The GroupShot universal app for iPhone and iPad allows you to blend faces from similar photos for a seamless, high-quality photo where everyone looks great. Taking good group photos with friends, family, co-workers, while bar hopping, playing sports, visiting the Lincoln Memorial, or at any other place else can be impossible and frustrating. Here’s what you end up with normally; Someone has closed or droopy eyes, someone else has a turned head. And, if you post a lousy picture of a friend on Facebook, you’ll hear about it. The Group Shot app is incredibly well-designed, highly functional, and intuitive. When you open the app for the first time, you can choose to watch a video to acquaint you with GroupShot’s interface. This is a great video. It is clear, concise, pleasant, and thorough. At the end of the video, you have the opportunity to play with built-in photos. Wow, you will be shocked by the juxtaposition of the incredibly complex capacity of Group Shot and its easy, responsive touch controls. You choose several group photos from your iPhone and iPad libraries, or you shoot photos from the GroupShot iPhone app camera. You will find the main photo in a larger part of the screen with the similar photos in a scroll feature on the right side of the screen. You simply rub your finger across the face that looks lousy. You don’t have to be terribly precise, but generally keeping on the face. You then scroll through the similar photos to choose the person’s face that better suits your main photo. After you select the photo, the processing begins. You know it’s processing when it says, “Performing magic.” Your nicely blended, corrected photo is complete. You touch select, and you’re finished. If you want to make more adjustments, compare photos, and Read More
If you need a simple, functional birthday and anniversary calendar on your iPhone, then you’ll want to download the Yearly app. With great, intuitive functionality, you can do a bit more than just post a birthday greeting on your friend’s Facebook timeline. The Yearly iPhone app functions by adding birthday and anniversary fields to your iPhone contacts. If you don’t know how to add fields, you are directed to a succinct, clear tutorial to easily accomplish this task. For someone who plays with her iPhone a lot, I never noticed the option to add a field in my contacts. You simply touch the edit button on the contact, then you scroll through the list. When you find birthday and additional date to use for anniversary, you add the specific fields and complete the dates. When you press done and return to Yearly, the birthdays and anniversaries appear. You can tell the difference between the two by the graphics. The anniversaries have a yellow band on the photo. The organization of data and graphic quality is presented beautifully and efficiently. Each entry has your contact’s photo, if you have one. There is a countdown until the birthday or anniversary. And, a simple statement shares how old the person or the marriage is on the date. It’s just the information you need–nothing more, nothing less. The settings button leads you to the menu to define preferred parameters to customize the Yearly iPhone app. You have the opportunity to specify the time when you’ll receive the notification of birthdays and anniversaries. This is a great feature–especially if a notification arrives before you’re ready to get out of bed. If you would like to receive notifications a day or two early, you can set that parameter with a couple of touches on your iPhone screen. Read More
The Photo Invader iPhone app brings cheeky, silly zombies, animals, and freaks to your photo libraries, Facebook photos, and downloaded images. You too can create humorous cat photos to share with your Facebook news stream without the expense of graphic design software like Photoshop and InDesign. To start with the Photo Invader iPhone app, you choose from the free photos or zombie photos. The free photos range from sexy ladies and men to silly cats to dinosaurs to Santa. After you select your Photo Invader, then you choose from your photo libraries, Facebook photos, and image search feature. Also, you can shoot a photo from within the Photo Invader iPhone app. The image search feature makes it possible to add your own humorous, witty touch to the popular, shared photo du jour. After you select your Photo Invader and your photo or image, you can choose from several photo effects for the Photo Invader. You can enlarge or shrink the Photo Invader and adjust its size with some typical finger movements on your iPhone screen. Once you touch the apply icon, the Photo Invader and your photo merge. You have the opportunity to enhance your image further by manipulating the Photo Invader. You can flip it upside down, turn it on its side, change the size, as well as move it around the screen. The finger controls respond precisely and quickly. There is no lag time as the image is created or as elements are merged. When you complete your photo, you can save, email, and share to Facebook within the Photo Invader iPhone app. It would be nice to enhance sharing options to include popular blog websites, as well as Twitter. These are the kinds of silly photos and images bloggers and geeks would love to make and include in Read More
Do you like to throw parties? Do you have a wickedly tricked out bar? Or, are you bored with your cocktail and want to try something new? If you answered yes or find yourself curious to learn more about cocktails, then you will want to download the Cocktail Flow app for your iPhone. From the home screen, you access ten different types of search, filter, and action options. There is a lot of information packed into your iPhone screen, but the features and functionality are well-designed and easily navigated. The developers at Distinction LTD loaded the app with graphically interesting and cleverly worded pop-up directions to help you maximize the features of the Cocktail Flow app. For example, your first touch on the favorites menu tells you how to favorite a drink and gives you the option of touching the screen to see a “random cocktail.” My random cocktail was a California Dream–a concoction of dry and sweet vermouth, tequila, and ice. If you’re not completely satisfied with the drink, you can touch the similar cocktails icon. A list of drinks pops up with names and the main ingredients, so you can scroll through more options. For each cocktail, the Cocktail Flow iPhone app gives you an ingredient list and recipe details, in addition to the similar cocktails feature just mentioned. One of the particularly cool features is each step has an icon to let you know what you’ll be doing in that step. It adds a pop of visual interest to the Cocktail Flow app experience, as well as adds information in a meaningful and complimentary vibe. And, the later the party goes, the easier you’ll want your directions to keep pouring drinks. You can keep stock of your liquor cabinet as well. It is arranged by spirits, liqueurs, and Read More
Game Oven’s app for the iPad, Fingle can be described as game of twister for your fingers. Fingle is a two-player game that uses the touch screen capabilities of your iPad in a fun and creative way allowing you to get the most out of your tablet. Fingle comes with over fifty levels and features a seventies inspired interface design including seventies music. Playing Fingle with someone on the iPad can be a great icebreaker and a good way to get some laughs. As the levels get more challenging it’s fun to try and figure out how to beat the level, intertwining your fingers with another players. There is a training mode as well as various different levels. The unique design of Fingle, requiring using from one up to ten fingers, is unique amongst current games on the iPad. Currently, most two-player games involve playing over the internet whereas this app requires player interaction on the same iPad. Similar iPad games include Multipong and Ogs, which are available in the App Store. It is a very neat idea and a super entertaining game. However, it gets old quickly. One downside is that you are required to turn off the multitasking features in your settings before playing. For someone like me that uses the multitasking features often, this can get annoying. Fingle is for sale for $0.99 in the App Store for a limited time. Here is a video demo of the Fingle app on the iPhone This 3rd Party App is available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. Browse the full list of all AppStore apps filed under the AppStore category. Price: $0.99 Version: 1.1 Size: 21.91 MB App reviewed by Laura Zito on February 6th, 2012 and filed under (Viewed 13 times, 13 so far today). Need help on using these Read More
Once in a while we get applications submitted to us that make us say those three famous words: WTF! This app (SexDiary) is the first in the series of those apps which we are going to start covering every so often under the WTF category. SexDiary is an iPhone app for keeping track of the people you are planning to take to bed, sort of like a full fledged black book with a twist. The broken English used in the app can be humorous although the extent of features provided are borderline disturbing. Some people are apparently so busy running around with new partners that they need an iPhone app to keep track of their habits. The app SexDiary goes into a really high level of detail when it comes to keeping a journal of your sex life. WTF app of the week! The screenshots of the app alone are interesting to say the least. There are pictures of both male and female partners on one screen labeled Partner, which while could be a hint that the app can be used by both men and women, could also mean that it is bisexual friendly. Once you load the app up, you’re supposed to rate your own sexual preferences in a variety of categories and then start entering your partners and details for when and where you want to “target” them. You would then enter events where you would go after your “target” and then keep track of your targets and their success rates. There are a variety of prebuilt locations to choose from such as On a plane, In the office and many more. If you consider yourself to be something of a pickup artist or player of major sorts, this app might be something you could use to digitize your Read More
Reckless Racing 2 is here for the iPad and iPhone from Polarbit and sells for $4.99 in the App Store. If you like top down miniature 3D drag racing games, RRd2 is a worthy app purchase. The original game (Reckless Racing) had tremendous success and a sequel is a welcomed addition. The game starts out asking you to choose an avatar from one of 17 hand drawn characters and entering your name. Reckless Racing 2 introduces dynamic difficulty where the game engine will automatically adjust the difficulty level to match how good (or bad) you are playing. Reckless Racing 2 has 4 gameplay modes: Career, Arcade, Single Event, and online multiplayer. Career mode: Play and unlock 12 cups. Winning one unlocks the next cup. The initial rookie cup is called Roadrunners and you can work your way all the way up to Outer Peak. Every cup comes with anywhere from 3-5 races for you to complete. Each event has a unique set of challenges to complete (Race, Hot Lap, or Elimination) and you earn difficulty points as well based on your effort level. Arcade Mode: Finish races in 3rd place or higher to move to the next challenge. There are a total of 40 challenges in this mode. Single Event Mode: Here you are free to jump in and race in any track, cup, & event with any car you’ve unlocked. Play in either a race, hot lap or an elimination race. Online Multiplayer: Either host a race or join an already hosted online game room and race against other users. Garage: View your cars on a platform and rotate the car using touch gestures by dragging it up/down/left/right. Your garage starts out with one car, the Sansiban XL. Winning races earns you prize money that can be used to buy Read More
Solomon’s Boneyard is a dual stick shooter game for iOS but instead of using guns and high tech weaponry you use magic. Depending on the character you pick, he or she can use fire, ice, lightning, or the classic magic missile to attack. Each character has specific skills to use in battle. The character you pick has an attack skill, a secondary skill, and a third skill you can choose if you can get it at random. This game is about surviving the endless waves of undead and other creatures Solomon Dark will send at you. Raptisoft who made Solomon’s Keep also made this app. Solomon’s Boneyard runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch and is compatible with iOS 3.0 or higher. Solomon’s Boneyard shares many similarities to Solomon’s Keep but instead of moving from room to room, you stay on one map and try to survive the endless onslaught. From skeletons to fiery creatures, your enemies will become stronger and will eventually reduce you to only a hat and a staff. Left stick is for movement and the right is for attacks. Mana is used for attacks so be careful of wasting it. Mana regenerates slowly so your attacks will be at its basic state if your mana is low. The best way to attack is to press rather than hold. You can equip up to two magic rings that will boost your abilities such as gaining more experience points, more mana recovered, upgrade one of your skills by a level, etc. You start the game with one health and mana potion and try to survive as long as you can. You start at level one and try to gain experience to gain more skills. I recommend getting more health and mana (max of four upgrades including boosts from rings) unless Read More
I recently downloaded the Action Movie FX app for iPhone to see what the ratings were all about. Let me say this is a fun little time waster application. Action Movie is a cut scene app that allows the user to add visual effects to their personal iPhone videos. Included in the app are a car tumbling toward a target, a missile impact, and a demolition ball falling. More effects are available in the freemium app. Why is this fun? Imagine sitting in a board meeting listening to that brown noser across the table yammer on and on. Take a quick five second video and align the crosshairs on the screen under the jerk. Then decide his demise. I prefer a demolition ball. Make the selection and the video will be edited. In a second or two you’ll be the star of the meeting when you express your angst to your coworkers by dropping a ball on the man! J. J. Abrams owned Bad Robot Productions has done a great job with this iPhone app, which has definitely helped build hype around the new Mission Impossible movie Ghost Protocol. Doing a quick search on YouTube for Action Movie FX returns over 35,0000 user uploads and counting. If you love destruction and explosions, this app will become a quick favorite. I give this app a 3.5 out of 5 rating. It’s a really fun little time waster, but it’d be the first to go when space gets tight. Here is a video demo of the Action Movie FX app on the iPhone This 3rd Party App is available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. Browse the full list of all AppStore apps filed under the AppStore category. Price: Free Version: 1.1 Size: 19.78 MB App reviewed by Clark Stewart on February 1st, 2012 Read More
SOULCALIBUR for iPhone and iPad is here from NamcoBandai Games, complete with all of the 19 original combatants. Gameplay modes for the iOS version of SoulCalibur are, arcade, time attack, survival, extra survival and practice; Museum and Exhibition modes are thrown in for those who like to watch. SoulCalibur (which was originally called Soul Edge) delivered us from 2D fighters like Mortal Kombat towards the end of the 90’s with the Sega Dreamcast port becoming highly regarded. The graphics are very good here for an iOS game. If you insist on comparing it to the superior frame rate of the Dreamcast you will be disappointed. The platforms, caves and other fighting venues look good, and there is no noticeable problem in getting them to your eyes through the wonderful retina display of the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. I look forward to trying SOULCALIBUR on an iPad 3. The controls are best described as adequate due to the issues around virtual controls as opposed to poor development. The controls can be customised to an extent, but I found the default to be just fine and a good way to maximize the viewing area. The soundtrack is typical of a fighting game and SoulCalibur for the console with all the butt kicking sounds you want to hear as you take on your opponent; on that note, blood and gore are nowhere to be seen. SoulCalibur or indeed the fighter genre are not new by any means, but what it does offer is the 3D element and the use of weapons, which most fighters tend to lack. As has become common, Game Centre integration is present, as are the achievements and characters to be unlocked. Hardcore enthusiasts do however miss the mission modes and the multiplayer option, and my biggest gripe Read More
