Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
EACH WEEK, WE highlight five apps that are worth downloading for your smartphone and tablet. There are a lot of apps released on a daily basis, but not all of them are worth paying attention to.
This week includes your own portable drum machine, an accessible cookbook and a way to prove you have the best Android phone of them all.
Keezy Drummer
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- You want a programmable drum machine you say? Well, you’ve got one right here.
- To be honest, that’s all the app is really, it’s a fun drum set that you won’t need any time to learn or get used to.
- For a drum set, there are a lot of customisation options. 12 percussion sounds, tempo adjustment and choosing where to place each beat is simple.
- The fun part is you can have it playing in the background when you leave the app, meaning you can combine your beats with any song (provided you’re creative enough).
- Because who doesn’t want a drum machine app on their phone?
Elepath, Inc. / Vimeo
Quicky
For: Windows Phone
Cost: €0.99
- Windows Phone 8.1 brought with it a lot of much needed improvement, best one being the action centre.
- If you feel it could do with a little extra functionality, it’s worth giving Quicky a trial.
- It allows you to open up apps directly from the action centre, just making the process switching from one app to another slightly faster.
- While there are a few pre-set shortcuts, you can create your own shortcut if you want (thankfully, it helps you out by providing the code needed to launch an app).
- If you find yourself jumping in between certain apps regularly, it’s a handy app to try out.
PCMark for Android Benchmark
For: Android
Cost: Free
- PCMark is for those who really want to know just how good their smartphone or tablet is.
- It benchmarks the performance and battery life of your device and compare it to other rivals.
- These tests are based on real-world tasks and everyday uses so you get a more realistic idea of just how fast/powerful your device is.
- Just be warned though, the app is 23MB, but the Work benchmark requires an extra 430MB, just so you know (The makers expect to add more benchmark tests over time).
- For those who really want to show off just how good their phone is.
Zombie Catchers
For: iOS
Cost: Free
- We’re fans of any game that comes up with a bizarre or original premise and Zombie Catchers has that in spades.
- You take control of an alien who hunts zombies, so far so predictable, but the difference is the zombies you capture are juiced and sold off to customers as drinks (well, we did warn you it was bizarre).
- You hunt zombies with a variety of gadgets, starting off with just a harpoon and balloons, but later you get access to jetpacks and tranquilizers to help capture the more tricky zombies.
- There’s enough variation between the different zombies in how they behave, and it presents enough of a challenge to prevent you from getting bored too quickly.
- A quirky, and bizarre game that’s more fun than it should be.
Yummly
For: iOS, Android
Cost: Free
- For some people, cooking is incredibly hard, and finding the inspiration to make new recipes is even harder.
- Yummly wants to be the app that will do just that and while it takes a short bit of time to get used to, it does the job well.
- The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s a beautiful app. Lots of visuals, clever search features and easy to follow guides certainly helps matters.
- If you want to go a little bit deeper, you can filter recipes through calories, carbs, fat and cholesterol.
- If you want to give your cookery skills a little more variety, look no further.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I got 99 problems but ice cream ain’t one
Well we’ve little or no use for it here during the summer, might as well export it to somewhere the sun shines :-)
@Spartacus Ireland: Wot r u babblin’ abou’ luv? Dis is not a *Caribbean* Island fer jaysus sakes. Wot were yew expecting?
This Summer has been the closest to non-Climate Change, Irish normal, in nearly a decade. Other than the persistent 20°C temperature. Usually we used to have a “Californian Winter” temperature of 14-18°C, with 20s to 23s being *”a heatwave”* for us.
Normal Irish Summers were always …”Soft” or “Bog” (mixed sun-cloud-showers with balmy moderate temperatures i.e. mid to high teens), and “Close” (moderately high Humidity).
Hence the Irish phrase:
“A sunshine shower only lasts a half an hour”.
Also – we happily gobble ice-cream in the depths of Winter.
….just to keep the foreign students and visitors totally and utterly off-balance…
A tactic retained from the time of the British Occupation – do the exact opposite to what they expect.
The madder, the better.
XD
We don’t need this “Sun” you speak of. We’re Irish, we eat ROCKS!!! Arrrrhh!!
Ice cream in Ireland is a thriving business due to the foresight of one man. Juan Cornetto
Wow, what a scoop!
The ice cream manufacturers are creaming it!!! Good news story.
This is great news for dairy farmers
@Sean Money: Unfortunately it’s only good news for a handful. Dairy farmers nowadays need to be enormous to turn a profit. Most will go as the ratio of effort to income continues to not make sense (only what I hear from my dairy farming neighbours).
@Thesaltyurchin: average dairy farm income is 175,000.00 per the national farm survey
@Ronan Meagle: Dropped from an unprecedented high in 2022 to €86,000 before tax in 2023. 7 days a week, 52 week a year, working on average 52 hours/week with many working 70 hours/week. €24 – €32/hour before tax. Most people aren’t cut out for the work that dairy farmers do – it ain’t easy!
@Ronan Meagle: As I mentioned, just from 3 conversations with locals. Doubtful that figure includes costs, employees, etc.
@Leslie Dwyer: They should sell up and get a 9 to 5 job then if farming is to poorly paid
@Leslie Dwyer: Thank you. I love dairy. Good bones ;-)
@Pat O Dwyer: Many are. There were 17,495 dairy farmers in 2020 compared with 31,809 in 2000 – a 45% reduction in 20 years. It won’t be long before that figure is 15,000.
But … look at the size of our national debt . One of the highest in the world . Why are the alarm bells not going off ?
@BL Music: The size if the debt is not important, it’s the ability to service it.
@BL Music: Debt per head is similar to the UK’s but they are tanking. Hopefully we won’t. Credit ratings are important for servicing it too. Macro economic prudence – less interesting than ice cream!
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: Let’s not forget that Moody’s and S+P effd us to save the WASP countries, when we were in a fully appropriate, *post-Conflict*, *Peacetime*, economic *and property* upswing.
The proof is in the pudding right now – we can’t live up to our (Housing) obligations both to our indigenous population, and the most vulnerable populations of the world that we swore to shelter as we were once sheltered.
We got a small portion of our post-conflict “valuing life” Peace dividend, regaining respect for lives on the road (and, to a degree, in other contexts).
But we should still be reaping that benefit – if not for the *foreign instigated* (Russian sympathising American-Zionist, Brit’ Zionist, and Russo-Zionists) rise, and rise, of anti-Catholic, anti-Semite [Christian, Jew and Muslim], anti-Irish, anti-Democracy, Fascism.
We are *owed* our post-conflict Economic stability, growth, and Housing Stability.
Cool story
I scream, you scream, everybody loves ice cream :-)
@Patrice Ahern: ….we all scream for ice-cream*
Plenty of research confirms that diary’s not good for ones health. But sure, who cares?
@Charlie Arum: Anne Frank would probably agree
@Ronan McGrath: It’s a good job Anne Frank didn’t keep a journal. When discovered,every second page would read “comments closed”
@Charlie Arum: Always baffled my why we drink the baby food of an animal with multiple stomachs. Seems mad. I do like ice cream tho
@Larry Betts: Hur da sure knew what the white Ashkenazi Zionists had done to her, and to the non-white Semite Jewry of Europe.
He wouldn’t give dem White [Russo-] Zionists the time of day, for all the rest of his days.
He *knew*.
Is a ’69′ the one without a flake stuck in it?
Its like reporting that X is the tallest of the seven dwarfs, when he is still a midget.
@Pat Mcleran: 6 out of 7 dwarfs are not happy
Does “ice cream” include that powdered stuff they mix with water and squirm it into cones and stuff flakes that are not chocolate into?
A…whaaaaaaa???
We have/make ice-cream, other than HB (*now made in fekn Engalund*), that we export?
A-beg-a-puddin’?
Whaaaaaaaaaaaa? O.o
Show me this “Irish ice-cream” you speak of.
What brands? What types?
And jaysus, it had better not be “Gelato” or the Italians will abandon the Croatia case, and hit the roof altogether.
This is great news, I was quite “cone”cerned about the future of our dairy industry
With that amount of dairy here what do you expect?
* dairy’s *
have your say