With Christmas over and the in-laws gone, you’ve no doubt gotta a mountain of dishes and cleaning to do. We know that thanks to the amazing powers afford you by leftover turkey and stuffing, you’ll be able to clean your house into submission over the next few days. We here at Mac|Life salute your efforts, and feel that you totally deserve to party hardy as a reward for a job well done.
Fortunately, New Years Eve is just around the corner, giving you the perfect excuse to cut loose and trash your home all over again. To help get your year’s end party started off on the right foot, we’ve put together a list of ten iOS applications--some free, others not so much--to ensure that you get down to celebrating as hard and as easily as possible.
If you’re planning on entertaining at home this year, you’re gonna need to sort out some eats. Fortunately, GroceryIQ for iPhone has you covered. Sporting an easy to use interface that supports, multiple shopping lists, a multitude of pre-entered products and brands as well as a bar code scanner, this application will help you to organize, delegate and complete your shopping needs with ease.
If you can’t bear the thought of cleaning your house from top to bottom twice in under a week, you can always turn to Open Table. With its extensive list of restaurants that ranging from cheap to those that would have you mortgage your house for the price of a bowl of soup, Open Table can assist you in selecting the perfect eatery for your New Year’s Eve feed, and make the reservations necessary to make it all happen.
Unless you’re making a dry night of it, your guests will be wanting a few drinks. You could just buy a few bottles and let them fend for themselves, or you can rise to the occasion with a great application like Mixologist to make their boozy party dreams come true.
Mixologist comes with a myriad of drink recipes so extensive that you could keep the party going for days without having to worry about ever making the same drink for anyone twice.
If you do opt to chase your favorite drinks on down the rabbit hole of insobriety, you owe it to yourself to avoid doing anything… regrettable. Under such circumstances, Don’t Dial has your back. Just enter in the time and date you plan to get your drink on, and then indicate the numbers and emails address that would be harmful to contact while you’re under the influence, and Don’t Dial will keep them out of your sight while you’re out of your mind.
If you’d rather not set Don’t Dial based on a specific time or date, just hand your iPhone over to a trustworthy friend to type in a password, locking off the phone until they feel that you’re sober enough to think clearly again.
If your circle of friends doesn’t have a designated driver to get you back home safe and sound, you can always count on Rocket Taxi to lend a hand. With thousands of taxi companies in the application’s database, Rocket Taxi can provide you with the number of a reliable taxi company no matter your location, ensuring that after a night of partying, you and those closest to you can return home safely.
With a wide variety of virtual lenses and films to choose from, this gem of an iOS application can give your iPhone photos a vintage photographic look equipment once only obtainable through the use of old school film cameras. If you’ve never tried it before, now’s the time to give it a go.
C’mon, give it some love! Often overlooked, but never underestimated, your iPad's iPod app is a mighty fine way to set the tone for any festive occasion. Just load your iOS device up with some situation-appropriate tunes, find a stereo to plug in to and let the merry-making begin. For those who demand their event music be “just so”, you can even load playlists from your Mac’s iTunes application to ensure that your music on-the-go never goes off the rails.
There are few finer ways to get your party started than with DJay. DJay comes with two turntables (but alas, no microphone) and a multitude of tools to get you and your fellow New Years revelers grooving. Whether you’re hardcore about getting your beats down right, or a budding DJ enthusiasts, you’re going to dig this app’s ability to mix your tunes, match up beats per minute, preview songs and even record your performance.
If you’re not in charge of your party’s music, you might not know what you’re listening to. Fortunately, SoundHound’s hear to help. When you hear a song playing that you wouldn’t mind adding to your personal music collection, just click on SoundHound’s “What’s That Song” Button. In doing so, SoundHound will use your iOS device’s microphone to sample and then compare the currently playing track against an intimidating number of songs to tell you the name of the song you’re currently grooving to. Best of all, if the song is available for purchase in the iTunes Music Store, making it easy to buy it and download it after your hangover has worn off the next day.
Blowing on old School noise makers to voice your delight that we’ve survived another is so 2010. Get in step with the new decade that is upon and let your iPhone make all that festive/abrasive noise for you! New Years Eve Noise Maker will let you celebrate as noisily as possible, by making all the racket of a traditional holiday noisemaker, while at the same time, leaving your mouth and lungs free to spew messages of good will and silliness. It’s social multi-tasking at its finest.
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