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Runtastic 5.0 update brings redesign, hydration monitoring and more to the fitness app
Runtastic today updated its Running and fitness app, bringing a brand new look to the app and few notable new features. The biggest changes users will notice is a fresh, new UI with improved automatic syncing to a user's Runtastic account when an activity is completed. Another new feature is hydration monitoring that takes into account the weather, your activity level and your vital health statistics to recommend the best way to rehydrate after each workout. The company also improved the free version of the app, making the previously pro-only Music player and Live Tracking & Cheering features available to free users. The Pro version keeps its full suite of additional features, which includes Powersong, Training goals, Interval training and more. Runtastic is available in two versions -- a feature-limited free version with ads and a US$4.99 ad-free version. Both are compatible with the iPhone and require iOS 7.
Nvidia Shield slashed to $199 for April, getting remote game streaming
Nvidia's Android-based handheld game system, Shield, will receive a temporary price drop for April, cutting the system by $50 to $199 for the month. The price cut is accompanied by new features arriving in a software update for the system next week, including a new user interface for the Shield's button-mapping feature. The addition lets players use the Shield's physical buttons for touch-based games on the Google Play store. The hardware company will also add a beta version of its away-from-home game streaming support feature. Players will be able to remotely play PC games on their Shield, waking up and logging in to locked PCs while on the go. Additionally, the update will add bluetooth keyboard and mouse support for those that want to hook their Shields up to a TV to play on a bigger screen. Lastly, the Nvidia Shield will receive the latest version of the Android operating system, nicknamed KitKat (version 4.4.2). Nvidia also recently revealed that Valve's popular first-person puzzler Portal will receive a full PC port on Android with full Shield support. [Image: Nvidia]
Daily App: Snippit mixes music with photos in a very social way
If you're the social type that loves mixing music with your photography, then you may want to take Snippit for a spin. The app allows you to take a photo, overlay 10 seconds of music and then share the result with the world. Snippit is first and foremost a social network for you to share your music-infused photography. You must sign up for an account in order to use the app and you quickly gain followers within the first few days of joining. There is a running posts feed of new snippits that you can view as well as a browse feature that allows you find new snippits based on music genres, hashtags and both popular and latests trends. When you find a snippit you enjoy, you can favorite it or comment on it. You also can tap on the user profile to dig deeper into who they are and what type of music and photography they enjoy. When you are viewing a user's profile, you can view all the posts this person has created. You also can filter the content and only browse the posts you have favorited from this user, their tagged posts and their posts with location information. If you like what you see, you can choose to follow the user, adding their posts to your feed. After you've gotten a feel for the app, you may be ready to create your first snippit. Just tap the big music icon in the center of the screen to start compiling the media. Pick your music track, using either your own iOS music library or the 30-second music preview available for all iTunes tracks. Each snippet can be 4 to 10 seconds long and you get to choose which section of the track you want to clip. Once you've selected the music, you are ready to add your photo by taking a new photo or importing an existing one from your camera roll. You also can write a caption for your photo, add location information, tag friends and share to social networks all with just a few taps. Once you hit publish, it takes less than a minute for your clip to show up in the stream. If you don't like what you just posted, you can easily delete it. Snippit is available from the iOS App Store for free.
Sonos announces new controller apps for Mac and iOS
Sonos, the company that develops the popular self-named wireless music system, says it is giving the apps that control it from Macs and iOS devices a complete overhaul. According to the company, the apps have been: "rebuilt from the ground up, this new UI not only looks great but gives our customers even faster access to ALL the music they listen to in their homes. One of the coolest features is universal search. Instead of having to look separately within each service to find music from artists you are interested in, one search shows all the places where an artist's work exists on the Sonos system." Sonos products have been on the market for more than ten years, and the company is looking for these new apps to go the distance for the next decade. Sadly, the Android apps are in beta now while the updated iOS apps should appear this spring. Versions for the Mac are also on the way, with a new look and similar features. Sonos has had an early advantage in providing wireless solutions for the home, but Apple has done well with AirPlay solutions, and recently Bose and NuVo have ventured into wireless whole-house music solutions among with many other manufacturers.
Tipbit relaunches with smart search and Evernote integration to help make your digital life simpler
Juggling multiple email accounts can be hassle, but Tipbit aims to make it a manageable one. Founded by Gordon Mangione, the former Microsoft exec who oversaw the development of Exchange, Tipbit combines your various email accounts into one manageable feed on your iOS device. However that's just the beginning of its impressive number of features. Where Tipbit shines is the way it integrates various web services directly into your email, allowing you to check data from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook without having to switch apps. Swiping left on a message brings up a menu that allows you to sort messages, find mutual contacts, make appointments in your calendar, and other tasks. With its latest update Tipbit is adding a new contextual, instant search function to the app. To ensure searching is as fast as possible the app indexes your information securely off the phone, allowing you to utilize their server for search rather than having your phone do the computing. It gives Tipbit a remarkably powerful leg up in sorting and organizing information. You can even search messages that haven't been downloaded to your phone yet. In addition to improved searching the update adds support for Evernote clipping directly from the app, allowing you to save an email as a pdf for later viewing. If you're worried that Tipbit might be tempted to try and monetize all this information you're sharing with them, put your fears to rest. I was able to speak with Mangione last week about the app, and specifically asked about their planes for monetizing the app. The company is taking a similar approach to Evernote, with the basic services they've made available since launch remaining free as long as the app is active. In the future they'll be offering paid premium services, but the app you download today is the app you'll always use. However they know that to get to that level of success, they have to respect their users' privacy. Mangione promised they would not be using any information connected to their servers for data mining purposes. Given how powerful the app currently is, it's easy to imagine a future where Tipbit finally makes it easy to manage a private secure enterprise email account and your personal email all from one app. We're looking forward to seeing how the app continues to develop over the coming months. You can watch Tipbit's launch video for version 2.0 below.
Daily App: MyScript Calculator solves your hand-written math equations
Typing math problems in calculator can be tedious, especially when you have complex equations to solve. If you want to write out your problems instead, then you need to check out MyScript Calculator from Vision Objects. MyScript Calculator provides a large canvas on which you can write out your equation. When you are done writing, the app automatically will convert your writing into type-written numbers and calculate the answer for you. If you don't like the automatic answer, a new feature recently added to the app allows you to turn off auto-answer and use a "Calculate" button instead. The app supports the standard operations such as multiplication and division as well as a wide array of complex functions used in trigonometry and calculus. One of the useful features of MyScript Calculator is its ability to solve for unknowns. Just insert an "?" into an equation with its answer and the app will fill in the correct value for the unknown. It also supports gestures which allow you to strike-through or scratch out numbers you want to remove from your calculation. MyScript Calculator was recently updated for iOS 7 and includes a new new operators (n-root, hyperbolic functions) and new rounding options that let you choose between rounded and truncated results. It is available for free from the iOS App Store and works on both the iPad and iPhone.
Findery app lets you discover the world around you using annotated notes and maps
Findery (free) hit the App Store today, and I expect it is going to be a successful app launch. Findery has been in beta a couple of years, so it already has a lot of content. Many new apps launch with very little user-contributed content, which is a weakness in my estimation. Findery allows people anywhere in the world to add notes, photos or video to illustrate the interesting things they see or experience. "Every place has a story, or a thousand stories," said Caterina Fake, founder and CEO of Findery. "Findery brings places to life, be they where you stand or where you hope to go." The app doesn't require an account if you just want to browse, but part of the fun is sharing. Members can leave notes that are public or private, and the app helps to organize a member's notes, reports activity on their notes, and provides information on followers. The app is easier to use than describe, and you can check out the idea and the content on the Findery website. A good example is best taco recommendations around the US, but topics can be really anything, from historical oddities to best surfing locations. Findery has elements of Yelp and National Geographic, Facebook and Instagram, yet in total it is a unique experience. Once you have the map, you can scroll and zoom to any place in the world and see what information people have uploaded. I tried the app from my small town in Arizona, and surprisingly there were quite a few items of direct interest to me. Obviously, the beta users have been busy. If I wanted to, I could leave my own notes on some of the local topics, or follow those who were making notes. The app is ad-free, but at some point it will likely be monetized. I found using the app easy and fun, and I learned some things about my area I would not have known otherwise. Findery is not universal, and it requires iOS 7 or later. It is optimized for the iPhone 5. I consider Findery a good 'find'.
The Learnist app brings its crowd-sourced collection of information to your iPhone
Learnist debuted in 2012 as crowd-sourced learning platform with a heavy emphasis on images and videos as a way of conveying information. Learnist pulled its old iOS app and recently debuted a new iPhone app that does a wonderful job of presenting this multimedia content. Often called the Pinterest of online learning, Learnist has a large library of user-generated multimedia lessons called "learnboards." The new Learnist app is a front for this library, allowing you to browse these boards on your mobile device. You can find boards on almost any topic, including technology, arts, crafts, history, cooking and more. Once you start thumbing through boards, you easily can lose an hour of your time. Learnist allows you browse through boards by categories, or search for either a topic or another Learnist user. Each board pulls in content from various sources on the web and compiles them into a neat and very readable package. The app provides a synopsis of the online content and then opens the full article in an in-app browser if you want to read more. When you are done reading, you can save a board to your reading list for future reference. You also can share the content via Facebook, Twitter, email and messaging. Though most of the content is user-generated and free, the app now features premium boards created by experts and celebrities, such as Mythbuster Kari Byron and film director Gus Van Sant. These premium offerings can be purchased for 99-cents via an in-app purchase. I purchased the Kari Byron set on science experiments for kids, and it was well worth the dollar that I spent on it. The Learnist app is available for free from the iOS App Store.
My cat Cinnamon reviews Friskies Cat Fishing 2
Cinnamon isn't the smartest cat on the block. He's adorable, a little bit chubby, and remarkably cuddly, but he's also a bit of an idiot. He eats his brother's food even though we yell at him every single day, he chews on power cords despite being shocked and nearly killed by one, and if you leave a dryer sheet in the laundry room he'll consume it whole. That being said, he's also an extremely skilled hunter that can snatch a house fly out of the air and jump 5+ feet up a wall to go after a laser pointer. So when I noticed that Friskies had launched a new version of its Cat Fishing app -- which Cinnamon had taken a great liking to years ago -- I decided I'd let him review it. I launched the app, called Cinnamon into the room, and waited for the fireworks to start. But they didn't. My little buddy just sat there and stared at the screen as the colorful fish swam about, with nothing in the way of an instinctual drive to attack. In fact, I think Cinnamon wanted to befriend the fish more than anything. I'm not sure what has changed in either the app or my cat since the original Cat Fishing game sent him swatting at the screen in a furry of hunger and angst, but it's not there anymore. When the app sensed that Cinnamon wasn't paying attention (after 30 seconds without interaction) it meowed loudly in a feeble attempt to elicit a reaction. It got one. Once Cinnamon heard the app's desperate meowing, he decided it was time for a snuggle, and as you can see in the photo at the top, he and my iPad are now best friends. Or they were best friends for roughly 45 seconds, at which point Cinnamon stood up, sneezed onto the screen, locked eyes with me as if to say "I guess you'll be cleaning that up now..." and walked back into the bedroom to fall asleep until dinner. Cinnamon clearly enjoyed his brief time with the app, and although he's too dumb (or too smart?) to go after the digital bait, it's definitely worth your time to download the free app and see if you can fool your own furball.
Photo Grid Collage Maker is capable and free
Photo Grid is a free (ad supported) app with lots of options for creating collages, as well as video slide shows accompanied by music. You can select the aspect ratio for the photos, and choose from more than 300 layouts. The layouts that appear depend upon how many photos you have. You can also select background colors, frames, text, and stickers. Your finished collage can be shared with the various social networks, emailed, or saved to your camera roll. I have used the app on several of my pictures, and find it straightforward. You point the app to your photo roll, select the photos you want to use, and the rest is pretty obvious, with controls along the bottom of the screen. There is also a feature that lets you create videos with photos. There's isn't a lot of flexibility there. Once your photos are selected, you can't change the order. And there are no dissolves between photos, which I think is a requirement for a nice looking slide show. The photos just cut from one to another. You can add music easily, and the app takes care of the timings and conforms the music to your slide show duration. Photo Grid works well and it is a universal app that costs nothing. It does have ads, and they can be distracting. I pressed a 'next' button on screen, and got more ads, when I thought I was advancing to the next screen of the program. Even with my caveats, Photo Grid has a wealth of features at an appealing price of free. I still like Diptic as a paid app for collage creation, but the creators of that app are getting carried away with too many in-app purchases. Photo Grid requires iOS 6 or later to run and it is optimized for the iPhone 5.
iExit gets new features and is now free
I liked iExit when I reviewed it a couple of years ago at US$0.99. Now I like it even more. Added features, a nicer GUI, and it's free. Unlike most navigation and POI-based apps, iExit highlights what's just beyond highway exit ramps. If you are looking for food, gas, coffee, hospitals, rest stops, you name it, iExit will point it out. The app has a new iOS 7 look, and 25 preset searches, but you can search for anything by typing in any description you like. Search results include a list of destinations, a one-touch call button, relevant web links, a Google Street View image and a directions button which lets you choose Apple Maps or Google Maps (via either the app or a browser). If you are nowhere near an interstate exit, the app will tell you that, and give you distances to the nearest exits, and then a single click tells you what businesses and services are at that exit. You also get a small map to tell you where the destination is in relation to the exit. I used the old version quite a bit on road trips, and this new version is slicker, has an updated database, and the Google Street View feature is potentially helpful. In using the app, I found that sometimes the Street View photo was facing the wrong direction. I'm not sure if that is a flaw in the Google software hooks or iExit, but sometimes that feature was less than helpful. iExit needs iOS 6 or later. It's a universal app and it is optimized for the iPhone 5. If you travel by car at all I think iExit is worth putting in your Travel or Navigation folder.
Dragon Dictate 4 released today with new features and speed enhancements
I've been a longtime fan of Dragon products, which seem to be at the very top of the line of speech recognition applications. I used an earlier version of Dragon Dictate to write large portions of a book, and I frequently use it for email as well as general control of Safari by voice. Nuance Communications has released Dragon Dictate version 4 today. The new version now includes the features of what used to be a separate product called MacSpeech Scribe. This functionality, which was introduced in the previous version of Dragon Dictate, has been considerably enhanced in function and performance. You can play a sound file into the application, and it creates a profile for the voice, which then results in a pretty accurate transcription of what was said. Many other voice recognition apps require an Internet connection because the processing is being done on a remote server. Dragon Dictation is all Mac-based, so you don't need WiFi or a data connection to let Dragon do its magic. I have spent about a week using DD4 around my home office. I noticed right off the bat that it is faster than version 3.5, and control of other applications like Apple Mail and Safari are smoother. Version 4 has also added precise control of Gmail, making creating, editing and sending a message a completely hands-off affair. Apple's Pages is also directly supported, so you can do all your formatting of text and speak other commands that would otherwise require mouse moves to a menu. It should be noted, however, that Pages 5.1 reduced support for AppleScript, so you don't get quite the range of options that you did with earlier versions. Big mistake, Apple. As a test of transcription, I downloaded a couple of podcasts. You point the Dragon application to an audio file, and it starts taking in sounds to turn into text. You then highlight a sentence of the converted sound file and make any corrections to the text. If needed, it's possible to play the audio file to hear what actually was said. Dragon needs about 60 seconds of corrected text to create a conversion profile, after which you play the sound file and the transcript appears in faster than real time on your screen. I played a 15 minute sound file into Dragon Dictate and it had the transcript ready in about 5 minutes. Things are surprisingly accurate -- better than 99% in my tests -- but one issue is there are no automatic paragraph breaks, which makes for a pretty large chunk of text to navigate. I have suggested to the Nuance folks that the app should automatically insert paragraphs based on pauses in speech, counting sentences, or every 20 seconds or so. Transcription is a great feature for students who want to preserve a lecture, or anyone wanting to turn recorded speech into editable text. The microphone needs to be pretty close to the speaker though, as you won't capture usable audio at a distance. Supported audio files include .mp3, .aif, .aiff, .wav, .mp4, .m4a, and .m4v. One nice way to record audio is to use the voice memo app that comes with iOS. When the recording is complete, email the file to yourself and let DD4 transcribe it. I tried that with a 40 second file and the transcription was perfect. Are all transcriptions mistake-free without editing? No, but Dragon Dictate 4 sure beats hours of typing. You will usually have to make some corrections. Of course Apple has long been involved in text-to-speech, and Mavericks has a built-in dictation function. It does need an internet connection, but you can download a large file that will allow local processing of speech just like Dragon does. Although neither company admits it, it's likely that Siri and Apple's OS X dictation are really Nuance products. Apple dictation is not nearly as powerful as the Dragon Dictate product, but it works well for basic dictation. If you want to dictate to your Mac while also controlling various apps without ever picking up a mouse, Dragon Dictate is the app for you. There is a certain joy and freedom that comes with seeing your words accurately appear on screen. I also love using Safari with voice only, initiating Google searches, clicking on links by voice only, and scrolling pages up and down. Dragon Dictate 4 requires an Intel Core Duo CPU running at 2.4 Ghz or faster. The app currently supports both OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks. A headset/microphone is included with purchase, but I did fine training the app with my Blue desk microphone. On my Mac laptop, I did quite well using the built-in microphone. By the way, this review was mostly written using Dragon Dictate 4 by dictating directly into our content editor on Safari. Making hyperlinks still involves using a mouse for part of the work. Dragon Dictate 4 sells for US$199.00. An upgrade from version 3 or 3.5 is $99.00 during this month. After that upgrade pricing for previous owners with a valid install of Dragon Dictate or MacSpeech Scribe is $149.00. Dragon Dictate 4 can be bought directly from Nuance or resellers.
Instapaper updates iOS app with AirPlay support and more
The popular webclipper Instapaper updated its iOS app late last week with a number of new features that will ensure you'll never have forget to check out something you saw on the internet. First up is the addition of AirPlay support for Apple TV. Instapaper is already a solid way to save videos for future watching, but thanks to this iOS update Apple TV owners will no longer be stuck the brutal frustration of watching their clipped videos on a tiny phone screen. If you find yourself having a hard a time reading particularly long articles on your phone's screen, and long for the smooth e-ink of your Kindle, Instapaper feels your pain. That's why the update also introduces the ability share Read Later articles directly to your Kindle. Sadly for free users, this feature is only available to premium subscribers. Of course the company has made it easier than ever to sign yourself up for the paid version of the app. Version 5.1.5 finally adds the option to sign up for an auto-renewable subscription to Instapaper. Once you sign up the app will ask for your email, zip code; while this may rub some users the wrong way the developers have provided the following explanation on their blog. Before purchasing the renewable subscription, you'll need to agree to share some personal information, including name, email address, and ZIP code. As per our privacy policy, we promise that we will neither access nor store this additional information. It is simply a requirement of the auto-renewable subscription process, likely due to the feature being available first for magazine and newspaper publishers. So if you subscribe, please don't be alarmed when you see it in the dialog box: Also, auto-renewable subscriptions are managed directly through iTunes, and so you'll have to return to iTunes to unsubscribe (not that you'd ever want to!). To unsubscribe you go to iOS Settings » iTunes » Apple ID » Manage button under Subscriptions setting. Support for back gestures via pagination have also been enabled, so if you use pagination you can now swipe left from the first page and then swipe right to return to your articles. Finally the Instapaper Daily function has now been integrated into the Browse section, showing you the top article each day. The update announcement blog also says the team is working on their most ambitious update since being acquired by Betaworks in April of last year. As for what surprises they have in store for us when it launches, we'll just have to wait and see. You can find the updated version of Instapaper, as a free download, right now in the iTunes Store.
Pic Scanner has been improved and the price lowered
I last looked at Pic Scanner last summer, and found it barely better than snapping a picture with Apple's camera app. Pic Scanner could do multiple photos but there weren't too many features, and the free version wasn't very flexible. If you wanted to share an image, you had to make a in-app purchase of US$2.99. Here's what the app does: Put some photos down on the table, and group them close together. The app takes a photo, then auto-crops so you have each photo as a separate file. There are filters, like sepia, black and white and others, and there are enhancement tools like sharpen and tonal balance. Thing are much better in this new version. The app is still free, but still limited in saving and sharing pics. You can now scan 10 photos or groups of photos, up to four at a time, and share three times. Then you need to buy the app, which for March only is $0.99, a much better deal. This new version makes higher resolution scans on the iPhone 5 and 5s, and there is a sharpen filter. Four photos can now be auto cropped instead of three, and the app integrates with Google + and Dropbox. The app offers a new spirit level to reduce distortion in your photos, and the whole app has had a pleasant re-design for iOS 7. I tried the app on some really old, low-resolution photos I had taken in college with a crummy film camera. The app accurately cropped each photo, and the enhance option did balance the color a little better, and sharpened things up. The developers suggest placing your existing images on a white background before snapping them with Pic Scanner, and that's good advice. On a wooden desk the app had problems cropping and auto selecting the photos, so I just put everything on a piece of white printer paper and everything worked well. Pic Scanner isn't as effective as a hardware photo scanner. I used my inexpensive Epson XP-400 scanner/printer and got a better quality scan, but then I needed to get that scan into Photoshop to clean it up and color balance it. It did a better job, but at a much higher software/hardware expense. Pic Scanner works as advertised. The universal free version will let you see if it will work for you, and I think for many casual users it will be just fine. The free version gives you a little more latitude to experiment, and if you have to buy it's a much better deal at $0.99.
Apple releases iTunes 11.1.5
Apple has released iTunes 11.1.5 which, according to the company's copious release notes, "...fixes a problem that may cause iTunes to quit unexpectedly when a device is connected and improves compatibility with iBooks for Mac on OS X Mavericks." Go and get it now in Software Update or Mac App Store.
OS X Update 10.9.2 now available, patches SSL/TLS hole [Updated]
OS X 10.9.2 just arrived via the Mac App Store, bringing with it a number of "improvements to the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac." While the update seems to focus on issues that were occurring with FaceTime audio calls, iMessages, Mail, and server/VPN connections, there's no word on whether or not it has also fixed the SSL vulnerability that was recently patched in iOS 7.0.6 and 6.1.6. Update: developer Steve Streza confirms that Safari now behaves correctly/securely in 10.9.2, indicating that the security hole has been plugged as expected. The "detailed information about the security content of this update" has not been posted as of publication time; however, "detailed information about this update" -- which lists all of the changes made with the exception of the security details -- is updated. Update: If you're dubious that the error has been fixed on a specific machine or browser, head over to http://gotofail.com to find out if your installation is safe from the Apple SSL bug. Thanks to Andrew, Eric and everyone who sent this in.
WunderMap: The weather app gets a "wunderful" update
It seems like it was only yesterday that I was writing about Weather Underground's iOS WunderMap app. Today, the company announced the availability of a new universal version of the free application, bringing the weather mapping capability to iPhone and iPod touch users as well. For many users of the app, that would be enough of an update to be worthy of celebration, but there's more that has been changed – in fact, in a day of testing before the app went live, I was frankly amazed with what Weather Underground has done with the app in about eight months. To begin with, the app now has a new, iOS 7-friendly design that is much easier to use and navigate. Radar and satellite imagery download much faster – I was impressed with how quickly I could load the animations that show how clouds and precipitation are moving into my area. One thing I've loved about Weather Underground as a weather website is the availability of webcam data, so you can actually do "eyes-on" verification of the weather conditions being reported. WunderMap now provides full-screen webcam imagery and –- when possible –- traffic-cam access. Last but not least, I was impressed with the new icon for the app. Rather than go with the typical boring iOS 7 flat icon, the WunderMap developers created a very descriptive and colorful icon that shows one of the PWS (Personal Weather Station) indicators that you're able to pull up on one of the map layers. Those layers –- the default map showing weather stations, radar, precipitation, temperature, infrared satellite, webcams, wind, US fronts, visible satellite, regional temperature, severe weather, hurricanes, active fires and fire risk –- can be viewed singly or layered on top of each other. Animations over time are available with a single tap on the lower right side of the app screen, and a legend showing what colors on a layer mean are also more easily visible now. The app is free to download, but you'll see ads when switching or otherwise editing layers. An in-app purchase is available to turn off the advertising for a year for US$1.99, and if you happen to be a contributor to Weather Underground by providing your Personal Weather Station data, ads are turned off by default. For weather geeks or those who are just curious about what's happening locally –- or around the world –- the WunderMap app is definitely one every iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch owner should install.
Voila screen recorder for OS X
OS X has a number of handy screen capture tools built in. There are standard keyboard shortcuts for capturing still images and QuickTime Player can capture basic screen recordings. However, sometimes you need a little more from your capture tools and, if that's the case for you, then check out the latest version of Voila, which is our Daily Mac App. Voila has just celebrated its fifth anniversary and developer Global Delight has released version 3.7 in honor of that. Among the updated features of the new version are a number of much-requested additions including the ability to record video in 60 frames per second, tighter social media sharing integration (Facebook, Twitter, and Vimeo have been added), and a number of features related to OS X 10.9 Mavericks including Messages and AirDrop sharing and improved tagging functionality. Another nice improvement is for those with Retina MacBooks: Voila 3.7 allows users to scale down Retina display images by up to a factor of two. This is incredibly handy as it reduces file sizes and also ensures that your screen captures will look good on non-Retina displays. The main benefit of Voila is not the new features, but the continued improvement of existing features. For starters, Voila has an excellent content management system built in. Under its Organizer tab you can quickly sort your captures via images, videos, or even files you have trashed. Voila also has a number of Smart folders set up or you can create you own, all of which makes finding your captured media quick and easy. Voila also offers a ton of tools and effects to use on your captures. One of my favorites is the rubber stamp tool, which allows you to make it appear as if you've stamped a screen capture with, for example, a "PAID" stamp or an "APPROVED" stamp, among others. Another really nice features is that screen captures aren't just limited to fullscreen, a single window, or a cropped area of the screen. You can capture multiple windows at once and even have non-standard shape captures, such as circles and free-form shapes. When you're done capturing, Voila makes it a snap to import your captures to iPhoto, email them, print them, or share them via Messages, AirDrop, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Voila is US$29.99 in the Mac App Store.
WeatherBug for iOS has been revamped with better real-time lightning features
WeatherBug (free) has long been a top choice for people serious about weather. Yes, Yahoo Weather is beautiful and useful, but WeatherBug has always let you dig deeper into weather data. Now, Earth Networks has released an update with enhanced Spark Lightning detection. As before, you'll get a warning when lightning is less than 10 miles away, and now you can zoom out to see lighting anywhere in the world in real time. The look of the map has been improved over earlier versions, too. The company claims its Total Lightning Network is the most advanced system in the world, and it's used by NASA, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Air Force. This latest version now lets you share lightning info with others. Other changes include expansed user-submitted galleries, a cold and flu section, and additions to what are called Lifestyle Forecasts. That includes golf forecasts, outdoor nature forecasts, pollen alerts, and a national flu update. You also get hourly and 10-day forecasts, plus a variety of weather map overlays for radar, clouds, wind speed, pressure, humidity, wind chill and heat index. WeatherBug's look is still a bit busy, but now it lets you choose background colors or a background picture. There are pop-up ads that show up at the bottom of the screen. I looked around for lightning, but when I checked there was nothing going on in the U.S. There were some pretty active storms in South America, and WeatherBug displayed the lightning flashes as they happened. WeatherBug now supports 64 bit operation, and requires iOS 6.1 or later. It's a universal app and it's optimized for the iPhone 5.
iTranslate Voice delivers version 2.0 with new features and faster performance
When I looked at iTranslate Voice in 2012, I though it was like science fiction. It lets you speak to your iOS device in one language, and hear any of 36 other languages come back. It's a powerful application for world travelers and anyone who must speak or interpret a foreign language. Version 2.0 (US$0.99) is now available. It's been redesigned for iOS 7 and is a universal binary. The app supports the new iOS 7 offline voices, making translations faster. This update also improves AirTranslate, which uses Bluetooth to communicate with another device running the app. Voice recognition is claimed to be faster and more accurate. Other useful features include the ability to repeat a spoken translation, and copying the text for use in an email or SMS. Text can be edited if need be to make changes. Voices seem very clear in this latest version, and speed is good on WiFi, 3G or LTE. Note that the app requires an internet connection to reach the translation server. I tried the app and found the speed of translation quite fast. I speak some German, and the app seemed to get the translation right in both directions. Reviews of the previous versions of the app have been strong. Of course, the app is designed for short sentences. Don't expect uninterrupted translation as someone delivers a speech, for example. There are quite a few translators out there, including a free one from Google. The Google app doesn't support cut and paste, and doesn't have iOS 7 optimizations as yet. Still, for free, it's powerful. iTraslate Voice has always been a top-rated translator, and with version 2 it's even better.
