Hound
SoundHound’s Hound app was finally released for iOS and Android earlier this week — and it’s well worth a download. The digital assistant app acts like Google Now, Siri, and Cortana; but it’s not as awkward to interact with, and you can chat with the app almost as naturally as you would with another human. Uber and Yelp, along with more than a 100 other partnerships, are integrated with the app, so you can order a ride just by talking to the Hound.
Roger
Calling is too much effort, and text-based messaging doesn’t always capture the right tone. Enter Roger, which made a splash when it first launched on iOS. Roger is a voice-messaging app that lets you send a voice message with anyone you have in your contacts by just tapping the mic button. You can see the city your contact’s in, their time, and weather. It will even tell you when your contact has listened to your message, which are stored for 48 hours. The well-designed app was just released for Android.
Anchor
Similar to Roger, Anchor wants to shift the importance back to our voices — and what better way to do that than focusing on podcasts? The app lets you broadcast two-minute audio clips to the world, and people can respond to them with their own voices. If you want a more passive experience, you can simply listen to all the voices on Anchor around the world. The free app makes it easy to share or embed your messages to other social networks or your own website. An Android version is in the works.
Plane
Plane is a text-based app — you can’t send images or see any, and that’s the point. It’s meant to foster a way to meet people, whether you’re in a new city or a local, looking for things to do. You can semi-anonymously send out a “signal,” which you can tailor to a particular city, and people will hopefully respond. These responses are private, and then you can expand them into full conversations that are also private. Signals and conversations disappear after 24 hours, so you better swap “social cards” quickly if you want to maintain contact with that person.
Morning Reader
Morning Reader is geared towards people interested in tech news, like yourself. The company used to provide a tech digest you could subscribe to, but it recently launched an Android and iOS app. The app itself is quite bare bones and minimalistic — it’s dead simple to use. Think of it more as an RSS feed with different viewing options. There’s “Top,” which shows the 10 most popular tech stories at the moment; then there’s the “River,” a chronological view of recent top stories; and you also have “Daily,” which shows the top five stories of the day.
