Mobile Experts Name Top Apps

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Mobility experts were grilled on their favorite mobile apps at a recent panel at the Microsoft New England Research and Design Center, and convenience-based apps were named most popular.

’Mine’s boring, I like Waze,’ said Skyhook Vice President Mike Schneider. ’It knows when I’m going to work and it reduces the time it takes me to get there.’

Waze, which was started in in Israel and acquired by Google last year, won the Best Overall Mobile App at the 2013 Mobile World Congress. The GPS application is available for nearly all smartphones.

Care.com Director of Mobile Products Ryan Charles named the app Mynd as his favorite. Mynd is an elegantly styled calendar and productivity app, which streamlines scheduling and calculates travel and commuting times.

’That app actually learns your commute and learns how long it takes you to commute. So not based off other drivers and how long their drive takes, but how I drive from Point A to Point B,’ Charles said.

’My favorite example is actually Google Now. I travel a lot and the number of times I pull out my phone to realize that 12:05 red eye is actually tomorrow night, not tonight, because of dates – or the number of times I’ve seen that package I really want is delayed, it’s not going to be delivered today, so there’s no point in rushing home -- it’s actually had a material impact on my day-to-day,’ said Localytics CTO Henry Cipolla.

Google Now is the company’s ’personal assistant’ application, which provides everything from parking location reminders to restaurant reservation assistance.