Snapguide
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Daily iPhone App: Snapguide helps you dye your hair, fix your car or chef up a great meal
The next time you need help to accomplish a specific task, it might be worth your while to check out Snapguide. Not only are there hundreds of different tutorials available for DIYers, Snapguide also allows you to easily create your own guide for someone else to follow. Snapguide is a companion app for the Snapguide.com website, which is home to thousands of guides on everything from cooking, fitness, tech and more. Though you can browse the site using mobile Safari, the iOS app provides a much better experience than the mobile website. You get niceties like search and categories, and you don't have to deal with the "Download the Snapguide app" nags in the mobile web version. The Snapguide app is an all-in-one solution that allows you to view full Snapguide tutorials without ever leaving the app. You can browse through the guides by category or search for a specific topic. Unlike most apps that require a login at launch, you can search or browse through guides without a Snapguide account. Each guide is broken down into steps that include text, photos or even video. At the beginning of the guide, there is a list of the items required (i.e., the ingredients) as well as a list of the number of steps in the guide. You can skip to any one of these steps via a convenient grid of numbered thumbnails representing each step. If you like a specific guide, you can flag it as a favorite (free account signup required) or choose from several options to share a link to the guide. There are also comments, allowing you to chime in with your own advice or read others' opinions. Besides reading guides, the Snapguide app also allows you to create your own guide using photos, videos and written instructions. Snapguide "guides" you through the creation process, allowing you to assemble and upload the final project up to its website using your iPhone. I found Snapguide to be one of those apps that I open up on a regular basis when I have some free time. I regularly scan the latest guides and mark those I want to check out later. It is convenient to have on the iPhone, especially when you are in a store searching for ingredients for a guide. Though not as portable as the iPhone version, Snapguide really comes into its own on the iPad. Instructions are easier to read on the large display and the images and videos really stand out. Snapguide is available for free from the iOS App Store.
How-to guide authoring app Snapguide finds itself on iPad
The iPad is great for lots of things that usually require lugging a MacBook (or real books) around, and reading how-to guides is one of my favorites. But what if you want to create your own guides that others tablet owners can use? iOS app Snapguide has been making that possible using an iPhone for a while, but now it's available as a universal version with an iPad-tailored interface. The app serves as a companion to Snapguide's website, letting users discovery guides created by others in addition to building their own. It allows favoriting, commenting and sharing via various social networks and sports a browsing interface that looks quite similar to Pinterest (which is itself a how-to guide aggregation site of sorts). You can download Snapguide from the App Store for free. Let us know in the comments if you end up making some handy guides with it! [Via TechCrunch]
Will creativity tools be the "next wave" of iOS apps?
Blogger Erica Ogg over at GigaOM's The Apple Blog brought up an interesting point in a post today, wondering aloud if creativity tools will be the next big wave of iOS apps. There have always been creativity tools, like painting and drawing apps, in the App Store, but Ogg based her comment on two beautiful and well-designed apps that appeared last week and have caught a lot of attention from buyers. Those two apps are Snapguide and Paper. Snapguide (free) provides a simple way for anyone to create and share step-by-step how-to guides, while Paper by FiftyThree (free, with in-app tool purchases) is one of the best iPad sketching and painting apps I've ever seen and used. Both of the apps have immediately resonated with iOS users, who find the creative aspects of these apps as appealing as the traditional consumption-oriented apps that have been so popular on the iOS platform. Ogg notes that "the debuts of Snapguide and Paper are showing that not only are developers making apps that make the iPhone and iPad more of a creative tool, but that users are responding." Many more developers may find themselves moving away from the heavily populated world of game app development to try the clear blue skies of creativity apps.
