iOS: Earlier this year, Google teamed up with Nintendo to turn Google Maps into Mario Kart, replacing the app's usual location icon with a fist-bumping plumber riding a red go-kart. The crossover didn't last very long, but Google is now bringing back some of that magic with a new update to the Maps app on iOS.

iOS: Making GIFs yourself has always been a pretty involved process either made too simple to suit my desires or too complicated to be intuitive. GIF Toaster blends the best of both worlds, offering more than enough control over the GIFs you're trying to create in an interface that's simple to use and free of ads (if you pay).

I learned how to play the piano the old-fashioned way -- by being dragged by my mother to weekly lessons taught by an elderly woman in the neighbourhood, and yawning at the sheet music as my kid-fingers played a clunky rendition of Für Elise. Since then, music instruction has evolved. There has been a crop of video game apps that introduce children to instruments such as the piano, guitar, drums and ukulele and through fun challenges, get them to practice -- willingly.

iOS/Mac: Whenever I plug my MacBook into a TV to share, say, a video with my friends, I end up on the floor, squatting in front of the laptop, while everyone else sits back and enjoys themselves. Since I occasionally use my Mac to manage the streaming media in my home and often find myself connecting it to some big screen via its HDMI port or through something like a Chromecast, a remote control would be a lifesaver.

iOS/Android: I hate mobile browsing. When I open Safari, I'm usually trying to google something quickly, then go back to my other apps. Lately I've been trying the mobile browser Cake, publicly released for iOS and Android today and it's made searching much faster.

You're standing in line at the grocery store, so it seems like a decent time to scroll through Facebook. But then you do it again while you're stuck in traffic driving those groceries home, and then again waiting on dinner to arrive. Before you know it, you can spend cumulative hours on social media over the course of the day, hours you're never going to get back that could arguably have spent, at least a few of them, doing something a little better.

Boomerang, the email add-on that lets you control when to send email, is now a free full-featured email app on iOS. We've included the Android version in our Android download pack for years and the app started in 2010 as a Gmail add-on, so this has been a long time coming. The iOS version is in beta, according to a FAQ buried inside the app's settings menu.

iOS: If you're like me, you've experienced the sting of an unwanted subscription draining money from your checking account, long after you forgot to cancel a free trial. If you'd like to finally get a handle on all your subscriptions without poring over your bank statements, take a look at Bobby. It's an iOS app that lets you track multiple subscriptions to see how much money you're shelling out each month. The only thing it requires is a little leg work to start (and a $US1.99 ($3) in-app purchase for certain options).

If you've been using your computer to manage the apps for your iOS device, that time has come to an end. The latest update to Apple's iTunes removes its access to the iOS App Store, as well as the ability to manage iOS apps, with the company expecting you to handle all that app-related business on your iOS device itself. So long, app syncing.

Life is filled with deep, complicated questions and you don't learn any of the answers during your scholastic education. Enter the School of Life app on iOS, where you can watch insightful videos, have intelligent conversations, and hopefully find some answers.

With an eye towards the developing world where people are more likely to own cheap phones and have spottier wireless data access, the big names in tech are developing simpler versions of their apps. These apps are lightweight, use little data, and don't burn through battery life. Sound good? It does to us too, and here's how to give them a test drive.

iPhone: The only thing better than using social media is not using social media. That's why there's Binky, which is sort of both.

iPhone: Annotable is one of the best image annotation tools around, especially after Evernote abandoned Skitch a couple of years ago. Now, it's been updated with a slew of new features, making it much more versatile.

Podcasts have become one of the best forms of entertainment around, but it's tough keeping track of the ones you like, ditching episodes you're not interested in, or even managing what you want to hear. Pocket Casts is one of the best apps for helping you organise your podcasts, but you'll need to experiment with it a bit to get it to work for you.

iOS/Chrome: If you like to collect together different links, whether that's for organising a vacation or just random cool stuff, Shout makes it easy to do so, then turn that collection into a list of stuff other people can see.

Equations may as well be a different language, considering how cryptic they can look to the untrained eye. Fortunately, just like the various apps that can use your camera to live-translate, say, Spanish or German, so too does a handy mobile tool exist for mathematics.

Infinity Blade II is not the freshest game available on the App Store, but when the price drops from $11 to free, can you really complain about its age? Even though it came out late-2011, it still looks amazing and if you have a recent device, it'll run great as well.

iPhone: Microsoft updated its Outlook iPhone app today, which happens to be one of the best email apps on iPhone, with a new feature that links the app to a number of third-party add-ins.

Android/iOS: Most calendar apps can manage your schedule just fine, but if you deal with multiple time zones, it's easy to get mixed up. Time Buddy helps you plot your day-to-day when you have to traverse the world.