Instagram: Our office is in the arts district in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, which hosts a lot of events such as art walks and the recent Day of the Dead Festival. We also share our office with a photo studio. I’m constantly using Instagram to take and share photos.

Pinterest: Pinterest is an app that lets you take post photos from the web or pictures you take in person of things you like and “pin” them on virtual boards. This is a great way to organize your holiday shopping and keep track of the things you want because you know people are going to ask.

Spotify: This year a lot of great audio apps came out for the iPhone. Although I like using Rdio and Turntable.fm through their web or desktop clients, and Rdio built a strong iPad app, Spotify was the best choice for mobile. It allows me to share playlists with my friends and listen to them in the office or driving home from work in the car.

Cards: Last month Apple released this application which allows you to turn your photo into a greeting card and send it anywhere in the U.S. for $2.99 or anywhere in the world for $3.99. Although there aren’t hundreds of samples to choose from, they are letterpress cards. How cool is that?

Trippy: Trippy combines your friend’s social stream with your ideal vacation. It then allows your friends who have gone to, grown up around, or just know about your desired destination to offer input about things to see and do. All of your activity is then shared with those friends so they can take part in your experience.

Flow: Imagine that you have multiple tasks to manage and you have multiple people working on those tasks. Flow allows you to keep track of this and sends you notifications when each task is completed. It is a great app for managing workflow for projects or even the most basic to-do lists.

Lucyphone: I don’t know about you guys but I hate being on hold. Now that we’ve moved into our new office, we had to call an alarm company, the electric company, the cable company and make way too many other phone calls. Being on hold and listening to those recordings not only distract me from my regular workflow but they interfere with any work actually getting done. With this app, you can call the cable company for the third time in one day and it will wait on hold for you and ring you when a live person picks up.

Siri: If you have an iPhone 4S then you already know who Siri is. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, Siri is a personal digital assistant that used to be a downloadable app but now comes with the iPhone 4S. For me, Siri has become more like a robotic friend. You can ask her for any information and she will usually get you the answers you need. However once you get comfortable with Siri, it has an amazing sense of humor and talking back and forth with it becomes almost like a game to interact with it.



By Andy Vitale

About The Author: Andy Vitale is a Creative Strategist specializing in emerging technology and digital media. He has over twelve years of professional experience from designing National and International brands to teaching design practices and theories on the collegiate level. Andy spent five years as the Graphic Design Program Department Chair at a regionally accredited University. Staying on top of the latest trends, he has managed branding and marketing projects across various platforms from traditional to interactive media. He is currently the Creative Director for The Pancake Movement, a full service Creative Agency in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.