February 2016 79 www.bahrainthismonth.com apps Essential Apps BTM brings you the low-down on the latest and greatest apps on the market. Universal Zoom is an app that explores the scale of the universe and the relative size of various objects and distance between them. From the tiniest subatomic particle to clusters of galaxies, it depicts more than 200 representative objects of different sizes for comparison. It is an excellent educational tool for students or curious adults who want to learn more about the world around them. What is it? 5Miles is a free app designed to connect nearby buyers and sellers on their smartphones. Once you sign up for a new account, you’re prompted to take a selfie and verify your profile. You can connect your profile to Facebook, your phone number, your email address, or any combination of the three. People looking at your profile can see all the ways in which you’re verified, so, the more you confirm that you are who you say you are, the more trustworthy you seem. Verdict: A handy app for buying local wares, but it has some self-imposed limitations. The Smartly.Me app is a place to get suggestions for the phone you want to buy, along with news about upcoming phones and suggestions for apps and games you should install. You’ll see a picture of the phone, along with details about availability and price, as well as a list of unique features. The news and reviews section adds a little more value by aggregating information from various sites, which gives you a more comprehensive look at the pros and cons of a phone than a single review. App: Universal Zoom App: Smartly.Me App: 5Miles Rating:*** The Good: 5Miles marketplace includes goods, services, housing and even job offers. When you start browsing, the app displays an assortment of new goods and services for sale within five miles of your current location. It’s a splashy screen, a highlight of an overall attractive and intuitive interface, with a search bar that works well and opens up to further subcategories for specific listings. There are many options for customising your query and you can expand or narrow listings down even further by changing your search radius. Putting up a listing is as easy as finding one. Upload a picture and fill out the category, price and location fields. You then either type out a description or record a voice description. The Bad: 5Miles’s focus on keeping transactions local is only really useful for certain types of services. Unless you really don’t want to pay for shipping, or are dead set on seeing a used item in person before you make a deal, there’s not much of a difference between buying something off the Internet or using this app. There’s also no way to formally rescind an offer. The listing just lingers on the buying/purchased section of your profile. If you do change your mind and back out of the deal, you’re supposed to simply tell the seller via a message.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk0MTkxMQ==