"If there is an app for that"

ThisWon, Otto, Fareness, and other apps to check out this weekend

May 28, 2016 by macjeff

Looking for a new app or game to help pass the time over the long Memorial Day weekend? iDB is here to help. In the latest edition of our Apps of the Week roundup, you’ll find a social networking app for polling friends and family, a podcast discovery app, a unique travel app, and two awesome new games.

ThisWon

Have trouble making decisions like where to go on vacation, or which shoes to buy? You need to check out ThisWon. ThisWon is a social platform where users can pose a question to their friends and family and receive instant feedback. You can post photo-based or text-based polls, and users can respond with a single-tap vote or give longer replies. Like all social networks, ThisWon’s usefulness to you will depend on who else in your circle is using it, but it seems like it might be worth checking out. This app is available for free.

Otto

Otto is an app that helps you discover news and podcasts based on your interests. Think Pandora for podcasts. It uses your interests and listening habits to find stories you’ll be interested in. At the push of a button, you can get a list of broadcasts tailored to your tastes and preferred length. For right now, Otto is available at no cost and there are no ads (outside of native podcast ads). This app is available for free.

Fareness

There’s no shortage of travel bargain hunting apps in the App Store, but few of them work like Fareness. Fareness breaks down travel deals by date and destination, so you don’t have to manually perform numerous searches with varying dates to find the best price. You just tell the app how long you want your trip to be, give it an idea of where you want to go (or select Popular Destinations), and let it do the work. Flight fare data is pulled from licensed sources for hundreds of millions of flights. Fareness is available for free.

Numito

Here is a gorgeous-looking game called Numito. It’s described as a mix of number and word puzzles, that comes with daily and weekly challenges. In the Letters Round, create up to 3 words with the given set of random numbers. In the Numbers Round, you’ll have to solve the puzzle to get the correct number. Numito also lets you take your friends and enemies on in a multiplayer mode, courtesy of Game Center. This game is available for free.

Hatoful Boyfriend

The visual novel-turned-hit-PC game is now available on iOS. For those unfamiliar with the title, you play as the only human student in a school for talented birds. You chat with birds of every feather from narcoleptic school instructors to pigeon biker gangs on your way to flirty encounters potential suitors that set your hear aflutter. I know it sounds weird, but this is apparently an extremely popular game. So if you’re up for trying something new and different this weekend, this seems like a solid option. Hatoful Boyfriend is available for $4.99.

More apps you should check out

• Bookmark apps and iTunes content and install them later with Lookmark for iPhone
• New Bravo, Syfy and E! apps available on fourth-gen Apple TV
• Minimal arcade game Octagon goes free as Apple’s App of the Week
• Weed through your emails with natural gestures in Morning Mail for iPhone
• Best voice recording apps for iPhone and iPad
• MailTime displays your emails as threaded conversations

These apps have been updated

• Google’s iOS app gains Accelerated Mobile Pages, sports highlight videos in Now cards
• Day One 2 gains Spotlight integration, On This Day and other new features
• Your Periscope broadcasts are now saved permanently by default
• Pixelmator for Mac gains precise selection tools, all-new Photos extension and more
• 1Password for Mac gains new browser support, anchored Large Type window and more
• Google Maps gains new voice controls in navigation, Street View tweaks and more
• iDB app update: you can now remove ads, get push notifications, and more
• Airmail 3 for OS X is here, brings best features from its iOS edition to the Mac

Battle to Victory in Mech Rush

May 27, 2016 by macjeff

Reviewed by Marilyn Chau

Booty Bay Limited brings Mech Rush to the ever expanding lineup of endless runner games.

Mech Rush is well designed fun and challenging game that really sets itself apart from average endless runners with fun personalization features throughout.

Features:

The features of this app could pretty much be guessed just based on its name alone. Mech Rush is a mech-based free runner app that sets players free to create their own characters.

Each decision you make can alter the way your Mech conquers in-app obstacles; this makes it possible to switch up the skill sets of your character really easily to allow for maximal personalization.

In-game levels are all different, with impressive graphics throughout the different worlds you have to run/battle through.

Thankfully the controls on Mech Rush are easy to use and really make sense, particularly if you’re used to other similar endless runner games.

Bosses of each world keep this game interesting, with each one being an entirely different challenge to conquer.  Mech Rush loads and operates smoothly on compatible iOS devices; I didn’t have any problem with lag when playing this app.

Appearance and Layout:

Mech Rush iPhone Game

Mech Rush, like many other games in its genre, doesn’t have to focus on graphics and appearance as the main contributor to its appeal.

However, the makers of Mech Rush definitely put a good deal of attention into the graphics of their game; Mech Rush’s characters and levels all have details in them that are way above par for free apps of its type.

The screen for setting your particular Mech options seems a little bit crowded, but this can be expected when considering the number of different ways that Mech Rush allows you to vary your character design.

Navigation through Mech Rush is easy as well, and for anyone who is already familiar with endless runner concepts, Mech Rush won’t be hard to get the hang of at all.

Value:

Mech Rush is a free app. It has got great graphics for a free runner game, and the controls work well for the style of the game.

Mech Rush is definitely a challenging game, but the level of difficulty is far from impossible.

While it’s hard to recommend Mech Rush over a lot of the other free runner apps on the market today, it is fair to say that this app can certainly hold its own.

In fact, for fans of Mechs, Mech Rush just might be the ideal free runner game.

Mech Rush iPhone app requires iOS 7.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

TheiPhoneAppReview’s rating:

Free Apps to Download TODAY ONLY 05/27/2016

May 27, 2016 by macjeff

Amplifind Music Player and Visualizer , Animal Math Games for Kids in Pre-K, Kindergarten and 1st Grade Learning Numbers, Counting, Addition and Subtraction Premium , Stackables - Layered Textures, Effects, and Masks and more

iPhone:

Choose any photo from your library or take a new one from within the app. You’ll then see a scrollable list of more than 200 unique effects, filters, and textures appear down the right-hand side of the screen. Stackables allows you to apply as many or as few of these as you like by creating separate layers for each. The layers can be customized in a variety of ways, and you’re able to rearrange them after the fact by dragging and dropping them into place. The app also includes 20 professional adjustment tools, the ability to create your own formulas and share them via email, and three resolutions to choose from.

Universal:

For us, Amplifind is all about the visuals. Those crazy, trippy visuals! You’re able to sort and play all of the music from your library, or pull music from cloud services like SoundCloud and Spotify. Songs can be favorited for quick access later on, searched for, and added to playlists. Then hit play and watch them come to life through the 10 built-in visualizers. Album artwork can take the place of the visualizers if you desire, and you’re able to choose from seven color themes.

To help each animal make their way home, your child will need to successfully complete a variety of math activities. Math activities range from adding and subtracting to counting and identifying geometric shapes. The app includes a total of 13 adorable animals to help home, and more than 100 activities. It also includes professional narration and instructions, and loads of positive encouragement.

Pressing teeny, tiny little buttons while driving is not only difficult but also dangerous. Skiplayer helps you stay safe by doing away with albums and playlists and instead shuffling your entire library. It also turns your iDevice’s screen into one big controller, allowing you to tap to pause, swipe to skip, and tap and hold to never hear a song again.

It takes mere seconds to record a transaction in DayCost. Just swipe down on the screen, pick a category, enter an amount, and swipe up to record. You’re also able to attach a payment type, photo, and note to your transactions. DayCost allows you to create a budget and view graphical reports to keep your finances in check. It also includes passcode protection, iCloud support, and the ability to create custom categories.

Boss Grimshaw has stolen all of the town’s gold and locked it up in piggy banks and safes. It’s up to you to save the day by leading trails of fire to the explosives. You’re able to utilize everything from flaming wagons to cannons, but be prepared for anything, because Grimshaw is one tricky bandit. The game includes a total of 150 levels to play through.

LightWeaver hunts down the edges and contours of your photos and bleeds out pixels in every direction. You’re able to choose from dozens upon dozens of effects and tweak them in a variety of ways. You’re also able to add color overlays. The whole idea is to tinker and see what you can come up with.

Choose any photo from your library or take a new one from within the app. You’ll then see a scrollable list of more than 200 unique effects, filters, and textures appear down the right-hand side of the screen. Stackables allows you to apply as many or as few of these as you like by creating separate layers for each. The layers can be customized in a variety of ways, and you’re able to rearrange them after the fact by dragging and dropping them into place. The app also includes 20 professional adjustment tools, the ability to create your own formulas and share them via email, and three resolutions to choose from.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free

Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

May 27, 2016 by macjeff

Everyone likes free apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers put paid apps on sale for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up fast. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.

The post Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time appeared first on Digital Trends.

Weed through your emails with natural gestures in Morning Mail for iPhone

May 26, 2016 by macjeff

Instead of waking up to tons of unread messages, most of which are probably spam, wouldn’t it be nice if your email client separated new messages from the other ones, so that weeding through your inbox in the morning were a breeze?

That’s exactly the problem that a free iPhone app by Moscow-based developer Andrey Usoltsev, aptly named Morning Mail, solves efficiently with its focus on natural gestures and simplicity.

Billed as "Tinder for mail", this lightweight app shows only one new email at a time, presented in the form of a card that you can swipe away. Other gestures are available for sorting out your morning emails easily, but email die-hards can optionally explore their messages in the traditional list view as well.

Tinder for mail

After launching the app, you will be asked to connect with your favorite email service. Morning Mail supports Gmail, iCloud and Yahoo Mail accounts but you can only add one account without upgrading via the In-App Purchase mechanism.

If you’re one of the people who always want to keep their inbox clean, Morning Mail will help you get to inbox zero by separating new emails from other mail, so that you can deal with them in the morning more easily. In the video below, you can see how the app represents new emails as cards which can easily be sorted out with simple gestures, one at a time.

To delete the message, swipe its card to the left. Swiping to the right archives the message while swiping down marks it as read/unread. You can also perform these actions by tapping the three icons at the bottom of the email card.

List view, composing and more

If you’d rather sort through your emails in list view, you can.

Just tap the Inbox tab alongside the bottom to view your emails in the traditional list view. Individual messages can be swiped left/right in list view to delete/archive them. To see your archived messages, tap the Archive tab at the bottom.

Tapping the More tab shows you additional mailboxes, such as Trash, Sent, Junk and more, depending on your account type.

Tapping the Pencil icon in the tab area alongside the bottom launches a compose sheet, allowing you to quickly fire up a message to a contact. It’s interesting that Morning Mail supports sending multiple photo attachments.

Just tap the blue Attachments icon in the message body, choose Add Photo and then select an image from your Photos library to attach to the message. Tapping the button again lets you review your attachments, add more photos to the message and remove ones you have already attached.

Using multiple inboxes

As mentioned, you only get to use a single email account at a time.

Adding additional accounts requires a one-time 99-cent In-App Purchase per account, or you can buy a $4.99 Unlimited upgrade to add as many inboxes as you like.

Thankfully, developer has added another interesting upgrade option for those short on cash: Pay by Share. With Pay by Share, tweeting out about the app or sharing Morning Mail on Facebook gives you an additional inbox at no charge.

This is probably the smartest way to have the best of both worlds: a freemium app that anyone can download and start using without paying a cent, with the option to support the developer by purchasing additional accounts or get a bonus mailbox by helping spread the word about Morning Mailbox on social media.

Snoozing, more providers and other upcoming features

In its upcoming update, Morning Mail will brought out the snooze feature.

If you don’t want to determine whether the message at hand should be deleted, read or archived and would like to deal with it at a later stage, you will be able to swipe up to reveal the Snooze option, as evidenced on the teaser image below.

As you can see for yourself, emails can be snoozed until later today (6pm), tomorrow (8am) or next week (Monday at 9am). Usoltsev has not said whether there will be a setting to customize snooze times as it would certainly make a nice addition.

The developer is also working on an Android edition of Morning Mail and has confirmed that a future update will add support for labels and Outlook.com/Exchange accounts, Yandex Mail and a bunch of other providers, support for signatures, push notifications, the ability to customize swipe actions and more.

Pricing and availability

Morning Mail requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 8.0 or later. The app is English-only and lacks a native watchOS 2 component for your Apple Watch and iPad-optimized interface.

Download Morning Mail free of charge from the App Store.