5 CRAZY apps: Avoid friends, confess sins and more

These will help you record things that happened five minutes ago, allow women to rate their exes, avoid friends you don't like, quit smoking and confess to your sins.

A new smartphone app that lets you record everything that happened around you five minutes ago has been launched.

The app -- Heard -- achieves this seemingly impossible feat by constantly recording whatever is going on and keeps it in a state of buffering.

If the user then decides he wants to record something that has already happened, he can go into the app and do exactly that, The Sun reported.

And if the user does nothing, then the recordings are constantly deleted after the five-minute mark.

The app also syncs with social networks so audio clips can be easily uploaded on to facebook, or emailed to pals.

It can run constantly whenever the smartphone is turned on, but it does have a red banner at the top of the phone screen to remind the user it is still on.

Heard is available free with 12 seconds' recording time, or for USD 1.99 for up to 5 minutes in the Apple store.

© Copyright 2013 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.

Now, app to help you quit smoking

A new app has been created that could help smokers kick the butt.

Craving to Quit, an app for iPad or iPhone, was developed by goBlue Labs, based at 5 Science Park, which was founded by Dr Judson Brewer, medical director of the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, the New York Daily News reported.

Mindfulness, a technique rooted in Buddhism and other traditions, proved effective in a smoking-cessation study Brewer conducted in 2009.

In Brewer's four-week study, 88 smokers with an average age of 46, smoking a pack a day, used either mindfulness training or the American Lung Association's Freedom From Smoking programme.

At the end of treatment, 36 per cent of the group that learned mindfulness training had quit versus 15 percent using FFS.

After 17 weeks, the success rate was 31 per cent versus 6 per cent.

The results are published online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Source: ANI

Want to confess your sins? There's an app for that

A new smartphone app that lets busy Catholic priests update their statuses to let people know when and where they are available to listen to their confessions has been developed in the US.

Father Richard Heilman in Madison, Wisconsin, is launching a My Confessor App that will let his parishioners know when and where he is available to listen to their sins.

A red status box means 'Father is OUT'. A green status box means 'Father is IN'. And priests have a special log in that lets them easily update their statuses and even post messages, according to app developer Mary Hoerr, New York Daily News reported.

The app also has a section explaining the sacrament of confession, as well as another place where users can read priests' bios.

Heilman is the only priest on the app for now but he says several other priests have reached out and asked to get involved.

The app currently serves people in the Madison area.

However, Heilman sees this going national.

The number of Catholic priests in America has declined in recent decades, according to data collected by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

In 1965, more than 58,000 Catholic priests belonged to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 2012, that number was closer to 39,000.

On the other hand, the number of people who self-identify as Catholics has grown from 48.5 million to 78.2 million.

"It's challenging sometimes for priests to find time for confession because they have work to do. And parishioners are trying to go easy on Father because they see us trying to handle multiple things," Heilman said.

© Copyright 2013 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.

New app lets women rate exes

A new mobile app allows women to rate their former partner's humour, appearance, manners, ambition and commitment, on a scale of one to 10.

On Lulu, women are able to give rating to past hookups and ex-boyfriends.

Alison Schwartz and Alexandra Chong got the idea for Lulu after a girls' brunch resulted in them oversharing about Topshop sales, dermatologist appointments, and, eventually, guys, the New York Daily News reported.

The app, exclusive to women, was launched in January and has been placed consistently among the top 20 in the iTunes store.

The app syncs to users' Facebook accounts to scan pals and see which men have been rated.

Source: ANI

Now, 'antisocial' app to avoid friends!

A new smartphone app that can inform you where your friends are and suggest best possible routes to avoid them has been developed by a US student.

The app named 'Hell Is Other People' utilises FourSquare -- a location-based social networking website for mobile devices -- to track check-ins made by friends to determine the best routes and areas to avoid them.

The experimental anti-social media app was created by Scott Garner, a graduate student at New York University, ABC News reported.

The Web app is simple to use. First, a person connects his or her FourSquare account through 'Hell is Other People'.

Then, the Web app conjures up an avoidance map. The map contains orange and green points. Orange points indicate check-ins by other users, and green points represent "optimally distanced safe zones," as suggested by the app.

James George, NYU adjunct faculty member, said his final assignment required students to create a system that enabled individuals to behave a certain way.

"I thought it was an amazing interpretation of that idea," George said.

"I think Scott was resistant to doing group projects throughout the class. He was like 'No, I do not want to rely on other people. He was able to turn that personal anxiety and channel it into the concept of that piece," he said.

The thought of an "anti-social media" app may seem ironic, but Garner said the initiative isn't as ridiculous as it seems, the report said.

"In some ways, social media and on-line media are kind of anti-social in that you are interacting in a virtual space.

Some people retreat to Facebook in place of personal interaction. It's something I am trying to explore," he said.

© Copyright 2013 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.