Health & lifestyle
6. The Fitness Buddy app is your portable personal trainer. With bespoke workouts and over 1,000 videos showing you how to properly use gym equipment, you’ve got no excuse not to go to the gym! Your buddy will also track your progress so you can see just how far you’ve come. Free on iPad, iPhone and Android.
7. Lots of us have trouble sleeping and fear the dreaded alarm clock going off in the morning. It’s just not nice to be shocked awake. The Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock gets around this nicely and still makes sure you’re up in time for work. It analyses your sleep patterns and monitors your movement to understand which sleep phase you’re in and wakes you up when you’re in the lightest phase. 69p on iPhone and iPad.
8. If you want to get a quick picture of your overall health, the Embarrassing Bodies My HealthChecker is a good place to start. Conduct an eye test, check your reaction times and your memory as well as having access to advice on improving your general health. Free on iPhone and iPad.
9. There’s nothing worse than wandering around trying to find something to eat when you have 10 minutes left of your lunch break. You’ll probably end up grumpy – and with something you didn’t fancy! With the Foodspotting app, you can type in the type of food you’re craving and it will tell you the best places nearby to find it! Free on iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows.
10. If you need to get somewhere in a hurry, the Addison Lee app will get you a taxi in London in under a minute. It uses your phone’s GPS system to understand where you are, so you just need to press ‘find my location’ and the app does all the rest. Free on iPhone, Android and Windows.

Fun & games
11. I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly thinking “Oh what’s that song that goes like this…?” before humming to the annoyance of my friends. If your friends want to save their ears, they’ll point you in the direction of SoundHound. Not only does it recognise music tracks you play it, but you can also sing or hum a tune and will tell you the artist and title. Free on iPhone, iPad, Android & Windows.
12. Whatsapp Messenger is a brilliant way to send your friends instant messages, pictures and videos – all for free with a WiFi connection after installing. You can have group chats as well as one-on-one conversations – a great way to keep up with your mates throughout the day. 69p on iPhone and iPad 69p; Free on Android, BlackBerry and Windows.
13. 4 Pics 1 Word is a simple but annoyingly addictive game that shows you four images and asks you what they all have in common. You’ve probably seen screenshots of it shared by your frustrated friends on Facebook, asking for help. Say goodbye to your evenings. Free on iPhone, iPad and Android; 75p on BlackBerry.
14. Snapchat is a messenger app which only allows you to take and send videos and images. The difference is, the app shows them to the recipient for a few seconds and then makes them disappear forever. Free on iPhone, iPad and Android.
15. Still a bestseller, Cut the rope asks the player to manoeuvre candy around obstacles and cut the rope from which it hangs to feed a little monster. This even won a BAFTA! 69p on iPhone and iPad; 62p on Android.

Yoshie & Nico Floral Case

So, we showcased some lovely phone cases from the likes of Ted Baker and Barbour the other week, but we have a little hidden treasure to share with you!

The very trendy sounding Yoshie & Nico have some amazing iPhone cases in their range. We tried out one of their floral cases and I was really surprised by its durability and quality.

Most iPhone cases from Yoshie & Nico are priced at an incredible £9.99 and not only do they cater for iPhones, they also have a case for most mobile brands and tablets alike. Definitely worth having a visit to their website and browsing through the extensive catalogue of mobile accessories.

They are the perfect one stop shop if you’re buying for anyone who likes accessories. There’s something for everyone, both male and female on their site and you can be assured you’re getting quality at great prices. One for our favourites page I think!

My personal favourite is the Ted Baker – Elvi by Proporta. It’s just so stylish and feminine. It’s reasonably easy to clip on and clip off. I was especially surprised at how slim the phone was with the case on. The case is £29.95 and you can see more of the Ted Baker High Summer 2013 collection on the Proporta website.

Second on our list is the QDOS Metallics range. This another great case. It’s solid and very funky. This range is great for the guys as well as the girls and is reasonably priced at £19.99.

Now, we all like a little bit of luxury. If you’re not after a clip on case and you want more protection for your phone, then this Proporta  Barbour case with cover is ideal for you. It’s beautifully finished and comes in grape, navy, olive and teracotta. Perfect for guys and girls and adds a little bit of country style to your phone. The cases also come for iPads and The Samsung Galaxt S4′s.

Finally, we have the Pong rugged cases by Pong Research. These are different from the others cases featured as they aren’t so much about style, but more about functionality. According to their website, ‘Pong cases can make your phone work better by directing cellular energy away from your head and body.’ This means they reduce the users exposure to radiation. They cost £47.99 and there’s free shipping on all cases. They are also available on a range of devices, so check out the website for more information.

The Cricut allows you to not only be creative, the stuff you can produce are useful and fun! Everyone gives cards at birthdays or Christmas etc. and the Cricut allows you to be creative and personal. It doesn’t stop at cards though, you can make decorations, create iron on designs to really personalise your clothes, bags and anything else you want to ‘jazz up’! The possibilities are endless.

There is so much inspiration in the Cricut Project Centre, you could spend hours in there planning your crafts. On their website, you can download the ‘Craft Room‘ and create your very own designs. It’s available on Mac and PC and completely free of charge.

The Cricut’s can be found on Amazon and retail between £190.00 for the basic and £270.00 for the more advanced models.

Sphero

The Sphero is controlled via your smart phone and not only can you roll it and race it, there are 20+ games you can play with it too. As well as the original Sphero apps, existing apps are integrating Sphero to enhance their gameplay as well.

Both my son who is almost two and my stepson who is eight, love the Sphero. My cats are a little bit obsessed with it too! I’m just waiting for an occasion to try out the party games for the adults. Bring on my Birthday!

Priced around the £100 mark, it’s not cheap, but if you have the cash, it’s certainly a party winner. Whether it be for Easter, Birthday’s, Christmas or that general family or friends get together, Sphero is great fun! Stockists include Firebox and Amazon.

In fact I can still remember carefully and painstakingly dragging windows in my screen and balancing the open windows.  Technically that still occurs if more than one application is open that is needed to be accessed and seen simultaneously such as an excel spreadsheet that needs a web browser supplied web site to get information from and a word document or power point.  We’ve all been there.  The web has programmed us all to be content hungry consumers of  a steady stream of information and multi-tasking has become a norm.

While this app may not be necessary for those who have a firm grasp on the ability to focus and follow through on one task at a time and are organizational experts, I, for one, am extremely guilty and confess to regularly finding my desktop to be crowded with open application windows.  Worst yet, at any given moment (like this very one,) I have at least 10 Google Chrome web browser tabs running at the same time that I either am consuming information, enjoying and reading material from, a social network or two that I am participating in conversations on, getting real time feeds on Twitter and also doing work of via Google Docs and Gmail.  Even more offending to the effort to focus, I’m often also operating any number of applications and accessing web sites and responding to messages and calls from multiple screens, windows, browsers and devices.

Alas, someone has finally invented an application for all web browser tab happy people who have at least a mild case of ADD when it comes to being web browser tab crazy: OneTab.  OneTab takes all of the tabs you have open (40 in the screen grab of the app above) and consolidates them all onto one web browser tabbed page as a hyperlink enabled list, enabling the saving of up to 95% memory, enabling the computer to run faster by reducing the CPU load and banishing tab clutter in Google Chrome.

OneTab also boasts a number of additional features that can be exceptionally useful as well:

- Export and import your tabs as a list of URLs.

- Create a web page from your list of tabs, so that you can easily share your tabs with other people, other computers, or with your smartphone or tablet.

- Drag and drop tabs in your OneTab list to reorder them.

- Functionality for the saving of favorite OneTab lists.

After using the app for even just a week, the enjoyment of some additional productivity and the helpfulness of the app has been incredible and may come in handy for you too!

I’ve been trying out one of their zip around purses for the iPhone. I wasn’t sure about it at first as it did seem a little big, but since using it, I’m completely converted. It’s the perfect size to keep not only your phone and cards in, but there’s plenty of space to keep your coins too, which I find tends to be a huge issue with these kind of accessories. This purse will fit most smartphones, although it’s primarily designed for the iPhone. I would even go as far as to say it’s the best purse I have ever had whether it be for phones or not.

Toffee Zip around purse

The purse is is made of genuine leather and finished with a stylish pinstripe lining. It comes in three colours, red, camel and black croc. It has 5 slip compartments, one of those being for the phone and a zip compartment to keep more important items (I use it for sim cards and my iPhone pin).

Inside

I only found one negative with the purse, but it’s one I could completely live with. When completely unzipped, I found my change escaped from the bottom as there are gaps at either end. Other than that, this purse is perfection. If I could give it 6/5 I would, but a definite full marks for this – 5/5.

There are some great accessories that match this lovely purse. Why not get a leather slim folio for your iPad mini. Again, this is made from genuine soft leather and looks fantastic. It enables you to stand you iPad mini up or use in the typing position. It’s not bulky and adds style to any iPad. It comes in black, red, turquoise and pink.

Slim Folio

Why not complete the set and protect your iPhone with a case. Check out their range here. There are slip cases and leather shells. All available in lovely colours at an affordable price.

Maroo have such a beautiful range of products. They come in all colours and designs and best of all they’re good quality at competitive prices! They cater for iPad, iPhone, Kindle and tablets. not only do they provide awesome cases, they also do a range of stylus’, audio and tablet accessories.

Maroo Drogo

We had the pleasure of trying out the Maroo Drogo and the Otago. Both cases are currently subject to discount over at Amazon. The Drogo is currently £79.99 (£10 off) and the Otago is £49.99 (£5 off). So why not grab that man in your life a little bit of luxury!

Maroo Otago

I do a lot of long distance driving and rely heavily on sat navs. I have a terrible sense of direction! Up until recently I was using a Mio, however that has given up the ghost and I’ve been forced to use my iphone as a navigation tool. I always saw using my iphone in that fashion as a real inconvenience as it would drain battery and I never considered apps to be as good as a real navigation system. Tom Tom proved me wrong!

The Tom Tom app is incredibly advanced and feature full. As well as showing you the way to where you’d like to go, it also shows you where various points of interest and gives you a variety of ways to find your destination.

One of my favourite features of the app is the speed camera warnings. They’re not too abrupt, but alert you enough to take heed of the alert. The app is very straight forward to use and is visually informative when inputting the details.

You get a choice of voices and even a level of voices. There’s the basic voices which reads aloud clear directions. The advances voice gives you more information such as turn by turn notifications, names/ numbers of roads and other various text to speech instructions. There’s also the novelty choice of getting a celebrity voice. I haven’t tried this yet, however, I’m off to see if I can find a Brian Blessed voice to amuse me when I drive.

Overall, a great app and a real eye opener to a cynic like myself. I’m now converted and couldn’t live without this iphone app on standby. You can get it from the App Store priced at a reasonable £39.99.  The Tom Tom app is also available on the iPad as well.

British Gas iPhone App

The other day we wrote about the very awesome British Gas Remote Heating Control. We tested this out whilst going on some great experiences with Lastminute.com. Due to the very cold snowy weather, I actually got a chance to use the app whilst out. Not only was it really easy, it actually worked and I went home to a toasty warm house!

I went on 4 amazing experiences. First was the river boat cruise meal with Bateaux London and a trip on the London Eye. I took in the breathtaking views of London on a beautiful boat whilst eating some delicious food! If you haven’t been ont he London Eye before, it’s definitely worth it. It’s amazing what you can see from there. This comes highly recommended by us and gets an impressive 4/5

Our second experience was a trip to the theatre to watch ‘Woman in Black‘ with a meal beforehand. Going to the theatre in London is always good fun. As you would expect, the show was fantastic. The food was good, but I felt a little rushed as I didn’t want to miss the show. Another great experience though and we gave it 3.5/5.

Third ont he list was tea for two at Fortnum and Mason and a trip to Kensington Palace. I took my Dad with me and it was just a perfect day. Anyone who’s seen my bio’s on various social media will know I’m a big tea drinker! The palace was brilliant and I learned so much stuff I had no idea about before. Tea couldn’t come soon enough though and what an experience it was. Fortnum and Mason know how to do service. We had all the tea, sandwiches, scones and cakes we wanted. My eyes were bigger than my belly though and I ended up taking home the cakes in a lovely box. Definitely my favourite experience of the lot. An easy 5/5.

Last, but definitely not least, was the evening chocolate tour around London’s West End. We were greeted with a decadent hot chocolate. Our guide gave us a background to chocolate and what we could expect to see ont he way. We visited a few of London’s finest chocolatier’s and finished off with an amazing chocolate cocktail. Loved this tour and would give it a fab 4/5.

Thank you to British Gas and Last Minute for the control and the experiences.