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TUAW's Daily iPad App: ScreenChomp (and Camtasia giveaway)
When most people think about developer TechSmith, they think of the company's big products like Camtasia and SnagIt. Now the company has come out with a fun little app for kids of all ages that brings video screen capture to the iPad. ScreenChomp is a free whiteboard app that captures everything that's drawn on the screen to a video that can then be shared with others. Not only does ScreenChomp work with the whiteboard, but it imports photos from your iPad Photo Library as well. The result? Well, it's really easy to draw a big pirate mustache and dark goatee on just about anyone, record a soundtrack, and have a blast. There's more to ScreenChomp than just fun and games. TechSmith sees this as a tool for teachers to explain concepts and record their drawings and explanations for posterity. The sharing capability is tied to a specific iPad -- there's no account to sign up for, you just tap a button to have the screen capture sent to ScreenChomp.com. ScreenChomp also allows sharing with Facebook accounts, and the URL for your opus on the ScreenChomp website is easily sent to friends or students. For students, they can draw and narrate their own movies for free. The app is extremely simple to use and cutely animated with the ScreenChomp mascot seen in the icon at the top of the post. There's only one downside for parents who show their kids ScreenChomp -- I don't think you'll ever get your iPad back from your child. Giveaway TechSmith has also provided TUAW with two licenses for Camtasia for Mac valued at US$99 each. To have a possibility of winning one of these licenses, keep an eye on the @TUAW Twitter account later this afternoon. We'll post the two product keys at a random time. Once you see one, grab it, download Camtasia for Mac (email required) from the TechSmith website, and then paste in the product key. If you happen to be the first person to use that product key, you're a winner.
TUAW's Daily iPad app: StumbleUpon
If you're familiar with StumbleUpon, the iPad app will be a very comfortable experience. Instead of browsing "stumbled" sites in a browser with a toolbar, the StumbleUpon app allows you to visit sites shared by others (within a couple dozen categories like "tech" or "babes") from your iPad, complete with sharing tools and the ubiquitous "Like" or "Don't Like" buttons for each page you visit. The StumbleUpon app is nicely designed for the iPad, with all the features you could access in your browser, somewhat more conveniently arranged around the main window where you'll be viewing shared web content. There's not much more to this app, except that I wish StumbleUpon had taken the opportunity to leverage the touchscreen on the iPad. It is handy to have Stumble, Like, share, forward/back buttons around your viewing area, but there's no real innovation in the app. There are glimmers of hope, as the Home screen actually has a swipe-able list of your interests (which you can edit). But it would have been nice to see this put into my history, so I could easily see previous "liked" content. Or perhaps a grid of suggestions grouped by interest, so I'm not passing through a bunch of "comedy movie" stumbles before getting to a "tech" page. Still, your profile screen offers a list of your likes, and how many people you are following and how many are following you. This is well-presented, as is the Home screen and your main browsing screen. Newcomers to StumbleUpon will find it quite easy to get started. While you cannot skip questions about your age and gender, finding others on StumbleUpon is really easy thanks to the app having access to your iPad's address book. Don't worry, this is only to match up email addresses to those already registered with StumbleUpon, and you don't have to choose anyone. Still, I found it was helpful to add a few people so I can see what they are sharing. StumbleUpon is, after all, a crowdsourced service, so the more the merrier. If anything, the StumbleUpon app suffers from a lack of coherent user interfaces. Still, the basic functionality of finding "cool stuff" by hitting that Stumble button is well-suited to the iPad. You're not going to see Flash content, but in the time I spent using the app I never saw any! If you're prone to clicking that Stumble button in your browser, or if you've never used StumbleUpon before, the iPad app is a great place to go. Within minutes you'll be up and finding all kinds of crazy things.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: 22 Days HD
22 Days HD is an event countdown app that tells you the number of years, months or days until an event. It even counts down the hours, minutes and seconds, but the app calculates that value according to the day, not the exact time of the event. The app looks nice on the iPad, even if its navigation is a bit awkward. It opens to your event screen which lists all your saved events. Each event has an icon and is arranged in a grid pattern according to how far away the event is (days, months, or years). You tap once on an icon to view the event details and tap twice to edit an event. Be careful not to triple-tap an event, as that deletes it. While still in the event list view, you can get a quick look at all the events in each time category by tapping and holding on the "days", "months" or "year" labels. Pulling up information in this event list view is quick and easy, but you do have to get used to these single, double and triple taps, as well the tap and hold. You can also swipe left and right to navigate between your event list and the new event screen. This swiping is not completely intuitive as you have to swipe across the large 22 Days logo at the top to navigate. If you swipe on the bottom half of the screen, nothing happens. Once again it's easy, but not completely intuitive. The new event screen is where you enter all your events. You can set the name, date (month and day only), assign a notification date and time, and specify it as a recurring event, There is no option to set the frequency (weekly, monthly) or the recurrence; each event by default is yearly. You can also choose an image and must assign one before you can create an event. The image can be a stock image provided by the app, one in your photo roll or one taken with your iPad 2 camera. The 22 Days app is also chock full of value-added features. It lets you add an unlimited number of events as well as grab location data for each event. You can even pull in event information from your contacts (their birthdays!) and from an ICS file exported from your personal calendar. Events can be shared on Twitter by double tapping the event and on Facebook by triple tapping. Overall, 22 Days HD is a nice-looking app with many features. You just have to get used to its semi-complex method interaction that uses a combination of single, double and triple taps. 22 Days HD is available here in the App Store for $1.99.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Baby's Musical Hands
Owen Goss is an experienced iOS game developer -- he's produced a game called Landformer, and I once watched him make a game about bacon farming in just 90 minutes at a conference. But he's taken a step away from gaming for his latest iPad app, instead creating more of a musical instrument meant just for the very young. Baby's Musical Hands is an app made for babies, using color and sounds to fascinate and entertain the youngest iPad users out there. The app was created with Goss' son in mind, but any baby will likely be drawn to interacting with the visual and audio feedback that the app provides, and parents can "play" along with children as well. Unfortunately, I don't have a baby to test the app out on, but I'm sure any kid would find the fun in this one. And at the price of just US 99 cents, it'll come much cheaper than most of your baby's other toys and gear (of course that doesn't include the cost of the iPad). If you've got an infant around who's shown a little iPad interest but isn't quite old enough to throw Angry Birds around, give this one a try.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Doodle Buddy for the iPad
Doodle Buddy is a free finger-drawing app for the iPad. It brings the fun of childhood finger-painting to the iPad as well as the grown-up need to make quick sketches to share with friends, family or co-workers. For your children or the child inside all of us, Doodle Buddy lets you draw with multiple finger on the iPad's large screen, just like finger-painting. It has over 44,000 colors in its color-picker so you never run out of choices. A variety of stamps can be added to your creation and each one makes a funny noise when you use it. It's perfect for situations when children want to draw, but parents don't have the materials or time to let them get all messy from markers, paints and ink. I've field-tested with my own children and my kids love it. For the adult, Doodle Buddy has a variety of tools you can use to mock up a quick drawing that can be shared via email. It's easy to grab the brush tool, dial down the brush size and draw out rough directions or a floor plan to send off the your significant other when apartment or house shopping. You can create each doodle on a blank slate, pre-made background, or doodle over your own pictures. The ability to mock up your own pictures can be useful for pointing an important aspect of a image, like "hey, that's me on that roller coaster." You can also use it to have some fun when you put a silly phrase on your cat picture and create your own lolcat. Overall, Doodle Buddy is fun, easy to use and great for both adults and children. The drawing app also has a rewards feature called Doodle Bucks that you earn when you download an app. Powered by Tapjoy, the Doodle buck let you buy expansion packs that include birthday, stencil, food and other theme-related tools. Doodle Buddy is available for free in the App Store. It does include advertisements which some parents don't like in an app used by children. These ads are removed with a 99-cent in-app purchase.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Paper Camera
Although I'm a sucker for photography apps on the iPhone, I haven't really done any photography on the iPad 2. It's a great device for running photography touchup apps, but what about actually using the camera? Paper Camera is a US$0.99 (sale price, regular price $2.99) universal app that is just fun enough to make me start taking pictures with my iPad 2. Sure, there's the problem of looking like a complete tool while holding the iPad 2 up to take a photo, but at my age I don't care any more. Paper Camera uses a whimsical hand-drawn user interface and displays your live camera image on a piece of wrinkled paper. There are 11 different filters available, each of which provide cartoon and painting effects to your photos. %Gallery-128478% Sliders are available for adjusting the contrast, brightness, and line thickness of any of the effects. When you want to switch effects, there are large arrows at the top of the screen to tap on. Want to actually quit admiring the view and take a photo? Tap the big red camera icon, which looks like a child drew it. The app only works with the camera right now -- you can't pull in photos from the Photo Library -- but developer JFDB Labs is planning on adding that feature in version 1.2, scheduled for about two weeks from now. Following updates are expected to add full resolution photos and saving live video with the effects applied. There's one annoyance with the app. The hand-drawn interface doesn't flip as it should when you turn the iPad over. Other than that, it's a barrel of fun and at just 99¢ right now, it's a bargain that you can install on your iPhone as well.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Battleship for iPad
Electronic Arts recently released an official version of Battleship for the iPad. EA kept the gameplay of the classic board game, but updated the graphics for the larger screen of the iPad. The iPad game has the look and feel of the electronic version of the game with several modes including classic, salvo, super weapons and multi-player. The multi-player mode lets you play against another iPad, iPod touch or iPhone via WiFi or Bluetooth. The gameplay of each mode is classic Battleship. There's a simple grid that you use to arrange your ships and fire on your enemy ships. You don't have to keep track of the grid (no, E5 or A8 required), you just double tap to fire (or tap and hit the fire button) and the game fills in your hits and misses. Each time you or your opponent fires, there is an entertaining cut scene that shows the missile launching and landing on its target. This back and forth cut scene does slow down gameplay a bit, but you can turn it off if you don't like it. A small set of sound effects add to the gameplay and is not overbearingly loud. The two-player player mode is one of the best features and it works great. The gameplay with two players is almost the same as single-player, but you get to beat your friend instead of the game's AI. The connection doesn't drop and it's as close as your going to get to the real thing without actually buying the original board game. Best of all, there are no game pegs or game boards to find and put away each time you play. Overall, the gameplay on Battleship for the iPad is smooth and responsive. It never crashed and the multi-player connection only dropped once in all my trials. The Battleship for iPad game is available now for US$2.99 in the iTunes app store. %Gallery-128408%
TUAW's Daily iPad App - Warplanes: A History of Aerial Combat
Gameloft recently released a new iPad book-app, Warplanes: A History of Aerial Combat (US$6.99). This app is follow-up to Gameloft's earlier book-app, War in the Pacific. This latest offering includes detailed information on 43 historic war planes including popular bombers like the B-52, fighters like the F-15 and reconnaissance airplanes like the SR-71 Blackbird. You can view a 3D model of the plane, browse vintage photographs, read detailed specs and even watch a video of the plane in action (though not all planes have a video). The app opens to a home screen with clickable images of all the planes and is organized as reference guide, not a chapter book that you read. The content is organized nicely and there is a lot of information for users to comb through, especially if you are new to military aviation. Besides background information, there is an interactive cutaway diagram of each plane and a rotatable 3-D model. The 3D model is a bit disappointing as you can only move it left and right. You cannot spin it to see the top and bottom of the plane. %Gallery-128298% The photo gallery for each plane is also inconsistent. When you click on gallery, sometimes you get a nice slideshow of pictures for each plane. Other times, you open a grid of images for all the planes, not just the one that you are viewing. The latter is a tease as you see fifteen thumbnails on the screen, but only two or three are for your selected plane. Overall, the app is geared towards the beginning aviation buff or the more experienced aviator who wants a quick reference guide. It's not for the seasoned aviation veteran looking for a lot of stellar pictures and heart-pounding video of the planes in action. This media-rich content which would look great on the iPad is lacking. I would love to see more images and, especially more videos of the planes in various aerial maneuvers. More planes would also be a welcome addition as 43 entries only scratch the surface of historic military planes. It is also worthy to note that the book-app is heavily weighted towards US planes and jets. There's a rich history of early World War I and World War II propeller planes that's missing.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: PDF Converter
It's not often that we can make a product announcement and also have it be a Daily App, but that's the case with Readdle's newest iPad app, PDF Converter (US$6.99). PDF Converter adds a tremendous amount of power to your iPad; it makes it possible to save almost any content on your iPad as a PDF file. Whether you have an email attachment, a web page, a document from your iDisk or Dropbox that you want to make into a PDF, PDF Converter does it. A tap on an email attachment brings up the familiar "Open In..." buttons, allowing the document to be opened in PDF Converter. The attachment is automatically converted to PDF format and available for further distribution or storage on the iPad. To convert a Safari web page to a PDF for future reading offline, just add a "pdf" prefix to the URL in the address bar, tap "Go" on the iPad keyboard, and the document is converted and placed in the Documents list in PDF Converter. The app can also take anything from the iPad clipboard, your contacts list, or Photo Library and convert it to a PDF. This is a wonderful app for creating and distributing ad hoc address lists -- by tapping on the names of assorted contacts and tapping the Convert button, PDF Converter instantly creates a formatted PDF with the contact info for all of the people you've chosen. It's also useful for creating ebooks on the fly. I took a Word document from Dropbox holding my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel, converted it to a PDF, and then used PDF Converter to open the novel in iBooks. This was all done without even getting near my Mac. PDF Converter has found a place on my iPad, and I think a lot of iPad users will feel the same way once they install the app.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Puffin browser
When you absolutely, positively need to be able to view Flash websites, the new Puffin Web Browser for iPad (US$0.99, universal app) is an inexpensive way to do so. The app, much like Skyfire ($4.99) before it, runs the sites through a server for rendering and compression before delivering the results to your iPad. The result? You can watch Flash animations and movies that are not viewable with Safari. I asked my TUAW cohorts to recommend a few Flash-heavy websites to check out Puffin, and each passed my tests with flying colors. First, Victor Agreda had me check the Fluidmaster website. This site is for a toilet repair kit company, and just going to the site in Safari was a total fail (see below). Opening the same site in Puffin, I was immediately able to view all parts of the site, including the ultra-cheesy Flash-animated "Bob the Plumbing Expert" (below). Rendering was fast over Wi-Fi, so moving from page to page was quick and pain-free. As you can also see in the image below, Puffin provides tabbed browsing on the iPad. One of our resident sci-fi experts, Dave Caolo, recommended trying to watch the Flash video episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars available on Starwars.com. When I loaded the site in Safari and went to one of the episodes, all I got was R2-D2 telling me I needed to load the latest Adobe Flash Player (below). Popping over to Puffin, I was immediately able to watch an episode. In comparison to watching it on my iMac in Safari with the Flash Player, the video was a bit choppy, and the audio occasionally got out of sync. One issue I did have with the app is that at the present time, cut and paste isn't supported. This was irritating when I was trying to paste in a password and couldn't. The Puffin folks say that it will be supported in a future version of the browser. The "drag" mode, which brings up a hand icon to facilitate dragging frames or scroll bars on websites, was also non functional for me. Still, the app is much less expensive than Skyfire; $0.99 gets you Puffin on both iPhone and iPad, while you'd need to spend $7.98 to get Skyfire on both devices. For those who really need to view Flash sites on mobile devices, Puffin is a capable browser at a bargain price.
How to create a unique iOS home screen icon for your website
GIGAOM has put together a nifty article detailing the process for creating a unique iOS home screen icon for your website. When iOS users visit your website and create a home screen icon shortcut to easily access your site again, you want that icon to stand out and be easily identifiable amongst all the other icons, particularly if your site is a web app. Normally, when you create a home screen icon for a website, iOS will create a thumbnail image of that webpage, but by following a few simple steps (using a program like Preview), and entering a few lines of code, your websites can easily be identified by a well branded icon on any iOS home screen. Click here for all the details.
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.
