Like it or not, the first thing a lot of us look at in the morning is our phone or tablet. To that end, a slew of different apps have popped up that seek to get your morning off on the right foot. Here are the best depending on what you're looking for.If you're hooked into the Google system with Gmail, Calendar, Maps, or any of its other services, the Google Now (Free) is easily the best option you have for a morning dashboard.Google Now lives inside the Google Search app. With Google Now, you'll automatically get a dashboard of up to date information about your day, the weather, and a ton of other things you care about automatically. Just load up Google Now, pull up the cards, and everything you need is right there in front of you. It's perfect if you're deeply invested in Google's ecosystem because it'll show you everything relevant to your upcoming day. That said, if you're not big into Google, it's a pretty worthless feature.
SMorning for iPad ($2.99) is probably one our favorite direct alternative to Google Now because it manages to emulate a lot of what Google Now does without requiring an account. Like Google Now, you get access to pretty every upcoming event in your day on a single screen.Unlike Google Now, Morning requires that you set it up a little. You have eight options for your main dashboard, including weather, to-dos, calendar appointments, stocks, news headlines, commute and travel time, the current date and time, or a countdown timer. You can customize the app within those options so you're only shown what matters to you. The basic idea here is to get you just the information you need as quickly as possible.The problem with Morning is that it's not particularly powerful and you can't really do much else with it. That's part of what makes it great, but power users are going to wish it could do a bit more.
Status Board for iPad ($9.99) is a powerful dashboard app that has a ton of customization options so you can use it however you want. Like most dashboards, you get access to email, tweets, to-dos, the weather, or mail, but you also get great visualizations of all that data so you can really understand what you're looking at.If the standard old info on Status Board isn't enough, you can also graph your own data if you'd like, or create your own HTML snippets. Essentially, you can turn Status Board into the perfect dashboard app if you're willing to do a bit of work.Status Board also has output through Apple TV or HDMI, which means it's great if you need to display a bunch of information to a group of people and not just yourself. It might be a bit excessive for the common user, but if you need the extra features and power, Status Board offers enough customization that you can serve up all kinds of data on the screen at once.If you're looking for a completely different way to start your morning, Pindolo for iPhone offers just that. Instead of supplying you with a ton of useful information about your day, Pindola serves up inspiration quotes, songs, and more.It might sound silly, but we've seen before, cuteness can actually make you more productive, so Pindola's not totally off the mark. Instead of boring you with your email or the weather, Pindola gives you an inspiration quote, or a song and happily sends you on your way.
You can even customize the background colors and the specific information each panel displays so you see what you want to see. The app looks great, and is on sale for $3 to celebrate its launch (although they don't say what the full price will eventually be). The dev also notes that he has plans to add other apps and tools to Morning in the future, like updates from Twitter or Facebook, or your current steps or status from your fitness tracker. In any event, you can hit the link below to read more about the app or grab it from the iTunes App Store.Morning ($3) | iTunes App Store via Morning