With the clock ticking down the hours until Santa arrives, here are some last-minute holiday apps to load on your iPhone or iPad as you go out caroling, do last-minute shopping or visit your friends and family: Santa's Big Helper ($.99): This has a number of features, and if you're looking for one good Christmas app, this is the one to grab. It has a Santa tracker, a naughty/nice list, the ability to write to Santa for those last-minute Christmas wishes, ask questions and more. FOOD52 Holiday Recipe & Survival Guide ($3.99): If you need a guide to hosting a holiday party or a good recipe for a family gathering, this app is great for doing everything from making pie to crafting a gingerbread house. There are eight suggested menus that will make fighting the crowds at the grocery store a bit easier, and you can follow community links to get Read More

Giving your child an iPad or iPod Touch as a gift this year? Preload it with some quality apps before you wrap it. That way you’ll increase your chances for a positive first impression. Here’s a fresh batch of suggestions, arranged from young to old. Bizzy Bear on the Farm ($4) is full of clever talking animals and barnyard jobs that include gathering eggs, herding sheep and riding a horse. Every page has hidden surprises that support the story. Ages 2-4. DoodleCast for Kids ($2) captures your child’s doodles and voice at the same time, for instant playback. The process is automated and the products make wonderful digital snapshots of your child’s development. Keep the file for a dozen years and you’ll have an excellent mechanism for embarrassing your high school graduate. An active YouTube account is needed for the sharing. Ages 2-8. Nighty Night! HD ($1, shown above). If there Read More

We love new apps. It is one of the joys of our life to sift through the flood of apps that are published or updated every month and deliver the best or most interesting to our readers. November had some great apps for Android, the iPhone and the iPad. In our ongoing series of Apps Of The Month, we take a look at what November produced below. We are continuing for the third month with our list of app updates so you can keep track of what you need to update for functionality and security purposes. The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without. A Charlie Brown Christmas - ($6.99 iOS, Android) Who better to tug on the heart strings of Christmas than Charlie Brown? The new app Read More

Forty-six years after it debuted on prime-time television, the beloved Christmas classic comes to a new medium -- the iPad. But instead of simply releasing it as a downloadable video, the A Charlie Brown Christmas app turns the story of an incredibly depressed child (yeah, you Charlie Brown) into a wonderful animated storybook that is sure to delight a whole new generation of children. The developers at Loud Crow Interactive who designed the app deserve high praise. I'm in my 30s and still the app has managed to keep me enthralled. The A Charlie Brown Christmas app features the original music and voices from the television special, plus read-along narration by Peter Robbins, the original voice of Charlie Brown. The book itself is made up of twenty beautifully rendered pages, each depicting a scene from the show. But what's really cool about this app is the interactivity. Children both young and Read More

By Chris Oldroyd, Saturday, Nov 19, 2011 | A Charlie Brown Christmas is now available in the App Store and it looks like another excellent app by Loud Crow Interactive Inc. The Charlie Brown Christmas app is an interactive book based on the 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas TV special. Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } Read More

Looking for a new app this weekend?  Here are ten great new apps for the iPhone and iPad that you may want to check out! Everyone’s favorite Charlie Brown story returns as an interactive storybook narrated by Peter Robbins, the original voice of Charlie Brown.  In addition to the book there are mini-games and activities including the chance to decorate your own Christmas tree.  $6.99/£4.99. A new photo sharing app with a selection of pro-quality filters and the chance to follow friends, view their pictures and explore all the online galleries.  The app is free for a limited time.  Free. The highly anticipated Pocket Edition of Minecraft, Mojang’s incredibly popular create-a-world game.  Here there’s no survival mode (yet), but you do get 36 blocks with which to build, plus a local Wi-Fi multiplayer mode.  Universal for the iPhone and iPad.  $6.99/£4.99. What is there to say, this is an app featuring Read More