The last column is the one worth reading. Four of these apps have no server at all
— not as a policy, but because none was ever built, so there is no address for
anything to be sent to.
App
What it does
What leaves your phone
What it does
- Sorts itself into the order you walk each shop
- Hundreds of groceries built in, already in aisles
- Your usuals, one tap each
- Several shops on the go at once
- Not only the supermarket — hardware, nursery, pharmacy
- Remembers which shop you buy a thing at
- Share the list, and two phones stay in step
- Say it instead of typing it
- Hand a list to a delivery app instead of walking it
What leaves your phoneNothing, unless you share a list or
join two phones to one household. Then that list is stored on our server so the other
phone can read it.
What it does
- Photograph a page and it reads the recipe off it
- Or send one over from wherever you found it
- Handwriting kept exactly as it was written
- Cooking for six instead of four, without the sums
- The ingredients go straight onto your shopping list
- One recipe on one page, on paper
- The oven converted four ways
- Send somebody a recipe as one link
- Findable a year later by whatever you remember
What leaves your phoneNothing, unless you send somebody a
recipe — then that one recipe goes on the server, with a small thumbnail of your
photograph. Pasting a web address sends that address, so the page can be fetched for
you.
What it does
- Jobs that add up to something a child is saving for
- One person sets them, another ticks them off
- A bit of a fuss when something is finished
- The prize lands on the shopping list
- Opens in the garage and down the garden, with no signal
What leaves your phoneNothing, unless you share the list
with another phone — then the jobs, the goal and the names you chose are stored
so it can read them.
What it does
- One link, and nobody buys the same thing twice
- You never see who took what
- Add a link to the exact thing you meant
- Three people can put in on one bigger gift
- The list can be the invitation, and collect the replies
- One link for the whole family, not one each
- Ask somebody else for theirs
What leaves your phoneThe list you share, because there is
no other way for somebody else to read it. What your guests do is anonymous — a
claim and a yes-or-no carry no name and no telephone number.
What it does
- Photograph a business card and keep the person
- Says what it could not read rather than guessing
- Where you met them, and what it was about
- Findable by anything you remember — company, job, city
- Your own card as a QR code anybody can scan
- Straight into your contacts, so WhatsApp finds them
- Nothing for the other person to install
What leaves your phoneNothing at
all. No server, and the reading is done on the phone. No photograph, name or
number has anywhere to go.
What it does
- Records a meeting and writes it up on the device
- Works where there is no signal at all
- The transcript appears while you are still in the meeting
- Yours afterwards as plain text
- One box searches every meeting you have ever recorded
- Lands you on the line, with the minute it was said at
- Hands the cards you were given over to CardPal
What leaves your phoneNothing at
all. No server and no upload. The speech model is downloaded to the
phone; the recording never goes the other way.
What it does
- One number a week, and the line it makes
- A week that goes the wrong way is just a week
- Does not assume which way you are going
- The dose, if there is one, marked on the chart
- What the tape measure says, not only the scale
- Kilograms or pounds, centimetres or inches
- Something to take to the appointment
What leaves your phoneNothing at
all. Sharing between phones is switched off in the code rather than merely
unused, and health readings never had a way out.
What it does
- Three steps, and the month has a shape
- The bills arrive as a tick-list with the amounts filled in
- Bills come off on their day, jars empty as you spend
- One number for what is safe to spend
- Share a bank message in and it offers to file it
- School fees in the months they are actually payable
- Two phones, one budget
- Forty-nine currencies, each printed the way its own banks print it
What leaves your phoneOnly sealed text, and only if you
sync between phones. The server holds an unreadable block and a name worked out from
your own key — no amount, payee, jar or shop.
On the four that store something so another phone can read it, we could in principle open
what is stored. On BudgetPal and BodyPal we could not. Saying so is the point of this
page.