App Focus: Best Apps Nov '15 Edition

A monthly compilation of some of the best new (and old) apps...

Noon Pacific, 22tracks, SoundCloud, SC Radio (for SoundCloud) - Easily the best apps/websites to explore fresh music.

YouTube Red - YouTube's design is still a mess, but with Red you can at least put every single video for offline viewing/listening and background playback. Not to mention, no ads!

Genius, Musixmatch - Finding the lyrics of a song you're listening to has never been this easy!

Great Big Story - Millennial-friendly bite-sized news is a trend that's catching up big time these days, with even major news organisations like New York Times (NYT Now), Wall Street Journal (What's News), Al Jazeera (AJ+), Buzzfeed and now CNN (which funds Great Big Story) joining the bandwagon. All of this is only making me miss Circa News more and more.

Rivet Radio - Remember Umano, the app that let you listen to news articles read by professional voice actors? It was shut down after it was acquired by Dropbox early this May, but now you have a replacement in the form of Rivet Radio.

Read (iOS only) - Do you recollect Readmill, the beautiful distraction-free ebook reader that was once again shut down by Dropbox after it was acquired last year? Chances are you have or haven't, but don't worry, there's a replacement for this one too, in the form of Read.

Sunshine, Shade, Weather Line, Fresh Air, Marline, Weather Timeline - Seriously if you ask me, the iOS App Store is inundated with a zillion weather apps - Solar, Weathertron, Yahoo! Weather, The Weather Channel, Dark Sky, etc. to name a few. But the above mentioned apps are good too, especially Sunshine, which goes the crowdsourcing way for more accurate weather forecasts, and Weather Timeline, a beautifully designed weather app for Android.

Onetime. (iOS only) - A simple but elegant world clock and time zone convertor app.

Enlight, Afterlight (iOS only, paid) - Some of the best photo editing apps alongside Darkroom and Google's Snapseed.

Nat Geo View (iOS only) - Stunning photography content from National Geographic, including archival photos that go back more than 100 years.

Google Keep, Apple Notes, Microsoft OneNote, Evernote, Inkflow, Paper, Notability - Note taking apps are no longer just about jotting down quick ideas and stuff, they are also about adding a visual dimension, allowing you to draw and scribble, thereby making it all the more useful to convey what you want.

Trello, Whiteboard - Like weather, task and to-do list management apps are one too many on Android and iOS, but that doesn't stop app developers from coming up with better variants, like Trello and Whiteboard for example.

Parchi (Android only) - While on the matter of notes and to-do lists, it may also be worth checking out Parchi, a new simple notes-cum-reminders app from Microsoft Garage.

Lumino City (iOS only, paid) - Gorgeous and 'lovingly' crafted to perfection (it's after all made out of paper), Lumino City is conceivably the best mobile game to come out since Monument Valley. (The app is in fact a year old, but I got to try it only now after I switched to the iPhone. The perils of switching between ecosystems!)