Mobile apps are a way of life at Barefoot. Yes for the obvious reasons in that we design and build them, but also because they help make our business and personal lives easier. We admire the work others put into their mobile apps, and are constantly surprised at what people come up with month after month.  There are many mobile apps almost everyone with a smart device uses. Communication apps like email or Google Hangouts help us stay in contact while on the go. Task management apps like Asana or RedminePM keep us on track with projects we’re working on either on our own or with others. Then for fun are gaming or social media apps like Candy Crush, Twitter or Facebook.  Yet which apps do we really get the best of both worlds, enjoyment and utility? We walked around the halls of San Diego’s Barefoot offices to find out what they thought.   Mint We have jobs and we make money, thankfully. Managing that money can be as easy as checking a Bank of America or Chase mobile app, but that just reflects how much cash we have to blow while agonizing over broken March Madness brackets. There are many other things to consider in managing money, such as tracking how well you’re paying off those grad school loans and department store credit cards. Enter Mint, the app for managing all of your money, all over the place. Once the app is downloaded, you can sync the app to your bank accounts to get an idea of how much cash you’re sitting on. Then you plug in any loans you have, mortgages, car loans, student loans, you name it. The app gives you your net worth by balancing your cash vs. debt. Then once you’ve resolved once and for all your tired of paying interest on that study abroad semester in Rome, you can set a goal for paying down debt, and getting on track.   Hype Machine On the entertainment side of things, we love music apps to keep our days going. Spotify and Pandora are great, but we also love a lesser known app called The Hype Machine. “The app aggregates music from blogs all over the internet and then crowd sources a fresh list of top tracks,” says Peter Holmes, our creative director who may or may not have an affinity for DJ’ing on the weekends. What he means is, Hype Machine checks in with the hundreds of the most popular Internet bloggers every day for the latest, most talked about music, then puts it in one easy place for listeners to discover. You can listen to the newest songs posted seconds ago, the most popular of the day tracks, and see what your friends are listening to and discovering. This way, you can listen to the newest and most hyped music before you commit to buy.   Docusign Docusign may be responsible for sending fax machines into extinction with the dinosaurs. When released we remember our accounts team excitedly talking about how much faster they were able to sign contracts and move the process along for clients. The reason why is the app provides a secure solution to collect signatures by allowing others to electronically sign documents. Hunter Jensen, Founder and CEO here at Barefoot, didn’t hesitate to bring up the app stating, “Docusign hands down saves me more time than any other app.” With Docusign we can import documents to sign or send signatures, place fields throughout documents to make it easy for signers to know where apply their excuse for a signature, and allows for signers to scribble right on the mobile device for circumstances like travel or trade shows.   Sidecar We recently discussed the most popular of the transportation apps, Uber and Lyft. While we certainly do get plenty of utility out of those two, Sidecar is the new kid on the block trying to make a name for himself and is starting to prove he can play with the varsity squad. Sidecar functions in a similar way as Uber and Lyft in that when you download the app it syncs with your Facebook account to get your profile information. Once you’re ready for a ride to happy hour, flip on the app and it locates the nearest drivers to your location. The difference with Sidecar however is that this transportation app is the one that started the idea of entering your destination location before the driver is selected. This is so the app can calculate how much your ride will cost, removing the surprise $40 bill for a ride around the block. Then once your pick up and destination locations are selected, Sidecar displays a list of drivers for you to choose from with varying prices and vehicles. Sort of like a Tinder for commuting, users can swipe down the driver list that displays the driver’s name, profile picture, image of their vehicle, and the price of the ride. The prices vary given the quality of the car and how far the driver has to come to get you. This means - if you’re picking up a hot date you can pick the swankiest car available. But if it’s a night out with the bros, who cares, pick the cheapest and closest.   It was tough to narrow down the list to just these, and we know there are hundreds of fantastic apps developers and users enjoy. What are your favorite mobile apps? Let us know in the comments below.

If you’re a Starbucks groupie, you’re probably already using their mobile payments app. It’s pretty smooth. You wave your phone over the dillibob at the Starbucks’ counter and you’re done. Unless you are a person who does the right thing and wants to add a tip. If so, you have to rummage through your wallet for some coins or bills. The app just became less convenient, right? In fact, some people (but not me or you) might skip the tip altogether because it adds just a tinsy bit of difficulty and time drain from their busy day. Well, Starbucks has a rep for being both customer friendly and a pretty decent employer, so they decided to make things easier for customers while at the same time beefing up their baristas’ bank account. They added a mobile tip jar to an iOS update to the app. Now customers will receive a push notification after a purchase that shows their receipt and gives them a option to tip their barista. But be speedy, because after two hours that option disappears like the aroma of fresh coffee on a windy day. They added some other cool features to the iOS update too - like shake to pay. Right now the app is only on iOS 6.0 devices or later and has a few other limitations. An updated Android app with all the new bells and whistles is poised to launch later this year. Take a bigger sip here: http://tinyurl.com/mccq63h

We thought it would be fun to make a shoutout to our favorite mobile applications that we didn't develop. They're listed in no particular order, but these are the apps that our team at Barefoot Solutions uses most often. We'll tell you what our favorite mobile apps (again, not including any that we've developed) do, and why they do it best. Enjoy! 1. Feedly It's our favorite way to get news, especially on what's going on in our industry. We can use it on our laptops or on our smartphones. We prefer Feedly over other news aggregator applications, because it's easy to navigate through articles quickly to find what we're interested in reading. 2. Waze Waze is our favorite mobile navigation application. Because it's crowdsourced, we're notified of accidents, traffic, and even the location of police officers as soon as someone else sees them. So not only does the app save us time when driving by routing us around traffic, it also helps us avoid tickets when we're in a hurry! 3. Mint Mint is our favorite mobile application for managing our finances. After initial setup, it's really easy to check account balances, and it notifies us of upcoming bills. Oh, and it also helps us save money, since it's free! 4. Safari To Go This mobile application gives up access to over a thousand ebooks and videos that we can reference at anytime from anywhere. 5. Alarmed We love Alarmed, because it keeps us organized and punctual. We use it to remind us about recurring tasks, such as oil changes, dog grooming, or bills, as well as one-time only tasks, like doctors appointments, when concert tickets go on sale, and even when our laundry is done. 6. Clear Clear is the best mobile to-do list app ever. It lets us easily create tasks and lists. When we've completed a task, we erase it from our to-do lists with a simple swipe. And the application's beautiful and intuitive design makes us want to use it more often. 7. Bandsintown Bandsintown makes sure that we never miss a good concert. This application scans our smartphones' stored music and Spotify for musicians that we listen to and lets us know when they're performing nearby. It even gives us suggestions for other bands' concerts that we might enjoy. 8. Buffer Buffer makes it ridiculously easy to share whatever we find interesting on websites like Feedly to our social media pages (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc). The best part is that this app automatically schedules our posts to be spaced out, so we don't spam our followers and friends. Buffer also offers insights, so we can see the number of clicks and the reach of each post. We hope you take the time to check out these awesome applications and enjoy them as much as we do!