The best iPhone apps, according to...well, me...

Hello? Is anyone still out there?

Probably not, as I've been pretty quiet lately. Balancing life and school, and whatever is left afterwards has proven to be pretty tricky (and, if I'm honest, not all that enjoyable).

I haven't felt like I have had anything interesting to say, but someone recently told me I should blog about my favorite iPhone apps. So, you know what? I think that's what tonight's post is going to be about.

In no particular order, here they are:

• Instagram Love snapping photos with your phone? Love adding filters that make them look fabulous? Love social networks to share said fabulous photos? Enter Instagram. Love.

• Runkeeper If you're big on tracking your mile-accumulating exercise, Runkeeper is the app for you. Working out in the great outdoors? Runkeeper's GPS will track your distance, pace, and time, as well as map your workout AND show your relative position to sea-level at any point on said map. Really, really cool. If you're not exercising outdoors, the manual tracking features are easy to use and still provide you with plenty of post-workout information.

• Waze I stumbled upon this after its initial release, and now believe it to be one of the best apps EVER. Not only is it a FREE and fabulous GPS --that will, by the way, continue guiding you even when you are on a phone call (it does momentarily cut into your conversation, but you won't ever miss that turn...so who cares???)-- but it often warns you about other issues along your route:  accidents, construction areas, hidden police, and other various hazards. Fantastic app.

• Pandora Have a favorite song? You can build a radio station off of it. Search and select the song to get started, give subsequent suggestions a thumbs up or down, and before long you will have the perfect radio station. Pandora is probably the only app that I can say for certainty I use every day. If you love late 80s, early 90s music, let me know. I've created the best station ever and am happy to share it :)

• Box Once upon a time, I used to swear by Dropbox, but these days, I've moved on to Box. So much more SYNCED storage (50GB) across all of my devices - iPhone, iPad, and Macbook Pro. Seamless document sharing and uploading between them. The only downfall is that many apps have yet to recognize it as a backup source (instead of Dropbox or iCloud).

• Day One I wasn't sure if I would include this or not. I love so many things about Day One, but the fact that it doesn't encrypt its backups is a huge issue for me. The convenience of updating across multiple devices is excellent, as is the inclusion of weather and location information.  But, you know what? If I'm keeping a pin-protected journal, I'm really not cool with someone being able to hop into my Dropbox and find the journal entries backed up (and easily readable). Not cool. At all. I'm hoping but writing about this here, others will take notice and action might happen. (A girl can dream, right??)

• Flipboard Somewhere along the line, someone decided to make their feed reader not just better, but amazing. And then? Flipboard happened. This was another app I stumbled onto, and never looked back. It is GENIUS! Your favorite internet feeds --not just blogs, but Facebook and Twitter, and others, as well-- in a format mimicking a magazine, for you to peruse, page to page. AWESOME.

• GetGlue Watching a tv show? Reading a book? Listening to music? Get rewarded! Download GetGlue, check into whatever activity you are doing, and earn stickers! This is especially awesome for people like me who scrapbook or smashbook. Sticker freebies that arrive in the mail?? Fantabulous.

By the way, it was originally my intention to put the little cutesy app graphics next to each link above, but all of them got super grainy when I tried to shrink them down, so. Take my word for it, and ignore the lack of pictures. The apps mentioned above are all FANTASTIC. I promise.