplace. Or if those don’t appeal, how about building yourself an island?
Healthcare and Fitness
PhotoCalorie (iPhone)
Free (was $0.99)
To people who are looking to lose weight, nutritionists will often recommend they keep a “food diary” so they can keep track of what they’re eating. PhotoCalorie takes the food diary a step further. It features users taking photos of their meals, and these photos and descriptions are used to identify how many calories the meals contain.
The app helps you keep track of what you’re consuming while identifying what you’re taking in each day. Descriptions can be vague or detailed, and will return different results: for example, the app description notes that typing in “coffee” will get info back on an average cup. Typing “Starbucks latte” will return results for the company’s specific beverage.
Shape Up, Slim Down (iPhone)
Free (was $0.99)
As its name suggests, Shape Up, Slim Down is filled with exercise and fitness tips that get beamed right to your iPhone. It provides workouts, video tips on various fitness and health subjects, and the ability to share your workouts and achievements with others via Facebook and Twitter.
The app offers some things for free when you download it, and you can subscribe to other features once you’re in the program with an in-app purchase. These include additional workouts (beyond the three that you get for free) which are tuned to different parts of the body to help get the results you want. So though it’s not exactly free, you can download the app to try it out before you pay for a subscription, which is nice.
Business
Hazard Manager (iPad)
Free (was $0.99)
At first, it seems like this app would only apply to factory managers, and while it is meant for inspections, Hazard Manager works with any image of a map you provide it.
It works like this: input an image of a floor plan through iTunes onto your iPad and fire-up Hazard Manager. The app helps you identify hazards or things that need to be dealt with, and you can use Hazard Manager to mark them on the map and identify them so you can return later and deal with them in the real world.
But what’s cool is that Hazard Manager doesn’t have to be about hazards, and it’s not just for factory managers and business owners. Anybody can snag this app and use any map image to mark points of interest, identify them, and share them with others. If you can find a use for it, go for it – it’s free after all.
Games
Happy Island LE (iPhone, iPad)
Free (was $0.99)
Facebook game fans might recognize this one, which recently migrated from the social networking website to the iPhone and iPad.
Happy Island is one of those simple but addictive social games that you can share with friends. Players design their own islands, with the object being to build places and resorts around the island that earn coins. Those coins get reinvested to make the island bigger and better. Players can then invite one another to see their islands and share what they’ve done.
