July App Love

Here are the apps that the RD team finds themselves using a lot, or are inspired by feature-, or design-wise in July:

Anna

1. Well designed app: WTHR
I really like its simplicity and clean design. Although, maybe it's a tiny bit too simple: At least show me that you are taking the weather from the city that i am in, by showing the city name somewhere.

2. Most used app: Path
Path is currently my most used app. Its also well designed, and the best part about it lies in its attention to beautiful, thought-through details: little animations, funny notes. accuracy. I am also a fan of the fact that they got rid of the tabbar and simplified the user-interaction similar to the facebook app.

3. Best functionality: Stress Doctor
It measures your heartbeat through the iphone-camera, and instructs you to breathe in the same beat as your heart. This is said to be the most relaxing, healthy way of breathing, which is also achieved during meditation. Really cool app idea, and very simply in its UI.

Fluxa

As I don't use mobile apps too much appart from Gmail and Instagram which is pretty boring I thought it would be fine if I post some of the games I was playing lately on other platforms.

1. Best graphics, best minimal interface design (basically no user interface), best playability, most innovative online multiplayer interaction, incredible immersive gameplay and probably the best experience I ever had playing a game: PS3 - Journey from TGC (That Game Company).

2. Best level design, amazing colorful graphics, challenging levels, hundreds hours of fun play. Nintendo once again giving us lessons on how to make their players understand how to play a game without tutorials (AKA: mega-man! mega-man!): Nintendo 3DS - Super Mario 3D Land.

Shinae

1. Best design - Pop camera
This is a camera app that provides several cool toy camera-like filters.
There are many camera app in App store but I think this is the most unique one with its interface and illustrations.

2. Functionality - Naver Chinese-Korean dictionary
This app saves me, as a Korean in Shanghai me a lot here in China. I can also find a chinese character by drawing it on the screen directly.

3. Game - Ghost trick : The Phantom detective
When I started this game, even it is quite long I couldn't let it go until I finish it. Story is solid, characters are strong and in-game graphic is nice. One thing evil is after they let you play 3 chapter, you have to buy the rest if you want to finish the story!

4. Most used app: Kakao talk /Kakao story
THE most popular social app in Korea. Most of my friends use them. KaKao talk provide free phone call between users.

5. Clear - simple memo app. easy to use, clean design.

Matt

My favorite app is still Reeder - I find it far preferable to read articles on the small iPhone screen using Reeder than on a laptop screen, due to it's excellent design.

* I use it multiple times a day to read news/blogs
* Very intuitive interactions
* Uncluttered visual design
* Clever gestures, like a 2-finger swipe to mark articles above a point as read
* Integrates with many third-party services like Twitter, Buffer, Instapaper

Tuo

1. Most used : Sina Weibo
I know Weibo has annoying "zoombie fans" (fake followers) and it is a little bit cumbersome comparing to Path. And you can even buy followers like Newt Gingrich on twitter. Also it is great tool for me to stay in tune with friends.

2. Best Functionality - Pocket (Formerly Read it later)
Pocket is my favorite app esp after it is renamed from read it later. Whole app looks very clean. During work, when I find something that probably worth digging into it , I usually save it to pocket directly from browsers. Pocket has great support for different browsers--like bookmark for firefox

3. Best Game: Tiny Wings
Intriguing story ,beautiful graphics, so nice.

Juan Claudio

1. Great Functionality: Sparrow
In my case this app totally replaced the native Mail app included by default in the iPhone. Nicer and better UI. Still waiting to support push notifications

2. Game: I'm playing Chrono Trigger.
Maybe the most popular RPG Super Nintendo game of all time, I think Square made a fantastic port form console to iOS.

April

1. Favorite App: 堆糖画报
Nice photo collection, I can collect whatever I like: DIY cute things/furniture/food, photos of animals/people/cloths/scene, comic/illustrations, etc

2. Most frequently used: 新浪微博
Most of my friends are using it, plus it is faster than any newspaper if anything big/strange happened, I could get more info from weibo than newspaper/news website.

3. Favorite game: Puzzle of Sango
It is a very simple game with characters from 三国演义, the images are very cute and the music is very cool, too.

Florian

1. Best Functionality: Pleco
Being in China and not speaking Chinese, I found this App incredibly useful. Especially the OCR function enables me to translate menus in restaurants or cooking instructions for Noodles.

2. Favorite Game: Where is my water
I don't really play games on my phone but I found this game quite interesting. The game has a great level design, is easy to understand and can be really challenging.