Smartphone Primer

• Diamedic Diabetes Logbook

Record and monitor your entire diet plus factors such as medication, insulin and physical activity. Customize the format for glucose readings and lab results along with refill calculators. E-mail your doctors or family members vital stats straight from the app.

$6; IP

• The Athlete’s Diary

This app allows you to track progress on a mobile device and the Web for numerous sports. Graphs illustrate your progress by week, month and year including any time, distance or quantity you choose to record. Each entry accommodates a description of the event, including course details, how you felt and any other info you might want to analyze later.

$20 (plus a free trial version); IP, PP

• GreenFinder Golf GPS

Thanks to your phone’s built-in GPS, this pricey app pinpoints exactly how far you are from the hole—give or take three yards. GreenFinder’s library includes well over 10,000 golf courses in North America and overseas, and new ones are added constantly. Users can also submit info on new courses and course changes, which typically finds it way into updates within a week. If you’re ready to play but don’t know where to go, the search function will find courses within a 20-mile radius. The Blackberry version even includes voice prompts for the yardage.

$35/year; IP, BB, AN, WM

Brain Exercise and Entertainment

• Brain Challenge

This tests and trains you in five categories—logic, math, memory, visual and focus—with multilevel games that genuinely challenge your ability to reason and solve problems.

$5; IP

• Word Fu

Give your iPhone a shake to roll the lettered dice and then tap the screen to construct as many words as possible before the countdown timer cuts you off. Longer, more complex words accumulate more points. Scrabble lovers will enjoy playing against family and friends in real time over a WiFi connection.

free; IP

• Pandora

Choose a song, singer, musician or musical genre. Pandora identifies similar music and streams a personalized “radio station” directly to your smartphone. It learns what you like and further customizes your stations when you give songs a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Free; IP, BB, PP, AN, WM

• Shazam

Ever heard a song in a store, restaurant, café and racked your brain to remember who sings it? With the touch of a button, Shazam’s electronic ears identify the name of the song and the artist, even at a distance or with background noise.

Free; AN, IP, BB

Jackson Lynch lives in New York.