iPhone App Reviews

Skizzle

Michael (Admin) | Sep 29, 2008 Games

User rating: (6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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FO’ SKIZZLE MAH NIZZLE!! Sorry, it just had to be said. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system…

Skizzle is pretty cool. It lets you turn any photo into a puzzle, and as an added bonus you can “share” that puzzle with your friends who will have to solve it (using Skizzle) in order to see the picture. Ah, very clever way to get more Skizzlers! But since I don’t have any iPhone friends who bought this app (and I don’t feel like trying to make them buy it) I’ll just have to stick to talking about the non-sharing aspects which are still great on their own.

Sharing aside, with Skizzle you can choose a photo from your camera roll, take a new picture, or grab one from the in-app Google Images search tool. Once you’ve made your choice, Skizzle will chop it up and scramble all the parts. Now your job is to reassemble the photo by dragging the tiled pieces into their proper places.

I love the Google Images thing. Maybe you don’t want to use the pics on your camera roll, or maybe you just want something more challenging… after all, reassembling a closeup picture of a bowl of fruit is probably a lot harder than putting your mom’s face back together.

I did a number of Google Image searches and never got more than 20 results back, but I bet that’s by design and I don’t really mind the limit. The point of Skizzle, after all, is to have fun solving photo puzzles rather than browsing the 142,000 results you would normally get when you look for “hot cheerleaders”.

Another cool feature is the ability to change the difficulty of the puzzle after it’s created. You can also cheat by peeking at the photo in its original form, and there’s a timer at the top of the screen just in case you want to get competitive. One thing Skizzle doesn’t have is a global scoreboard and I suppose that’s because no two photos are exactly alike, but I think a cool thing for the future would be a place where people can share photos publicly and post their record times. This way, lots of people could solve the same puzzles and compete on a per-photo basis.

Sudo Labs, LLC has done a really nice job on Skizzle and for $1.99 it’s not a bad way to occupy yourself on your daily commute. Even better, use it to keep your hyperactive kids occupied! A few pictures of Barney the Dinosaur could buy you a lot of peace and quiet if there’s a reward for completion, ie: dinner. :mrgreen:

Tags: $1.99, photos, puzzle

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

Pictems

Michael (Admin) | Aug 6, 2008 Photo & Video

User rating: (1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)

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Got a crappy photo on your iPhone that you want to dress up? Got one that’s already disgustingly cute and you want to make it even cuter? Pictems to the rescue! Well, sort of…

Pictems is basically a clipart library that you can add to photos piece-by-piece. The pieces are grouped as follows:

Accessories
Costumes (subgroups: Wicked Witch, Bunny, Cat, Cave Man, Clown)
Faces (subgroups: Noses, Eyes, Teeth, Ears)
Frames
Hair
Jokes

When you browse the item categories for the first time, it might seem like there’s a lot to choose from but the (lack of) variety gets very stale very fast. Look at the costume groupings. Those five costume themes compose about 80% of the clipart. On the plus side, adding and resizing these little costume pieces is pretty easy. Touch the piece of clipart you want to adjust and when you see a white box appear around the piece you can move it with one finger or resize and rotate with two fingers.

Despite certain options that are lacking such as free transform (change height and width independently of each other) and layer ordering (what overlaps what), it’s pretty easy to use the available clipart and put the pieces where you want them. Other options include remove the last item placed, remove all of the items… and if you remove all it can’t be undone because there’s no Undo Button, kind of a pain… and flip an item so it’s properly oriented for people facing left or right.

I bought this application hoping that I’d be able to make my friends look like idiots, but truth is I’m afraid that if I Pictem-ize a photo and send it around the only one who’s gonna look like an idiot is me. The clipart is all pretty juvenile stuff which would be great if I had kids and wanted to email photos of them to grandma, but I’m single and in my 30s and putting bunny ears on my 30-something friends kind of screams LOSER more than HaHa, and even if I did have kids I’m sure grandma would be pretty sick of clown hair and cat eyes by the third or fourth photo. Oh well – that’s what I get for not reading the full description of the app carefully. Notice that their screenshot in the App Store is of a baby! That should have been a big hint that this app isn’t for me.

With that said, I think it’s pretty clear where I stand here: Pictems is (probably) fun for parents with small children, but that fun will wear out fast unless Starchy Tuber adds a ton more of their crappy clipart. However, if you’re an adult with no interest in sharing the supposed cuteness of children with your pals then this app is most likely going to be a waste of your time and $2.99.

How could Pictems have not disappointed me so? I would have been far more content with artwork that’s more geared towards social situations and funny stereotypes (ie: the Office Tramp) than a Halloween party… stuff that lets me point out how stupid this guy is, how drunk that guy is, how bored everyone in the picture is, that kind of thing. And I wouldn’t be charging $2.99 for the app either. I’d be giving it away for free and then selling themed artwork packages, kind of like Photoshop plugins.

Hopefully Starchy Tuber will release something for grownups and give current Pictem customers a free “upgrade” for giving them a chance on this very parent-oriented exercise in photo editing mediocrity.

Tags: $2.99, photo editing, photos