It takes a huge chunk of our disposable time and unless we are deliberate about how we spend our time, we would literally just watch life roll by leaving us with nothing but regrets. 

Just as social media apps litter the playstore for android phones, tons of good and productive apps are available to those who crave for it.

This is the third part in the series of my android apps, and I am buoyed by the sterling responses from those who have read the first two parts in the series. I am yet to scratch the surface on great productivity apps that almost everyone will find useful, but let’s take each article one step at a time.

For those who are wondering how and if I have all the apps highlighted in the previous articles installed on my phone, the answer is YES. At some point I let some apps go by uninstalling them, and then install new ones. I do cleanups every now and then to create space and remove the clutter. But no app stays idle for up to a week.

So without much ado, let’s get into the unveiling on some interesting apps;

Elevate – Is a personalized brain training program designed to help elevate your critical thinking and cognitive skills. It is similar to Luminosity App that I mentioned in the earlier article.

It uses research-based games to train up different areas of your cognition, like reading or memory, and allows you to track your progress over time. If you’re looking to give your brain a regular workout, Elevate is undoubtedly one of the best apps out there. 

Whenever you get the feel to get your lazy brain started, give it a jolt with a 30min session with Elevate. It works just fine. It has a daily session personalised to allow you have an all round cognitive development. Its Brevity session for instance would help with English, its Eloquence training session will help with speaking, its retention session will help juggle your short term memory.

The game is well thought through and allows you track your progress. A good number of the session comes free on a daily basis, but making some further optional payment will open even more sessions. 

Medium – Is an online publishing app that serves both the writers and the readers. It is a great platform to share articles, or stories written by the users. It is simple, clean and easy to use. It has a community where the stories or articles are rated by using claps. The number of claps is akin to likes in other social media platforms. Medium also lets you see how many people have viewed, read, and clapped for your posts.

Another thing that I love about writing on Medium is that it already has a built-in audience or community. When you create your Medium account, you also have the opportunity to connect to your social media accounts such asTwitter and Facebook accounts.This gives you a ready-made audience to start with.

In Medium, you are also allowed to use up to 5 tags in each of your stories. Using relevant tags will allow the in-built Medium algorithm to share your stories with a larger audience. Through its partner program, writers can earn money every month on Medium. The amount earned would depend on the number of applause, length of time spent on the stories amongst others.

To make it more interesting, it also provides a stats page where you can see how well your story is engaging the audience and get a sense of how well you are doing as a writer. 

Fiverr – Is a freelance services marketplace for business. This app is an amazing creation of globalization. Talking about reaching out to markets far and beyond your geographical reach. It simply connects freelancers to business opportunities.

Depending on the services that you are desirous of, Fiverr will connect you with several freelancers who would offer you services at competitive rates and with good response time. Services such as Logo design, animation, business card design, company profiles, Resume development, Influencer marketing, web design, web traffic,  social media design and marketing, voice over, SEO and even cartoons or translations. There is someone out there who can provide the services within 2-3 days for a modest token depending on what you intend to achieve.

The freelancers also get reviews from previous jobs to guide the prospecting customer and a good comparison can be made with other freelancers. There is a chatting platform that allows you engage the freelancer directly.

I think this is a great platform for people with specific and good skills to earn passive income.

Mobdro – is an app that allows you to stream movies, TV shows, documentaries, sports, and other content on your Android. You will not find this app on the play store.

It is one of the best Apps to watch Live TV online for free. Well if you don’t consider the data you will be trading for this convenience.

The truth is, if you do not know the TV channel streaming whatever you intend to see on the app, you will likely be wasting valuable time. For periods when I am away on the road and have limited access to watch my favorite football matches, I turn to Mobdro to rescue me from the quagmire.

I get to see live football matches, boxing matches and a host of other must-watch shows while on the go. It therefore takes the need to hurry home or to some public joint to watch football off my list.

It streams the visuals fairly okay with intermittent breaks but not enough to ditch the game.

I have had it for a while now after a dear friend recommended it during our trip back from Ife.

Deeezer/ soundcloud – I have lumped two music streaming apps together because I want to put them both side by side and to analyse the benefit of one over the other.

SoundCloud is described as more than a streaming service, but an open global community for anyone to upload any sound for immediate discovery. And that is the bit that irks me. While soundcloud has tons of music, a good number of the tracks are karokees and parodies of the original version. The platform therefore appears to be cluttered with all sorts of songs with no particular well laid and organized way. After fruitless searching for the original tracks, you may be lucky to only find a 30seconds preview!

Yes, it allows almost anyone to upload music, but it leaves the platform utterly difficult to navigate.

At least I would not get locked out of the app as with Deezer.

Deezer on the other hand and in my opinion is a better organized music streaming platform. Navigation is relatively easy, you can search by genre or by new releases. The app is also quite intelligent as it would study your music preference and offer the user songs within the most frequented genre. Here it is much easier to get the original version of many songs. 

The platform is also open to users to upload music tracks but it has some really firm restrictions. After free use for a few weeks, you will be required to go premium( and pay a token).

You will find just about any song on this platform. It reportedly has 54million songs in its kitty and some reviews question the quality of the sound. 

For music lovers like me, it just allows access to music of any kind and at any time. Once a tune pops in my head, I am gunning for any of these two apps to stream it!

Pocket – Someone thought about this app and I must say it was well thought through.

Pocket lets you save articles, videos, images, tweets, and more in one place. That’s all it does.

To put this in context, let me share the problem this app solves. Sometimes we get articles online or links to read a story or news article via whatsapp platform, twitter or even facebook and we are unable to read the article or to complete it due to pressing attention and demand from other things at the time. Simply copy the link and put it in pocket for later read.

This helps solve the trouble of looking for articles that you would have loved to read during free time.

Pocket keeps the link active until you are ready to read. It also analyses the link and determines how much time you will need to read the article. I think that is an amazing feature. It simply focuses on productivity and wise use of time.

Afriticket – Afriticket is a similar app to Eventbrite. This is a relatively new app and it hasn’t even gained much traction yet. The app claims to be Africa’s leading end-to-end event ticketing platform for concerts, festivals, educational courses, fashion shows and much more around Africa. The platform allows users to find, create, share and book events of all kind with ease. The interface is simple and well organized featuring all the details for the events with the cost tag to guide the user on events he would like to attend. The app provides details of the event itself and allows the users to like events that pique their interest.

Tickets can be purchased off the platform although it appears that this isn’t quite properly integrated on the app yet.

For events during the yuletide, Afriticket will guide you on events that may interest you.

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