The Quartz app sends users messages, photos, GIFs, and links relating to particular topics, and users can tap to signal that they're interested in learning more. Quartz views the app as a publication in itself; the app links to other publications, in addition to its own stories. The interface resembled an automated assistant, but the content is written by human editors and writers. The average daily user checks the app twice a day and spends around three minutes inside the app.

Credits: Zach Seward: SVP of product and executive editor, Quartz Adam Pasick: Push editor, Quartz Sam Williams: Senior software engineer, Quartz Daniel Lee: Product design director, Quartz Svati Narula: Reporter, Quartz Jill Petzinger: Reporter, Quartz Jason Karaian: Finance editor, Quartz John Keefe: Bot developer and product manager, Quartz April Siese: App writer, Quartz

Stop staring at food labels! Luvo, a frozen food company, wants people to eat better. So there’s Luvo CheckIt, for those needing insight while shopping for food. The mobile nutrition label reader scans 300,000 products’ UPC codes, and then offers some color coding guidelines -- green represents “good”; blue, “neutral”; and red -- well, you get the picture -- not so much. Additionally: Some there is some inspiring key messaging like: “This will make your mouth water and your heart happy." Or maybe not.

Credits: Leora Schachter, VP of Marketing at Luvo Samantha Cassetty M.S., R.D., VP of Nutrition at Luvo Gillian Damborg, Creative Director at Luvo Peter Chleback, Director, Digital Art at Luvo Heather Magee, Director, Digital Strategy at Luvo Oli Maughan, Digital Community Manager at Luvo

Putnam Investments FundVisualizer The FundVisualizer mutual fund comparison tool lets financial advisors track and compare over 11,000 load, no-load mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), along with over 2,500 indices. The free app gathered the most commonly used functionalities from competitive products, and then simplified the user inputs and resulting output for a simple-to-use, initiative platform. All charts are interactive, enabling users to rearrange the fund display order or to change the representation of various data within the charts. The platform was recently updated with a refreshed user interface as well as introducing the first-of-its-kind feature to enable users to discover and explore new investment opportunities. There is no requirement to use a Putnam fund when using the app.

Credits: Putnam Investments: David Nguyen, Director, Mobile Strategy & Products Paul O'Connell, Director, Digital Christian Eio, Director, User Experience Algert Sula, User Experience Architect Catherine Nguyen, Senior Visual Designer Cantina Consulting: Doug Reynolds, Senior Project Manager Jay Dolan, VP, Engineering George White, SVP, Innovations Jeremy Brody, Senior Developer Sean Neacy, Senior Developer

With the Sit With Us app, users create a simple profile page, type in their school and school address, and then can find open lunches within their own school community under a “featured” tab. Anyone who takes the Ambassador’s pledge agrees to post open lunches from time to time and make anyone who joins feel welcome. Created by 16-year-old Natalie Hampton to combat loneliness and bullying, this friendly app is making great strides in bringing people together and improving communities worldwide.

Credits: Natalie Hampton, the 16 year old Founder and President of Sit With Us, Inc. (designed user interface, flow, function, graphic design; came up with the idea and concept) Jiaming Zhang, Zcoder LLC (handled the actual coding based on Natalie's specifications)

NetSfere by Infinite Convergence Solutions NetSfere is a cloud-based, enterprise messaging service that offers a secure platform for internal communication and collaboration, giving IT total control over employee messaging across multiple devices. The messaging service's new Guest User Feature allows NetSfere users to exchange messages with virtually anyone, including those that do not have a NetSfere account. Members can also quickly communicate and collaborate with colleagues who are traveling or working remotely without the threat of hacking. NetSfere is in compliance with major laws in healthcare, including HIPAA, as well as in finance and banking including Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, FINRA, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the SEC.

Credits: Harsh Mamgain, VP of Product Development

The Quartz app sends users messages, photos, GIFs, and links relating to particular topics, and users can tap to signal that they're interested in learning more. Quartz views the app as a publication in itself; the app links to other publications, in addition to its own stories. The interface resembled an automated assistant, but the content is written by human editors and writers. The average daily user checks the app twice a day and spends around three minutes inside the app.

Credits: Zach Seward: SVP of product and executive editor, Quartz Adam Pasick: Push editor, Quartz Sam Williams: Senior software engineer, Quartz Daniel Lee: Product design director, Quartz Svati Narula: Reporter, Quartz Jill Petzinger: Reporter, Quartz Jason Karaian: Finance editor, Quartz John Keefe: Bot developer and product manager, Quartz April Siese: App writer, Quartz

College is pricey — and working students balance part-time jobs with classroom demands. Their busy schedules mean they can’t always make professors’ office hours or meet in study groups. To ensure they keep up, Course Hero supplies easy-to-access study resources, tutorials and a library with 10 million documents of study materials to supplement specific subjects. Per McGraw-Hill, 81% of students use mobile devices to study. Homework questions? Ask Course Hero. It doubles as a 24/7 study aide.

Credits: · Nick Zakula, Senior Product Manager, Course Hero · Ian Carrigan, Staff Software Engineer, Course Hero · Vesko Dimitrov, Senior Software Engineer, Course Hero · Emily Tsai, Designer, Course Hero · Lauren Falzarano, Software Engineer, Course Hero · Alex Chiou, Software Engineer, Course Hero · Stefanie Swift, Software Engineer, Course Hero

Using in-stadium photography that shows the view from a particular seat, the app Gametime enables mobile sports fans to quickly and conveniently shop the top 50 seats in any stadium by price and seat quality, instead of depending on static seat maps. A two-tap checkout is all that's required to have tickets delivered directly to a smartphone. Gametime has been recognized as one of the top-rated event apps in both the Apple and Android app stores and boasts nearly 4 million downloads.

Credits: Brad Griffith, Founder and CEO

A new CW network app on Apple TV offers much functionality of a TV network app. And then there is this: An expiring episode messaging function. Moving through its guide of shows, it’ll could post this message: “Last Chance To Watch” -- which is helpful for series moving, with little notice, to different platforms, say from Netflix, to Amazon, or another different place altogether. Since its initial October 2016 premiere, it has been ranked steadily in the top 15 of Apple TV apps.

Credits: The CW Network team Tierra Innovation

Anyone can be a special effects wiz with the iOS app Sync My Lights, which works with the app-controlled Philips Hue lighting system to create user-generated ambient lighting effects that play during movies, TV shows and music videos. Lighting enhancements are timed to draw out major on-screen action, pivotal sounds effects and emotional cues. Users can create and share their own “lighting recipes” for any title by logging in via Twitter. Content already enhanced by users includes “Avatar,” “Frozen,” and “Stranger Things.”

Credits: Brett Circe - Chief Interactive Officer Matt Wood - Director, Innovation Lab

Like the Boy Scouts say: be prepared. The free Bump takes that dictum to heart, providing new moms with one-stop shopping — daily recommendations to a huge catalog of baby products/reviews. Also, expert advice addresses key topics, from combating morning sickness to the best items for your hospital bag. The Bump gives answers to questions from doctors, interactive 3D visuals of your baby’s growth and a planner for all prenatal visits. It’s your unofficial 24/7 live-in OB-GYN.

Credits: Eben Levy - Experience Design Director Sarah Wood - Product Manager Jon Dobrowolski - Director of Product Julia Wang head of digital content Tian He - Director of Engineering

Personal finance gets real personal. An app from Personal Capital says long-term users of its app save up to 15.7% more after using this free tool. Key here is a maintaining what it calls a keen bird’s-eye view of one’s entire financial health and progress -- including, for example, on Apple Watch -- where one can set monthly spending limits and monitor investment performance. Personal Capital’s tools, an investment advisor, is used by over 1.3 million people -- a good base work from.

Credits: Jim Del Favero, Chief Product Officer Ehsan Lavassani, Founding Engineer & Chief Engineering Officer

Apps for every sport? Not quite. An ancient sport, Kabaddi, played throughout South Asia, hasn’t had one. The team sport sends a “raider” to contact the other team and make it back to home -- in a single breath. Imitating the real-life game rule, app users tap their screen quickly, uttering the Kabaddi “chant” also on one breath. Good scores exhale -- including 6,000 app installs, over 250,000 app views; over two million total impressions; and a 0.88% click through rate.

Credits: Bharatesh Salian – Vice President & Head Strategy Dinesh Swamy – Sr. Creative Director Ofira Ashtamker - Director - Client Servicing Krupa Jhaveri - Client Servicing Raj Naik - Sr. Art Director Bhadresh Rajput - Sr. Art Director

The Luvo CheckIt app provides a convenient way for nutrition-conscious shoppers to get an immediate, simple answer to the question “Is this food good for me?” while in the supermarket. The app's label reader can scan 300,000 products’ UPC codes, and then provide color-coded evaluations, ranging from green (good), blue (neutral) to red (poor nutrition). More-detailed ingredient data is also available. CheckIt works well as an extension of the brand Luvo, a packaged food company with a mission to help people eat better.

Credits: Leora Schachter, VP of Marketing at Luvo Samantha Cassetty M.S., R.D., VP of Nutrition at Luvo Gillian Damborg, Creative Director at Luvo Peter Chleback, Director, Digital Art at Luvo Heather Magee, Director, Digital Strategy at Luvo Oli Maughan, Digital Community Manager at Luvo

Do your kids know what to do in an home emergency? The app, MakeSafeHappen, offers room by room specific child advice. To keep parents from feeling overwhelmed, one simply selects children’s ages and the number of home rooms. And then there are a home’s safety issues that are addressed -- which can include everything from anchoring flat-screen TVs to keeping cosmetics out of reach. It offers a drill/practice for possible home fires, making sure one's family responds calmly when the alarms start to wail.

Credits: Dr. Lara McKenzie Ph.D. Principal Investigator Nationwide Children's Hospital Kristin Roberts, MS, MPH Senior Research Associate Nationwide Children's Hospital Chris Cotton Marketing Consultant Nationwide Insurance

ClipCall, a free mobile marketplace, matches homeowners with pre-screened, qualified service professionals through aggregated behavioral data to make remodeling and repair projects easier. The app taps into AI self-learning algorithms to match and manage the workflow. The service takes users from price quote to final payment using in-app video, texting, chatbots, recording the entire transaction between homeowner and contractor inside the app. It walks the homeowner through instructions to create videos to describe their project to service professionals, who evaluate and quote the job.

Credits: Daniel Shaked, CEO & Founder, ClipCall

Tata Consultancy Services, known for its innovative applications, sponsored the TCS New York City (NYC) Marathon and created an app with real-time on-map tracking of up to 20 runners. Analytics predicts finish times based on each runner’s unique running history. It also supports up to 300,000 concurrent users. Users could track runners worldwide and send support from afar. The app ranked as the top free sports app and featured as a best new app in the Apple App Store on Race Day with 317,000 downloads.

Credits: Mr. Ramaswamy Raman, Project Manager, TCS Ms. Sneha Khadatare, Module Lead & Android Developer, TCS Mr. Gaurav Gholap, Module Lead & iOS Developer, TCS Ms. Manisha Yadav, Server Developer, TCS Mr. Aishwarya Patil, QA Engineer, TCS Mr. Arvind Kadu, Delivery Manager for DESS Mobility Sports team

When the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation needed a new mobile app to help visitors make the most of their time in the historic location, it created features to prompt visitors to spend more time engaging with the unique 18th-century space and less time looking at a phone screen. A custom map with turn-by-turn directions helps visitors locate famous moments in history and suggests talking points to help spark interactions. The new features increased use by 183% and average session length rose by 42%.

Credits: Pavani Yalla, Creative Lead Kate Farina, User Experience Designer Haritha Muthyala, Analytics Strategist Matheus Meneghel, Visual Designer Mark Hurley, Director of Technology Gaurav Singh, Mobile Architect Andrew Chanrasmi, Mobile Developer Erin Wash, Mobile Developer Rick Moton, Mobile Developer Michael Leonard, Delivery Lead Aram Yang, Delivery Lead Rebecca Hamm, Project Manager Walker Heflin, Business Analyst Jorge Rivero, QA Joaquin Lee, QA Derek Aldrich, QA Mark Song, QA

The latest Coupons.com app, created by Quotient, has a feature that lets consumers save money even when the store doesn't offer a loyalty program through receipt-scanning technology. It offers cash back discounts by adding coupons, taking a photo of a receipt after purchase, and getting cash back directly from a PayPal account. There is no minimum and shoppers get cash back when submitting a receipt. The app lets shoppers store their digital grocery coupons for use at stores like Walmart, Costco, and Kroger.

Credits: Julie Gerdes, VP of Product Management; Chris Boorman, Director of Product Management; Bhavana Gupta, UX Manager; Rohit Mordani, Senior Mobile Software Engineer; Casan Callaway, VP of Operations; Eli Curetti, Cofounder and CEO of Shopmium (part of Quotient) and many others on the Coupons.com mobile team.

Cancer.net's mobile app is the perfect interactive tool to help you keep track of questions to ask healthcare providers. It's a place to save information about prescribed medications, including photos of labels and bottles (on camera-enabled devices), and a symptom tracker to record the time and severity of symptoms and side effects. Excellent scheduling features allow you to add any symptom, medication, or question to your calendar to ask at your next appointment.

Credits: American Society of Clinical Oncology

A location-based messaging app is a great idea, because it spurs connections in new and unfamiliar environs. Imagine sparking up a conversation with fellow concertgoers, sports fans at the game, or networking at your next conference. But, with its LOC app, Optimac didn’t stop there. Emboldening users to explore the world, LOC can translate chat messages in real-time between 90 different languages. Users are free to initiate their own chat, or peruse a map where they’ll find existing threads right where they were first created.

Credits: Scott Gardner, Developer, Optimac, Inc.

Piano by Gismart allows music lovers to learn piano on the cheap or give aficionados the opportunity to play their favorite songs. The app has three play options: realistic piano simulator, Magic Keys game and Magic Tiles game. Users select a song from a Song Book and playing commences. The gaming aspect makes learning something new not so intimidating. To mix things up, musicians can make the piano sound like an electric guitar or organ, among others.

Credits: The app is made by music app developer Gismart.

Adobe's free Lightroom for mobile enables people to edit and share high quality images from smartphones and tablets. The app allows users to change white balance, access a range of color information, and edit uncompressed files. People can also sync photo edits and metadata -- from smartphone photos or raw DSLR images -- across Lightroom enabled devices. People who use the app's editing tools can revert to the original at any time. Users can share photo collections in online galleries.

Credits: Josh Haftel, senior product manager, Adobe Tom Hogarty, director of product management, digital imaging, Adobe

If you’re into smart appliances, smart gadgets, smart homes, and other smart things, then you’d be, um, smart to check out Stringify. The app is so named because it helps you string together various devices and services in whatever way works best for you, and then serve as a single touchpoint for your entire IoT system. Presently, the service can connect to more than 600 smart products, including Nest, Google Home and Amazon Echo, along with range of services from Twitter to Facebook to Dropbox.

Credits: The Stringify Team

Dictionary.com’s apps are the leading English dictionary apps for both iOS and Android, offering trusted reference content with more than two million English definitions and synonyms, and are the most comprehensive tools for word discovery. Special features of this free app include: editorial posts about language usage in historical and current events as well as advice and insight, quiz widgets to test vocabulary, local lookups, favorite words and search history, and an advanced learner’s dictionary.

Credits: Mark Koerner, Director of Mobile Product Michael Villas, User Experience Designer Lauren Sliter, Marketing Manager

Wayfair offers consumers access to more than 8 million furniture and decor items, but the best app updates comes in the form of “View in Room.” Buying furniture online is not always easy. Will the piece go with existing furniture and is there room to add it? “View in Room” will place 2-D product images in any room via mobile phone camera, allowing shoppers to better visualize a piece of furniture in-situ. Image can be saved and sent to friends for feedback.

Credits: Bill Gianoukos, Senior Director, App & Messaging Ben Violette, Product Manager, App Monique Eisenach, Graphic Designer, App Anthony Gallo, Engineer, App Tom Husson, Manager, App Justin Henry, Senior Manager, App, Arpit Gupta, Senior Product Manager, Apps

Anyone who ever visited the Shake Shack knows the main downfall is long lines. The Shack app was created in an effort shorten pick up times and connect fans with all social media elements of the brand. Via the app, customers can order food, select an available pickup time and show up. The app also contains nutritional information, events and promotions and a live view of the Shack Cam at the company’s first location in Madison Square Park.

Credits: Kate Elle Griffin, Senior Engagement Manager, Fuzz Noah Blake, iOS Director, Fuzz Phil Crawford, Vice President of Information Technology, Shake Shack

The LOC app allows users to chat with anyone, anywhere, across the globe. Users can join a chat or create their own. The app even offers real-time translation in 90 languages, should you desire to join a chat in a foreign language. Topics range from sports, concerts, everyday life… it’s the user’s choice. Businesses can create chats to attract customers. Think food truck owners giving daily locations and menu previews or a real estate agent listing properties and answering questions live.

Credits: Scott Gardner, Developer, Optimac, Inc.

The Sacramento Kings partnered with Built.io and M&C Saatchi LA to create the Sacramento Kings + Golden 1 Center App. The fan app displays updated game stats, sans refresh button. There’s also a chat bot, games, an arena thermostat, ordering food and drinks in-seat, and a virtual cowbell to get your seatmates riled up. Fans can also purchase tickets and research parking and ridesharing options.

Credits: Nishant Patel, CTO at Built.io Gal Oppenheimer, senior product manager at Built.io

Bills itself as a 24/7 personal concierge for travel, Mezi collects traveler information through conversational messaging — then creates personalized recommendations. Once itinerary gets an OK, Mezi handles reservations and completes payment — without the user leaving the app. Teamed with Expedia and AmEx, Mezi utilizes AI-powered chatbots for bookings across hotels and flights. The pitch is end-to-end travel— you plan, Mezi does the heavy lifting. The result? User travel requests have grown 750% month over month since April 2016.

Credits: Swapnil Shinde, CEO and Co-founder, Mezi Snehal Shinde, CTO and Co-founder, Mezi

Whether you’re already friends with Alexa or still eying Amazon’s virtual assistant from afar, you’re going to want Reverb on your phone. Developed by digital consultancy Rain, the app lets people take Alexa for a test drive before actually buying an Echo smart speaker. If you already own an Echo, Reverb can easily expand Alexa’s horizons. Heck, it’s even compatible with iPhones, and other iOS devices.

Credits: Steven Hansen, CTO Christian Torres, iOS Developer Branden Russell, Mobile Dev Director Mitchell Harris, Senior Tech Lead Matthew Parkin, UX Designer Mathew Knecht, Web Developer Daniel Hatch, UX Designer Jeremiah Stephenson, Lead Android Developer Shaun Little, QA Tester Octavio Menocal, Web and VX Developer Joaz Rivera, Web Developer Nathan Tubb, DevOps Yuliya Kauwe, Project Manager Rommel Berrios, Web and VX Developer

Real-time forecasts are essential, and Accuweather touts the newest weather tech: Minute Cast, a minute-by-minute precipitation forecast, pinned to your street address or GPS location. Travelers rejoice: It’s available in many countries and 100 languages. Search everything via voice commands. For current conditions and/or road hazards, try AccUcast, a global crowdsourcing tool with live user-generated input. The accessible AccuWeather for Android caters to weather junkies who love video presentations and long to customize content.

Credits: AccuWeather for Android was created by the AccuWeather cross-functional mobile team, including team members representing design, development, IT, product management, and more.

If you can’t make it to Las Vegas, opt for the city’s app from The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Virtual Reality allows users to experience the city from various angles, including 360-degree video. The app brings travelers-to-be to dozens of attractions throughout the city, from resorts, popular shows, restaurants, spas, shopping, and pools. It’s unclear if the “What happens here, Stays here” mantra applies to the app.

Credits: Colleen Yoshida, Director of marketing