Checking your list, the high-tech way

Smart-device applications to help and amuse us for the holiday season include many ways to make a list and check it, and a "Grinch Edition" of the Dr. Seuss Camera.

Visual Travel Checklist, free from Mobili Studio for Apple gizmos, is a right-brain method for listing all the stuff you need for a trip, such as the one over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house.

Rather than using words, VTC has users put lists together from icons. The app describes itself as being "language-barrier-free." To-do tasks, such as buying tickets and withdrawing cash, are represented in a series of monochrome icons. Objects for packing lists - an overcoat, toothbrush, and so on - are represented by color drawings.

Tap the icons that fit your needs, or create an icon of your own from photos of, say, your briefcase or special jewelry.

Once all your chosen icons are on the screen, tap each to check it off as it is accomplished, or packed.

And get going.

Gift List Manager, a free Android app from Garland Systems, prompts you to group gift lists by occasion and person. For everyone on the list, enter a gift, where it is sold, the website, the price. Tap to check off purchased items and keep track of how much you've spent.

List Buddy To-Do Checklists is $1.99 from developer John Parron. With this iPhone app, you can make basic lists of any sort: a wish list for a holiday, task list for work or home to-do list. Check off items as they're accomplished, or share a list as needed via e-mail.

On the Kindle Fire's "curated" app store, we found Amazon Santa free from Amazon Digital Services Inc. It is also available for iPad. Geared for adults helping children make a wish list, the animated app allows kids to send a wish list to Santa with a tap - or to any Santa stand-in with an e-mail address.

Amazon Mobile, free from AMZN Mobile L.L.C. for Android and Apple, uses your Amazon account to create a wish list that, if you choose, can be viewed by virtually anyone interested in knowing what you want. They won't have to buy from Amazon, though the app sure makes it convenient to do so.

If you can't wait for someone to consult your wish list on their own, send it out in an e-mail, text, tweet, or Facebook post.

Dr. Seuss Camera - The Grinch Edition by Oceanhouse Media, Inc. is 99 cents, which is billed on Apple's App Store as a sale price. Use this app to put photos of yourself and friends into scenes from the Seuss Grinch story. Results can be quite comical and are ready to save or e-mail.

The many Dr. Seuss apps include a free birthday edition of the Dr. Seuss Camera.