Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and 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,...
Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and 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, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!
Reminders – @iMuggle and @llofte
Ally: I’ve been using the default reminders app in iOS 5 for a few months now. I was hesitant to think it could replace my current task management apps but it pretty much has. I love that it can sync across all my Macs and other devices. I don’t have to log in to some 3rd party website to view my reminders or have a Mac app launched. It just seamlessly integrates with my current workflow and iCal setup.
Adding a reminder is quick and easy and now with the addition of Siri, I’m actually not forgetting things (well most of the time anyways). Now the only thing I’m missing is a jailbreak and all those fancy themes for my iPhone 4S!
Leanna: I recently sent out a tweet saying that the combination of Siri and Reminders is greatly improving my life – it’s so true! I swear I’m one of the most forgetful people on the planet, so having reminders is very helpful for me. Before the iPhone 4S, I would use various to-do apps, but they were hit or miss for me because I would think about the things I had to do at moments I couldn’t add them to my list, like while driving. By the time I could add them, I’d forget. Not anymore!
Believe it or not, I’ve become a more productive person since getting my iPhone 4S. I tell Siri to remind me of all sorts of things at specific times or when I get home or arrive at school. If I’m driving when I remember of specific task I need to get done, it’s not a problem because I can ask Siri without taking my eyes off the road.
Siri and Reminders is exactly what I needed.
AppDelete (OS X app) – @Alli_Flowers
I would never have thought of going with a Mac app for my pick of the week, but this one saved my bacon. I actually purchased AppDelete shortly after buying my first Mac. Coming from Windows, I was not only uncomfortable just dragging apps to the trash can to delete them, but it wasn’t always working. And I kept finding remnants left behind. A quick search led me to AppDelete, which comes with a 5 use trial. Five uses was enough to convince me that it was well worth the $7.99 purchase price.
Skip to yesterday when I discovered that by some quirk of fate, my Lion installation of iTunes had menus in some unreadable, unrecognizable Slavic language. Nothing I tried would get my menus back to English, not even half a dozen new installations of different versions of iTunes. But I couldn’t remove it, because iTunes cannot be removed from Lion…or so they think! As if by technomagic, AppDelete removed all traces of the evil iTunes and allowed me to install a nice fresh version direct from Apple.
AppDelete has a ton of features for getting rid of things. You can drag an app right to to AppDelete (instead of OS X’s trash can), or you can search for things to delete including apps, files, and orphans. AppDelete is like the terminator – it will find what you want and get rid of it. Permanently.
A few of AppDelete’s advertised features: - Hidden mode for full backgound operation - Finds associated items that are invisible or hidden - Archive/install from Archive feature for safekeeping and transferring items to another Mac - Preference to protect Default (Apple) apps - Keeps a log of all activities and has the ability to Undo a deletion - Force Empty Trash for stubborn to remove items - Don’t wait until you find yourself in a position where you can’t get rid of something.
Get AppDelete now.
[$7.99 - Purchase link]
CamScanner – @chrisoldroyd
I have been looking to apply for a new mortgage for my home this week and one of things I had to produce were scans of my payslips and passport. As I have an HP Scanner and Printer this shouldn’t be a problem right? Wrong, even though the printer is installed and working wirelessly on my PC it will not work as a scanner, the software does not even see it. Total fail!
Luckily I have my trusty iPhone 4S at hand, a quick search in the App Store and CamScanner is on my home screen and its free. A couple of pictures later and it re-sizes them, squares them up and emails them as a PDF. Awesome!! It can even search text within scanned documents as it supports OCR too. With CamScanner, your iPhone is actually a portable scanner, with which all your paper documents, receipts, notes, whiteboard discussions can be archived anywhere at any time.
If you want a simple to use scanning application for your iOS device, this is very good.
[Free - App Store link]
WriteUp – @sethclifford
I’m a sucker for apps that sync with Dropbox, and I’m just as smitten with plain text editors. Naturally, as you might expect, I’ve tried a great number of the apps fitting this description in the App Store, and one of my favorites that I’m currently enjoying is WriteUp.
WriteUp hits all the basic notes for me out of the gate, but it has a few nice interface features that some of the other apps are missing. You have the ability to apply different themes to the app, which is nice if you want to change things up visually from time to time. There’s also a very handy swipe menu (which plenty of apps have come to utilize, but it doesn’t mean it’s any less useful) that lets you copy text or HTML, mail text or HTML, or delete the note all from the main notes list. There’s also a full-screen edit mode which is really nice, allowing just a little bit more screen space and less clutter when your keyboard is up or a simplified interface when you’re just reading over notes in general.
The app has great Markdown support and allows for previews with one tap, which is great to quickly check on your formatting as you’re writing. A new feature to the app is also the ability to tweet the contents of a note, so that if you want to, you can set up files to store drafts that you can access on your iOS devices and your desktop or laptop, and save ideas wherever they strike you. The settings contain plenty of font options, sort options, and the ability to change the Dropbox folder to which the app syncs, which is nice, because since I switch apps so frequently, I can have one single folder for notes, and point whichever app I’m using at that folder.
There are a lot of great choices for text editors on iOS, almost an embarrassment of riches. If you’re still looking or just like to sample what’s out there, WriteUp is a solid candidate for a test drive.
[$3.99 - App Store link]
Flick Home Run ! – @jdipane
Personally I get pretty bored of games on my iPhone rather quickly, I don’t care for games with an intense plot or story line, I would rather something I can launch to play for a few minutes and close without worrying about having hit a save point. Flick Home Run is a great game that I came across, very similar in concept to Flick Golf, except baseball styled. They pitch the ball to you and you swipe your finger across the screen and try to hit a home run, simple right? Wrong. Some pitches come straight, others swirvy, slow, fast, all sort of craziness comes across the screen, and each has to be hit a bit differently in order to try to get a home run. In the sky are various balloons which offer different prizes and multipliers, and there are a few different home run types depending how far the ball is it.
If you are looking for something to kill some time, and to offer a small challenge, be sure to hop in the AppStore and pick up Flick Home Run today for free before it goes back up to 99 cents!
[Free - App Store link]
Noteshelf – @reneritchie
This isn’t really my pick of the week. I’m donating my pick this week to Andrew, one of the big brains behind the scenes at Mobile Nations because he was so in love with this app, I just had to help give his recommendation voice.
When Andrew first got his iPad it was out of curiosity but it rapidly fell into inconsistent, infrequent use. He surfed some web, he consumed some content, but between his laptop and his iPhone there just wasn’t any compelling reason for a third category of device, regardless of what Apple said.
Then he started investigating note-taking apps. Then he found Noteshelf. Now his iPad is a first-class device in his lineup, and his go-to device in meetings and brain-storming sessions. Now he’s using his iPad so much he can barely keep it charged.
The levels to this app amaze him and he keeps finding new features and new combinations of features that light him up and get him praising it anew. Noteshelf is literally a note-taker’s Nirvana in finely crafted App form.
He sold it so well Leanna and I have both bought it, and now, like Andrew, we’ve moved from looking for the best note-taking app to looking for the best stylus to help us take more detailed, less fat-fingered notes.
Look for what Andrew — and we — find in a future pick.
[$4.99 - App Store link]
Thomas & Friends: Day of the Diesels – @Barryloy (Reader’s Choice)
This week, my 2 1/2 year old son found the Thomas & Friends train app in the App Store. After checking it out, I noticed it was on sale for 99 cents, instead of the original price of $4.99. This was great news, because as anybody with kids knows, things get expensive fast. The Thomas & Friends: Day of the Diesel app is great! It has a story book, movie, coloring, puzzles, and matching. The games are great because there is a easy and hard setting. My son has played with it for a few hours and loves it so far.
[$0.99 - App Store link]
Your pick?
You’re part of the team as well, so we will be choosing one reader to make a submission each week! Just look for the announcement on twitter or our Facebook page each weekend for a chance to be picked! In the meantime, jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!
Eliza Dushku
Adriana Lima
No comments:
Post a Comment