Editor’s note: This piece was written as a follow up to Brad Spirrison’s (a TechCrunch contributor) article. He picked up the best iOS apps of the year – an annual tradition for him. What I have tried to do is see how such apps are (can be) useful for the African user – entrepreneur, artist, content manager or just a tech savvy youth.
1. Flipboard
Flipboard creates a personalized magazine out of everything being shared with you, from Instagram photos and Facebook updates to Tumblr posts and articles from your favorite publications.
It is highly recommended for users who publish on or subscribe to many platforms, as it converges all of these materials in beautiful fashion – for the purpose of viewing and/or sharing.
Photosynth by Microsoft lets users quickly and reliably capture panoramic 360-degree gyroscopic images simply by moving their cameras.
This is highly recommended for photographers and graphic artist, as it allows you literarily perform magic with a collection of random photos. I will attend an exhibition that showcases product of the Photosynth.
3. This next-generation music detection app lets users not only identify what song they are listening to, but also seamlessly share the track with friends and followers from Facebook, Twitter and foursquare.
We love movies and sitcoms and a good fraction also love the soundtracks played in most. So here is an app that helps track sounds and share with friends.
4. Perhaps the most impressive translator – you can translate words and phrases between more than 60 languages using Google Translate for iOS. For most languages, you can speak your phrases and hear the corresponding translations.
This should be interesting for web users that do not want to be restricted by language, since the web is set to make the world a global village. You can now get information – words/phrase/website from any country and find it useful.
5. GarageBand
GarageBand turns your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go.
This is for the (indie) music producers and indie artist, as the app allows for the use of Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument.
