iPhone App Reviews

Postage & Halloween Postage

Michael (Admin) | Oct 15, 2009 Photo & Video

What’s this… a competent greeting card app not called C@rds? I’ve only tried a couple of other apps in this category and, until now, C@rds was the only one that was truly worthwhile.

Postage by RogueSheep oozes quality in most areas and it also does things a bit differently. While Hot Chili Apps sells extensive greeting card sets both a la carte and via C@rds Master, Postage sports a collection of e-cards that span a bunch of different genres and all can be had for a single price. There are over 60 cards spread out over 12 card genres: Simple, Halloween, Frames, Cards (as in stationery-style), Love, Cutouts, Travel, Comic, Announcements, Organic, Letters (also similar to stationery), and Moms and Dads.

There’s a lot of variety in Postage and, even though the text handling isn’t all that versatile compared to what Hot Chili offers, it’s still a very good app that’s worth considering if this is what you’re in the market for.

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Tags: $.99, $4.99, greeting cards, photo sharing

WTF: Me & My Grandparent GOLD

Michael (Admin) | Sep 16, 2009 Entertainment, WTF?!

First of all, lemme just say that I’m not laughing at old people here! Parents and grandparents and other wrinkled folk are A-OK in my book and I mean that in all sincerity. In the past 18 months I lost both of my great aunts who nearly hit the century mark (the older one made it 99) and I truly miss them, and I truly truly wish I could have sent them some greeting cards from Me & My Grandparents GOLD because they would have gotten a good laugh out of them!

Some of you will think I’m crazy or just plain mean for poking fun at this app, but Mobile Champs has produced 30 of the gooeyest, gaudiest, most over-the-top expressions of Love any human has ever come up with in the history of written schmaltz. The wording of the default greetings is both flowery and bizarre, and to top it off they’re adorned with rainbows and hearts and fairies to make the experience complete.

Me & My Grandparents isn’t horrible in the functionality department, but it’s not good either. The icons used for navigating are kind of cryptic, text editing is somewhat limited, and photo handling is extremely limited. All of that will be forgotten, though, when you start sending these unintentionally funny greetings around and get an inbox full of LOLs and WTFs in return.

iTunes Link – Me & My Grandparents GOLD
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1

Tags: $.99, funny, greeting cards

C@rds Master

Michael (Admin) | Sep 16, 2009 Utilities

Let’s see… I’ve gushed about Halloween C@rds, Christmas C@rds, Love C@rds, and Frame C@rds. Can you tell that I like this series of greeting card apps?

Hot Chili Apps was kind of ahead of the App Store’s development curve when they released their first C@rds apps last year… in-app purchasing wasn’t possible until just recently, so they released each version of their app one by one and if you bought several of them it meant having several different app icons to access them all. Now that in-app buys can be made, they’ve released C@rds Master which provides a complete preview of each C@rd set’s templates and it also includes two working templates from each set that you can use right away.

At first glance you might think this app is just a ploy to sell more C@rds, and selling is definitely part of the plan here, but it also lets you consolidate all of the C@rd sets you’ve already bought into one place! Sweet.

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Tags: $.99, greeting cards

B-Day Giveaway: Birthday C@rds

Michael (Admin) | Jul 30, 2009 Utilities

If there’s ever an iPhone U where they teach iPhone app development, I nominate Hot Chili to teach the world how to handle text and images. I’ve said it like five times already today, and I’ll say it again: they RULE at it! And their Mad Skillz in this area make their entire C@rds lineup a joy to use. If you ever plan on emailing a birthday card from your iPhone, GET THIS APP! Trust me, it’s the best.

Well folks, I’m exhausted… I guess giving out free iPhone apps for 13 hours will do that to you!

I still have some more apps which will have to be posted tomorrow, but it seems fitting to close out today with Birthday C@rds by Hot Chili Apps.

Thanks to everyone who makes this site work: the readers, the writers, and the app developers. It’s a sick love triangle we’ve got going here, but it’s also a lot of fun! This past year has been awesome and, in many ways, a learning experience, and I’m looking forward to another year of iPhone nuttiness.

:) :) :)

Michael

iTunes Link – Birthday C@rds
Hot Chili Apps website

* Today is iPhone App Reviews.net’s birthday *

Tags: $1.99, greeting cards

B-Day Giveaway: Frame C@rds

Michael (Admin) | Jul 30, 2009 Utilities

I’ve tried Christmas C@rds, Halloween C@rds, and Valentine & Love C@rds, and now I’m trying out Frame C@rds for the first time today! It’s just as great as all those other C@rds apps, but it’s specifically for photos and you’re not limited to any specific theme.

Frame C@rds features card templates made from photographic elements as well as more basic templates that are intended for single or multiple photos… and of course text and photo handling are nearly perfect! That seems to be Hot Chili Apps’ trademark and, out of all the hundreds of apps I’ve tried over the past year, I have yet to see anyone else make this kind of app work as seamlessly. Also, the last time I reviewed a C@rds app I don’t think it had the photo effects that it has now… you can change your imported photo(s) to black and white or sepia! Kewl.

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Tags: $1.99, greeting cards, photos

Silly Songz

Michael (Admin) | Apr 8, 2009 Music

Email greeting cards have been a pretty huge industry since the day when environmental hero Al Gore invented the internet, but for some reason audio cards never really caught on. Spazzles is trying to change that, but instead of adding a personalized recording to a greeting card image, they’re adding that personalized recording to the end of a goofy song instead.

Silly Songz is a semi-schizophrenic collection of original music that’s half nice and half craaaazy, and you get to append a 15-second recording to the end of the song you choose. Some of the nice songs deliver messages like don’t be sad, get well, I love you, etc. The crazy songs are far less kind and deliver messages like you’re dumped, quit calling me, let’s golf and drink beer, and my personal favorite, “I got diarrhea”.

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Tags: $3.99, greeting cards

Valentine & Love C@rds

Michael (Admin) | Jan 20, 2009 Utilities

This app is called Love C@rds today, but its name will soon be expanding to “Valentine & Love C@rds” since Valentine-specific templates are going to be added before February 14th.

If you would like the chance to win this app (and others in the future), join my Facebook group which I’ve cleverly named “Win free iPhone apps“. Hot Chili Apps has generously donated 15 promo codes which I’ll be distributing to random winners every day for a week starting on February 1st.

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I said it when I reviewed Halloween C@rds, I said it when I reviewed Christmas C@rds, and I’m gonna say it again for Valentine & Love C@rds: Hot Chili Apps knows their stuff. I’ll confess that I haven’t tried every single iPhone greeting card app out there, but I’ve tried a few and I think it’s very safe to dub this C@rds series the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion. It’s that good.

As with the other themed versions of this app, you get to choose three different types of card templates: Pattern, Picture, and Photo. Pattern is mostly stuff that fills the screen with… well… a pattern or graphics of some sort, Picture is a collection of templates with photographic elements, and the thing that kicks the most ass is the collection of Photo templates that allow you to incorporate your own photos into your greeting card.

No matter which template you choose, text is about as customizable as it can get. You can add as many different lines of text as you need which means you can get creative with fonts, text sizes, colors, and positioning. Drop shadow is optional, and text is moved and resized with that two-finger maneuver that most of us iPhone geeks have grown accustomed to by now. The only obvious thing that’s missing is text wrap, so if you’re writing your boyfriend a long, weepy note you’ll have to hit “return” in the text editor where you want line breaks to occur. A way to automatically align my text horizontally would also be welcome, but unless you’re constantly creating greeting cards it’s probably not an issue.

Photos are also super easy to handle. When you place a photo into a Photo template, you can scale and resize any which way you damn well please with that same two-finger move that you use for text. It’s all incredibly well done and easy to use.

As of today this app includes 15 Pattern templates, 14 Picture, and 16 Photo templates for a grand total of 45… and since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, Hot Chili Apps will be adding even more templates before February 14th. Some of those new templates will be Valentine-specific, so if you buy the app today don’t be disappointed at the lack of “Happy Valentine’s Day” stuff! I haven’t seen them, but I know they’re coming.

As greeting cards go, Valentine & Love C@rds absolutely rules and I think it’s worth every penny of the $1.99 asking price. If you’re just too broke to spring the two bucks, join my newly-minted Facebook group and hopefully you’ll win a copy!

Tags: $1.99, greeting cards, valentine's day