iPad apps - page 29

NBC’s Jimmy Fallon is the first American late night TV host out of the gate with a dedicated app for Apple’s mobile device users, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (iTunes link), available free as of Wednesday in the App Store.

Fallon, arguably the most tech-savvy of all the late night talk show hosts in the US, regularly spotlights tech and social media in his show’s skits and jokes and in the past showcased “fantasy” apps such as “Axl Rose Relaxation” and “Moldova Y/N” that actually made it into the production release.

The mobile app — compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch — will also showcase video clips and photos from the TV show along with behind-the-scenes blog posts from the Late Night site.

The Washington Post has chosen to advertise their new iPad app by portraying legendary journalist Bob Woodward as a decrepit moron completely befuddled by technology so easy to use that even 99 year olds can quickly master it.

We laughed, although we’re not sure if it’s at the Washington Post’s self-deprecation or just the stupidity of it all. Probably a bit of both.

NY-based DJ Rana Sobhany is fully committed to Apple’s mobile hardware — iPads and iPhones — as the technology that will be used to create the next generation of mobile music production. Her website Destroy the Silence chronicles her iPad Music Experiment and is filled with audio and video clips showing how the author and former instrumental musician is warping the boundaries of nightclub and dancefloor music production.

Sobhany notes in a recent interview that the strong emotional connection usually present between audiences and traditional live music performers can be lost in the transition to computer-based performance. She feels the touch-screen UI of Apple’s flagship mobile device may be able to help bridge that divide. “The iPad creates complete audio and visual engagement with the audience because I’m not just clicking a mouse,” she says, adding “I’m actively using these apps and mixing beats.”

This link points to a 10 minute clip of music Sobhany created during a recent set at the House of Blues in LA. It was mixed live on two iPads with one additional synth/drum machine controller powered by an iPhone.

[FastCompany]

Halloween, with its legions of black-clad kids running around and darting out into the street, introduces its own variety of driving perils. So in addition to warning other users of speed traps and red-light cameras, Trapster users can now mark two new location types on its map this Halloween: haunted houses and trick-or-treat zones.

The free app works through crowdsourcing, which means any registered user can add markers which then become viewable to other Trapster users; and if users find a marker that’s inaccurate (say, if some user tagged their in-laws place as a haunted house), it can be removed with enough votes against it. Now if only the had a marker for houses with the best candy…

It’s unclear whether voters will approve California’s ballot measure to legalize and tax the growing and use of medical marijuana next week, but in light of the growing industry that’s sprouted up around the medical marijuana business, it seems immaterial.

One of the elements of that industry is the proliferation of pot-related iPhone and iPad apps.

The iPad is just about perfect for reading magazines; surprising, then, that more publishers haven’t come out with iPad-specific apps, right? Thankfully, publishers seem to be catching on, and last week saw two tricked-out versions of women’s magazines debut as apps on the iPad.

This is turning out to be a pretty artsy weekend for the iPad. Not only will there be an explosion of iPad and iPhone art at the first ever Mobile ArtCon in Manhattan, but Infinite Dreams has also just launched a free version of their Let’s Create Pottery HD app, which turns the iPad into a virtual pottery wheel and kiln and has to be one of the most stunning creative apps we’ve seen on the device. there’s even a virtual showroom, where finished creations can be displayed.

The full, $5 version of the app will also be on sale at $3 through the weekend, though it’s not immediately clear what the differences are between the two.

If you’ve ever participated in any kind of canvassing for a political party or for pet causes, you know what an excruciating experience it can be on every level.

From having to put on a cheesy smile as you approach busy strangers in the street to having to put all the information together back in the office, it’s just one of the most tedious tasks around, apart from, say, taking out the garbage.

The Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America have gone a long way to address all of that with their thoughtfully-designed iPhone/iPAD/iPOD Touch canvassing and organizing application, which was launched earlier this month. It’s one of the best tools I’ve seen.

As New York Times reporter Kate Zernike notes in her new book “Boiling Mad,” a good portion of the Tea Party movement is composed of youthful, tech-savvy hipsters — so it really shouldn’t be surprising that the movement has its own iPhone/iPad app.

The app features top news of interest to members of the movement, polemics from 11 conservative bloggers, Tea Party videos, and wouldn’t be complete with a feature called “Outrage of the Day.”

Tweet Library by Manton Reece is something special, and I think one of a very tiny handful of Twitter clients – not just on the iPad, but on all manner of platforms – that add something genuinely new.

Remember this video from a week or so ago? It was made by the people at London’s BERG studio for people at advertising agency Dentsu, as part of a wider project called “Making Future Magic”.

BERG hit on the idea of breaking words and pictures into slices which are displayed on an iPad screen one at a time. If you capture this display with a long exposure on your camera, you get 3D words and images extruded into thin air.

And now the rest of us can join in the fun, with a $1 app for iPhone and iPad, called Holo-Paint.

Another sign that Kindle should beware: iBooks is the most popular free application for the iPad and iPhone.

According to Distimo, a start-up that analyzes app stats, iBooks has made the top ten list of free apps available on iTunes from July to September. This constant hovering in the most popular category is a ranking Distimo believes may be “influenced by the fact that Apple pushes this application to iPad users.”

Games are still less popular on the iPad than the iPhone, Distimo notes. In the Q2 version of the report, half of the top ten paid iPad apps were “productivity tools” like note taker app Penultimate and presentation app Keynote. In the Q3 report, the trend continues:  there is still just one game — old school classic RealSolitaire —  among the ten most popular free applications  for iPad, compared to four in the Apple App Store for iPhone.

This is ace. This is today’s Best Thing Ever. It’s called Revinyl, and it’s a one-dollar app that turns your music collection into a quiz that you can play on your own or with friends.

In “Rediscover” mode, the app will play you short snippets from songs, and show you a selection of album art. Pick the correct album – then name the song or the artist for bonus points. All against the clock, of course.

The video above is a first look at Sonos’ brand new app for the iPad, which makes for an awesome multi-room stereo system.

Paired with a couple of Sonos’ S5 players, the iPad app makes it easy to play music from your computer’s iTunes library, as well as a ton of online sources, including thousands of Internet radio stations and streaming services like Pandora and Last.fm.

Released last night, I’ve been playing with the app all morning and I’m delighted with it. I haven’t got this much kick out of audio gear for a long time. Sonos’ S5 speakers cost $400 each and sound great.

The Sonos Controller for iPad is now available on the iTunes App Store.

The app turns the iPad into a music hub for WiFi-connected Sonos players, streaming music from a variety of online music sources.

We got a sneak peek earlier this summer and were very impressed. The slick app makes digital music very easy — especially listening to online music services like Pandora, Rhapsody, Last.fm and the fantastic Mog.com. Using the iPad as a big Wi-Fi remote control, you can play music from your iTunes library, thousands of online radio stations, satellite radio subscriptions, or online sources.

Sonos sells wireless music players that make it easy to get multi-room audio around your house. Plug in a player in each room and stream music to each one (or the same music to all of them). Sonos’ products have won kudos for painless setup, ease of use, relative low-cost (you can spend a lot more) and innovation — this is the home stereo of the future. The iPad app takes it to the next level.

Analyst Michael Gartenberg is a fan. “I’ve been testing for a while and it shows the power of the tablet platform perfectly,” he just tweeted.

Sonos Controller for iPad [Sonos]

Sonos controller app page [iTunes]

PlainText is the latest text app from Hog Bay Software‘s Jesse Grosjean.

Jesse, as many of you will know, is the genius behind several other apps for iOS and the desktop, including WriteRoom and TaskPaper.

PlainText is very similar to, but not exactly the same as, another of his apps called SimpleText. Where SimpleText was built to sync with a home-made service called simpletext.ws, PlainText has been built from scratch to sync with Dropbox.

PlainText is a simple text writing tool for iPhone and iPad. It will sync with Dropbox, and includes support for TextExpander snippets if you use them. It’s free, supported by adverts. If you want to switch them off, you can for a one-off payment of $4.99.

Long time readers of Cult of Mac may remember a series we carried a year or so ago, under the title WTF App Of The Week.

We’ve not had any of those apps for a while now, but I saw something today that made me reach for the old WTF-ometer, because this most certainly qualifies.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Poo Log HD. Readers of a squeamish disposition may wish to stop reading right here.

Proof that politicos are just like the rest of us: David Axelrod, senior advisor to President Barack Obama,  keeps himself entertained during meetings by playing video games.

Axelrod confessed to logging in some quality time with old-school favorite Pac Man on his iPad.

Site Real Clear Politics asked Axelrod what does with the iPad he’s been “known to sneak into meetings with.” His answer: “It depends on whether my Cubs are playing…(but) it’s really actually very useful to keep track of what’s going on….I google things all the time.”

[xrr rating=80%]

The highly rated Springpad “remember anything” service is rolling out several nifty new features — starting with mobile notifications that will alert users to events, news and special offers.

Springpad is a free lifestyle service that makes it easy to save digital content — everything from news stories to recipes, email, wine labels, restaurant reviews, travel tips and so on.

It rivals similar services such as Evernote and Backpack, but value adds by analyzing saved content and layering it with metadata like special deals, nearby retailers, and useful links. If you save recipes, for example, it can automatically generate shopping lists of ingredients. Scan the barcode from a bottle of wine, and it’ll give you info and also find a local retailer.

“Anytime, anywhere, anyhow — it makes it drop dead simple to capture stuff you want to remember,” said Springpad CEO Jeff Janer in a phone interview last week.

Saved content is synchronized across iPhone, iPad, Android and Web apps. The service was recently named one of Time magazine’s 50 Best Websites and favorably reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

On Wednesday, the service is adding alerts to its mobile app — event reminders, news alerts, to-dos, price drops, coupons, and special offers, etc. If you show an interest in Apple’s iOS, for example, it will alert you if Apple issues a software update.

The company is also releasing an extension for Google’s Chrome, which will make it easy to add content without leaving the browser. An extension for Safari will follow in about 30 days, Janer said. It is also adding push notifications to Android (available today) and iOS, which will available in about a month pending Apple’s approval.

Here’s a video of the new features in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REssNBbtmjc&hd=1

Popular open-source media player VLC is now available for iPad, thanks to developer Applidium.

Offered gratis, VLC faces some competition from other universal media-playing apps already available for the iPad including paid apps  OPlayer ($2.99) and CineXPlayer ($3.99).

VLC has long been my go-to app for video viewing (can’t remember the last time I even bothered to update Quicktime), nice to know it’s available now for the iPad, too.

Britain’s best-selling Sunday National Newspaper The News of the World is the latest publication to announce plans for a subscription-based iPad app.

Dates for the iPad app haven’t been announced but are expected to be in synch with the relaunch of the website in October.

iPad users will have to pay £1.19 a week (about $1.85) to view the celebrity highs and lows, that’s slightly more than the £1 newsstand cost but less than a snail-mail subscription, which currently costs £134.00 a year or £2.57 a week.
The website will also be behind a paywall, charging readers £1 for a day’s access or £1.99 per month.

The rogue tabloid — currently embroiled in the celebrity phone hacking scandal — is the third title in under six months in the News International stable to launch digital subscriptions, following the Times and Sunday Times.

“News International is leading the industry by delivering on its commitment to develop new ways of making the business of news an economically exciting proposition,” Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, told Reuters.

If you’re a DevonThink user and an iPad owner, here’s some good news: the forthcoming DevonThink To Go app will let you take entire DT databases with you.

Just as you can with the desktop application, it’s possible to add notes into each database’s inbox while you’re out and about, and sort and categorize them later. Everything gets synced to your computer over a local wifi network when it suits you.

Although intended as a companion for the desktop, there’s no reason why you can’t use DevonThink To Go as a standalone iPad notebook and document storage box.

For a better idea of what’s to come, check out the screenshots gallery.

This new app from Epson significantly ramps up iPhone or iPad print capabilities: PrintJinni for Epson will allow users to print from an iDevice, via a web-based cloud service, to any network-connected Epson. It also comes with an impressive range of print options, even allowing the user to print attachments directly from an email — without requiring an app associated with the attachment to open it.

The range of document types the app can work with includes pdf, jpeg and most versions of Microsoft Office documents.

PrintJinni doesn’t come cheap. The app is $10 (though offered now at an intro price of $7 for an unspecified time), and continues to ding the user at what Epson says will probably be $7 each additional year for the cloud services; though they also say that these recurring fees won’t be necessary for all document types (users just wanting to print jpegs, for instance, won’t need to pop for the yearly fee), and that the yearly fee can be opted out of, should the user just wish to print on local networks  not need to print MS Office documents.

Apps are so easy — maybe too easy? — to buy on an iPad even a three-year-old can do it.

Toddler Sienna Leigh in Sydney racked up about $50 in app purchases before her mom noticed the shopping spree.

“She uses it every day for a few hours, but I didn’t think anything of it.
“She was just playing with it until, later, when she had gone to bed and I was checking my email and I saw that I had paid for a whole bunch of apps that I didn’t remember buying.”

Mother Lisa Leigh had to go to a Mac forum to figure out how her kid did it — it seems she went to a recently-purchased app and continued shopping with the saved password.

Sienna bought $17 Docs to Go app and a flight control app among others before mom managed to stop the spending spree. “But the main thing is that I’ve completely turned off the Wi-Fi on her iPad so she has no chance of accessing the app store at all now.”

Leigh decided not to ask Apple for a refund, since by the time she figured it out her other children had already opened and played with them.

Apple said it wasn’t the first time parents had contacted them about iPad purchases made by their kids.

If you have a tech-savvy toddler, here’s how Apple Fiona Martin spokesperson suggests you keep the tyke from shopping: “The restrictions preferences are located under Settings > General > Restrictions > Allowed Content (In-App Purchases) OFF. When this is activated, in-app purchases is turned off.”

Via The Age