Apps

With access to over half a million apps in the App Store, getting things done on our iPhones has never been easier. So instead of running around like a headless chicken this Christmas Eve in a desperate bid to buy gifts for all your friends and family, why not sit back, stick your feet up, and do you Christmas shopping on your iPhone? We’ve compiled a list of the App Store’s best apps for Christmas shopping that will help you plan, save, shop and send cards directly right from the palm of your hand.

The newly launched shopping discovery app Zoomingo announced today it has secured $1.3 million in funding from early-stage VC firms Naya Ventures and Benaroya Capital along with several prominent angel investors. Previously self-funded, Zoomingo says it will use the additional capital to enhance its current mobile application, build a retailer platform and grow its community through expanded outreach to customers and retailer partners. With this funding, Dayakar Puskoor, managing director of Dallas-base...

Newly launched Zoomingo is a shopping discovery app that aims to help you find nearby sales using either your Android or iPhone. With a focus on clothes, shoes, jewelry, handbags, beauty and home products, the app appeals to the everyday bargain shopper, not the daily deal seeker or the gadget guru looking to compare prices on HDTVs, for example. Sales data for major retailers is available all across the U.S., including from stores like Nordstrom, Macy’s, JC Penney, Williams Sonoma, Target, Kohl’s, Dill...

Instacolor: Far from being lukewarm, Instacolor takes the best bits of Instagram and combines them with the location-specific guidelines of the unpopular Color, helping you find other photo-sharers in your proximity, in real time. Out now, it costs $1. Capture: The quickest video camera you'll find on iOS. Once you launch the app, it starts recording instantly, like seriously instantly-so there's no valuable seconds of horseplay missed. So technically, it's just a home screen button that automatically...

TapNav: It's a GPS app that cleverly uses Augmented Reality to show you which direction the road is going to go. Once you fire open the app, you'll see what's literally in front of you IRL (it uses a live feed from the camera like other AR apps) and a series of "AR" discs that paint the direction you should be going. So not only do you know which way to turn, you won't get lost as long as you follow the blue disc road. $3 Play Dead: Play Dead is an app that fakes like your iPhone is dead with a loop of...

We may still be waiting for Penguin's beautiful childrens' book-reading iPad app, but if you favor their Classics range, this free annotated listing app will be a nice companion to that battered paperback you always carry around. It basically acts turns any Penguin fan into a card-carrying Penguin fan, with descriptions of each book; quizzes; a profile for listing all of your read books; plus a neat shake-to-discover function so you can read something the app chooses at random. Unfortunately the app...

CarZen is a gorgeous iPad app for shopping and researching new cars. This app cleverly sorts models by body style, brand or price and offers in-depth reviews, stunning galleries, specs…

Anyone familiar with the minimalist Japanese store Muji (which has shops all around the world) will expect these three apps to be cleanly-designed and stylish. The Calendar app is my favorite, but Notebook is bound to be the digital Moleskine-equivalent. Both the Calendar and Muji To Go are free, but the Notebook app costs a few bucks—$4, to be exact. Muji To Go is a neat little app that bundles in relevant services for jetsetters, such as world clocks, Forex currency converters, weather and a cute...