By Daniel B. Kline
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: Starbucks app
By: Starbucks
Price: Free
Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android
Should you get it?: If you shop at the pricey coffee chain, the Starbucks app makes it awfully easy.

While a lot of companies have apps for their customers, the Starbucks app may be the best retail app available. The coffee chain has pioneered the use of your phone as a payment device, and it’s almost too easy to take a Starbucks gift card and make it your payment method through your phone.

Basically, a cardholder simply inputs some data and the balance gets transfered to your phone. You can set up automatic reloads that make sure your virtual card is never empty. This, of course, also creates an odd disconnect between buying something at Starbucks and actually spending money. When all you have to do is hold your phone up to a digital scanner to pay, it simply does not feel like spending money, which might lead to overspending.

By Daniel B. Kline
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: Trivie
By: Trivie
Available on: iPad, iPhone
Price: Free (upgrades are available for a price)
Should you get it? Maybe

Trivie offers fairly basic trivia action in a game show-style format. Players must either create an account or log in through Facebook to play, and all games are head-to-head against either a friend you invite or a stranger you are matched against randomly.

The basic game play has players competing in a four-round match where the early rounds are multiple-choice questions and the final round is a single question a la Final Jeopardy. There are rotating free categories as well as a selection of topics that can be paid for. You can also buy other items in the game like fancier avatars or the ability to earn credits to buy even more stuff faster.

Trivie works much like Words with Friends or an online board game like chess or checkers in that once the first user completes a round, he must wait for his opponent to play before scores are compared and the second round becomes playable. This makes for somewhat unsatisfying game play as playing a round takes longer than many games with similar styles of play.

In addition, over the handful of games I played with strangers, it seems that if one player builds a commanding early lead, the other tends to not come back to finish. If that happens, instead of a forfeit victory, the player in the lead is simply stuck in an unfinished game. And, since Trivie does track how many victories a player has, creating a big lead only to have your opponent not finish can be somewhat frustrating.

Trivie's website claims the app has more than 75,000 trivia questions and in frequent play, I did not see a repeat very often. The questions are somewhat easy in general and the game is more aimed at the Wheel of Fortune audience than the Jeopardy crowd.

Trivie is a decent, but not great, app that suffers from the intermittent game play. A single player option would be nice, as would faster gameplay.

By Joel Abrams
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: Tiny Tycoons
By: The Tab Lab
Available on: iPhone, iPad
Price: Free
Should you get it? Yes, if you like Farmville-type games.

I recently put in a bid for The Boston Globe, but was unsuccessful, so I bought Boston.com. Not in the real world, but in Tiny Tycoons - a sim where instead of growing crops, building a city or running an amusement park, you take over real-world real estate.

By Daniel B. Kline
Boston.com staff

Reviewing: OpenTable
By: OpenTable
Available on: iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone
Price: Free
Should you get it? Yes

Having a useful website does not always translate into having a useful app. Take countless travel apps that perform poorly when compared to their online versions. So just because OpenTable has an easy-to-use, especially useful website does not mean that would carry over to the app.

In this case, however, those fears were unfounded as the OpenTable folks have delivered a perfect, simple, and elegant app. Like its online parent, the OpenTable app lets you make restaurant reservations. And while the website can sometimes feel cluttered and a little hard to navigate, the app offers the bare minimum. There are no bells and whistles; but in this case, you don't need them.

The OpenTable app makes it incredibly easy to use your phone to make a restaurant reservation – be it for tonight in Boston, or six months down the road in San Francisco. After registering (or logging in with an existing account), you simply pick a location, a date, and time. Once you enter that data, a list of available times at various eateries come up and finishing the reservation is just a couple of clicks away.

There's nothing fancy about this app. It doesn't do much to help you decide between the restaurants (though you can see menus and read reviews from other OpenTable customers). You can also get directions by accessing the Maps app from the OpenTable app, but none of that is the point. This is an app that lets you make a reservation in a few simple clicks and it does that fabulously well.

OpenTable also has a rewards system tied into your account where you get points for every reservation you make and keep. Those points can be traded in for gift cards good at any OpenTable restaurant. Since the app offers a useful service without offering a kickback, the rewards system is simply icing on an already delicious cake.

By Daniel B. Kline
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: SkyDrive
By: Microsoft
Available on: iPhone, Windows Phone, Android
Price: Free
Should you get it?: Yes, if your main computer is a PC.

Microsoft and Apple have worked together at various points, but it's usually a union full of mistrust.

In the past - before the iPod, iPhone, and iPad - Apple needed Microsoft. But in recent years, Microsoft has fallen behind its hipper competitor. Neither Microsoft nor Apple has ever seemed to want to work together. Even when Microsoft creates a version of its Office software for Mac users, both sides seem a little disgusted to need each other.

SkyDrive, however, is Microsoft admitting that some people will use Windows-based PCs, but refuse to adopt Windows phones or the Surface Tablet. Instead, these users will embrace Apple iOS or Android-powered products.

A few years ago, Microsoft would have made it hard on those users, forcing them to find workarounds to move their files between operating systems. SkyDrive, the generic name for Microsoft’s cloud-based storage product, shows that those times have changed and that the Windows-maker understands that it must allow users easy access to their files even on devices running competing operating systems.

The SkyDrive app (tested on an iPhone 4S) allows easy access to stored Windows files. In my case, the files were mostly Word documents created on a Microsoft Surface RT and pictures taken on a Windows phone. The SkyDrive app made those files readily available on my iPhone in a basic, easy-to-understand file folder structure.

Unfortunately, available is all that they were as the SkyDrive app does not offer the Web-based editing services the Web version of the product offers. To edit a Word or Excel document through the app, iPhone users must also have an app that allows for editing that file type. And even though there are lots of options for apps that allow for that, not having basic in-app editing tools in the SkyDrive app is disappointing.

Of course, Windows phones come pre-installed with a mobile version of Office, so this won't be a problem if you are one of the few who have one. Still, the SkyDrive app lets you read documents or forward them to another device – not perfect, but still useful. And if you have any of the apps that let you open Office files in iOS, you'll have full editing access and SkyDrive becomes an even better product.

By Daniel B. Kline
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: Pandora
By: Pandora
Available on: iPhone, Android
Price: Free (paid version available without ads for $3.99 a month)
Should you get it? Yes

Pandora knows my musical tastes better than I do.

The app/website works off a simple premise: Tell it an artist or two whose songs you like, and Pandora feeds you music it thinks you will enjoy. Give a song a "thumbs up," and Pandora serves you more like it. Give a "thumbs down," and not only does the song stop playing, but Pandora knows to steer its choices away from that type of music.

I signed up for Pandora after downloading the free app in the iTunes store on an iPhone 4S. After a simple registration, I built a "radio station" by inputting a few bands I liked, starting with Buffalo Tom, The Lemonheads, The Replacements, and John Hiatt. Pandora used that info to start serving me songs from those artists and others its extensive database thought I would like.

Even the initial mix was pretty good, delivering me cuts from my selected artists along with some songs I had never heard, but liked. Yes, I gave the thumbs down when there was a little too much Weezer and my selection of Hiatt led to a bit too much country for my taste, but the choices were 80% accurate, and Pandora learned my tastes very quickly.

Since I had a free, not paid, account, Pandora served an audio ad every six songs or so and the app had plenty of graphic-based ads that got in the way when I glanced down while driving to see what song was playing. Non-paying customers also have a limit on how many songs they can skip in an hour. (A Pandora subscription offers an ad-free experience for $3.99 a month.)

Pandora has almost no learning curve. It's a very simple app to use, and while I appreciate that it gave me songs by my favorite artists, I also enjoyed that the app exposed me to bands and artists I was unfamiliar with whose work I now plan to explore further. This piece actually elevates Pandora above other music services as it does not merely play a mix of stuff I already like; it broadens my musical horizons in a way that rarely happens to a 39-year-old guy who never listens to music radio (and who wouldn't like much of what gets played anyway).

By Martine Powers
Globe Staff

Reviewing: Sunrise
By: Adair Systems
Available on: iPhone
Price: 99 cents
Should you get it? Yes, if sunlight is kind of your thing.

The "Sunrise" app is so bare-basics, it feels like it should come pre-uploaded on every iPhone, a la "Weather" and "Stocks."

It's been a staple on my iPhone for years, but I was flummoxed when a co-worker - brooding about daylight savings - announced that she'd never even heard of the app, which functions as a solar calculator.

The concept is simple: "Sunrise" uses your GPS coordinates (or one of hundreds of pre-uploaded locations worldwide) to determine the exact moment of sunrise and sunset at your spot, as well as moonrise and the end of twilight.

Since I downloaded this almost-freebie, I use it way more often than I ever anticipated. Will you have time for a post-work run before it gets too dark? Trying to time your lighthouse visit to coincide with a romantic sunset? Planning a road trip and want to hit the road before dawn? This app has answers.

And there are a few features other than sunrise and sunset: Data on lunar phases helps plan when to go on that moonlit walk. And I'm not really sure I ever cared to know when "solar noon" takes place, but it's a fun fact to have handy!

"Sunrise" is particularly helpful for travel or hiking. If you choose one of hundreds of pre-loaded locations around the globe (rather than your real-time GPS location) the app has saved a database of solar data for years to come. That way, even if you're in a place with 3G or wi-fi access (think: a remote Caribbean island or the wilds of the Berkshires) you can still get the stats to maximize your daytime.

Of course, if you download the app, you'll discover that - surprise! - the recent "fall back" in daylight savings time means the sun now sets at 4:35 p.m. Which is kind of depressing. Seriously.

But at least you'll know that solar noon takes place at 11:29 a.m.!

By Robert S. Davis
Globe Staff

Reviewing: 360 Panorama
By: Occipital
Price: 99 cents
Platforms: Available on iOS (tested on iPhone and iPad) and Android
Should you get it?: Yes.

From a viewer's perspective, there are few things more dramatic and immersive than a panoramic photograph. But for photographers, the production of such sweeping images can be an onerous task that at first required specialty cameras and film as well as time and expertise.

Digital photography facilitated production, allowing photographers to stitch together many photos in an image editor or via a camera's built-in software. And now app-laden smartphones that rival the image quality of point-and-shoot cameras make producing stunning panoramas easier than ever.

At 99 cents, Occipital's 360 Panorama app offers iOS and Android users a powerful tool to create not only standard panoramic photos, but truly immersive, 360-degree images with sweeping views from sky to shoes. Image quality is often excellent and the app offers several options for sharing photos.

By Eric Bauer
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: Ad Hawk
By: Sunlight Foundation
Price: Free
Platforms: Android, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Should you get it?: Only if you're not already turned off by politics

We're all sick of campaign ads.

But let's face it, for the next few weeks you won't be able to avoid them unless you disconnect your TV, radio, computer, and phone. Your best defense against this political blitzkrieg is to be aware and informed.

Or so believe the makers of Ad Hawk, a free app that identifies the campaign ad you're listening to and tells you who's behind it, where their money comes from, and where they stand politically.

It relies on technology similar to Shazam, the hall of fame app that identifies the song you're listening to, and using it couldn't be simpler.

By Elizabeth Comeau
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: StandApp
By: Lyonel Douge
Available on: iPhone
Price: Free
Should you get it? Yes, if you need a reminder to get up from your desk job

OK, I fully admit that the idea behind this app sounds foolish and unnecessary: An app that reminds you to get out of your desk chair and stand up at various intervals during the day.

But I'm a web producer. Other than the fact that I'm training for a half-marathon, my entire day is spent sitting down at my computer.

StandApp is really straightforward: Download the free app and tell it at which specific interval you would like to be reminded to get up.