Category Archives: app of the week

app of the week, flickr, ipad, iphone

FlickStackr – iPhone App of the Week

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FlickStackr – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is FlickStackr.

FlickStackr brings Flickr photo sharing to the iPad. Designed from the ground up for the larger screen, it allows you to BROWSE photos in the Flickr universe. UPLOAD photos and EDIT your photos’ metadata.

£1.19

There is a free Flickr App for the iPhone (which I do have) however when I came to look for a Flickr App for the iPad, I wanted something that used all that lovely screen rather than the x2 of the Flickr iPhone App. I came across FlickrStackr and decided to try it out.

Now before you start shouting at me that the “iPad doesn’t have a camera” let me just remind you that there are quite a few photo editing Apps available for the iPad and you can also get a camera connector kit for the iPad that allows you to upload onto the iPad, photographs from a “proper” camera!

FlickStackr is an universal App and therefore if you get it for the iPad it will also be available on the iPhone in an iPhone version. This is (as you might expect) similar to the Flickr App for the iPhone. It allows you to go through Flickr as you would on the website through a standard browser, but is a much better experience than using mobile Flickr through the mobile Safari browser and that is the main reason to use the App over just using the web interface.

I can browse my photostream and find images. These I can then download onto the iPhone if needed.

I might be doing this if wanting to send images to another service, or attach to a blog posting using the WordPress App.

I can also go through my sets, this is useful If I was wanting to show some of my photographs to someone, I have sets of my Library and of the facilities in my college for example.

I can also use the App to upload photographs, and with the much better camera in the iPhone 4 I suspect I will be taking more photographs with it than I did with the 3GS.

The original reason I bought the App was that it was a dedicated iPad App and it does work very well on the iPad. I can view my photostream.

I can view individual images.

Browsing images is easy and quick.

Overall if you take photographs with the iPhone, or you have the camera connector on the iPad, and you have a Flickr account, it makes sense to have some kind of Flickr App on your iPhone or iPad.

The free Flickr App is going to be fine for what most people need, however if you want something a little better and £1.19 is not exactly going to break the bank, then I would recommend FlickStackr.

Get FlickStackr in the iTunes App Store.

app of the week, ipad, iphone

iThoughtsHD – iPad App of the Week

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iThoughtsHD – iPad App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is iThoughtsHD.

iThoughtsHD is a mind mapping tool for the iPad. It is based on and compatible with iThoughts for the iPhone.

Mindmapping enables you to visually organise your thoughts, ideas and information.

Product Highlights:

• Import and Export Freemind, Novamind, Mindmanager, XMind, iMindmap, Mindview and OPML format maps.
• Export as PDF or PNG images.
• Wirelessly upload/download mind maps using a web browser.
• Email maps as attachments (in all supported formats.)
• Open email attachments in iThoughtsHD.
• Integrated with box.net online collaboration service.
• Topic attributes (colour, icon, shape)
• Topic notes (with hyperlinks)
• Task Management (due date, percent complete.)
• Relationships (links between topics)
• Collapsible branches.
• Cut, copy, paste, move and merge topics and branches.
• Auto align and arrange topics relative to each other (automatically if desired.)
• Pan and Zoom (out)
• Work in landscape and portrait mode.
• Support for very large maps (with a canvas that is 600x the standard screen size)
• Configurable canvas backgrounds.

£4.99

I will say at this point that I am not a great mind mapping user. I don’t generally use it, but that’s not say that what I personally think matters. We have MindGenius at work and this is used by learners and practitioners. One of my team does all the training for that.

However I did buy iThoughtsHD, which is a mind mapping App for the iPad. There is also an iPhone version. This is though a separate App rather than a single Universal App that you can install on both your iPhone and iPad, so you will need to buy it “twice” if you have both an iPhone and an iPad and want the App on both! Now this is not a “cheap” app, at £4.99, but I do wonder why we think £4.99 is expensive for iPad software, but £100 is cheap for PC software!

Now as I am not a mind mapping expert or heavy user it is difficult to say whether this is excellent or rubbish, which is one reason why I included the list of features from the App description.

I do find it easy to use, very simple to create branches, colour them, add icons. You can add relationships too.

You can change the colour of the canvas too.

One feature I would like to see is an Undo button, sometimes you can create multiple branches accidentally, you have to select and delete each one, rather than just click an undo button. Likewise if you accidentally delete something, you can’t get it back.

It is quite simple to export the mindmap, either into another mind mapping format or in PDF or an image format.

I also like how I can export over the wireless network.

From my limited mind mapping expertise I like the app and it may even get me using the technique more often. Would be interested to know what mind mapping users think.

Get iThoughts HD in the iTunes App Store.

app of the week, ipad, news

The Early Edition – iPad App of the Week

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The Early Edition – iPad App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is The Early Edition.

Finally – your own personal, daily newspaper! The Early Edition takes all of the news sources that you enjoy and presents their content in a format which is familiar, stylish and intuitive.

£2.99

One of the useful things that both the iPhone and iPad allow you to do is with certain Apps, aggregate RSS feeds and bring the news right to your device. Saves you having to visit the different websites and or news services.

In this series I have mentioned NewsRack that I use as my main RSS reader, in the main as it syncs with Google Reader allowing me to read the news either on the iPad, on the iPhone or on the web, without having to re-read stories I have already read.

So why did I buy The Early Edition?

Well apart from my making my blog look nice…

Actually there is a simpler reason, The Early Edition is a really nice way to find and read news stories. The way I use it is to access sites that I browse now and again on diverse subjects.

Another way to look at this is I use NewsRack as my daily newspaper, whilst The Early Edition is my Sunday paper.

The Early Edition allows you to import RSS feeds from various sources, including if you want from Google Reader. However unlike NewsRack it doesn’t sync back to Google Reader. Another reason is that RSS readers if they have lots of feeds can be slow. Sometimes I just want the important news not the fluff!

There are quite a few RSS readers on the App store for the iPad, like Reeder and Pulse. Not sure how many RSS news readers I need, but at the moment two are sufficient for me.

Get The Early Edition in the iTunes App Store.

app of the week, iphone

0870 – iPhone App of the Week

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0870 – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is 0870.

Many companies use 0870, 0845, 0800 numbers for customer service, which usually cost around 35p per minute to call.

0870 will turn these expensive numbers into 01, 02 (which come out of your contracted minutes) or cheaper 08 numbers.

Save money on phone calls!

Free

This is quite a simple App, which does one thing really well.

Enter in one of those BT local numbers and it will provide you with the “real” number. Simple, but can save you money.

Photo source.

app of the week, iphone, ipod touch

National Trust – iPhone App of the Week

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There is much debate at the moment about the growth of Apps versus the web. Especially paid apps versus free web content.

But, after 15 years as the net’s publishing platform of choice, a movement is growing that wants to put the web back in its box.

Blame the ‘app’. With little prior culture of mobile web consumption, publishers have barely given their HTML efforts five minutes in the sun before preferring to code snazzy, custom, closed interfaces instead in the likes of Xcode and Objective-C, in iPhone’s case.

This isn’t really the article for this debate (maybe later) however the reason I bring this up, is this week’s App of the Week, which is about an App that replaces a web site. I don’t think this is an issue, but does cloud the debate over Apps in that some Apps are there to complement web content and others replace it with an App that costs. Anyway onto the App…

National Trust – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is National Trust

Fancy a day out and wondering where to go? Want to visit glorious coastline, wander through wild countryside, relax in exquisite gardens or explore historic houses? Find a National Trust place near you, wherever you are in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. See it on the map, find out opening times, prices and facilities and access information. Find nearby places, or choose from an A-Z list.

Free

All the information in the App is available online through the National Trust website.

So why on earth would you use the App?

Well though the website is fine, it’s a complicated site and hasn’t really been designed for a small mobile screen, despite the superior browsing capability of the iPhone.

Using the App means not having to worry about the busy web site and can focus on the content.

Well if you have an iPod touch and no connectivity, then this App does work offline in a manner, though you can access all the information (so it’s like a virtual National Trust handbook), but the maps don’t work!

The main reason for using the App is that it is a better experience than using the web site.

The App will find National Trust properties close to your location, using the location based capability of the iPhone (and iPod touch), though as mentioned you will need an internet connection to “see” the map.

It will give you information about the property and details on the facilities on offer.

You can browse an alphabetical list too.

Of course this is one useful App if you are a member of the National Trust, it’s also useful for when you are on holiday.

However I also think it has the potential for travel and tourism courses on looking at particular properties for the basis of activies for that subject.

  • Create a marketing plan for a National Trust property.
  • Devise a tour of National Trust properties in a particular region.
  • Undertake a SWOT analysis for the National Trust on a property close to the college.

If you have other ideas please let us know in the comments.

Though if you live in Scotland (or are going on holiday there) do take note…

Please note, this app does not include information from the National Trust for Scotland (NTS). The National Trust and NTS are two separate charities, run independently of each other. Our app is built using the data from our handbook, and as this does not include any NTS properties, we are unable to include this information.

Ah well.

Overall a nice App that does what it does well.

app of the week

Vuvuzela 2010 – iPhone App of the Week NOT!

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Vuvuzela 2010 – iPhone App of the Week NOT!

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone Apps available. With the release of the iPad in the UK, this series will also now cover Apps for the iPad. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is Vuvuzela 2010

Finally available, the Vuvuzela! The hype for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Free

This is one App you don’t want to get and if you do you will find that you have no friends left…

It recreates the “annoying” sound from the World Cup in South Africa. Just the perfect App for classroom lessons on the World Cup!

app of the week, ipad

WIRED Magazine – iPad App of the Week

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WIRED Magazine – iPad App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone Apps available. This series will also now cover Apps for the iPad. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is WIRED Magazine.

Download WIRED and be the first to experience this groundbreaking magazine with exclusive iPad content. Go behind the scenes of Pixar’s Toy Story 3. Spin our interactive Mars map to see the human impact on the Red Planet. Hang out in the recording studio with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. See the greatest special effects in modern film—all in one reel. It’s the WIRED vision of how technology is changing the world—and it’s only on the iPad.

WIRED: It’s a look into the future of science, culture, business, and entertainment. Get connected. Get WIRED.

£2.99

Certainly this App for the iPad (and this is an iPad only App) has been making the news.

So what did I think?

Back in January I posted a YouTube video showing how a magazine could work on a tablet type device. This was before Apple announced the iPad.

Here we are in June and I have now managed to get my hands on something similar, WIRED Magazine for the iPad.

Now I do buy WIRED magazine now and again, usually if I am going to fly or take a Cross Country Voyager train, somewhere with no connectivity or not allowed to or easy to use a laptop.

I enjoy reading the articles and much of the tech is not computer tech but very specialist and geeky tech.

I was slightly hesitant about spending £2.99 on what is basically an online magazine, I like many others, am very accustomed to free online content. I did however want to try out this App (magazine) as it was going to be indicative of what was possible for the iPad in terms of providing content.

I did write a week or so back about problems people had had with academic text books on the Kindle.

This is a lesson that educational publishers need to recognise when publishing content to platforms like the Kindle and the iPad. Though novels are linear and as a result eBook formats can “work” like a printed book, educational books are used differently and as a result eBook versions need to work differently. Students need to be able to move around quickly, annotate and bookmark.

I have also talked about how e-Books could make a big difference to learning.

e-Books are not about replacing books, in the same way that online news sites don’t totally replace physical newspapers, or YouTube replaces TV.

Likewise e-Book Readers don’t replace computers; what both e-Books and e-Book Readers do is allow reading to happen at a time and place to suit the reader.

So I think I had quite high expectations about WIRED Magazine and was looking forward to reading it on the iPad.

First impressions were quite favourable with the pages looking wonderful on the iPad screen.

I did like the use of animated and interactive graphics in certain articles. These really made it easy to see what the diagram was trying to demonstrate.

I also liked the use of video, this did enhance many of the articles. I liked the one used for the ILM Turns 35 article which showed clips from many of the films ILM has created effects for.

With both of these I am sure this is because they were “new” and “shiny” I did miss a few of them, well I wasn’t looking for them. The same can be said for some of the images that could be swapped about.

It was useful that the App remembered where you had go to and you could (using a movie type scrubber) move quickly between different areas of the magazine.

The text was easy to read and many of the articles were quite interesting.

There were though issues with some aspects.

I didn’t like the navigation, sometimes you had to swipe left and right to move between pages and sometimes up and down to access more of an article. It wasn’t always clear where you would be going next. Having said that, the App was quite good at moving between portait and landscape mode.

My main issue was the quantity of advertising. Yes I know it’s a magazine, but two adverts between each page of content! I paid £2.99 for this App and it’s also advertising supported. A very few adverts had interactivity, others were just typical magazine adverts. Note that they were all US based so most were not relevant.

Upon reflection I was quite impressed and enjoyed the reading experience. In many ways it was a similar experience to reading WIRED magazine, but the enhancements did add to the experience.

This is still very much old media trying to use new tools to sell a traditional old media type experience.

Was it worth £2.99? This I am less sure about. Though this issue of WIRED sold well, it will be interesting to see if the next issue sells just as well.

Update: link changed to reflect current offering in App Store.

app of the week, ipad, iphone, news

NewsRack – iPhone App of the Week

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NewsRack – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone Apps available. With the release of the iPad in the UK, this series will also now cover Apps for the iPad. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is NewsRack.

NewsRack is a full-featured RSS reader for iPhone and iPad with a unique interface. Skim over the latest headlines on a beautiful rack of newspapers or use the powerful classic interface to read and organize feeds.

£2.99

There is lots of stuff out there on the web, lots of news, blogs and other stuff. Stuff that I may find useful and stuff that I may want to pass onto others. I often get asked how I know about stuff, well I read a lot of stuff is basically the answer.

A key information skill is the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff in the sheer amount of information which is thrown at you on a daily basis. I often see my role within the use of ILT as a gatekeeper to ensure that important and relevant stuff gets to key people in the college without overloading them with either lots of stuff or what can happen loads of irrelevant and unuseful stuff.

Now I only have limited time, so I need to use tools to allow me to quickly and effortlessly sift through the information, picking out the gems and useful bits. I need to store some for later, others I will post out straight away.

A key way in which I do this is through the use of RSS feeds from the various blogs and news sites. These automatically update throughout the day so that I don’t need to go back to sites and check if there is anything new, the use of RSS feeds allows the news and articles to be pushed to me.

Even though I use RSS I don’t read everything, I just don’t have the time… when I do find a spare minute I will flick through the feeds to see what is interesting and new. I star things I think may be useful, interesting or to blog about later. I also will post URLs to Twitter or the VLE.

On the desktop I use Google Reader, but it’s also nice to be able to view the feeds on a mobile device. In the main as I am more likely to have time with my iPhone to read feeds than with the desktop. I have used a few apps in the past and some of these have relied on services that have come and gone. I use to use NewsGator and NetNewsWire

My current setup consists on Google Reader on the desktop and I now use NewsRack on the iPhone which was recommended to me by someone.

There is also an iPad version available too.

Now NewsRack is not a free App and there are ways of reading RSS feeds for free on the iPhone (through Safari bookmarks for example). What I like about NewsRack is that it syncs with Google Reader, so that any items I have read on the iPhone will be marked as read on the desktop and likewise articles I have starred on my iPhone will be available for reading again, linking, blogging, etc…

As a result of using a service like NewsRack I can quickly browse news and blog feeds and am able to pick out the relevant and useful news and articles I need to enhance and improve the way in which I work.

Yes the newspaper thing is a bit of a gimmick, but that wasn’t the reason I purchased the App. I like how it works and I like how it improves the way I work.

app of the week

Hipstamatic – iPhone App of the Week

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Hipstamatic – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will also work on the iPod touch.

This week’s App is Hipstamatic.

Digital photography never looked so analog. The Hipstamatic brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras of the past! The Hipstamatic keeps the the quirks of shooting old school but gives you the ability to swap lenses, film, and flash settings all with the swipe of a finger. Characterized by vignettes, blurring, over saturation, discolored images, Hipstaprints have a casual and seemingly accidental snapshot feel. Pictures taken with the Hipstamatic have their very own look and unique character. Artistic and painted with light and quirk, Hipstamatic images are sometimes surprising and offer a delicate beauty turning any iPhone into an instant art making machine. Images can be uploaded directly to Facebook, Flickr, or emailed to your friends and family.

£1.19

This is one of the many camera or photo apps I own and is in the “fun” category. Basically it turns your iPhone into an old film camera from 1974!

Using a variety of lenses and “films” you can take some “old school” photographs.

It has a bit of a quirky interface that takes some getting use to.

I quite like the effects and can see some use for the types of images it produces.

Interesting (as is happening with many apps) you can purchase in-app upgrades.

Additional lenses, films, and flashes are bundled within the app as ‘Hipstapaks’ and start at 59p. Each Hipstapak includes multiple items.

This is a two edged sword for me, it makes the core app cheaper (or even free) however means for added functionality and features you need to pay an upgrade. Fine if you own the phone, less so if you have an institutionally owned phone and don’t have access to the iTunes account for the phone.

I like Hipstamatic but it is quirky and won’t appeal to everyone.

app of the week

Boggle – iPhone App of the Week

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Boggle – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will also work on the iPod touch.

This week’s App is Boggle.

Test your way with words by playing the popular wordsearch game.

Until 23rd May £0.59

Boggle is a nice simple game that gives you sixteen letters, has a time limit, and you need to create as many words as possible with the rules that the letters can only be used once and must be “touching”.

The iPhone is a great little gaming device and works really well with these casual games. At 59p it’s not expensive and is certainly value for money. I think it was David Sugden who told me about it, so he’s to blame!

Research from various universities has demonstrated that if learners play word and number games this can improve their literacy and numeracy skills. As reported by The Telegraph:

Scrabble is just as good at improving mental sharpness as a Nintendo DS video games console and a copy of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, say researchers from the University of Rennes, Brittany.

Just on that article and research I have to admit I have always found it much easier to get 17 year olds to play games on the Nintendo DSi or the iPod touch than I have getting them to play Scrabble!

Boggle is a fun word game that fills the time waiting for the bus, the train or coffee.