Get detailed instruction to life's nagging problems with Trusper
As a child of the digital age my first impulse when presented with a "How do I do X?" question is to ask the internet. For the most part I can find the answers to most questions within a few clicks. But it's often more difficult to find usable step-by-step instructions on how to actually do things. Trusper Tips, Tutorials, How-to's is an app that sets out to deliver clear instructions and answers on a wide variety of topics. Trusper requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5 (I tested on an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.02).
If forced to pitch this app as a Hollywood movie, I'd say, "It's Pinterest for How-To Tips!" That's pretty much it. While Pinterest typically displays single images, Trusper displays mini-tutorials. This works best when the tips are a series of clear photographs or illustrations. It works less well for text-only tips.
Trusper is cleanly designed and if highly visually oriented. I found it easily to use on my new iPhone 6 but it becomes better and better as you move up screen sizes. It's much better on an iPad and excellent on a big external monitor when using the trusper.com web site. It's just truism that instructional photos are better when bigger and easy to examine. For the most part the display on the iPhone 6 was fine.
When first launching Trusper you'll see that it's yet another app that requires a Facebook login, but will permit signup with email. The app then asks you to select from several high-level interest categories, like fashion, automotive, food, etc. It then presents you with popular, trending, and other tips.
This is the point where you'll see the community aspect of Trusper. All of the content is user-generated. Posters can be rewarded with "Likes" and comments are an integral part of the tips. You can also post questions and quandaries to be answered by others or select from the list of asked questions with tips of your own. And if you answer questions and create your own tips you gain likes. I'm not sure what this collection of karma gains you, except, perhaps bit of self-esteem.
After exploring a selection of available tips I found that I liked the ones where people took there own photos and gave instructions from personal experience. I found a very nice on on using Mason jars to start an herb garden. That's a lot of work and I appreciated the poster's efforts. I even added additional information in a comment to the post. I also found far too many tips that were simply recycled from other sources, particularly "life hacks." And the use of stock or "borrowed" images was widespread.
If you like and use Pinterest then you'll probably like Trusper Tips, Tutorials, How-to's. It's suited more to browsing tips and finding interesting things than it is to simply search for required instructions. If you enjoy looking for interesting idea, you might like this app, too. If you're not into browsing, but need instructions on how to build something or do something, I recommend trying sites like Instructables.com for detailed how-to instructions.
