App stores are crowded places these days, and because storage space on your phone is often at a premium, you’ll want to find and fill it with not only the best, but also the most helpful apps out there. Because they come and go quicker than the latest fashion trends, and digging through Google Play, the iTunes App Store, or any of the others is such a mission; a little nudge in the right direction is often very welcome. Here are the apps we think you need to check out this week.
NewsGIF
Reading the news, flipping through your local paper or browsing the headlines online, feels important. There’s a sort of obligation to be informed on what’s happening around you, to have an understanding about the world. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a struggle to stay engaged. Stories don’t always seem to have an immediate impact, and it’s not always clear why a story is important in the context of everything else. Sometimes the news is straight up boring.
NewsGIF wants to solve that problem. The first step is turning the news into bite-sized, easily digestible pieces of information—no deep dives, no long explainers, just the important stuff. The next step is to make that information catch your eye by layering it over GIFs, the internet’s favorite form of looping entertainment. Maybe you don’t care that much about a trade agreement being passed, but you’ll definitely take a look at it if it’s posted on top of a Ron Swanson GIF.
Playboy Now
You know the joke people always make about Playboy—they buy it for the articles. Well, with the new Playboy Now app, that’s actually true. The magazine has stories crafted by some of the best longform writers around, but if you’d rather not flip through the pages of nude bodies to read the interesting narratives, you can pull up the Playboy Now app and take your time to enjoy the stories without feeling weird about it.
IIIN
The things that draw the attention of Internet dwellers can change on a dime, and you never know what’s going to be the next obsession in the many different communities. If you’re worried you’re missing out on something interesting, you can pull up IIIN and see what’s trending right now. The new news app curates top stories every hour to catch the latest hot topic and integrates additional social features to make it easier to talk about what’s happening with people who care just as much as you.
Bundle
With smartphone cameras getting better each year, along with the multiple ways to share pictures you take online, the temptation is there to snap everything in sight. The problem is figuring out what to do with them all. Bundle’s goal is to make organization of your photo roll easier than ever by grouping images into sortable, shareable bundles that can be contributed to by friends and family, or simply kept private for your own viewing.
Docady
You take precautions to protect your online presence using password managers, encrypted communication apps, and many other tools. However, you probably have your private paper documents just laying in a folder somewhere in your house. Docady adds the protective services of digital storage to the files that matter most in your life. Scan in everything — from your ID cards and important paperwork, to sensitive documents — keeping them accessible, but under the protection of a digital lock and key.
