Price: €0.79

Download it from AppStore.

Have you ever woken up feeling completely wrecked when the alarm clock goes off, despite the fact that you have slept “enough” hours? This usually happens when you wake up during a deep sleep phase (and you turn into a zombie for the rest of the morning). Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock uses the accelerometer on your iPhone to detect movement when you are sleeping, and then determine which sleep phase are you in (deep sleep, medium sleep, light sleep or falling sleep). This app uses a 30 minute alarm window that ends at your set alarm time and wakes you up in the lightest sleep phase, so you will be happy and full of energy for the rest of the morning. Obviously, this app is not a substitution for a good night’s rest, but it’s really helpful on nights that you don’t get as much sleep as you wanted. It has a nice design, it’s easy to use and the price is great taking into account the quality of the app. So place your iPhone on your bed before going to sleep and give it a try. Please comment and let us know if you liked the app and if it was useful for you. Sweet dreams!
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A good app to manage your personal finances is always welcome, especially if it’s free. Using Money you can manage and arrange all your bills with a calendar reminder, see your bank accounts and cards by taking a quick look at the screen or plan income and expenses in the budget section. You can sync from different devices and import or export data and reports. Money has a number of cool features but it’s really easy to use, with a good design. Give it a try and start saving by tracking your finances.

Price: Free

Download it from App Store and the Android market.

This is definitely one of the most popular apps of the productivity category, awarded several times in the past year. Evernote helps you remember everything and stay organised, across different devices. You can edit text notes, to-dos and list tasks using text, audio or images. After that you can sync them across your PC, tablet and the rest of the devices that you use. Apart from that you can email notes, save tweets to you Evernote account and share everything you want on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Apart from having a better and more organised life, many who use it say it’s a good substitute for Dropbox (a cloud storage system that enable users to store and share files and folders with others across the Internet using file synchronisation). It’s free so give it a try and if you are already using it, please comment and let us know if you are happy with it.

Price: €3.99.

Available on Appstore.

Writing Kit by Quang Anh Do is a new kit for iPad writers, with full Markdown support and easy ways to research while writing. You can use TextExpander snippets, edit documents anywhere with Dropbox, find reference materials, look up or substitute words from the Terminology app, insert quotes and links or upload images to CloudApp. After writing your document, you can share it easily as Markdown or HTML files on Evernote, Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr or Twitter. Writing kit manages to combine a rather powerful set of features, and yet it remains very simple to use, with an uncluttered interface. Definitely worth a try if you are writing anything on your iPad.

Price: Free.

Available on the Appstore.

First of all, if you have never heard of Pinterest, here’s a brief description: “It’s a Virtual Pinboard. It lets you organise and share all the beautiful things you find in your life. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organise their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.”
Pinterest is becoming really popular nowadays, and that’s because it’s new, fresh and stylish. The iPhone app is high quality. Take pictures and share or ‘Pin’ them quickly or browse the pictures from the people and pinboards you follow.
Have a try and, why not, follow Digital Times on Pinterest.
Pinterest is still quite exclusive so you have to request an invitation (that they usually send you in less than one week). But if you can’t wait to start using it, we can invite you from Digital Times’ Pinterest and you will be ‘pinning’ in seconds!

How long were the monkeys typing?
While Apple doesn’t expect to make any money from the vast majority of books created using iBooks 2, it does expect to make a healthy profit from the educational sector.
School books in the US, like Ireland, are extremely expensive. iBooks 2 offers a very appealing and more affordable solution for both teachers and parents.
At the launch of iBook 2, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller and Apple apps chief Eddy Cue introduced tools to make digital textbooks and demonstrated how authors and even teachers can create books for students (see video below). Schiller said it is time to “reinvent the textbook”, adding that 1.5 million iPads are in use now in education.
Education as we know it is about to change for the better and this, perhaps, will be the greatest legacy of Steve Jobs – a man who also changed forever the PC, music, film and mobile phone industries.

Price: Free

Download from the Appstore.

After yesterday’s app of the day, Epicurious, we may need something like Calorie Counter today. With this easy-to-use app you can set your own goals and limitations for weight loss or just to keep fit. Control the consumption of unhealthy ingredients and create your plans. You also have loads of food items, recipes, exercises and of course ways to measure your results with statistics. But what if a product is not in their food database? No problem, Calorie Counter has a barcode scanner. The app has way more cool features that you can check out on their web page, but I would say that definitely the best one is its price – it’s free. A big number of awards endorse this app, highlighting the best of the iPad Heatth & Fitness category in App Store Rewind 2011 in the US.