Byte The App: Must See Apps Of The Week 5/12

The app stores are teeming with new releases, but who has time to go through them all? We do. Bringing you a selection of the most interesting, creative, and innovative apps each week. Submit your suggestions for next week in the comments below.

Simon Faithfull’s Limbo [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
You can get plenty of things delivered to your phone—weather updates, event updates, sports results, new music, recommendations for restaurants and coffee shops, meet ups with strangers—but where, you might ask, is the app that delivers me a digital drawing in real-time by a renowned artist? Well it’s here, finally. British artist Simon Faithfull has spent the last 10 years traversing the globe recording where he’s been like a touring, drawing, one man art show, sketching what he sees on his Palm Pilot or iPhone. This app gives you access to his back catalogue and delivers his new work as soon as he’s finished it. In an age when the photo reigns supreme in its ubiquity, it’s refreshing to see the world being documented in such a hand-made, subjective form.

Leafsnap [iPhone, iPad, Android]
This is one for all the nature lovers out there, especially for the amateur botanists and tree (or more accurately, leaf) huggers among you. It’s an educational app developed by Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution that will hopefully bring out the conservationist in us all. Using the same technology as face-recognition software, the app lets you identify a species of tree from a photograph of its leaf. It currently identifies the trees of New York City and Washington, D.C., but will eventually cover the entire continental United States. Now, to extend this to the rest of nature and the world (maybe that’s a crowdsourced project in the making—hint, hint) and we’ll all be making David Attenborough documentaries on our smartphones in no time.

Hype Machine Radio [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
Launched by the immensely popular and long-established online music service Hype Machine, a site that curates music from the best music blogs that populate the vast virtual plains of cyberspace—a bit like your know-it-all musical friend who likes to rain down new music on the heathen hordes. Now they’ve made a miniature version for your phone, with the app turning the music blogs into radio stations complete with text and artwork, giving you various ways to listen to that slamming new music: sort by most popular, genre, radio show, blog directory. With the app and website in your music discovery arsenal, now there’ll be no real reason why you’re still listening to Britpop.

Symphony of Colors [Android]
There are not many art-type apps for Android, ones where you can create some generative shapes and play around with them using the touchscreen, but they do have this. It’s an interactive wallpaper that you can customize and then move around in a futuristic prism-type soothing motion. Admire the pretty colors and then question why there isn’t more art-based apps for Android.

Sketcher [Android]
While you’re busy lamenting the lack of art-based apps on Android, everyone else can start getting creative with this, a procedural open-source drawing tool. It’s a decent drawing app that will let you sketch like you’re Simon Faithfull (see above), with 11 brushes (Sketchy, Chrome, Shaded, Fur…) and the all-important eraser for when you’re riding that learning curve. It gives you a blank canvas and then lets you draw with your finger or stylus. A drawing tool for Android users that can rival the iPhone’s celebrated OmniSketch. Happy doodling.