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All the best new apps and app reviews last week on TUAW
Last week was a busy one for app news and announcements, giving your favorite TUAW writers a chance to post some great reviews of the apps that grace their home screens. Here's a quick roundup of our recent reviews -- and the best new apps -- you may have missed. App Reviews Just in time for his film return, Godzilla has an iOS game Daily App: FilePane is a versatile multi-tool utility for OS X file management Symmetrain challenges your one-handed reflexes CARROT fit 2.0 wants to you exercise, meat bag Daily App: Lapse It Pro is a robust time-lapse tool that's easy for everyone to use 5 fantastic iOS games you aren't playing, but should be iParked is the best way to find your car Daily App: Stack the States is a must-have educational game that quizzes you on US Geography Sonos 5.0 software hits the app store with many new features Klyme: A colorful way to look at your local weather Daily App: Piano Tiles adds music to popular Don't Step the White Tile game Wthr is a well thought out and innovative weather app for iOS Wthr is a well thought out and innovative weather app for iOS Fotos for iOS does some things Apple left out Oh look, a developer is making Nintendo's money without them The creepiest app on the App Store is now free New and Notable Apps Bricks – Arcade Game [iOS Universal; $0.99] Test your reaction skills! Rotate your iPhone or iPad 360 degrees to knock out all bricks and reach the top of the leaderboards in this totally new arcade experience. Haunted House [iOS Universal; Free] Run for your life! Based on the classic Atari hit of the same name, Haunted House® is the re-imagined update filled with non-stop thrills and chills. HexMiner [OS X; Free] HexMiner is a hex editor with features such as work with large files, multiple character encodings and more. ClickPhoto [iOS Universal; $0.99] ClickPhoto is a simple and easy to use application that allows the user to take an image by clicking their fingers. Last Inua - An Arctic Adventure [iOS Universal; $3.99] LAST INUA is an award winning platform adventure game featuring an Inuit father and his son on their epic quest for survival against the elements. Atom Run [iOS Universal; 42.99] Atom Run is an action-packed retro-futuristic platform game, in a superb mechanical-dynamic world. Jump, push, run and avoid the many dangers you'll encounter. 9/11 Museum Audio Guide [iPhone; Free] Enhance your experience of the 9/11 Memorial Museum by using the official audio guide. The Museum honors the 2,983 people killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. Swarm by Foursquare [iPhone; Free] Swarm, the new app from Foursquare, is the fastest way to keep up and meet up with your friends. With Swarm, you can easily see who's out nearby and who wants to hang out later. Thomas Was Alone [iPad; $8.99] Meet Thomas, a curious rectangle, and help him unravel the mysteries of his existence in a wonderfully strange world. Sago Mini Space Explorer [iOS Universal; $2.99] Blast into space with Harvey the dog. Invite Harvey out to play among the stars and planets. Hitman: Absolution - Elite Edition [OS X; $28.99] Become Agent 47, a genetically-engineered killer, and use your skill and ingenuity to turn assassination into an art. List One [OS X; Free] All your lists on one view. Customize, Share, Sync with iPad, iPhone and iPod using your iCloud account. Teleprompt+ 3 [iOS Universal; $14.99] Teleprompt+ 3 offers many advanced options and features that will enable you to custom tailor your prompting setup according to your needs. MovieLaLa [iPad; Free] MovieLaLa is a social network that helps anyone share and discover coming attractions through a personalized upcoming feed, share their favorites with friends, and find friends to go to movies with. FusionVOX [iOS Universal; Free] Use FusionVOX to assist & organise your daily life. Manage your daily tasks & increase productivity for study, music, business, home & much more with this new amazing memo & projects App! Twistam [iPhone; Free] Make two film clips: one with the front camera and one with back and blend them into one video clip! Pantomime 3D [iOS Universal; Free] Mind-bending Pantomime 3D™ turns any iPad, iPhone or iPod touch into an advanced 3D game paddle. Play in realistic 3D worlds on your table by swinging your mobile device - while you apparently look right through its screen. MagicSketch 2 [OS X; $4.99] With MagicSketch have fun and create professional quality sketch software. Publisher Plus [OS X; $19.99] Publisher Plus is a powerful desktop publishing and page layout app for both business and home use. Elephant Drop [iOS Universal; Free] Press and hold on either side of the screen to avoid thunderclouds and hit other objects to slow down. RecordRun [iOS Universal; Free] Record Run puts you in the middle of your music, chasing records and dodging obstacles to the beat in a crazy musical world. AFilter [iPhone; $1.99] Over 245 free effects are shown to you in this application. KeroBlaster [iPhone; $4.99] A classically-styled 2D side scrolling action game packed with adventure, for iPhone & iPod touch. Heroes : A Grail Quest [iOS Universal; $0.99] Heroes : A Grail Quest is a turn-based strategy game in a fantasy world. Kiwanuka [iOS Universal; $1.99] Kiwanuka! Only you can save us all! Guide the lost citizens to freedom. Discover forgotten dreams. Use the magical staff to tower and climb. Good luck on your journey! TWiT.tv [OS X; $1.99] Enjoy TWiT Live streaming, interact with Leo's Chat room live, and view the previously recorded shows! TUAW will be back next week with another round of app reviews, so be sure to drop by to see what's new and what's cool.
Weekend App: Vhoto converts your iPhone videos into beautiful stills
Vhoto is a new photography tool that allows you save still photographs from a video. Instead of scrolling through your video frame-by-frame, Vhoto scans it on your behalf pulling out the best still shots. You then can choose your favorite snapshots and edit them as needed. When you are done, you can either save them to the iOS Photo Roll or share them on a social network, including Vhoto's own built-in network. As someone who films children, I find it exceedingly difficult to capture a still shot of my kids using the camera. Inevitably, someone is moving, frowning or crying in the photo. Vhoto helps with this photographer's dilemma, allowing you to capture video of your children while they are playing and pull out a still photo that encapsulates the moment. Some might argue that Vhoto takes some of the skill out mobile photography as you are not able to frame a shot like you can with a still photo. The free-form nature of video, though, allows you to capture a moment as it happens and in a way that you didn't expect. Vhoto proves extremely useful in this style of filming as it takes the grunt work out the process by picking out the still frames for you. When picking out stills, Vhoto's performance met my expectations, pulling out a number of quality photos for each video clip. On average, the app generated 10-15 photos for a 30-second clip. All of the photos were high-quality stills with minimal blur. The app also did a great job at capturing action, showing my daughter jumping from rock to rock, for example. It didn't hit every shot, though. In the photo below, I would rather have the moment the bow is drawn all the way back instead the one Vhoto generated. The only drawback to Vhoto is that it has a high signal to noise ratio due to the shooting technique it fosters. The app uses on bulk processing -- pulling a dozen or more images out of a clip with hundreds of frames. Out of the 20 photos from each video clip, I found I only kept one or two images. Most photos were repetitive, while only a few were truly unique moments. That being said, Vhoto is still a valuable tool in a photographers arsenal of apps, you just have to know when to use it. Sometimes it's easier to frame a photo and capture the perfect moment using single or burst mode shooting, while other scenes lend themselves well to this style of video capture made possible by Vhoto. It's also useful for pulling stills out of pre-existing video, compensating for those moments when you decided to shoot video, but kicked your self later for not taking burst mode shots. Vhoto is available for free from the iOS App Store. It is compatible with the iPhone and requires iOS 7.1.
Daily App: FilePane is a versatile multi-tool utility for OS X file management
FilePane is handy Mac utility that simplifies the sometimes cumbersome task of managing your files. It's lightweight, sits in the menu bar and provides quick access to a variety of tasks such as resize image, convert text to PDF and more. FilePane sits quietly in the menu bar and activates whenever you select a file (or files) and drag them across your screen. When you start the dragging process, a small box appears that prompts you to "Drop Here." When you drop you files in this hot zone, a small dialog appears with a variety of options depending on the file type you have selected. The available options for each file(s) appear as icons, which makes it difficult when you start using the app. Most are self-explanatory, but I did find myself having the consult the cheat sheet provided with the app. You can find this icon list by opening the app in the menu bar and clicking on the question mark. The app supports images, text documents, multiple files and folders and provides with the following choices: show file size copy file path to clipboard move file email file AirDrop file resize image on the fly (images only) set as Desktop picture (images only) share on Twitter/Facebook (images only) convert it to PDF (text documents only) print (text documents only) and more Once you have identified the appropriate action for your file, you can then select it and follow the prompts to complete it. For example, I often drag an image file and choose to resize it. The app allows me to enter in the dimensions and provides an option to make it proportionate, which is useful if I want an image that is 600 pixels wide and an appropriately scaled height. FilePane is reliable -- it hasn't crashed nor affected the performance of my Mac because it is so lightweight. It works in other apps and it is not constrained to only the Finder, though that is where it is most useful. It also works in web browsers and document editors, allowing you to perform actions on the text and images that you select and drag. My only critique of FilePane is the duration of the "Drop Here" window can be frustratingly short when you are working in a large Finder window that is filled with files. Sometimes I would drag a set of files, pause for a second or two and the "Drop Here" window would disappear. I found that I had the files with the purpose of dropping them on the hot zone and had to drag with minimal pause. I believe this timed disappearance is a feature, allowing the hot zone to disappear quickly when you are dragging for reasons other than to activate FilePane. For example, I did notice that the FilePane drop zone activated I was managing my emails in a web browser. Every time I dragged an email to a folder, the "Drop Here" box appeared and then disappeared fast enough that it did not get in the way. FilePane is useful for OS X owners who want a quick and versatile method of accessing the most common actions for a file. It offers a variety of options that are different from those available when you right click on a file and is extremely easy to use. FilePane is available from the Mac App Store for US$4.99.
Daily App: Lapse It Pro is a robust time-lapse tool that's easy for everyone to use
Time Lapse photography allows you to record a scene or landscape as it changes over time. With the right tools, you can create stunning videos of a busy city or a beautiful sunset. With its small size and non-retractable camera lens, the iPhone is perfectly suited to capture time-lapse photos. One of the best apps for capturing photos over time with your iOS device is Lapse It Pro from Interactive Universe. Unlike traditional iPhone photography where you fire up your camera app and start taking photos right away, time-lapse photography takes some preparation. You need a tripod or some other stand that will hold your iPhone for the duration of the capture. Don't try to do it by hand, unless the resulting shakiness is part of the effect that you are trying to create. You'll also need a power source for long-term captures as the app will quickly drain your battery. On the app side of the equation, you must spend a few minutes configuring the app to capture photos according to your needs. The app allows you to set the interval for capturing each frame, the capture limit (frame count, length of time or a manual limit determined by the user who can tap the stop button) and other variables such as resolution and brightness level. The app even includes a scheduling feature, allowing you to setup your capture rig, configure the app and walk away knowing your overnight captures will take place right on time. There are also multiple settings for the rendering engine, which will determine the quality of the final time-lapse video. You can change the encoder, the quality, and the frame rate. The frame rate is adjustable, so you can try different rates to get the best mix of fluid motion and playback speed. If you are unsure what a setting does, you can tap on it, and the app displays a brief description of the feature and how the changes affect the photos. When you have completed your capture, Lapse It allows you to edit the resulting collection of photographs. You can trim the series of photos and remove frames that you don't need. You also can add effects or music to the resulting video. When you have finished tweaking the images, you can render the output with the ability to save the video to your camera roll or publish it to an online service. If you need inspiration, Lapse It Pro has a social feature that allows you to view time-lapse captures from other users. You also can share your own projects and inspire others. Users can favorite clips in their Lapse It feed as well as view and add comments. There's also a profile that you can use to provide information about yourself. You do need a login to access the social side of the app, but it is available for free. With a decent tripod and Lapse It Pro, you'll be creating excellent time lapse photos in no time. The app has a well-designed interface that manages to pack in a lot of options without being overly confusing to the user. I also appreciated the useful tips that'll help new photographers get their bearing as they venture into time-lapse for the first time. Lapse It Pro is available from the iOS App Store for $1.99 and is compatible with the iPhone.
iParked is the best way to find your car
Over the years, I've seen a lot of parking apps that let you drop a pin at your parking space, and then you can navigate back to the marker when it is time to return to your vehicle. iParked (free) does those apps one better, and definitely gets my "gee, I wish I'd thought of this" award for the week. You launch iParked before you leave for your destination and will see your location on a moving map. When you come to a stop sign or a traffic light, the app drops a marker. If you start up again, marker is picked up. The app leverages your iPhone's motion tracking sensors and GPS. I tried the app recently when I went out to lunch. iParked did drop a marker at every stop, but when I finally got out of my car to walk to the restaurant, the marker stayed with my car while a blue dot showed my current position. The app runs in the background so you can do whatever else you do with your phone and not lose your parking place. As a nice bonus, iParked has a timer to alert you to when your parking meter will run out. iParked is a clever and welcome improvement in the current selection of parking apps. They all work well, but most make you manually drop a pin to mark your position. iParked dispenses with that, making it more useful and showing some fresh thinking. iParked is a new app store release requiring iOS 7 or later, and it is optimized for the iPhone 5. I think you will like it, so give it a try if you often need help finding your car.
Daily App: Stack the States is a must-have educational game that quizzes you on US Geography
Stack the States by Freecloud Design is a geography game that makes learning about the 50 states fun for children and adults. The app quizzes you on a variety of information about the states including capitals, borders, flags and notable landmarks. The main part of the game challenges you to enter a fact-based question about one of the 50 states without any time constraints or pressure. In fact, I allowed my children to use a US geography book to help them look up answers to the questions they did not know. If you answer correctly, you win that state and are allowed to add it to a stacking pile that is situated on a platform at the bottom of the screen. You need to place each state carefully as you can lose it if it tumbles off the edge. The placement is a challenge as some states are oddly shaped and don't fit easily into a pile, or are large, such as Alaska, and tend to knock your pile to pieces if you are sloppy in your placement. As you answer additional questions, your pile of states grows until it crosses the finish line. Once you cross this line, you are awarded a permanent state that you can add to your US map. Your goal is to eventually fill the map with states that you have earned. As you earn permanent states, you also unlock mini-games such as Map It!, Pile Up!, Puzzler and Capital Drop. Each one these mini-games reinforces the facts that you learn in the main part of the app. Stack the States is a wonderful tool that makes learning US geography an enjoyable experience. The graphics are cute, the music is catchy and the gameplay is exceptionally fun. It also supports multiple users, allowing my children to learn at different rates. I've used it as a prelude to a comprehensive geography class as well as refresher for those who are studying geography and need a break from the traditional pen and paper coursework. Stack the States is available for US$0.99 in the iOS App Store. It is compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad.
A roundup of last week's app reviews on TUAW
Last week was a busy one for app news and announcements, giving your favorite TUAW writers a chance to post some great reviews of the apps that grace their home screens. Here's a quick roundup of our recent reviews -- and a few app roundups -- you may have missed: Weekend App: Keepy is a private Facebook-style platform for your children's memorable moments I've fed this Human-Faced Fish 17 frogs and he's still hungry Daily App: Cubits! mixes Tetris with Rubik's Cube in a new tile-sliding game Bridge Constructor Medieval doesn't fix what isn't broken Take pictures in very low light with NightCap Pro Alfred 2.3 adds external triggers and more Fantastic Library lets you easily catalog books, movies, music and games Adobe Voice for iPad creates audio, video presentations quickly and easily I was having a lot of fun with this iOS game, and then it rained Would Apocalypse Survival Guide help keep you alive? Disney is hiding an excellent Podracing game inside this Star Wars storybook app AlienTube lets you replace YouTube comments with Reddit threads Daily App: Fjuul is a unique activity tracker for your iPhone FaceSnap has Galileo support for hands-free selfies Daily App: Watch Over Me protects you from harm even when you can't help yourself Sumotori Dreams is how my wife and I will now settle disagreements Picplace is a free app that helps you store your photo memories by location TUAW will be back next week with another round of app reviews, so be sure to drop by to see what's new and what's cool.
Weekend App: Keepy is a private Facebook-style platform for your children's memorable moments
Every parent knows the pain of throwing away a precious piece of art work created by their child. As much as you love to store every single scribble, there just isn't the room to keep every work of art crafted by their little hands. This problem of safekeeping art and storing memories is where interactive scrapbook app Keepy shines. Keepy can be broken down into two parts -- the app you use to capture your memories and the private online website that allows you to share those precious moments. These two aspects of the service work together to create a memory playlist for each of your children. The Keepy app allows you to take photos as well as accompanying audio or video to provide a narrative about the artwork, event or memorable moment you managed to capture. Each item called a "Keepy" is uploaded to Keepy's servers for sharing, with a Dropbox option for backup and long-term storage in case the Keepy service shuts down. You also can view your children's collection of Keepies and organize them directly on your phone. The online side of Keepy stores the memories you capture into a "memory playlist" and allows you to share these moments with friends or family members. The website component is private, with only invited "fans" given the ability to view your uploaded content. In a two-parent household, the second parent can be a fan and given upload privileges so he or she can add content to each child's playlist. Fans not only can view the items that you capture, they also can respond via voice or video comments. This is a wonderful, personalized experience for families whose members live far away. The Keepy app can be downloaded for free from the App Store. The service to store your photos is available in three different tiers -- a free plan that provides 31 Keepies per month, a premium plan with 101 monthly Keepies and an ultimate plan with unlimited Keepies. All images are stored on Keepy's servers and can be backed up to your Dropbox account.
I've fed this Human-Faced Fish 17 frogs and he's still hungry
As you might imagine, we get a lot of emails about new apps. We do our best to wade through them all to find the gems you should actually care about. Forbidden Breeding Kit - Human Face Fish isn't one of them. I'm writing about it simply because it might be the most absurd, weird, insane app I've ever seen land in my inbox. Rather than write a traditional review of this game, I'm going to give you my stream-of-consciousness reaction to playing it for the first time: Ok, it's installed, let's see what this is all about. I'm greeted by some broken English text teasing some mysterious creature that may or may not exist: "Although there are testimony and a legend, the living thing which is not checked still now exists." Well OK then! Now there's a fish on the screen and a bunch of buttons. The fish is just chilling out, swimming back and forth. Looks like a normal fish to me, I'm not sure where this whole "Human Face" thing comes in. There are frog icons on the screen and a button that says "Push." I push the button. Oh sweet merciful creator, the fish just attacked a poor frog in a flurry of black bubbles. It looked like some sort of magic spell. I now have one less frog. The fish has resumed swimming back and forth. The animation is really poor, it's just two fins that move and a couple of googly eyes. I hit the frog button again, with the same result. There's a counter in the upper left that tallies each time I feed this little beast a frog, so I guess I need to fill that up. I hit the "Talk" button and I'm given three options: "Hey" "How old are you?" and "I'm glad to see you." I hit "Hey." The fish responds with a squeak and a speech bubble that says "Please do not think that an answer will come on the contrary if a question is asked." I'm not sure what that means, but it seems appropriate given the circumstances. I hit "How old are you?" It responds: "How old do you think I am?" Oh no, the fish is turning into every girl I've ever met at a college party. This is bad. I back out of the Talk menu and resume feeding the fish. After a while, I hit the limit and the word "EVOLUTION" appears on the screen. The fish freaks out a little and then a weird, flesh-toned space appears on its forehead. That's it. It's done. Now I have to feed it 20 more frogs in order to get to the next evolution. The frogs regenerate over time, so I have to wait quite a while before I can feed him again. In the meantime I decide to mess with the Talk option again. There's new questions to ask! I ask "Are you a male?" The fish responds: "Is it related to you?" I think I'm going to stop asking this thing questions now. I keep feeding the fish, taking breaks to let the frog icons regenerate. I'm about to feed it the last frog. I feed it. On a side note, I've seen this feeding animation 30 times now, and it doesn't get any less horrifying. "EVOLUTION" ensues. Wait... the fish is growing something out of its body. Its fins are morphing or something. What am I looking at? Oh my... did this fish just grow human hands? The fish grew a pair of human hands out of its side. I uninstall the app.
Daily App: Cubits! mixes Tetris with Rubik's Cube in a new tile-sliding game
Cubits! is a smart tile-sliding puzzler from Rocket Mobile that mixes the spatial shape awareness of Tetris with the sliding row strategy or Rubik's cube. The developer pulls it off nicely to create a challenging puzzler that offers more opportunity for creative thinking than most of its rivals. Cubits! is a tile-slider at its heart. The game opens with a grid of colored tiles, called "Cubits," that you can slide in rows or columns. The goal is to slide the tiles and align three cubits of the same color together in a row or a column. You earn points and clear the tiles off the board whenever you make a successful match. As you remove tiles, new ones appear to fill the board. The game ships with three different modes to match your mood: TIME - A Race-The-Clock mode for adrenaline junkies MOVES - The default mode that emphasizes strategy and making every move count ZEN - Unwind and enjoy the open-ended gameplay that allows you to match tiles without a discrete goal at the end. The app includes rewards such as Power-Ups to boost your score when you match four or five Cubits together and the bonus removal of all Cubits of one color when make six matches in a row. You also earn points called "bits," which can be used to buy extras within the game such as extra moves, a cubit blast that blasts the area around a cubit and more. Bits are also available via in-app purchases. Cubits! offers a fun array of colors, catchy music and simple yet addicting gameplay that challenges you to think. The UI has a fresh, modern feel that makes the experience that much better. Cubits! is available for US$0.99 from the iOS App Store. There are no ads, but the game does include in-app purchases that are optional for gameplay. You only need to buy them if you want to speed up your progress. It is available for both the iPhone and iPad and requires iOS 7.
Adobe Voice for iPad creates audio, video presentations quickly and easily
Adobe has released a nice story-telling app called Adobe Voice for iPad. It's available for free from the App Store, but a Creative Cloud account is required to use it. Adobe Voice lets you easily create animated videos for personal use or business presentations. You can include your own photos and graphics, and the app can easily create cinema-quality effects like animations and transitions. When you are done, your presentation can be emailed, sent to social media services like Twitter or Facebook, or you can get a link so it can be viewed on any device. The app contains more than 25,000 icons, professionally-animated themes and licensed music to fit almost any mood. Adobe places credit and attributions page at the end of each presentation, so you needn't worry usage rights. I was able to get an advance look at Adobe Voice, and generally I came across very impressed. A tutorial that leads you through your initial project, though most actions are obvious. You can record narration for each page, and if you don't like it it is easy to re-record. By answering questions before you begin, Adobe Voices can make some suggestions about how to proceed, but you can be on your own if you like. Adobe Voice makes nice-looking video presentations, and that's a good thing. an Adobe spokesman noted that about 19% of web traffic is generated by YouTube, and that video was extremely important in business and personal consumption. It's clear from using Adobe Voice that a lot of thought has gone into producing this app. I can't think of a way to make creating a professional grade presentation could be any easier. Every element can be changed after the fact. Images, icons, animations, music, and narrations. Who will use this app? Students, families, small businesses, photographers, and people who have a story they want to share and didn't previously have a way to illustrate and share that story. A couple caveats. When I created a presentation and sent a link to a friend, the video quality was far from perfect. I had used some high quality photos, and the video really did not reflect their quality. Also, I find it a bit strange that the app works only in portrait orientation on the iPad. Most video is longer in width than height, so why doesn't the app configure itself for the best view? I asked Adobe about storage limits. There are no limits at this time, so create as much as you want. Videos are stored on Adobe servers and can't be stored locally yet. Everything is in the cloud, and any server issues could send your presentations to the land of lost content. Adobe is using industry standards for video. H.264 HD video and HTML5 so people can view Adobe Voice videos on any device. Adobe Voice is an elegant and clever app. It is likely designed to push more people to the Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions the company covets, and I'm sure it will. It's a very nice benefit of Creative Cloud membership at a very nice price of free. Adobe Voice needs an iPad 2 or later, and iOS 7.
Daily App: Fjuul is a unique activity tracker for your iPhone
Fjuul is a US$2.99 (briefly on sale for $0.99) health-related app that tracks your full body activity. The app runs in the background, and uses the iPhone sensors and your location to get a handle on what you are doing and how much exercise you are getting. Once you enter your body characteristics and age, the app calculates calories burned and allows you to set goals while you adjust your level of activity. "We've developed Fjuul using a scientific approach to activity tracking, with a focus on the intensity of someone's movements. With Fjuul, it doesn't matter whether you're training for a marathon or walking to or even moving in the shop – every move counts," said CEO and founder of Fjuul, Sascha Wischek. "We believe counting steps, duration or calories just isn't enough when it comes to measuring the impact activity is having on a person's health or levels of exercise. Fjuul understands each user and educates them about what their daily activity means, how it can be maintained or increased to have a positive effect on their overall health." When setting up Fjull you can create a free account or use your Facebook login. Enter your height, weight and age, and you can set a goal that includes things like burning off a hamburger, pasta or ice cream. Unlike a lot of fitness trackers, this app has a special emphasis on leisure activity, not just running or hiking. There is also a social component to the app, which allows you to compare your activities to friends and family who are also using the app. I set the app up and took a stroll. It seemed to pretty accurately gauge my activity, and even counted my steps. That was with the iPhone in my shirt pocket. Fjull runs in the background and I did not notice any heavy hit on battery life. Fjuul is not a substitute for expensive and cumbersome performance hardware, but it did seem to register my activity in a meaningful way. The data seemed constant from session to session, so it's going to be helpful as you use it more to achieve your goals. I would say the app should best be thought of as designed to measure casual activity. The only negative is when I shut Fjull down through Apple's multi-tasking gestures the app complained about being shut down. That seemed a bit over the top. A similar app worth looking at is the free Argus pedometer. While not an exact feature-for-feature match, it will track your motion throughout a day. Fjuul is an interesting approach to activity tracking, and comes at a fair price. The app requires iOS 7 or greater and it's optimized for the iPhone 5.
Daily App: Watch Over Me protects you from harm even when you can't help yourself
Watch Over Me is a safety app with an interesting story -- it was born out of a real-life abduction situation that left app co-founder Xin-Ci Chin uninjured, but badly shaken up. After her ordeal, she realized the futility of "panic button" apps that require you to open and press an alert button the middle of an attack. She became involved with Watch Over Me to provide people, in particular women, with a better alternative. Watch Over Me sets itself apart with its automated tracking that allows you initiate tracking when your safety is a concern. You can select an activity like "jogging" and set an estimated duration for the activity. The app will then track you until you check-in safely. If you fail to check-in on time, the app will then send out alerts to emergency contacts with information to help them locate you. The app also offers a "shake to alarm" feature that activates emergency alerts and turns on the camera to record what is happening to you. Watch Over Me also offers protection before you are in a crisis using crowd-sourced crime data (available in New York City, London, Leeds, Melbourne, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur & Bangkok). The app will alert you when you are entering a high crime area so you can be more aware of your surroundings. It also allows you to report any crime you witness, allowing you to warn others about a possible threatening situation. Watch Over Me is available for free in the iOS App Store. The basic features are free and include up to 20-minutes of tracking, one emergency contact, Email & Facebook emergency messages only and no video recording. You can expand the available alert methods, the number of emergency contacts and add video with a monthly subscription of US$3.99.
Daily App: Vango brings an art gallery to your iPhone and iPad
If you are looking for original artwork created by artists and not some off the shelf prints, then you should check out Vango, formerly ARTtwo50. The iPhone and iPad app allows you to browse and purchase artwork from independent artists who post their work for sale on the art network. Vango is more than just a database of paintings, its offers personalizations that are tailor-made to your tastes. The app has a recommendation engine that learns from the art that you favorite. The more paintings you like, the better the app will become at selecting pieces to match your taste. The recommendation engine also takes into account the colors of the room you are looking to decorate, eliminating outlying art work that may be beautiful, but just doesn't suit your current needs. Vango also offers a visualization feature that'll take a piece of art you are viewing and allow you to use your camera to virtually picture how it would look in your home or office. It's a very useful feature for getting a rough approximation of how the piece will match your decor. If you enjoy supporting local artists, Vango also has a localization feature that grabs your location information and shows you artwork from nearby artists. You can use this feature to find artists in your hometown as well as find local talent when you traveling away from home. For artists, Vango allows you to list your artwork starting at $100 and $250 price points, with higher amounts available as you begin to sell your work and build a satisfied customer base. A "following" feature allows your customers to follow you and receive notifications when you upload new pieces of art, sell your work, or move up to a new price level. Vango is available for free from the iOS App Store. The latest version of the app adds support for the iPhone, making it a universal app that supports both the iPhone and iPad. It requires iOS 7.
Google Docs and Sheets: A first look at the underpowered iOS apps
Two new competitors in the realm of productivity apps for iOS showed up on Wednesday in the form of Google Docs and Google Sheets. Docs is, of course, a word processing/page layout application that works like the web-based Google Docs, and Sheets is the equivalent of its web-based sibling. Both of the apps work both in sync with their online counterparts and offline, and Google's blog says that a presentation app -- Slides -- is on the way. Let's take a quick first look at both of the current apps: Google Docs Launching the Google Docs app, you're greeted with a login for your Google Drive account. Sign in, and a list of all current docs you have online appears. Either tap one of those existing docs to open it, or tap a plus sign button for a blank document. And blank is what you get. A white page with no ruler (not that it's needed in this day and age), and a toolbar with some standard mundane formatting commands: fonts, bold, italics, underline, justification (left, center, right and fully justified), numbered/unnumbered lists, and indent/outdent. If you're looking for full page layout capabilities as you see in Apple's own Pages or on the Web version of Docs, you're going to be disappointed because they're not here. On the other hand, if you're working on simple memos, letters, or notes, then Google Docs is probably up your alley. What's even better is that the app is targeted to those who want to collaborate on documents -- there's a comments button on the right side of the toolbar, along with a button showing who else is viewing the document. To share your Google Doc, just save it with a tap on the "checkmark" button, and then tap the information icon to bring up a Details pane. From that pane, you can share the document, rename it, even get a link to send to others who you'd like to have download the document. Unlike Microsoft Office for iPad, Google Docs supported printing from day one. There's a toggle on the Details pane for keeping a local copy of the document, and a graphical indication of who is currently sharing the doc. At least at this point, there's no way I could find to actually drop an image into a document -- c'mon, Google! Even the original MacWrite back in 1984 could handle copying an image and pasting it into a doc. In many iOS document apps, a tap-and-hold in a document brings up "paste" in a pop-up, or you can add an image directly by tapping a plus sign button and searching for an photo to paste in. Here? Nothing. Google Docs is also missing most of the features I've come to know and love in Pages. Things like real-time spell checking, the ability to do actual page layouts? Not there. If you're planning on writing a simple document and need to have others check or comment on your writing, then Google Docs is a workable alternative. Offline work can be immediately synced upon connecting to a network, and you can polish things drafted on an iPad or iPhone once you're using the online version of the app. The Web app is at least fully-functional and also has a variety of add-ons that you can use to make your document look beautiful and professional. The bottom line: Google Docs for iOS is an excellent bare-bones text editor that syncs with the Web-based version and can be used to create rough drafts of work that will be finished in the online version. Google Sheets For spreadsheets, Google Sheets provides an on-device-synced-to-Google-Drive solution similar to Google Docs. And by that, I mean that it's a faint replica of the Google Sheets found online. In fact, Google Sheets is only usable for portable data entry. You can't do anything even remotely spreadsheet-like with the app except for entering numbers or text into cells. Want to add a formula to a spreadsheet? You'd better know what the exact format for each function is, since Google Sheets for iOS has no way of inserting those formulas from a pop-up, nor does it give you hints when you're starting to enter a formula. At least Google Sheets has some of the collaborative tools of its Web-based sibling, so you can share documents with other or open and edit spreadsheets created online by others. But there's no way to leave a note for one of your collaborators as there is with Google Docs. You can change the font, borders, and formatting of cells, but that's about it other than just entering data or hand-typing formulae into cells. The bottom line: Google Sheets for iOS is a only good for doing basic data entry into existing spreadsheets that are created online with the Web-based version. Conclusion Both Google Sheets and Google Docs are very bare-bones and basic versions of what's available online. Rather than useful tools, both apps appear to be rushed-to-market responses to Microsoft Word and Excel for iOS. While Google Docs can at least be used to do drafts of documents and share them with other individuals while mobile, Google Sheets has nothing to commend it as a true spreadsheet other than the fact that it presents cells on a page. Anyone who is looking at getting real work done on an iOS device at this point will be better served by Apple's Pages and Numbers (US$9.99 each, free to owners of new iOS devices) or Microsoft Word for iPad and Microsoft Excel for iPad (free, but requires an annual subscription to Office 365 at $75+ per year).
What the heck is Blek?
There are some fantastic puzzle games on iOS, but the vast majority could be replicated on a different, non-touch device without too many issues. Blek is a rare breed in that it absolutely could not be played without a touchscreen, since your ability to draw on the screen is essentially what the game is all about. Your singular goal in Blek is to eliminate colored spheres from the screen. You accomplish this by drawing a line on the screen which then endlessly repeats until it either runs off the top or bottom of the screen, or runs into a black sphere. You can draw your line long or short and make it as complicated or simple as you want. Wherever your line drawing ends is where the next one will start, which means you usually can't just scribble a quick line and let it go, or you'll risk a misguided shot. The first dozen or so levels are very straightforward, but the difficulty quickly ramps up with levels that are downright sinister. You'll go from drawing short lines to ridiculously complex patterns in the hopes of touching all the colored blobs on your screen, and you'll retry later levels dozens of times before getting it right. The entire experience is very zen-like in that there are no text instructions, prompts, or needless menus. You can instantly recover from a failure by drawing a new line with zero waiting, which makes your inevitable mess-ups sting a little bit less. When you complete a level, a new level appears within seconds, turning a 5-minute time killer into a 45-minute marathon session before you know it. The best part is that there's really no penalty for failure here. You won't see a counter of the number of times you've fallen short, and the game doesn't antagonize you whatsoever. Losing means you get to try again until you get it right, which is a refreshing twist to what would otherwise be a very evil puzzle game. Blek has an entire trophy case of awards already, and it definitely deserves all the attention it has been getting. For US$2.99, you can't ask for a more engrossing, yet relaxing experience. The core game features 60 levels which will take you a good while to complete, and the developers note that there are more on the way soon. It's definitely worth the price of admission.
Red Herring: A terrific little game from 7 Little Words creator
Last night, my daughters and I spent several hours working our way through the first levels of Red Herring (free, with in-app purchases), a twistedly difficult new game from the creator of 7 Little Words and Moxie. The game presents you with 16 phrases at a time, which you categorize into 3 meaningful groups of 4, plus a "red herrings" column for the extras. If you're playing the most difficult level -- and the game isn't nearly as much fun unless you are -- it's a true challenge to sort out the meaningful groupings from the red herrings. Like 7 Little Words, you get the initial puzzle pack for free. In Red Herring, this consists of 50 challenging puzzles to start with. Once hooked, you pay for additional packs. The puzzles can be fiendish, especially if you choose to work without the built-in categories or partial solutions offered by the easy and medium levels. 10 gateway hints are offered for free. After that you pay US$1.99 for unlimited hints. My family had a ball with this -- it was tons of fun and involved lots of brainstorming. Throw the display over to a TV via Air Play and it's the perfect party game as well. We really liked it. Recommended.
Daily iPhone App: Give A Smile helps you spread some cheer
Give a Smile from Nobilebits is a charming little app with a noble intention -- to spread love and happiness by sharing as many smiles as possible. The app is not an emoji library, rather it uses the familiar smiley face that we all know and love. Give a Smile is easy to use. Just pull down on the ribbon to enter the "Smile Maker" mode and start customizing your smile. You can change the color and add personalized text with a handful of different fonts that allow you to spruce up your smile. When you are done, you can share your happiness on social networks as well as via email or messaging. The Give a Smile app is available for free from the iOS App Store. It is compatible with the iPhone and requires iOS 7. There are advertisements that stay at the bottom of the screen and go fullscreen after you send a smile.
Daily App: Duet challenges you to stay alive while you dodge walls
Duet from Kumobius takes a simple action of spinning two dots in a circle and turns it into a challenge by adding some upbeat, yet eerie electronic music along with a impending sense of failure that hangs over your every move. In Duet, you use your thumbs to control two circles that are placed on the opposite sides of a ring. The ring is there for visual purposes and serves only as a reminder of the track that the circles spin on. The circles interact with walls that fall down the screen, and your challenge is to spin the circles to avoid the walls. If you hit a wall, you die and are tossed back to the beginning of the level. The wall that you hit also is stained with the "blood" of your circle and these blood stains increase every time you fail. The game admonishes you to "keep calm and avoid everything," and that is sage advice, even if it is difficult to follow. It's only through a carefully choreographed series of movements that you will be able to survive a level. With the background music and the graceful back and forth movements of the circles, the game has a dance-like feel -- a dance that you inevitably die in, but a dance nonetheless. Duet provides a curious mix of simplistic gameplay, panic-inducing impending failure, and coordinated controls that when combined is surprisingly pleasing. Duet is available in the iOS App Store for US$2.99. It is a universal app, compatible with both the iPhone and iPad.
Daily App: Spheres for iOS is a new way to share photos with family and friends
Spheres is a clever take on photo sharing from iOS devices. Open the app and take a picture, or load one from your camera roll. The picture goes to the cloud, and people that you assign to a group -- called a 'Sphere' -- will receive the photos without having to do anything if they are also running the app. Other individuals can be contacted via email or text message, and they receive a link to view the photos in a browser. Photos can also be shared with social networks including Facebook and Twitter. Spheres has some similarities with Apple's iCloud Photo Sharing service. Apple doesn't use a special app, but shared photos alert anyone you wish to notify, and viewers can comment on or 'like' your photos. Apple also allows others to post photos or videos to your stream from any iOS device, Mac or PC. The Apple service creates web pages for universal sharing and also integrates nicely with Apple TV for viewing streams on large screen displays. Spheres is more automatic. Snap some photos using the camera app built into Spheres, and everyone in your Sphere is notified and receives the new images. A message with a link also is sent so people in the Sphere can view photos on the Web from any device without the app. The app does not currently support iOS notifications, but that feature is coming soon. No account is needed to view images, but Sphere accounts are required for adding pictures. The accounts are free, and you can create a login or use your Facebook credentials. Comparing Spheres to Apple's iCloud offerings, Spheres developer Adam Peterson says "We are trying to create an easier way to privately share Spheres with users in the same geolocation. Anyone can add photos to the Sphere as long as they are invited by the creator." He provides this example of how it can be used. "For example, I create a sphere for my Son's 7th birthday party and we invite all his friends from his class. I know his friends parents are going to be taking a lot of photos at that event and I'm not necessarily close enough friends with them to have phone number or email. This is a way for all attendees at this event to share photos privately with all attendees. This is similar to paying a professional photographer to take photos of the kids at the event but it is free and everyone that is at the event gets all photos instantly." The app is easy to use and works as expected. The only risk is if the developer drops support for the app, because the photos you take with the app are not saved to your camera roll but to Spheres' servers (there is an option to manually save to your camera roll). Spheres maintains its own servers, and has no limits on the amount of photo postings. I think the longevity of your photos would be assured if the app saved your photos to the camera roll automatically. Spheres has a privacy policy similar to many other photo-sharing apps. Your pictures remain your property and can't be exploited by third parties, but the company reserves the right to delete offensive materials if there is a complaint. Spheres is not a universal app. It requires iOS 6.0 or later, and it is optimized for the iPhone 5.
