iPhone App Reviews

Postage & Halloween Postage

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

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

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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

WiFiPhoto

Michael (Admin) | Oct 2, 2009 Photo & Video

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

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I just posted like 20 screenshots on my review of PhotoForge. In the old days, meaning earlier this week, I would have had to email each screenshot to myself individually… that may not sound like a lot of work, but when you’re doing it 20 times it’s a huge pain in the ass!

I’m done with emailing photos to myself. Those PhotoForge screenshots were super easy to get from my iPhone with WiFiPhoto; all I had to do was start the app, add photos from my Camera Roll, and then find the pics in my browser at the specified IP address. To save each photo, I just clicked each one (no right-clicking needed) and got the standard Save File dialogue box. There’s also the option to download everything as a zip file! Haven’t done that yet, but wow.

Your device needs to be connected to the same wifi network as the receiving computer, and as long as that’s true this app should work perfectly. You’ll need to keep WiFiPhoto open while you’re saving stuff from the browser which makes sense, and if you’re trying to grab photos from a gallery not named Camera Roll you’ll need to go into settings and turn on “Choose photo source”. Matteo Rossi’s photo transferring tool just made my app-reviewing life 1,000 times easier!

iTunes Link – WiFiPhoto
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1 and Google Chrome on Windows Vista

Tags: $.99, photo sharing

Q&F: Mover

Michael (Admin) | Aug 28, 2009 Entertainment, Quick & Free

User rating: (No Ratings Yet)

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Wheeee this is fun

It *almost* works just like you’ve seen in the iPhone commercials… Mover lets you move photos and contacts from one device to another via either wifi or bluetooth, and they get automatically saved which is a really nice feature.

I say “almost” because sometimes the transfer is smooth and instant like the commercial, and sometimes it takes a few seconds for the receiving iPhone/iPod to get what you just slid over. And sometimes it just hangs and you’re not sure what Mover’s doing, and then the transfer happens much later than you were expecting.

For the most part it works and it’s fun to do, so for the low, low price of Free it’s worth grabbing, if for no other reason than to try it out and wow (or possibly disappoint) the crowd gathered around you. There’s also a paid version of Mover called Mover+ which I haven’t tried, but for $2 hopefully Infinite Labs was able to make it more stable than this freebie.

iTunes Link – Mover
Version 1.0.2
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.0.1

Tags: contacts, free, photo sharing

OldCamera

Michael (Admin) | Aug 20, 2009 Photo & Video

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

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From the same dude who made QuadCamera and ToyCamera comes OldCamera. Can you guess what it does? That’s right… it makes your pics look really old!

Takayuki Fukatsu has built a pretty great foundation for his camera apps which includes all kinds of stuff in the Settings panel such as randomly applying any of several different filters, vignetting on/off, square mode on/off, and various image sizes. The only real difference between OldCamera and ToyCamera is the choice of filters that can be applied. OldCamera comes equipped with several different kinds of black & white plus a weird thing called Cyanotype that turns your pics blue.

I personally prefer ToyCamera… which I use ALL the time… but OldCamera is also a good quality camera app and, if black & white is your thing, it’s a great buy for just a dollar.

iTunes Link – OldCamera
iTunes Link – ToyCamera
Version 3.5.1
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.0.1

Tags: $.99, photo sharing, photos

Puri! 2.0

Michael (Admin) | Aug 6, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)

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Is it wrong for a 30-something guy to be dressing up photos with a gaudy teen-centric photo stamp app? Yeah, it probably is but I’m doing it anyway so screw you!!

Photo booths in Asia have been laying flowery, ultra-cute designs over pics for years, and I’m guessing it’s probably catching on in the western world now but to be honest I have no idea. What I do know is that the iPhone is the perfect platform for apps like Puri! where you can take a photo (or select from the camera roll) and apply all kinds of frames and stamps and text, all in the name of making them sickenly cute.

I may not be an expert in this kind of app, but I feel pretty good about saying that Puri! gets the job done and offers a pretty big array of cartoony cuteness that’s just waiting to make it onto your photos.

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Tags: $2.99, good for kids, photo editing, photo sharing

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