Ten Apps to Make Life Worth Living

If your smartphone has all the appeal of gum surgery, you’re overdue for an app makeover. There’s nothing like fresh apps to put spring in your step and purpose to an otherwise gray existence. Below are ten apps guaranteed to put some pigment back in your pallor.

OffDaGrid

OffDaGrid converts your iPhone or Pixel into a console for managing your backyard nuclear power plant. Whether you’re flushing waste water or tracking fissile material, OffDaGrid enables you to multitask: swap out spent fuel rods in between scrolling your news feed or drilling Minecraft shafts. Jump up levels by passing surprise AEC inspections. Install a webcam and visually inspect waste ponds when running errands. In-app purchases let you stock up on supplies like U-235 and coolant. For complete plant installation, get OffDaGrid Pro for a nominal $5,500/kW.

Left Swipe

Left Swipe has a disarmingly simple concept. With Left Swipe, you can left swipe, and you’ve done a left swipe. Do it again: another left swipe! With Left Swipe Pro, not only will a left swipe swipe left, but a right swipe will swipe right. There’s also a Left Swipe Power User version, which allows you to expel people into a parallel universe by left swiping them.

iKnockoff

Maybe you’re coveting an iPhone, but skittish of Apple’s prices. iKnockoff was designed for you! With iKnockoff, you can upgrade any mobile device to an iPhone running the latest iOS, with just a download. Tired of Apple snobs looking at your Samsung Galaxy like it’s bio waste? Just download iKnockoff for Android, open ‘er up, and that clunky Android bursts its cocoon and spreads its iPhone wings, complete with cerulean SMS speech bubbles and free admission to the Apple cult’s Wicca.

iKnockoff also has app versions for Nokia, Blackberry, iPod, Zune (sorry, Balmer), Fitbit, TV remotes, digital picture frames, toaster ovens, and gym socks. For the Apple purist, there is iKnockoff for iPhone, which, when loaded on your iPhone, turns it into an iPhone Squared (iP**2). The world’s most powerful phone, the iP**2 can:

• In under a zeptosecond, calculate pi to a number of places a hair shy of Planck’s constant.
• Simulate a network of quantum computers.
• When connected to 5G, vaporize Saturn. (Pro version only.)

Home Surgeon

Created by a group of hard-core DIYers who cut their teeth designing 3D-printed 3D printers that 3D print 3D printers, Home Surgeon enables you to do basic surgery in the comfort of your living room, using nothing more than a Leatherman SuperTool 300, Gorilla Glue, and a pack of Wet-Nap Premoistened Towelletes. Appendectomies, biopsies, laparoscopic stent insertion — you name it! Featuring streaming video of world-class surgeons performing incisions, suturing, and wound management, Home Surgeon guides mobile users through dozens of procedures that would cost thousands of dollars at a hospital. Vital signs dropping? There’s a chat function for that! Solicit realtime guidance from on-call physicians. In the event of a Code 99, just download the free companion apps, Home Attorney and Home Mortician.

ShutUpTed!

ShutUpTed! is a social networking application targeted at people who can’t stand Ted Cruz. And it’s gone seriously viral: since its release last week, ShutUpTed! has captured 63% of the smartphone market. Moderators vigilantly police app traffic, ensuring that all posts are a) directed at Ted Cruz, and b) one of more of: derogatory, obscene, or an ad hominem attack. (UPDATE: ShutUpTed! has edged up to 64% of the smartphone market.) Users have an opportunity to upvote the nastiest insults, and volunteer hackers attempt to insert the top five onto Cruz’s website monthly. (UPDATE: 65% … 66% … 67% …)

Sock Shepherd

Outdoor surveillance, smart irrigation, and medical fridges are but a few of the use cases driving the 35 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices we have today. How could that number double? Socks! Waaaaay more socks than medical fridges.

Back-of-the-envelope math … 7.6 billion people, say six socks per person: that’s 45 billion socks itching to emigrate. Which is why the good folks at LegWhere Labs built Sock Shepherd.

You dropped $295 at Neiman Marcus for a pair of Brunello Cucinellis, wore them once, and somehow a singleton emerged from the dryer, pining for its mate. Another runaway. So stop the bleeding — install the app, tag your socks with inexpensive RFID tags, and let Sock Shepherd do the round up. Behind the drier; buried under your spouse’s mound of sweatpants; snaking through your dachshund’s digestive tract: no sock can hide for long. Sock Shepherd wrangles your sock flock, and beds them down safely each night in your sock drawer. For chronic fugitives, upgrade to Stocking Stalker.

EweTube

The dominant player in the exploding ovine streaming video market, EweTube, a spin out from YouTube, provides subscribers with a curated collection of the finest sheep footage on the Internet, including rare closeups where you can actually see liddle lamzy divey. While EweTube is iOS-only, for Android users there’s YewTube, where videographers celebrate the miraculous Taxus Baccata. Finally, the few Linux mobile users out there have HughTube, featuring Jackman, Grant, Downs, Hefner, and Laurie.

Unter

What Uber is for cars, Unter is for hoverboards. Same idea: open app, enter pickup address and destination … kill time playing Five Nights at Freddy’s … within minutes an Unter hoverboard driver cruises by … just get a running start (I mean a good running start) and hop (i.e., leap for all you’re worth) on.

With Uber, you never know if the driver is going to get creepy. With Unter, if your driver tries to hit on you, just bail out (trying to avoid pavement or sharp objects): Unter won’t even charge you for the lift! Plus with Unter, it’s only $.02/mile, so going from Boston to LA would only set you back like sixty-two bucks, plus toll money. There’s also UnterEats for when you’re hungry: drivers will toss you packs of peanut butter Nabs as they whiz past.

Cnsnntz

A key addition to your “life hacks” tool belt, Cnsnntz not only caffeinates your productivity, but it also styles your prose with that hip “all consonants” look. Simply enter a URL, copy-paste in a text block, or upload a PDF/Word file, and Cnsnntz will automatically strip out all vowels: you get trim, lean paragraphs of pure, spanking-clean consonants. No more wasting crucial seconds slogging through every vowel, y cn jst rd th cnsnnts, whch s s mch fstr! (S wht dd thr?)

According to the company’s Chief Philosophy Officer, Soo Doh Wiz Dum, users not only up their reading game, but can optionally “give back” to the community by donating pruned vowels to favorite non-profits. And with Cnsnntz Pro, you can also strip out punctuation, metaphors, white space, meaning, and other time bandits.

Air Bed

For travelers on a budget, and those who want to monetize mattress space, AirBed is a must have app. If you don’t mind scootching over, you can make extra cash hosting budget travelers who need a slice of bed but can’t afford pricy AirBnb rates. Host solo trekkers, families, even bus vacation tours (king mattress recommended). As a traveler, you save big bucks, so long as you’re in absentia until bedtime, and you hit the trail by sun up. For a few bucks more, you can lock in overnight lavatory privileges via a separate contract using companion app Bathroom Buddies. Otherwise, bring your own mason jar.