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Do you have an app that you use for a unique or uncommon purpose? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by cheese_greater@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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That diverges from how the app was intended to be used or for what audiences it was marketed for

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[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Merlin Bird ID - it’s Shazam for bird calls

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Right but do you use it for some orthogonal use? Arent you just using it exactly as intended for its primary purpose?

[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Should have read more, I wasn’t aware that was part of the question. I’m just posting about niche usage apps I like. I don’t use them often, but they’re essential for their niche.

Idk if this counts, but I use the Reminders app on my phone to create packing lists for work travel. Very easy to uncheck everything then re-check off things as you pack them. Keep building a perpetual packing list and you’ll never forget things. Lists in general are awesome for offloading cognitive workload.

RunPee will alert you when there’s a lull in a movie so you can sneak away to take a leak. Includes a plot summary of what you missed while you pissed.

RPM app - I use this for ensuring my turntable is spinning at the correct RPM.

I’ve got a Dolby app on my Mac that I use for encoding or decoding Dolby B/C tape recordings because I’m a cassette nerd. Super niche.

I also enjoy GPS raw data apps for seeing how fast my airplane is going when it takes off.

If I think of any more I’ll post again.

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Idk about merlin, but with iNaturalist, the purpose was logging sightings and locations of plants/animals/fungi/etc, and letting people double check your ID so it can be used in research.

This built a massive database of images, locations, times, etc, which is a really good training set for image (or sound) recognition. Now the app is really good at automatically recognizing stuff from pictures, so people just use it for that. The app actually started to try to penalize you for using it for identification without actually logging stuff.