Apps to ring in the New Year in style

It can’t be New Year’s Eve without a fair selection of apps to get you to 2015.

But first: the party. The celebration in Times Square is one of the most famous in the world, and, of course, there’s an official app. The Times Square Official Ball App connects you to a social media feed about the party, plus a live stream for the ceremony in which the ball drops at midnight. The app has a countdown timer built in that allows you to know when the new year hits New York City.

There’s not much more to this well-designed app, but it’s free for iOS and Android.

For a more global take, there is the New Year Countdown app by TimeAndDate.com. This app is part countdown clock, part global timekeeper, and great for explaining to children how time zones work. The app’s main page shows a countdown for key places in each time zone, starting with Christmas Island/Kiribati. There’s also a map view where you can watch all the different time zones switch over as 2015 arrives. It’s very simple, but charming, and it’s free on iOS.

New Year’s resolutions are notoriously hard to keep, but there are apps to help you build and stick to a habit. My favourite of these is Lift, which promises to help you “Get fit. Get thin. Get rich. Get promoted. Get happy.”

The app is part motivator and part prompt. The motivation comes from the community of Lift users and some coaches. You can chat with any of these people, for advice or cheerleading. The app can also prompt you regularly with reminders. It’s elegantly designed and so easy to use that you won’t waste energy trying to figure it out. It’s free for iOS and Android.

Getting fit is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions, and there are many great apps like RunKeeper (free on iOS and Android) that use your smartphone’s sensors to track your bike rides, workouts or runs. RunKeeper is good for the self-motivated sort who just needs a little boost.

But my favourite app for keeping fit and dropping a little excess weight is Breeze. Breeze simply keeps track of your step count every day, and it prompts you when your pace is falling behind around 10,000 steps - a daily goal that is often said to help you keep healthy. The app also displays positive feedback notifications like “You’ve almost achieved your goal for today, keep up the good work!”

I find that this gentle nudging helps, though I can imagine that some users may find the repeated notifications annoying. Breeze is free on iOS.

If you’ve ever wanted to keep a journal, the New Year is a fine time to start, and apps like Day One and Diaro can make your paper diary a thing of the past. Day One is a great journal app, for iOS only, that has a stylish minimalist look as well as a long list of features like automatic location tracking, weather logging and a privacy passcode.

The app lets you include photos and text in each entry, and you can set it up to remind you to add a daily entry. There’s a lot to like about this app, and perhaps its only flaw is that it could be a bit more customisable. It costs $1 (Rs 63).

On Android, Diaro is a great counterpart to Day One. It also has a minimalist look, and it’s easy to use. Diaro includes nice touches like the ability to tag your journal entries so that later on you can easily find similar entries by searching, and the option to add many photos to a particular entry. It’s free.

Finally, check out the New Year Fireworks live wallpaper app, free for Android devices. It’s a simple, fairly stylish animation to celebrate the New Year and includes fireworks effects that play on your home screen behind your app icons. And it may even help you remember to write “2015” instead of “2014” on your January bills.