Gear Diary | Everyone can understand technology; sometimes it just takes a little translating.

Retro Camera

| FREE | Urbian

Android App Review: Retro Camera Review | Gear Diary - Gear Diary | Everyone can understand technology; sometimes it just takes a little translating.

I recently noticed an influx of funky old-timey photos on Facebook.  After asking around, it appears that most people I know are using Retro Camera. According to Urbian (the developer), the app lets you take “delicious old-school pics your friends will drool over” and it delivers an “off-the-hip analog look.” Now, in general I consider myself to be pretty cool, but I am a far cry from a hipster.  I own neither over-sized 1980s glasses nor a t-shirt depicting three wolves howling at the moon.  Regardless, I felt compelled to give it a try. I installed it on my Droid X and knew right off the bat that I like this app. It’s witty, functional, and makes phone-based photography a little bit more entertaining. The app is available for Android and iOS, and is offered in two versions: a free one and another that’s $2.99.  The difference is essentially advertising.  In the free app, you get a box in the lower middle part of the screen that rotates through a bunch of ads.  The pay version not only doesn’t have these ads, but in the place of that box (in picture-taking mode) you get a virtual “level,” like a builder’s ruler would have. The app gives you five retro camera choices.  Here’s how they are described by Urbian: The Bärbl - An East German classic, naturally faded with a scratched film and medium vignetting, the perfect all-round choice. The Little Orange Box - The Soviet Staple with aggressive cross processing and scratched square film. It’s crappy plastic lens leaks in light and exhibits strong vignetting. Black and white option for even more emotion. Xolaroid 2000 - Its inspiration is obvious! We love the candid snapshots this camera produces – you simply can’t fail, every shot is a keeper. Blue / Green Read More

Evernote

| FREE | Evernote Corp.

Android App Update- Evernote for Android Bumped to Version 2.0 | Gear Diary - Gear Diary | Everyone can understand technology; sometimes it just takes a little translating.

Evernote is just announcing a major update to their Android app that brings it up to Version 2.0. As the version number indicates, this update brings some truly significant features and tweaks to the app. Among the key changes… version 2.0 has a new, more intuitive interface, it has a cleaner home screen, you will find a new search interface, there are new views with new options and the list goes on. It also brings simpler sorting and browsing, it is dramatically faster, it offers offline note storage and it brings background syncing. Over all this update brings many of the features on par with the solid and more “mature” Evernote for iPhone app while also taking advantage of some of the Android-specfic features that are available on that platform. There are other new features however that push this version of Evernote past the iPhone app. Key among them… with the Android App you can now record audio as you type since “The audio recorder is right in the new note screen so you can tap and talk at the same time.” (ala Livescribe to a degree) and you can now send content from other apps into Evernote using a new sharing option and Evernote will turn it into a new note. As an iPhone user I’m sure hoping to see these features make an appearance on iOS in the near future. For those of you who have Android handsets and use Evernote this is a rather nice way to start the week. A full rundown of the new features follows thanks to Evernote… New Home screen- You’ll immediately notice our new, cleaner, more intuitive home screen, which allows you to make new notes, gives you fast access to your notes and displays synchronization status. New Search interface- We placed the Search Read More