Carnation Software

As a guy who regularly checks apps for a living (on AppMinute), Sam Levin knows which apps work and which ones don't so when he recommends and app, you know he's using it. This week Sam tells us his ever-rotating list of top 3 apps (again, called his favorites, but they happen to be often-used). The apps discussed are: Read More

Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Friday, April 9, 2010 Category: iPod, iPhone, and iPad Gems: Apps, Games + More Welcome to our first non-gaming edition of iPad Gems! As with our earlier game-focused version, we’re looking at a huge collection of different iPad apps today—20, actually—giving each a relatively brief overview. Unlike the prior column, we’re looking here at apps that either didn’t exist on the iPhone and iPod touch, or never previously received attention in one of our Gems pieces before. They’re unrated for the time being, but our descriptions make clear whether they’re worthy of your time and attention. ABC Player Apart from the app’s unfortunately vertical-only browser design, ABC Player (Free) from ABC Digital is an exciting piece of software—arguably the single biggest step forward in media consumption on an Apple device in a long time. ABC Player is a full-fledged browser and streaming video player for the ABC television network’s TV programs, enabling you to watch complete episodes of 24 different shows, including present and prior seasons. Not surprisingly, ABC presents the videos with commercial interruptions and gives you only limited control over fast-forwarding and rewinding, but the commercials aren’t horribly long, and links are provided to buy the commercial-free episodes from iTunes. The crystal clear, high-definition videos can be viewed in vertical or wide format, but the browser to search the network’s content is only available when the iPad is vertical. Overall, this player strikes a very good balance between offering on-demand access to a great library of content and advertising support for that content. American Dreams Multieducator’s American Dreams - Speeches and Documents in US History HD ($3) is not going to win any awards for interface design—between the background textures, fonts, and utterly plain presentations of text documents, sometimes without proper formatting, it feels somewhat slopped together. But the concept is an exceptionally powerful demonstration of the iPad’s potential as a learning tool: you can read, hear, and sometimes see the full inaugural addresses of every U.S. President, read the Constitution, key pieces of legislation and Supreme Court decisions, and watch videos from critical moments in American history. To the extent that it’s built on publicly available content, American Dreams mightn’t seem like a big step forward, but there’s something far more compelling about being able to hear Teddy Roosevelt speak or watch John Kennedy’s Cuban Missile Crisis address than merely reading about them. A superior Read More

There are plenty of easy ways to share a photo quickly via the iPhone, and various apps that will let you share your location quite easily, and plenty more that will let you create voice notes and save them / share them.  But there are not any apps that I could think of that make it super easy to quickly package up a voice note, an image, and a Google Map with your current location and fire them off via email.  Until I discovered Say It & Mail It that is.  I ‘m so glad I did discover it yesterday, via this post over at TUAW, who referred to it as ‘Voice Memos on steroids ‘.  I don ‘t think that phrase does it justice though.  I ‘ve seen quite a few apps that knock the socks off Apple ‘s Voice Memos, but none that provide the clever combo that Say It & Mail It does. So here ‘s what you can do with Say It & Mail It: Record a voice note with two taps “ ‘Say It ‘ to start, and ‘Stop It ‘ to finish. Then play it back if you want to, to check that you ‘re happy with it. Add a picture “ a new one snapped from within the app or an existing one from your photo library “ again with just a minimum number of taps. Throw in a road or satellite map showing your current location, again with just a few quick taps. Then email off your voice note, image, and map with just one more tap.  By default when you tap ‘Mail It ‘ you ‘ll get a new mail with your own email address already filled in (so that sending yourself reminders and similar is dead simple).  You can change this and send to anyone you like of course.  The new mail will have your voice note attached (in compressed wave format that can be opened on a Mac or PC), as well as your image and a Google Map link (if you ‘ve chosen to include these). The app just got an update last night that adds an ability to adjust the picture quality for attached images. And here ‘s an example of what you “ or whoever you send one of these combo messages to “ will see in their inbox: I think the combination of voice, image, and Read More

Innovation is a wonderful thing. Developers are taking built in features of the iPhone and improving upon them. As Bookmarks is a subsystem for iPhone/iPod touch Audiobook listening, Say It & Mail it [iTunes Link] is a subsystem for Voice Memos that outclasses the Apple-designed feature by a mile. Apple's Voice Memo app lets you record a memo and optionally create an email to send it. That's pretty neat, but how about recording a voice memo and sending it as a pre-addressed email along with the option of attaching a picture (either shot from the camera, or photo library) and tossing in your location for good measure? Say it & Mail it does all this in the easiest and most intuitive way imaginable for $1.99. Start by tapping on 'Say it' and record a voice memo. Tap 'Play it' and listen. From this point you can Mail it, or tap on a camera icon to take or use an existing picture. Then click on the little 'Interstate 10 sign' icon and the built in GPS will find you, display a road map or satellite view of your location, and add the clickable Google Maps link to the email. You don't need to use it all, but you can't send email unless there is a voice memo created first. The other two options are, well, optional. Read on for more details & a video preview. In using the app, I was impressed with how well the user interface was thought out. I haven't seen many multi-faceted apps that make as much sense as this one. However, if you need a bit of help, the info screen displays detailed directions and links for even more help. There is no possibility of loading this app and then wondering: 'Now what?' One downside is that each time you want to add your location you'll need to re-enable the GPS function and then wait a bit for it to stabilize. It would seem to make more sense to have this enabled as soon as you click on the sign icon. I can't think of any reason to choose the option and then not use it. Future versions will include picture size and quality adjustments along with being able to send email to groups. It requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. If you have a need to send yourself media rich reminders, or email information without bothering Read More