Download of the Day

We understand, the daily driving commute gets monotonous. After working hard for eight-plus hours, sleepy driving can become a real concern. Technology to the rescue! Drive Awake is a free app that uses eye-tracking technology to "see" when your eyes start to drift closed and will wake you with a loud parrot squawk and driving directions to the nearest Café Amazon, the company behind the app (of course there has to be a business purpose to the service, right?).

Since Café Amazon stores are in Thailand, those based outside the country can ignore that part of the app, but give a test-drive to the eye-detection part. The iPhone needs to be placed at eye level on the windshield, which isn't the most convenient place, but in our brief use of the app, it did notice as our eyes closed. Actually, it also screeched a warning even when eyes were not closed.

It may be an advertising gimmick, but could this be the sign of technologies to come? A Google Glass windshield that monitors biometrics and ensures drivers are at their optimum alertness for driving?

Follow the break to see a Drive Awake demo.

Sure, apps that add type to photos are nothing new, but an app that does that plus a whole lot more? That's novel. Enter A Beautiful Mess ($1) — an app from the popular site of the same name — where scrapbooking meets Instagram meets blogging.

A Beautiful Mess gives you many ways to play with photos and make them look pretty and fun. First select the picture you want to spruce up, choose a filter and cutesy border, then add text to the image. Pick from four fonts, and move and resize the text in any color you wish. Go even further by adding doodles, like bikes and word bubbles, and throw on phrases like "Adventure!" The app even offers more doodles and fonts for $1 per pack. After you've created your masterpiece, of course, you can share it on social sites or email it.

There's no denying that the app is a great way to make your snaps stand out. For that, it sure does put the "beautiful" in beautiful mess.

Google finally has a solution for those multiplatform relationships (you know, if he's an Android and she's an iOS or vice versa), and it's called Hangouts. The video chatting feature for Google+ is now a standalone app for Android and iOS and as an extension for Chrome.

How is the Hangouts app, introduced at today's Google I/O conference, about to change the way we communicate? By eliminating the barriers between different mobile platforms that prevent texters on different types of devices from sending video, photos, and — most importantly — Emoji. Hangouts is a messaging app that streamlines conversation between multiple people, enabling one-on-one or group chatting across both iPhone and Android devices.

You can invite up to 10 friends to a video call and "hang out" on a computer or a smartphone. Conversations, shared photos, and video call history are kept in the cloud, so you always have access to those threads even if you lose your device.

Synchronicity is definitely one of Hangouts' best features. Once you get a notification for a new message on one device, that alert will be silenced across your computer or other devices. There's even a snooze option when you need some peace and quiet from notifications. Download Hangouts and see how Google's new app bridges the multiplatform divide!

It's happened to all of us: your friend recommends a book or a bar, and you forget to jot it own or can't find it buried in your pile of sticky notes later. Now Thinglist ($2) promises to help you access the info in a snap.

Billed as your "want-to-do list," the app is an easy way to keep track of ideas and recommendations so you don't have to rack your brain trying to remember the name of a person or place that's on the tip of your tongue.

The app works two ways. First, when you want to make a note of something, you click on a plus sign, add a name, and then choose the category that it fits under, like food or movie or product. You can even add notes like "great happy hour deal" before you save. Then, when you want to find something, just filter by category to see what you've jotted down before.

It's simple, beautifully designed (just look at those fun icons), and set up to make life a whole lot easier. Isn't that what apps are supposed to be?

Tired of games that have you feeling like you're in a different dimension? Maybe you're wishing for more minimalist designs. Well, meet Dots, a free app from Betaworks that's so pretty and simple, it's like a breath of fresh air.

Here's the scoop: you have 60 seconds to connect as many dots by color as possible. As soon as you swipe them away, new dots take their place. Tip: if you draw a square with dots of the same color, it removes that color completely, giving you one less thing to worry about. Share your score on Facebook and Twitter, and challenge friends to beat it. Buy dots, if you wish ($5 gets you 50,000) to purchase "power ups" that let you stop the clock, remove dots, or expand the board.

Before you know it, a minute's up, and you're strategizing your next go at it. Is it grade-school easy? Yes. Addictive? Absolutely.

When you're waiting on a late bus or a handcrafted cappuccino, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever other social feed fills your idle time no longer needs to be your boredom go-to. After downloading Tapestry (free for iOS and Android), you'll get lost in the app's wonderful collection of bite-size short stories. Welcome to your new form of digital escapism.

The app is a reading portal that features original copy and illustrations from bestselling authors like Robin Sloan in a fun, bite-size format. Each story is "tappable." There's no page-turn animation, no swiping — just a tap. The stories only move forward, and tapping gives the creations a stop-motion effect.

Some are funny, like ""It's Hard Being Two," and others are thought provoking, like "Underwater Philosophers." But they're all adorable and completely original. New tappable stories are delivered to your Android or iOS device regularly, and if you're inspired to create one yourself, sign up and do so, then be sure to share your tappable essays with us.

Sharing beautiful snaps on Instagram has become mobile America's favorite pastime, but Days (free), an app for iOS, is encouraging smartphone-empowered citizens to share what Instagram doesn't show — their real lives, unfiltered. The visual diary, which has a bright, playful interface, lets users create and upload photos and animated GIFs, with no filters or camera roll importing allowed.

Like a photo journal, the Days app organizes your media into — you guessed it — days. Photo collections appear in your stream with time stamps, and you can share those "days" via email or text.

The app's best feature is its off-line capability. Photos and GIFs can be captured and edited without a data connection, then uploaded once the device is back online. Your unfiltered creations can also be crossposted to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. Days is a unique twist on photo-sharing social networks, and we think it'll "GIF" the traditional diary a run for its money.

If, like George Clooney, you spend lots of time up in the air, then you are very familiar with the inevitability of acts of mother nature, delays, cancellations, and missed connections. Biding time in an airport certainly isn't glamorous, but GateGuru (free), an app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, makes it all a little easier on your weary traveling soul.

The airport information and flight status mobile guide — which was recently revamped with a snazzy new interface —automatically lists info about an airport's weather, amenities, and maps once you input your itinerary.

Submitting an itinerary is easy too. Just email it to plans@gateguruapp.com or connect your account to Kayak or Tripit, and the app will fill in the blanks for you. GateGuru is loaded with essential details about your day of travel: estimated security checkpoint wait times, tips to help navigate puzzling terminals, and real-time flight info. Plus, GateGuru now lets you book last-minute car rentals right from your phone.

For frequent fliers, there's a fun way to track your mileage with travel stats, a log of how many airports you've visited, how much time you've spent waiting for security, and more. This app helps make a long day of travel go more smoothly, especially if you've got multiple connections. Travel advisory: don't pack your bags without it.

Distraction-free tweeting? It can be done! Alas, a solution: Twipster is a browser extension for Chrome and Safari that brings the micromessaging site back to the bare necessities. Twipster completely transforms Twitter.com by replacing distracting backgrounds with a simple white backdrop and increasing text size to make tweets more readable.

With Twipster, Twitter becomes more responsive, too — you'll be able to read those pithy messages no matter what size the window is. The way you interact with tweets is unchanged. Twitter cards still expand to show a preview of the link or image attached, and you can still reply, retweet, favorite, email, and embed to your heart's content.

What's missing are the trending topics, who to follow, and photo and video nodes on the left. Tweets, following, followers, favorites, and lists have been moved to the top of the page.

Add the browser extension to Chrome or Safari, and Twipster will wipe away all of those unnecessary distractions automatically. Ahhh . . . clean and simple, just how we like it. Are you a Redditor, too? Check out these minimalist mobile apps for "the front page of the Internet."