The Best Business Simulation Game

As you know, we recommend that Financial Literacy should be covered early in the Foundational Skills of the child - budgeting as early as 3 years of age and the formal financial literacy at 8-10 years of age.


This helps children understand the value of money (a common complaint). It also helps them grow into adults who are able to manage their own wealth sensibly. Our world is plunging into a jargon jungle - where professionals of every discipline choose to hide behind complex sounding jargon. Therefore, it makes sense to understand the fundamentals as early as our brains can process it.

One incredible learning tool that i have used myself, and now with a 9 year old, is being recommended in this post.


Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting : Capitalism Lab. http://www.capitalismlab.com/


Trevor Chan's cult design makes this among the best business simulation games I have seen - ever.
When we gave this to a 9 year old to play (a year after he finished his financial literacy course), he was able to understand the entire cycle of production - from factories to retail stores, the impact of advertising and sales, and the difference between a profitable business and its opposite. He was able to appreciate the importance of cash flow management (a rare skill).


For every child, we highly recommend Capitalism Lab as an excellent learning tool on how the production cycle works, and of course, money management.


Privacy Rating: This is a single player , offline game that can be played on a PC. There is no privacy or security concern with this game.

The Best Logic Puzzles App

About:
Logic Puzzles is one category where its so hard to get something that works, is easy on the eyes and is wholesome. No point in downloading 50 apps to get 50 types of puzzles.


Simon Tatham's Puzzles is a single app that has 41 puzzle types in a single, light and non intrusive app. Its a treasure find!


Details:
If you like logic puzzles, or want to do 5 to 10 minutes of brain training a day, this is just the perfect app for you.


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles&hl=en


I have used this app for over 2 years now, and still haven't explored all the puzzle types. What's more, each puzzle type in turn has difficulty levels that you can choose, and most of them also allow you to create a custom difficulty level.  This is incredible functionality that is so light on the infrastructure, its insanely good.


What's missing:
However, the one not so good thing is that the app does not store your progress, your win ratio, or any other stats of usage. There are no levels to cross and feel good. In short, the gamification of usage is missing altogether. You move up to the higher difficulty levels at will.


The app also does not provide hints or clues during game play. So once you start a puzzle, you are on y our own. You can see the solution if you'd like though.


The graphics are adequate. They are not 3D or out of this world. They are not so poor that they strain your concentration. Being largely in neutral shades, they also don't strain the eyes so much.


There is no option to multi player - online or offline. You cannot see the leaderboard, or check global average stats either. So you don't know if you are slower or faster than the global average of puzzle solvers with this difficulty.


Though the puzzles are for the family (because they are that good), one thing that sorely hurts is that I cannot set up a challenge with another person from my family, using the same device. I would so like multiple profiles on the same device, so that we could take turns trying to solve puzzles. There is so much potential in what this app has to offer.


Best For:
1. Logic puzzle lovers.
2. Brain Training folks
3. Anyone who is ok with adequate but not out of this world graphics.
4. Those who don't want the mobile resources to be locked up by an app - either in foreground or background. This app never steals background running space.


Don't use it if:
1. Check  the What's missing section above. If anything in that is absolutely vital to you, don't use this app.
2. You like to use a separate app for each puzzle type.




Privacy Rating: A


Privacy Rating Details: It asks for Near Field Communication, but we are not sure what for.


Overall Rating: Best in Class

Getting Jobs Done - Tick Tick - Among the Best

About:
I am, by nature, a procrastinator. Also lazy. So my primary thing in life is to mark off all my work so that I can be lazy conveniently.
I have looked for a lot of apps which do this simple thing of "Task Management" as against "Calendar Management" or "Notes about work".


So Tick Tick comes well vetted, tried and tested. The reason I am not giving it a "Best in Class" Rating is that personal productivity apps are very individual dependant.


Details:
Tick Tick allows you to store one line tasks. It also allows you to create checklists, add texts, add due dates et al. Its as big or as small as you want it to be. The handy widgets - ranging from 1*1 to 4*4 are excellent too and make the app much easier to use. The best thing about a personal productivity app is that it should adapt to the user's natural style and make them more productive, not force them to learn a new way of doing things.Tick Tick is top notch on that count.


Update: The last update to the app was on Nov 24, 2016 and apparently, the app is being slammed after that. I am guessing that the company will rectify the bugs soon enough. There is, however, a feature change which limits the free version to 9 lists. That officially makes it a freemium app.

Best For:
Students
Mothers
Professionals
Anyone at all with an agenda led existence.


Don't use it if:
You don't want to make in app purchases or be forced to move to pro version. The app page indicates that the purchases may be from 50 to 1850 INR. So it may be too expensive for some of us.


App Page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ticktick.task&hl=en


Privacy Rating: B because it takes a LOT of our data, but I don't know for what.

The best Memory app - Berni Mobile

I love teaching children foundational  skills, and memory is one of the more important skills that we teach.


Memory cards are one of the oldest ways to enhance memory, but I also use it to activate middle brain functioning and subliminal processing of information. Simply put, when we play memory cards, we encourage children to NOT focus on or remember the individual images or places. We want them to just look at the card and move on.


Berni Mobile's Memory app is not just one of the best - its a clear winner in its category, and its the only one I use.

Who should use it:
1. Anyone working to improve their memory.
2. Anyone working with children to teach them memory techniques that use middle brain activation and subliminal processing. This is a great aid.


You should not use this if:
1. You believe in "Levels" and need a constant feedback loop in an app.
2. You want to track all your stats. This app only records your best 5 times at every level. There are no average times, no number of attempts et al.


App Page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.berniiiiiiii.memorize&hl=en


Privacy Rating: A