Posts tagged iphone

Tumblr (iPhone App) — Tumblr, Inc.

A year and a half ago I reviewed version 1.0 of the official iPhone app for Tumblr, the popular microblogging (and hipster culture coverage) platform. In the interim, as the social media site continued to gain an astonishment of new users, the app underwent a few minor changes that necessitated increments in the minor numbers of the app’s version. But just recently the app was redesigned seemingly from the ground up, thereby finally promoting its version to 2.0.

What’s new in this brand new version? Practically everything. The most prominent change is, of course, the interface. Tumblr apparently used the interface of the Instagram iPhone app as a template: as in the Instagram app, there’s a bottom bar in the Tumblr app populated by five buttons, the middle button being slightly bigger and similar to Instagram’s Share button. That button is labeled here as Post, and it opens a selection grid of post types: text, photo, link, quote, audio, and video. Most posting options found in Tumblr’s full site post editor—among these are options to publish a post immediately or save it for later and fields in which to specify tags and URL slugs—can also be found here by swiping to the left while you’re on the post editor page.

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The Classics (iPhone App) — Penguin Group USA

With the gradual but successful adoption of e-reading by bookish folk across the globe came the challenge for traditional publishers to level their marketing strategies at the newly established niche ruled by Nooks and Kindles and e-books and reading apps. A few publishers remain adamant in their devotion to publishing books in good old bound-paper form, but many companies have long allocated a great deal of their resources toward electronic publishing. Penguin, the largest publishing company in the world, is of the latter inclination.

Reinforcing the renowned publisher’s already impressive e-arsenal, which includes the electronic versions of most of its backlist and new releases and the “Amplified and Enhanced” iPad editions of literary greats like Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, is the Penguin Classics complete annotated listing iPhone app. Nope, the free app is not a collection of e-books under the Penguin Classics umbrella. (If it were it wouldn’t be free.) Rather, the app, released in celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Penguin Classics imprint, is basically an online catalogue of classics, optimized to be easily accessed right from and on your iPhone-clutching palm.

The app is centered on exploration of books which bear the Penguin Classics imprimatur. Items in the catalogue can be searched by title and by author, but two main categories are provided: Essential Classics, which includes perennial bestsellers and Pulitzer Prize winners, and Newest Classics, which lists books recently added to the Penguin Classics arm.

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Kindle for iPhone — Amazon

Just recently Amazon released a major software update to its hugely popular, all-time number one bestelling product, the Kindle e-ink e-book e-reader. The update brought several new, much publicized features. With the new software version installed on your Kindle, you can now enjoy a new and easier layout for your magazine and newspaper subscriptions, you can immediately leave a rating and get recommendations based on a book you just finished, and you can enable your notes and highlights for public viewing.

But the most prominent among the new features is arguably the inclusion of real page numbers. Previously, the contents of Kindle books were marked only by location numbers, which remained the same however you resize or reformat the text. Apparently a lot of Kindle users, especially those who are members of book clubs or are academic researchers given to citing their sources, demanded real page numbers, which match those in their print counterparts. This in-demand feature is now also included in the Kindle app for iPhone and other supported Apple devices.

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ReadMore If you’re a voracious reader or a self-styled book blogger (read: me), you’ll definitely find ReadMore, a reading log iPhone application, very useful. Being a reading log of sorts, ReadMore is designed to maintain a record of your reading habits, a list of your currently-reading, read and to-be-read books, and other pieces of information that are relevant to your vice of choice. ReadMore has three main sections, namely Reading Stack, Reading Log, and Help. The third section, Help, is fairly self-explanatory: it provides the user with an image-enhanced tutorial on how to properly use the app. It is essentially where you can learn how to go about using the first and second main sections. The Reading Stack shows a stack of books that you are currently reading or books that you plan to read. Adding a book to the stack is quite easy: simply tap the + button above the stack, enter the title and author of the book, and then the last page to read in the book, which will be used by the app to assess your reading progress later on. You can also type in a summary or other details about the book as well as choose a color and texture to distinguish a book from the other items in your stack. Tapping on a book in your stack will call up the Book view, where data related to your reading of the book are shown, including the number of pages read on the current day, the number of pages left to read, the number of pages read since you started, and information pulled from your reading sessions. Within the Book view, you can see a big green button labeled, “Begin Reading.” Pressing this button marks the start of a reading session, whereupon a new view is called up on the screen, that of a timer that will record your time as you read. A new reading session will automatically start at the page you left off, effectively serving as a bookmark, but you can change the page number if you happen to want to read a different place in the book by simply tapping on the “Start on Page” field above the timer. Below the timer are three buttons: one for Pause, one for Stop, and another for Notes. The Pause button pauses the reading session, naturally, so the timer is temporarily stopped while you attend to an interruption. Tapping the Stop button will end the current reading session, and you will be prompted to enter the last page you read during the session. The Notes button enables you to write notes as you read (e-marginalia, if you will), a feature that is doubtless useful for users who write book reviews regularly. Lastly, the Reading Log shows a sorted-by-month list of books you have archived upon finishing them. You can export this list, as well as the data contained within reading sessions, as a .csv file for reference. Quick TakeValue: Medium.Would I Buy Again: Yes.Learning Curve: Low. The help section explains almost everything you need to know. Who Is It For: Avid readers and book bloggers. What I Like: Percentage and graphical progress indicator. Note-taking and exporting capability. Pseudo-background-running app, i.e., the timer seems to still run even when the app is quit to access other functions of the iPhone. What I Don’t: A sporadic display bug, sometimes showing ‘99’ on the app’s currently-reading count badge when it should show just ‘1’. Final Statement: Unless you’re a passionate reader who likes to see your reading habits assessed, ReadMore may not be very useful to you. But if you are, it will indeed push you to do what its name says.

ReadMore

If you’re a voracious reader or a self-styled book blogger (read: me), you’ll definitely find ReadMore, a reading log iPhone application, very useful. Being a reading log of sorts, ReadMore is designed to maintain a record of your reading habits, a list of your currently-reading, read and to-be-read books, and other pieces of information that are relevant to your vice of choice.

ReadMore has three main sections, namely Reading Stack, Reading Log, and Help. The third section, Help, is fairly self-explanatory: it provides the user with an image-enhanced tutorial on how to properly use the app. It is essentially where you can learn how to go about using the first and second main sections.

The Reading Stack shows a stack of books that you are currently reading or books that you plan to read. Adding a book to the stack is quite easy: simply tap the + button above the stack, enter the title and author of the book, and then the last page to read in the book, which will be used by the app to assess your reading progress later on. You can also type in a summary or other details about the book as well as choose a color and texture to distinguish a book from the other items in your stack.

Tapping on a book in your stack will call up the Book view, where data related to your reading of the book are shown, including the number of pages read on the current day, the number of pages left to read, the number of pages read since you started, and information pulled from your reading sessions.

Within the Book view, you can see a big green button labeled, “Begin Reading.” Pressing this button marks the start of a reading session, whereupon a new view is called up on the screen, that of a timer that will record your time as you read. A new reading session will automatically start at the page you left off, effectively serving as a bookmark, but you can change the page number if you happen to want to read a different place in the book by simply tapping on the “Start on Page” field above the timer. Below the timer are three buttons: one for Pause, one for Stop, and another for Notes. The Pause button pauses the reading session, naturally, so the timer is temporarily stopped while you attend to an interruption. Tapping the Stop button will end the current reading session, and you will be prompted to enter the last page you read during the session. The Notes button enables you to write notes as you read (e-marginalia, if you will), a feature that is doubtless useful for users who write book reviews regularly.

Lastly, the Reading Log shows a sorted-by-month list of books you have archived upon finishing them. You can export this list, as well as the data contained within reading sessions, as a .csv file for reference.

Quick Take
Value: Medium.
Would I Buy Again: Yes.
Learning Curve: Low. The help section explains almost everything you need to know.
Who Is It For: Avid readers and book bloggers.
What I Like: Percentage and graphical progress indicator. Note-taking and exporting capability. Pseudo-background-running app, i.e., the timer seems to still run even when the app is quit to access other functions of the iPhone.
What I Don’t: A sporadic display bug, sometimes showing ‘99’ on the app’s currently-reading count badge when it should show just ‘1’.
Final Statement: Unless you’re a passionate reader who likes to see your reading habits assessed, ReadMore may not be very useful to you. But if you are, it will indeed push you to do what its name says.

Wallace and Gromit: The W Files

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Wallace and Gromit’s first ever appearance, in the stop-motion animated short film A Grand Day Out, a series of digital comics featuring Britain’s world-famous cheese-loving inventor and Dogwarts University alumnus duo was released as native iPhone/iPod touch apps. I just downloaded and read issue no. 1, ominously titled The W Files (opening panels in above photoset). It is free for a limited time (Crikey!) and is, unsurprisingly, cleverly funny.

When strange shapes and flashing lights are seen in the night sky, there are only two paranormal investigators that can solve the problem. Sadly they aren’t available; Wallace and Gromit might as well have a crack at it. After all, what could possibly go wrong?