Useful apps for Windows 8

Windows 8 is a good desktop operating system (OS) program, but it is also a very good mobile device program too. It is better than Windows 7 at converting into a mobile device piece of software. This is why the Windows SmartPhones and tablets may be in for a bit of a revival in the near future. Whilst Windows 8 is a good operating system–are there any good apps for it? Here are a few of the best.

News Bento

With this free app you are able to keep track of a number of different news sources. You can customize the app so that you can keep track within six of their news categories. All you need to do is tap the logo and it will add or remove it from the feed.

The browsing interface is very good so you will find plenty of news feeds to amuse you. It has live tiles that rotate with pictures and articles so that you can see some articles that may interest you. It is a well designed app that allows you to enjoy the process of picking news steams, instead of concentrating solely on providing a service for reading feeds.

This is a radio app that you can download for free. It was a popular app for the Windows XP and 7, but is now here for the Windows 8 OS. There are hundreds of radio stations that you can visit, and they are divided up into regions to making finding your favorite stations a little bit easier.

The app allows you to tune into radio stations that are host to a massive number of different music genres. You may even filter some of the thousands of websites by their languages. This app will even let you listen to pod casts too, and will allow you to filter those into genres.

This is a photo-editing app and you get it free. It has a lot of options to help you get the most out of the app. It allows you to do all of the basic stuff such as rotating the image, cropping the image, resizing the image, etc. It also allows you to do other slightly more advanced stuff such as changing the exposure of the image or tweaking the color temperatures. You can use the sharpen and the blur tools to create a very nice photo effect. You can even add image features such as adding a lens flare or changing how the shadows look.

You can add things such as Instagram-style filters, plus you can add things such as frames that may be pulled from lots of different sources. If you wish then you can purchase even more photo editing features if you buy the Pro version of the app.

This is an app that will allow you to have a free trial before you buy. It is primarily a rudimentary feed reader. You can use it on your tablet or your desktop computer. The list of feeds will run down the left hand side, and the reading panel is on the right. You will see that as you tap the feeds the information pops up on the right. You will need a Google reader account in order to use this app, and if you want to manage your subscriptions then you must go back to the browser and alter them from there.

The toolbox app is a multitasking tool that has a lot of mini utilities that you can use for a massive number of things. There are utilities that range from a calculator to an app that checks the weather. It has things such as social networking clients and a web browser. It also supports Twitter and Facebook.

If you swipe upwards from the box at the bottom of the app you will see that the app allows you to use a number of layouts. There are two to six windows on each of the layouts. You can put different apps in each window and run them as you wish. It is a nice little way of allowing you to fill your toolbox of windows before you start multitasking. This app is free to use and will give you six pre-set tool/window configurations.

Kate Funk is passionate about different technology topics. She coaches individuals in writing and networking skills at Tutorsville.