Apps of the Week: Documents 5, ETA, Globo, and more

I’m starting to worry about the weather in California. In my area, it rained pretty hard all day yesterday, but now the sun is shining down like it is a spring day today. Even in California, I’m just not used to all of this winter sunshine. “Winter is coming,” my foot.

If you are planning a trip to my side of the country this weekend and need to know how long it will take, or need a better way to manage your files, we have a list of apps and games we think are pretty darn good, rain or shine…

God of Light

This interesting game just showed up in the App Store a few days ago. It utilizes physics-based puzzles and adventure gaming. Not entirely unlike Enigmo, players use tools to redirect a stream from one location to another. In this case, the stream is light and the tools are reflective gems and alien-like flowers. The source is a friendly character being called “Shiny” and when he glows, his beams can be manipulated in many different ways in order to find the Source of Life and bring light back to the darkened universe. This game is available for $1.99.

Disco Zoo

The casual game makers that brought you Tiny Tower, Pocket Trains, and Nimble Quest have another hit on their hands. This one involves zoo animals and a disco party. Players rescue animals from all over the world by traveling in a variety of different flying ships. Rescuing an animal requires tapping squares on a grid to reveal matching animal tiles. Once rescued, players make sure their animals stay awake by throwing a disco party. The whole zoo dances to the beat when the music plays. In addition to animals earning money for the zoo, visitors will sometimes throw you a tip to add to your coffers. This game is available for free.

Globo

Sure, Apple has a world clock that tells time wherever you are and wherever you want to be, but it’s not exactly a stunning app, now is it? Sometimes, you need a new skin on an old face to make you feel fresh again. Globo offers a sleek and attractive way to display and manage different times around the world. You can create up to 64 custom alarms to help you keep track of every place you’ve ever been or want to go. There is also an alarm feature so you don’t have to switch apps to use the feature. This app is available for $0.99.

ETA

I have a feeling this is going to become my new favorite travel companion. If you want to know how long it will take to get to a location, add an address and save it. Save your favorite destination spots to easily see just how long your drive will be. I just used it last night to determine how long it would take me to get to my dinner reservations. I was on time, to the minute. Unlike map apps, Like Google Maps, the point of this one is to make it easy for you to see the estimated time of arrival. If you want directions, you can access them by tapping on the directions button to be redirected to a mapping app. This app is available for $1.99.

Documents 5

I am a big fan of Readdle’s productivity suite. They offer some high quality apps and services that make it easy to take care of business in the most efficient and convenient way possible. The update for the file management app, Documents, turns the app into a productivity hub for all of the company’s other apps. From it, you can store a multitude of different files, edit PDFs, print, scan, and convert PDFs from one location, as long as you have the compatible apps. Save files to a multitude of different cloud storage locations, including Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive. This app is available for free.

Learnist

Oh good, another social networking app for people to post pictures of their cats and whine about their daily grievances. Wait, maybe this one is different. It’s about learning. It’s also about teaching. Have you ever done a web search for, “how to chop an onion”? You’ll get 15 million results. Do you want to weed through all of the muck to find good, helpful advice? What if there were groups of people, experts even, to gather the best videos, articles, and tutorials on the subject so you could quickly find out the best way to cut an onion. Now, that’s what I call social networking. This app is available for free.