:: FLAWED LISTENING
:: VISUAL BOOKMARKING
:: TIME SAVING READING
:: PRACTICAL SPEED READINGThe App Store turns five this week, and we'll be taking a long look back at this disruptive force in the way we use our mobile devices. Back in 2008, when the App Store launched, we had no idea how far it would come in such a short time, but hindsight is a good thing.
During that time, there have been a ton of apps that changed and improved the state of the art. Here, then, are ten that we think really matter, apps that had an effect on our lives, even now. Apps that changed the landscape of what we expected from a mobile device, and gave us new ways of interacting, sharing, and understanding our world.
Before Google Drive, before iCloud, there was Dropbox, a service that mirrors your documents across computers with a simple, unified login. The Dropbox app on the iPhone took the same, intuitive simplicity and allowed us all to access and edit the same documents on the go as easily as doing so on our Macs and PCs.
Ever been in the car when a song comes up on the radio and you just can't remember the artist that performed it? Hold your iPhone up, launch Shazam, and let the app magically recognize the music, returning the artist name, album, and easy-purchase buttons for the iTunes store. Newer features include movie preview recognition with links to more information, and television ads that, when recognized, provide links to vendor websites. It's magical technology at its best.
RSS is great, as are Twitter and Facebook feeds. But what we really want is a place to see all of those things at once, published in a slick, easy to use layout. Enter Flipboard, still the best darn social news reader around. It makes the various web sites and social feeds we all rely on much prettier and interesting to look at, letting us keep up to date without having to dip into several different apps to do so.
Can't decide where to eat? Shake your iPhone and Urbanspoon will randomly choose a restaurant nearby that matches your criteria of price, cuisine, and distance. Released in August of 2008, Urbanspoon was the first app on the App Store to combine GPS location data with a database of local dining and drinking establishments, creating a loyal community that reviewed meals, restaurants, and service for other users.
Marco Arment, of Instapaper fame has launched a new monthly subscription magazine on Newstand. The Magazine: For Geeks Like Us looks to be a great periodical for technology-centric readers.
It looks like Apple has been furiously working behind the scenes the last couple of days, responding to the problem some app updates were having, which was later shown to be an issue with Apple's FairPlay DRM and specific app updates.
Apple said that it has fixed the problem. “We had a temporary issue that began yesterday with a server that generated DRM code for some apps being downloaded,” Apple said, in a statement to All Things D.
The fix, at the time, was to have users with an affected app to re-download it from the App Store.
Today, it seems as if some updates are fixing themselves, whether users have updated or not. Our own inestimable Jeff Scott said that this morning, "I had an update to Instapaper that when installed fixed the broken app, with no need to re-install." Good news, then for app developers and app consumers.
In another rare move, Apple flexed some editorial muscles this morning, hiding any one-star apps that resulted from the DRM snafu.
As of this morning, it appears Apple has indeed removed negative reviews from apps affected by the bug. Apps like Instapaper, GoodReader, and The Early Edition are showing no reviews for the latest versions available, which are the ones that were crashing earlier in the week. We haven’t checked on every single app that was affected, but it is safe to assume at this point Apple will remove all reviews (not just negative ones) from any app that received a corrupted update.
Cult of Mac weighed in with its own thoughts on the mechanics of this move, pointing out that "Apple didn’t actually delete the reviews, though. Instead, what they did was force all of the affected apps to trigger a new “app update” on users’ devices, then moved the old 'Current Version' reviews to 'All Versions.'"
All in all, a good day for consumers and developers alike. For Apple? Maybe not so much, though they do get kudos for being so quick with a fix.
Marco Arment, the developer of Instapaper, noticed a curious thing last night - Instapaper was crashing on launch after an update from the App Store.
"Last night, within minutes of Apple approving the Instapaper 4.2.3 update," he said on his blog, "I was deluged by support email and Twitter messages from customers saying that it crashed immediately on launch, even with a clean install."
Even though Apple had reviewed the update, and it must have worked for them, every clean installed copy Arment downloaded and installed exhibited this behavior. Instapaper wasn't the only app, either.
Here's what he says is typical of such behavior:
Characterizations of this issue:
Obviously, this is a fairly serious issue, and - according to Arment - has already been fixed by Apple. If you have similar issues with some updated apps today, Ament says, "The only fix for people with bad copies, once good copies are being served again by the App Store, is to delete and reinstall the app."
In addition, he warns app developers against releasing non-critical app updated for the next couple of days to be sure the issue is resolved.
More as the story updates - stay tuned.
Source: Marco Ament
This week at 148Apps.com, we checked out the long-awaited release of Readability, via a quick overview and full review from Lisa Caplan. Caplan writes, "The app provides the same service and merges seamlessly with the web versions. Users open to a blank page with just a menu. Filling the app is the the reader’s job. Users can search the web or enter an URL manually. The app pulls the article, pretties it up, and places a lead-in on the home screen.
I found it faster to just surf on my Mac adding articles that appealed as I found them, but how one fills the app is a small matter. What Readability does with the content is the cool bit. I tested the universal build on an iPad and it works wonderfully in both orientations. In landscape the articles fill the main pane and a well-designed and unobtrusive sidebar has the menu. In portrait the sidebar is a tiny top bar."
Read our full review on 148Apps.
Meanwhile, our sister site Giggleapps.com dug deep into the garden of apps and came up with a review of The Giant Turnip: A Kidztory Classic Animated Interactive Storybook. Reviewer Amy Solomon says, "As always, the look of this app is delightful, with wonderful colors and textures and fun use of music incorporated into a style utterly recognizable as a Kidztory storybook. I appreciate the warm browns and green shades seen in the land where the turnip is planted, along with the noticeable brush strokes for a lovely effect. Possibly more so than other apps from this series, nothing is flat-looking within this app as every animal or other detail has its own imperfect texture that layered together on the page really brings a richness to this story that adults may enjoy even more than their children."
Read the full review on Giggleapps.com.
The old week is done. Bring on the new week, with the promise of the iPad 3 just around the corner. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook to keep abreast of the latest reviews, news items and contests right when they happen. See you next week!
Part One: 16 - 25
Pocket Informant - While iCal is nice, sometimes we need a more robust solution - hopefully one that works seamlessly with Google calendar. This is that app. While there's no universal app yet, we find this one to be compelling enough on either device type.
American Presidents for iPad - With over 300 gorgeous vintage images and photographs, this is an educational app for everyone. There are biographies of every US president, a historical timeline, and detailed quizzes on the text itself. Presidential history never looked so good.
Camera+ - This one gets a lot of play on our personal iPhones, bringing a ton of extra funtionality we really wish the native Camera app had, including multi touch exposure adjustment, grid line compotition help, and loads of effects and post-processing abilities. Also, it's super easy to share to a ton of different services, not just the default Apple ones.
1Password - Seriously, we have a ton of passwords out there. Some we use a lot, and remember, while others, well, not so much. We're guessing you do, too. Enter 1Password, the super vault of all those pesky passwords that we can't seem to keep track of any more. There's a version for iPhone only, iPad only, and a universal version.
Sketchbook Mobile - Feeling creative? Artsy, even? Want to doodle a little while you wait for your constantly late friend to show up to the cafe? Pull out that iPhone and sketch a little, why don't you? The smaller version of this app (there's also a pro version available for iPads) packs quite a punch in a tiny little package, including multitouch navigation, up to 6 layers per image file, and 10 levels of undo and redo.
Band of the Day - We're huge music fans, so finding this app was a happy day indeed. Selected as App of the Year runner up in Apple's own Rewind section, BotD updates us daily with free songs, reviews, bios, charts, sharing, videos and the like. It's also, you know, free, which earns it some points, though we'd gladly pasy some money for this level of awesome.
Jamie's Recipes - Jamie Oliver is a chef for the everyman and everywoman. Each of the included 12 free recipes is easy to make and the food is approachable by a wide range of palates. Many more recipes can be downloaded as in-app purchases, each with its own theme, making this recipe app well worth a look.
Instapaper - Here's the original and still the best too-long-didn't-read-but-want-to-read-it-later app out there. Instapaper lets users save web pages for later offline perusal with a simple browser extension and a mobile device. We're also still happy this is a one-person operation, showing us all that independent development is still a thriving industry. If you don't have this app yet, you should.
Shop Savvy - Here's a simple idea, well-implemented, made possible by that powerful networked computing device with a camera you have sitting in your pocket. Scan a bar code at any store, and Shop Savvy will find it online as well as locally, telling you if there are less expensive options out there for you. This is a daily must have app, even when it's NOT the holiday season.
Localscope - This app uses the geo-tagged info from local search engines, social networks and media sharing services to connect you to the people and places around you. Walk around the places you frequent and try this one out - you'll be amazed at how fun and informative it can be.
We hope you've enjoyed the best apps of 2011. Come back on Friday to see our top five favorite apps and games of 2011.
Previously, on 148Apps:
Favorite Games, 6 - 15
Favorite Apps, 16 - 25
Favorite Games, 16 - 25
:: FLAWED LISTENING :: Read Review »Instapaper is one of those 'can't live without' kind of apps. Considered one of the best apps out there, one of the first inductees in our App Hall of Fame, Instapaper is the app to buy for those users who want to save articles for offline reading. It's especially fortunate that regular support for the app is still there with the latest update (4.0) providing almost as big a list of changes as 3.0 did earlier this year.
Most pivotal for iPad owners is the complete overhaul of the iPad browsing interface for the app. Instapaper users can now enjoy a much more touch-friendly grid interface which promises to be easier and more attractive to look at. iPhone users get to enjoy a restyled and unified appearance that's easy to use.
Other aesthestic changes are afoot with the reading screen no longer showing the top status bar by default amongst other things. Articles from many sites now display the site title, author name and published date were available.
True hardware brightness control is now possible thanks to iOS5, immediately protecting sensitive eyes when reading at night.
Selecting text and tapping define now enables users to look up terms in Wikipedia at the touch of a button and happily residing alongside the offline dictionary.
Articles can now be multi-selected, making archiving, deleting or moving to folders enmasse quick and easy.
Adding some social features to the mix, users can now view, via the Friends panel, all links posted to their Facebook news feed, Twitter timeline or Tumblr Dashboard.
The biggest change of all, however, is the new search feature available as part of a $1/month subscription service. Called Search Subscription, it adds server-side searching of the full contents of every article users have ever saved. It's understandably powerful stuff and makes Instapaper even more useful than before.
Check out the full list of changes on Marco Arment's site.
The first use of Spool is that it serves as a service to read items at a later date, presenting items in an easy-to-read format. This is similar to Instapaper on iOS, only that this is a cross-platform service. There's a browser extension for all the major web browsers. After installing the extension, the link is saved to the user's spool. Then, the user can load up a mobile app, currently available for Android and iOS, and read the content that was saved. New content can be spooled from the app as well, by either searching or visiting a URL directly from within the app.
Now, this gets to the other part of Spool's usefulness; Spool can be used to save videos for offline watching. By loading up the app once an item has been spooled, the site and video is loaded into local memory. This includes Flash videos; the Spool servers can record Flash video and convert them to a format that's viewable on mobile, and able to be watched offline. Videos from Adult Swim and Dailymotion work well with the service. MLB.com doesn't seem to work with Spool's video conversion properly. YouTube videos can't be saved for offline access at this time.
The ability to watch and view offline is a huge part of Spool's utility; by preloading content, this makes it useful for watching videos in places where internet service may be less than ideal or even nonexistent; this is perfect for cell phone users on limited data plans or iPod touch owners. Download videos and content when on wifi, and then watch them whereever. The app is not necessarily optimized for tablets yet.
This app is especially interesting for iOS users looking to easily watch Flash videos on their phone or iPod, and for Android users looking for a service similar to Instapaper for their phones. Spool is free to use, but is currently only available as invite only by registering at Spool's website.
:: FLAWED LISTENING
With an e-reader of their own on sale for $149, Kobo isn't exactly the smallest of the Amazon challengers. Their app seems to be doing fairly well, and has some cool features that are unique to the platform, such as its innovative social reading platform. Called "Reading Life," iPad users can now view statistics about their user preferences and even earn achievements for their reading prowess.
The newest feature in their standard app is its integration with Instapaper, which allows users to read long form web text, save text for later viewing, and allows users to sync their Instapaper text instantly to their other iOS devices.
“People are constantly discovering a wide variety of great information on the web, but they don’t always have the time to read everything that they come across,” said Mike Serbinis, Kobo CEO. “With Kobo’s integration with Instapaper, readers can clip, save, and read this content anytime, anyplace they choose using the Kobo eReading application for iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.”
Kobo currently has over 2.2 million e-books in its library, from free classics to New York Times bestsellers, and has a subscription plan that offers acces to many of the most popular newspapers and magazines. Their system is all cloud based and uses open standards, so choosing Kobo allows users to build their libraries without getting stuck on a particular platform. The app is free too, so give it a try. You may just like it.
That’s the advice of Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper for iPhone and iPad.
Writing on his personal blog, Marco notes the staggering number of applications playing on the name of successful apps or using similar keywords in order to con unwitting App Store customers into buying them.
Popular bird-launching game, Angry Birds, is one such successful application plagued by a host of pretenders that are found when searching the App Store for its title. Of the top ten search results, only four apps appear legitimate with the actual Angry Birds game and its Lite version making up two of these. Six of the top ten search results are made up of cheat apps and walkthroughs.
ESCAPP’s Angry Birds Cheats, for example, appears in the top five searches and uses a lookalike icon. At $0.99 (the same price as the full Angry Birds app) the application’s description reads “Wonderful and addictive cheats. Accept No Imitations”.
That should be no imitations other than the imitation of affiliation with an actual application and/or developer.
We’ve not downloaded Angry Birds Cheats, but with 432 one star reviews out of 487 and reviews entitled “Absolute Rubbish!!” and “Waste of time money and effort” we’re willing to gamble our reputation on this being a pretty poor app. Add to this that the developer, ESCAPP, doesn’t have a working website but a GoDaddy holding page instead, and the fraud is complete.
InTekOne, LLC is another app publisher working in a similar way but this time using a modified version of the Angry Birds icon for its Angry Birds Walkthrough app. Once again, its site does not appear when clicked in iTunes and it’s left up to the poor developer, who was presumably commissioned to create the app, to shoulder the blame.
Chillingo, the publisher of Angry Birds, is equally unhappy with these apps: "We are going to send a formal copyright infringement request to Apple about these apps soon," said Joe Wee, Director of Chillingo.
Chillingo prefers to reward loyal gamers with hints and tips at no cost by providing walkthrough trailers on its Developers’ YouTube channels. That way, they get free, valid information directly from the source. Angry Birds' developer Rovio provides official suggestions for Angry Birds here
So what can you do to avoid inadvertently downloading fake apps or “squatters” who use successful apps as a marketing tool? Unfortunately, not a lot. Of course, you’re free to contact Apple and let them know your thoughts and Marco Arment also lists ways developers can protect their intellectual property from such apps on his site here.
For the average consumer, however, it appears that vigilance is your only weapon. Find out the name of the developer, check their website and, most importantly, read the app’s reviews for consumer feedback before buying.
Neither ESCAPP nor InTekOne, LLC have responded to our contact regarding their applications at time of writing.
[ via Marco.org ]
