Tag Archives: iPad

How To Add Call & Text Shortcuts For Any Contact To iOS Home Screen Without Jailbreak

by on
3
A lot of Cydia tweaks let users skip the hassle of opening the contacts app, searching for a person and then making a call. You might be able pin contacts on your iPhone’s SpringBoard for easier access, or even making calls using simple gestures. Unfortunately, all these goodies are usually reserved for jailbreak users only. Having said that, there are always alternative ways for iOS users who like keeping their devices Cydia-free. You might not have considered it possible, but there is a rather simple method for pinning a contact to any iPhone’s Home screen for making calls with a single tap. You can also use the same procedure to create a shortcut for sending texts to a particular person directly, without having to find their thread or start a new one manually in the Messages app. Read More

Merge Duplicate Contacts & Backup iPhone Address Book With OneContact

by on
Leave a comment
If you are using a smartphone, chances are that you rely on a cloud service to keep your contacts permanently backed up. Gone are the days when you had to spend hours transferring your address book to a phone whenever you switched devices. These days, you just sign in to your Exchange or Gmail account to fill up the Contacts app in your new iPhone. While an extremely convenient method, this cloud syncing comes at a slight cost. If you are using more than one cloud service, you might end up with a lot of duplicate contacts when all your accounts have been added to the device. These duplicate contacts are a pet peeve of many users, forcing them to spend a considerable amount of time in making their address book neat and dupe-free. OneContact is a new iOS app that automates this process by scanning your complete contact list and highlighting all duplicates. The app is intelligent enough to sniff out multiple entries even if they are slightly different. Read More

Go Back In Time To Capture The Perfect Photo With timelyy For iPhone

by on
Leave a comment
During the past week, RIM was renamed to Blackberry, which might be indicative of the fact that Blackberry 10 is the company’s only shot at survival now. The OS could have been better, but it does get a lot of things right. It might be a long time before Blackberry gives major platforms any competition, but the platform's constant decline might just change for now. One of the good features in BlackBerry 10 is the ‘Time Shift’ option in the camera. The idea is to capture multiple photos temporarily, and then save the best shot from them. The concept is great, but it is not necessarily new. Windows Phone has had it since last year when Nokia introduced Smart Shot in June, while iOS has a very simple and effective app named timelyy that does the same thing. The app was released a couple of months back, and it silently captures a string of images as soon as you launch it, allowing you to save any number of photos from that batch. Read More

InFocus Pro: iOS Project Management Suite With A Sketch Pad For Notes

by on
Leave a comment
It’s always nice to see a feature-rich app, but when an app offers way too many unrelated features, people seldom like it. A successful app strikes a fine balance between being full of useful features while maintaining an acceptable level of understandability. You might be tempted to think that InFocus Pro tries to do too much, but all the features it offers are interconnected in one way or the other. Basically, InFocus Pro is a project management app incorporating task lists, notes, sketches and calendar appointments for each project. There might be other apps available for iOS that do the same things, but InFocus has the advantage of accepting handwritten entries for almost any field. It is also possible to make the app read your notes and lists out loud. Read More

Penultimate For iPad Now Free; Gets Evernote Sync & Handwriting Search

by on
1
Evernote is great if you want to make sure your idle scribbling and great ideas never get lost. There are times, however, when you don’t have enough time to type everything. Say, you are attending a lecture, and want to make notes quickly, your inclination might be to grab a pen and use your handwriting to get the work done. Fortunately, you can use your smartphone to achieve this in a really efficient manner. Evernote offers Skitch for annotating images, but if it’s a standalone sketching/handwriting app you want, give Penultimate a shot. Acquired by Evernote in 2012, Penultimate is a well-crafted, user-friendly sketching and handwriting app for the iPad. The app has just been updated with a revamped UI and Evernote integration, which includes handwriting search and the ability to sync all drawings and scribbles with your Evernote account. The character recognition makes your handwritten text searchable both from within Penultimate as well as any Evernote client. What's more, the app has gone free! Read More

Crop iPhone Photos Using Different Shapes & Patterns With SymbolGram

by on
Leave a comment
Earlier this month, we covered PIP Camera that allows iOS users to put your images in photos of different objects like screens, bottles, frames of different shapes and sizes etc. The newly released SymbolGram is based upon a similar concept, but this app is much simpler and doesn't ask you to do much before you can see the final result. Sure, there aren’t as many effects available in SymbolGram as there are in PIP Camera, but you get a full-featured photo editor to go with the ready-made shapes. The shapes offered by the app include stylized text, hearts, balloons, and geometric patterns, among others. The available sharing options include Instagram and Twitter, and you can also save a picture to the camera roll and send it to anyone from there. Read More

Lock Your iPhone’s Screen In Landscape Orientation With tsLock O

by on
Leave a comment
It has always bugged me that the iOS orientation lock is not smart enough to detect your device’s current orientation, and locks the screen only in portrait mode. Admittedly, most of the times you need your iPhone screen to stay vertical, specially when you are lying down, but there are some occasions when you might want to keep the screen in landscape mode, for instance when watching a video in a player that supports both orientations, web browsing, or even reading an eBook in some situations. tsLock O is a new Cydia tweak that brings this much0needed functionality to jailbroken iOS devices. The tweak simply endows the orientation lock toggle with the ability to lock your device orientation in the whatever mode is active when you press the button. You won’t lose the default portrait lock, as the new addition is really unobtrusive and comes into action only when you need it. Read More

Fireplug For iPhone Tracks Reading Habits & Creates Smart News Feeds

by on
1
News apps that learn your preferences with the passage of time have been around for quite a while now, but Fireplug has just made this concept novel once again. Released by the team behind retickr, Fireplug combines social networking, automation and a sense of competition to bring you the only news reader you are ever likely to need on your iPhone. Like most modern apps of this genre, Fireplug has a ‘smart’ news stream that offers more relevant stories as you interact more often with the app. You can also maintain separate streams for different topics, but the best feature of the app is that everything you read is reflected on your profile. This makes Fireplug a good app if you are interested in keeping track of your own reading trends and showing off your expertise on your subjects of interest based on what you read. Read More

Discover Fun Places Recommended By Friends With Scoopt For Android & iOS

by on
3
Looking for a simple location discovery app that helps you easily find the best nearby and worldwide amenities recommended by your very own friends? You might want to give Scoopt a try. Utilizing the trusted and widely used services of Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare, Scoopt is a free location discovery social app for Android and iOS that claims to offer the best recommendations for interesting places to eat, drink, shop, sleep and visit. It does so by presenting crowdsourced location-based information from actual visitors, app users and your friends instead of fake advertisers and promoters. The app sports arguably the best interface that we have seen in a while. In just a few taps, you can end up finding some of the most fascinating places to spend your weekend, or you may let your friends know about a nice little food spot you’ve just discovered in town. The app’s Holo-ish UI is curated in a way to help you easily explore all the recommended places by their order of submission, proximity, categories or a point of interest anywhere on the map. Read More

Configure Your Home Theater To Perfection With THX tune-up For iOS

by on
Leave a comment
For decades, cinemas and commercial theaters have been making use of THX standards to ensure high quality of audio and video. THX offers a set of rules for the optimal viewing experience on any medium, complete with guidelines to set up speakers, displays and projectors with ease. Until now, THX has mostly been useful for cinema owners but with the advent of home theaters and better television sets, the brains behind the standard set have resolved to make THX mainstream. THX tune-up is a newly released iOS app that helps you set up your own media equipment properly, according to THX standards. Not only does it have detailed tutorials, but the app also scans your devices for perfect sound, color, screen and connection settings. The instructions are available in both text and audio formats, making THX tune-up a perfect companion for configuring a full home theater without being a rocket scientist. Read More

Digitize & Combine Real-Life Notes On iOS With ‘Edit & Share’

by on
Leave a comment
Times might have changed, but the practice of jotting down notes during presentations still as useful as ever. Smartphones and tablets have started assisting people in this endeavor to some extent, but some still prefer written text over typing it or making audio/video recordings. You can easily snap a picture of someone else’s notes, or capture everything your teacher/boss might have written on the whiteboard, but it is always a nightmare to try and keep these random pictures organized. On a computer, you might organize photos from particulars lecture or presentation in their individual folders, but the same can’t be easily done on an iPhone or iPad. With Edit & Share however, you can create separate projects for photos that are related to each other. There are plenty of editing options in the app that let users stitch images together, crop them or add text notes to make everything searchable. Read More

Social Tiles For iOS Is A Modern UI Pinboard For Twitter Profiles & Facebook Pages

by on
Leave a comment
Some apps don’t do much, but are so good-looking that one just gets lured into use them once in a while based on their looks alone. Social Tiles might appear to be one such app at first, but there is more to it than a shiny interface. If you are the admin of a Facebook page or just want to keep an eye on the popularity of your Twitter profile, Social Tiles can be of use. The app lets you pin any public Facebook page or Twitter profile to its home screen, where you will be shown stats portraying the account’s fame. There is no limit on the number of accounts that can be monitored via Social Tiles, and the best part is that you don’t even need to sign in to your account to use the app. Social Tiles can also offer some really good quotes that can be shared to your social network accounts with a single tap. Read More

Facebook For iOS Gets Voice Messages, Video Sharing & A Better Nearby Tab

by on
Leave a comment
At the beginning of this month, Facebook Messenger’s Android and iOS clients got updated with voice messaging. The Android app for Facebook received the same feature a few days later, and now the iOS variant has also been updated to let you attach audio recordings with your messages. The latest update adds some other changes to the mix as well; you can finally record and share videos without having to leave the app. There is no apparent change in the photo sharing menu, but once you initiate the camera, you now get the option to switch between image and video capture. The Nearby tab has been revamped, and you get to apply a variety of filters while performing a search in nearby locations. It is even possible to look for interesting places only in a particular area of the map. Read More

Adobe VideoBite Offers Simple & Quick Video Editing On The iPhone

by on
Leave a comment
The previously covered video highlights app Givit belongs to a category that has yet to see a lot of development. Fortunately though, a big name has finally shown interest in the genre by coming up with a nice highlights compilation app of its own. Adobe’s VideoBite could be labeled as a very simple video editor, but that might be overstating its functionality a bit. Basically, this iOS app lets you combine parts of different videos into a single clip. You can mark a particular moment as a ‘highlight’ while recording, or choose parts from videos that already exist in the camera roll of your device. These highlights can then be rearranged individually before you share them over Facebook or save them locally. Read More

EQuala Is A Social, User-Curated Radio For Android & iOS With A Twist

by on
1
Social music discovery services are special in that they not only help you explore the top trending tracks from all across the globe, but also let you share your personal musical tastes with worldwide music lovers. The phenomenal aspect of most quality apps in this regard (like Hitlantis, MusicBunk, Exfm and Soundtracker) is that they add something unique to the concept in terms of both aesthetics and functionality. In EQuala, we might well have found another very impressive solution for discovering great music on mobile devices. Available for Android and iOS, EQuala (beta) presents you with a unique equalizer-like UI containing various sliders linked to selected EQuala users and friends. By adjusting the levels of these sliders, you can let the app know exactly what ratio of tracks to stream from the choice in music of each of these users. Based on your custom settings, EQuala will then begin playing a continuous stream of music, allowing you to enjoy the right blend of music from various users as you like. Read More

Get The Summary Of Any Web Page With TLDR Reader For iOS & Android

by on
1
The internet is full of content related to any subject imaginable, and to effectively find what you're looking for, you must possess the skill of navigating your way through all the fluff out there. If there is a really lengthy article online, most of us formulate a gist of it by skimming through parts of the text. TLDR Reader is based on a similar concept, and offers summaries of the best news stories from around the web. Users can personalize news sources and entire categories. It is also possible to easily find articles that are similar to a given story. The best feature of TLDR Reader is its built-in web browser, which can be used to create a summary of any webpage you want. The app even offers the choice of the summary’s default length. Read More

TweetAmplius Removes Character Limit From Twitter & Tweetbot For iOS

by on
Leave a comment
Since Twitter is a microblogging service, the 140 characters limit for tweets is quite sensible. There are cases though when conciseness can’t help you. For example, a humorous tweet won’t sound too funny if you had to break it into multiple parts. In addition to that, many deem the character limit on direct messages to be less reasonable than that on tweets. There are countless web-based solutions to this problem, and even smartphones platforms have apps of their own to free users from the limitation. With TweetAmplius however, you don’t have to switch to a new Twitter client in order to bypass the character limit. This Cydia tweaks allows you to send direct messages and tweets of any length from Tweetbot and the official Twitter app for iOS. Long tweets are automatically shown as links that point to a Pastie page. Read More

SKYE For iPhone Combines Weather Forecasts With Photos From Your Area

by on
1
A weather app can rarely be labeled exciting and unique these days, since there are so many of them available in the iOS App Store, with most of them differing from their competitors only in terms of interface. While SKYE Weather+Photo offers a decent interface too, the app’s real uniqueness lies in the fact that it mixes a bit of photo sharing with weather. You get to provide your own feedback related to weather and can also view weather conditions of the cities most of your friends live in. SKYE lets you overlay the current weather information on any photo, and post it to the app’s network. These photos also act as part of the background for the weather page of your current location. Read More

AutoSnap For iOS Instantly Shoots & Uploads Photos To Cloud On Launch

by on
Leave a comment
While Photo Stream can be quite useful for backing up all the photos you take from your iOS devices on iCloud and keeping them synced across all your devices, many people snap photos with the intention of later uploading them to Instagram, Facebook or some other online service, and Photo Stream offers no such auto-sharing option. AutoSnap allows you to do just that, and more! In fact, you don’t even have to shoot the photo manually, as the app can take a picture after a few seconds’ delay whenever you launch it, which can come real handy to quickly capture those precious moments that you would otherwise miss. Though you can also stop the shooting and uploading processes any time you want. Read More

View iPhone Photos In A Map & Personalized Timeline With Handy Album

by on
Leave a comment
Since iOS does not display EXIF metadata of photos by default, a lot of users feel a bit lost when browsing through the camera roll of their iPhone; even basic information like an image’s name and time of capture is not visible unless you transfer it to your computer. There are some apps out there that solve this issue, but none of them are likely to be as user-friendly and good-looking as Handy Album. This app shows all the albums stored in your device in the form of a personalized timeline. You can see the images you shot or saved on a particular date, or even a certain time of the day. Another mode offered by Handy Album is the map view for your geotagged images. Although you can view the detailed EXIF data of each photo, seeing your collection overlaid on a map is far more interesting. You can also shares your photos in batches very easily from the app. Read More