Summer is here and more people are taking to the skies, roads and rails to travel than at any other time of year. It’s great to bring a proper DSLR camera along for professional quality photos, but they are bulky and not always the best options when you are on the move. And, with the iPhone 4S, it’s no longer necessary to bring along a standard point-and-click digital camera at all. Whether your iPhone has the latest optics or not, there are tons of apps that make taking, enhancing and sharing vacation pics easier and more fun. This week we look at our four favorites.
Simply HDR
HDR, when speaking of photography, stands for High Dynamic Range and there are many apps that achieve a full range of tones, lighting and detail by superimposing different photos of the same composition onto one another and manually or semi-automatically adjusting them to achieve rich realistic end results. The photos can be beautiful, but most apps require at least some degree of knowledge about HDR to function well. Simply HDR, however, takes both the mystery and layering away. With a single image and some behind the scene magic, photos come out looking lush with no effort. That said, the app does come with a slider for smoothing and several HDR effects including black and white.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-06-20 :: Category: Photography
360 Panorama
If you are vacationing anyplace with a killer view – skyline or landscape – a panoramic image allows you to capture a much wider view than traditional photography. As always there are many apps for that, but for ease of use and great results 360 Panorama remains our choice. This universal app allows you to take individual photos and patch them together seamlessly to create stunning vistas. The app uses the iPhone’s gyroscope to enable a full 360 degree view and stitches the images with amazing speed.
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-07-30 :: Category: Photography
GroupShot/StillShot
Group and family vacations call for group and family shots. But trying to get a photo on the fly where everyone looks good is next to impossible. Someone is always looking away, blinking, or making a funny face. GroupShot solves this problem by letting you import several snaps of the same group in the same setting – you really want to snap the base images quickly so everyone stays aligned – and then with the simplest gestures you can swap out funny faces from one photo and replace them with a better facial expression from other images.
The same developers also make make StillShot, another great tool for travellers, specifically those who shoot more video than they take photos, but still want to have an album to browse through later. All this app does is capture frames from video and convert them to stills, but it does so with remarkable ease and great looking results.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2012-05-01 :: Category: Photography
Facebook Camera
Facebook is still the most popular photo sharing venue, and they recently released a dedicated camera app that puts all your friends’ photos in an easy-to-navigate stream and let’s you share yours. The app has a few fun Instagram-like effects, and pictures can be cropped or rotated, but what makes Facebook Camera shine is speed. Uploading pictures to Facebook is not only faster than with third party apps, it even beats uploading to Facebook directly by several seconds. Vacation time is precious time, and this app will help you keep your eyes on the view, not on your iPhone screen.
It’s not an organization that many of us would automatically expect an official app from. Regardless, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO to you and me) has recently released its own news app.
It’s an iPad-only affair but it offers all the latest news from the organization. That kind of news covers everything from important visits to the NATO Headquarters to statements on major issues in Afghanistan.
Alongside text-based news comes a number of videos from NATOchannel.tv, the official video focused site for the crucial organization.
Combined, NATO News should be the ideal portal for those in need of greater insight on all the things NATO does at the moment and some of the background information about the organization. For news hounds such as myself, it should form a great resource in times of major world news as there’s a lot more detail to releases than major news networks would suggest.
When it comes to news these days, at least here in America, the upcoming presidential election is the big story. Today though, politics can be so crazy that keeping up with it all is next to impossible. That’s why NBC is delivering its powerful political reporting on-the-go with the new NBC Politics app.
With NBC Politics, users can get all sorts of information in all sorts of different ways. Users can read text stories, flip through photo slideshows and view clips from NBC shows like “Meet The Press with David Gregory”, “Andrea Mitchell Reports” and “Morning Joe.” On the more interactive end, users can share stories through Facebook and Twitter using the app and watch election results unfold in real-time. On the iPad, users can even make their own predictions and test them against the experts on the Battleground Map.
Indecision 2012 is just around the corner. Wait, wrong network. NBC Politics is available now for free on the App Store.
Mother’s Day means so many different things to so many different people that it’s hard to create a list of just four apps for the occasion. There are great gifts to purchase right from iTunes and the App Store, and tons of apps to help you find the right present. But we decided to keep the focus on free or inexpensive apps that will make moms feel special this Sunday and leave them with more than a memory to treasure all year long.
Slow Message
There are a ton of special-for-Mother’s-Day e-card apps, but once sent and received, they tend to be filed away no matter how much sentimental value they hold, like real cards. Slow Message offers an alternative to make mom happy year round. The app allows users to write emails and arrange to have them sent out in daily, weekly, or monthly intervals. While the app doesn’t have card templates, it’s a wonderful way to keep the love flowing even when life’s so busy there’s hardly time for a text message. And while we’re using it, we can set up annual birthday and anniversary emails too.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2012-01-20 :: Category: Utilities
Skype
A phone call or card is wonderful, but nothing beats seeing your children’s faces, especially when they are away from home. And while many moms are tech savvy and iOS ready, some older mothers and grandmothers still find new technologies overwhelming and lots of geek-moms use non-iOS devices. Since almost everyone has access to some sort of mobile or desktop computer with a camera, Skype is the perfect cross-platform app for catching up and sharing events. And, if your mom is one of the sort who isn’t techy, spend the time teaching her how to set up and use it as a time to bond.
iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2011-08-02 :: Category: Social Networking
Fotopedia – Women of the World
What better way to show mom that you appreciate everything she does and everything she is than by celebrating the beauty of womanhood with her? Oliver Martel’s free collection of photographs of women from – you guessed it – all around the world is full of stunning images that celebrate every facet – modern and traditional – of being part of the fairer sex. The app has a wonderful permanent collection and a series of changing photo stories that commemorate different cultures, occupations, rites of passage and of course, lots of photos of mothers.
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-02-08 :: Category: Travel
iPad Newstand Subscriptions
Looking for something more tangible? Does your mom have an iPad? If so, one of the best gift ideas – one that keeps on giving and doesn’t cost too much – is a newspaper or magazine subscription. There is something on Newsstand for almost every mom. The New York Times has a section for every interest, and if that’s too pricey or not her style some other great choices include:
Taptu, the self-proclaimed DJ of news aggregators, offers a blend of RSS feeds and social network feeds into what they call a social news stream. The already a popular iPhone and iPad app just had a major overhaul with the release of version 2.1.
The biggest change is to the interface; the app now displays articles as stacks of cards arranged by category. The introduction of search streams that allow users to turn any keyword into its own news feed is also very cool.
In addition, users no longer need a Taptu account to have cross-device account syncing. Logging in with Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn will do the trick instead. There is now support for Spanish, French and German and Readability integration – a particularly nice touch.
The only trouble seems to be with the apparent Retina display support for the 3rd generation iPad. While Taptu claims it’s fully upgraded, users report it’s anything but. Everything looks fine on 4th generation iPhones and the iPad 2, but on the newest Apple tablets the text is apparently blurry and hard to read. The developers seem dedicated to the long-term success of the cross-platform service, however, so we hope and expect this will be remedied in an update soon.
Knowing what’s going on in the world at large is certainly useful. Sometimes though, it’s more important to know what’s going on across the street instead of what’s going on across the globe. Recognizing that, the EveryBlock app seeks to fill that local news niche and with its the new update it is hoping to fill that niche even better.
The 2.0 update adds a host of new community features bringing the app more in line with the EveryBlockwebsite. Users can now more easily connect to their neighborhoods by choosing the specific locations they want their news to come from all the way down to the block level. Users can become citizen journalists and share breaking news and photos of events as they unfold. Using the app, users can also send questions to their neighbors or even just start a conversation in real time.
Be aware that currently EveryBlock is only available in the following 16 cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The updated EveryBlock app is available now for free on the App Store.
News.me, the news reader from betaworks, has released a new feature called Paperboy. Paperboy is basically News.me’s way of competing with offline reading services like Instapaper and Read It Later (now Pocket).
Paperboy is an automated service that detects when the user is leaving their home location (set within in the app) and downloads their news for the day so that it’s readable offline. This feature is especially going to be useful for people who spend periods during the day without access to their data networks (spending time on subways, no-reception rural areas, airplanes, etc).
News.me is popular for its “Reactions” feature where users can make a one-tap reaction to the story they’ve just read by tapping one of the apps pre-made responses (Ha!, Wow, Awesome, Sad, and Really?). People users follow will see these reactions in their news streams on News.me. News.me is a free app and is made for both the iPhone and the iPad.
For those in the US shopping around for the best carrier, a Boston-based start-up, SwayMarkets, launched an app late last week that serves up data that AT&T, Verizon and Sprint usually keep obfuscated. CarrierCompare has received a lot of media attention, but users and critics have mixed reactions.
The app itself is easy to use and provides useful information for finding the carrier with the best coverage right where users actually use their iOS devices. The trouble, according to CNN Money, is the way the app gets its data. Dave Goldman explains:
Here’s the catch: The app is only as good as its crowd-sourced data. SwayMarkets has a starting data set pulled in from its previously released NetSnaps app, but CarrierCompare will only become really useful if a critical mass of people adopt it.
Another more recent issue that’s hurting CarrierCompare is the removal of one of the three key metrics – Signal Strength – leaving only Response and Speed measurements. Users are not happy, and SwayMarkets explanation is confusing. In the App Store they state:
This update removes the ability to measure signal strength as one of the metrics we use to compare carriers. Luckily, when compared to our other measurements, signal strength has the smallest impact on the quality of your data service. We are actively working to find a way to bring this feature back in the future. If it is important to you, please let us know by emailing us from CarrierCompare or our website.
But on their website (on a page that looks bizarrely, if not deceptively, like a page from Wikipedia) they politely blame Apple and urge users to take up their cause by leaving comments about the app:
We had to remove signal strength in order to remain in compliance with our developer agreement with Apple and avoid having our apps removed from the App Store entirely. Apple has been very cooperative through this process, and we are pursuing ways of bringing signal strength back in the future. … However, we recognize that signal strength is an important metric for comparing voice quality, so we encourage you to mention it in your reviews and emails to us – it can only help raise awareness.
Some users report the app crashes or doesn’t work, but Philip Elmer-DeWitt in his article for CNN Money had no issues with his testing in Brooklyn. The app is free of charge and ad free so if you give it a test run, let us know what you think.
Zinio has long been a serious player in digital magazines distribution, on and off iOS. Zinio first appeared on the App Store in April 2010, but offered digital magazines on its website well before that. Zinio’s iOS app updated recently and is now optimized for the new iPad’s retina display. With a vast catalog of first and second tier magazines and with periodicals available across various mobile and PC platforms, Zinio is proving they can stay competitive. Download speed has also been improved considerably in this update.
The quality of individual digital magazines is always dependant on the publishers, not Zinio or any distributors. Some magazines look like what they are – prettified PDF’s. But, when magazines like National Geographic take advantage of all the interactivity, particularly now with the crisper text and images, the reading experience parallels any on Apple’s Newsstand where many magazines have yet to be updated for the enhanced display.
Zinio’s update shows the company’s continued dedication to iOS as a platform. Until Apple can bring in more partners like Rolling Stone and somehow urge or compel all iOS native magazine publishers to support its best and newest features – a slow process considering major publications like Time Magazine, The Nation and The Atlantic have yet to adopt Newsstand, much less adapt to the latest iPad’s specs – Zinio should continue to hold their market share and possibly even see it grow.
One of the best newspaper reading apps, PressReader, likes to keep on top of new technology and updates to the iPad, regularlyadding new and useful features and tweaks.
With the recent release of the new iPad, this has happened again with a great selection of new features.
The big one is Retina Display support, ensuring that everything on the new iPad screen will look pretty amazing, even when zoomed in.
Also included is the ability to instantly translate publications in up to 12 languages, as soon as the title is opened. It’s also now possible to save articles to Evernote or Instapaper for later consultation as well as email or share them via Twitter or Facebook.
It’s also an ideal time to check out the new SmartFlow functionality within the app which works well alongside the Retina Display support to make this a great way of reading the traditional newspaper in a 21st century way.
Check out the PressReader video below demonstrating what’s been changed. The update is available now.
According to AllThingsD, iPhoto for iOS passed the one million download mark last week. That’s quite an impressive figure, particularly when it implies Apple has earned more than five million dollars from the app in less than a two week period.
Apple released the final piece of its popular iLife suite of user-friendly creative apps at the Apple Event in San Francisco early this Month where the new iPad was unveiled.
Critics – like our own Kevin Stout in his review – quickly noted the app’s simple interface that offers moderately advanced editing features in a way best suited to the multi-touch screen and gesture controls. It also seems that users agree that at $4.99 for a universal build of a photo app that can beam pictures from device to device, create web-hosted photo journals, and touch up photos with simple sliders and brush-on effects is a winner too.
Here’s hoping that theses results motivate to the folks in Cupertino to apply the winning formula to all their software. Then at the next iPad launch we can dream of an Aperture app to compete with Photoshop Touch and to seeing other professional-grade Apple software adapted to their mobile platforms with the prices adjusted accordingly.
Kid-lit publisher Oceanhouse Media may not be a household name, but the catalog of children’s books they own the rights to are. They include, amongst others, Eileen Christelow’s Five Little Monkeys series, the beloved Berenstain Bears and, most notably, the collected works of Dr. Seuss. The universal apps are minimally digitized, focusing on the words, illustrations and learn-to-read features.
Last week they announced a second collection of Seuss titles, five in all, in a single package priced at $11.99. The Dr. Seuss Beginner Book Collection #2 contains:
Green Eggs and Ham
Dr. Seuss’s ABC
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
There’s a Wocket in my Pocket!
Hop on Pop
They also released a lesser known title, The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, in which the guru of children’s literature waxes nonsensically poetic on “The shape of you the shape of me the shape of everything I see . . . a bug . . . a balloon, a bed, a bike. No shapes are ever quite alike.” The app is currently on sale for $1.99.
For young readers – and their parents – the new collection offers a great savings on classic Seuss titles, and the new release is ideal for pre-readers to enjoy.
First published in 1940 by Dorothy Kunhardt the touch-and-feel board book, Pat the Bunny is a nursery library staple. On April first Random House, publishers of the Pat the Bunny book app, are releasing an update to the beloved classic. It will be free for those who own the app, and a seasonal incentive for parents to get the award-winner for their kids as their parents may have shared the classic print version with them.
Aimed at toddlers through pre-schoolers the universal digibook already features 14 interactive pages with tons to touch and swipe as little ones play hide and seek with the bunny. There is a fun paint mode, and on devices with front facing cameras kids can see their own reflection, like in a book with a tinfoil mirror. The app has everything except the soft patches of fur.
Soon kids will see an Easter themed design and be able to join an Easter egg hunt. Once located, the eggs will yield surprises that should delight the youngest iOS users. The update will be available for a limited time only, so if there is a household with cute and chubby fingers that is without a copy this would be a good time to get it, and if it’s already a favorite don’t forget to watch for the update on the App Store to enjoy the holiday treat.
The purposes of these apps are not just to generate revenue by working with corporate sponsors, but to also serve as ways to generate subscriptions for the main Daily publication, as these free apps help get the name of The Daily and its content out there to potential readers.
Pulse is about to pick up on what’s important locally for users, not just nationally. The new Local category in Pulse adds special local categories for users based on their current location. This includes sports categories provided by SB Nation, Bleacher Report, and CBS Sports, to help read up on local teams. Publications that track food reviews are also available, to find the newest delicious eats in the area. As well, deals from LivingSocial and Groupon are collected and available in the app. This is along with special categories for local publications that can provide relevant news and happenings in the local area, such as Gothamist for New York, and The Bold Italic for San Francisco users.
These categories appear identically to national sources in Pulse, and articles can be read and shared from them just as national publications, making for a seamless fit into the app. The free update is available now for both the iPad and iPhone/iPod versions of the app.
News sources are in abundance in this modern era, but none can beat the accuracy or the in-depth coverage that the award winning Associated Press can provide.
That accuracy and impressive content can be checked on the move courtesy of the redesigned AP Mobile app that features all the big stories as well as local coverage from over 1,000 different sources. It’s even an Universal app now for extra convenience.
Like all the best news apps, it’s possible to personalize the app to the user’s interests. It’s also just as easy to check video and photo content as it is written news.
For those with limited time, the “Big Stories” section covers major stories, told through many different forms of media. The US election and the Olympic Games are both set to be covered in this section in the future, along with any other major breaking news.
The Local News section means that users can check out the stories from local sources, all through simply entering a city or Zip Code.
AP Mobile is out now for free and it’s an Universal app.
One of the downsides of a landscape dominated by social media is the fact that the noise level is often through the roof. Thousands of links can fly through your feed in minutes, and it’s tough to know what’s important and what’s just fluff one of your friends posted up when drunk. For those of us who don’t have time for the clutter News.me is here to do the heavy lifting for us.
The app scans your Facebook and Twitter feeds and grabs links to articles that seem to be really resonating with your personal community. If you tend to associate with a more gamer-specific crowd then you’ll see a lot of stories revolving around video games; if you lean toward sports then scores and highlights from yesterday’s games will appear onscreen. News.me strives to deliver all the content you care about and nothing you don’t.
The app also supports offline reading so you don’t have to worry about having a signal, as well as displaying what friends are saying about each story on the feed so you can have your finger on the pulse of the conversation. With so much information out there we have to be smart with how we consume it, and News.me seems poised to be one of the best tools out there for doing just that.
Chillingo released two new games this week. Well, maybe new isn’t the right term, one is a sequel to an iconic tower defense game and the other is a flash-favorite quirky platofrmer ported to iOS. Both are poised to be huge hits.
iBomber Defense Pacific
iBomber Defense Pacific is the sequel to Chilingo’s tower defense classic. Developed by Cobra Mobile the game brings new elements of TD to the Pacific ocean this time. The game has deeper strategic elements without giving up the classic gameplay, and the graphics and sound have had a serious makeover. The game is selling for $2.99 for a universal build and there is a free lite version to try before buying. For fans of the genre, this one is going to be a must have.
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-03-01 :: Category: Games
Fancy Pants
Fancy Pants was co-developed by BorneGames and Over the Top Games is the first mobile iteration of the enormously popular Flash game. This is one of the most unique looking platformers with a hand drawn doodle feel and levels that surprise at every turn. Included in the iOS version are new weapons and plenty of new tricks to help Fancy Pants an save sister Cutie Pants from the “worst pirates ever.” The game is universal and selling for $.99
Following a year long approval battle with Apple over it’s subscription service, Readbility made its App Store debut today. The web-based service that provides users with a stripped-down, clean view of any web article and allows saving for offline reading has been around for several years and is integrated into many apps, but a native iOS version was hard-won.
If you’re familiar with iOS 5’s reader option, now built into Safari, or if one has used apps like Instatpaper and Read It Later, there’s really nothing you haven’t seen before. The app is not as feature-rich as some alternatives, but it’s free, pretty, and handy. The app allows for URL input and minimal web searching, but using any of the browser plug-ins on a computer helps fill the reading list best.
Readibility states on their blog today, “We wanted to create something that makes it as easy as possible to queue up and take web articles anywhere you go on your iPhone or iPad. Our guiding principle was simple: get out of the reader’s way.”
Readability for iOS was born of a collaboration between the Readability team and Teehan+Lax. The typography, from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, looks sharp.
We’ll have a complete review for you soon, but in the mean time if you try it out, please let us know what you think in the comments.
Fotopedia’s mission has always been to create a photographer and user-friendly Wikipedia for photography. Their iOS apps take a category and compile the best shots in a wonderful package. Their latest offering, Women of the World, a collection by Olivier Mantel, is free and “A tribute to the diversity, beauty and strength of women around the world.”
A joint project with the World Bank, the photos celebrate the indomitable strength of women all over our planet with hundreds of extraordinary images and a small selection of photo-stories that showcase women in traditional and decidedly modern roles. From a mosque in Senegal to a road works project in Vietnam and even on to Wall Street, the collection spans 35 years of women at home, at work, and on the go in moments of joy, contemplation, toil, and sorrow, but often doing everyday things in everyday settings, too.
The stories are updated: at present they focus on the “Women of Africa,” “Eternal Mothers,” and just added, “Forever Yours” – a look at marriage.
Like all Fotopedia apps, the interface is simple to use and the images sharp and striking. There are also lots of sharing options built in to help bring attention to, as World Bank president Robert B. Zoelick so aptly puts it in the app’s forward, “women [who] make up 50% of the global population, 40% of the global workforce, yet … own only 1% of the world’s wealth.”
Download this visual treasure trove and celebrate the world’s mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, friends, colleagues and inspirations.
California’s famed J. Paul Getty Museum houses one of the great collections of Greco-Roman and Etruscan art in its Palisades’ Villa and a vast array of objects d’art from the middle ages to the present day at the Getty Center in Brentwood.
Created in conjunction with their new exhibition The Life of Art: Context, Collecting, and Display, which opened last week at the Getty Center, the companion Life of Art app offers users an in-depth look at curator’s criteria using four gorgeous examples: a lidded bowl, a silver fountain, a side chair, and a wall light.
The introduction explains the instalment and app’s intention. “From the time an object is made until the day it enters a museum’s collection, a work of art may be displayed, used, and perceived in different ways.” The app uses the included samples to illustrate the point.
Tapping on any of the four decadently beautiful examples gives users detailed information on on the object’s journey by discussing the style, use, history and detailing. The objects are presented in a rich 360 degree view and a tap on a specific area prompts the app to show that area up close with detailed information, factoids, additional images, even flaws.
For the would-be curator, museum lover, or as a companion to an actual visit, The Getty’s new app offers a beautiful interactive selection of The Life of Art exhibition.
February is Black History Month in the US. It’s a time to reflect on the past of a people who have journeyed from slavery to the Oval Office and look at the heroes, sung and unsung, who made the transformative journey possible. It is also a time to look forward, for people of all races and ideologies, and to continue the quest for true racial equality in America. Apps are great educational tools so we’ve collected our favorite four that look backwards and forwards at this epic struggle to show by word and deed that all men – and women – are indeed created equal. If we missed an essential please let us know in the comments.
Then and Now Series: Black History
A look at the lives of 100 historically important Black people in a simple easy-to-use app, Then and Now Series: Black History focuses on the people behind the struggles and successes. Seek out more information on the names you’d expect to find or browse to discover lesser known, but equally important, figures from Black History. The app also allows users to print or share their discoveries with anyone who also wants to learn more.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-08-11 :: Category: Education
Black History In An Hour
While Black History In An Hour is long overdue for an update it still allows those who want to learn more without investing too much time to get the most important facts on the most salient topics. This app goes beyond the US to the rest of the West and into Africa, but it focuses mostly on key events in the history of African Americans particularly during slavery. It’s not meant to be a comprehensive eBook, just a starting point for discussion or further study.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-10-08 :: Category: Education
Black History Facts
Another basic guide, Black History Facts does not focus on the struggle for racial equality in the US alone, but rather explores Black History from around the world. The app offers over 530 snippets of information including 15 that were added as recently as january of this year. The app’s stated purpose is to foster deeper inquiry and provoke discussion.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-12-15 :: Category: Entertainment
The Root for iPad
Brought to iPad by The Washington Post and The Root, The Root for iPad looks not at black history as recorded in the annals, but black history in the making. This app aggregates relevant web news as well as curated commentary from highly respected African American writers. The app tackles the current implications of race in American society and myriad related issues. It even has podcasts on hot topics. The newest of the apps on this list, it’s optimized for iOS 5 and incorporates a host of sharing features to spread the best stories around the web via social media to open debate… and minds.
A new challenger has entered the news aggregation realm, as Streamglider+ has officially launched and is taking aim at the likes of Flipboard. The app seeks to aggregate everything that’s important to you, allowing you to mix in RSS feeds, YouTube channels, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more into one centralized app.
Streamglider+ boasts three different modes; lean-forward scrolls news and headlines across the screen, lean-back presents photos or news stories in a slideshow format and magazine mode presents fully stories just as they’d be found in a periodical, with no need to jump in and out of a browser. It’s all very slick, and the pro version is currently free so there’s really no reason not to check it out.
Of course the big question is can Streamglider+ dethrone the likes of Flipboard? It’s a very cool app, but when you come late to the game into a space dominated by a rival what are your odds of success? We’ll be interested to see how this slugfest plays out over the coming months.
It’s not an organization that many of us would automatically expect an official app from. Regardless, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO to you and me) has recently released its own news app. 
:: REALLY SWIFT SERVICE
Taptu, the self-proclaimed DJ of news aggregators, offers a blend of RSS feeds and social network feeds into what they call a social news stream. The already a popular iPhone and iPad app just had a major overhaul with the release of version 2.1.
News.me, the news reader from 
Zinio has long been a serious player in digital magazines distribution, on and off iOS. Zinio first appeared on the App Store in April 2010, but offered digital magazines on its 
:: SIMPLE, NOT POWERFUL
One of the best newspaper reading apps, PressReader, likes to keep on top of new technology and updates to the iPad, 
According to 
Kid-lit publisher 
They also released a lesser known title, The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, in which the guru of children’s literature waxes nonsensically poetic on “The shape of you the shape of me the shape of everything I see . . . a bug . . . a balloon, a bed, a bike. No shapes are ever quite alike.” The app is currently on sale for $1.99.
First published in 1940 by Dorothy Kunhardt the touch-and-feel board book, Pat the Bunny is a nursery library staple. On April first Random House, publishers of the Pat the Bunny book app, are releasing an update to the beloved classic. It will be free for those who own the app, and a seasonal incentive for parents to get the award-winner for their kids as their parents may have shared the classic print version with them.
News Corp.’s digital newpaper 
Pulse is about to pick up on what’s important locally for users, not just nationally. The new Local category in Pulse adds special local categories for users based on their current location. This includes sports categories provided by 
News sources are in abundance in this modern era, but none can beat the accuracy or the in-depth coverage that the award winning Associated Press can provide. 
One of the downsides of a landscape dominated by social media is the fact that the noise level is often through the roof. Thousands of links can fly through your feed in minutes, and it’s tough to know what’s important and what’s just fluff one of your friends posted up when drunk. For those of us who don’t have time for the clutter News.me is here to do the heavy lifting for us.
Fotopedia’s mission has always been to create a photographer and user-friendly Wikipedia for photography. Their iOS apps take a category and compile the best shots in a wonderful package. Their latest offering, Women of the World, a collection by 
The stories are updated: at present they focus on the “Women of Africa,” “Eternal Mothers,” and just added, “Forever Yours” – a look at marriage.
California’s famed J. Paul Getty Museum houses one of the great collections of Greco-Roman and Etruscan art in its Palisades’ Villa and a vast array of objects d’art from the middle ages to the present day at the Getty Center in Brentwood.
Tapping on any of the four decadently beautiful examples gives users detailed information on on the object’s journey by discussing the style, use, history and detailing. The objects are presented in a rich 360 degree view and a tap on a specific area prompts the app to show that area up close with detailed information, factoids, additional images, even flaws.
A new challenger has entered the news aggregation realm, as Streamglider+ has officially launched and is taking aim at the likes of 
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