WWF Together: The World Wildlife Fund has released a free app designed to raise awareness of endangered species without resorting to just the usual dry facts and figures. The app, called Together, uses stunning imagery and digital storytelling to relay information about exotic vanishing animals, from giant pandas to marine turtles to jaguars. Interactive features like Tiger Vision, which allows users to compare their own vision to the advanced visual prowess of a tiger, make clever use of the platform. Through this and similar features, the app meets growing demand for sensory stimulation—all the better to appeal to a new generation of potential donors.

New Forest Cicada Project: Brood II cicadas will soon noisily invade the Eastern Seaboard, and their UK brethren, New Forest cicadas, are also due to emerge this spring. Interestingly, this particular breed hasn’t been discovered in forests for over a decade—possibly due to its incredibly high-pitched song, which is inaudible to human ears. Researchers at the University of Southampton are currently developing an app that will do the hard work of detection on humans’ behalf. If just some of New Forest’s one million annual summer visitors download and open the cicada-detecting app, it could further researchers’ understanding—and future preservation—of this elusive endangered species.

Whale Alert: Those with long-term memories may recall when “Save the Whales” was a widespread rallying cry, but in recent years the anti-whaling initiative has quieted drastically. That’s not to say, however, that there are no longer efforts to protect whales from the effects of the commercial shipping industry. Though boat-whale collisions are rare, some species’ numbers are so low that even a single strike can dramatically impact their already fragile population. Large vessel operators can now rely on an app called Whale Alert, developed by navigation experts at EarthNC, to detect and avoid drastically endangered ‘right whales,’ a class of whales comprised of three species that are particularly prone to thread by trade.

WiFiSLAM: One litmus test of a technology’s future prospects is the degree to which Silicon Valley giants invest their time and money in it. So, it’s telling that both Microsoft and Google (the uncontested victor of the maps-app war) have poured significant resources into indoor navigation capabilities—and Apple’s recent acquisition of WiFiSLAM may tip the scale. The start-up promises to improve the accuracy of indoor mapping by using existing WiFi signals to pinpoint a user’s device to within 2.5 meters. The acquisition, which cost Apple a reported $20 million, suggests that the company isn’t yet committing a full-fledged default to Google’s mapping program.

Indoo.rs: Austrian start-up Indoo.rs recently picked up six figures’ worth of seed money to fuel its indoor-mapping mission. The aptly named firm has developed an SDK designed to make indoor mapping easier for app developers. The resulting platform’s navigation system allows users to determine their exact position within a building, follow the best path to another indoor location, and track their movement en route. Developers can integrate the software into existing apps, allowing users to locate fellow users as well as themselves. Though a potential privacy nightmare, the app should have positive implications for large-scale conferences and conventions, and major events held in big arenas.

Guardly: Mobile safety app maker Guardly has launched an indoor positioning system that promises to speed up response times in emergency situations. The new IPS uses radio frequencies to go beyond identifying the geographic coordinates of a person in danger. In fact, it can specify both the floor level and room number of a person’s indoor location to more precisely direct first responders to those in peril. The system seamlessly integrates into Guardly’s currently available safety apps, which aim to deliver faster, more accurate emergency response. This practical approach to IPS may soon become a standard element of emergency preparedness protocols.

ArtLens: The Cleveland Museum of Art’s free iPad app, ArtLens, provides an enriched and personalized experience. Users can follow pre-programmed tours, or choose to forge their own paths through the galleries, curating selections in real-time as the app’s indoor navigation technology directs them from one work to the next. In an updated approach to QR technology, image recognition software unlocks additional video, audio, and visual content and interpretive context (only available on-site through the app) from artworks marked with an ArtLens icon. For visitors who don’t own an iPad, loaners can be rented for $5.

Sound Uncovered: Part science museum, part “learning laboratory,” San Francisco’s Exploratorium provides an interactive and creative space where visitors can learn through hands-on immersion. The museum’s latest app, Sound Uncovered, likewise relies on interactivity to stimulate users’ enthusiasm about the qualities, effects, and experience of sound. Through twelve activities, some of which relate to upcoming exhibits at the Exploratorium’s soon-to-open location, the app investigates subjects like auditory illusion, palindromes, and other “acoustic phenomena.” Like its predecessor, Color Uncovered, the app draws connections between sensory experience and abstract scientific concept, and in doing so contributes significantly to current cultural explorations of sound.

Art Lab: MoMA’s Art Lab provides budding Gen Z artists with the framework to learn about and experiment with key concepts in creative abstraction. Indeed, the app is a companion to MoMA’s ongoing Art Labs, a series of interactive, child-friendly spaces where families can experience the museum’s collection through imaginative play. The digital counterpart brings these activities home, allowing users to compose sound poems, make designs out of lines, create group drawings (a la Exquisite Corpse), or even to sketch freely on a blank canvas. Activities are supplemented with relevant context about prominent modern artists and movements, providing a historical grounding for kids’ artistic explorations.

Clipped: High school sophomore Tanay Tandon developed the summary app Clipped for the academic purpose of condensing the many in-depth materials he regularly reviews for his school’s debate team. But he soon saw its potential for an even broader range of content. Using a patent-pending algorithm to determine main ideas based on sentence structure, the app pulls key points from news and other non-fiction documents and webpages. Summaries are presented in a bulleted list, making for incredibly digestible reading and allowing users to consume more information in less time. The app is currently available for iOS and Android, and also as a Chrome plug-in.

Wavii: Info aggregation app Wavii has a higher goal than most of its competitors, which CEO Adrian Aoun describes as steadily building “a knowledge base of everything that exists.” Like most other aggregators, Wavii provides a feed of subjects and news items, using Facebook Connect to determine relevant content for the reader at hand. But the app distinguishes itself from similar offerings by boiling down articles to a single summarizing sentence, using machine learning to determine each article’s essential point. As is now standard in the aggregation landscape, an integrated social element allows users to instantly like and share their favorite condensed content.

Summly: News-condensing app Summly, the 2011 creation of then-15-year-old Nick D’Aloisio, recently released a redesign featuring stronger summarizing powers. In its updated form, the app relies on gesture-based functionality so that news summaries are the sole focus on the screen. Users still choose the news categories they’d like to follow, but the update promises clearer, more accurate article synopses, thanks to enhanced algorithms and natural language processing. The redesign is rumored to have caught the attention of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, whose recent string of mobile acquisitions suggests the Internet giant may be exploring the hip, relevant mobile experience Summly provides.

Sitegeist: A product of The Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization that advocates greater government transparency, the Sitegeist app connects users to a comprehensive aggregation of data about their local surroundings. The app draws from publicly available information, like census and other statistical data, even Yelp and Foursquare listings, and arranges it into visually pleasing infographics, easily navigable by category. Out-of-towners are sure to benefit from content pertaining to recommended restaurants and popular local haunts, but the Foundation hopes that natives, too, will use the app, to familiarize themselves with the political and economic demographics of their own cities or towns.

Field Trip: Push notifications might seem a tad too pushy lately, thanks to rampant overuse. But Google has found a way to make this much-abused feature worthwhile. The search giant’s Field Trip app provides compelling facts and practical info about users’ immediate surroundings, via push alerts that respond to location and anticipate interests and needs. The app is one of the latest in a line of ambient intelligence platforms, which run constantly to create a seamlessly integrated online/offline experience. Through ambient technology offerings like Field Trip and Google Glass, Google aims to connect users with the physical world more seamlessly and effectively.

Urban Compass: Eight million dollars in seed funding is powering the development of Urban Compass, a forthcoming app that seeks to provide hyperlocal information to urbanites. Co-founders Ori Allon and Robert Reffkin have expressed a desire to build a human-powered data network, through which individual data collectors will contribute to a platform that aggregates listings for users’ convenience. The first of these “data drives” will take place in NYC, with future efforts planned in London and San Francisco. Little else is known about the app at this stage, but its rank and file of influential and discerning investors has made it one to watch.

Echoism: Aspiring ANTM contestants can now learn to “smize” via Tyra Banks’ app that applies her modeling advice to photos, even though some users report extraterrestrial results. Those seeking potentially more attractive photo mods may find Echoism, an app that shows users what they’d look like if both sides of their face matched, more to their liking. Artist Julian Wolkenstein created Echoism to explore the debatable notion that symmetrical faces are more attractive than asymmetrical ones. The results, which range from the subtle to the eerie, are a powerful reminder that the idea of a “good side” usually only exists within one’s own head.

Face Retirement: Gen Ys are wont to live for today rather than plan for tomorrow, as many have seen their parents’ savings eroded. Merrill Edge, however, is trying to remind them that they won’t be forever young. The Merrill Lynch offshoot is taking a more positive approach - as opposed to painting portraits of future financial catastrophe - with Face Retirement, an app that applies the passage of time to user–submitted portraits, revealing wrinkles, sags, and age spots. According to Wired, Merrill Edge conceived the promotion in response to research indicating that people are more inclined to save if they can “meet” their future selves.

Drinking Mirror: Alcohol has a wicked relationship to age. The younger one is, the higher one’s tolerance; yet, the older one gets, the more that boozing destroys the vestiges of youth. The Scottish government’s Drop a Glass Size campaign aims to illuminate the long term effects of drinking by speaking to women’s vanity. The Drinking Mirror app, available for both iOS and Android devices, invites users to upload a photo and enter data about their particular drinking habits. It then shows them a photo of how they might look in 10 years at their current alcohol consumption rate. The outcome is certainly sobering.

Infinite Jukebox: 2012 spawned an extensive playlist of earworms, yet music fans whose tastes skew left of the Hot 100 made their own hit factories. Still, they listened to those songs with the frequency of “Call Me Maybe” playing on the radio. Infinite Jukebox, a new hack from The Echo Nest, gives listeners of any genre a clever way to capture the high of song repetition without burning out on a loop of the exact same tune. The program first dissects a song into beats, then uses an algorithm to rearrange them into varying patterns, ensuring that it is never the same old song twice.

Song Reader: Beck is no stranger to remixes, having reinvented compositions by everyone from Lykke Li to Philip Glass. While such projects have kept him relevant, fans have been anxious for a proper Beck release. His new album, Song Reader, turns the tables by inviting fans themselves to interpret his work. The 20-track collection exists solely in the form of sheet music. In introducing the atypical format, he presents “a way of opening music up to what someone else is able to bring to it.” The participatory experiment has drawn, in addition to leagues of YouTube contributors, the likes of Stephin Merritt and Ed Harcourt.

MusicTiles: Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” released more than 26 years ago, remains one of the most influential music videos of all time. A new promotion for Gabriel’s latest album, So, should be similarly trendsetting. The British musician granted Danish robotics professor Henrik Hautop Lund access to his multi-tracks in order to create MusicTiles, a mobile remix app that gives fans the ability to add their creative stamp to Gabriel’s pre-existing work. Sort of like a freeform, audio version of Tetris, the app consists of tiles, each representing a different instrument, which can be reconfigured to compose heretofore unheard mixes.

To the Power Of: Recently shown at the Martha Otero gallery in LA, Jen Stark’s To the Power Of is a series of paper sculptures that captures the kaleidoscopic beauty of geometrical patterns. Stark painstakingly assembles her works out of hand-cut colored paper, layering shapes to create the illusion of exponential growth and allusions to the mathematical patterns that occur in nature. Past works such as Alpha and Omega, Reciprocal, and Piece of an Infinite Whole suggest Stark’s longstanding interest in the world of math, placing her in a catalogue of contemporary designers and authors who are likewise inspired by arithmetical concepts and seek to express them artistically.

MoMath: The National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) is the latest addition to NYC’s myriad museum offerings and, at present, the only math-centric museum in the U.S. In 2008, following the closure of what was then the country’s only math museum, a group of math enthusiasts set out to establish a new physical space for the public to interact with mathematical ideas. Helmed by mathematician Glen Whitney, the museum is packed with high-tech, hands-on exhibits that realize abstract, elevated concepts (like fractals and hyperboloids) through visual and tangible displays, thereby making some of math’s notoriously difficult ideas more accessible and exciting to visitors young and old.

BrainNook: Educational gaming site BrainNook has become a go-to tool for elementary school teachers, providing fun, interactive supplements to Core Standards and helping students learn through real-time play. The platform recently expanded its offerings with the release of an iPad app designed specifically to enhance second-grade math skills. The app is the first of an intended series which will provide educational gaming that’s actually educational (as compared to popular edutainment platforms which offer only a minimal element of educational content). The app uses storytelling and game mechanics to engage students in math review, and avoids the boring and frustrating pitfall of rote drills.

Massive Health: Beautiful design is rarely found in healthcare settings. Seeking to reverse the trend, however, designer/entrepreneur Aza Raskin launched Massive Health, a health app startup that hopes to improve users’ well-being via sleek, yet still accessible, digital interfaces. Supported by top global investors, Massive Health has already seen success with its inaugural release, The Eatery, a free iPhone app that allows users to track their eating habits and boost consumption accountability. Currently, the team is working to create an app that will help patients take their medications on time and track their health to uncover ailments before it’s too late.

Healthy Habits: New Year’s resolutions are often broken by February, but Healthy Habits users are equipped to sustain them beyond winter. Winner of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Healthy App Challenge, 2morrow Mobile’s app invites users to focus on reversing bad health habits by sending reminders and rewards as they work towards personal goals. Go-getters can choose up to three habits to track with features like reports, graphs, and past due reminders, and can share their progress through social media if they choose. The program gives users about 60 days to form each new habit, which seems apropos based on the app’s favorable reviews.

UMSkinCheck: The National Cancer Institute estimates that there will be millions of new skin cancer diagnoses in the US this year alone. Luckily, there’s now a quick and cost-effective method for early detection. The University of Michigan’s Health System developed UMSkinCheck, a free app that detects suspicious moles, lesions and skin changes. Users are guided through a self-exam and photographic survey and are able to store photos for comparison over time and receive notifications to conduct future self-exams. While whole-body photography typically requires a professional photographer, a shooter of any skill level can assist with UMSkinCheck’s photo-snapping—making it as easy as, say, wearing sunscreen.

Google: Google first premiered its App Inventor in 2010 to encourage non-developers to try out simple programming. Though Google eventually shut down the project, the search giant left its source material open for anyone who wanted to carry the torch—and Inventor was in fact recently restored by the powerful minds at MIT. Though manned by the institute, this new iteration integrates fully with Google and Android systems. Before starting new projects, users can learn through tutorials and troubleshoot via an open forum, making Inventor an ideal tool both for classroom settings and individuals who want to acquire digital development skills independently.

BlackBerry: There’s been much ado about the speculated disappearance of BlackBerry from the smartphone landscape, but a forthcoming redesign and a rising stock price—along with a somewhat surprising report of the smartphone’s popularity among European teens—may suggest a somewhat brighter fate for RIM. Regardless of what the future holds, BlackBerry is at least keeping pace with its competitors by encouraging app development specifically for its branded app store. The company’s Java SDK is a step-by-step guide to building “super apps,” connecting programmers to development tools and resources, and ultimately directing them to BlackBerry App World to publish what they’ve created.

Apple: Last April, Apple filed a patent for a tool that would make it easier for amateur and non-developers to build their own apps for iOS. Despite (valid) accusations that Apple was attempting to patent a concept that already exists in several independent forms, the patent nonetheless presents some interesting implications in terms of Apple’s desire to make content creation more accessible to the general public. Its authoring tool would avoid technical programming language and computer code, instead providing templates for a range of actions and animations. With Apple behind it, the tool could reach wide audiences of budding developers and potential app virtuosos.