Market Harborough thoughts » iphone app review

iphone app review – Hipstamatic

Jonny Atom — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:01:17 +0000

Recently I’ve been downloading a few photographic apps and trying them out, this is one of the best I’ve found. Hipstamatic is an app that, according to their website, “brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras from the past.” How I’d describe it is pretty similar, but the final pics are far from having a toy feel, they have a very retro look about them and in my opinion are superb. Below are some examples taken at a recent Puppini Sisters gig.

The great (and some would think annoying) thing about the app is that you can buy add ons, more lenses, film and flashes that when combined give a huge amount of different effects. These are priced at 59p each, so don’t break the bank, though once one is purchased the rest simply have to follow.

Another well thought out part of the app is the shake for random effect, this will choose a film, lens and flash from all of the options purchased which is good for quick, random choices. When you hit on a particular image you like, you can gather the info of the ‘camera’ that took it and use them again, right from the press of a button. The randomness of the shake affect and the unknown outcome is what makes this app good.

I’ve already taken over 200 photos and I’ve not had this app a week yet, it’s that compulsive. So needless to say I love this app and am looking forward to new ‘add-on packs’. Which leads me onto the other fantastic part of the app, in app purchasing. You can buy the add-ons anytime, right from within the application. As I said, both addictive and compulsive.

iphone app review – Chicktionary

Jonny Atom — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:08:21 +0000

Word games, ya gotta love em. This one, Chicktionary, goes along the Scrabble theme of creating words out of a ‘rack’ of letters. There’s 2 games, timed and untimed. The timed is just that, create as many words as you can in 3 minutes and score max points, bigger points for bigger words. The second game gives you a timed challenge at the beginning, then you have as long as you wish to complete. One tip on the second game, keep finding words even when you’ve filled all of the slots on the ‘board’. This will gather you more points and we know points make prizes, well in this case Eggchievements.

All in all an addictive, simple game that’ll keep you amused for quite a time.

iphone app review – Dragon

Jonny Atom — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:27:13 +0000

I was told about the dragon app one morning at a networking breakfast meeting and thought that seems like a good idea, I’ll download that and give it a go. The app is a speech to text dictation tool, whereby you dictate into the iphone and your speech is converted into copiable text. As an example, here I am in the app now and I’m speaking the text which you are now reading.

So as far as the app goes, it works quite well, it’s free and is easy to use. A little thought and care is needed when using the app, as mistakes can creep in, plus when you’re speaking, it’s not the same as typing and you have to concentrate on what you’re saying and add punctuation manually when required. This is easy to do as you can pop up a keyboard to edit the text at anytime.

All in all though, as I said, the app works quite well and I have dictated most of this, well in fact all of this post to you via the app, which has been copied and pasted into this post. That, in my books, is a result.

iphone app review – Stanza

Jonny Atom — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:10:59 +0000

Stanza is pretty much like the Kindle app in that you can buy, store and read books on your iPhone.

I was a tad dubious about this concept of book reading via the iPhone until I trialled it on holiday this year. I downloaded the Twilight series of books and found the app to be very readable. What this did for me was to allow extra space in my suitcase (where the 3 or 4 books would have gone) for presents and Ouzo. Yes I went to Greece.

The great thing about the Stanza app is that you can also get Stanza Desktop which is a small utility program that helps convert books of differing formats into the ePub format that Stanza likes. It also helps in transferring these books to your iPhone.

Another good feature of the app is the ability to click to page flip, to drag one finger down the screen to dim the page, the ability to invert text to be black on white and to resize the font size, which automatically reformats the book.

All in all a really good free app

iphone app review – Angry Birds

Jonny Atom — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:45:56 +0000

This game, from Clickgamer, is of the Worms ilk of puzzle come destruction games that’s über addictive. The dirty, rotten, thieving piggies have knicked the birds eggs and holed up ‘over the way’ in various buildings and constructions. The overtly mad birds must fling themselves from a catapult, kamikaze stylee, onto the pigs to destroy them.

The simplicity and ease of play of the game makes this very easy to pick and start to enjoy and as I said quite addictive. The levels get progressively harder, but not too hard and new bird types are introduced as one progresses. The cartoon style is cutesy and slick, whilst the physics engine makes the game different virtually every play. This is a must purchase at 59p, ridiculously good, addictive fun.

iphone app review – Happy Tree Friends Slap Happy

Jonny Atom — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:47:28 +0000

Slap Happy is a must for every iphone owning, Happy Tree Friends fan. The app puts your very own Happy Tree Friend, Cuddles, in your pocket for you to knock about, maim and ultimately kill in a gruesome accident.

The graphics and sick humour are brilliantly realised. Watch your friends faces as, after they’ve said “arrrrhhh cute” upon seeing Cuddles and you slide your finger across the screen and slap him with a big smack sound. Then flip him up to the top of the screen and watch their faces again as he drops with a heavy thud to the floor. Give him a shake and listen to the “oooohh nooooo” from your now disturbed, laughing friends.

I’ll leave the rest of the delights for you to find out for yourself, but needless to say, it gets better.

iphone app review – TV Plus

Jonny Atom — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:14:31 +0000

If you have Sky+ this app is a must, it’ll be the best £1.19 you’ve spent. What it basically does is, after setting up an online sky account, be able to remotely record anything on your Sky+box. So if you forget to record a program you can search for it in the app, hit record and a request is sent to your box to record it. Perfect.

This is definitely one of the best apps I’ve downloaded.

iphone app review – OldBooth

Jonny Atom — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:55:09 +0000

This paid for app (£1.79) is a very good example of what fun things can be done with the iphone. Basically, take a photo, preferably face-on of someone’s face and pop it into pr-made masks to make and ‘old’ version of the person.

Here’s an example of one of the finished photos.

Here’s a demo…

iphone app review – Newton’s Cradle

Jonny Atom — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:48:33 +0000

Newton’s Cradle is another one of those apps that’s pretty useless as far as functionality goes but it’s just great fun. What does it do? It replicates the old 70′s office toy by using real world physics and clash detection to make a very realistic Newton’s Cradle. Cool!! Ohhhhh and it makes good use of [...]

iphone app review – Dice

Jonny Atom — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:00:32 +0000

This app doesn’t really do much except roll a number of dice, that’s it, but it does this beautifully. The animation and real world crash detection is simply sublime. Just shake your iphone and watch the dice roll around and come to rest on your score. You can choose how many dice and from a number of different patterns. This is the lite version of a poker dice game by the same company which I guess will be excellent. As I don’t know how to play dice poker I won’t be partaking in this app, I’ll just sit mesmerised, looking at the beautiful rolling dice for an hour or two.