New APP's For Your Pad or Smart Phone

Apps just keep getting better and better.  I recently added eBay and Amazon to my phone, and these two Apps are very user friendly, even more so than the website. They have obviously spent serious programming dollars to make these stand-outs.

Zillow, the amazing real estate site, just added these features – you can now choose to see just the foreclosures.  And if you previously viewed a house, there’s a visual indication on the house.  Photo gallery also enhanced.

Flight tracking is fun, even if you are not actually flying.  Several sites serve interested persons, one new to me is www.Flightradar24.com  it has an App as well as a website.  It shows all planes in flight on a map, and you can click on any plane to see details such as plane type, flight number, and so forth.  Red color means the plane is 5 minutes late (so says one reviewer).  Choose an area, like your town or region, or some other region, and you can even see with a click the “view from the cockpit” on some planes.  What hath technology wrought?  In the military we could do this, crudely, now anyone can do it even on a pocket device.  Reviewers either love or hate this site, there is a free and a paid version.  Competitor sites exist, post a comment if there's another you like. I have used FlightTrack Pro for a long time, but it is not good with small airlines like Allegiant. And sometimes it is hard to enter a flight IMO. A pilot told the cabin on one delayed flight for all of us passengers to use the App to see when we would take off, as it was just as accurate as any information he had in the cockpit.  It was all real time.

"AP mobile" is the App for Associated Press.  I don’t know why I was stuck in neutral with the older version, which was not very functional, but finally found the right version yesterday. This new update is awesome to say the least.  And the reviews are among the most consistently praising that I have seen in a long time.  I agree.  Many photos, fast loading,  has local news as well, right from your local newspaper.  And it is free. Navigation is a breeze, and you can email stories to friends if you like. This one gives competitor news sties a run for their money.  USA today isn’t keeping up, it used to be great, but now is more and more limited and not very cosmetic IMO.  I don’t like white text on black.  Pulse App is also excellent, and BBC news as well, but AP might be the most useful.  Fluent News was great for awhile, but now I am using it less and less.  Our local State Paper site is primitive, but somewhat better than it used to be, and only works well on the iPhone, there is no real iPad version (and there needs to be).

As everyone ramps up their game, App competition will yield more and more usual services to the convenience of us all.  Please comment about any favorites you have.