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Welcome to the Keep Your English Up- Date podcast from BBC Learning English.com.

In this episode, John Aito looks at the phrase apps.

Apps. How many apps? Aps.

How many apps have you got?

Nowadays it seems you're no one unless you've got more of those little icons on the screen of your smartphone than a troop of over-enthusiastic boyscouts have badges on their sleeves.

The word app is short for application, which in the world of computers means a piece of software which

carries out some specific task for the user.

For example, producing spreadsheets. The concept and the name date from the 1960s but for a long time

they were known mainly to computer geeks. It's not until recently that they've begun to muscle in on our everyday lives.

The tipping point probably came in 2008, when Apple Inc. introduced its App Store. Note the pleasing coincidence of Apple and

App. This is a service which enables iPhone users to download apps, and similar services are now common for users of other smartphones.

To begin with, there were about 500 of them.

At the latest current, there are over 150,000 apps in the store.

So now you can use your phone to play computer games, find a shop that sells what you're looking for, do

Sudoku puzzles or control robots.

If you want to look at a map, read a comic, check snow reports at skiing venues, cook

a recipe or buy a car. There's an app for that, and for all I know, one that will tuck you up in bed and say good night to you.

That was the Keep Your English Up-To-date podcast.

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