94 Seconds

Quick - fire quiz games that tickle your brain. Ideal for those moments of downtime - waiting in line, say, or for the phone to ring - 94 Seconds is a quick0fire quiz game that's good for tickling your gray mater without running the risk of getting bogged down in a game. Players use their minute and a half (and change) to fill in the letter and a category.

You're rewarded based on how original you are - for example, guessing " chameleon" instead of "cat" when asked for animals that start with "C" will get you a far better score. You can use a couple of quick cheats to get ahead in a round, but the best feeling is beating the clock with your own original answers.
For iOS and Android devices.

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Twitter Music

A Pleasant Distraction

Twitter took the wraps off a much-anticipated music service last month, which is supposed to make it easy for users to find new music and keep up with their favourite artists in the process. Users can listen to four types of songs: music that's popular on network, songs from "emerging" artists, songs from the people your friends follow and, finally, music from the artists you follow. Of course, you can share the songs you are listening to in a tweet.

Tracks play courtesy of iTunes - you also can hook the app into your Spotify or Rdio account to tap their song databases. There are a couple of quibbles, however, For one, not every artist you follow may have an available track, though there is a wide variety available. Also, the app isn't available for Android devices, which makes it unavailable to most of the US smartphone market.

While the app is fun and good for a few moments of distraction, it doesn't offer quite enough to replace your favorite playlists or Internet radio service, Free, for iOS devices.

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Amount

A handy tool for bakers and travellors alike.

Not everyone has the brain space to spare in order to remember how many teaspoons or the formula for converting Fahrenheit to Celsius - let alone that morning's exchange rate for dollars to yen. For those of us who aren't pub-quiz champions, Amount is an app that will put all of those quick coversions at your fingertips. It's undoubtedly a handy tool for international travellors or serious bakers, and the app lets you save favorite conversions on a handy shortcut list. But ultimately, it's a niche app & you may balk at having to pay any amount - even 99 cents - when it's just as easy to pop your convertion questions into your nearest search engine.
99 cents, for iOS devices.

Tempo

A smarter calender

The Tempo calender app attempts to improve on the default calender program for the iPhone - and largely suceeds - by pulling information from multiple accounts, adding relevant information from multiple accounts, ading relevant information such as meeting locations from email accounts and letting users text or call contacts from within the app. Having all of that information centalized in one location is incredibly usefl, and the app is designed to pull in email attachments from your accounts to make items like meeting agendas or presentation materials easy to reach from your calender.

It remains, however a work in progress. Users can't, for example, add the names of attendees to events - one of many features developers promise are coming soon. Also, something the app does things like pull the wrong similarly named contact from your phone book into your calender. Still, the app gets better the more you use it and is an elegant alternative to Apple's baked-in offering. Free, for iOS devices.

Angry Birds Friends

Finally, competition

The Angry Birds franchise has taken us plenty of places. We've flung birds in Rio and in a galaxy far, far away, but now game-maker Rovio is attacking an entirely new frontier: the competitive arena. "Angry Birds Friends" taps you into your network of Facebook friends to offer a new dimension to its familier game. Users can play weekly tournaments with their friends with three levels per week. At the end of the tournament, the game lets you know how each of the four players have fared in their levels and ranks them. The addition of a ssocial, competitive element is fun - users should know the game must be granted Facebook access to work - but it's really easy to blitz through your levels fast and have the app sit dormant for the rest of the week. If you like trying to best your friends, then feel free to pick up this title.
But if you want a game with lots of playing time, give this one a miss. Free, for iOS and Android devices.