Apps to help get a handle on your busy life — or an emergency

  • Friday, May 1, 2015 3:22pm
  • Life

Wouldn’t it be great to have your calendar, email inbox and to-do list in one place?

The Handle app links three productivity apps into one — the email inbox, calendar and to-do list — to help you get a grip on your life.

Handle makes it easy to create to-dos and calendar events from emails in your inbox, and can show you everything on one screen. When dealing with emails, users simply have to swipe left or right on the message to create a reminder or event, choose to read a certain email later or delete it.

To take advantage of the features, you will have to give the app access to your calendars and inboxes.

One big caveat? The app works with Gmail addresses only, so if your company or personal email is on another service, you’re out of luck. (Unless you want to forward everything to a Gmail address.) There’s also no super-quick way to find emails you’ve archived, which means you may not want to ditch your current e-mail app if you’re always looking through that folder.

Free, for iOS devices.

Red Cross app

Although it’s not fun to think about rainy days, it’s always good to have some information to help deal with them.

This app from the American Red Cross is full of how-to tips, quizzes and shelter lists designed to help you prepare for severe weather such as tornadoes and natural disasters such as earthquakes. It also has monitoring features that allow you to keep an eye on several locations at once. In an emergency, the app will show you an alert outlining what’s coming your way and offering next steps.

Users can also opt to give the app access to their contact lists, which will let you assign certain people to particular locations. The app also provides information on what to do in case of smaller-scale emergencies such as a fire in the home or chemical incident.

Free, for iOS and Android devices.

— Hayley Tsukayama, The Washington Post

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