Topping our Fresh Apps today is Auto Tune the News, which brings the popular and often hilarious Internet music videos straight to your phone. We’ve also got a great couple of apps for productivity: a cloud-synced to-do list and an app that lets you send short voice messages to share ideas with anyone in your contacts list.
Auto Tune the News (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Maybe you’ve seen the hilarious Auto Tune the News videos on YouTube — they employ video clips from actual newscasts, along with some creative editing and sound manipulation, to from music videos with some fairly funny results.
The Auto Tune app gives full access to videos, and you can watch them straight from your mobile device, as well as the music and news that go into making them. The app can also notify you of when the newest Auto Tune videos become available so you can watch them immediately, and you can share them from the app via Twitter, Facebook and email.
Wunderlist Task Manager (iPhone, iPad) Free
Here’s a to-do list app that stands apart from the hundreds of others in the App Store. In addition to being fairly simple, elegant and focused, Wunderlist has two distinct features: it can sync your to-do list with your computer using a Wi-Fi connection, allowing you to add to your list on the fly wherever you are; and it’s free.
You’ll need a free Wunderlist account and to download a program to your desktop, but the good news is that Wunderlist works on both Mac and PC computers. The app lets you organize your lists and prioritize items on it so that you can keep track of what you have to finish on a given day and what’s overdue. There’s also a search function that lets you check through your items to find specific tasks.
Jawbone Thoughts (iPhone) Free
Sometimes, sending a text or making a call can be a pain. Dropping what you’re doing to put your attention into a keyboard, or potentially getting caught up in a lengthy conversation, can be a pretty substantial interruption. Jawbone Thoughts excels in taking that potential irritation out of communication — you can record short voice messages, up to a minute, and send them to anyone in your contact list from the app. It’s basically a text that you listen to.
While Jawbone Thoughts might be convenient as a replacement for texts or calls, it really shines when you apply it to helping you keep up with colleagues or collaborators. You can quickly send a message to multiple people through Thoughts without typing it, conveying a quick idea or update. To me, that sounds like the best use for this app: as a means for sharing ideas and keeping multiple people running at the same speed on a project.
