App reviews: Forest, Music Memos

Can't seem to put down your smartphone? Believe it or not, there's an app to help you. Forest is a sort of glorified timer: Users set an amount of time to focus on a task and the app "plants a seed" at the start. If you make it through your specified time without hopping into another app, you're rewarded with a digital tree to plant. If you leave for a different app during that time, you get a shriveled stick instead. Results are "planted" in a plot at the end of every session. The more often you succeed in your concentration goals, the bigger your digital forest becomes.

Seeing a plant from seed to tree (or shrub, if you're trying to focus for 20 minutes or less) can be difficult, particularly if you're smartphone-dependent. But it's kind of nice to not only have a timer set for quiet time, but also to get a little reward at the end. Free, for Android devices. For iOS devices, it's 99 cents.

Music Memos

Apple's newest music app has what may be considered a niche audience, at best: songwriters. (Or at least people who fancy themselves songwriters from time to time.) But with Music Memos, the company has produced a pretty good tool for catching those moments when the muse takes you. The app is designed to automatically detect the chords and rhythm of what you record, to provide its own guitar and drum backing tracks.

This works better in some cases than in others. If you're fiddling around with your guitar and want to strum in the bones of a song, it's pretty good. It's less successful if you're singing solo. That's particularly true if you're really on the go and not somewhere very quiet. Still, the app is a fun way to keep track of those little nuggets of songs you may come up with, regardless of whether you're a casual songbird or have your eyes on a Grammy. Free, for iOS devices.