Best Iphone Apps Review

Times for iPad Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

I’m at a crossroads. I genuinely am. I want to like, if not love, Acrylic Software’s new Times for iPad app. It’s gorgeous. It’s sleek. And it’s just the sort of app that will make your non-iPad owning friends drool with envy. At first glance Times for iPad appears to be the second coming of RSS readers – a reader for the rest of us, formatted in slick newspaper style that’s hard not to like.

There’s just one problem. It doesn’t do some things I expect any RSS reader to do.

Once you get beyond the very palatable aesthetics (and they are a powerful sales inducer, no doubt), you discover that the core reader functionality just doesn’t measure up to other, similarly easy to use readers. Want to save an article to Instapaper or Read It Now? Nope. Want to import and sync your by-now-highly-curated Google Reader feeds? No can do. In today’s app store economy, these are as close to deal breakers as you can get. Without these kinds of features, Times for iPad is just another pretty but limited RSS reader. The developer told us that a direct sync with Google Reader isn’t in the works due to the very different way Times and Reader handle RSS feeds.

I should, of course, balance this review by stating what this first version of Times for iPad CAN do. It can organize by categories across the top of the screen, making it easy to transition from one area of your virtual newspaper to another. It can also save articles to a shelf for later reading if time is tight. This isn’t Instapaper, but I can see where it could be a solid replacement eventually (and you wouldn’t have to quit one app and open another just to read a story). Times for iPad also has a built-in web page viewer so you can view the article in its original format, and you can share any article you access via email, Twitter and Facebook. These last features are pretty much standard in every app these days, even quite a few games, so they don’t exactly make Times for iPad stand out from the crowd.

What DOES make Times stand out is its look and feel. There is no denying that this is a pretty app, and I’ve actually found myself wondering about moving all of my Google Reader feeds to Times, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s ready yet.

Those who already own Times for Mac OSX, however, might find this a welcome purchase, as you can sync your feeds between your desktop and iPad with seeming ease (once Acrylic releases version 2.0). The Mac app currently will import from other RSS apps and OPML files, so a Google Reader import is at worst a few steps away. This would make Times for iPad a better value, especially with the desktop sync feature.

For the moment, if you’re looking for a similarly-styled RSS reader as Times, I suggest you look at Early Edition, which WILL sync with Google. As for me, for the moment, I’m sticking with Reeder.

[ Times for iPad Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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Wide Angle Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Wide Angle is a news photography application that takes images from “big picture” posts – a collection of stunning snapshots, usually at least ten, from a single news story. Short captions are then applied, with the images being the centre of attention.

Presently, there are only two sources to view – The Big Picture and CBC Photo Galleries. There are a significant amount of galleries to view from within these two sources, but this is nonetheless a heavy limitation on the application. We hope that future updates will add more sources.

Navigation is simple, with a single vertical column along the left that lists the titles of all of the galleries. A circle beside them highlights which ones you’ve looked at fully (grey), partially (half grey half blue) and which ones you haven’t seen yet (blue). Viewing the images themselves reveals the Apple-style fast scroll feature, first seen on the iPad and now introduced on the iPhone with iOS4. This is very nice integration – it gives Wide Angle a much more official, respectable feel to it and makes it easier to navigate your way around particular galleries. The images are of reasonably high quality, making good use of the iPad’s generous display.

The captions have some opacity to them, and are limited in size which focuses the attention on the pictures. Captions can turned off with a single tap and remain that way for that particular gallery. Everything bar the picture (and caption, if you have them on) fades away after a few seconds, allowing the picture to take up the entire screen with no distractions. You can scroll the pictures manually with flicks of the finger if you wish.

Its drawback is its lack of sources. It operates by pulling pictures from specific RSS feeds, but there is no way to add your own. In addition, there is no search for a specific gallery. You can share a gallery link over e-mail, but Facebook and Twitter users are left empty-handed. What Wide Angle provides it does with precision: high quality, mesmerising images. It just needs to offer more.

[ Wide Angle Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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Popular Mechanics Interactive Edition Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Reviewer’s note: Functionality Rating refers to how you expect to interact with the magazine and how it actually works. The version reviewed is not the final product, and so this rating is likely to change positively in the future.

Popular Mechanics is the latest in a string of interactive magazines to enter the iPad App Store. With integrated video, animation and links, the future of magazines is surely digital.

The first thing that struck me about Popular Mechanics was its apparent lack of a contents page. But a single tap reveals this and so much more. A discreet menu bar at the bottom of the screen plays host to six buttons. On the very left is Contents – a large interactive box, vertically scrollable, revealing the seven major categories of Popular Mechanics and their articles. Next up is a beautifully designed page viewer. Each category of the magazine is colour coded, and each individual page is given its own coloured bar according to its category. A preview of each page is also available (and adjustable in size), with a single tap pointing you to exactly where you want to go. Options to share a specific page via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter also exist. Individual pages can be bookmarked (loving this), with titles automatically added according to the contents.

A live news feed is also available from the menu bar, meaning there’s always new content to read. The design is succinct and smart, with two fixed scrollable columns – one for a list of content, one for the articles themselves. The final menu bar button allows you to leave feedback and personal comments.

Back to the magazine itself – specifically its design. Videos can be spotted with a gently pulsating play sign and some even have interaction within them. All ad videos were YouTube embedded, and all article videos and animations were integrated into the magazine itself – meaning if you aren’t connected to Wi-Fi or don’t have 3G, you still have the premium features that a digital magazine offers. Text, although not adjustable, is reasonably sized. There is a bit of a discrepancy between longer articles that scroll vertically and scroll horizontally – in other words, for some it was flick down, others a flick across. The norm – which I favour – is for each article to be on its own page, vertically scrollable. This review is covering a version still in development, meaning such confusion should be made void with later versions. Popular Mechanics expect to be rolling out fully-digital versions of their magazine by the end of the year.

That said, the interaction is to be found on a number of pages. One particular feature worth noting was a “swipe for more” gesture, which kept the text body of the article where it was, but the top half of the page becomes a horizontally scrollable area that offered more information on a certain article.

The problems for Popular Mechanics are limited and nit-pickety at worst. The only significant problem I was faced with was a frozen screen when I stopped a particular video mid-way through. Something a quick fix should resolve. The magazine does not rotate, but is instead built almost entirely for portrait mode. The very few times that you do need to rotate (for video), it’ll tell you first and won’t activate the video until you do so.

I was very impressed with Popular Mechanics’ integration. It feels like what a digital magazine should be like. And there really isn’t a better device than the iPad to read it on.

[ Popular Mechanics Interactive Edition Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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Flipboard Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Here’s the idea: make an app that pulls content from popular social networks and formats into a slick, ‘zine inspired interface. It’s a simple idea. But is it practical? Flipboard certainly thinks so, and they’ve invested quite a bit of design and promotion into it. The result is a social networking ‘zine that is good-looking and easy to browse, but still awaiting some more advanced features.

Flipboard works like this: connect the app to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Select up to seven other Twitter feeds or lists that you want to treat as “news,” then browse them via an interface that looks less like Twitteriffic and more like Newsweek. In other words, turn your Facebook friends into something cooler! The appeal is not the content, but the presentation. At a basic level, it is just another feed reader; the big selling point is the interface–the way you read your feeds.

And on that level, boy does Flipboard make my Facebook friends look good. Mimicking the look of slick modern ‘zine, Flipboard really turns mundane links and albums of Little League photos into very appealing things. The very posts that you might gloss over as you browse your friends status updates become front-and-center eye-catchers here, complete with headlines and graphics. It does all this through a responsive and intuitive touch control that lets you flip pages just like a book. Everything moves smoothly, and I did not detect any real glitches in the interface. It’s really well done and a treat to use.

Having said that, I also have to say this: right now, Flipboard feels more like a novelty than a killer app. It doesn’t mine the social networks popular links, doesn’t follow hashtags or trending topics, doesn’t allow you to make new status updates or create new tweets within the app. It’s great at what it does, but what is does is limited.

In the case of Flipboard, though, I am willing to temper my judgment of these limitations and put some faith in the future. This is not a small developer firing off their first app, but instead a major venture by a group with a lot of capital behind it. And the developers are promising that more dynamic feed sorting and other features are in the pipeline, as users begin to fuel and shape Flipboard content. If they realize the apps full potential, then it will be a beautiful thing.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one small but important issue here. Flipbook, for all its slickness, apparently wasn’t ready to handle the level of early interest it has generated. After dealing with Facebook lockouts in the first launch days, they’ve initiated an invite system, which means you may have to wait a couple days before you can make use of the apps primary selling point. And that sucks, just a bit, though it’s certainly one of those things that won’t be a lingering issue once the hype dies down.

So, is Flipboard a novelty social network reader, or a new paradigm in popular media? The jury is still out. If the developers follow through on the potential the app holds, it will certainly rise above the status of eye-candy and become a singular way to consume your daily dose of social media. I, for one, can’t wait.

[ Flipboard Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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Sports Illustrated for iPad Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

When it was released in December, the tablet demo of Sports Illustrated (see below) set off a firestorm online. The new SI promised interactivity, live sports scores, and the great sports coverage readers have come to expect, all wrapped in a beautifully designed application. Since the video’s introduction, the iPad has been released and dozens of magazine properties have taken their brands and content to the App Store. Few have succeeded in matching the design or functionality promised by SI’s initial prototype. Now, with the official release of the Sports Illustrated app, the video has finally come to life.

Delivering on Old Promises
Fortunately, Sports Illustrated’s app includes most of the features that were promised in the initial tablet demonstration. It far outperforms the official Time Magazine app, also published by Time Inc. One of the coolest features of the app is the “wheel,” a feature that enables sharing, emailing, player stats, and related photos and articles to be accessed simply by holding a finger down on an article. This means, however, that there’s no traditional copying and pasting available in the app. The share feature luckily makes up for this shortcoming,

Live Scores and Articles

Like Time Magazine’s application, the Sports Illustrated app also integrates nicely with live content from SI’s website to ensure that articles and issues are never out of date. Individual articles can pull up “related articles” or “related stats” from the aforementioned wheel. Better yet, users can get live stats and articles from SI.com directly within the app.

One of the Few Standouts
The Sports Illustrated app is an all star in the App Store. That said, it’s not difficult with the lackluster efforts from the magazine industry thus far. The SI app has great navigation and doesn’t bother with any of the more bizarre vertical and horizontal reading schemes. Instead, it sticks to the basics, presenting great content and adding interactivity and new features only where they’re of use to the reader. The SI app should serve as a great example to publishers of what their magazines should be like when ported to the iPad.

[ Sports Illustrated for iPad Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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