The 10 Best Apps Of July From The Daily App

App Reviews: A Busy Month For Mobility

With a new platform – the WebOS-based HP TouchPad now on the market – and the world bracing for iOS 5.0, July proved to be a busy month for mobile technology and a very busy month for apps.

Out of those we test-drove during the month in our Daily App blog, these are the 10 we consider the best.

Smart Planner For iPhone

Smart Planner, by TeleNav, is a free download from the Apple iTunes App Store. Immediately after download and installation, it essentially married the calendar information with the native mapping application on the iPhone. The result: a map that tells you when your next appointment is and how far away you are from it.

Google+ For iPhone

Google+, the iPhone App that is an extension of the social networking service, has functions that have long been available on iPhone, like chat, messaging, photo and location sharing, Google Plus for iPhone has introduced its ’Huddles’ to the platform – the most significant group-chat app for iOS until now. Huddles are on-the-fly text chats through the iPhone app with multiple people. While the concept of a group conference on a 3.5-inch screen might be a stretch, Google+ for iPhone manages to do it in a way that has a natural look and feel to it.

Firefox For Android (Beta)

Firefox for Android, which is still a beta app, is designed the way you’d expect a full browser for a tablet to be designed, and on 10-inch Android tablet, it’s visually pleasing. And, like Firefox Home, you can synchronize your bookmarks from your PC to your Android tablet through a somewhat kludgey method – but one that works all the same. For power browsing on an Android tablet, this might just be the app for you.

Threety For BlackBerry Playbook

Threety is a time-tracking app for the BlackBerry PlayBook platform that we like for three important reasons: It’s free, it’s simple and it works. We’ve looked at other time-tracking apps that are either pricey, are limited in functionality (such as only being able to track one task at a time), or are clunky. We looked at Threety version 0.9, and liked the simple functionality.

Threety, a free app for download from Research In Motion’s BlackBerry App World store, allows for tracking time for work on multiple client accounts, note-taking, and has simple ’start’ and ’stop’ buttons for each created event.

Optimum For iPad

With the free Optimum app, which is available for download from the Apple iTunes App Store, Cablevision (Time Warner Cable has a similar app, among others) provides live streaming access to all the channels to which you subscribe – and streaming access to on-demand programming as well. This app essentially turns the iPad into a mobile, hand-held TV with crisp audio and video.

Dolphin Browser For Android

On the Android platform, the Dolphin Browser HD – a free download from the Android Market – is geared toward making the full Web also a full browsing experience. It adds in tabbed browsing and bookmarking features that go much further than Apple's Safari browser for iOS, for example, in making the browsing experience feel more natural and PC-like.

Data Drilling Pro For BlackBerry PlayBook

We tried Data Drilling Pro, a $4.99 download from the BlackBerry App world store. The app does what its name suggests it does: it drills down through Excel spreadsheet data, and presents in graphical format every aspect of the data you need to study.

IP Scanner For iPad

IP Scanner on the iPad will run a network scan blazingly fast and identify every device on a network. Tap the device on a list, and you’ll see a pop-up for the device’s IP address, MAC Address and its manufacturer. It will let you add notations about the device, ping the device, run a port scan or open a device manager for that device in the iPad’s Safari browser.

For an IT management staff that’s on the go, running around a building or campus managing PCs, printers and other devices, IP Scanner can prove invaluable.

Subnet Calculator For HP TouchPad

Optimized for the TouchPad, as opposed to other, earlier apps that were optimized for either the Palm Pre or Palm Pixi, Subnet Calculator will do the work of calculating a series of configurations using IP address, netmask, subnet bits, and will calculate First Octet Range, Hex IP Address, Wildcard Mas, Host Address Range and more. It’s a free download from the HP App Catalog, and it’s an app that can be a time-saver for techies - in the right situation.

Scan to PDF For iPhone

With Scan to PDF for iPhone, which is a free download in the Apple iTunes App Store, it’s possible to go beyond mere document scanning into a full menu of document editing options. Create PDFs from multiple pages, scan to color or black-and-white, turn images already on your phone into a PDF or use the on-board camera to shoot a photo and turn it right into a PDF – all are options with Scan to PDF.

Tipirneni Software is the developer of this app, which comes with a mini-training video, and allows for preferences that include defaulting scans to black and white, as well as high-definition image captures.