iPhone App Reviews

(10+2)x5 Procrastination Hack

Tony Mei | Apr 28, 2010 Productivity

User rating: (17 votes, average: 2.47 out of 5)

 Loading ...

As far as working effectively goes, I am a black belt in procrastinating. In fact, I’m procrastinating at the moment from writing a research paper in order to review this app, which, ironically, is supposed to help end my procrastination. But at least it’s an incremental step.

(10+2)x5 Procrastination Hack  by EBratton revolves around the idea that if you commit 10 minutes to working on a task and then take a 2 minute break afterward, you will be able to ‘hack your procrastination to oblivion’ if you rinse and repeat the cycle 5 times. The app is essentially a single screen with a set of buttons and a timer that clocks how long you’ve been working, and when you deserve your scheduled 2 minute break ration.

For such a simplistic and bare-bones app, it gets the concept across pretty nicely. I find it much easier to work on a project when there is timer tracking my progress and keeping me motivated. While I found the app successful, these kinds of unique productivity apps will obviously have wildly different success rates from person to person.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: $1.99, procrastination, Productivity

Todew

Tony Mei | Mar 23, 2010 Productivity

User rating: (9 votes, average: 3.56 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Face it: most of the to-do apps that run rampant in the App Store are filled with clutter and difficult to navigate, making them useless. It’s not fun having to spend more time organizing your day’s events then actually doing your day’s events. Todew, in the words of its developer SomanticContact, is a “no-frills, yet powerful to-do app that won’t waste your time”, is sounds like exactly what the App Store needs.

Todew’s interface is fast, sleek and simple. No unnecessary buttons to fumble around with. No option panels to get lost in. Adding the day’s events is super efficient and easy. Press a button. Make a title. Pick a day and a color. Done. My biggest gripe with the built-in iPod Touch/iPhone Calendar is that it coerces you to make a time for your event, or else use the generic ‘All-Day’ feature. Thankfully, Todew takes care of this by only sorting the events into different days, which makes for a more simple and efficient process.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: $.99, Productivity, to do

Flipside – Digital Studying

Tony Mei | Feb 5, 2010 Education, Productivity

User rating: (27 votes, average: 3.07 out of 5)

 Loading ...

It’s a shock to see a flashcard app that’s actually useful.

Flipside – Digital Studying made a fantastic first impression. The app’s interface is slick. The controls and options are easy to find and use. It’s a breeze finding your way around. After locating the multitude different buttons and features, the process is intuitive and efficient. JBB Productions made a fantastic app that is easy on the eyes and easy to use.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: $1.99, flashcard, Productivity, study, useful

EventHorizon

Lee | Mar 12, 2009 Productivity

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

 Loading ...

I like this app. It’s simple. It’s practical. It does one thing well. EventHorizon by Percula Software is well designed and functions reliably. It’s nice to have an app that just does what it’s supposed to do and doesn’t get in your way, or its way. 

The concept is simple: you have a list of events and reminders that you want to be able to look at quickly. You don’t want to be surprised that you missed your Mother’s Birthday two days ago. EventHorizon takes that fear away by allowing you to put all of those important dates and reminders into the app and not worry about them.  Better yet, if you have them stored in your Calendar (edit 3/16/09) Address Book app on your iPhone/Touch, it will pull them over for you. Bada-Bing, Bada-Boom! If you have pictures of your Mom in the Address book app, it’ll pull that over too. Lickety Split!

You pick the time frames for the notice periods: urgent, approaching, and normal. You can also add to the pre-set categories that come loaded with the app, customization at your fingertips.

This thing is flexible too. You can keep it light (Birthdays, Anniversaries, important events etc.) or you can go full bore and make it a mini-personal assistant, putting any and every reminder you want into it. Very nice.

In my opinion, this is what you wish the Calendar app would do for all of your reminders. 

This review is short. Not for lack of words, but because the thing just works. It made my home page in my reference section. Good job Percula!

Tags: $2.99, Productivity

FCTasks by FranklinCovey

Lee | Mar 2, 2009 Productivity

User rating: (23 votes, average: 2.52 out of 5)

 Loading ...

FranklinCovey is a giant in the organization/personal productivity arena. Do you remember the famous 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? Before digital PDAs, I carried around the hardcopy Franklin binder system, following the A-B-C priority philosophy espoused by this book. Boy, have we come a long way from pencil and paper to floating electrons. I can remember writing and re-writing whole to-do lists from page to page, day after day, to keep abreast of a busy schedule. Now, swipe-of-finger and touch interface rule the day. When I saw FranklinCovey had produced an iPhone app, FCTasks, it was a no-brainer to want to get it, use it and review it. 

I’ll have to be frank up front, FCTasks is a mixed bag in my opinion… a disappointment actually.

Functionally, you can get things done with this app. At it’s core you simply list your to-dos or reminders. However, If you are new to the FranklinCovey way of personal workflow, this app may not be for you. It does not come with any on-board help features, nor are they laid out on the website. It assumes you already understand the methodology (i.e. A-B-C, 1-2-3 priority system, delegate/forward/completed/in-process etc.).  This should be no problem for followers, but if you’re not one, then you will have to either get it intuitively or be willing to expend the energy learning it via the book.

Some odd things:

- “Attachments” is a funny name for pictures. Normally, we think of attachments as documents attached to the task,
- The “Forward” button is inactive. Perhaps this is a feature for a future update?
- The “Sort” button performs the edit function; a different way of saying this from most other iPhone/Touch apps, 
- “Master List” seems weirdly titled as it only holds actions that are not time specific. Wouldn’t it make more sense to call it “Undated Actions?”

Aesthetically, the app is attractive. The color schemes are beautiful and coordinated. The design encourages you to work in the app and feel comfortable, undistracted. But, there’s really something missing, a feeling of incompleteness, unfinished business. I took a look at the FranklinCovey website. Pictures of other operating systems, of other software offerings for other mobiles boast of features like team, tasks, schedule, blogposts and goal tracking. Those phones and PDAs are able to synchronize to a desktop or laptop computer and/or the web. Yep! that’s it, that’s what’s missing in this app for the iPhone/Touch. There’s no comparable desktop and/or web-based application to synchronize with. Most of the major productivity apps today synchronize somewhere, extending your capabilities; especially when there’s large amounts of data that cry for a desk or laptop interface. 

Another questionable area for me is pricing. I hate to complain about AppStore pricing. I am personally willing (and have in the past) to pay more money for applications that are worthwhile, but this app seems overpriced at $5.99 in light of it’s competitors (In fact, a quick look at some of the comments in the App store express regrets for paying so much for so little). Perhaps this first attempt should have been priced as free, 99 cents or, at most, $1.99 as an introduction. Maybe this should be called FCTasks Lite. It really seems as if more is planned and more is needed for this application.

At the end of the day, personal productivity apps or organizers are decidedly a personal choice… like a good pair of jeans. Everyone has their own opinion about a good fit. I cannot commend this app for a hard core get-it-done person. I even hesitate if you are actively looking for an application because you don’t currently have one or are not happy with your existing system. The $5.99 price tag makes trying this on for size too expensive. I will give this application an above average for potential but a below average for usability. I have just come to expect more from personal productivity apps, especially from a noted name as FranklinCovey. Maybe this will change with an update.

UPDATE 3/2/09: As I was posting this review, I checked the website one more time to ensure the accuracy of my information. I cannot find FCTasks on the FranklinCovey website, nor any reference to the iPhone/Touch. It’s still for sale in the AppStore though. Curious!

Tags: $5.99, Productivity

CalcConv

Lee | Feb 18, 2009 Productivity

User rating: (22 votes, average: 2.68 out of 5)

 Loading ...

CalcConv by Mobilissimo is an interesting and handy tool. I have been playing with it for the past week. Its starting point is the basic calculator, very similar in look and feel to the Calculator app that comes with the iPhone/Touch. That calculator covers the basic and scientific calculator.

CalcConv begins to shine when you go beyond the calculator features to the conversion features. The conversions range
from temperature, to acceleration to taxes (yes taxes: US or Canada. Nifty). First impressions. I like having this with me. I like to know it’s there when I need it. My most likely uses include currency exchange, sales markups or markdowns, cooking, volume and length. There are 25 categories in version 1.3. 

When I first got the app, there was a bit of a problem with changing the units, but an update quickly took care of that. Now there are very distinguishing up/down arrows in each corner and a nice big space in the top middle for changing conversion units. I also found it appealing that results flash up as you are inputting data, real time calculations. The only thing is that you have to adjust your attention if you are only using it as a calculator because the last conversion data remains on the screen as well. Once you do a calculation or two, that’s easily ignored. 

RPN calculators are quite numerous in the AppStore. This feature is available in CalcConv. I’ve never done math calculations in this manner on a calculator, so I had to spend a little time on Wikipedia learning about this methodology. For those inclined, my understanding is that RPN allows more efficient data entry. I can logically follow it, but for some reason, it seems a new trick this dog can’t handle right now. So I stick to the old (inefficient) way for now.

That aside, I had another conversion application before this. It quickly lost its spot to Mobilissimo’s CalcConv.

Tags: $0.99, Converter, Productivity, Utilities

Take A Note and Docs

Lee | Feb 18, 2009 Productivity

User rating: (31 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

I like productivity applications that do what they say they are going to do. I also am really impressed when the developer takes the extra steps to add appealing design elements. That being noted, here are two related apps by the same developer you may want to consider.

Take A Note

Take a Note by Readdle is a very handsome application. The design is attractive from the moment you load it. The opening splash screen shows you a nice leather front cover that digitally represents a notebook. This sets a very positive and motivating stage for note taking.

Take a Note allows you to capture four types of notes: text, audio, photo and drawings. For each note type, you get a multi-tabbed page. One tab for where the actual note resides. A second tab for your comments regarding that note. A third tab to categorize (or tag) your note. Each note is date and time stamped in the upper right corner and you are limited to one tag per category.

I have to make some special comments about the photo note. Photo notes have a wonderful, scrapbook appeal where there is a place holder piece of paper “taped” into the notepage with masking tape on the edges. Once you snap your photo or take a photo from your photo album it is put into this placeholder page. It fits so nicely, the photo looks like it was truly “taped” onto the page. Clicking on the photo brings it full screen where you can see all the details of the photo. This is a great example of the design element I mentioned at the beginning of this review; very thoughtful.

You have full control over your folder structure. You can be as minimalist as you like or as numerous, however, at this time, there is no embedded folder structure. The developers state they are working on this for a future release. Another nice touch, especially when you start to develop a large amount of notes, is the search feature. It will allow you to search for keywords that either reside in the title of the note or within the content of the note. This is really nice, very powerful, and another thoughtful touch.

Some additional controls:

- Font size: as small as 14 or as big as 48

- Five available fonts: Helvetica, Times New Roman, Courier, Marker Felt and Zapfino

- Alphabetical note sorting

- Volume boosting, and

- Optional password locking (side note: this is a universal password lock. It would be nice if you could control this feature setting for individual notes)

The icing on the cake for this application is the Wifi syncing capability with your lap or desktop computer. This feature allows you to take your notes back and forth. It comes in two flavors, a shared disk mounted on your mac (or PC) or via a WebDAV client called Cyberduck. I tried both. They each worked without a hitch. I think I will stick with the Cyberduck client as it has fewer needed steps and a few more capabilities.

I’ve tried a few note applications in the past. This is by far the most attractive I’ve seen from the standpoint of looks alone. It’s handsome and makes you feel good to keep your notes in it. If you like physical notebooks, this is a strong digital equivalent. Functionally, Take A Note it is also very capable. The ability to capture text, photo, audio and drawing notes makes it useable and practical in many settings.

I can be very hard on productivity applications. I need them to be quickly responsive, intuitive, helpful, almost invisible. If I have to think to use it, it’s in the way. Take A Note by Readdle passed all of my requirements. It actually earned a spot on my Productivity page on my iPhone. I am impressed. I think you will be too.

Readdle Docs

Readdle Docs is a nice tool for keeping documents accessible either on your iPhone or via access to the cloud. I have a MobileMe account, so I was able to quickly and easily access my iDisk and the files I have stored there. Sweet! I also took the time to sign up for Readdle’s free storage space (512MB) under the AppStore plan (They have pay-to-use plans too for larger storage needs). This too was quick and easy. There is a companion application that you can download to your laptop or desktop (called Readdle Up). It is free. It allows you to load files directly from your desk into the storage by drag-and-drop. No fuss, no complications. Nice! I haven’t jumped on the Box.net service, but Readdle does support it, as well as any other WebDAV access service.

All of the standard Microsoft Office, PDF, TXT, RTF etc. are supported. I could not load up and access iWork files (I particulary tried to load a Numbers document). I also, for grins, loaded up a mindmapping file (NovaMind), it could not read this, though I really didn’t think that it would. They were, however, accessible when I converted them to PDF documents. In fairness to the developers, every file type they listed as accessible was indeed accessible. It would be nice if they could include iWork file types, though.

You can access the web via the internal browser (this includes portrait and landscape orientation). I had been meaning to thumb through a forty-one page PDF document on the web, so I took the opportunity to open it through the browser. After looking around, I was then able to just download the document to my iPhone; portable goodness. Inside the settings page on the app, there is a nice “device storage info” bar that keeps track of how much storage you have remaining. Good! No worries about guessing if I’m bumping up against the limit. Docs automatically picked up all my photos that I am carrying on my iPhone. I didn’t particularly want this and was able to easily turn that feature off. Also, you can email files to your accounts or share them with friends/co-workers. Another nice touch.

This is a useful tool. The layout is intuitive and functional. I am hopeful that someday it will allow iWork files to be loaded and ultimately they will eventually allow on-board editing capabilities (Aren’t we so demanding regarding our applications (smile)). At the end of the day, I like Readdle Docs. It works for me.

Tags: $4.99, $9.99, File Sharing, notes, Productivity

MyDecider

Lee | Jan 26, 2009 Productivity

User rating: (3 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)

 Loading ...

I don’t like losing sleep thinking about problems that need a decision. Lately, I’ve been contemplating my car. It’s getting up there in age and mileage (it’s a ’97).  My wife and I noted our hefty expense bill this past year on a couple of fixes I had to have done. The dilemma: when is it time to let an older model car go? When I saw MyDecider by EdibleApps, I was intrigued by it’s concept: a tool to help you input criteria and weight it towards a decision. Hmmmm, this was appealing.

I like this app. It gets all the perplexing thoughts out of your head and on to a place where you can see things more clearly. The process is pretty straight forward. Here’s how it works. First, what’s the decision to be made? You enter on the first screen a question. This is the question you are trying to answer.

Next, at the bottom of the page, what are the criteria you need and value to make this decision? Cool! List them out. How important is money to the decision? What about gas mileage? What will future mechanic bills look like? etc.

As you are entering the criteria, each one has its own page where you can enter its importance to you on a scale from one to ten, ten being most important. Then, at the bottom of this page, each of your option choices are listed. You reorder the list according to how you rank each criteria. You work your way through each criteria and the app determines a percentage for every ranking you’ve made. Oila, you now have a decision.

Based on my input, it is time to move on to another vehicle. It is just too costly in parts and labor to justify the current value of the car. Hard pill to swallow. However, I realize this will be the right move. The MyDecider app helped me reach a good decision.

This type of approach is not for everyone. There are many different tools you can use to make a decision. If you tend to be a little anal like me, this can be a very thorough approach. Edible Apps has made a very good and useful tool with their MyDecider app. I think it’s worth a look-see.

Oh, by the way, MyDecider taught me two things: I need a new car and my wife is a very good and quick decider in her own right, without an iPhone app. We were in North Carolina recently, shopping for new bedroom furniture. We saw about twenty different sets. We narrowed it down to about three we were interested in. I proceeded to lay out all the options in MyDecider, trying to show off. My wife just chose. Bless her heart, she patiently waited as I sat for about five minutes inputting the options and our criteria. Yep! she was right. Moral of the story: some people won’t need this app; for the rest of us, there’s MyDecider.

Tags: $2.99, Productivity