(This is the fifth in a series that showcases apps the staff at MacNN and Electronista use and recommend. The first installment, discussing media streaming and playback apps, is here. The second covered photo-editing apps, the third looked at music apps, and the fourth focused on board game conversions.)

One of the biggest perks of being a technology writer is getting to play with a bunch of the latest toys from lots of companies, sometimes before they come out. At any given moment, my house holds maybe four tablets, three to five smartphones, and two or three notebooks and desktops, including my own personally-owned tech, of course. In order to work across these multiple devices, I've had to develop a healthy agnosticism when it comes to platforms. This article on My Five Apps, then, will be an attempt to convert you to that view: The One True Tech Faith of No True Tech Faiths.

The Platform Agnostic Path isn't a lonely one -- you'll largely find yourself using many of the same apps as others -- but it is one without brand fervor and instead works toward finding things that will help us, well, work. The key to that is locating what exactly it is that you want to do and then finding those third-party apps that make that possible. What I tend to want to do is to write and to remember and to occasionally entertain myself. To that end:

Evernote

Evernote has gone from a relatively simple cloud-based note-taking app to an app powerhouse with a presence on every major platform. The Green Elephant is just about indispensable, as it has a presence on OS X, Windows 8, iOS, Fire OS, Android, Windows RT, BlackBerry, and just about every other platform you or I will wind up working on. On top of that, it's got an ever-capable web-portal, so you always still have access through the browser.

I use Evernote largely to save assorted brain-droppings: poem snippets, article ideas, script drafts, and so forth. The Evernote Web Clipper allows for quick storage of anything that tickles your fancy or floats your boat in your endless web crawling. It's the sort of thing that really helps one keep track of potential inspirations, so long as one is willing to do the legwork of tagging and minimally organizing things.

Pocket

Here you may be thinking, "But, Kevin, isn't the inclusion of Pocket directly after Evernote somewhat redundant?" To which I respond, "Quiet, you. Who's the one proselytizing the Platform Agnostic Path here?"

Pocket makes it onto my list because it helps compartmentalize assorted web clippings. Text things go into Evernote, visual things get tucked into the Pocket. Sure, it would be easy to simply tag things within Evernote and sort the visuals into a visual folder, but having a (mostly) separate app that's devoted almost entirely to cool pictures, drawing inspirations, and so forth is pleasant.

Read more here:
My Five Apps: Kevin's (Platform) Agnostic Life