In an effort to provide some guidance, we asked the staff and writers of Computerworld to tell us about their favorites -- no matter what type of smartphone they use.

The results are listed here. The apps are varied and interesting -- they include a variety of choices for music, video and photos; apps that help to find restaurants, detect earthquakes or track all your digital data; two games and two e-readers. There are also a few that make life easier on the job, including one that takes credit card purchases.

To try to make some order out of this plethora of apps, we've divided them into several categories:

-- music, photos and video

-- e-readers and games