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So you’re out and about, searching for that special tool that you need to get your project done — a screw, piece of shiny fabric or whatever it is. You find it, but it’s pricey, and you want to know if you can get it cheaper somewhere else. So you pull out your iPhone, take a shot of the item with CamFind, and sure enough, it’s out there.
OK, now it’s Tuesday and you’re in a part of town where there are a lot of good looking restaurants with menus written in languages you don’t understand. No sweat. Out comes CamFind, you take a picture and next thing you know, you’ve got a translation.
Alright, one last one. You’re in a strange city for work, and you walk past a memorial to something that seems important. You want to know more, but there doesn’t seem to be any pertinent info anywhere about. Pull out CamFind, take a shot of the memorial and it comes back with info on it. Like magic.
CamFind is a little bit of magic in your pocket. It can do all of the things listed above, as well as find reviews and trailers for movies; restaurant reviews from photos of their sign; find nearby coffee shops; and scan QR codes. It’s got a lot wrapped up in a nice little package, making it an app that you’ll surely want to have on your home screen.
Get It Now!
Did that peak your interest? No? Well how about this: it’s free. That’s right, CamFind is available for the low price of free, and it comes complete with all of those features. Is it the perfect app to have? Maybe. But it’s definitely one you’ll want to keep handy. I know it’s changed my iPhone for the better.
If you were to ask multiple Android Jellybean users what their favorite Android feature is, the smart bet is that most would say Google Now. As a non-Android user, I’ve had little hands-on experience with the feature, but it’s not from a lack of want. I’m a die hard iOS user, but I’m also a very emphatic user of Google’s services (Gmail, search, Google Docs, Chrome).
So imagine my surprise (hint, it was very) this past Tuesday morning when I learned Google Now had arrived on iOS by way of the Google Search app. Having lived with this much touted service for a handful of days now, getting to chance to experience what it really has to offer, it’s time to determine if Google Now has lived up to the hype. (more…)
I’m big fan of Google. I use almost all their web apps and the ones I don’t use probably are geographically locked — but that’s on the web. On the mobile, it’s a totally different story altogether. From Google Reader to Calendar and Docs, all my favorite apps on the web don’t have a native iOS app.
But they’ve all been present in the Android Market for a long time now. Then there are native iOS version of apps like Gmail that blows. The Google Search app for iOS has been around forever. While not as horrible as the Gmail app, it wasn’t mind blowing either — up until now. Follow me after the fold to learn how the new version of Google Search has made me a believer. (more…)
Flying can be such a burden at times and in my case, it is finding the right flight, the best seats and then a good price. I don’t do a ton of traveling, but when I do, I tend to put in way too much time trying to find the best solution. I am always looking for apps that can help simplify and make this process much smoother and less time consuming.
I never thought I would want to use an iPhone app to search and book flights, but when I got my hands on SeatGuru, I have to say I was intrigued to say the least. The app lets you search and book flights, find information on seats as well as check a flight’s status. This is kind of your one-stop shop app for flight travel. (more…)
Looking at mobile trends we’ve all heard about check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla. These apps rose in popularity because they offered great features and were enticing to new users with badges and profiles. A new brand app Localmind follows in a similar pattern in building a global Q&A type social network.
With Localmind you can connect with people in your area and help to answer the question “What’s going on?” Residents have the ability to send out questions and others living in the same area can pick them up and offer solutions in real-time. It’s a new way of thinking about information sharing with an emphasis on local current events — not to mention the app looks beautiful and showcases a brilliant example of iPhone UI design. (more…)
When you think of website search engines, it’s big-name brands like Google or Yahoo! which come to mind — even Microsoft’s Bing is doing very well in the rankings. However, there is an underdog in the mix and it’s not Dogpile.
DuckDuckGo Search is a very simple engine which borrows a lot of traits from Google’s UI. Their search functionality is easy to use and also includes extra features for custom searches — in this way you can limit to specific domain names or even search in alternate places such as Wikipedia. Their web app is certainly fantastic, but the company has done an even better job for their iOS app, which we’ll delve into after the break.
Frequent fliers know that there is an art to finding good deals on airfare. Booking early is a sure way of getting better prices, but sometimes it just comes down to comparison shopping. Unfortunately, there are so many individual flight search engines on the internet that performing this kind of search can quickly become tedious and unnecessarily time consuming — although it is a nice distraction from packing.
Hoping to resolve this issue, Momondo created a clean and efficient search aggregator that compiles results from over 800 different travel sites so that you can input your query once and get all the results you need. Having been successful with their web-based system, the company has finally released an app that allows you to take their powerful searching service on the road. We take a look at it after the jump.
Managing files on your iPhone can be a pain. iOS includes file viewers for most common file types, and with a few 3rd party apps you can easily edit many common office documents and other files you might receive in emails. You can even view or download any file in your Dropbox or SpiderOak accounts with their respective iPhone apps. The problem is, every app manages its own files, and there’s no built-in file explorer to let you save files and access them from any app.
Enter Berokyo. Berokyo is a powerful app that lets you manage files and organize them into folders, right on your iPhone or iPad. You can import files from many apps, then open files saved in Berokyo in other apps. It’s also fully integrated with Dropbox, so if you store most of your files in the cloud you’ll be able to use them from your iPhone easier than ever. In essence, it is the closest thing you can get to Finder or Explorer in iOS. Let’s dive in and see how Berokyo can make your mobile computing life easier in iOS.
Most of us rely on Google Maps and Search to get through the day, and never give the choice much thought. Today we’re going to look at the Bing app for iOS and see if it’s worth switching to a new search engine.
In a world where Google is now used as a verb for searching the web, most wouldn’t consider using any other search engine. That’s why Microsoft surprised the world when it released Bing and now they’ve made it accessible even to Apple’s mobile devices with the Bing iPhone app. There’s no such thing as a perfect search engine, so we’ll take you through the Bing app so you can see what it offers and decide for yourself.
Stephen Fry—British writer, actor, and geek extraordinaire—recently wrote of the iPad, “One melancholy thought occurs as my fingers glide and flow over the surface of this astonishing object: Douglas Adams is not alive to see the closest thing to his Hitchhiker’s Guide that humankind has yet devised.”
That is a sad fact indeed; apps like Articles and Wikipanion have essentially made The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a reality, and Douglas Adams, who died in 2001, missed seeing the fantastic mesh of software, hardware, and network that made his dream real by only a few years.
Human ingenuity being what it is, though, the capabilities of the iPhone and the iPad have already begun to overtake the capabilities of The Hitchhiker’s Guide, and WolframAlpha is a great example of that. Today we’ll be looking at how this knowledge and functionality is packed into a simple iPhone app.
