Are you afraid that the number of “friends” you have on Facebook may compromise your privacy? Then Path is just the app for you.

A brainchild of David Morin, a former senior platform manager at Facebook, Path is where you can upload and share that moment with your closest family and friends. It functions like a Twitterfeed with a thumbnail for a snippet of text. Unlike Facebook, Path limits your friends to just 50. It is available as a free app in the App Store or the Android Market.

However, a word of caution. Their privacy policy states that they collect “information you voluntarily provide”, which is really everything and anything you do on the site. When you download and run Path on your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, it automatically suggests a number of people as friends. From where do they get that list? Does that mean they are accessing your mobile contact data without asking?

Moreover, once you upload a photo on the Internet, it takes only one person to download it and post it on a public site. Relationships can turn sour. Today’s boyfriend can become a stranger tomorrow and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. If someone tags a photo of you, the owner of the photo can then share that with anyone in their 50 contacts, and so on. Despite all this, Path’s popularity is growing.

Search Engine: When I first heard of Duck Duck Go it made me laugh. My first encounter with the search engine was a major disappointment, as it showed no results for the Wall of Sound. Subsequently, it did return the most relevant links like Google does on your smartphone. I was surprised that it showed no results since it culls its information from Wikipedia and Yahoo’s BOSS Service. However, this search engine has been very highly rated by many Americans, who said in a readers’ survey by a leading magazine that it is even better than Google.

Duck Duck Go does a good job of providing options for disambiguation. For instance, if you type Paris, it will ask if you mean Paris, the French capital, or the socialite Paris Hilton. It has a number of blog widgets that are not directly related to its core business. It also boasts of a Firefox Toolbar, which can guard against 44 million spam and parked domains. It is a free app for both iPad and iPhone.

Wall of Sound: For music lovers, the Wall of Sound is a free iOS app that provides over 20 million songs. You can listen to songs and view album covers because the app constantly fills your iPhone and iPad screen with album covers as you move your finger across the screen. You can adjust the size of the covers by pinching in and out. You can click the picture on the album to see its tracks, and preview related songs. All the music can be purchased using iTunes via a download link in the app. However, you cannot yet buy songs in India. But the Wall of Sound does have a tremendous collection of Bollywood songs dating back to the Forties. You can also share your favourite music with friends through eMail, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter.

Vanishing Text: By far the most diverting app is the TigerText Vanishing Text App. It sounds intriguing doesn’t it? TigerText messages self destruct. You don’t even need to share your phone number; you can just give your TigerText ID. The sender can decide how long the message will last and can even recall the message. Unlike normal messages that remain with the server indefinitely or with the recipient till he or she deletes it, TigerText will disappear even from the server. Therefore it cannot be charged.

TigerText works on any device, iPhone 3G, iPhone 4G, iPod Touch & iPad and with any BlackBerry, Android or WindowsPhone7 smartphone. TigerText is a secure, private communication tool for you and your friends. It is a brilliant app that eliminates the possibility of damaging evidence being left behind. But be smart. Anyone can take a screenshot, to present it as evidence that you did indeed send the message.

It is precisely for this that this app had run into heavy weather with the Indian government, which was debating whether to ban it or not. However, the problem has been resolved and it is now available. Be sure to get it.

App Corner: You will find exciting Christmas apps at www.telegraphindia.com/knowhow/ bitsnbytes/appcorner

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