It doesn’t matter whether a GPS signal is available to know what restaurants are nearby, or where the next gas station is. In fact, I’d easily trade Localscope for Google’s Places on Android (and who wants Hotpot when you have Facebook?). You’re never tethered to a single source of information with Google, Bing, Foursquare, Twitter, and Wikimapia for a combination of maps, current events, and augmented reality. Talk about holy wowza! And the thing is, Localscope is incredibly pretty. It’s the iPhone companion you’ll want on your homescreen if not in a nearby folder, and we’re going to run through some of the features that make this client worth its weight in bacon.
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Localscope Is Perfect For iPod Or iPhone
CalendarBar Tucks Event Reminders In Your Menubar
Clean Cut Code is known for making beautiful apps like Cloud Calendar, and it was only a matter of time before they brought some of their talent to the OS X desktop. CalendarBar takes on the inefficiencies of a traditional calendar client by providing a quick list of events in a beautiful timeline that can grab events from iCal, Google Calendar, and Facebook. Clicking on an event takes you to the event listing in its parent application – CalendarBar removes the distraction of busy calendar utilities, but provides shortcuts so you can add entries and gather additional information. The app features a some iOS overtones in its design, most obviously via the settings and exit button that adorn the bottom of the pop-up panel. Launching yesterday, the app is only $1.99 in the Mac App Store.
Push Browser: An App That Sends Webpages from iOS to OS X
Two weeks ago I realized I needed a way to send a webpage not only from my Mac browser to an iOS device, but from the iPhone or iPad to my Mac browser as well. The reason is simple: I find an interesting link on my iPhone I don’t want to bookmark or Instapaper, yet I want to simply check out later on the desktop. There’s no easy way to do it. So with the help from a friend and support from my Twitter followers, I created a folder action script for OS X that receives links shared from iOS through Dropbox and opens them in a new tab in the system’s browser. The method still works for me and it’s a really easy (yet powerful) way to save just about any link for later desktop usage, but I saw many had trouble trying to make the script work or integrate it with Dropbox. So here comes an app for that. Read more
Simple iOS Photo Editing with Crop and Straighten
Crop and Straighten by Fingertips is the photo editing app for iOS Apple should have built into their operating system. It’s a simple, fast, minimal solution to change the aspect ratio of your photos and crop them, on the iPhone and iPad. That’s it.
You fire up the app, and you’re asked to import a photo from your camera roll. Choose one, and you’re ready to edit. You can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific detail, or rotate the photo with the usual two-finger gesture and adjust it taking a look at the grid that appears on screen. Very simple. If you want to change the aspect ratio, tap the button in the toolbar and you can choose between 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 6:7 and 1:1.
If you need an app to quickly crop your photos (especially on the iPhone), Crop and Straighten is highly recommended. Go download it here.
QuickShot: A Custom Camera App That Automatically Uploads to Dropbox
A few days ago I reviewed DropPhox, an iPhone app that can upload photos and videos to Dropbox, also allowing you to set a specific size for uploads so you don’t have to worry about large files being transferred over 3G. DropPhox has some great features and, overall, works pretty well but in my review I mentioned the app could use some additional UI love and the possibility to upload media without tapping on a confirmation button.
QuickShot, a similar app I stumbled upon over the weekend, lets you upload photos to Dropbox but it does this with a polished interface and by completely working in the background. The developers achieved these results using a custom camera view that lists uploads right below the statusbar, without requiring you to confirm photos going off to Dropbox. You can, however, change this option in the settings. QuickShot also enables you to choose a Dropbox path, save pictures to the Camera Roll and set photo quality to low, medium and high. Medium works best for me.
Perhaps the best thing about QuickShot is its minimal and elegant UI that puts three buttons in the standard camera view, with one of them allowing you to pick photos from the iOS camera roll and send them to Dropbox. The app I reviewed, DropPhox, doesn’t have such a feature, or delicious interface.
QuickShot doesn’t do videos, but it’s a great solution for photos. Get it here at $0.99.
Twitterrific 4 Update Hides Dock Icon, Opens Links in Background
All hands on the Mac App Store! Get your update button ready for Twitterrific 4.0.1, a substantial update to the already awesome Twitter client that’s bringing loads of cool new features. Now supporting key commands for page-up & page-down, you’ll also find a “Full Metal Ollie” who’s ready to take on some of the client’s advanced features. Per your requests, you can now hide Twitterrific in the dock, open links in the background by default, and get notified of important mentions and messages through Growl.
If you don’t yet have Twitterrific, a free version is available at Twitterrific.com with ads, while a full version can be had for $9.99 on the site or on the Mac App Store.
Place Clock Combines iPhone Alarms and Location
Sometimes, you don’t want to be reminded of something you have to do at a certain time during the day – rather, you’d like to be notified of events and tasks you need to take care of in a specific location, say pick up the laundry at home or meet Mike at the office. But as the default iPhone clock application doesn’t allow you to attach location info to alarms, you’re forced to assign a “time” to everything.
Place Clock, a new app by Ocoomo, aims at fixing these issues by providing a solution that combines both time and location to create the ultimate alarm clock application that’s aware of where you are in the world, yet can rely on time-based alarms as the native Apple software can. What’s cool about Place Clock (I have been testing the app for 2 days now), is that it completely works in the background without draining too much battery (at least on the iPhone 4, might be different on the 3GS) and it continuously keeps track of your location as a possible way to initiate alarms. The app doesn’t need to be open all the time, but it can fire off an alarm when you arrive to, depart from a location or get in a specific range. This, combined with classic time-based features, makes for a very solid app that’s, at least for me, something new on the iPhone. Read more
MacStories Product Review: Joby GorillaMobile For iPod Touch
Joby has an affliction for legs and we wonder if it’s become a fetish. Their trademark product styling involves those signature curvy, twisting joints that allow cameras of all kinds to stabilize on a variety of uneven surfaces, including from the back of car seats, refrigerators, poles, or a rocky mountain landscape. All of their tripods are incredibly versatile, but I got to go hands on with one specifically made for the iPod touch, a variant of the GorillaMobile series. Check past the break for this clingy review!
DropPhox: The Easiest Way From Your iPhone’s Camera to Dropbox
DropPhox, a $1.99 app by DaVinciWare, provides an easy solution to take pictures and videos on your iPhone, and instantly upload them to the popular service Dropbox, used these days by a plethora of applications and external services. The app’s tagline, in fact, is “Snap and send to Dropbox”.
Once authenticated with your Dropbox credentials in the settings, the app will create a folder in your Dropbox to save photos and videos shot on the iPhone. By default, the path is /DropPhox. In the in-app settings you can also choose to keep GeoTags while uploading, whilst you’ll have to head over the Settings app to modify other preferences. The selection here is pretty rich: you can edit the date format (International, US, Japan), choose the photo size (keep original, or automatically scale to 600x800, 960x1280, 1200x1600) and select the badges you’d like to see on the homescreen and tab bar. I particularly appreciate the possibility to choose photo size as most of my iPhone 4 pictures will end up being resized at 600x800 anyway.
With DropPhox set up to upload to Dropbox correctly, there really isn’t much else to say: open the app and start shooting. As you take pictures and videos, the queue will upload them to Dropbox in the background. It’s very nice. After taking a photo or video, you’ll only have to tap on an additional “Use” button to send stuff to Dropbox.
DropPhox could use some additional UI refinements, but it works well as a way to get photos and videos on to Dropbox in seconds. Sure, everything will depend on the speed of your Internet connection, and that’s why the size settings are very welcome (especially when using an iPhone 4 on 3G). Go download it here.