Best new apps of the week: Carrot Hunger and Evernote Scannable
Every week, our staff will handpick an app from the past two weeks that we believe is a must-have download for your iPhone or iPad. These apps will always be from various categories, but they are chosen because our own staff members love it and have been using them daily. So here are this week’s picks! Enjoy!
Carrot Hunger
Get motivated for healthier eating and stop stuffing your face with our hilarious App of the Week.
Looking for the best way to keep track of those calories you’re stuffing into your face this year? Then look no further than our App of the Week, Carrot Hunger from Grailr. This is the fourth iteration of the popular “CARROT” A.I. line of apps from the developer, and it’s as hilarious as ever.
Carrot Hunger features the same bright and colorful interface as Carrot Fit, the other health-based app in the line that tracks your weight and workouts. Users are able to pick a funny avatar that suits them, enter in basic data about themselves, and then get a daily calorie goal to strive for. As you log your calories, you can watch your avatar get some meat on their bones throughout the day, but watch out when you go over — you don’t want to make Carrot mad.
As far as inputting your calories goes, Carrot Hunger does it quickly and efficiently, though you can be even more productive with the Ruthless Efficiency Collection, which is a $1.99 in-app purchase. You can search for food and drink items in the database, manually add them yourself, or use Carrot’s built-in barcode scanner. The Ruthless Efficiency Collection will include the ability to add multiple items at once, and quick add recent entries.
Carrot Hunger stands out from the rest with the fact that she will display the “actual cost” of consumed food. What this means is she will tell you exactly how much exercise you need to do to work off that slice of cake you just stuffed into your face. It’s easy to understand and sheds some light on just how much you’re going to pay when you eat unhealthy foods.
With Carrot Hunger, you can keep track of those calorie-burning activities too. Just act like you’re adding a new food item, but then tap on the red fire button to switch to the exercise logger. You can search the type of exercise you did, how long you did it for, and then Carrot will calculate how many calories you just burned off.
Over time, you can check your Diary to see what you’ve eaten and how much you’ve exercised. Entries can be deleted or edited from here as well. The Store has other additional items that you can purchase, such as ad-removal (half of the ads are fake and hilarious), and fancy platforms for your avatar to stand on. Your profile contains all of your stats, in case you want to look back and reflect on your eating habits.
We’ve been fans of the Carrot apps for a long time now, and we are glad to see her come back once again in the form of a calorie counter. It’s the perfect compliment to Carrot Fit, and always hilarious to hear her insulting quips. If you want to start the year off right and be motivated for a healthier lifestyle, then it’s time to check out Carrot Hunger for yourself. You can get it on the iPhone App Store for free with in-app purchases.
For a closer look at Carrot Hunger, make sure to check out my full review.
Honorable Mention
Evernote Scannable
Obtaining a paperless lifestyle has never been easier thanks to Evernote Scannable.
Looking to improve your lifestyle by going paperless this year? Then you have to check out our Honorable Mention, Evernote Scannable, a brand new mobile scanning app for your iOS devices. If you are an Evernote user, then you have to give this a whirl.
Scannable launches into the camera view directly, so you can scan your paper right away. The app can automatically detect the document when you hold the device above it, though this works best when there’s a contrasting background. Scannable highlights documents (or parts of it, depending on the clarity) with blue and shows a meter to indicate progress. Once it is done, it ends up being scanned and you can find it underneath the viewfinder. You can also opt for manual capture if the automatic algorithm isn’t working for you. Scannable can also smartly detect business cards, and will link it with LinkedIn and you can add the contact to your device address book.
You can scan multiple pages at once, and Scannable will save it as a multi-page document. Tap on pages to rename them if needed. Users can upload these scans directly to their Evernote account, or share via email or message, export to iCloud or Dropbox, save to the Camera Roll, or open it in the native Share Sheet.
We’re always looking for ways to improve our paperless lifestyles, and Evernote Scannable is a fast way to achieve that. You can get Evernote Scannable on the App Store as a universal download for free.
For more information on Evernote Scannable, don’t miss my full review.
