Tag: Tools »

This week at 148Apps.com, we got to known iOS developer Lady Shotgun. Jennifer Allen writes, "Doing things a little differently from the rest, Lady Shotgun considers itself as a co-operative of freelance game developers, with the team working remotely from each other rather than through a central office. It might be unorthodox but this team is made up of folks with some extensive experience in the game industry. Uniqueness continues through the fact that Lady Shotgun is made up, predominantly, of female game designers and coders with men forming the minority here."

Read the full interview at 148Apps.

GiggleApps.com headed to work for a review of the unique Grandpa's Workshop. Amy Solomon says, "Grandpa’s Workshop is a fun interactive app which teaches about the tools found in a workshop as well as learning about simple math concepts.
I really enjoy how this app works, as a fun older gentleman walks children through workshop-related activities such as identifying tools, painting different projects or mending broken objects jigsaw style.

Simple math-related activities are also included such as using a tape measure to measure boards, cutting boards into fractions such as halves or quarters, choosing the correct number of screws or other parts grandpa needs as well as a spot-the-difference section involving tools that may be similar or different."

Read Amy's full review at GiggleApps.

Finally, AndroidRundown.com's KickStarter spotlight this week was for the BlueTube Amplifier. Joseph Bertolini writes, "Being a sort of audiophile I appreciate the sound of a classic tube amplifier and I recently just started re-downloading my favorite albums as lossless FLAC files to preserve that original sound quality. Looking around the market today, it is really a sad time for those who really care about the quality of their music as cheap parts are appearing from overseas and there is a resulting flood of bargain Bluetooth speakers and docks on the market. These sound terrible, and combined with the super-compressed audio files that the average user has in their music collection music really has taken a technological step backward at a time when there has been nothing but technological advances. Well, audiophiles and smartphone owners rejoice because I have discovered our savior and it does not come from the likes of Sony or any large corporation. Meet the BlueTube Bluetooth Tube Amplifier, and built out of solid cherry and walnut hardwood it promises to look as great as it sounds."

Read Joseph's full article at AndroidRundown.

Thus ends November, but that means December fun is just getting started. Join us on Twitter, Facebook and now on Pinterest for the latest news, reviews and more. See you next week, true believers.

Everyone knows that in order to organize their lives, sometimes lists are a necessary evil, just to help maintain the sanity.  Further helping to cut through the mental fog, timed schedule reminders will can once again aid in burning through the mental clutter.  But what if there was another way to keep your head straight that didn't necessitate a specific time frame or list?  While it may not seem completely apparent, geographical location can play a big role in choosing what tasks you choose to tackle on a daily basis.

Seeing this niche, and taking the phrase, "If you're ever in the neighborhood..." to heart, Hillcrest Lab has created an app that keys on the innate need to make life as efficient as possible.  Regions is your one stop app for reminders based on your location. It is so simple to use, they can describe it in no time flat:

Regions is a simple iPhone app that reminds you to do things based on where you are. It won't kill your battery either. It does one thing and does it well. Regions provides just enough functionality to get the job done and avoids getting in your way.

So how simple is the software to use?  All you need to do is place a pin on the map, set a notification reminder and warning radius, and the tool does the rest.

It is always awesome when functionality meets a need that we never even knew we had.  That said, I can't even count the number of times that I have driven past a store and though that I would take care of something next time I passed through, only to kick myself later when it slipped my mind.

Those days are a thing of the past, as Regions hopes to revolutionize the travels of a multitasking mind.  For under two bucks, it is bound to make an instant impact.

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Ruler 2 is a new app from the same folks who brought us the popular book app, Classics. Like Classics, Ruler 2 pays equal attention to form and function; beneath the glossy interface is an easy-to-use ruler, complete with a slider for measurement instead of forcing you to guestimate. The app supports both inches and centimeters, includes a trick for measuring longer objects, and allows you to copy and paste your measurements into apps like Calculator or Mail.

It's a big step up from the original Ruler: just ask the developers. "Ruler 1.0 was, to put it bluntly, awful, so we burned it to a fine ash and began again,” said co-creator Andrew Kaz. Their hard work seems to have paid off. Ruler 2 is clearly well-thought out, proving that traditional mediums aren't necessarily the best implementations. In some ways, the iPhone/iPad app is more useful—and certainly more convenient—than a wooden ruler. (I really like that automatic slider. No more guestimation!)

To celebrate Ruler 2's launch, developers Andrew and Alexa are hosting a contest. Happily, you don't even have to buy the app, and entering is easy. Prizes include fresh new Apple swag—a 64GB iPod Touch, a 16GB iPod Nano, the new iPod Shuffle, and the new Apple TV. By spreading the word about Ruler 2 via Facebook or Twitter, or by signing up for the email list, you get one entry in the drawing. (For more information, or to enter, go to http://rulerapp.com/.)

Ruler 2 is a great new implementation of a ruler app for both iPhone and iPad, and the contest is just an added bonus - you don't have to buy Ruler 2 to enter! Check Ruler 2 out on the App Store; the universal version is a mere $0.99.

There have been a few apps that I've picked up that claim to be able to judge the distance from one object to the next, all of which have produced questionable results. The one that I liked the best was Sonar Ruler, but it wasn't very practical to use, and became more of a cool "look what my iPhone can do" app than anything.

DAH-Measure takes the measuring app one step further by measuring distance, angle, and height, all in the same app. The developers don't divulge how they calculate the distance, they just say that Measurements are taken using iPhone's camera, sensors and mathematical equations." Their goal was to make a more practical app that wouldn't have a bunch of bells and whistles bogging it down. It was built to work, and it does fairly well.

After fidgeting with the settings, I got to where the measurement tool worked fairly well, only coming 2 ft. off the actual distance (which was 18 ft.). Height was a bit trickier, with one example coming within a foot or two of the actual target and one not coming very close at all.

One word of warning, in the settings screen you have to determine how high your camera is off the ground. Because I am an American, I switched the setting to imperial, as I like ft. better than meters. Anyways, if you use an accurate distance for "camera height from the ground" (i.e. 35-50 in.), the resulting measurements will come up pretty short. I got a more accurate distance saying that my camera was something closer to 150 in (over 12 ft.!) off the ground, obviously a crazy number. I don't know if this is a glitch or just happened to work in my circumstance, I'm just throwing it out there.

The developers did put out a disclaimer saying that the measurements are more approximate than anything, but once you get the settings right, the results are pretty nifty.

With the current “retro” trend refusing to die down, especially on the App Store, one of the first and best videogames, Space Invaders, is making a return but not in the form you might expect.

Instead of simply porting the relentless, pixilated aliens to the iPhone platform, Taito has introduced a novel set of utilities (Gizmos) themed with Space Invaders graphics.

Available now on the App Store, iPhone users can take advantage of Space Invaders business card swapper, a calculator, battery meter, memory status tool, clock, flashlight and a timer. Each app offers a unique Space Invaders design and incorporates the 8-bit graphics of the classic game into buttons and displays.

Of all the apps available, Space Invaders Business Cards looks the best featured with the ability to create and customize personal business cards and share them between devices via Bluetooth.

All of the apps, bar the premium version of the calculator are free and provide a fun way to perform basic tasks on your iPhone while remembering simpler times back when a phone just made calls.

I get a lot of e-mails daily, most of them the usual snore-worthy PR mailshots from the App Store big boys .. and of course (well, at least most of the time), these are about upcoming games and apps for the iPhone itself. So, it was refreshing this morning to receive the heads up on a new completely open-source project from iPhone development studios Edovia and FutureTap.

Originally a Canadian-German co-production between both firms, InAppSettingsKit is an open-source project which allows iPhone developers to place settings in-app, as opposed to hiding them away in the iPhone OS Settings.app.

Edovia and FutureTap admit there has been extensive discussion among the iPhone community about which option is better. Do you oust your app's settings to Settings.app and hope the user finds them successfully, or do you opt for the in-app route and risk cluttering your once streamline app with a bunch of settings most would only use on the rare occasion? According to Edovia and FutureTap, there are quite a few reasons in-app settings should be considered.

- Settings.app becomes a total mess with longer load times
- If only in Settings.app most users simply don’t understand the mechanism and miss the settings
- A context switch is needed to switch between settings and the app. If on the 16th screen, this involves quite some tapping and flicking.
- In-App settings can instantly change the behavior of the app

Sure, in-app settings are popular. After all, What's better than to be able to edit the global settings of an app, without having to leave the actual app? We've seen a slurry of the big name apps take this approach. Including the likes of Twitterrific, AIM and more recently, Tweetie 2 .. among others.

What's interesting about this project is, as a developer, instead of having to choose one route and ultimately having to accept the consequences via user feedback, it proposes a new outlook on settings for iPhone OS. Dubbed 'Hybrid Settings' the settings are place in Settings.app sure, but they're also available in-app too, providing the best of both worlds - and don't worry about visual consistency of your settings either, using the kit your in-app settings will look just like as if they were pulled straight from Settings.app.

"We’re proposing a second approach that we call “hybrid settings”. In this model, the user has the choice: the settings are available in Settings.app. But they’re placed in-app as well. That way, every user can decide where to edit the settings. The in-app settings are a 100% clone of the Settings.app style."

Developers can find out more about the project at InAppSettingsKit.com - and if you have an app and you've recently added the InAppSettingsKit to it, the guys at Edovia and FutureTap want to know. Add yourself to the list at: inappsettingskit.com/apps.