My Favorite Apps for Working and Living in China-Part 3

This is the third and final post recommending apps for living and working in China. In case you missed the others, you can find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.
I’ve already covered Chinese specific apps for daily life, and apps for learning chinese, but what about non-specific apps that just make life a little easier or more interesting. These are some of the apps I use on a daily basis.
Songza
Songza is a music app in which it suggests playlists based on the time of day and the activities you might be doing at that time. For instance 8 am on wednesday would suggest commuting, waking up, in the shower, working etc, while 5 pm on a thursday might suggest cooking dinner, exercising, getting ready for bed, working. Then, within each category is several different playlists ranging from metal, to country to indie and so on. Then you chose what kind of music you want to listen to and let it go from there.
While living in America you hear a lot of different styles and genres of music on a daily basis. From stores to commercials and radio you hear classic rock, country, oldies, the latest hits, 80’s music and more. But in China you don’t get that variety. Your more likely to hear Justin Beiber’s “Baby” a hundred times then say, the Beatles or some bluegrass. So this app is just great to get your fix, wether it’s oldies or rap, or anything really.
I also like the playlists this app suggests. They are totally spot on. While I might not think of it myself, Classic Bossa Nova or Martini Swing (think Sinatra) is the perfect mood music for cooking, while the Music from Jim Jarmusch Movies does complement a walk perfectly. And I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit I like listening to the Top 100 Worst Songs playlist when I’m showering. (It’s shocking how many are from my youth, was the music in the 80’s and 90’s really that bad?!) They also have one eclectic mix called Songs to Take a Dump To. As I type this I’m listening to the Motown Dance Party playlist.
Youku
As YouTube is blocked in China, this is a good alternative video website app to have. Youku is the largest video site in China and while it doesn’t have everything Youtube does, you can certainly find many of the same videos and waste just as much time playing around as you might on YouTube.
Evernote
Evernote is a note-taking app that downloads back to it’s own servers. So when you write a note on your iphone, you can access it later on your computer. This is great for me, a constant note taker. When I had my ipod I took copious amounts of notes using the built in notebook feature. Then when I changed to the iphone I had a bitch of a time transferring the notes from one device to another. And of course if I lost my phone I would have lost all my notes.
So using Evernote prevents all that because I can open it on any device that has this app installed and see all my notes compiled in one place.
MutiConvert
This covers all the basics from currency, to weight to temperature and more. As an American not so comfortable with the metric system, I find distances and temperature in China a little confusing. Also, China has some of it’s own measurements, so this app is really helpful when trying to explain how big 6 acres is, or figuring out how heavy 3 jin is.
 
Dictionary
I find this app really helpful for two reasons.
One-when I am trying to look up a word in my Chinese dictionary and can’t due to my inability to spell the english word correctly. For some reasons my dictionaries don’t “suggest” how to spell it. I have to spell the english word exactly right or it can’t work. So I use this dictionary, which does suggest proper spellings, to help me.
Two- In class sometimes my students use really, really, strange words. It’s because they  have used electronic dictionary’s which sometimes uses really old or uncommon english words. In the past I have accused my students of making up words. But now I first check my dictionary and if it’s a real word, I then tell them the more common word to use.
Fruit Ninja
What can I say, everyone in China plays this too so I jumped on the bandwagon. Since each game is only a minute long it is really fun to play in a group. Once me and my friend had an epic Fruit Ninja play off. We each used our own phone and started a game at the same time. After several rounds the person who has lost the most had to buy dinner for the winner. I’ve also connected with a number of new students based on this app. I see them playing and I’m all like, “hey kids, I’m hip with your games.” Might sound dorky, but it works.
 
So that rounds out my apps suggestions. I’ll be adding a resource section to the website soon and will be putting all these apps there as well. Do you have an app you think I should know about? Let me know!