Ten Apps and Other Resources We Like.

By Erica and Karen

We have found some cool new apps recently, (can you believe we grew up without apps???) and we have come to rely on other resources that we recommend.

Here’s our list:

1. Too Good To Go. We are concerned about food waste. Here’s a really clever idea. The app lists restaurants willing to sell bundles of food for a fixed price. The descriptions tell you what kind of food the establishment serves, and when you can come pick up your bundle. (For example, fine dining restaurants may set a later time than coffee shops, which might close earlier.) You can then pick up your bundle, and take it home, where you will open it excitedly to find out what it is. We know people who have been delighted with dinners of an amazing quality they could not normally afford. And while they indulge they accomplish a worthy goal. How smart is that?

2. FlightRadar24. Air travel has become nightmarish. Flights are delayed or cancelled at the last minute, or rerouted, or you simply can’t get any information about status. FlightRadar24 gives you up-to-date information, and also world maps on which little airplanes are flying along pictured routes. Cool! We’ve also heard good things about Flighty, which apparently gets information way ahead of the airlines and alerts you to changes. Finally, think about the Apple Air Tag if you still boldly check luggage. We’ve decided never to do that again.

3. Ckbk. A curated universe of recipes from lots and lots of cookbooks. Yes, you lose the great pleasure of reading a cookbook, but you gain access to all sorts of wonderful recipes for whatever you have in the cupboard.

4. Strava. If you run or hike and you like to do it with your friends, virtually—and you are just a tiny bit competitive—Strava will record what you are doing, you can see what your friends are doing, and you can try to do better. We don’t do any of these things, and we hate it when our iPhones tell us we are not walking as much as we did last week, but if you are a better person than we are, Strava is for you. We know people who love it.

5. Read.ai. You’re having a strategy meeting on Zoom and you need a note taker, Read.ai is actually amazing. You will get a coherent transcript—assuming, of course, that you and your colleagues were coherent in the first place—before you know it.

6. Canva Magic Eraser. We’re not sure which app is the best, but we love the idea of erasing things that you did not realize were in your photos. Or people you no longer want to see in your photos. Yes, we do grasp that mischief might result. Some of our friends swear by Canva to perform this task.

7. Windfinder. You probably have a weather app you use. We use a few—Weather Underground and NOAA, but we especially like Windfinder because wind has a big effect on how the weather works and feels. All the apps talk about wind, but Windfinder’s images of wind blowing over whatever place we are interested in makes it visually clear what is about to happen, and is also very fun. (We liked Dark Sky too—but it’s gone!)

8. Eater. Eater is opinionated when it comes to restaurants, which we enjoy, and it has expanded to quite a few cities. It’s always on top of openings and closings. We use it often. Because we eat often.

9. Hovding 3 Airbag. More and more people are biking, here and everywhere, and fewer and fewer of them are wearing helmets. It worries us. So we were delighted to find an airbag for cyclists that turns into head protection in the event of a crash. We saw it on many people in Copenhagen, and it struck us as a brilliant idea. (Might be a good one even for pedestrians in our city, where cyclists think the road rules to not apply to them.)

10. Dashlane. Everyone hates passwords, and we surely hope that face or eyeball identification (passkeys?) soon eliminates the need for the brain damage created by passwords—different ones for each site. But until then, a password manager can save your some of that brain damage. One of us has used Dashlane for years and could not live without it. One of us relies on her memory. What do you do?

And what would you add to this list?