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TUAW's Daily iPad App: Tapatalk
Although Internet forums are the illegitimate offspring of the old dial-up Bulletin Board Systems and the Web, I find myself using them a lot. Whether I'm checking with fellow cruise enthusiasts over at Cruise Critic or looking for tips about hardware issues over in the MacRumors Forums, these online discussion groups can be a lot of fun and educational as well. Tapatalk (US$2.99, universal) works with all of the standard forum software, including the big two names, vBulletin and phpBB, to bring iPad ease of use to forum participation. Since the iPad first shipped last year, I've found it difficult to use many of the forums because of some incompatibilities with Safari. For example, I had to discover by accident that I could scroll a text entry field by using a two-finger swipe, a "feature" I then passed along to my forum-frequenting wife. That still didn't make using forums a pleasure... The way I found out about Tapatalk was through the aforementioned Cruise Critic forums. As I entered the forums one day, a pop-up appeared telling me about Tapatalk, which I promptly purchased. Since then, I've been using Tapatalk to easily navigate my way around forums and I think it has actually resulted in an increase in my forum activities. %Gallery-127922% Tapatalk requires that the forum operator enable mobile access from the server, but once they do (and over 16,000 forums worldwide are already set up this way) you can use the app to enjoy your forums. Not only does the app include a way to automatically log into forums that you frequent, but there's a search tool for finding new Tapatalk-compatible forums. Once you're found them, it's easy to register from the app to participate in a new forum. If you're a forum moderator, Tapatalk includes a way to delete, unapprove, lock, or stick posts. For the rest of us, it's a breeze to add photos from the iPad's Photo Library, maps, or links to any forum post. Tapatalk has very good ratings on the App Store and for good reason -- it's a well-executed app that makes forum participation from an iPad easy and fun.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Cargo Runners
Trouble Brothers is a company run by developers Jeff McCord and Steve Shippert, and when I saw them back at Macworld earlier this year, they showed me a game they were working on called Cargo Runners, destined to be released on the iPad, along with an actual real-life board game version. It doesn't seem like the board game version has arrived yet, but the iPad version is out now and available for $4.99 on the App Store. You can play the game a few different ways, including just pass-and-play local, online synchronous or asynchronous multiplayer, and there's a version with solo play against an AI coming soon. The basic idea, as I saw in February, is that each player runs a ship around the world, collecting and delivering cargo while contending with all sorts of issues, from weather to political scheming. The game's fun, bright, and extremely well-designed, perfect for board game fans, or just anyone who likes a solid game in this style. The missing AI can be a problem (Game Center users are reporting that the matchmaking is lonely sometimes), but if you've got a group of people to play with, the experience is excellent. Board gamers, pick this one up right away, and everybody else bookmark it away for when that solo AI shows up.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Decibel Meter Pro
Have you ever wondered just how loud a noise is? During a recent review of the SoundJaw iPad accessory, I needed to see if it really increased the volume of the iPad's speaker. What did I use to measure the sound level for the review? The iPhone version of Decibel Meter Pro (US$0.99, universal), a fun -- and useful -- app to measure the max, peak, and average dB (decibel) levels associated with a sound source. To use the app properly, you must point the iPad's microphone (it's at the very top between the power button and headphone jack) directly towards a sound source such as a speaker. The app shows four meters, all of which rotate so that they're always vertical. There's one that displays peak sound pressure level as a number, one for max, and one that displays an average. There's also a large combo needle-type gauge that displays both peak and average dB levels. Decibel Meter Pro provides four separate frequency weightings -- A, B, C, and Z (unweighted). According to the built-in users guide, "these weighting filters emphasize or suppress certain aspects of a frequency spectrum compared to others." The A-weighting is used most commonly since it measures sound pressure level with more sensitivity at the higher frequencies, just like the human ear. During my tests with the iPhone version of the app, I found myself confused about certain aspects of sound pressure measurement, so I decided to check with the folks at Salt Lake City-based Performance Audio who make Decibel Meter Pro. I'm always used to waiting for a few days for answers, so I was shocked and pleased when I received an answer in just minutes. The support for Decibel Meter Pro is some of the best I've ever seen for any app. Thanks to the "install once, install everywhere" setup for universal apps, I am able to enjoy Decibel Meter Pro on both my iPad 2 and iPhone. I find myself using the app a lot. I have a little bit of tinnitus in my left ear, so I find myself concerned about loud noises. I've measured the crowd noise at a Major League Baseball game (86 dB), at my desk (52 dB), and in a favorite restaurant during a busy time (72 dB). There are a couple of little things to be aware of. First, tapping on the screen or rubbing against the iPad case will bump up the Max dB reading, but you can lightly tap the Max dB meter to reset it and get a more realistic reading. The other oddity is that when you first launch the app, the Max and Peak readings are huge numbers. Keep watching the Peak reading for about 30 seconds, and you'll see that it resolves into a reasonable number. You'll need to tap on the Max dB meter to reset it from the huge number you'll see. Finally, the app is advertised as having a decibel reference chart (it's shown in the description), but it's not actually in the app. At US$0.99, Decibel Meter Pro is a bargain. It's a great tool for anyone who is concerned about noise levels or who needs a tool for measuring just how loud the neighbor's barking dog is.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Sadun's Collage
To start off this new series of daily apps, I thought I'd pick something close to home -- an app by TUAW's own Erica Sadun. The free, ad-supported app is called Sadun's Collage, and it produces fun photographic collages of pictures taken with the cameras in your iPad 2. Sadun's Collage is very intuitive to use. When you launch the app for the first time, you see a corkboard with a live image frame on it, as well as a group of buttons that are at the top of the screen. The buttons fade out, but are summoned back with a tap on the corkboard. To take a photo with Sadun's Collage, you tap on the live image frame. Once the photo is "pinned" to your corkboard, you move it by sliding it around with your fingers, use the pinch gesture to make it bigger or smaller, and rotate it by twisting it clockwise or counterclockwise with two fingers. Every photo has a white Polaroid-like frame, and displays shadows for a feeling of depth as you layer the images. To take another photo -- there doesn't seem to be a limit to how many you can place on the corkboard -- just tap on the corkboard and then tap the + button that appears in the toolbar. If you've been snapping photos of your friends with the rear-facing camera but want to add your face to the board, there's a button for toggling between the cameras. You're not stuck with just the cork background; there are also slate, marble, sandstone, and limestone to use as backgrounds. Once you've captured, sized, and placed images on the background, a tap on a "photo" button sends the collage (sans advertising) to your iPad photo library. Another button opens a blank email with the collage attached for sending to friends. Any individual image on a collage may be removed by tapping on it to display a minus sign (-), and then tapping the minus sign to confirm the deletion. If you decide to erase the entire collage and start over, a tap on the "recycle" button offers up a clean slate to start with. I asked Erica why the app doesn't let you place images from your iPad photo library into the collage. Her response was that the app is designed for spontaneous fun with groups of people more than after-the-fact collage creation. It's also possible that the standard iOS photo browser was omitted because it tends to be a bit slow and is a memory hog, but that's just my opinion. While you're hanging around at a picnic, hiking in the mountains, or waiting for the fireworks to start over the Independence Day holiday in the U.S. this weekend, be sure to download Sadun's Collage, have a little fun passing around the iPad 2, and enjoy those holiday memories in a clever photo collage that you created.
