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Tiled For iPhone & iPad: Powerful Collage Maker With A Metro-Style UI

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One thing that you’ll find in abundance across any platform – iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and even Web – is perhaps photo editors and manipulators, and within those, collage creators, to be more specific. These tools not only make it easy to produce astounding images that can awe your friends on social networks, but may also help if you’re a meme fan, as the panel-layout provides an easy base for creating your humorous masterpieces. The thing about smartphones is, they’ve put every sort of tool in the palms of our hands, and collage creators are no exception. iOS, in this regard, is rather well-endowed, as the platform boasts several capable apps for creating collages on the go. We have reviewed several of the kind before; Photo Wall, which lets you create collages graffiti style on iPhone/iPad, or Nostalgio, which impresses with its wide array of Frame templates, and my personal favorite, Frame Artist, which is arguably the most comprehensive collage maker for iOS that I’d seen to date. Tiled is a new entry in the same genre which packs a vast and handsome set of features, capable of rivaling the best in business while maintaining user friendliness. Read More

Transfer Files From Mac To iPhone Over Wi-Fi Without Using iTunes

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The iPhone is easily one of the best things that Apple has ever made, but there are certain things you have to accept about an iPhone. One of them is that you cannot use the iPhone as a mass storage device. You literally have a considerable amount of storage on your phone that you will have to fill with audio, video and image files. iTunes does have a file sharing option, but since you can only authorize 5 systems to sync with your phone, it is far from a universal solution. There are, however, apps available to make this file transfer easier, and if you’re a Mac user, File Storage Companion is an app that, coupled with its iOS client File Storage, lets you transfer files from your Mac to your iPhone over Wi-Fi. The Mac app is free and available in the Mac App Store, whereas the iOS counterpart costs $1.99. The iOS app isn’t just a means of transferring files, but is also a fairly good file viewer that can create directories (folders) and open zipped files. Read More

Run An AppleScript When A Bluetooth Device Goes In/Out Of Range On Mac

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A couple of months back, we reviewed Bluetooth Screen Lock (detailed here). The app allows you to lock your screen whenever a specific Bluetooth device paired with your Mac goes out of range. It is one of the best ways of ensuring you never forget to lock your system when you leave. Bluetooth Proximity Tasker is a Mac app worth $1.99 in the Mac App Store and developed by the same developer who made Bluetooth Screen Lock. The app works on the same principal, except that it allows you to run a AppleScript when a Bluetooth enabled device comes in or goes out of range. Unlike the previously covered app, this one allows you to perform different actions for when the device is in range and when it leaves range. You can run one or several scripts for each action. Although slightly pricier than the previous app, it offers more functionality. Read More

Create Hyperlinks To Any Part Of An iTunes Song, Video Or Podcast [Mac]

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iTunes is more than just a media player; it’s a media manager, lets you listen to and download podcasts, keeps your movies and music collection organized and backs up & transfers files to and from your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. TunesLinker is a Mac app worth $1.99 that will help you get more out of iTunes than you would have thought possible. The app lets you create hyperlinks to any part within a song, a movie or podcast. While it doesn’t sound terribly useful if you only have music in your iTunes library, it provides a way for you to ‘bookmark’ portions in a podcast or a movie. These bookmarks, or hyperlinks, can be saved to any text editor and played from any app that supports the link format. Read More

Take Pixel-Precise Screenshots In Mac OS X

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One of the very basic features of an image cropping tool should be to allow very precise control, i.e., users should be able to decide how many pixels they want to trim from any of the four sides. Such a crop tool is difficult to come by for Mac, and will likely have a bloated price tag. For users who need this specific functionality for screenshots, there is Precise Screenshot. It is an excellent Mac app priced reasonably at $1.99 and available in the Mac App Store. The app comes with screenshot size presets, but also allows you to trim the screenshot area by the pixel. A red frame that you can position anywhere on your screen outlines the screenshot area, and you can choose to either use this frame or capture the full screen. Precise Screenshot also has a time delay feature for taking screenshots (both full screen and area specific), and once captured, they can be stored as files in PNG, TIFF or JPG formats, or copied to the clipboard for pasting. A number is appended to successive screenshot files, and they can be saved to any folder of your choice. Read More

Tracks: iTunes Menu Bar Controls With Growl & Last.fm Support [Mac]

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Tracks is a Mac app worth $2.99 in the Mac App Store that controls iTunes from the Menu Bar. When launched, it automatically starts iTunes in the background and adds a play icon to the Menu Bar, clicking which opens a search bar that allows you to query your iTunes library. Of course, this isn’t why you’re paying $2.99 for the app. Tracks has excellent and fully customizable universal shortcuts for controlling iTunes. You can play/pause, move to the next or previous track, increase/decrease volume and rating and open the current song in iTunes. It gives you Growl notifications when a new song is played or changed, and allows you to connect with your Last.fm account. Read More

Popular Mac App Color Splash Studio Comes To iPhone

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Color splash photography is a genre of photo editing that is not as complicated as some of the other fields, but the results you can get thanks to splash effects are certainly good enough to make your ordinary photos look like works of art. If you own a Mac, then Color Splash Studio probably introduced you to this class of photo effects. The famous Mac photo editor has recently been released for iPhone, and now you can edit your iDevice’s photos in a beautiful touch-based environment. The app offers some pretty good photo filters (named Dramatic Effects), and you can also choose individual objects in an image to apply these filters and other color splash effects to them. Another great aspect of the app is its sharing capabilities. Color Splash Studio comes with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr integration, and you can even get your images delivered to you (in real life) as postcards, thanks to the app’s collaboration with the Sincerely service. Read More

Cydia App Clone Display Recorder Comes To App Store, Lets You Create Screencasts On iPhone & iPad

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iOS was the first major smartphone platform to offer native screen capture capabilities to its users. Screenshots can prove to be a useful feature in a smartphone, and might save you from a lot of trouble in a number of scenarios. However, a still image can never be as detailed and revealing as a motion and audio-incorporating video. For instance, if you just want to boast about your great Temple Run score, a screenshot of the winning moment will suffice, but what if your friends ask you to teach them the game? In the latter. you will need to create a screencast by capturing your iPhone or iPad’s display in the form of a video. Until recently, only Cydia users had the option to record their iDevice’s screen (thanks to Ryan Petrich’s Display Recorder app for jailbroken phones), but an app with the same name has been released in the App Store, and now any iOS user can create screencasts and video tutorials on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The app looks much more polished than the Cydia one, and you can add your own voice to the screencasts as well. Read More

Favorites: Rate Files By Importance To Better Organize Them [Mac]

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For organizing bookmarks and web material, bookmarks are the right thing, and it’s only too bad that there isn’t something similar in Mac for your files. While files are theoretically organized into folders, there is often the problem of distinguishing identical files that are, in fact, different versions. It isn’t just the file names that make it hard to find them again; often you forget what a file is called, or don’t have the time to add it to the right folder. Favorites is a Mac app worth $4.99 in the Mac App Store that lets you rate files by their importance. It acts as an organizer for these rated files, and lets you create folders for the type of files you need to mark. Files can be filtered by their rating or searched for. The app also lets you quickly preview a file, or open it. Read More

NoteBar Is An iPhone-Inspired Note Taking App For Mac OS X

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NoteBar is a Mac app worth $1.99 in the Mac App Store that looks just like the stock iOS Notes app, even with the same features; you can add notes (the first line of a note becomes the title), long titles are shortened, notes can be searched and shared via email, exported as a text file, printed and copied to the clipboard. Even on the interface front, expect the buttons to be exactly where you find them on the iPhone app, with the only slight change being that the note background doesn’t look resemble a margined notebook page. Read More

faceMe Opens Files & Apps Using Your Webcam & Face Detection [Mac]

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Controlling your devices via simple gestures that are read through your webcam might seem a futuristic idea, but as recently covered app Flutter showed (read full review here), it isn’t that far away any more. If you think waving your hand infront of your webcam to trigger iTunes was cool, you’re going to love faceMe. It’s a Mac app worth $1.99, and is, literally, worth every penny you pay. Like Flutter, it too is triggered by what the webcam sees; only, instead of being limited to a single app, faceMe lets you launch an audio file, a video or an app, quit an open app, open a file or speak predefined text when it detects a face. More on this marvellous app after the break. Read More

LiquidColor: Save Color Codes In Groups & Search For Them By Keyword [Mac]

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LiquidColor is a Mac app worth $0.99 in the Mac App store and is completely different from other color picking tools available out there. It provides an easy way to catalog different color schemes you have created for multiple projects. Instead of opening your mock-ups and templates each time (in heavy-to-load apps like Photoshop) to look up a color, this light weight utility lets you record them, organize them into profiles and associate keywords with them. The tool saves RGB values and Hex codes for each color code. You can add as many profiles as you like and add as many colors to a single profile. Read More

PaperLock Adds Paper-Themed Lock Screen Animations To Your iPhone [Cydia]

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Looks like the Unfold Cydia tweak (reviewed here) has started a really good epidemic. First, there was Unlockize (review), a tweak that borrowed the main concept behind Unfold but with more diversity, and now, PaperLock has arrived in the Cydia store. PaperLock is another collection of unlock animations for iPhone and iPod touch devices, and although it lacks the variety on offer in Unlockize, this new addition to Cydia brings a completely new flavor to lockscreen animations. The tweak has three animations (or themes, as it labels them) and all of them are designed to emulate some sort of paper. You can peel away the lockscreen of your device to reveal the Springboard or passcode screen. Read on for details regarding all the animations available in PaperLock. Read More

Unlockize: Get 6 Awesome Unlock Animations On Your Jailbroken iPhone

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The awe-inspiring lock screen Cydia tweak, Unfold (reviewed here), hasn't grown old yet, and already there is a new boss in town. Although Unlockize is based on the same principle as Unfold, the newer tweak is six times better than the latter! We say six, because that’s exactly the number of lockscreen animations offered by Unlockize! Each animation is as good as the one offered by Unfold, and there’s even one that is identical to the unfold animation made famous by the former. Not only can you choose any of the available animations when using Unlockize, the tweak is intelligent enough to automatically switch between animations if the user has chosen more than one. So, if you have a jailbroken iPhone, head past the break to know more about Unlockize and get a preview of each of the animations in the tweak. Read More

Switchy Expands App Switcher To Two Rows & Adds Extra Options [Cydia]

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The App Switcher tray is one of the best features in iOS, but that doesn’t mean it is perfect. In fact, if you give Switchy a try, you are sure to wonder how did you survive with the old task manager in your iPhone. As the developer claims in the tweak’s Cydia description, Switchy is everything that the App Switcher should have been in the first place. Every time you launch App Switcher on an iPhone or iPad, only the bottom area of the screen remains active, while everything else is grayed out. Switchy takes full advantage of this wasted space, and adds an extra row of icons to the App Switcher tray. However, this is not the only thing Switchy does. The tweak will also enhance the music area of the App Switcher, adding artist and album name to it, and in addition to all that, the tweak will add a new button to the bottom bar, tapping which will kill all apps at once! Read More

Tune Your Mood: Music Tracks For All Occasions & Emotions [WP7]

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While Tune Your Mood might not be the first Windows Phone 7 app of its kind, it certainly is one of the most comprehensive ones in the Marketplace. The app can be used for two purposes. You can use it as a music discovery app when you have really run out of songs to listen to, and it can also be helpful if you want to stream music related to a particular mood. Tune Your Mood has playlists that are categorized with respect to different events and moods, rather than the music genre or artists name. You just have to share your feelings with the app, and it will come up with the perfect playlist for you. Read on to know all about this fantastic music streaming app. Read More

Windownaut For Mac OS X: Window Management via Keyboard Shortcuts

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Window management in OS X is something that third-party developers have been trying to fix for quite a while. Assigning apps or windows to desktop spaces is the Apple way of doing it, but honestly, that is focused more on capitalizing on the full screen feature in Lion rather than to help utilize display real estate when working with wide screen monitors. Windownaut is yet another one of those remarkable window management apps for Mac, worth $4.99, which rely heavily on shortcut keys and allow you to define a shortcut for each region that you can move a window to. Understandably, it isn’t easy to remember so many shortcuts, which is why the app has the added feature of viewing the different layouts along a window’s title bar. Read More

[Giveaway] CollageIt: Create Gorgeous Photo Collages Within A Few Clicks

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In the past, we have covered numerous photo collage creators for different platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS etc. Today, we will take a look into another collage making tool for Windows and Mac OS X known as CollageIt, that with its easy to use interface design, lets you generate unique photo collages within a few clicks. You can choose among several different templates, which are further customizable with the number of editing options. The intuitive UI presents both the eye-candy and simplicity of use, to its users. The beautiful looking photo collage can be easily exported into PNG, PDF, JPG, PSD, GIF, TIFF, BMP and format or you may instantly upload it on your Flickr or Facebook to share it with your friends and family from within the application. Read More

FreezePaint For iPhone: A Unique Way To Merge Parts Of A Photo With Another

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Photo apps for the iPhone are a dime a dozen but every now and then, you come across a unique one that stands out. For instance, one that lets you take a photo, freeze any part of it on screen by freely swiping your finger on it and then take another picture with your selected frozen parts overlaid on it. You can even remove the dark circles around your eyes with it, with ease, though in a rather unorthodox manner. It’s a concept rather hard to describe in words, but we’ve got you covered with our detailed review, hands-on screenshots and even a story! Read on for our detailed review. Read More