Best Iphone Apps Review

My Reading List – iPad App Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

My Reading List ($2.99)
Version 1.1

(only available for the iPad)

Are you an avid reader looking for a way to organize your future reading material? If so then you may enjoy My Reading List for the iPad. This app was developed by 59thirty LLC and is not only a catalog but also an integrated purchasing tool.

The app has a clean and simple interface to it. When you open the app it defaults to your Reading Wish List. In this menu you can see which books are on your list, preview the book cover (by clicking on the cover icon), rearrange or delete books, and even purchases books through amazon.com

In the upper left hand corner you can edit your list .. i.e. remove books you’ve already bought and even rearrange books within the list.

In the upper right hand corner you have the option to add new books to your list. You can add a book either by searching for the name of the book or the author’s name. Once you do that it populates a list of book options where you can select the book you were looking for.

Once a book is added to your list you have the option to buy it, using this app and Amazon.com. Simply click on the “Buy” button and it will pull the book in question up within amazon.com’s website and from there you can select the reading format you are interested in and place your order.

My biggest suggestion for this app would be to incorporate a means to track books that people have read, because that seems to be a common trait among avid readers. That could be as simple as a long, uncategorized list or as nice as breaking it out by genre (possibly pulled from amazon’s website as well), author, or similar categories / ordering.

All in all if you are an avid reading looking for a quick and easy way to keep track of your future reading list you may want to give My Reading List a look. It’s currently on sale in the App Store for $2.99 and currently is available as an iPad only version.

- Christina G

© 2010, iPhone and iPad app reviews. All rights reserved. An expedite fee may have been paid for some reviews. We work diligently to ensure that this does not affect the content of the review and strive to keep the journalistic integrity intact. All reviews are the personal opinion of the reviewer.

Tweet This Post 

Bookmark this Best Iphone App Review Post

Hide Sites

iPad or Kindle? A Flawed, but Popular, Comparison is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Most people who have seen my new iPad react with the same question, “should I get this or the Kindle?” Apple, obviously, intended its iPad to be perceived as much more than an eBook reader. Yet the much publicized launch of the iBookstore, along with the iPad’s slim form factor, have led many consumers to perceive the iPad as an expensive eBook reader.

The Kindle is the Premier eBook Reader

Amazon’s Kindle 2

The Kindle was launched solely as an eBook reader and is marketed as such. Jeff Bezos, on introducing the device, said of the Kindle that “it’s so ambitious to take something as highly evolved as the book and improve on it. And maybe even change the way people read.” Amazon has definitely done much of the legwork in improving the acceptability of the eBook as a new medium for written material. Amazon’s true innovation was bringing E-Ink technology to the consumer market, along with doing the technical legwork to simplify the reading experience. At its core, the Kindle is a delivery device – a user purchases a book as they would online and finds it available for reading seconds later.

The reading experience does everything it can to mimic the experience of paper, all of which is aided by E-Ink. The screen is technology’s response to those who complained that they would never be able to read a book on a traditional LCD screen or a laptop. The Kindle itself is merely the size of a large paperback and is lighter than most printed books. The Kindle is Bezos’ effort to translate the book for the digital age, and he has largely succeeded in providing a popular and widely accepted new platform.

The iPad as an eBook Reader

Apple’s iPad with iBooks

The iPad has benefited from terrific interest from both book publishers and book retailers. As a consequence we’ve seen innovative new packages like the Vook and traditional books from retailers like B&N, Amazon, and more. While the Kindle has a terrific – and probably the largest – bookstore, the iPad offers more choices for where you get your ebooks.

There’s Apple’s iBooks, Amazon’s Kindle reading app, B&N’s new iPad reader, and more. The three largest players each offer different solutions to the eBook problem. iBooks tries to mimic the feel of a physical book, utilizing a color UI with beautifully rendered page turns. The Kindle’s UI is black and white and encourages the same type of user interaction as the physical Kindle – a simple tap on the side of the screen changes pages in a fluid transition not as visually distracting as that of iBooks. B&N’s app allows users to choose from dozens of different visual settings but maintains the same fluid page transitions as Amazon’s Kindle app. Only the iBooks app has a store in-app; the others force the reader to go to Safari to purchase books. This is a definite snag in the clear workflow Bezos presented with the original Kindle, but one that I’m sure both B&N and Amazon will surmount in future applications.

The iPad’s reflective LCD screen probably isn’t the best for simply reading a book. It’s a pain in the sun, where it’s nearly impossible to see the text on a page. E-Ink mainly solves this problem with its screen. People who have issues reading for long periods of time on their laptops may wish to reconsider an iPad purchase if it’s intended solely as an eBook reader. While the reading experience is cleaner and more enjoyable, it’s the same experience as the backlit screens most notebooks include. In addition, the iPad’s battery life is rated at 10 hours, enough for most commuters but nowhere near the weeks the Kindle can last for.

The iPad as a Platform: Bigger Than Books

A Vook on the iPad

The key differentiator between the two comes when we move beyond the simple eBook reading features. The Kindle includes a browser, but not one that functions nearly as well as the iPad’s. It’s black and white and renders incredibly slowly due to the E-Ink screen technology. The iPad’s Safari browser is widely regarded as one of the best on a mobile platform.

I’ve always seen the iPad as more than a traditional book reader as well. The Kindle simply translates the book reading experience into the digital age but strives not to completely alter the way we experience books. New features like Amazon’s Popular Highlights add subtle suggestions about the importance of a passage but do not redefine the reading workflow. Cool ideas like the aforementioned Vook change the reading experience by adding videos, multimedia, more information about certain topics (with links) and more. Could the iPad help the form of the written word change? Only time, and developers, will tell.

Decisions, Decisions
Those of you struggling with the decision to purchase an iPad or a Kindle might want to do some soul searching. What do you want from your portable device? Just books and nothing more? Buy a Kindle – that’s what it’s meant for. But if you’re looking for a small computer, with thousands of different and innovative new applications that could redefine reading, the iPad is for you.

[ iPad or Kindle? A Flawed, but Popular, Comparison is a post from 148Apps ]

Bookmark this Best Iphone App Review Post

Hide Sites

Celebrity Meet-up? Get Them to Autograph It is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Price: $.99   Score: 8/10   By Michelle Schusterman

I’m not one to run screaming at the sight of a celebrity – well, maybe in the other direction. But the possible usefulness of Autograph It goes beyond shrieky fangirls.

Designed by Sulaba, this app aims to be how we get an autograph in the digital age. First, the convenience; no paper or pen necessary. As long as you have your iPhone, you’re prepared for any celebrity sighting. Second, you get more than just a signature. From the icons at the bottom, you can choose to take a picture from within the app, choose an existing picture, or leave it as a blank white page.

You can also choose the recording icon and record your celebrity crush professing his undying love for you so you’ll have proof for your friends. (Because oh yes, that’s exactly what will happen.) And for more legible text documentation of the momentous occasion, you can choose the “notes” icon and type in a description, like where you were, the time, or anything else. One more icon lets you share the autograph (including voice, saved as a WAV file) by email or Facebook.

All of this means that, within a few seconds, you can have a signed photograph with voice message ready to share with family and friends – a pretty cool package. I like how Autograph It allows you to set the thickness of the “pen” from the main menu. As far as functionality, of course it doesn’t allow for as neat an autograph as you would get with pen and paper – you are writing with your finger, after all.

One small point of criticism is that the eraser (which I’m very grateful to have) is set to the same thickness as the pen. If you have the pen set to be particularly thin, erasing is pretty much not worth it – better to start over.

You can save these little autograph packages and assign them to categories. One thing I found interesting was that you can still edit the autographs within the gallery, including adding or changing text and deleting the picture or voice message. I can’t decide if I’d prefer the autograph to be permanent – after all, if you get it right the first time, why risk messing it up later?

Autograph It is a cool concept, it works and the price is pretty darn good. If you’re planning a trip to Hollywood, want to have something cool to keep track of people you meet, or just want to be prepared in case Angelina Jolie shows up at your local Chili’s, check this app out for sure.

Autograph It requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. A small expedite fee was paid by the developer in order to speed up the publication of this review.

Bookmark this Best Iphone App Review Post

Hide Sites

Stanza Updates for the iPad is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Stanza’s Options and Reading Screen

Lexcycle, acquired last year by Amazon, released a version of their popular iPhone/iPod touch eReader Stanza for the iPad last week. Stanza was my eReader of choice on my iPhone and I’m thrilled it’s finally been ported to the iPad. It’s a terrific reader that’s compatible with a wide variety of different formats. Before Stanza for iPad was released, I used Calibre to convert my eBooks to iBooks’ required ePub format. Stanza allows users to read in a whole bunch of formats, and the 3.0 release adds PDF, DjVu, and Comic Book Archive support to Stanza’s already extensive library of readable files.

Stanza includes the most customizable reading interface I’ve seen on a mobile application. It allows you to customize nearly everything, from the page turning animations (a slide like the Kindle’s or a page turning animation like iBooks’) to the background and color of the text. Stanza really does make the experience all about the text – the user is able to customize everything about the way the book is viewed. Barnes and Nobles’ app was lauded earlier this week for including the same customization but their application locks you into using their bookstore. Stanza lets you load your own books onto the iPad or iPhone. It also, however, allows you access to a variety of other eBook stores directly from the phone.

Stanza’s Text Descriptions

Perhaps the application’s best feature is Stanza’s Detail views for text. Highlighting text using the traditional copy and paste mechanism in iBooks yields a tooltip that lets you bookmark (highlight) and look things up in the dictionary. It’s a more complicated scenario in Stanza but one that offers one additional option – the ability to share text on Facebook, Twitter, and through email. The detail view pulls up the paragraph in question in an iPhone-sized window and makes it easier to select text.

Stanza works perfectly with Calibre, my app of choice for eBook conversion. It now allows for a really simple workflow to get eBooks from the desktop to an iPad. It’s possible to move books by utilizing a computer as a wireless server, or by pushing them from Calibre into iTunes. It’s also possible to drag books into iTunes and into Stanza.

Stanza is the ideal reading experience, with customizable colors, animations, and more and compatibility with dozens of different formats. The Lexcycle team has succeeded in bringing the great iPhone app to the iPad and I, as an avid reader, am glad they did so.

FREE!

Stanza

+ Universal App – Designed for iPhone and iPad

Our Rating: :: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2008-07-13 :: Category: Books

[ Stanza Updates for the iPad is a post from 148Apps ]

Bookmark this Best Iphone App Review Post

Hide Sites

Doing Good Works – iPhone App Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Doing Good Works (Free)

Version – 1.1

Review – “Learn to be a better person with this free app!”

If you’ve ever wanted to change things for the better, but felt powerless to do so, you might want to check out the Doing Good Works app for your iPhone. This app is a book that packaged into an easy to access app for free! It has some basic tools to help you navigate through it quickly, and it offers a link to their website where you’ll find more information about the book and it’s Author.

The app starts up pretty much instantly and offers a couple of different options at the menu screen that pops up. If you touch anywhere on the screen that is not a button you’ll start reading the book either at the beginning, or if you’ve been reading it before, at the place where you left off when you were reading it last.

In the center of the screen you’ll notice two small buttons: “Chapter Select,” and “More Info.” Touching the chapter select button will bring up a scroll bar at the bottom of the screen with a list of all the chapters that are available in the book. To skip straight to a chapter all you have to do is select it with the wheel and then touch the top half of the screen. If you touch the more info button you’ll shown a screen that basically directs you to the website for the book. You’ll find a variety of information, as well as find out how to purchase physical copies of the book if you’d like to give one to somebody you know.

The book reading interface is pretty simple, although it is a little different if you’re used to the interface of most book reading apps such as the Kindle app or the iBooks app on the iPad. Instead of turning pages from left to right, in this app you scroll down as you read the book. Something that is pretty nice though is that the book is separated into the actual physical pages of the book. In most electronicformats the “pages” are determined by what font size that you are reading the book at.

Another thing that I did notice is that, because the book is divided into the actual pages from the book, that the font is extremely small in portrait mode. Thankfully the latest update for the app will allow you to read it in landscape mode so that you can zoom in a little more on the text. It’s still a little bit smaller than I would have liked but it is definitely readable at this size.

Overall, the message of the book seems to be positive. It focuses a lot on taking an honest look at what you have and at what you can give easily without much effort. I have not read the entire book, but what I did read seems to be pretty on target. If you’ve always wanted to make a difference in the lives of others, but never really sat down and thought out how then what are you waiting for? Grab a copy of this normally $14.99 book from the App Store for free!

- David H.

Download Now!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Developer – Multimedia Marketing LLC

URL: http://www.doinggoodworks.org

© 2010, iPhone app reviews. All rights reserved. An expedite fee may have been paid for some reviews. We work diligently to ensure that this does not affect the content of the review and strive to keep the journalistic integrity in tack. All reviews are the personal opinion of the reviewer.

Tweet This Post 

Bookmark this Best Iphone App Review Post

Hide Sites

EW’s The Must List Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

I have a confession to make.  I love Entertainment Weekly.  I know, I know…there are more intellectually stimulating mags out there, and EW can occasionally hover a bit too close to the terrifying US Weekly and/or People magazine territory, but when it comes to learning about new books, movies, TV shows and more, it’s my go-to rag.

So, when an EW-branded iPad app showed up prominently displayed in the app store, I had to download it and give it a spin.  True to my fixation with EW, I was not disappointed.

At first glance, the EW Must List app seems incredibly limited.  Basically, it takes the two page Must List spread (which catalogues the latest music, book, film and, yes, app, “must-haves” for the week) and translates it to the iPad screen.  Seems sort of ho-hum, doesn’t it?  Fortunately, the developers of the app have harnessed the power of the iPad display and used it to create a compelling product.  Yes, it looks just like the print version of the Must List (and it might even look a little better.  The iPad is just screaming for high color, dynamic content like this), but clicking on any of the items not only pulls up the blurb written by EW, but also links to, say, movie trailers, song samples, an artist’s Twitter feed or Facebook page, or purchase points like Amazon or the iTunes store.  While writing this review, I even looked at some past lists and quickly pulled up the latest info on the Scott Pilgrim movie, including the hyperactive trailer.  For a pop culture junkie, this is pretty close to nirvana.

As a final treat, users are allowed to add any item to their own Must List, an action accompanied by an animated star spritely hopping into the menu.  While this is just a simple variation on the classic wish list, a la Amazon, it helps generate further enthusiasm for the content while making users come back for more each week.

There’s no doubt that this is a simple and straightforward app, yet there are features I’d like to see in the future updates to the app.  Probably the first and foremost is some sort of social aspect.  It would be great to be able to see friends’ must lists, and even purchase items for them directly from the app. And while the Must List is a weekly tradition in the Entertainment Weekly print magazine, a twice a week Must List would not be a bad thing.  A week is too long to wait for the next Must!

If you always want to know about the next big thing a little bit ahead of the curve, EW’s Must List is a must have for your iPad.

[ EW’s The Must List Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Bookmark this Best Iphone App Review Post

Hide Sites

Simon Graham and the Extraordinary Timepiece – iPhone App Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Simon Graham and the Extraordinary Timepiece ($1.99)

Version – 1.0

Review – “Fun strategy game that will stretch your intellect!”

My wife loves to play games on the internet. There are a lot of games that make you think of words, or piece things together, or find things out there. What Simeon Graham and the Extraordinary Timepiece does is take a lot of those different game concepts, and tie them all together with a storyline. The end result is a creative strategy game that forces your brain to be firing on all cylinders!

The game loads up very quickly, and the main menu is very well done. It looks nice, but is extremely simple and functional. There is the option to start a new game, continue your game if you have played it previously, open up an options menu, or view the games credits. The only “Option” in the menu is to turn the music on or off. While the music at the menu is alright, it does get a little bit old after a while of playing so it is nice to be able to turn it off if you want to.

Once you get to the actual game the first thing you’ll see is a pop up box that will start to tell the storyline of the game. The basic story is that a child named Simon Graham’s grandmother has been kidnapped and he has to find her! She’s left him clues along the way and so you’ll have to use your deductive reasoning skills if you want to rescue her!

I found some of the games to be easy to figure out quickly, while others required me to think about them for a while until I was able to find a way to complete them. While most of them I was able to figure out without too much trouble, there were a couple that had me stumped for quite some time!

The controls are very simple. While they will change from game to game, you are given instructions that will make them easy to learn quickly. A few of my favorite games types in this game were the word puzzles, and the math ones. With that said, they’re all a lot fun. Although it definitely would have been nice to have some kind of a “hint” feature for when you get really stumped.

All things considered the only really negative things I have to say about this app are that the music gets old pretty fast, and that if you do get stuck on a puzzle for a while it gets boring fast because of the linear nature of this game. With that said, ifyou are a fan of puzzle games, this one will keep you busy for a long time! It offers plenty of variation in gameplay, and it has a lot of different puzzles. Simon Graham and the Extraordinary just entered the App Store yesterday evening, and it is just $1.99. So if you like puzzle games then what are you waiting for? Check it out for yourself in the App Store today!

- David H.

Download Now!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Developer – The App House, LLC

URL: http://www.extraordinarytimepiece.com

© 2010, iPhone app reviews. All rights reserved. An expedite fee may have been paid for some reviews. We work diligently to ensure that this does not affect the content of the review and strive to keep the journalistic integrity in tack. All reviews are the personal opinion of the reviewer.

Tweet This Post 

Bookmark this Best Iphone App Review Post

Hide Sites