Depending on the reason, moving can be an exciting or a terrible experience. Either way, it’s a lot of work that no one particularly wants to do, even if you’re moving to the tropical oasis of your dreams.  Thankfully it’s 2015, and there are apps built for just about everything. From finding the right neighborhood to your specific home, app developers have thought of just about everything when it comes to moving. Let’s take a tour of how the typical moving process works, and the apps that can help you along the way.   Step 1: Get Hired By a New Company to Give You Money Maybe you’re lucky enough to transfer with your company, or the reason for your move is to accept a new position. But for the movers who are relocating based on heart’s desire or just plain needing to get away from Aunt Silvia’s cheek pinching nonsense, you’ll want to get the job hunt squared away or at least off the ground before you hit the road. One of the first places you’ll look is your LinkedIn app, and connect the heck out of everyone in your peripheral network. Then you’ll naturally get your resume up on Indeed and create job filters for the types of jobs you’re interested in. You can do regular job searches on their app while you’re waiting in line at the DMV to get your new license, and receive alerts when a new job in the area you’re looking in pops up. Yet once that lead trail dies down, another great place to look is Intro, an app network that connects via LinkedIn and Facebook to people within your particular industry. Intro introduces you (see what they did there) to new people in your social networks via the persons you have in common. It also alerts you to professional events and social meet-ups so that you can put on your game face and get that new job with your polished elevator pitch and knowledge of the weather.   Step 2: Find Somewhere to Put Your Couch  Ah apartment/condo/house hunting. Such a delight. If you couldn’t read through the blatant sarcasm, allow us to point out that hunting in this regard is nothing really fun at all. But do it you must, and fortunately there are plenty of ways to get it done. Craigslist is an old go-to, but for some reason they no longer support their mobile app. There are now however 3rd party apps that pull ads from Craigslist letting you, the happy househunter, browse from your phone. Two of the most popular, per the App Store, are cPro and Daily Craigslist. We prefer Daily, simply because the UX is a little more friendly and has this feature that lets you circle the listings you like. We like circling things. For Android users, the most popular is cPro again and then CityShop, in which case cPro is the better option.  Getting away from Craigslist is an app specific to the house hunt only. Padmapper, the app that makes, “apartment hunting suck less,” is ideal for drilling down to the locations of places you want to live to view all available listings. Once you download the app, switch on the location services and Padmapper will display on a map all available apartment and housing listings for rent. From there you can filter by price, bedrooms, bathrooms, and keywords, helping you find that new apartment that hopefully won’t suck.   Step 3: Hire a Strong Lad/Lady To Move Your Stuff If you own a truck, you know how annoying it is when every other weekend a friend wants to borrow your truck to move their kayak, couch, or worst yet, their entire residence. Don’t be that guy and get a moving truck. One of our favorites is BuddyTruk, for as they say, “Whenever You Need a Buddy With a Truck.” Available on both the App Store and Google Play, BuddyTruk links you to local people with large vehicles who will use their personal truck to get your stuff from point A to point B. The downside is, this is more the “Uber for Moving,” and isn’t so good for when you have a 3 bedroom home you need to move from Chicago to San Diego. A better alternative for this scenario is Ghostruck, which syncs with professional movers in your area and tell you exactly how much the move will cost. In fact at the time of this writing, Ghostruck is offering a 25% discount on your first move, so get to getting.   Step 4: Settling in to Your New ‘Hood You made it! You’re filling your piggy bank, you have somewhere to rest your head, and all your stuff is in one new place. Now, time to make some new friends - or get really good at solitaire if that’s your thing. If you’d rather interact with other humans, a solid first choice is MeetUp, a social network for strangers who like to do the same activities. Want to practice sprechen-ing your Deutsch? There’s likely a MeetUp group for that in your new town, and you’ll be able to flirt in the ever so romantic language that is German with new neighborhood darlings. No matter how normal or strange your preferred social activities are, Meet Up is a great place to join and check out some of the happenings in your city.  But how about getting to know the neighbors in your specific neighborhood? Nextdoor is “the private social network for you and your neighbors,” allowing you to connect with your neighbors directly in your neighborhood. It even requires a verification process so they can make absolutely sure you live in that neighborhood. Nextdoor is great for finding a new trustworthy babysitter, finding your lost pup, or when you’ve settled in and realized you don’t need 27 beer steins, can help you find them a new home. Moving is the worst, but thankfully there are plenty of ways to get there. Have an idea for a moving app? Ping us here and we can get it moving.

Barefoot Solutions is excited to announce the launch of a new iOS weight loss app called It’s A Cinch. It’s A Cinch was created by Jessica Talbi, a woman with a passion for fitness and health. Jessica has been an avid user of calorie counting apps, but as her fitness level began to change, she noticed her apps were not evolving with her. Based on her first-hand experience of that problem, Jessica created It's A Cinch to provide a more accurate way to teach users how to successfully count calories. Most importantly, Jessica aims to enable users to make healthy decisions by providing custom meals that fit individuals' specific calorie and dietary needs. Though the development  behind the app was rather complex, the app itself is very user friendly and easy to navigate. Not to mention, It’s A Cinch helps you with every aspect of losing weight from eating well to exercise and calorie counting. The app even adapts to your individual food preferences and weight loss goals. It's A Cinch is able to do all of this because it's a database-drive app, connected flawlessly to calorie, exercise, and food databases like FatSecret, which contains over 3,000,000 foods. The app allows you to then enter your meals and snacks, which the app converts into the amount of calories you've consumed. Add your physical activities for the day, and It's A Cinch provides your net calorie consumption for the day. The app includes a weight tracker, which shows if you're getting off track or really starting to make some progress. The app even allows you to store daily pictures, so you can see your before and after pictures and results in real time. This feature was important to include, as your weight on the scale says less about your health than the way you look in the mirror and the way your clothes fit. It's A Cinch always keeps your connected, allowing you to share your struggles and successes with other users through various social media platforms. This iOS app  even connects you to recipes, food suggestions, and healthy tips to keep you motivated and to make reaching your goals as simple as possible.          

Google is throwing the spotlight on its most recent Android update. The functionality focus of the update is increased device security. With this update, the users will attempt to install a new app, and  Android scans the app and raises the red flag - via an alert. If it appears the app might harm or compromise the user’s device. Then the user can take action, and the Google update continues to scan apps after installation for new malware code. This update is good news because malware can be pretty nasty and invasive. It can grab your personal information and  control phone functions. Even worse, it can access a your voicemail, login data, text messages, call logs and more. A couple quick caveats - Google notes that your device may be made more vulnerable when downloading apps from a third party source outside of Google Play. The update won’t necessarily prevent users from downloading bogus apps that cost money and provide no real service - like the $3.99 Virus Shield. The update will not be effective if it’s not put into use. An astonishing low number of users actually install system upgrades when offered ( only 2.5% of Android users are running the latest version of the software known as KitKat, released in October of last year) . Read more about the update here. Sources: http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2014/04/expanding-googles-security-services-for.html http://www.androidcentral.com/android-update-coming-regular-malware-scans?utm_content=bufferfed28&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer