Smule’s been racking up the hits with apps like Ocarina and I Am T-Pain. Their latest is called MadPad, and like the others, it’s well-polished, cooler than an arctic popsicle and impossible to put down. And today, it’s free.
For all those kids out there frenziedly ringing doorbells or knocking on doors till your knuckles hurt: If no one’s coming out to rain candy into your little plastic jack-o-lantern, they’re probably just taking advantage of OnLive’s Halloween weekend of temporarily free-to-play games and too busy to come to the door.
Snap your Halloween party pics right by taking photobooth-style shots from your iPhone with Hipstamatic’s Incredibooth — offered free over the weekend.
Planetary isn’t the most practical iPad app, but it’s absolutely one of the prettiest. The app reads your iTunes collection, then forms a gorgeous miniature galaxy — complete with elegantly animated solar flares — on your iPad, where the suns, orbiting planets and moons all represent artists, albums and songs respectively.
Let’s face it: Chess is pretty geeky. Then again, so is the iPad (c’mon, it is). Blend the two though, and you’ve got…well, let’s just say that playing chess on an iPad at your local coffee hangout is a Wookie’s fingernail-width less geeky than insert-hyperbolic-geek-stereotype-here.
Who cares though; with its portability, large screen and potential to reach all 600 million chess players around the world, the iPad is the ultimate gadget for playing electronic chess, and the free Social Chess app is the way to play.
If you’ve got a bicycle and an iPhone/iPt, here’s a pretty interesting development: iBike, who earlier this year introduced a $200-plus kit that turned the iPhone into a sensor-linked cycling computer, has just released a $70 iPhone cycling package for riders who aren’t Gu-fueled cycling nuts; and it includes what looks like a stellar — and free — cycling app.
Most of us work, right? Because Apple makes great stuff, but most of it isn’t free. Which means you need money, and that means you’ll need to get paid for your time. That’s where HoursTracker Lite, and its iPad equivalent, HoursTracker HD Lite, come in handy.
I was seriously shocked when I saw this: Snapseed, probably the most elegant iOS photo editing app at the App Store, has been knocked down from $5 — to zero. It’s free.
I can only guess how much explosive glee AutoDesk Motion FX — a new free app from AutoDesk, the developer behind AutoCAD and the SketchBook line of apps — would have engendered in me as a little kid, because I fostered a deep yearning to run around with a flaming hand or fire leaping from the top my head like some Ghost Rider clone. Good thing my parents kept me well away from matches and gasoline.
TeamViewer has been steadily updating its free remote-desktop app for the iPhone and iPad with big features ever since it first hit the App Store over a year ago. This big new update adds another meaty treat: the ability to transfer files back and forth between your iDevice and a Mac (or PC).
Yesterday, we reviewed Canopy’s Kapok camera system for iPhone 4; the free, feature-packed Canopy Camera Tools app is an excellent camera app and an integral part of that system — but it also works just fine by itself, without any extra hardware.
Tony Bongiovi (yes, if the name sounds oddly familiar, it’s because you’re probably thinking of his cousin, Jon Bon Jovi) should know a thing or two about sound, hopefully; he’s had a hand in producing albums from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Aerosmith, and of course, his famous cousin.
AirBeam is a clever little app that lets you output realtime video from one iDevice (camera-equipped, obviously) to another iDevice on the same local network. The app usually sells for $4, but it’s free today through Saturday.
That’s right — the next time you watch a pirated feed bringing you announcement of the next iPhone (like, say, next month), you could be kicking back and watching it on the iPad, thanks to Ustream’s new iPad app.
There’re absolutely zero reasons not to get this incredibly slick, fly-by-the-seat-of-you-pants remake of the 90’s classic racing shooter Death Rally iOS game unless you hate fun or you’re dead.
About a week ago I spent $2 on Penultimate, an iPad app that lets you scribble notes on the screen and save them in notebooks. Maybe I didn’t have to though, because tablet-maker Wacom has recently released their own free iPad app, Bamboo Paper, that does basically the same thing. Almost.
This is what the iPhone was made for. INK: Tattoo Simulator will save your ass (literally) from desecration by a massive tattoo of an obscure Star Wars character, the name of the girl you just met in your freshman college biology class and want to spend the rest of your life with, a portrait of Newt Gingrich or whatever kooky longing for ink your drunk mind might come up with.
I always had a heck of a time figuring out what to get my dad for Father’s Day; he never wore ties, didn’t have patience for gadgets and wasn’t a big sports fan. I might have sent him one of these, though (and if he had ever read his email, he might have received it).
Seems like just yesterday that the Swoosh introduced its Nike+ iPod kit to the delight of iPod-toting runners everywhere. It wasn’t yesterday though, it was five years ago (and one week). To celebrate, Nike has been giving away free copies of its Nike+ app (regularly $2) at the App Store. The app uses the iPhone’s GPS and MotionX technology — the same tech found in Jawbone’s stunning new Era Bluetooth headset, btw — to track your run (the GPS works well outdoors, the MotionX tech takes over where GPS signals are weak). And then there’re all the great motivational features and post-run sharing options.
Better make a dash if you want a copy, though — it’ll probably revert back to $2 soon.
Chinese developer Digiarty is giving away a two-title combo pack, which includes a video converter and a DVD ripper, for free till May 25.
Who wants to sift through all this text crap when you could just watch a video? If your answer to that question sounds something along the lines of “not me,” you should probably download Showyou onto your iDevice during your next coffee break — just don’t blame us if your boss fires you because you spend the next five hours watching clips on it.
The app elegantly aggregates all the videos that your contacts on Facebook or Twitter have posted, and also from its own Showyou network that can be joined via the app. Sharing clips looks just as elegant and effortless.
Showyou looks good on the iPhone, but gets drool-worthy on an iPad with videos from feeds laid out in a seamlessly swipeable checkerboard. Bonus: It plays nice with an Apple TV.
If possession of any one app could ever be considered an instant ticket to membership in the Cult of Mac, this is it. Mactracker has been around since early 2001, and we’ve talked about it before on our site (Giles Turnbull thought it was so fantastic he included it in his list of 50 Mac Essnetials); but last week a newly-updated version hit the Mac App Store — which is enough to earn it a spot as today’s Daily Freebie.
The app lists painstakingly complete data on every Mac product ever made in an elegant, searchable, easy-to-use interface. The new update even brings with it the ability to track your Macs’ serial numbers, service work performed, etc.
The app is free, but we think a little donation at the app’s website (which is where those who’re allergic to the App Store can also download the app directly) is money well spent.
Seriously: Imagine your kids being able to play around with all the wonders of physics — without the fear they might slice off a finger (or two), or burn their eyebrows off.
That’s the basic idea behind the brilliant Xperica HD for the iPad, a physics sandbox that lets high-school kids (or anyone, really) make sense of physics through playing with interactive experiments. The first four modules are free, with $4 netting the remaining half-dozen set of physics experiments.
While the first set is all about physics, the developer told us they’ll soon have experiment sets in other spheres of science (like chemistry) available soon, with some modules in each sphere being released for free — and that they might make all the modules free at some point (which might make one hesitant to buy the extra modules, we think, but there ya go).
What’s better than a free app? Yeah, two of them — so today’s Daily Freebie is actually a twofer. Both are from MacPhun, developer of the PhotoStudio app we reviewed yesterday.
The first is a free version of PerfectPhoto, macPhun’s iPhone photo editor. It may lack the fancy filters of the paid version, but it comes with all the darkroom tools you’ll need to edit photos on the iPhone: adjust exposure, contrast, color temp, shadows, crop images and even a posterize and vintage effect. Frankly, you’re going to be using PhotoStudio for the effects anyway.
The second app, Cartoonatic, (that’s a screencap from its App Store page, above) is where the real fireworks are, though — it’ll let you transform a video clip with nine different, wild-looking effects, with live previews while recording, the ability to play around with the clip’s speed, add a soundtrack from your music library and all kinds of other neat stuff. That’s a lot of wow for free.
If you’re lucky enough to posses an iPhone 4 and haven’t already downloaded freebie Ball Pit, do it now and play around with it a little. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Pretty cool, right? For those of you at work or still saving for an iPhone 4, the game is basically a first-person shooter set in the middle of a what looks like a holodeck from the later Star Trek shows, with the objective of shooting down the spheres that happen to be floating around in the big room with you.
