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Whether you are renovating, buying a new home or just redecorating, it is not uncommon to spend dozens, if not hundreds of hours poring over shelter magazines, books, websites and blogs. Not only is interior/exterior design information and photos scattered (and oftentimes costly), it can be utterly overwhelming.
Houzz, which is touted as the “Wikipedia of interior and exterior design” by CNN, consolidates everything from finding home improvement professionals in your area to gathering inspiration into Ideabooks, all in just one app.
And that’s not the half of it. Learn more after the jump.
On October 4th, freshly-appointed Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage to headline his first Apple event, and announced the release of the iPhone 4S and iOS 5. Under all of the exciting features that were covered that day were a few new Apple-designed apps. Apple doesn’t publish its own apps for download on the App Store very often, and when they do, the apps tend to be small companion apps and utilities (Remote or Find My iPhone) or productivity apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). But on that day, Apple announced a few full-featured, standalone apps. One of those was Find My Friends.
When I sat down to spill out my heart about Find My Friends, I wasn’t sure whether to review it proper or to simply share some thoughts, given that the app was developed by Apple. After some time, however, I decided to give it the review treatment, because I think that there are distinct pros and cons that should be considered in the context of other apps with similar functions. For those of you who weren’t able to watch the announcement and demonstration, allow me to recap some of the features first.
The iPhone as we all know, is one of the best smartphones that is out on the market. One of the greatest things about it is its ability to be able to do more than just your standard calling, email, text, etc. Apps and the App Store brought the iPhone from good to absolutely great!
Zinio is one of those apps that contributed to this leap. It is a magazine subscription and reading app for both the iPad and the iPhone. As most people know, who own an iPhone and an iPad, it is definitely a much better reading experience on the iPad. But for the thousands out there that don’t have both, the iPhone is a decent alternative, especially if you have an app like Zinio.
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September 3rd saw the launch of the much awaited for PostSecret app. If you are a regular follower of PostSecret then you, no doubt, were aware of the impending launch. But in case you don’t follow PostSecret, let me bring you up to speed. PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where individuals craft a postcard that contains a secret and then anonymously send it to Frank Warren, the creator of the project. Every Sunday a selection of those postcards appear on the PostSecret blog.
Up until now, viewing and interacting with the secrets was limited. Each week only about twenty secrets were posted on the blog along with a small handful of selected comments. The PostSecret app now changes this. Owners of the app are able to discover new secrets as they are uploaded by users, can share their own secrets via the app and the opportunity to interact with posted secrets is now possible. This review will walk you through the nuts and bolts of the app including the process of discovering, sharing and replying to secrets.
How many times have you walked to the store to pick up a carton of eggs, or some mundane item, and you realize you forgot your wallet at home?
Now you can intentionally leave your wallet at home thanks to Square’s (relatively) new Card Case for the iPhone. Square Card Case is the next logical advancement in the Square payment system. Essentially, users can “start a tab” at their favorite retailers or vendors making the need for such things as cold hard cash (not to mention wallets) superfluous.
Interested?
As I’ve mentioned before, I play and write about video games quite frequently. My parents probably thought that this particular hobby wouldn’t get me far in life, and to that I say “hah!” However, since becoming an adult gamer (and subsequently, a writer on the topic), I’ve certainly discovered the need to budget my time properly. No, this doesn’t mean spending less time on games and more time on work. It means spending less time looking for games and more time gaming.
If you’ve never read the popular gaming webcomic Penny Arcade, you’re doing yourself an egregious injustice (especially if you like games). The comic includes an amazingly witty, yet dry sense of humor that the creators (along with the help of The Binary Mill) so gracefully included when they developed Decide-o-tron: an iOS app that recommends games based on the games you already like. It’s like iTunes Genius, but for video games. Let’s dig into it more after the break.
Travel guides, Urban Daddy, Yelp; while these are excellent resources for finding the pulse of a city, that pulse is often buried under trivial tourist traps, ad dollars and dated information. Enter Urbandig, an insider’s guide offering users unique city guides curated by local experts.
These guides are not just any run-of-the-mill list of recommendations; instead, these guides run the gamut from offering up the best spots for late night grub to retracing Charles Manson’s most notorious stops.
Interested? Learn more after the jump.
Have you ever wondered what your neighborhood looked like throughout history, or perhaps the historical significance of a nearby landmark? With Historypin, you can easily get historical data through user-generated images displayed in relation to your current location, all from your iPhone.
The main feature of the app allows images and relevant historical data to pop up overlaid on the iPhone’s live camera view (thanks to integrated Google Maps and Street View technology). This allows you to quickly get a snapshot of what a nearby location looked like in the past by simply holding up your device in the street. Historypin is certainly an intriguing and extremely unique approach to augmented reality, but we wanted to find out if it was just a gimmick like so many others.
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Now that Fall is just about here, for sports fans, that means one thing: football! For me as a sports fan, it also means other things. The baseball season is wrapping up, the PGA Tour is heading to the “silly” season, and yes, even the MLS is starting to wrap up.
With not having cable TV in our house and always being out and about, I needed an iPhone app to stay on top of all of my different teams and sports, as well as the latest scores and highlights. Sportacular is an app that does a lot of the things that I need and want and works really well, for the most part. Let me show you around.
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It’s Productivity Week here at iPhone.AppStorm, and all week we’re going to have app reviews and how-tos, all based on getting things done. Plus, we’ll even pull some classic reviews out of the archives. Stay tuned all week!
A key practice that can lead to better productivity is getting the things in your head out into the physical — or digital — world. While there’s no shortage of task managers out there to help you with those little nagging things that you need to get done, there’s a large market for other things that can be distracting as well. Desire aims to help you stop worrying about how much money you’ve saved up for a specific item, whether or not you can afford something, or how much longer you need to wait before you can get going on another project.
So does it work? Read on past the break and find out!
