Ben's Blog World: TiPb Picks of the Week

Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game. To see what we picked [...]

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To see what we picked this week, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

Alli’s Pick: Touch Icon Creator

Back in my Treo days, I managed to sweet talk ToySoft into creating an app called PictureDial. I like having people’s photos on a single screen, and able to speed dial by just tapping the photo.

Touch Icon Creator is basically a web app that allows you to use your photos to create a speed dial/text/email icon. There is an option to confirm dial, but (at least in my opinion) that defeats the point of a speed dial, so I have it turned off. Takes a heartbeat longer than a normal speed dial since it has to bounce off the web, but if you like photos for dialing, it’s pretty clever.

I know there are several straight up apps for this, but you have to enter the app to dial. Touch Icon Creator allows you to set the icon on any screen. Mine are now on page two of my springboard.

[$0.99 - iTunes link]

Ally’s Pick: Trainyard for iPhone

Trainyard for iPhone is a strategy/puzzle game for iPhone that involves getting the train to the correct station. Some stations will be hubs for several tracks, some for only one. The game starts off extremely easy but gets tough pretty quick. The simplicity of this game is what I love. It doesn’t require a lot of learning, it just requires patience. If you like games such as Cut the Rope or Angry Birds, I could almost guarantee you’ll really enjoy Trainyard!

[$0.99 - iTunes Link]

Andrew’s Pick: iTracker (Jailbreak)

iTracker is a great new app available in Cydia for your jailbroken iPhone. The App allows for tracking down your lost or stolen iPhone — similar to the Find My iPhone feature under MobileMe — but with additional features and benefits.

The way the app works is as soon as another SIM card is inserted into the phone, iTracker will automatically send the GPS coordinates to one of three designated phones via SMS. In addition, you’ll get the thief’s telephone number if you want to give them a quick call to let them know you’ll be swinging by to pick up your found or stolen iPhone soon.

This awesome new app is only $4.99 (with no subscription required), and can quickly help you turn an unfortunate situation into a successful recovery with little work at all. However, if you end up tracking the perpetrator down, we’d suggest bringing some back up just in case.

Farbod’s Pick: DisplayOut (Jailbreak)

Created by Ryan Petrich, DisplayOut mirrors your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch to any external display using either Apple’s VGA cable or Apple Component cables. This app detects orientation and even has customizable zoom.

I have tested it on my iPhone 4 running 4.1 and it works perfectly.

George’s Pick: Mobile Mouse Pro

Mobile Mouse Pro is one of the most sophisticated remote mouse applications on the iTunes App Store. The app connects your iPhone or iPod touch to either your Mac or PC and acts as either a wireless trackpad, or an air mouse.

However, not only does it act as a mouse, it also gives you unique controls depending on the application you are using. For example, it gives you media controls for applications like iTunes and VLC, and browser controls for all your web browsers. It also shows your dock so you can even launch your Mac applications directly from the app.

Mobile Mouse Pro has a built in “pinch zoom” feature, that allows you to perform the screen zoom on OSX, so that you can see your screen even when your sat quite far away.

This app is perfect to control your computer while you’re laying in bed or sitting on the couch, watching online videos, or surfing the web. You can be as far away from the screen and still see what you’re doing.

[$1.99 - iTunes link]

Leanna’s Pick: Moxier Collage

Moxier Collage is a great photography application for the iPad that allows you to turn your photos into a beautiful collage. It comes stocked full with clipart, frames, backgrounds, and other goodies so that you can also easily design cards and posters. Using Moxier Collage is a pleasant experience as you drag your photos around, pinching and zooming, to make your perfect creation.

I have been wanting to make a collage for my website for quite some time now but haven’t been able to find the time. With Moxier Collage, I had my creation finished in no time. It would have take a lot more time to produce the exact same thing with Photoshop.

[$7.99 - iTunes link]

Rene’s pick: Markdown Mail

Markdown Mail does just what the name implies: it lets you write HTML email in John Gruber’s Markdown syntax. But that’s not why I use it (I prefer plain text email). I use Markdown to format blog posts for TiPb, and for that Markdown Mail is great tool both to write and preview content on the go. A universal binary for iPhone/iPod touch and iPad, the latest version not only lets you write formatted text in a highly readable format, version 2.0 supports drafts and TextExpander.

Whether you want to be able to quickly, intuitively, legibly enter text for news, reviews, how-tos, podcast show notes, or just send your friends colorful HTML email, Markdown Mail is a great mobile tool for the job. (And if you’re an elite level ninja, you can start using it for everything, including round-tripping between different text apps, including note takers, text editors and word processors, different CMS engines, and more.)

It costs less than a typical humber combo and saves me hours of tedious HTML coding a month. Win. Win.

[$3.99 - iTunes link]