iPhone App Reviews

ezimba

Michael (Admin) | Aug 29, 2008 Photo & Video

User rating: (3 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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The iTunes App Store has plenty of apps that let you do all kinds of things with your photos… upload them, share them, deface them, you name it… but what if you just want to rotate your photo? Or make it look all artsy by making it black & white?

In the absence of a full-on Photoshop app, which you probably don’t want on your phone anyway, you don’t have many options. But you do have the simple iPhone photo editor called ezimba.

I’ll never know why ezimba is called ezimba, and frankly I don’t really care. All I know is that it lets me do simple things to photos (and a lot of bizarre things, too) and that’s about all I need.

Most of what you’ll want from ezimba can be found under the Standard Enhancements and Reorient categories. Once you choose your photo and load it into the app, you can go into Standard Enhancements and adjust the contrast, brightness, sharpness, saturation, hue, and perform a few other semi-common operations like blur and soft light.

Under Reorient, you get to rotate your photo, flip it vertically, flip it horizontally, and a couple other things not worth mentioning.

There’s also a Resize & Reduce category that sounds useful, but you have to remember that you’re using your phone to manipulate photos. You can reduce the size of your photos by anywhere from 10-90% (but why? iPhone photos are relatively small as it is), but when it comes to cropping specific parts of the photo you’re out of luck.

Aside from color effects that let you change the image to sepia, monochrome, and other colors, most of ezimba’s other functions are just for fun. Despite whatever fantasies you might have about applying a High Swirl to your mom’s face and then putting her inside a Pirate Cut Out, it’s really not that glamorous.

If you take a lot of pictures and have an occasional need or desire to make something black & white or brighten up low-light photos, ezimba is perfect. It even lets you undo all of those horrible filters you’re bound to apply. If there’s any real downfall in this app, it’s that you will lose any work you’ve done when answering a call or responding to a text message, and this is where you learn the first rule of image tomfoolery: save your work often!

I really could do without all the crazy transformations and filters, but you gotta give ezimba’s developers credit for putting in the effort. If you take pictures with your iPhone and like to tinker with them, you need this app and you need it now.

Tags: free, photo editing

Wikipanion

Michael (Admin) | Aug 29, 2008 Reference

User rating: (19 votes, average: 3.11 out of 5)

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If you thought your iPhone made you The World’s Biggest Know-It-All before Robert Chin created Wikipanion, you were living a big fat lie!

Wikipanion is really just the Wikipedia website optimized for iPhone and packaged with a couple of usability enhancements built in, but it rules and will make you truly worthy of the Nerd crown you seek. Apart from giving you access to the full range of publicly-maintained knowledge within Wikipedia, Wikipanion gives you a separate table of contents for each article and the accompanying categories that match.

And that’s about it.

Hey, it’s Wikipedia, what more do you want? Sure, it would be nice if you could forward articles to your friends… but if you’re that much of a geek, it might be time to find yourself a girlfriend! Sorry, that was inappropriate.

Tags: free

Movies

Michael (Admin) | Aug 28, 2008 Entertainment

User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)

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I’ve been a fan of Now Playing (formerly called BoxOffice) since it came out, mysteriously went away, and then came out again. It tells me what’s in theaters, shows trailers, and that’s about it. Jeffrey Grossman’s Movies, however, aspires to be more than just a movie theater guide which it is… and it isn’t.

In the what’s-playing-in-theaters department, Movies does pretty much everything Now Playing does. It lets you browse by what’s opening this week, what’s leading at the box office, movie titles, and ratings provided by the app’s new owner, Flixster. You also get movie trailers, browsing of theaters by name or location, and you can also designate your favorite theaters so they always appear at the top of the list.

Something Movies does that Now Playing doesn’t do right now is show details and trailers for upcoming movies which is a nice feature. Did you know that Kate Hudson has a movie coming out on September 19th called “My Best Friend’s Girl”? I haven’t even watched the trailer and I can already tell it’ll be her worst chick flick yet, but I wouldn’t have known about it if Movies hadn’t clued me in.

Movies also provides closer looks at movie posters which I like, and thanks to the power of Flixster’s growing database there’s also a feature that lets you search for older movies now on DVD. There’s no way to buy the DVDs or add them to a Blockbuster or Netflix queue (yet?), but at least this feature might help you settle a bet or two. Flixster, IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes web links for each movie is also a nice touch. Gotta admit, Movies is looking pretty good right now.

But here’s what Movies doesn’t do… it doesn’t provide direct links to buy tickets from Fandango’s iPhone site. Sure it gives you Fandango’s number, but I don’t need a movie app to call them.

Much worse, though, is Movies’ inability to display one of the larger movie theaters which is literally within walking distance from my place. I gave Movies my zip code and it didn’t find the Kerasotes Webster Place theater that I was hoping for. I turned on the Current Location function, still nothing. There are only two movie theaters I go to with any regularity, and if one of them isn’t featured in this app that’s enough to make me not want to use it at all. How can it not know about this missing theater? It’s not like I live in Mayberry… I live in the middle of Chicago.

But wait, there’s more!

I saw Dark Knight from the very front row which sucked. Great movie, bad seat, so I wanna see it again. When I found the movie in the listings, I tapped it to see showtimes and it only displayed showtimes at three theaters, two of which aren’t even in Chicago. I know for a fact that Dark Knight is still playing all over the place, including both of the theaters near me (one of them being the theater that Movies doesn’t list), and I know this because (a) Now Playing told me, and (b) I double-checked with Fandango’s website.

If I look for the movie theater instead of the movie, then I’m told that Dark Knight is being shown. That’s really nice but, if I’m supposed to believe what this app is telling me, the info has to be in both places.

Movies has some cool features that Now Playing lacks, but the #1 thing I want from a movie app is to find out what’s playing where, and right now I don’t trust Movies to provide that.

Tags: free, movie listings

Jamd

Michael (Admin) | Aug 27, 2008 News

User rating: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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I have the attention span of a five-year-old and I’m not ashamed to admit it. When I “read” the newspaper I’m not reading the articles… I’m reading the captions under all the nice pictures. This is why I like Jamd – it’s all about photos and the accompanying story capsules that are occasionally weird and are written by people called ‘shindig’ and ‘kitten’. Jamd certainly has a few flaws, but it’s still a pretty cool way to get a quick glimpse of what’s happening out there in the world.

Jamd is divided into three categories: Featured, Breaking, and Popular. Search is also available if the three default categories don’t do anything for you. Tap a story to read more, and the full text of each story comes with a thumbnail photo. Tap the thumbnail and that’s where Jamd starts to work its magic.

Behind each story’s thumbnail photo is usually a whole slew of related photos from the story you were just looking at. Some stories might not have any related photos at all, but if you’re reading about Brad Pitt or the Olympics or something that gets a lot of coverage then the extra photos will be there. Duplicates seem to come with the territory, but they’re easily pushed out of the way with a swipe of the finger.

When looking at a group of photos, or a “stack” as it’s called in Jamd, one finger will move photos around and two fingers will let you resize and rotate the photos. The motion is very fluid and kind of fun to do when there’s a lot to dig through. Double-tap any photo to see the story behind it. Unfortunately Jamd doesn’t let you save the photos directly from the app… Getty Images obviously doesn’t want to encourage that behavior… but you can either take a screenshot or email the story’s web link to yourself and save it from the Jamd website.

Jamd is a great idea that could only be pulled off by a company that owns 70 million photos the way Getty Images does. There’s no question that it’s nicely executed, but the app isn’t perfect… as of right now, none of Jamd’s three categories contains more than 15 stories which is very limiting. I’m also pretty unclear on how stories are classified as Featured, Breaking, or Popular. Check out the screenshots to see what I’m talking about… “Daddy can you buy me a pony” is breaking news? Pffft.

Tons more highlighted content and more logical category placement would make this app Great, but until that happens I’m just going to classify it as Really Good.

Tags: free, photos

PhotoSwap

Michael (Admin) | Aug 27, 2008 Social Networking

User rating: (14 votes, average: 3.07 out of 5)

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Using PhotoSwap is incredibly simple: take a picture with your iPhone which is then whisked off and shown to some random person, and in return you get a picture from that same stranger.

Each photo sent through Photoswap is sent only to one person, so you should never see the same picture twice, and you can send photo replies back and forth to each other. Also, as a bonus for the stalker in all of us, you get to map the sender’s location! It doesn’t give pinpoint accuracy (a good thing, imo), but if this creeps you out just go into Settings and select Hide Location: On.

Photoswap employs a very interesting concept, but unfortunately the results are mind-numbingly boring. I confess to sending around some pretty boring photos myself in hopes of getting something back that’s worth looking at, but I’ve been sorely disappointed every single time. Maybe that’s the problem here? Everyone is snapping crappy, boring photos on the off-chance they might get to see something funny or at least some boobs or something.

Padadaz is obviously aware of this problem since they recently started greeting PhotoSwap users (every time the app is opened) with a desperate plea for non-garbage photos. Something tells me nothing will change as long as PhotoSwap insists on making you take a new photo in order to get one back.

I understand why the app wants a new photo… it’s all about immediacy and sharing a photo that’s fresh right NOW. This would be great if we were all living like rockstars, but the reality is that most of don’t have anything terribly interesting to share right this minute. We could share something interesting from last weekend, but right now we’re just sitting on our asses playing with an iPhone.

The other problem is that any photo you take with PhotoSwap is gone forever, sent off to that anonymous stranger. You don’t get to save it first and it doesn’t get saved to your Camera Roll. If it’s a really cool photo, do you really want to give it up immediately? I don’t.

Kudos to PhotoSwap for trying to do something new, but right now it’s not doing enough to be anywhere near interesting.

Tags: free, photo sharing

Stylem Greetings

Michael (Admin) | Aug 26, 2008 Entertainment

User rating: (2 votes, average: 2.50 out of 5)

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I love the idea behind Stylem Greetings… browse a catalog of “greetings cards”, write a personalized note, and email your sentiment to friends and family from your iPhone. Sounds like it has the potential for mass appeal, right? Yeah, one would think.

Unfortunately, Stylem Greetings doesn’t appeal to the masses. It appeals to teenage girls! And if you’re a teenage girl, or someone who thinks like a teenage girl, then this app is probably “da bomb”… or something like that.

It looks like the folks at Stylem Media literally spent hours and hours trolling MySpace for all those crappy gif images that people post in each other’s comment boxes when they have nothing genuine to say. You know what exactly what I’m talking about… cheesy self-affirmations, gooey proclamations of love and friendship, excessive Girl Power declarations, occasionally witty things that were obviously stolen from tshirts, and general over-the-top cutesy garbage.

Hmm, can you tell I’m a 30-something GUY?

Seriously, Stylem Greetings appears to be manufactured from no less than 99% recycled trash from MySpace. If you like that kind of thing, and despite my very mocking tone it’s certainly not wrong if you do, then go get it and have fun. The app itself is quite functional and well-organized, so spreading all those gooey, cutesy feelings to your pals will be easily accomplished with Stylem.

I just wish Stylem Media would use their obviously strong engineering skills to make something for people who aren’t into sunshine and glitter!

Tags: free, teens

Hee Button

Michael (Admin) | Aug 26, 2008 Entertainment

User rating: (2 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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Hee Button’s description in the App Store is written in English (barely), so I installed it. According to ObjectGraph LLC, Hee Button is “from a famous Japanese TV show!”

And what, pray tell, are you supposed to do with this wacky Japanese Wooo Button equivalent?

“Push the button when you have a good trivia!”

Yeahhh ok then. Push the button and a creepy monotone voice says something that sounds remotely like ”Hee.” It has a counter that goes up with every Hee and it maxes out at 20.

Am I really going to start annoying people with this thing when I “have a good trivia”? Only if they’re Japanese – everyone else will just think I’ve lost my mind.

Tags: free, useless

iPhone Wallpaper: Flowers

Michael (Admin) | Aug 25, 2008 Wallpapers

User rating: (2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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I don’t know how many of these I’ll be posting, but I’ve got at least one pic I took with my iPhone that seems wallpaper-worthy:

Tap the thumbnail, then tap & hold to save directly to your iPhone

Tris Update

Michael (Admin) | Aug 25, 2008 Games, Updates

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Looks like I picked the wrong time to review Tris! Noah Witherspoon, Tris’ creator, pointed me to his blog where he explains why the game will soon be disappearing from the App Store:

Well — I’ve received notice from Apple that they’ve been contacted by The Tetris® Company about Tris. That, I’m afraid, is essentially game over. Do they have a case? No. Not really. I am convinced that if it went to court, the “copyright” claim would get thrown out completely. The trademark, perhaps not — but if I changed the name, to e.g. “Trys”, that would be much harder for them to argue.

The trouble is, I’m a college student, and not an affluent one, and I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to fight this battle right now. There’s a point at which I am willing to give up and be practical, to let the world have its way with that ever-mistreated little ideal of “principle”. Thus, it’s with great sadness that I must announce that I’ll be pulling Tris from the App Store on Wednesday, August 27th, to remain in Apple’s systems but publicly unavailable until I work out a solution to this.

That blows! If you’re reading this and you have the ability to help Noah out with legal counsel or something that might help him fight The Man, let him know through his blog, Two Finger Play.

Otherwise, INSTALL TRIS WHILE YOU STILL CAN! It won’t be there for long. :mad:

Tags: Updates

Tris

Michael (Admin) | Aug 25, 2008 Games

User rating: (18 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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Sorry, lawyers have run Tris out of the App Store. See the Tris update for details.

If you got all excited to see Tetris ® in the App Store and then screamed OMG WTF at EA’s ridiculous $9.99 price tag, you definitely weren’t alone. If nothing else, you had Noah Witherspoon on your side.

Tris is pretty much right on and the gameplay is 99% identical to the falling blocks game we all know and are hopelessly addicted to. However, it is very important to note that Tris is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or in any way associated with The Tetris ® Company or any of their products. Once again, it’s NOT AFFILIATED so don’t you dare go all lawyer on our hero Mr. Witherspoon.

The 1% of difference I just alluded to is in the way the falling pieces move horizontally. Unless you’re new to this planet, you know that falling pieces in this game usually move in kind of a clunky way when you maneuver them left or right. Pieces in Tris do more of a sliding thing which seems weird at first but it’s very easy to get used to. Tap to rotate them and you can still put pieces wherever you want.

Like any high-quality game, Tris remembers your place if you get interrupted and it has a high-score board so you can show your friends what an awesome stud you are. It also has a global scoreboard for worldwide bragging rights, but apparently the sudden rockstar popularity of Tris is pushing Noah’s shared hosting resources to the limit which he’s working on fixing. Give the guy a break, the game’s free and it kicks ass!

The one thing Tris lacks entirely is sound, but that’s very forgivable considering how great the gameplay is. Some would even call that a bonus since the sound effects for this game have always been pretty stock to begin with.

If you like “falling blocks” games you should be installing Tris right this second. The pieces may “slide” instead of “clunk”, but if that doesn’t bother you (and it doesn’t bother me one bit) then the game is just about perfect.

Tags: arcade, classic, free

aSleep

Michael (Admin) | Aug 25, 2008 Healthcare & Fitness

User rating: (8 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

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A lot of iPhone apps are so boring and pointless that it seems like the developers are trying to put me to sleep, but so far Signs Studios is the only one that does it consistently and on purpose.

The first version of aSleep only included six sounds which kind of had me wishing I’d bought Ambiance instead. aSleep’s latest update, however, expands the selection to 50 snoozers that are all over the place and suddenly I’m quite pleased with my purchase! Here’s the full list of the sounds you’ll find in aSleep 2.0:

Actually, by my count, that’s only 49 sounds! Bastards. Oh well, there’s still a lot of variety… my personal favorite is Relax 1. I seriously have no idea how anyone could fall asleep to the incredibly annoying sound of a didjeridoo, but I think that’s the point of including so many sounds – something for everyone, including crazy people.

aSleep’s nicely assembled interface includes a timer that will fade the sound out after a certain amount of time (up to 23 hours 59 min) and there’s also a volume slider which should address whatever volume issues iPod Touch users might have. At this point there’s really nothing else to throw in except more sounds, and since we only have 49 right now I’d like to nominate Whale Noises as #50 to be added in the next update.

I have only one problem with aSleep and that’s with the timer being set to default to 15 hours 01 min. I really think it should default to something more realistic like two hours, or maybe even remember your last timer setting so you don’t have to do it again.

You should definitely get this app if you’ve ever had trouble sleeping. Even if you only fall asleep to it once, $.99 is totally worth it.

Tags: $.99

Fox News UReport

Michael (Admin) | Aug 22, 2008 News

User rating: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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Fox News Digital wants ME to report the news! If they knew what a jackass I am they’d probably rethink that proposal.

This app is super simple. Its sole purpose is to let you “take or select pictures of news happening around you and send them directly to FOX News Channel from your iPhone.” If the brains at Fox deem your submission newsworthy, it gets used either online or on TV. Just open the app, take a picture or choose one from your Camera Roll, and submit it to Fox via the app’s built-in email submission form.

I’m a big fan of citizen journalism, but I have kind of a hard time seeing myself using Fox News UReport to do anything but waste some poor intern’s time with pictures of myself on the throne. If I had anything truly newsworthy on my iPhone, would I be sending it to a national news outlet through such an informal channel? Ehhh maybe. If the story’s very small and local, like pictures of a house burning to the ground, then sure. But if Barack Obama’s in the house and John McCain is standing outside with a can of gasoline, I’d probably skip UReport and go for the exclusive deal ‘cuz I gotz ta’ get PAID.

But not everyone is as shallow and greedy as I am. If you happen to be on the scene of something hot and want to see if your photos make the evening news, go ahead and send something to Fox. Who knows, Bill O. might even salute you in his Talking Points Memos. Just be ready for Keith Olbermann to dub you The Worst Person in the World.

Tags: free