THERE is now an "app" for pretty much everything.
I barely know what an app is. I know it stands for "application program" and it has to do with people's handheld devices. According to the website Define That, "Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for their environments so they can sell more boxes."
Huh? This kind of utterly nebulous explanation is one reason that technology and I are usually "friends off."
The slightly more helpful Dictionary.com tells me that an app is "an application, typically a small, specialized program downloaded onto mobile devices."
GPS (Global Positioning System), for example, can be purchased as an app that replaces the map in your glove box. A web browser is another popular app choice - it allows you to troll the Internet while you're away from your desk, say, hurtling over Lions Gate Bridge. Facebook is another app that technology addicts like to keep close, in case they want to take a picture of the running shoes they just bought and post it on FB for their friends' approval.
The game Angry Birds is one app that's become a craze. My Sketch lets you draw pictures on your handheld device, a thing we oldsters used to do with a pencil and call "doodling." Hair Color Booth lets you see what you'd look like with different coloured hair. In other words, if you're on a perpetual quest to waste time, apps are the developments for you.
Oddly, however, a website called Practical Commerce recently announced 21 new "productivity apps." The concept reminded me of the store I saw recently at Park Royal Shopping Centre, whose window display invited customers in to buy things to help them get rid of clutter. Buy an app to make you more productive? How about just cutting back on distracting apps?
Never mind. Practical Commerce recommends that you purchase one particular app to "control, manage and backup your local and cloud memory." (I hate it that techies have now harnessed the previously lovely word "cloud" for their own nefarious purposes.)
The same website notes that an app called Smartr Contacts allows you to search from your smartphone for everyone with whom you've ever exchanged an email, phone call or text message, so you can call them up. Won't they be thrilled?
Meanwhile, an app called RemindThat apparently alerts you when you arrive at your destination, something I think might be better called GetaClue.
In other, more challenging arenas, there are apps to help you pair wine with food. I'd probably use one of those, if I had a handheld device, and if there weren't three to five salespeople standing nearby in any wine store, doing absolutely nothing. I suppose the advantage of choosing the wine-pairing app over the wine-pairing chap is that in the case of the former, one doesn't have to embarrass oneself by revealing that one doesn't know the difference between merlot and mead. The disadvantage is that an app can't give out tasty samples - at least, not yet.
Apps certainly don't stop there with their helpful ways. By accident, apparently, the Apple iPhone has an "infidelity app" that enables your spouse to trace your cheating. Last
April a couple of British software developers revealed that the iPhone keeps track of its owner's daily trail - the various locations and times at which he or she stops - so suspicious partners can secretly commandeer their spouse's phone and do so as well.
Meanwhile, the website AppBrain writes about an undetectable tool for the Android market called Infidelity Spy, which logs all your spouse's text messages to a G-mail account that you can monitor. It got bad reviews, but surely a War of the Roses app, enabling squabbling partners to torture each other online by wreaking havoc with one another's electronic datebooks, will be next on some amoral developer's agenda.
Not app-happy but still adultery-minded? Never fear. The online world is still your oyster. If you're married and you want to start an affair, for instance, you can simply go online to Ashley Madison.com to hook up with your fellow horndogs. The "service" supposedly boasts more than 11 million anonymous members, some 12,000 of whom were allegedly online "near me" at the time I visited the website (for research purposes - or so I claim), which was 1: 37 on a Wednesday afternoon. Ew.
Once you've done the nasty and have been caught out, there's a new online service called Affair Recovery, "designed to help those struggling with the consequences of infidelity." It includes a free tool, the Affair Analyzer, which assesses the personal situation of each participant and recommends "steps toward healing."
I suppose the invention of a "Keep Your Pants On" app might prevent some technophiles from ever needing the Affair Analyzer, but perhaps there's a limit to any app's powers. I once heard a famous rabbi say in a radio interview that God doesn't exist to prevent bad things from happening, he exists to help us survive them. I guess the same holds true for technology.
