Have you ever had a hard time keeping your resolutions for the new year? There are plenty of iPhone and Android apps that can help you out.

Image credit: christmasstockimages.com

The University of Scranton surveyed Americans earlier this year to find the top 10 most popular New Year’s resolutions. Here are some of our favorite apps for helping you keep them throughout 2015.

1. Losing Weight

• MyFitnessPal Calorie Counter (Android, iOS): This free app has a huge database of food so you can look up the calorie count on almost anything. It also lets you set a daily calorie goal, track your weight, and even share with friends for mutual encouragement.

• LiveStrong My Plate Calorie Tracker (Android, iOS): Thiss app free on Android but will run you $2.99 on iOS. The nice thing about this app is if you have an account on LiveStrong.com this will link up to it.

• My Daily Plate (iOS): My Daily Plate is an app that can help you make good nutritional decisions throughout the day. It costs $.99, and is only available on iOS.

2. Getting Organized

• Evernote (Android, iOS) and Google Keep (Android): These are both great free apps that let you quickly type out or even write a message to yourself. You can also take pictures of things and save them for later. And they are both cloud-based, so you can write a note to yourself on your smartphone, update it from your tablet and check it later on your home computer.

• Google Now (built into most new Android devices; included in the Google Search app for iOS): This app is wonderful for setting creating reminders for yourself. If you give it permission to do so, Google Now will actually scan your Google calendar and even your email to find upcoming events. If those events have a physical address associated with them, Google Now will even tell you when it?s time to get in the car and head out!

• Any.do (Android, iOS): Any.do combines checklists with reminders. You can quickly enter a task by either typing it or speaking it, and then set when the task is due: today, tomorrow, or in the future. When the appropriate day rolls around, Any.do will pop up a helpful reminder.

3. Spending Less Money and Saving More Money

• Mint Personal Finance (Android, iOS): Mint is a free app from Intuit, the makes of Quickbooks. Mint lets you keep track of all of your financial accounts in one place, and set a budget and stick to it. On the website and the app, you can see all of your debts like student loans, car notes, credit cards and mortgages, and you can see all of your money like checking accounts savings accounts, money market accounts, and CDs. Mint gives you a snapshot of what your financial situation looks like, and gives you advice how to make it better.

4. Travel More

• Expedia (Android, iOS) & Kayak (Android, iOS): Book flights, hotels and  rental cars on these apps for popular travel sites Expedia and Kayak.

• Hipmunk (Android, iOS): We’ve discussed Hipmunk’s website, which rates flights based on aspects like layover time and whether or not they offer Wi-Fi, in an earlier article. The app also offers this helpful tools, but it also shows you listings from AirBNB and HomeAway, services which let people rent a room from somebody for just a couple of days.

5. Staying Fit

• Endomondo Sports Tracker (Android, iOS): This apps allows you to track your running/biking/skating workouts and set challenges for yourself. The pro version is $4.99 and includes features like a pedometer so it will work indoors.

• Active.com’s Couch to 5K (Android, iOS): Like its name suggests, the Couch to 5K training app will gradually get you ready to run your first 5K race over a period of about six weeks.

• Zombies, Run! (Android, iOS): This run tracking app helps to motivate you by disguising your workout as a game – a horrifying game. Imagine this: you’re out for a run, when all of a sudden you’re being chased by zombies! You put your headphones on, and as you run you’ll periodically hear orders from your fellow survivors to outrun zombie mobs.

6. Learn to Play a Musical Instrument

• Piano Teacher (Android only): This app has a Guitar Hero-style interface that lets you learn songs by hitting the right keys as notes fall down the screen. You can even purchase a USB adapter to use this app with an actual Midi keyboard.

• Piano Tutor (iOS only): Piano Tutor teaches you how to read notes and rhythms on sheet music, and how to to learn to play by ear. It also supports the use of a Midi keyboard through a USB adapter.

• Ultimate Guitar Tabs (Android, iOS): This app has a huge searchable database of guitar tabs (notation that shows you instrument fingering instead of sheet music notes) for popular songs. It also shows you how to fingering for chords and more. Ultimate Guitar Tabs is $2.99 on both Android and iOS.

7. Quitting Smoking

• QuitNow! (Android, iOS) & LiveStrong MyQuit Coach (iOS only): These apps both keep track of the time since your last cigarette, how many cigarettes you’ve avoided since quitting and how much money you’ve saved in the process. You can also set health goals and create motivators to help you quit.

8. Helping Others

• Feedie (Android, iOS): Feedie lets all the foodies who take pictures of their meals to finally do it for a good cause. For every food photo taken at a participating restaurant and shared via social media, 25 cents will be donated to the app?s nonprofit parent company, The Lunchbox Fund, which provides meals to students in rural South Africa.
• HTC Power to Give (Android only): By downloading the app, plugging in your Android phone and connecting to Wi-Fi while you sleep, your phone?s spare computing power becomes part of a huge grid that provides power to a scientific project of your choice, like researching cures for cancer, Alzheimer?s disease, AIDS, or understanding climate change, or searching for extra-terrestrial life.

• DonorReminder (iOS only): If you like to donate blood, this app keeps track of when you last donated and when you can do it again.

9. Falling in Love

• Tinder (Android, iOS): Tinder has gotten a lot of press in the last few years because it’s based entirely on looks. It’s like HotOrNot but you can date the person if they find you hot too. You open the app and see pictures of potential dates that are near you. You swipe to the left if you’re not interested, and swipe to the right if you are interested. If your crush finds you attractive too, Tinder lets you both know, and you can chat.

• Down (Android, iOS): If you’ve always wondered if one of your friends was interested in dating you, but you never built up the gumption to go and ask him or her, you can now do it in a more anonymous way. With Down, you can scroll through a list of your Facebook friends and swipe up if you’d like to date them, swipe left if you’re not interested, and swipe down if you’re interested in, to put it in polite terms, “spending a night with them.”

• OkCupid (Android, iOS): Just like OkCupid’s website, this app offers a free dating service that feels most similar to a social network.

10. Spending Time with Your Family

• No app recommendations for this. Just put away your phone and talk to them!

Did we miss your favorite app? Send us an email to questions@deemable.com and let us know.

If you are a small business owner wondering if there are any apps out there that can help make your life easier, wonder no more! These days you can practically run your entire business through a tablet or mobile device. Your device can handle point-of-sale, time tracking, invoicing and much more.

Here are a few of our favorite apps for small business owners:

PayPal, one of the first online transaction companies, got into the mobile payment game with the PayPal Here.
Image credit: PayPal

Point of Sale

You’re probably already familiar with Square, the little plastic card reader that plugs into a smartphone. But Square is no longer the only card reader in town. Here are a few of the card readers currently out there:

• Square
• PayPal Here
• Amazon Register
• Intuit GoPayment

You can get all of these for essentially free (for example, the Square reader is $9.99 at retail stores, but it comes with a $10 mail-in rebate). The card reader companies make their money off transaction fees, which vary by device. You can read more about credit cards readers in this article.

Let’s talk about a different type of cards: business cards.

Business Card Readers

There are apps that will allow you to photograph, scan and store the information from people’s business cards, creating a digital Rolodex. There are two major apps. Abbyy’s is the tried-and-true original, Evernote’s is the new upstart:

• Abbyy’s Business Card Reader ($4.99 on Android and $5.99 on iOS)
• Evernote Hello (free)

Bookkeeping

A good bookkeeping app will not only connect to your various accounts and allow you to create invoices, but will categorize your expenses and income for tax purposes. There are a number of cool bookkeeping apps out there:

• Freshbooks
• Quickbooks
• GoDaddy Bookkeeping (formerly Outright.com)

Most of these charge monthly or yearly subscription fees. There is also a newcomer called Wave Accounting whose website is free to use. Wave also does payroll management for $4/month for the first 10 employees (and $1/employee after).

Productivity

You have two major options for productivity software. The first is Google Drive, which includes Google Docs and Google Sheets. This is free, but not as fully-featured as Microsoft Office. You can also get Microsoft Office 365, the cloud-based (read: online) version of Office. One user is $6/month.

Also, this is not exactly an app but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention Google Apps for Work. Do you want to have your own, custom email address that still uses the Gmail interface? Google Apps for Work can give you that. For instance, Ray@SmallBusiness.com could be accessed through Gmail and would also have full access to Google Drive.

Google Apps for Work is $5/user/month or $50/year.

This week on the Deemable Tech podcast, Ray and Tom answer a ginormous number of your questions about everything from Gmail message threads to iPhone apps that won’t update.

Then the guys take a few minutes to discuss some of their favorite iOS and Android apps at the moment in our Downloadable segment – including Tom’s current favorite, Doge Weather. Much tech advice. So wow.

#61 An Explosion of Tech Questions

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Avast! Antivirus
• AVG Antivirus
• Apps Gone Free
• Google Keep
• Google Now Launcher
• Weather Doge – iOS – Android
• Magnifier Flash
• Baby Connect
• MOON – Current Moon Phase