Apps That Help You Manage Your Life

SAN FRANCISCO -- Early mobile apps were designed as entertaining diversions or workplace efficiency tools. Now, there are a slew of apps aimed at making your domestic life easier, from helping you pay your bills on time to keeping track of your kids.
"Mobile apps are a little unique," says Nick O'Neill, founder of SocialTimes.com, an online media company focused on the convergence of social and mobile technologies. "For example, I use something called UberCab, which allows me to call a taxi. All apps serve some utility; it's how well they serve it that determines the demand."
There's demand, all right. Billions of apps have been downloaded from Apple's ( AAPL - news - people ) App Store alone. O'Neill says content such as games will always dominate downloads because most games entertain only for a short period of time. In contrast, utility apps will hang around on people's smartphones longer, provided they're actually useful.
In Pictures: Apps That Help You Manage Your Life
Here's a rundown of the best apps for managing your hectic life:
ICurfew lets kids use their iPhone to send parents a time-stamped report--that can't be edited--identifying their location.

"If a kid says 'I want to go to a party,' and the parent says, 'How do I know you're going there and not somewhere else?,' the kid can use iCurfew," says Vanessa Van Petten, founder of iCurfew creator Radical Parenting. "Teenagers tell me they get to build more trust with their parents. And people also use it when they need to pick their kids up, so kids don't have to wait outside in places that aren't safe."
Having trouble keeping track of your bills? BillMinder allows users to create a bill payment schedule.
MobiQpons allows users to download coupons based on users' location and shopping interests. MobiQpons also recruits local businesses into its network to match their promotions to nearby MobiQpons users. "Let's say I'm looking for a massage, and I'm only willing to pay $40," says founder and chief executive Navneet Aron. "You can do a search, and it'll only pull up local 4.5 to 5-star rated businesses (based on reviews by aggregators such as Yelp and Google ( GOOG - news - people )) offering deals in your specified price-range."
Other useful apps: DinnerSpinner lets you enter ingredients you have on hand, or find the nutritional values you desire, and see a range of possible appropriate dishes and recipes. Laundry Pal lets users enter in the washing symbols on clothing tags to find out how to handle their garments. Baby Soothe lets your mobile device play one of a variety of calming sounds to lull your crying baby to sleep.
But apps aren't simply going to help people live more efficiently on a task-by-task basis. Control4, a company that develops software to integrate home systems and household devices, is betting that mobile apps will be a huge player in the integrated household of the future.
"With our system, you can use your smartphone to tell your house you're coming home early, or check if your kids are home," says Will West, chief executive of Control4. "Or maybe grandma doesn't want to go to the nursing home, and now [her own] home can watch or take care of her. So, for example, if she hasn't eaten in 24 hours, I can know that and call her."
O'Neill says the rise of apps corresponds with the death of desktop PCs. "The bottom line is that a very large percentage of people have mobile devices, and the capacity of those devices is increasing exponentially," he says.