This Week's Sponsor:

TRMNL

The E-ink Companion For Your Favorite Tools

Posts in reviews

Terra Is A Powerful, Free Alternative To iPad’s Safari

Currently the #1 free app in the iPad App Store, Terra Web Browser is one of those apps I didn’t know if I should take for a spin at first. There’s no shortage of alternative browsers for iPad: from the excellent iCab Mobile (which I use on a daily basis) to more innovative solutions like Sleipnir, it’s very easy to achieve the perfect browsing experience on the tablet if you think Safari is too limited and you’re willing to spend a few extra bucks. It needs to be mentioned, however, that unofficial browsers don’t get access to the latest Nitro Javascript engine goodness, and there’s no way on iOS to set a default browser other than Safari. Still, many users like me feel like having a (perhaps slower as far as webpage rendering goes) browser companion to Safari is necessary for more complex tasks like saving files locally, or displaying open pages as tabs under the main app’s toolbar. Again, iCab is quite possibly the perfect app if you’re looking for desktop-like interactions on the iPad.

Back to Terra, it comes from the guys behind ReaddleDocs and Calendars, and it’s free. I was a little skeptical at first because I really don’t need another browser on my iPad, but for what it does and for its current price, I have to say Terra is a really good app. All those positive ratings in the App Store can’t be completely wrong, after all. The app’s got a minimal interface with tabs, and you can go fullscreen with the tap of a button. Unlike many, many other apps that try to replicate fullscreen mode with semi-transparent icons on top of a webpage, Terra places a single button in the upper right corner. If you want to focus on something you want to read, hit fullscreen and forget about it. Thanks to the implementation of multitouch gestures, you can switch between open tabs with a three-finger swipe. The top toolbar gives you access to the usual functionalities of an iOS browser, such as address bar, refresh button, Google search, settings, bookmarks and action button. In the settings you can set a passcode for the app, choose to navigate in incognito mode (your cookies and history won’t be saved), change the user agent and modify the selected search engine. You can also import bookmarks from your computers, but you’ll have to use iTunes File Sharing for that. Bookmarks, history and “saved files” are located in a bookmarks popover on the left, but I couldn’t figure out how to export my Chrome’s bookmarks bar to Terra. I guess I’ll have to properly edit my exported .html file to make it work. The action button has got some interesting features as well: you can create a new bookmark, AirPrint a page, save a page locally for offline access, mail a link or forward to Safari.

What most impressed me about Terra, though, is how it handles tabs. Not only the app is stable and can handle dozens of open pages just fine (tested last night, 13 open tabs and none of them reloaded after several minutes of navigation), it’s also got a nice popup menu that will show a webpage’s full title as you tap & hold a tab. If you have a lot of open tabs and you can only see the favicons, that’s quite handy. Switching between tabs is not as fast as iCab, but it’s more than acceptable. The animations are smooth and, overall, the system works well.

Terra for iPad was a surprise. The app is free, but it does a lot of things better than many apps priced at $2.99 and above, without sacrificing its minimal approach to UI and responsiveness. Get it here.

Music Hunter: Intelligent Music Discovery For iPad

If there’s another industry the iPad is disrupting (together with media consumption, digital reading, medical applications – you name it), that’d be music discovery. The category isn’t nearly as popular as news readers and social aggregators and RSS apps, but two apps that came out in the last months which I also reviewed here on MacStories, Aweditorium and Discovr, are leading the way towards better, more interactive, beautiful discovery of new artists and songs on mobile devices. Where Ping failed at empowering people to share, buy and discover new music, apps like Aweditorium make it super-simple to “touch” music you’ve never listened to, explore genres and albums you didn’t know you might be interested in, share the results with your friends on Twitter and Facebook. The iPad does its job extremely well in this case: with a large screen that’s meant for swipes and taps, it easily becomes a piece of glass functioning as a wall for music. Like those walls in guitar shops advertising this week’s shows from those unknown bands your friend keeps talking about all the time. Here, that’s what music discovery on the iPad is all about: the intertwinement of social, digital stores, and personal taste.

Music Hunter is the latest entry in the music discovery market for the tablet, and at $0.99 it offers a sweet way to find new songs to purchase later on the iTunes store. While Aweditorium and Discovr are based on indie artists and correlation between music you already know, respectively, Music Hunter starts up with a window displaying two sliders: one for genres, one for styles. As you move the sliders, you can get to results like “high energy hip hop” or  “90’s electronic music” that will load a wall of artists with the first song picked for you. The results are generally accurate as they’re based on the echonest engine, the same infrastructure that powers Discovr for iPad. Like Discovr, song previews are fetched from iTunes and a button allows you to quickly jump to the store and hit Buy. You can scroll through the wall to see more songs and previews, or mark something as favorite and start exploring from there as the app allows you play “music similar to your favorites.” There’s no support for AirPlay (unlike Aweditorium), but you can check out quick artist bios from a popup window that can be activated from the bottom toolbar. What I like about Music Hunter is that it packs a lot of features: you can search, adjust the settings at any time (and thus load other genres and styles) or aggregate different artists and music styles into the Favorites for the ultimate personal playlist. Everything’s really minimal and good looking.

If you’re a fan of Aweditorium and Discovr, Music Hunter is the app to add to your collections of music discovery tools. It’s elegant, well integrated with iTunes and “intelligent” in the way it aggregates results from echonest. Go download the app here.

Percolater: A Visual Take On Feed Reading

There are mostly three ways to read articles coming from the web on the iPad nowadays: with an RSS reader; with social aggregators like Flipboard or News.me; with Instapaper or Read It Later. While aggregators and read later services are actually ways to plug into a social stream or a website, respectively, to fetch content to consume on an iPad, RSS is the most direct way to interact with a website: you log in with your Google Reader credentials, and you get the most recent feeds from your saved sources in chronological order. There are several great RSS apps for iOS out there, but the biggest problem of RSS is that articles lose their original “feel” – the way they look on a website as the author intended. Percolater, a $4.99 news reader for the iPad, wants to be an alternative that’s entirely based on the opposite concept: getting articles the way they would look in a web browser.

As the developers write in the app’s iTunes page, Percolater gives you the Internet “unprocessed” and “unfiltered.” Articles aren’t fetched in the form of textual excerpts or brief summaries with accompanying images: rather, the app loads a thumbnail preview for each article of your favorite sources, and allows you to swipe through these visual previews as if you were scrolling through the pages of a magazine – only the magazine is made of pages that look exactly the way they’re rendered in a web browser. Indeed, everything’s unfiltered. Including images, video, and ads.

Percolater can get content from your Twitter and Google Reader accounts. On the top section of the main page (which has a wooden background), the app also displays “popular” content it found on the web on a specific day, but I’m not sure how this section works. Maybe it gets the most popular articles from your Twitter account, or maybe it just runs a Google News search. You can import all your sources from Google Reader (and edit them later in the Settings), but you can’t add specific Twitter streams like users, favorite tweets, or lists. I wish Twitter integration went to a deeper level – as it stands now, Percolater only gets links from your timeline and renders them as browser previews in-app. So what happens when you tap on a thumbnail? You’re brought to another view that displays these “images” of articles stacked on top of each other, and you navigate between them with a vertical swipe. Alternatively, you can go back to the main screen with a horizontal swipe. The original tweet is displayed below the preview, and the quality of images is generally acceptable – obviously they’re not saved in super high-resolution, but it’s enough to get a glimpse of an article without reading it. If you do want to have a broader view of a post, however, you can tap on the preview to see the full-sized image Percolater saved. Tap the browser icon and, boom, Percolater loads the original link in a real browser window – meaning it will let you select text and do all the stuff a regular browser allows you to do. You can also share articles on Twitter or send them to Instapaper.

Percolater isn’t a product for everyone and it’s not perfect either. The app could use some speed optimizations and more Twitter functionalities, as well as a few fixes to reduce crashes on heavy load when the app is refreshing multiple sources at once. Still, Percolater is an interesting app in the way it puts the focus on the real web you see with a web browser. The app is available here at $4.99, and I’m looking forward to future updates. Read more

iPhone App Transmits GPS Data to WiFi iPad Using Personal Hotspot

Back in March, a series of reports from several blogs and publications claimed a WiFi-only iPad connected to an iPhone via Personal Hotspot was able to receive GPS data through the established connection, even if the iPad itself didn’t have any GPS capabilities. If GPS data was being transmitted thanks to Personal Hotspot, many speculated getting a 3G iPad was basically useless as the last advantage of internal GPS could be replaced by an iPhone and proper tethering. With Personal Hotspot and wireless GPS data transmission, many said, users could install navigation software on a WiFi-only iPad and obtain GPS points thanks, again, to Personal Hotspot and iOS 4.3. However, while the reports about WiFi iPads displaying semi-accurate locations in the Maps app were accurate, rumors about GPS and Personal Hotspot were quickly debunked as, it turned out, a WiFi iPad couldn’t rely on tethering for location purposes for more than a few minutes, as also demoed on video here. Rather, it seemed like a WiFi iPad could get location info while on the move thanks to WiFi access point and hotspot discovery – considering the recent debate on Apple and location cache, this doesn’t surprise anymore.

As it usually happens in the Apple community, though, what started as an inaccurate report or a simple proof of concept eventually turned into an app available for download on the App Store. AirLocation, a $0.99 universal app released today, enables WiFi iPad users to achieve the workflow described above: once connected to an iPhone using Personal Hotspot, an iPad running AirLocation will be able to fetch accurate GPS data from the iPhone and update your location in real-time as you move. AirLocation will have to run on the iPhone as well in order for the whole setup to work. I’ve personally tested the application during a 20-minute car trip to Viterbo, my town, and it really works as advertised: although AirLocation doesn’t come with all the features of the Maps app for iOS, it does keep track of your location in real-time on the iPad using GPS and it didn’t stop working after a few minutes. I could see the blue dot indicating my location moving on screen at the same time of the iPhone, which was transmitting data via Personal Hotspot.

AirLocation doesn’t come with many functionalities, but it does one thing well: getting accurate GPS data with iOS 4.3’s Personal Hotspot. Get it here.

MobileRSS for iPad Comes with New UI, Feed Management, Article Downloads

Deeply criticized by the iOS community in the past months for being too similar to Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder, MobileRSS by NibiruTech recently went under a major update and facelift. When I was told a few weeks ago to give a try to the app again, I was a little skeptical: how could there be an improvement when the previous version was so clearly inspired (to an extent, one could have called it a “rip-off”) by another app? Fortunately, my skepticism – while reasonable – couldn’t do anything about the fact that the new MobileRSS HD for iPad is a well-crafted application. Sure, it still hints at Reeder and Twitter for iPad in some interface schemes and navigation methods, but who doesn’t nowadays, honestly? The new standards created by popular apps like Twitter (panels, sliding actions, pull to refresh), Reeder (more vertical panels, popups) and Apple itself (landscape sidebars, popovers) can now be seen in hundreds of different applications from the most variegate categories. And if we refer to some of these features as “standards”, there’s nothing much to rip-off at this point.

MobileRSS Pro perhaps won’t replace Reeder and Mr. Reader on my homescreen, as the developers still have some issues to iron out (specifically with the unread items list not removing a selected read article after a refresh) and some interface changes to refine around the edges. From what I’ve seen so far, though, the app provides a very solid alternatives to the feed readers mentioned above: MobileRSS HD has got support for multiple Google Reader accounts, it lets you add and remove subscriptions thanks to full feed management (like Mr. Reader), and it’s got plenty of sharing options to forward interesting articles to Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, Read It Later, Delicious, and email. The app allows you to choose fonts from a popup menu, as well as change font size for optimal reading. On top of that, you also have classic Google Reader options like mark as read / unread, like, share, and note. Most of these functionalities have been implemented through popup menus that, with the new default dark theme, look really good on the iPad’s screen. The app is stable, fast and reliable – pretty snappy on the iPad 2, too.

Two features that particularly impressed me in this new version of MobileRSS are swiping actions and the possibility to download full articles for feeds that only come with excerpts. In the settings, you can select websites that have truncated feeds, and tell the app to always download the full content upon opening a new unread item. MobileRSS will then display an indicator showing that the full article is being fetched, and after a few seconds you’ll be able to read the entire article without jumping to a web view. On the other hand, navigating between feeds in MobileRSS looks a lot like Twitter for iPad: the main list displays unread items, and tapping on one of them will open a second panel on the right with the RSS view. The unread list will overlay the left sidebar, and with a right swipe you can go back to the main view. A toggle on the left allows you to switch between “all items” and “unread items.”

Overall, I think NibiruTech is doing a good job in differentiating MobileRSS from other RSS apps for the iPad, yet implementing concepts and UI elements that have become standards on the platform thanks to third-party software adoption. MobileRSS HD is available at $4.99 in the App Store, and you should give it a try. Read more

Radium Revisited: Review & Giveaway

If you listen to the B&B Podcast, Ben Brooks & Shawn Blanc arrived at a topic that would make for a good ice breaker over a cup of Caribou Coffee. If MacBooks weren’t yet on the table, the question of, “What are your five quintessential Mac Apps,” would quickly lead to a scurry of charging cables and open lids. If you asked me, I’d have a difficult time choosing three of the four (if the fifth includes OS X), but I’d have no problem in preceding that answer with Radium for the Mac.

You might ask me of what value Radium delivers that it can potentially keep FastScripts, TextMate, TextExpander, or some other key productivity app off of my MacBook. And the answer isn’t that these other apps aren’t as good, but rather that Radium sort of defines everything I grew up with in music. There are a lot of trends when it comes to curated online playlists, but nothing can top a good radio station playing all of my favorite singles. Package all the music I grew up into a delightful app that fills the room with great tunes, and Radium defines my sort of superhero theme songs. It’s the one app that will always start with my Mac and goes to sleep with it.

Read more

Cloud2go Is The First CloudApp iPhone Client With Streaming API [Giveaway]

If you use CloudApp as much as I do, you know that being able to upload files or links from an iPhone adds a whole new layer of sharing possibilities to an amazing service that was born with the Mac in mind, but it’s rapidly extending to other platforms and services with support for Windows machines, and direct integration into apps like Tweetbot. CloudApp makes sharing files (like screenshots, text documents, PSDs, and even audio files) and shortening links a real pleasure: not only the app is well integrated into the Mac’s ecosystem with great keyboard shortcuts and “raindrops” plugins, the developers also built a full-featured web application that allows you to set up your own custom domain, delete files, or check on stats.

How about the iPhone? Over the past year or so, I’ve been using Cloud2go by Matthias Plappert to quickly upload files from my iPhone and share them thanks to the app’s custom URL recognition. The fact that Cloud2go also packs full access to your CloudApp account and is neatly organized in sections based on your file types helped along the way as well. But the latest update to Cloud2go, released a few minutes ago in the App Store, makes things so much better: the new version introduces a Twitter-like swipe bar to delete / rename / make private / share files and links, as well as the possibility to watch files and stats update in real-time through CloudApp’s streaming API. This means that if you’re uploading a file from your Mac and you watch Cloud2go on your iPhone, you’ll see the file automatically pop up in the list as soon as the desktop upload is finished. Same applies to view counts: as people click on your links, you’ll see the counter go up in real time.

Cloud2go 1.1 also brings improved error handling, a faster sync algorithm and better navigation between uploaded items. Go download the app here, as it’s the best CloudApp client you can have on your iPhone right now. Read more

Rubbernet Monitors Your Mac Apps’ Network Usage

If monitoring bandwidth and network usage on a Mac is your thing, Conceited Software’s latest app might just be what you need. Rubbernet is a €30 tool that can be installed on a local machine and networked Macs (unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be support for Hamachi computers just yet) and provides an easier solution to more complex applications like Little Snitch, which besides network monitoring also offers firewall functionalities and lots of settings to play with on an app-by-app basis. Rubbernet, powered by a nice interface design and a daemon that runs in the background all the time on your Mac, allows you to see what apps are consuming bandwidth on your computers, and what kind of connections to remote servers are being established.

The app supports multiple accounts (as you can see in the screenshot above), but I haven’t been able to test it with another Mac on my local network. The Summary app gives you a glimpse of all the active apps that are connected to the Internet, including upload and download rates. The Connections and Activity tabs, on the other hand, will show you all the single IP addresses your Mac is connecting to including, in the case of single applications under Activity, a breakdown of all remote hosts, open ports, and a graphical visualization of downloads and uploads over time. These graphs update in real-time, with a minimal footprint on your Mac’s memory.

You can download Rubbernet here. A free trial is available, so you should check it out and see whether the app can recognize your networked Macs and improve the way you keep network usage under control. No one wants to let Dropbox eat all the bandwidth during an Apple event.

[Disclaimer: Conceited Software’s Rubbernet is a MacStories advertiser. This is not a sponsored review, as it’s entirely based on my personal experience with the app.] Read more

QR Code Reader Scan for iOS is Fast

Scan for iPhone & iPad

Scan for iPhone & iPad

If I have to pull out my mobile device to read QR codes, I want an app that’s fast, locks on, and scans codes quickly without any fuss. While there’s a plethora of QR code scanners on the App Store, one in particular I’ve fallen in love with is Scan. Maybe it’s because Barcode Scanner on the Android Marketplace is so damn slow (I’m tired of how long it takes the camera to focus), and I was blown away by how fast Scan was… on an iPod touch (which comparatively has a pretty crappy camera). As soon as I opened the app, I simply placed the QR code inside of the sights and just as instantly it opened a web page in its own browser. If it can’t scan a QR code (which is rare), Scan won’t complain. Just relocate your device or find a higher quality image: how painless Scan is to use is fantastic. Plus, it saves a history of everything you scanned in a simple list that’s perfect for how often I use it. Sure there are other apps that let you generate QR codes or offer a lot more features, but for sheer simplicity and fast scanning, Scan has become the mainstay reader on my device. You can download it for free on the App Store.