Microsoft has rolled out its popular MSN app to the USA and Canada. It was originally launched at the end of January as a UK only release. The MSN app brings you all of the latest news, sports, entertainment and much more form the Microsoft network in a beautiful, magazine style layout on your iPad.

MSN is now available on your iPad – easily swipe to find your favorite news, sports entertainment, autos and money articles & videos in one place. Easily share what you find with your friends on Facebook,Twitter or e-mail a link to the article. Of course you can view articles, photos and videos in either portrait or landscape modes with MSN for iPad. Need to dig deeper on something you just read? We’ve built Bing right into the top of the app for easy searching.

The app will also let you gain access to your Hotmail accounts and Windows Live Messenger. It is a well laid out application that makes full use of the iPad’s screen and touch interface. The screen is split into small rows which you an flick through to find an article of interest. You can even download the whole days news for offline reading later. Microsoft has made a very nice news application for the iPad.

Free – Download Now

Yearly is an iPhone app that pulls the birthday and anniversary information stored in your Contacts and displays them in a nice chronological list so you can keep track of which of these important dates are coming up next. When your friend’s birthday arrives, Yearly will send you a notification and you can quickly text, email, or call from within the app.

Since Apple’s built-in Contacts and Calendar apps support birthdays, you may be wondering the point of an app like Yearly. With the beautiful list that Yearly generates, it’s really easy to keep track of who’s birthday or anniversary is next in line and plan accordingly. You can also set it up to send you a notification 1-14 days before the events so that you are reminded if you want to buy a gift. Yearly has also implemented some nice gestures so that sending a Happy Birthday text is just a quick swipe away.

Tapping on a contact will bring you to a stripped down version of the info you’d find in the Contacts app. In nice big letters, Yearly tells you how old the person will turn on his or her next birthday and you’ll also find any notes you’ve stored for that contact, their phone number and email address. One piece of information that you find in Yearly but not Contacts is your friend’s zodiac sign.

Yearly may be duplicating some functionality of Apple’s built-in apps, but it’s focusing on a single function — keeping track of birthdays and anniversaries. The removal of unrelated information and the gorgeous UI is what makes Yearly a desirable app.

$0.99 – Download Now

“When it comes to storing and syncing files online, Dropbox’s accessibility from multiple platforms, easy to use interface, free starting service, and reasonably priced professional services make it hard to beat.”

Dropbox is one of several high-profile cloud storage and sync solutions, but it comes out on top due to its fantastic iPhone (and iPad) support, multi-platform availability, easy to use interfaces, excellent availability and reliability, and highly competitive pricing.

Apple’s iCloud is a great way to keep your personal information, your device data, and a few, compatible files like iWork backed up and in sync. However, iCloud doesn’t provide anything beyond that. If you want to store files strictly online, if you want to access and edit them from other platforms, if you want past versions of files kept available, if you want an actual filesystem to work with, then iCloud isn’t enough. (Anything a previous user of iDisk on MobileMe or .Mac knows and laments.)

Dropbox does all this, easily and transparently, and more.

Dropbox looks just like an iPhone version of Windows Explorer or Mac OS X Finder... or the old iDisk app

Dropbox for iPhone opens up with a list of all the files and folders you have stored on their servers, arrange alphabetically. You can swipe up or down to browse, or just like Contacts, you can tap a letter on the right side of the screen to jump to files and folders that begin with that letter. It’s like a very simple, iPhone optimized version of Windows Explorer or Mac finder.

If you tap on a file your iPhone understands, like text, HTML, PDF, documents, music, or video, Dropbox will open it up and show it to you. If it’s an image file and the folder you’re in has multiple images, Dropbox will show you a small gallery button at the top left and if you tap on it, will switch to a thumbnail view for easier browsing. You can even delete files right from your iPhone if you want to.

Dropbox gives special treatment to images, including a gallery view option

If another app on your iPhone understands and can do more with that file, like edit it, Dropbox will list the app under the action button and offer to send it there for you. You can also tap the Link button to share the file via email or copy it to the clipboard, or the Favorites (star) button to store a copy of the file locally (so you can access it when offline).

If there's another app on your iPhone that can better handle a file, Dropbox will let you send it over.

You can choose how much local storage you want Dropbox to use in the options tab. This makes it really handy for not only stories work files or family pictures, but storing PDF copies of your travel documents (airplane, hotel, event registrations, photo of your passport, etc.) as a backup.

Allot a certain amount of local storage for quick offline viewing

Dropbox, smartly, made an open API (Application Programming Interface) so other apps could tie into their services. A lot of iOS apps have chosen to do so, including list-makers, password utilities, and text editors. Here are just a few of our favorites:

• 1Password
• Elements
• Comic Zeal
• Noteshelf
• PDF Expert

That means it’s really easy to access your files from pretty much anywhere. (Several of us here at iMore keep our entire local work directories in Dropbox, which means our computers are in sync at home, at work, and while traveling, and setting up a new computer is much, much easier.)

Dropbox also makes it easy to share folders and files. I’ve got several folders set up, some private, some shared. When I’m working on a website for a client I can share a folder with them so we can collaborate and they can preview what I’m doing and share back information I might need. This is far more productive than swapping emails and losing track of changes and versions.

Options vary depending on the type of file, but sharing with Dropbox is as easy as tapping and choosing.

You can move non-vital files off your iPhone (or iPad) an onto Dropbox to free up valuable local storage space. For example, if you have an iPhone 4S you have probably noticed how fast you can fill your phone with 1080p video and high quality images. While I was never able to fill 32GB on my iPhone 4, I’m quickly hitting a wall on my iPhone 4S.

Using Dropbox, I can simply upload photos and videos right from within the app, delete them from the Camera Roll, and still have access to them whenever I’m online. (The online part is key — if you absolutely, positively have to have something available, make sure you store it locally on your device. Dropbox is for the vast majority of stuff that’s okay to leave online.)

If you’re traveling and away from your computer, and you need to share a file, you don’t have to wait until you get back — just share a link from Dropbox.

Add a passcode to protect sensitive files in your Dropbox

With any online storage solution, security is important. Dropbox encrypts files in transit and when stored on their servers. Dropbox also allows you to protect your files with a passcode on your iPhone. After so many incorrect attempts you can tell it to wipe your data off that device as well. I use Dropbox to store client files and business information so anytime I configure it on my iPhone, I make sure I add a passcode for added protection on top of my default iPhone password.

If that’s not secure enough, you can even store encrypted disk images in dropbox, though you won’t be able to open them on your iPhone.

Backup is also extremely important. With Dropbox, copies of all your files are stored on their servers. So if you lose your iPhone or your PC hard drive fails, you haven’t lost any important date. You just replace the device or the drive, install Dropbox, and all your stuff is back.

While Dropbox is free up to 2GB, there are paid plans available as well

The Dropbox app for iPhone (and iPad, it’s universal) is free, as are your first 2GB of storage. If you need more, they have several reasonable price plans available.

• 2GB Basic account – Free
• 50GB Pro account – $9.99/month
• 100GB Pro account – $19.99/month
• 1TB+ Team accounts – $795/year for first 5 users

Dropbox also has a referral program that allows you to net an additional 250MB of storage space for each person you refer. Free accounts can earn up to 8GB from referrals while Pro users can get an additional 16GB of free space on top of their paid storage. (So if you sign up for the free account, hit up your friends and family before they find out about it first!)

The good

• Free basic service, reasonably priced plans for power users
• Dedicated apps for iPhone, iPad, other platforms like Android, as well as Windows, Mac, Linux.
• Online access via Dropbox.com
• Wide ranging support from iOS apps
• Referral program allow you to add quite a bit of extra space at no cost to you
• Save images and video from Dropbox directly to your device when you need to
• Easily create links to share files on the go straight from the app

The bad

• File sharing only available on the website
• iOS app lacks viewers for popular formats like Photoshop
• Online file storage is always susceptible to connectivity issues.

Conclusion

When it comes to storing and syncing files online, Dropbox’s accessibility from multiple platforms, easy to use interface, free starting service, and reasonably priced professional services make it hard to beat. Other services like Box.net and Sky Drive are comparable but when it comes to iOS app support and native client ease of use, Dropbox comes out on top.

Free – Download

Your dreams of becoming the perfect home barista who offers up beautiful lattes to your guests will come true with Coffee Art for iPhone. This app will teach you, in great detail, how to add hearts, tulips, and even dragons to the top of your espresso drinks.

Art of Coffee is like attending a class. Before learning how to create your designs, the app teaches you the basics of espresso making and how to pull the perfect shot. It then focuses on how to steam the ideal pitcher of foamy milk. When it’s time to learn about the designs, Art of Coffee provides detailed, step-by-step instructions and photos, and a videos of the designs being poured and etched into perfection.

There are two levels of difficulty included in Art of Coffee. Essential Art will teach you designs like hearts, tulips and seagulls. The Advanced Art section is where you’ll go to learn the extra fancy designs such as butterflies, dragons, and double heart double rosettas.

Although any coffee lover would enjoy Art of Coffee, it’s important to note that accessibility to an espresso machine is required in order to attempt any of the designs. (If you have any recommendations, I’m guessing a lot of us are suddenly in the market!)

$2.99 – Download Now

“Women make up 50% of the global population, 40% of the global workforce, yet women own only 1% of the world’s wealth”. This fact is the first thing you read upon launching Fotopedia Women of the World before diving into this tribute to the diversity, beauty and strength of women on this earth.

Fotopedia Womeon of the World is filled with hundreds of beautiful images and stories of women from 75 different countries. Through photographer Olivier Martel’s art, you will witness the fighting spirit of these women in the face of human, political, religious or dramatic events. In her words,

It’s about giving people their dignity in a photographic homage that takes the form of a search for beauty.

Some of the women you will discover in Fotopedia Women of the world include a woman whose daughter had just been saved from malaria, girl-soldiers in Mozambique, nuns in the convents in France, and Ivory Coast healers who are feared for their power.

This is a must have app for any photojournalism lover. Even if you don’t have time to read all the stories or flick through every photo, Fotopedia has equipped the app with a slideshow so that you can enjoy seeing the images displayed on your iPhone or iPad while going about your day.

Free – Download Now

One of the cool features of Foursquare is Explore, a way to find really great things to see and do nearby to where you are, but until now, most of its features were only available on the web. That’s all changed with Foursquare 4.2 for iPhone — you can now set your location and filter your recommendations by type, or even specific foods like “ham sandwich”. Your search result just got a lot more personalized!

One of the improvements with the new version of Foursquare is that your recommendations are also now dependent on time of day, where your friends have been, and places on the lists you follow. That means many more data points are factored in to the process. You are also no longer restricted to only searching for recommendations in your current location. If you’re on your way downtown and want to search for places to go before you get there, you can move the map to the area you wish to search, or specifically search a specific neighborhood, city, or address.

Oh, and Foursquare also snuck in menu and pricing information in the update. Pretty sweet!

Free – Download Now

Source: Foursquare

The darling of hardcore iPhone twitter users comes to the iPad, but how does Tweetbot measure up on the big screen compared to Twitterrific and Twitter’s own app?

Twitter may not be as big a social network as Facebook, but you can’t turn on a television, let alone visit a website, without seeing an endless stream of @usernames and #hashtags. While smartphones are great for Twitter on the go, the iPad is perfect for sitting back and really getting engaged. But which Twitter app for iPad is the best to engage with? Not only do you have Twitterrific, the original iOS Twitter app, but you have Twitter’s official Twitter for iPad app, and now you have Tweetbot to consider as well, one of the most popular iPhone Twitter apps, just released for the iPad.

We’ve often said iOS and Twitter and like chocolate and peanut butter, two great tastes that taste even better together. And it’s true. Time after time, platform after platform, the best developers and designers always seem to gravitate towards making Twitter clients, and nothing proves that more than Twitterrific, Twitter, and Tweetbot.

So which one is best, or more importantly, which one is best for you?

Caveats

We’re going to be using a lot of Twitter-specific jargon here. If you’re not already familiar with Twitter and are reading this as a way to decide which app you should start with, be sure to check out our Twitter and social networking slang dictionary so you can get up to speed on also the latest terms. (Or just skip to the conclusion to find out which one you should get.)

Also, Twitter for iPad is currently still the version that began life as Tweetie for iPad by Loren Brichter of Atebits but was bought and rebranded by Twitter before release. Twitter has since redesigned the iPhone version of Tweetie/Twitter, and we expect will be redesigning the iPad version soon as well. When that happens, the pros and cons listed here will change dramatically, and we’ll do an update.

Similarities

Since Twitterrific, Twitter, and Tweetbot are all Twitter apps for iPad, there are a great many similarities. They all have timelines to see the tweets of the people you follow. They all show you mentions, lists, and direct messages. They all let you search and see favorites. They all let you compose new tweets and direct messages. But the way in which they go about doing this varies greatly.

Reading Experience

Twitterrific puts everything in one place with a unified timeline, full sidebar, and lots of popovers

Twitterrific has a combined timeline, so you see all the tweets of the people you follow listed alongside your @mentions and direct messages. You can read @mentions and direct messages as separate lists, but there’s no option to separate view just the tweets of the people you follow. The sidebar contains those tabs, as well as search, recent searches, lists, and current trends.

Twitterrific makes extensive use of popovers (a combination of popup and dropdown menu that Apple introduced alongside iOS for the iPad), but it can also make you feel boxed in, unable to expand content like pictures and lists to fill the screen. All this makes Twitterrific a good reading experience, but not a highly scalable one.

"Twitter for iPad uses sliding panels like something out of a sci-fi movie. It's innovative, even inspired, but it's not for everyone.

Twitter for iPad uses an almost futuristic feeling, highly table-optimized sliding panel user interface that’s also deeply divisive. Some love it, some loathe it. Everything you tap causes a new panel to slide in from the right, layer after layer, and you need to swipe them all away to get back to where you started. You can also pinch to zoom out on a tweet to bring up a user’s profile, and pinch to zoom in to fold it away again. Twitter’s sidebar contains a list of all your accounts (if you have more than one), and timeline, mentions, messages, lists, your profile, and search are shown for the currently active account. Overall, Twitter manages to feel scalable and spatial, but still simple to some, while annoying and needlessly fancy to others.

Tweetbot for iPad looks a lot like Tweetbot for iPhone, which lets them pack in the features while still keeping things clean, though not always immediately accessible.

Tweetbot has a charmingly distinct user interface that some adore and others feel is overly loud and heavy. Instead of popovers or sliding panels, Tweetbot simply replaces the main window content with whatever you tapped on, be it timeline, user, or picture. That makes it harder to quickly refer back to something, but also removes a lot of the visual clutter that can otherwise build up. Tweetbot’s sidebar presents tabs for timeline, mentions, messages, favorites, search, your profile, lists, retweets, and mute filters (so you can temporarily suppress people, hashtags, and even certain clients and services). The web view also has a toggle to switch between standard and Readability views.

Despite the distinctive design and gesture actions for more advanced users, Tweetbot behaves a lot like a standard iOS-app, making it easily accessible to new users as well.

Writing experience

Twitterrific keeps your tweets alive until you say to kill them, but doesn't offer as many auto-complete options.

Twitterrific’s compose window is unique in that the content persists, even after you close it. If you start typing a tweet, then close it to go do something else, when you tap compose or hit reply again, your text will still be there. (You have to tap the counter and then hit Reset Text to clear it.) There are no auto-complete buttons, but if you type an @ (at) symbol it will start offering username suggestions. If you type a # (hashtag), however, it won’t start offering trend suggestions, and you can’t change which account you’re replying from once you’ve begun to reply. Also, if you add a picture or video, no thumbnails are shown so if you come back later, you’ll need to go to the link if you want to remind yourself what it was.

Twitter for iPad keeps an enormous amount of information immediately at your fingertips, though it approaches visual overload

Twitter’s compose window can quickly start looking like an unruly stack of papers, one piled atop the other. However, it means you have instant, same-screen access to the contents of your timeline and of any conversations you’re joining, which makes checking references while you type a breeze. Twitter supports drafts, and offers auto-complete for both @mentions (which, ironically, brings up a popover in one of the few places Twitterrific does not) and #hashtags. If you add a photo or video with the camera button, you can preview it by tapping the camera button again, and there’s a location button to toggle your coordinates on and off as well.

Tweetbot is crisp and clean with great auto-complete options, but you have to exit out if you want to refer back to something.

Tweetbot has a clean, clear composition screen but, aside from the tweet you’re replying to, you lose out on the ability to reference any other content unless you cancel, save as draft, and come back later which is more cumbersome. There are buttons for auto-completing @mentions and #hashtags, and toggling location, and any photos you add are placed in the menu bar as thumbnails you can tap to view or remove.

Bells and whistles

Twitterrific's settings aren't found in Twitterrific but in the built-in Settings app. The dark theme is one of the standouts here.

Twitterrific doesn’t yet support native iOS Twitter integration, which means you have to authenticate through the web the first time you set it up. (I’m guessing this will be updated in the not-to-distant future). Twitterrific also doesn’t support push notifications, which means unless you have email or SMS alerts set up, you won’t know if you get any mentions or direct messages until you open the app.

Twitterrific’s settings are found in the built-in iOS Settings app, and there you can enable the Dark Theme for night-time use, set up Tweet Marker to sync your timeline position between different clients, like iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and toggle and customize services, including read later (called bookmark) and advanced features like custom media uploads as well.

Twitter for iPhone doesn't have a ton of options, but it does have push notification.

Twitter for iPhone supports native iOS Twitter integration and push notification, but not Tweet Marker. Despite having been on the market for a significant amount of time, it never got all the power features Twitter for iPhone enjoyed, and likely won’t given the almost certain redesign in its near future. You do have control over which image, video, and read later services you use. However, there’s still no pull-to-refrsh direct messages and while it marks messages as unread, frustratingly, there’s still no way to quickly mark them all as unread.

Tweetbot has an almost dizzying array of powerful options, and will even pause push notifications while you sleep.

Tweetbot supports a ton of features, including native iOS Twitter integration, push notifications, and Tweet Marker. For notifications, it not only has options for mentions and direct messages, but retweets, favorites, follows, adds to lists, and subscribes to lists. It’s almost too many, but they can be mitigated by sleep options that suppress them at night (just pick your start and end times).

You can also customize services, including read later and mobilizer (like Safari’s built in Reader feature, but with your choice of provider). Literally, the options threaten to burst out of their popover.

Cost

Twitterrific is free but requires a $4.99 in-app purchase to turn off ads and turn on tweet translation and multiple account support. A universal binary, it supports both iPad and iPhone.

Twitter for iPad is free and also universal for iPad and iPhone.

Tweetbot is $2.99. It’s not universal so the iPhone version will cost you another $2.99.

Conclusion

That part about there being an embarrassment of riches when it comes to iPad Twitter apps wasn’t fluff or filler — it was truth. Twitterrific, Twitter, and Tweetbot each come from brilliant designers and developers with sometimes very different visions for what the ideal Twitter app entails.

Twitterrific is great for new users who want a simple, stable experience, where everything is easy to find, and often all in one place. It doesn’t have as many features, and lack of push notifications might be a show-stopper for some, but those who have been using it since the beginning and like the way it works and syncs consistently across iOS and OS X will also do well to stick with it.

Twitter for iPad, in its current form, is great for those who want fast access to literally layer upon layer of information. It’s an audacious, inspired interface that’s likely going to be replaced with something much more like the Twitter.com website, which also makes it very difficult to recommend to anyone who isn’t already using it.

Tweetbot might feel over-designed to some, but it’s well-designed. It has a ton of features for power users, including the best push-notification implementation in the business. As far as general purpose Twitter apps go, Tweetbot hits the best balance for the widest range of our readers.

Twitterrific could update any time now, and Twitter for iPad will be going through a substantial change soon, but as of right now, if the $2.99 price tag — less than the cost of a fancy coffee, mind you — doesn’t give you pause, Tweetbot should be your go-to Twitter app for iPad.

- Twitterrific – Download now

- Twitter – Download now

- Tweetbot – Download now

Tweetbot, the widely popular iPhone Twitter that also just happens to be a 2011 iMore readers choice, and editors choice award winner, has just been updated with new timeline and direct message views that feature image thumbnails, a redesigned “new tweets” bar, support for readability, and more.

Following the launch of the official Twitter 4.0 redesign, many power users fell out of love with the new, more mainstream direction Twitter decided to take, and switched over to Tweetbot instead. I’ve been using Tweetbot since it launched and it has consistently been one of my favorite Twitter apps.

The Tweetbot 2.0 update has made the already awesome experience even better. Now that the timeline features image thumbnails, Tweetbot meets all my requirements of the ideal Twitter app: gorgeous, fast, native push notifications, and image previews.

The new timeline also features colored links that are single-tappable, a new “retweeted by” bar, and some minor adjustments to the cell colors to improve contrast. The tweet replies view has also received some changes, and the overall performance of the app, including scrolling, is snappier.

$2.99 – Download Now

Valentine’s Day is coming up fast, and if your lover loves their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, you’re in luck, there are some fantastic device, app, accessory, and media gifts to thrill them and score you major brownie points. Whether you’re romantic enough to prepare well in advance, or if you’re scrambling to stay off the couch, sit back and get your groove warmed up — Rene and I decided to do a little written ZEN and TECH this week and help you pick out the perfect Valentine’s Day gifts for your special someone.

Dream devices for the person of your dreams

On the off chance the love of your life doesn’t yet have an iOS device to call his or her own, that’s a great place to start. An iPod touch can be the perfect travel or exercise companion. An iPad can entertain and inform at home or away. An a iPhone can keep you both in touch no matter where you are. And Apple TV is perfect for all the couple movie classics.

And hey, if you’re in a long distance romance, just wait until they discover FaceTime.

• Apple iOS device gift guide

Awesome accessories

If your significant other already has their iOS device needs met, then accessories are your next best bet. There’s something about a tangible gift — something about receiving a gift, opening it, seeing and feeling it for the first time. It’s… real.

There are a ton of great iPhone and iPad accessories to choose from. Here are some of our favorites.

Case-Mate Barely There Brushed Aluminum Case for iPhone

Year after year, Case-Mate melts my heart with a shiny, sexy case for the iPhone and this year is no exception — the Barely There Brushed Aluminum Case is simply spectacular. As always, it’s light as a feather, extremely low profile, and the finish is fabulous. Girls will love the heart red or stunning silver, guys the basic black. Both will appreciate the aircraft-grade aluminum inlay, gunmetal hard shell, and awesome good looks of the Barely There Brushed Aluminum.

$29.95 – Buy now

Pad & Quill Little Black Book for iPhone and Contega for iPad

Little Black Book‘s are usually reserved for hot little numbers, and Pad & Quill’s take on the classic is no exception — it wraps your high tech iPhone in old word craftsmanship. It fits both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, it’s precision cut and framed from Baltic Birch, covered in Italian leather, bound in book cloth, with an extra pocket inside for credit cards or ID. If pink is your thing, Pad & Quill is offering the Little Black Book in just that special edition color, just in time for Valentine’s. If not, they have a rainbow of other colors to choose from, from red to blue and everything in between.

Contega brings the same hipster vibe and quality construction to the iPad with even more features, notably a fold-up stand to make it easier to type or just watch your movies.

$54.99 and up – Buy now

Jawbone JAMBOX

You put down your wine glasses, take each other’s hands, walk over to the dance floor, hold each other close — and hear the tiny, tinny sound of your iPhone’s speaker. Grrrrr. Jawbone’s JAMBOX makes up for Apple’s still disappointing audio with the best Bluetooth sound ever. It’s rich. It’s deep. It’ll keep you dancing until dawn.

$179.99 – Buy now

8-Bit Dynamic Life Shirt

These light-up shirts from Think Geek will normally show two-and-a-half glowing hearts. But when you and your special someone come together, your heart bar glows full and you power up. Get one for yourself, one for your love, and whenever you’re together, your shirts will light up.

$17.99 – $24.99 – Buy now

Amazing apps

You know if there’s an app for just about everything, a large portion of those just have to be for love! Whether you’re deeply in love, trying to keep the home fires burning, or still trying to kindle the flame, there are most definitely apps for all that.

Romantic apps

If you’re already in a relationship, especially if you’ve been in one for a while, and you need or simply want something sexy to spice up your Valentine’s day, the App Store has plenty to offer.

$1.99 – iKamaSutra

Interlude: A romantic rant

We looked for more apps we could recommend, but frankly most of them looked terrible. The icons were horrible, the screenshots were horrible, and the reviews were horrible. We’re long past the time lazy, opportunistic “developers” should be able to put out junk and make money off iPhone and iPad users. This should be a good market. There should be a great developer who can make a gorgeous looking, fabulous working dice game, spin the bottle, truth or dare, or something — anything — else for adults who simply want to have some fun. Take this as a challenge — by next Valentine’s Day, have some amazing stuff in the store for couples!

More apps

We offer up what we think are simply the best apps day in and day out here at iMore, just because it’s Valentine’s doesn’t mean you need to get a Valentine’s specific app. Sometimes something thoughtful, something that shows you’ve listened, learned your significant other’s interests, and found them something delightful is the way to go.

• iMore’s best app lists

Online dating apps

If you don’t happen to have someone special this year, if you’re still searching, it’s never too early to get ready for next year. Why not harness the power of your iPhone and iPad? Many of the popular online dating sites have apps in the app store, and since our lives are increasingly mobile, there’s no reason our love lives shouldn’t be as well. (The apps are usually free, as is browsing, but there are typically fees associated with messaging.)

Free – eHarmony

Variable – More online dating apps

Last minute gift ideas

If you’re reading this with only minutes to spare before your special someone comes to the door, or comes downstairs, all hope is not lost. In addition to the apps listed above, all of which can be bought in an instant, there are also several sweet services and certificates that are yours to be had, only a few clicks away.

Netflix, Hulu Plus, Slacker and other subscription

You’ll be stuck watching romantic comedies, chick flicks, or something racy, but you won’t be stuck on the sofa or the dog house!

• Netflix
• Hulu Plus
• Slacker Personal Radio

iTunes, App Store, iBooks gifts and gift certificates

If romance is still fresh and new and you don’t want to risk gifting the wrong app or iBook or iTunes music, you can get them a gift certificate. Don’t just hand it over, however. Take their hand and go online shopping with them!

• iTunes gift certificates

Amazon gift certificates

Amazon has a ton of digital content all there own, but they also have old school media — paper books, plastic CDs and Blu-Rays, games that come on cartridges… Gift certificates let your special someone pick just exactly the goods — real or virtual — they want, and Amazon will deliver it straight to the door or the device. Again, shop with them!

• Amazon gift certificates

Your Valentine’s gift ideas?

Did we miss any of your favorite Valentine gift ideas, past, present, or future? Anything that especially made your heart melt or soar or skip a beat? Please share in the comments!

Do you love Path, the slick, simple, moment-sharing social network app for iPhone? Well, you get ready to dial it back a notch, because apparently they’re storing your entire address book, e-mail addresses and all, on their servers, and in plain text. What kind of evil deeds does Path have planned for all that data? Well, the CEO, Dave Morin, said that the data is used exclusively to notify you when your friends sign up for Path. He also claimed that it’s the industry standard to transfer that personal information in plain text, even though, as one commenter points out, it could be done with representative hash codes instead. Morin also said that they intend to update the iOS version with an opt-in dialog for the feature, which is a tweak they’ve already rolled out on Android.

If you’re not cool with the data Path already has stored on their server, you can e-mail service@path.com and they’ll wipe everything out for you.

The whole mess was discovered by the developer of an iPad news app called Denso. He was toying around with a new tool from mitmproxy.org that monitors the API calls made by apps by setting up a man-in-the-middle HTTP proxy.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this issue on iOS. Nuance‘s popular Dragon Dictation faced and addressed similar concerns back in 2009. While we’re prone to just hit the “allow” button on just about any app we download when prompted for access to personal data, you aren’t currently getting that message when downloading Path on iOS. Even if you were, it’s still pretty sketchy that this data is being transferred without being hashed, even if it’s transferred over SSL. What if Path’s servers got hacked? We wouldn’t get much more than a “whoops” from Path. What worries me even more is that there are still a ton of other services out there just farming up personal data from not only you, but everyone you know, without your express or implicit permission.

It certainly makes me think twice when signing up for new services…

Source: Read Write Web, Denso, mitmproxy.org

What it lacks in depth or features, HQ: To Do makes up for in speed, style, and simplicity. For those interested in getting things done, it’s a good place to start.

HQ: To Do for iPhone is for those who need more than Apple’s built-in Reminders app, but not anything as complex or costly as some of the full on GTD (Getting Things Done) or power-user productivity apps available in the App Store. Part of the new generation of big, bold, user experiences, HQ: To Do does a good job of making sure most of what you need is always right under-thumb, and available, with a couple taps or swipes. And it looks great doing it.

Creating projects and lists in HQ: To Do is very easy and fast because the UI isn’t cluttered with an overflow of options. HQ: To Do also makes use of quick gestures like sliding over a project for easy access to checking it as done, deleting it, or making edits.

That makes HQ: To Do a good fit for everything from groceries to packing lists to daily to-dos. The touch targets are large, which makes the interface easy to use while out and about, and there are enough colors and contrasts to easily let your eye quickly find exactly what it’s looking for.

It’s also really easy to see which tasks are still pending, which tasks are done, and which are (long?) overdue. If you’re action oriented, HQ: To Do makes it simple to know what’s next. HQ: To Do also makes clever use of gestures so, once you’ve gotten familiar with it, getting around is as quick as a swipe and a flick. There are even “quick-swipe” filters to rapidly re-order and re-organize your projects.

Again, HQ: To Do isn’t for the GDT or super-productivity crowds. If that’s you, you’ll be happier with Omnifocus, Appigo Todo, or Things. HQ: To Do, however, is a good way to get started.

$1.99 – Download Now

“MyFitnessPal is free, a MyFitnessPal account is free, and if you’re dedicated enough to stick with them, the positive effects they can have on your health are priceless.”

In today’s fast paced, highly mobile society it is often much easier and cheaper to eat fast food on the go than it is to spend the time and money to east fresher, more healthy meals. MyFitnessPal wants to make the switch to a healthier lifestyle easier by helping you track your calories and activity levels, set your weight-loss goals, and monitor your progress.

Losing weight and getting healthy is not easy. It’s even harder to do alone. But if you’re looking for assistance, putting the MyFitnessPal calorie tracking app on your iPhone (or iPad, it’s universal), is a great way to get keep you going in the right direction, and a great goal to consider for our Mobile Nations Fitness Month.

MyFitnessPal launches and shows you how many calories you can consume

After installing MyFitnessPal you have to enter your personal information. This helps create your calorie goal and intake needs for each day.  The first page that launches gives you your calorie goal, and once you start inputting foods and exercise into MyFitnessPal it will calculate your remaining calories available for the day. Directly below this you will see a news feed that displays your updates, as well as updates from any friends you may have added through the app’s social networking feature as well.

Easily add breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to MyFitnessPal

There are a few ways to add food to your diary; the first is simply by clicking the Add to Diary button that appears right next to your remaining calories counter. From there you can either search for the food you are eating, or if there happens to be a barcode available, you can scan it right in. (MyFitnessPal does a good job finding most products.) The food database contains over 1 million entries for things as simple as an onion or slice of cheese to your favorite meal at Outback Steakhouse or the Olive Garden.

View a breakdown of each meal in your daily diary

In addition to logging the food you are taking in, it is equally as important to log any exercise you have completed for that day because that will help ensure that your calorie goal remains accurate. With over 350 different exercises in the application, logging the exercises you complete should take only seconds. Each day you can enter your weight into the application to help you keep track and on the right path. If you have a specialized fitness device, like a Fitbit, MyFitnessPal can interface with that as well.

Monitor your progress with a chart of your daily weigh-in information

Your weight will show in a graph so you can visually see if you are headed in the right direction or not. At the end of each day there is a button to complete logging your food entries for that day, and this will then pop up a message which gives you how much you would weigh in five weeks if you continued to eat and exercise the way you did that day.

In addition to the iPhone app, MyFitnessPal also works on the iPad. The iPhone is ideal for entering data while on the go during the day, but the iPad is nice for looking over and analyzing your progress when you have more time. You can also log anything and everything through the MyFitnessPal website so even if you don’t have your iPhone or iPad handy, you still have a way to stay on track.

The good

• Barcode scanning makes adding food quick and easy
• Links with popular fitness devices like Fitbit
• Social networking features help keep you motivated (peer pressure!)
• Also available for iPad and via the web

The bad

• Cardio activities are more confusing to add since you don’t always know the specifics of speed, heart-rate, etc.
• If a particular food is not in the database, adding it is difficult

The conclusion

MyFitnessPal is is free, the MyFitnessPal account is free, and if you’re dedicated enough to stick with them, the positive effects they can have on your health are priceless. It’s the dedication part that’s really important. You need to be completely honest about what you eat, how much you are working out, etc. If you’re looking to take better control of your weight or your fitness, get MyFitnessPal and get one step closer to a healthier lifestyle.

Free – Download now

If you’ve created home videos with your iPhone but are having a hard time finding music to accompany them, YouTube Producer has come to the rescue! YouTube Producer offers tens of thousands of copyright-free music tracks that you can add background, ambiance, and mood to your personal productions.

Copyright-free is the key point here. Most of us have big music libraries we’d like to use, but the songs they’re filled with are copyrighted. If we add them to our videos, we could get complaints, and YouTube could remove the videos. Using YouTube Producer alleviates this concern completely. It has a great selection of music that can be sorted by genre, mood or tempo, and it’s 100% safe to use.

There are some limitations, however. Namely, the music you choose for your video must be placed in the background of the entire video. Using it’s music for just your intro, for example, is not an option. You do have control over volume, however — either mix the music with the video’s existing audio, or have the new music replace the audio track completely.

Also, YouTube Producer isn’t a full blown video editor. If that’s what you’re looking for, you need to pick up a copy of Apple’s iMovie instead.

If you just want to add a soundtrack or some background music to your the videos in your iPhone Camera roll and easily upload them to YouTube, then this is the app for you.

• Free – App Store link

Georgia, Seth, and Rene talk about copy-cat apps, iMovie vs. Avid, Launch Center, Jailbreak apps for iOS 5, as well as cases with stands, iPhone guns, and glowing Apple logo mods. This is Apps & Accessories Live!

• Subscription information coming soon! Right now you can enjoy Apps & Accessories Live in the iPhone & iPad Live fees!

Meta

• February is fitness month at iMore and Mobile Nations! [iPad 3 giveaway!]
• Don’t forget we give away a ton of stuff!

App News

• Apple removes copy-cat apps from the App Store, doesn’t address larger issues
• iMovie vs Avid Studio: iPad video editing app shootout
• Readdle Remarks brings note-taking and PDF annotating in one to iPad
• Book Palette for Mac offers 10 beautiful templates for iBooks Author
• iMore app picks of the week for February 4, 2012 [Giveaway]

Jailbreak Apps

• BiteSMS vs Messages+ for iOS 5: which should you use?
• LockInfo vs IntelliscreenX for iOS 5 jailbreak: which should you use?
• Hands-on with Zephyr for the iPhone and iPod Touch [Jailbreak Apps]

Launch Center

• Launch Center puts Messages, Facebook, Twitter, a flashlight, more in your iPhone Notification Center

Accessory News

• Xappr Gun turns your iPhone into an FPS dream machine!

• Ten One Design announces Pogo Sketch Plus capacitive stylus for iPhone and iPad
• Hands on with the Jot Touch, a pressure sensitive stylus by Adonit

• Incipio SILICRYLIC case with kickstand for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 vs. Case-Mate Pop! Case with Stand for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4

iPhone Mods

• iFixit Thirsty Bag for iPhone, iPad review
• iFixit iPhone transparent rear panel mod kit review
• Hands on with the glowing Apple logo mod for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S

Hosts

• Georgia (@GeorgiaTiPb)
• Seth Clifford (@sethclifford)
• Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie)

Credits

You can reach all of us on Twitter [@iMore](http://twitter.com/imore), or you can email us at , or leave a comment on the website when the show goes live.

We’re here every Sunday night at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern, 2am GMT, and our companion show — iPhone and iPad Live! — is at the same time, on the same channel, on Wednesday nights — www.iMore.com/live

For all our podcasts — audio and video — including iPhone and iPad Live, ZENandTECH and Superfunctional, Iterate and Girls Gone Gadget and more… see MobileNations.com/shows

If you haven’t already please subscribe to all our shows in iTunes and leave a rating. It helps people find the show and means a lot to us!

Thanks to the iMore Accessory Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

TinyWorld is a fun little app that turns your photos into miniature planets that you can save or share with friends. Specifically, it warps what your iPhone camera sees in front of you into 360 degree spheres, making your room, your garden, your skyline, your tourist shots — whatever you want to take a picture of — into the surface of a planet.

TinyWorld was recently updated and now allows you adjust tilting after taking your photo to fine tune where the two ends of you flat world meet. You can also convert your preexisting photos into a TinyWorld. Additionally, exporting your photos directly into Instagram is now supported.

I’m having a lot of fun with this little app! Now I just wish I was back in San Francisco where the tall buildings would make for a fantastic TinyWorld photo.

If you pick this one up, please share your little planets in our Photography Forum. We’d love to see them!

TinyWorld turns your environment into miniaturized worlds. The app’s “One Click to Shoot” process makes this simple and fun, while the live preview editor allows you to see the results before they’re created. And with easy exportation to eMail, Twitter, and Instagram, it’s never been more fun to create planetoids from your iPhone!

• Live preview guarantees quality in the finished product
• Easy exportation to popular social networking services like Twitter and Instagram, as well as eMail
• Seamless creation of planetoid-like photos from shots of your environment
• Fine-tuned controls allow for streamlined editing of shots, even after the shutter has closed

Update notes:

• Even better performing live warping preview
• Warping of existing photos is now also supported
• Adjust the tilting afterwards, to fine tune your planet’s shape
• Gradually adjust the softening of the stitching seam
• Share using email, Twitter or Instagram

TinyWorld is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Our challenge this week was to find an app that could capture a still image — a photo — while simultaneously shooting video on the iPhone. With the default camera app, you have to stop recording video, switch to still camera mode, shoot a picture, then switch back to video and start recording that. Not ideal. Neither is trying to screen capture while recording, since there are way too many controls visible, cutting into the picture.

With over half a million apps for just about everything, you’d figure there’d have to be at least one in the App Store for this. But with so many apps, it can be hard to find the one you want. That’s where we come in. We’re sorting through the App Store and we’re going to help find just exactly the app for that.

App for that: QuickPix

QuickPix does exactly what Ron is looking for. While filming a video, QuickPix has two buttons: one to stop recording, and one to take a photo. These photos are sent directly to your camera roll along with the video once you end the recording.

Some other features of QuickPick are RapidFire (2 pictures per second), QuickPic (shoot on app launch), and the ability to separately set the focus and exposure.

Now that I have discovered QuickPix, I will use it for all filming I do from now on. There have been multiple times where I had to choose between capturing video or taking photos of a special moment, but now I can do both! Thank you, Ron, for sending me on the hunt for this app!

• $1.99 – App Store link

Thanks to Ron – Ertiguy for the question. Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for Ron? Let him — and all of us — know in the comments below.

Having trouble finding what you need in the app store? Head on over to our App for That Forum and let us know what you’re looking for. The iMore community will do our best to find you just the right App for That!

Every week a few of us from team iMore will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

The White House — @andrewwray

Looking for a great way to keep tabs on the Obama administration? The White House for iPhone is your best pick, giving you access to news, photos and video of what’s happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Not only will you have direct access to their blog, which is more of a news source than anything else, but you’ll also be able to browse through archived photos, video and more. I was able to watch the State of the Union address in its entirety earlier this week without strapping myself down to a desk or television. Instead, I just whipped out my iPhone and within a few minutes I was watching the livestream — no questions asked.

Next to the plethora of content, media and information about The White House at your fingertips, you can also setup push notifications to be notified of any major news stories going on in the political realm. Overall, it’s a great resource and the livestream feature is a lifesaver.

• Free — App Store Link

Zite Personalized Magazine – @sethclifford

Flipboard is the app that everyone likes talking about, but there’s actually a few new apps that are doing stylish news aggregation pretty well. One that I’ve really been enjoying lately is Zite, which takes a similar approach to Flipboard, but allows you to customize your reading experience over time by voting stories up or down and then learning what it is you prefer to read and giving you more tailored content.

The setup for the app is pretty simple, and I really like the clean UI. There’s really not much to get in the way and the content really takes center stage. I feel like it’s easier to browse than Flipboard, and while the Flipboard UI conventions are cool, don’t get me wrong – after a while, I feel like I’m really working to see new content, and I don’t feel like I can scan as quickly on my phone (which is a prime criteria for consuming news on the go). Zite feels like it allows me to do that more easily.

The customization aspects are cool too – you basically give stories a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and Zite will remember what it is you liked and in the future return more content like it. There’s a lot of detail here as to how this is all accomplished, and since I’ve only been using it a short time, I can’t speak to its accuracy yet. Also, the type of feeds I’m looking at (tech stuff) usually have a bit of overlap, so it’s hard for me to tell right now. I’m less concerned with teaching the app though, and more concerned with the quickness of information and scanning, and it definitely succeeds there. But the app’s main draw is the personalization of content, so don’t let my particular use-case dissuade you from trying it out. It’s free and a really nice way to get your news.

Zite Personalized Magazine – Free – iTunes link

Messages+ – @iMuggle

I can not explain how happy I am to have a jailbreak on my iPhone 4S. Along with a new jailbreak comes tons of updated utilities and applications for iOS 5. I’ve been using IntelliscreenX and with it comes Messages+. I’ve been a long time fan of BiteSMS but I’m really loving the tight integration Messages+ has with iOS. There’s no separate application or icon, it just works. There’s really nothing to configure. Just set up a quick reply action via Activator and you’re good to go.

You can view images and files right from the quick reply window and then dismiss them. The UI blends perfectly with the default UI of iOS so it looks like something Apple themselves would have made. If you’re jailbroken and haven’t checked out Messages+ yet, I’d give it a try! If you already have IntelliscreenX, you already have a license for it and it comes built-in. If you don’t, you can buy Messages+ separately.

$7.99 – Cydia Search Link

Going back to a #TeamPure iPhone – @chrisoldroyd

This week I decided to give the new Absinthe Jailbreak a go on my iPhone 4S. I have always tinkered around with jailbroken devovces and do love apps like BiteSMS and SBSettings. This time the experience has been awful for me.

Installing the jailbreak was simple enough, I had to wait a bit longer as I am a Windows user. Anyway, to cut a long story short, my phone is all jailbroken in minutes and I installed BiteSMS and SBSettings and nothing more. A few days later and I try and listen to my music in the car and things start to go terribly wrong. Album artwork shows the wrong song playing and most songs start to play then stop or don’t play at all.

I turned iTunes Match on and off, and even synced again with iTunes, transferring all my music back on manually, still the same issue. Only option I had was to go back to a stock install and lose my jailbreak. That is where I am at now and guess what? Yep my music is now perfect again!

Squrl – @Bla1ze

I don’t watch a lot of TV and the shows I do want to watch are usually found on iTunes or Netflix but there isn’t a lot of good stuff out there these days any how in my opinion. For filling that void, I often scour the web looking for good online content to watch when I have some spare time but keeping track of that stuff has proven to be a difficult task over time. For Christmas I got an AppleTV and found Squrl. Squrl basically aggregates a lot of popular online video sites and various other content providers and provides a beautiful UI that allows for tracking videos, saving them for later viewing. Couple that with an AppleTV and you can amass plenty of content to watch in place of television shows. Social network integration as well as netflix, it has become a key resource of entertainment for me and it’s available for free in the iTunes App Store.

• Free – App Store link

Rdio – @jdipane

Music is a huge part of my life, and the ability to have almost any song at my fingertips without eating up all the space on my iPhone is a huge plus for me. Rdio is a subscription based service similar to Spotify, but I find that more songs that I enjoy to listen to are available through Rdio. Whether I want to select a certain song, album or just listen to a particular artists stations I can do so with a few simple clicks from within the application. I have various playlist’s set up, one for work out, one to relax, and I can add and remove songs with ease. Rdio also ties in with my home Sonos system which is great as I can listen to the music through my headphones, the speaker of the device or through the Sonos to keep me motivated. The application is free, but the service is paid, hit the link below to start your free 7 day trial!

• Free – App Store link

Puzzle Juice – @JorjLim

Tetris? Boggle? If you can’t decide which game to play, then Puzzle Juice is a sure winner.

The game starts as a standard game of Tetris; coloured blocks fall from the top of the screen, and you have to form a line at the bottom to score points.

However, unlike traditional Tetris, once you’ve completed a line, it won’t disappear. Instead, every block will turn into a letter and you’ll have to form words to score even more points. Here’s the fun part; while you’re looking for words, the next Tetris block has started falling. If you need more letters to form a word, tap on 3 same-colour blocks that are adjacent to one another to reveal more letters. There is also an optional Zen Mode, which challenges you to score as many points as you can in 90 seconds.

The game itself is well designed and even the menu screens have a pinch of character. You won’t see a “Ok”, or “Start” button throughout the game, instead you’ll see phrases like “Sounds Peachy” and “Totally Got It”, just to add that extra flare to the game.

The game is a mind-game, a fun-game and a challenging game all wrapped into one neat parcel, and will keep you busy for hours!

• $0.99 – App Store link

Doodlecast Pro

My day job is teaching two Intermediate Algebra courses at my local community college and this semester I’m experimenting with making videos for my students on new or difficult topics. Doodlecast Pro for iPad has turned out to be the best app to help me accomplish this. It records both my voice and handwriting and allows me to export and upload my videos directly to YouTube. If I made some mistakes along the way that I want to edit out, I can export to my Camera Roll instead and edit in another application like Avid Studio or iMovie. My only complaint is that the handwriting strokes are not really that great. I would love to see Doodlecast match the quality of handwriting to apps like Penultimate and Noteshelf.

• $3.99 – App Store link

LabTimer – Joe (Reader’s Choice winner – Comment #22)

My favorite right now is Lab Timer. It’s a free universal app that gives you 16 timers. They’ll count up or down and will sound an alarm. It’s handy for work so I can have a break timer, a lunch timer and can time how long a process is taking all from the same app. It’s especially handy for the iPad since there is no built-in clock app.

• Free – App Store link

Tell us your pick, enter to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. We’ll pick one of you and send you a shiny $10 iTunes gift certificate so you can start stocking up for future picks! Contest starts now and ends next Friday, January 13 at 12pm PT.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

Apple and Avid have been battling it out on the big screen for years, but now they’ve brought the video editing battle to the iPad — and the winner may not be who you think.

Avid Studio for iPad launched this week in the App Store, instantly becoming the first real competitor to Apple’s iMovie video editing app. What makes this so interesting is that Avid was king of digital video editing in Hollywood for a long time, and then Apple came out with the far more affordable Final Cut Pro/ Final Cut Studio, and enticed a few big name directors to give their new software a try.

So is Avid getting a little payback here by bringing the video editing battle back to Apple’s home turf? Most definitely, and as good as iMovie is — some of the best mobile software we’ve seen to date — Avid may be even better.

Similarities

Both iMove and Avid Studio can do the basics that you would expect from any video editor. You can insert videos, photos, and music, trim clips, add titles, and export to YouTube. Unfortunately for iMovie, this is where the similarities end.

Audio management

Layer up to 3 audio clips at a time with Avid Studio

In iMovie, the only thing you can do with music is insert it as the background of your movie – your entire movie. It’s impossible to take just a clip of the music to place where you wish – you’re stuck with playing the whole song. In Avid Studio, you can trim your music clips and insert them anywhere in your movie. You can also layer up to 3 audio clips at a time.

Inserting photos and videos as picture-in-picture

Insert picture-in-picture image over movie clips with Avid Studio

One of the cool features Avid Studio provides is the ability to insert photos or video over the main movie in the timeline. Meaning, if you want to have a photo or video play in the middle of a movie clip, you can do so while still having the audio and elapsed time from the main movie playing in the background. This is one the features I most like about Avid Studio. The only thing you can do in iMovie is split up the clip and put a photo or movie clip in the middle. Avid’s way — which Apple does support on the desktop version of iMovie — is more useful.

Video management

Access movies that were synced onto iPad from iTunes with Avid Studio

I was surprised when I learned that iMovie did not allow me to access videos that I imported onto my iPad with iTunes. The only videos accessible with iMovie are the ones in your camera roll or albums. What a huge disappointment. Avid provides just such access.

Titles and montages

Avid Studio come preinstalled with 15 montages

Both iMovie and Avid Studio allow you to insert titles for you movie, but iMovie requires that you do it with one of their themes. There is not an option to insert a black slide with text like Avid Studio. This means that all text inserted in iMovie must be overlaid with part of your movie.

Avid Studio also comes preinstalled with fun montages to add to your videos. These are made up of anywhere between 1 and 4 photos and may be static images or mini video clips.

Conclusion

Avid Studio is the clear winner!

Avid Studio may be iMovie’s newest competitor for video editing on the iPad, but it’s not a fair competition. Avid Studio is the clear winner. iMovie doesn’t offer any significant features that Avid does not, but Avid can do much more than iMovie. Since they both cost $4.99, it’s almost a no-brainer. Right now, the only thing iMovie has going for it over Avid Studio is that iMovie is a universal app and also works on the iPhone.

With iPad 3 on the horizon, I hope Apple has a more feature-rich iMovie 2.0 up its sleeves to help show it off. Either way, I can’t wait to try video editing on a 9.7-inch Retina display.

• Avid Studio – $4.99 – App Store link
• iMovie – $4.99 – App Store link

Apple has removed a number of copy-cat apps from the App Store, specifically plagiaristic titles such as Tiny Birds, Temple Jump and Numbers With Friends created replicated by developer Anton Sinelnikov. Apple has made similar moves against shady developers in the past, taking down 1,000 apps in 2008 after they noticed fake 5-star reviews in the App Store.

However, the problem is greater than just a few scam apps from a few shady developer. Most of us know that these titles copy from the real deal, specifically Tiny Wings, Temple Run and Words With Friends, but new users might have a hard time telling them apart, and get a nasty surprise after they’ve drop down money only to discover they’ve been conned into buying a fake app. That creates a bad experience and might make them wary of the App Store in the future.

For legitimate developers, they lose out on the income. It’s difficult and expensive enough, especially for independent developers, to get a hit title on the App Store. When and if they finally do have a hit on their hands, they now have to worry about scammers trying to steal their sales, damage their brand, and turn off their customers. Worse yet, according to developer Kode80, scammers rely on the outrage that follows their copy-cat apps to actually gain attention and drive sales.

Should Apple be doing more to prevent copy-cat titles from hitting the App Store in the first place, and should they be making it easier to report when they do? Apple long ago appointed themselves as gate-keepers and curators, but when it comes to copyright issues, they’ve followed the common practice of waiting for a complaint and then leaving the developers involved to fight it out. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it lets bigger, more established brands bully competitors out of the App Store.

Likewise, Zynga, one of the biggest gaming companies on the planet, has been accused of copying NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower with their new game, Dream Heights. Dream Heights doesn’t present itself as a copy-cat in the App Store the way Sinelnikov’s did, with similar naming and branding intended to cause confusion, but it does duplicate the look, feel, and gameplay of a popular independent game.

Where should the line be drawn, and should Apple be the ones drawing it?

Source: The Guardian, TechCrunch; image via @tapbot_paul

As expected, Reckless Racing 2 is now available in the App Store. It is the sequel to the hugely popular racing game Reckless Racing which brought thrills and spills from the track as you slide you car around corners on dirt and tarmac.

Strap down and prepare for the ride of your life… Reckless Racing is back with more! Including a selection of 18 highly detailed cars, ranging from small dirt buggies to fast supercars, and 24 routes in a variety of flavors make this a racer for all tastes – both dirt and tarmac.Compete in the Career mode to earn money for new cars and car upgrades. Have a quick race in the Arcade mode with 40 pre-defined challenges. Compete against your friends on the leaderboards in Single Event mode – including Race, Hot Lap and Elimination events.Tune your car in the garage to match your driving style with a vast selection of parts and upgrades. Whether you are a reckless power slider or a slick race driver, make your car the way YOU want it.

• Probably the best power slides in the world
• Tune and tweak the performance, handling, tires, rims and colors of your cars
• Shader based game engine with normal maps, reflections, specularity, shadows, particles and more
• Improved and optimized shaders for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S
• Online leaderboards with downloadable ghost cars
• Online multiplayer over the Internet
• 17 characters, including your favorites from Reckless Racing 1
• 5 control layouts with customizable button positions
• Optional assists, such as race lines, mini map, chase camera and more

• App Store link

No one likes doing their taxes, but TurboTax thinks bringing their service to the iPad and making it mobile might also make the chore a little easier. With TurboTax 2011 for iPad, you can file your federal and state tax returns and receive your refund in as little as 7 days. If you’ve used TurboTax online, iPad or Desktop, you can transfer all your info, speeding up the process.

Now the question becomes, would you want to? As more and more finance and budget applications can be managed from mobile devices such as the iPad, it makes sense that companies like TurboTax and H&R Block will continue to make their content available to iPad users as well. While this may be ideal for filers with only a few forms, it still can’t compete with desktop or pro versions of tax software that can maximize deductions in a way simple programs and applications can’t yet do.

Bottom line, if you’ve got a lot of forms to file and your taxes don’t consist of a few W-2 forms and standard deductions, we’d still recommend a pro desktop suite or utilizing a licensed CPA or accountant.

TurboTax 2011 is available on the iPad for free, but you’ll have to pay fees when/if you use it to submit your taxes.

• App Store link

Readdle has released their new note-taking and PDF annotating app, Remarks, for the iPad. Remarks is fully featured with the ability to take handwritten or text notes, add shapes, import photos, and annotate PDFs.

It’s no secret that I have a love for handwriting iPad apps and Remarks in no exception. I admit that the strokes may not be as smooth and fluid as some of other apps out there, but the killer feature for me is PDF annotation. This is something I have desired from all the other note-taking apps and Readdle has delivered. Before Remarks, I was using Readdle’s PDF Expert to annotate PDFs, but it left a lot to be desired. Namely, with Remarks, I can use the zoom feature to make the most detailed of notes on my PDFs.

We had a chance to go hands on with Readle’s Remarks for iPad at Macworld 2012, roughly a week before the release. Check out the video below, along with all the app details, or just grab it now from the App Store.

Write down your thoughts, capture ideas and information, annotate documents and outline notes anywhere from university class to sofa at home.

To let you write anything you have in mind we included all the tools you might need: pens and highlighters of different colors, floating text boxes, shapes and of course an eraser.

At the same time Remarks is a fully featured PDF annotating application. You can highlight, underline, strikeout text, draw upon the documents – that means anything you can do with the document on paper and even more.

• Make notes
• Sketch new ideas
• Type in text notes
• Annotate PDFs
• Draw with your finger
• Co-edit notes with friends
• Add Notes Quickly
• Exchange documents with your computer
• Edit your notes on the Mac or PC
• Annotate Email Attachments
• Share Notes With Your Friends
• Import PDFs from Dropbox, Box.Net, Safari and other applications.

Remarks is available on the iPad for $4.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Video Camera for iPhone by i4software is a video studio in your pocket. It allows you to switch between front and rear cameras while recording and snap photos while recording. For those looking for a professional level of control, Video Camera also lets you manually control exposure, focus, and white balance via a triple tap. The recent update also grants the permission to record up to 8 remote cameras.

Unleash yourself from time-consuming camcorders and editing programs—get Video Camera and join the video revolution.

• The most intuitive video app makes shooting, editing and sharing a streamlined process.
• Switch between front and rear cameras while recording.
• Snap photos while recording.
• Optional Date & Time stamps directly into the video.
• Choose one of three professional-quality studio intros for a Hollywood experience.
• Fully customizable titles and scrolling credits.
• Includes rights-free music for unrestricted use, or access songs from your own music library.
• Full-featured editing mode for advanced users.
• Quickly and easily move, duplicate or delete clips.
• Use location services to automatically add location to the scrolling credits.• 1920×1080, 1280×720 and 640×360 resolutions on supported devices.
• Optional manual controls for exposure, focus, and white balance accessible by triple tapping.
• Full zoom control for video, including a smooth auto-zoom.
• Patented Live Non-Linear Editing (LiNE™) makes trimming while capturing a seamless experience.
• Preview and trim clips the moment they’re shot.
• Move, delete, or load clips in your timeline without exiting the main camera view.
• Import .MOV files from the camera roll, including those created with third-party apps.
• With the iPad Camera Connection kit import and edit clips from many popular cameras, including GoPro Hero, Panasonic GH1, Canon PowerShot S100, 60D, and more! Process your final movie right on the spot.

Video Camera is available on the iPhone for $7.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

iBooks Author has but a limited selection of templates, so Jumsoft has released Book Palette, a Mac app that offers 10 additional stylish and modern templates for you with the promise to bring more. Although these templates are ready to use and don’t need to be changed, the ability to customize them to your liking is possible so that you can create a book that is uniquely yours.

Each template contains an assortment of standard section and page layouts including covers, chapter pages, text pages, tables of contents, glossary pages, and more.

As if it wasn’t already simple enough, Book Palette has just made creating your beautiful, multi-touch, interactive iPad book even easier.

With the new, revolutionary iBooks Author app, anyone can create and publish great Multi-Touch books for iPad, including you. Jumsoft swiftly offers you an enhanced experience in book creation with 10 beautiful templates for iBooks Author.

Each template included in the Book Palette app features an assortment of stylish and modern page layouts. You can use them as a starting point and go from there by typing or pasting your own text, adding or removing text boxes, and dropping images or other media.

Although the standard designs included in Book Palette are very polished, you are not expected to settle for default. Most objects in the templates can be easily reshaped, moved, or removed, and colors can be changed. Use a variety of pre-designed text styles or opt for fonts of your choice to format your text for the best effect.

Book Palette is available in the Mac App Store for $2.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter are a collection of apps that use the iPhone GPS to track your activity while simultaneously providing you with feedback and motivation to go farther.

The upcoming updates for Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter will introduce a new interface that allows you to easily swipe through information making it easy to view data like time, distance, speed, location, elevation, and heart rate even while in the middle of your ride, run, or walk. Each screen is customizable so that you can be sure you are seeing the information that matters to you.

Although there are 3 different apps, each app is essentially the same. So if you purchase Cylcemeter and want to use it for your run, just set the mode of the app to running. Whichever version you purchase is just which activity the app will be preconfigured for.

We got a sneak peak of Cyclemeter version 7.0 while at Macworld 2012.

• $4.99 – App Store link

Cyclemeter turns your iPhone into a powerful GPS-enabled fitness computer, giving you feedback and motivation to go farther, be healthier, and live longer.

• Track – Cyclemeter continually records your time, location, distance, elevation, and speed – years of workouts only take up the space of a few songs.
• Visualize – See your results on maps, graphs, and a calendar, and organized by routes and activities.
• Hear – Monitor your progress with more than 70 configurable announcements including distance, time, speed, and elevation.
• RACE – Compete against your previous workouts along a route, or import and compete against other people’s workouts.
• Train – Keep on track with extremely configurable interval training, zones, and targets. Set up repeating intervals, pyramid intervals, or tempo workouts.
• Share – Use email, Facebook, Twitter, and dailymile to share Google Maps of your workouts, automatically updated every few minutes.
• Import/Export – Import a route or virtual competitor by simply clicking on a GPX or KML link or file in Mail or Safari. Export complete summaries of your workouts, or detailed CSV, GPX, or KML files for use in maps, graphs, or social fitness sites.
• For cycling, running, walking, skiing, skating and more – Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter and are built from the same core foundation, but come preconfigured for cycling, running, or walking. Each supports all features and activities.
• Improve – Cyclemeter gives you the data that helps you achieve your goals, whether it’s to cycle a park or a century, run a mile or a marathon, or walk a block or a march.

Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter are available on the iPhone for $4.99.

• Cyclemeter – App Store link
• Runmeter – App Store link
• Walkmeter – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Avid Studio is a new app that lets you edit video, audio and photographs right on your iPad. And if you think Apple’s iPad version of iMovie has just gotten some real competition in the video editing space — you’re right.

Avid and Apple have been battling it out for years now in the professional space, with Avid’s high end movie editing kit seeing competition from Apple’s much lower priced Final Cut Studio. Several prominent directors switched from Avid to make high profile movies using Final Cut. Following Apple’s recent re-invention of the digital editing model with Final Cut X, they faced a lot of push back from unhappy editors who missed features or simply didn’t like the new software. Apple did, however, achieve some consistency across their editing software, with everything from iMovie on iPhone and iPad, to iMovie on Mac, to Final Cut Pro embracing similar user interface and design concepts.

Now Avid is bringing the battle back to Apple, and on Apple’s mobile turf for a change. We’ll have a full hands-on, and a side-by-side comparison with iMovie coming your ways soon. In the meantime, here are all the details on Avid Studio for iPad.

Big-screen moviemaking comes to the touchscreen with Avid® Studio for iPad. We’ve distilled the world’s leading film-editing technology into an easy-to-use app that enables you to edit video, audio, and photos at the speed of your creativity. Swiftly arrange your clips in the Storyboard, make precision edits using the Timeline, and add high-quality transitions, effects, and a soundtrack. Then share your movie directly to YouTube, Facebook, and more—or export your project to Avid Studio for the PC and continue editing with even more advanced tools.

Easily Access Your Media

• Work with any media on your device—video, audio, and photos
• Access media from external devices via an iPad Camera Connection Kit (sold separately)
• Capture video and photos from within the app
• See your media organized by Albums, Events, Faces, and more

• Get started quickly with how-to materials
• Easily navigate your project with intuitive gestures
• Swiftly arrange clips in the Storyboard
• Make precise edits and trim individual frames in the Precision Trimmer
• Use the Razor Blade tool to cut on the fly and delete or replace the second half of the clip
• Easily replace one clip with another

• Quickly create multi-layer 3D animations, transitions, and titles with included Montage templates
• Easily composite video tracks to create layered looks
• Add high-quality fades and dissolves to help your story flow
• Generate professional-looking motion titles and graphics with full control over text, font, color, size, position, and rotation
• Create amazing Picture-in-Picture effects with full control over position, size, and rotation
• Pan and zoom on your photos to create high-impact slideshows
• Enjoy full-screen playback

• Use your own audio or choose from the included sound effects
• Trim audio to any length, set levels, and fade audio in or out

• Easily share movies via YouTube, Facebook, email, and more
• Export projects to Avid Studio for the PC

• Created by Avid, the maker of the world’s leading film and music editing technology
• Easy enough for the hobbyist, powerful enough for the pro

• App Store link

Zynga has released their newest iPhone and iPad game for animal lovers called Dream PetHouse. In this game, you are in charge of raising hundreds of adorable pets in a huge treehouse and making them has happy as can be.

As with all Zynga games, there is a social aspect to Dream PetHouse where you use Facebook Connect to visit your friends’ trees and help each other with various tasks.

• Do you love animals? Then here’s your chance to create the biggest, happiest home for hundreds of irresistibly cute pets in Dream PetHouse by Zynga! Collect the world’s cutest animals and care for them in your own unique tree, staffed by Chipper and his group of adorable chipmunk friends!

• Feed your pets and watch them grow up right before your eyes!

• Connect Pethouses using dynamic bridges and see your pets explore their new home!
• Capture fond memories of your pets’ childhood in family albums!
• Raise your pet families and collect all the Golden Frames!
• Visit your friends’ trees using Facebook and get their help raising your pets!
• Customize your Pethouse with wild-looking trees and unique habitats!

Dream PetHouse is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The Lotto Machine is not your average random number generator. This one has a beautiful UI and is equipped with a physics engine giving you the perception of having some control over the outcome. The Lotto Machine uses the iPhone accelerometer so that as you tilt your iPhone, the balls roll around in the spinning drum.

The Lotto Machine is purely designed to help you pick your numbers for the lottery – sounds boring, right? Wrong! With a gorgeous UI, a spinning drum and physics that you can control with the accelerometer, now playing the lottery is fun no matter the outcome!

The Lotto Machine is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Pad & Quill, the makers of The Little Black Book for iPhone and Contega for iPhone have a nifty littles notes app in the App Store whose design was inspired by their cases.

What makes Pad & Quill Notes so special is the same thing that makes their cases so special — craftsmanship and attention to detail. It looks beautiful. It works smoothly. It’s well thought out.

Your notes will be neatly organized in classic notebooks and stored on a wooden shelf with stylish papers, fonts, and colors waiting to be read. There’s nothing new age or fancy here. It’s for people who like type written notes in hand written fonts, exquisitely rendered and precisely placed. And it’s a universal app so it works perfectly on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

• $0.99 – App Store link

Pad & Quill organizes your notes in classic notebooks kept on a wooden shelf. It’s intuitive, simple and beautiful. Inspired by the Italian bonded leather cases made by Pad & Quill, the app turns your device into books you will truly love.

CORE FEATURES

• organize notes into different books
• sync notes on all your iDevices
• realistic page turn effects
• universal app
• beautifully designed

CUSTOMIZE

• 10 fabulously designed book covers to choose from
• 10 beautiful fonts (font size adjustable)
• different ink colours
• different paper styles (plain, ruled, wrinkled, bookish, squared…)
• customizable note titles
• bookmark individual notes

MORE FEATURES

• automatic page of contents
• e-mail notes
• typing is supported in both landscape and portrait mode
• infinite digital paper & unlimited number of books

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Paper Monsters is a new platformer game for iPhone and iPad. In the game’s world, everything is made out of paper and cardboard, including your character. It’s a classic 2d side-scrolling platformer placed in a 3d environment.

I am loving this game! Paper Monsters has great graphics that are also very fun. My favorite little feature of the graphics is that sometimes things like trees and bushes pop up in front of or behind you in the 3d atmosphere.

Dive into the world of Paper Monsters and watch a living world made out of paper, cardboard, and a few cotton balls unfold right before your eyes.

Paper Monsters takes all of the classic 2d platforming elements, combines them with cutting edge graphics and then packs it onto your iPhone or iPad.

• Classic 2d sidescrolling gameplay with gorgeous 3d environments.
• Original and adorable characters
• Awesome original soundtrack – headphones recommended!
• Fun under water and flying powerups.
• Two control types: “floating” Joystick or classic touchpad
• Game Center Leaderboards
• Adventure and Hunt for hidden Game Center Achievements
• 16 Large Levels across 4 unique worlds
• Tons of secret areas!
• High score dash mode for endless replay value!
• Airplay Mirroring
• Fun for all ages
• Universal for iPhone, iPod, and iPad

Giveaway

We’re a big fan of cute platformer games, here at iMore, so we’re giving away Paper Monsters to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below! Must have a US iTunes account to win. Apple’s rule, not ours!

Paper Monsters is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Flipboard, the hugely popular iPhone and iPad social magazine app, has announced that it can now deliver customized content guides for four more countries, including UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia.

Anyone who has his or her iPad or iPhone region set to one of those countries automatically receive the local edition of their Content Guide when they tap on the red ribbon in the top right corner of Flipboard. To switch back to the “original” Content Guide, set your device’s country setting to United States.

The four new content areas are in addition to the other areas which are already supported. These are China, France, Taiwan, Hong Kong and of course the United States.

• Free – App Store link

Source: Inside Flipboard

Cocktail Flow is a gorgeous bartending app filled with delicious recipes. This isn’t your basic recipe list, however; Cocktail Flow keeps a list of what ingredients you have in your bar and populates a list of drinks you can make with your current stock. If you’re only a few ingredients away from some drinks, CockTail flow will also show you those and provide a nice shopping list of the items you need and estimate their total cost for you.

Throwing a party for this weekend’s big game? Cocktail Flow has just been updated with a Super Bowl package available as an in-app purchase.

The application features beautifully presented recipes and identifies cocktails that can be made from ingredients in your bar. It also gives suggestions on what ingredients to buy next to make additional delicious cocktails.

• Amazing photography
• Select what drinks you have at hand, and it will automatically show you which cocktails you can make
• Shopping suggestions to maximize the amount of cocktails you can make
• Special themed packages like New Years, Christmas, Valentine’s day and St Patrick’s day
• Detailed guides to help you through the process of making amazing cocktails

Cocktail Flow is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

If you’re heading to the Super Bowl this weekend, SB XLVI Guide will be your companion in your pocket. It’s your guide to official Super Bowl events, a map of Indianapolis, a 3D map and seating chart to the Lucas Oil Stadium, and a reference for local restaurants and nightlife.

Whether you’ll be in Indy or not, the Super Bowl XLVI Guide is your must-have companion to Super Bowl Week!

• A detailed guide to local restaurants, nightlife, and official Super Bowl events
• A 3D map of Indianapolis and an interactive 3D map of Lucas Oil Stadium for gameday
• You can follow all of the social media buzz with NFL Huddle
• Pin your parking spot and find your seating section in the stadium
• And much more!

SB XLVI Guide is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

FavorIt is the place where favorite friends and favorite apps meet. This new twist to app discovery lets you share your five favorite apps with your Facebook friends and view theirs. You can also see which apps are popular among all your friends.

This is one of those types of apps that needs participation from your friends in order to be useful, but the good news is that it only takes a few moments to login and do your part, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get your friends on board!

We took a closer look while at Macworld 2012.

• Free – App Store link

When you know the apps that your friends call their FavorIts, the possibilities are endless!

Rediscover those awesome iPhone classics or join in the latest App Store craze. Find out who’s also addicted to that zombie-words-tower game, or learn about the latest time-saving productivity tool. Has the latest bird-themed release kept you up until 2am? Don’t just love it, FavorIt!

FavorIt – Where Favorite Friends and Favorite Apps Meet is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

If Tetris were to wed a matching game, their resulting child may be something similar Revertis. The goal of this casual puzzle game is to draw 4 dots at a time in such a way that matches identical colors. The objective is simple, but execution may not always be.

I’m enjoying playing Revertis. It’s relaxing, has nice music, but isn’t mindless.

Are you on your way home from the work? May be in a subway or in a bus? Do you have 5 minutes? Would you like to shut down those thoughts in your head? Just for 5 minutes? Try Revertis! It is like meditation! It helps you to relax and trains your brain at the same time.

• 10 different game modes
• Competitive modes with limited time per turn
• Post your results on Facebook
• Game Center integrated
• Unique animation
• local leaderboards
• option for color-blind people
• soundtracks
• achievements
• German & Russian localizations

Giveaway

The makers of Revertis have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below!

Revertis is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land

A turn-based strategy/role-playing game based on Call of Cthulhu RPG. Set in the midst of World War One, the game pits your team of investigators and soldiers against an ancient enemy, one older than humanity itself… Can your team of investigators keep their grip on sanity long enough to stop these diabolical plans? The fate of humanity is in your hands…

• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Meeting Mapper

Documents all the important information in meetings and display a graphical depiction of your meetings. The information can be exported as a PDF and emailed and uploaded into your CRM application, SharePoint or just save it on your computer.

• $9.99 for iPad – App Store link

Tiny Review

Review stuff with just one photo and three lines of texts. Seriously, if they read how much we just wrote about them, they’d be pissed. (But now you can login with Twitter or email!)

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Ringtones & Alert Tones Maker

Personalize your iPhone by creating your own ringtones, text tones and other alert tones with Ringtones & Alert Tones Maker. Choose the song you want to use as your ringtone, specify the type of your alert, then choose the required segment from the audio track.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

The Very Cranky Bear

The award winning and much loved children’s book, The Very Cranky Bear* is now an animated, interactive app! Join Moose, Zebra, Lion and Sheep as they try to hide from the rain in a cave, but accidentally disturb a very cranky bear…

• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad -App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

MacPhun, the makers of FX Photo Studio, are working on a selective-coloring photography for iPhone called Color Splash Studio. Unlike similar apps already available in the App Store, FX Photo Studio comes with a slew of tools that allows you to further customize your photos including contrast, brightness, saturation, and hue. You can focus these edits to just the background or just the colored portion of your photo. You can also apply various filters (like sepia) to your background, making it more interesting than the traditional black and white backgrounds.

FX Photo Studio is already available in the Mac App Store [$2.99 - Mac App Store link] and will be available on the iPhone in mid-February.

We got a sneak peak of Color Splash Studio for iPhone while at Macworld 2012.

Sprint has released an iPhone app for their customers called Sprint Mobile Zone. With this app, users can access their Sprint accounts, check out promotions, and read Sprint news. Non-account holders may also use the app to check your power consumption and running resources and find Apple and Sprint stores.

Sprint Zone offers Sprint customers immediate access to their account online, Sprint News and promotions and in addition, it offers the following for both Sprint and non-Sprint customers:

• Simple device management (power controls, resources etc.)
• Apple and Sprint store Locator*
• Help functions, including access to a care representative

Sprint Mobile Zone is available on the iPhone for free.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Voice Calendar: Create calendar items on your iPhone with your voice.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

flickr hd: Displays a new photo from your public flickr photostream, your flickr.com favourites, or a custom flickr search every minute. Currently on sale!

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Girlfriend 411: Store all the information you will ever need to know about your girlfriend in a time of need. Thinking about sending her flowers, but can’t remember her address? Forgot what her favorite type of flowers are? These are the types of issues that a lot of men run into quite often.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

TextVite: The hottest new way to invite your guests and friends to anything! Choose a background, plug in your details, add a few cool design elements, and in seconds your TextVitation is buzzing on all your guests’ phones.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

World Tree With Dragons: The first tree world simulation type game. You can build a fantastic world where you control almost everything! By combining 3 types of branches and 12 different patterns of leafs (more to come in future updates), you can grow your tree totally unique from any other one in this world! It’s the best game to show your creativity and art sense.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

iCookbook is an iPhone and iPad app that will help you plan, prepare, and cook your meals. One of its unique features is the support for voice commands. While cooking, it is not uncommon to have your hands covered in matter that you do not want transferred to you iPad’s screen, so instead of using you hands to navigate around the app, you can use your voice. It also includes features that you would expect to find in any good cooking app such as detailed, customizable recipes, shopping lists, social sharing, and the ability to add your own recipes.

We interviewed the folks at Publications International and took a closer look at Macworld 2012

• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

• Voice Commands. Completely unique to iCookbook is hands free voice command. Cooks can proceed through the preparation steps without touching the iPad or iPhone screen. Just speak the simple commands to move to the next step, manage timers, view notes [iPad only], and more.
• Prepare Mode: Unique to iCookbook, the Prepare feature provides an enhanced display of a recipe a cook can read at a distance from the iPad and iPhone.
• Stir it Up! Feeling adventurous? Press Stir and iCookbook offers a selection of randomly chosen recipes based on a particular search or filter criteria [Shake to stir on iPhone].
• My Recipe Box. Enables a cook to create a set of iCookbook favorite recipes for easy retrieval, and add recipes from a personal recipe collection.
• Network with Friends and Family. Share on Facebook, or email any recipe to all your friends to let them know what you are cooking.
• Printing. Now print recipes to any AirPrint™ compatible printer.
• Personalize the Recipes. Everyone likes to put their own personal touch to a recipe. Our Notes feature allows you to record your ideas and comments about iCookbook recipes.
• Kitchen Tools. Multiple timers, substitution lists, and measurement conversion charts.
• Shopping List. Tag ingredients directly from a recipe to your shopping list, then print or email your list.
• Add your own recipe – You can easily add your own recipes so you never lose your Grandma’s favorite chocolate cookies or your world-famous pasta sauce. Once the recipe is added, you can also easily add your own photos, search for your recipe or even share your personal favorite through E-mail.

iCookbook is available on the iPhone and iPad for $4.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Garmin now owns Navigon and while you think twice as many turn-by-turn navigation apps from one company would be doubly confusing, they’re doing a good job at differentiating their products, but what’s more — Garmin themselves are going way beyond turn-by-turn apps and harnessing location-based GPS services including apps for pilots, and for fitness.

Garmin Fit uses location to measure and track you walking, running, or cycling activity, and lets you easily refer back to them or even share them via Garmin’s Connect service. It also ties into your music, trying to match a soundtrack to your activity level. Garmin Fit measures: current speed, distance traveled, your route, and your calories burned.

You can also get an optional dongle that uses ultra low-power Garmin Ant+ to wirelessly send data from your iPhone and Garmin Fit to external sensors including heart rate monitors, foot measures, and cycling meters.

Garmin On-Demand takes the traditional turn-by-turn navigation app and lowers almost every barrier of entry imaginable. It’s not expensive — you subscribe to what you need, when you need it, in small chunks for small periods, not massive bills forever. That also speeds up downloads and updates, since only the areas you’re traveling need to be transferred to your iPhone. Not driving? Not a problem — Garmin On-Demand has walkers covered too.

Both apps, as well as Garmin’s full suite of apps — which includes Navigon — are available now on the iTunes app store.

• $0.99 – Garmin Fit for iPhone – App Store link
• $0.99 – Garmin On-Demand for iPhone – App Store link

Taglists is an iPhone and iPad app that lets you create and share playlists made up of music, videos, and photos that can be streamed for free by you and your friends. Just tag all the media with the same hashtag label and Taglists will generate the playlists for you. Want to enjoy these playlists via a different medium? No problem; Taglists lets you use Airplay or DLNA to play them on connected TV, A/V receivers, iPod docks, stereos, Apple TV and more.

We took a closer look at Taglists at Macworld 2012.

• Free – App Store link

Taglists lets you create and share playlists that mix free music, videos, and photos from multiple places, including Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, and SoundCloud.

• Create a Taglist by tagging songs, videos, and photos with the same hash-tag, like #inthedark (See #inthedark here: http://eye-c.tv/twv)
• Share Taglists on Twitter and Facebook automatically, and let friends add to your playlist to build your own shared channel that others can watch on any computer
• Play Taglists on your iPhone or iPod touch or iPad or use Airplay or DLNA to play them on connected TV, A/V receivers, iPod docks, stereos, Apple TV and more.

Taglists is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The Omni Group is famous for their high quality, thoughtfully designed, and enormously useful productivity apps for iPhone, iPad, and Macs, including OmniFocus, OmniGraphSketcher, OmniGraffle, and OmniOutliner. They were one of the earliest high profile developers to go all-in on the iPad, bringing several of their premium apps to platform on launch day. Not believing the “consumption not creation” mantra of the usual suspects, they took cues from Apple on model controls and full screen workflows and re-imagined their apps until they became a way to almost finger-paint with productivity.

In addition to their user interface and user experience work, they’ve also been early adopters of new iOS features, such as adding location to task management and implementing iCloud sync.

Live from [Macworld 2012], Ken Case talks about all of the above and more, and where The Omni Group might be going next.

Check out the video above, and find all of the Omni Group’s finely crafted apps on the App Store via the links below.

• OmniFocus for iPhone – $19.99 – App Store link
• OmniFocus for iPad – $39.99 – App Store link
• OmniGraphSketcher for iPad – $14.99 – App Store link
• OmniGraffle – $49.99 – App Store link
• OmniOutliner – $19.99 – App Store link

iStopMotion brings the power and magic of stop motion animation to the iPad. Stop motion, and the slightly more advanced go-motion animation techniques, are what brought everything from the original Clash of the Titans and Star Wars movies to Wallace and Gromit to our screens, and now you can do it right on your iPad.

iStopMotion helps with a lot of the heavy lifting. Set up your stage, place your actors, and put your iPad in place and you’re good to go. Snap a picture, slightly move the scene, then take the next picture. Repeat. Once you have all your frames, you have your movie.

Live from Macworld 2012, Boinx shows us how you can set a time in iStopMotion to automatically take the frames for you at regular intervals, and even set up your iPhone as a better, more positional remote camera. An overlay shows you the last frame so you can more easily place the next, and if you take a bad frame — who’s hand is that?! — and once you’re done you can ad a soundtrack and share your creation, including to YouTube.

Yes, you can finally take that old AT-AT Walker out of storage, get the kids’ lego Batman sets all built up, or put the classroom Transformers toys to work. It’s Harryhausen time.

• $4.99 – App Store link

Garmin may be best known for their driving navigation apps and devices, but they also have Pilot My-Cast, an iPhone and iPad app for pilots to plan their flights by not only mapping out their route, but checking the weather by overlaying real-time data and maps including radar, clouds, and lightning. The UI is designed very nicely and is meant to be a quick and simple reference for general, corporate, and commercial pilots.

We got a closer look at Macworld 2012.

Garmin Pilot My-Cast is an aviation-centric weather and flight planning application designed specifically for general aviation, corporate and commercial pilots. Pilot My-Cast allows subscribers to view comprehensive weather information for your route or airport of interest. With Pilot My-Cast, you can quickly see how the weather will impact your flight by overlaying numerous real-time data including: Radar, visible and infrared clouds, AIRMETs, SIGMETs and lightning on a map with your flight displayed. Pilot My-Cast also features the AOPA Airport Directory along with the ability to file a flight plan and much more. Features:

• Designed by pilots specifically for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch
• Maps include: Animated radar, AIRMETs/SIGMETs, Lightning, PiREPs, METARs/TAFs, Winds Aloft, TFRs, Infrared and Visible Satellite and Prog Charts
• Extensive text products include: METARs, TAFs, Winds Aloft, PiREPs, AIRMETs, SIGMETs, Area Forecasts and NOTAMs
• Dynamic weather overlays with your route displayed on map
• AOPA Airport Directory
• Flight plan filing via DUAT(s)
• Comprehensive weather data direct from the National Weather Service and Environment Canada

Once the 30 day free trial expires, Garmin Pilot My-Cast Aviation Weather and Flight Planning requires a $9.99 monthly subscription.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Remarks is a brand new handwriting note-taking, and PDF annotating app for iPad from Readdle. I’m convinced the team at Readdle never sleeps because they release new apps, and update their catalog of existing apps, at pretty fast pace. They’ve focused on PDF lately, seeing a need for good editing, form filling, and annotating on iPad, and Remarks extends that expertise in a really interesting way.

Live at Macworld 2012, Readdle takes us hands on with their new handwriting style not-taking app. Whether you use a finger or a stylus, Remarks records your every stroke and because the iPad’s capacitive screen isn’t ideal for fine-grain, fine point detection, Remarks provides a handy “zoomed-in” mode so you can write out your notes in large scale, complete with scroll and new-line detection.

PDF editing and annotation is also built right in. You can add text, lines, and all the other standards, as well as move pages around and extra pages for easier, smaller-sized sharing. Not having to mail a full, 20MB file when all you marked up is a couple pages is most welcome. Add in Dropbox support and you start to get close to productivity nirvana.

Remarks has been submitted to the App Store and should be available in the next couple of days for $4.99.

Hit the link below to browse all of Readdle’s apps for iPhone or iPad, and read on for the details on Remarks.

• Readdle on App Store link

Write down your thoughts, sketch new ideas and diagrams, or annotate PDF documents during the university lectures, brain storming or just on the sofa at home.

• Add Notes Quickly. Only one tap is needed to start new a note.Exchange files with Mac/PC
• Use a USB cable and iTunes File Sharing to copy notes.Edit your notes on the Mac/PC
• Make changes into your notes using any PDF editor like Preview or Adobe Reader.Annotate Email Attachments
• Open PDF attachments directly from the Mail app to annotate them.Share Notes With Your Friends
• Email notes to friends with remarks and they will be able to edit it like their own.Import PDFs from Dropbox
• Use “Open In” to transfer documents from Dropbox, Box.Net, Safari and other applications.

While checking out the showroom floor at Macworld 2012, we encountered this cute little game called Bag It! The goal is to efficiently bag your groceries while optimizing space and not crushing items by, say, putting a watermelon on top of the bread.

These aren’t normal groceries, either. Each item is actually a character that has a personality. Bagging characters next to each other that get along well will help you achieve higher scores. For example, Sunshine the OJ and Spilt the Milk are sweethearts and bagging them next to each other awards an additional 300 points.

If organization isn’t your style or you need to blow off some steam, Bag It! also has a Rampage mode where your goal is to actually destroy as much groceries as possible.

Heavy, sturdy items on the bottom, light and fragile items on the top – seems simple, right? Think again!

• 50+ unique levels!
• Standard, Rampage, and Puzzle modes!
• Try to get 3 stars and both medals for each level! Master them all!
• 3 unique Endless Modes!
• Unique grocery combos – try to find them all!
• Custom tailored translations in 7 languages
• Game Center with Leaderboards

Bag It! is available on the iPhone and iPad for $2.99 or just the iPhone for $0.99.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $2.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Launch Center, a new shortcuts app for iPhone, aims to make everything from sending messages and mail to posting on Facebook and Twitter, to turning on your LED flashlight, faster and easier via an extremely clever, borderline audacious use of URL schemes and iOS 5′s Notification Center.

Produced by David Barnard of App Cubby fame, it boasts an absolutely gorgeous user interface that lets you easily set up which actions you want to appear in your Notification Center from a robust set of shortcut that include Phone, SMS/iMessage, Email, Twitter, Facebook, Flashlight, Google search, and Custom URL schemes. (That last one, for more advanced users especially, should make Launch Center an instant buy.)

Live from Macworld|iWorld 2012, David showed off some of the new features in the recent Launch Center 1.1 update, including scheduled launch actions — for example if you know you need to SMS your wife every morning or email your boss the report every friday at noon.

David’s keeping Launch Center in his dock now, since using Launch Center to quickly call a favorite or send a message is faster than tapping and pecking through screens of apps and layers of menus.

Hopefully Apple finds a way to balance security and accessibility in the next version of iOS so apps like Launch Center can start to do even more fantastic, time saving things.

• $0.99 – App Store link

The British Heart Foundation PocketCPR provides REAL-TIME feedback and instructions on Hands-only CPR that empowers ANYONE to learn and practice CPR, so that they can be READY when seconds really count!!! The technology is the same as that used in the ZOLL PocketCPR for actual rescue from sudden cardiac arrest. This version teaches Hands-only CPR skills according to the latest American Heart Association and European Resuscitation Council CPR and ILCOR Guidelines as published on October 18, 2010.

• BHF Pocket CPR is a must-have app for anyone who wants to learn how to perform CPR with accuracy. The PocketCPR app can be used in CPR training programs and for individual practice at home or at work. It is a great tool for families to learn CPR in order to be prepared if a loved one needs their help
• Actively utilizes the accelerometer hardware in the phone for real-time coaching and actual feedback on CPR while you are learning and practicing
• Measures the actual rate and depth of your compressions and lets you know if you need to push faster or slower, and whether you should push harder or softer
• PocketCPR will remind you to Call for Help, to Check Responsiveness, and to perform Hands-only CPR at the correct rate and depth. The device algorithms are in complete compliance with American Heart Association and International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) guidelines.
• Clear visual and audio step-by-step instructions on Hands-only CPR performance, including initial steps for the Chain of Survival.
• Precise metronome to pace chest compressions
• Accurate ability to detect rate of actual compressions and to state visually and audibly whether to push faster or to push slower
• Industry-proven technology to detect the depth of chest compressions
• Audio and visual prompts to push harder or to push softer
• Feature to detect when chest compressions have stopped and to prompt user to START CPR
• Complete Instructions for Use
• Ability to capture and email CPR compression data and accelerometer data allowing the user to record the quality of the CPR chest compression training

• App Store link

Valve has released Steam Mobile for iPhone and iPod touch into the App Store. Sort of. It is available to download and install on your iOS device, but unfortunately you need to be part of a limited beta to actually begin to use it. We are sure this will change fairly soon but it is very frustrating for those gamers that use Steam and want to use the app now.

With the free Steam app for iOS, you can participate in the Steam community wherever you go. Chat with your Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, read the latest gaming news and stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales.

• Connect with friends:  Steam on your mobile phone is the easiest way to keep up with your Steam friends while on the go.
• Steam Chat: Now you can take your Steam chats away from your computer with Steam for iOS and Android.
• Shop Steam: Browse the extensive Steam library of Windows and Mac titles from your phone. Find out about Steam sales wherever you are.

The Steam Mobile app is available for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad. It is not a universal binary so you are looking at 2x mode on your iPad. Hopefully Valve will rectify that soon as well.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Smash Cops is an iPhone and iPad game where you get to be the police in wild car chases. You may be weaving through traffic going after runaway felons or even fleeing from a felon attack until backup arrives. The city you work is huge with just as huge graphics and includes over 20 missions and 5 vehicles.

Smash Cops is this week’s Games of the Week in the App Store.

PURSUE

• Take down runaway felons whilst avoiding civilian traffic and buddy police as you chase and weave through traffic.

ESCAPE

• Escape under time pressure from felon attack and get to a call out location as quickly as possible.

CHALLENGE

• 4 different mini games: smash a load of cars illegally parked in a car park, weave through a course laid out by cones, dodge traffic on a highway and collect evidence throughout the city.

GROUND BREAKING CONTROLS

• By placing your finger behind the car you can steer, weave, defend and attack runaway felons with full control of your vehicle, never before used in touch racing games.

LARGE DRIVABLE CITY

• Huge city with high quality visuals creates a fun and rich environment for different attack and escape routes spread over 20 missions and 5 vehicles.

CHAOS AND MAYHEM

-Smash, crush and flip felon vehicles. Obliterate the street scenery.

Smash Cops is available on the iPhone and iPad for $2.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Zombie : The Rescue: Get hooked by the dozens of challenging stages, each offering you the chance to be a hero! You’re not just here to blast these baddies into oblivion—you’ve got helpless civilians to rescue. Don’t worry, though, you’ll have plenty of chances to reduce the shambling hordes to quivering sludge, too.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

The Adventures of Robin Hood: Dive into the story of Robin Hood, Maid Marion and the Sheriff of Nottingham with full screen cartoons, karaoke-style reading, sound effects and mini-games that stimulate the imagination.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $3.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

PicYou: With a simple photo you can connect with others from around the world and explore new things to do or see. See a sweet shot? Snap it with your iPhone and let PicYou do the rest with its awesome filters and frames.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

NewsFlash: One tap is all it takes to see what just happened… NewsFlash brings you all the latest news, as it breaks, from the major news sources in your country.

• Free for iPhone and iPad App Store link

Spirit of Wandering – The Legend: Sail the seas with a pirate captain in search of her missing love in this adventurous, hidden-object quest! After an attack by the Flying Dutchman, the crew of the Spirit of Wandering and captain’s companion, Jack, were imprisoned in the spirit world. Use powerful tools such as the Crystal Orb, a trusty compass and the help of fellow prisoners to find hidden objects that are drifting between the two worlds. Remove the lingering curse and save those stuck in the spirit world!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link
• Free for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Powerhouse social gaming company Zynga, as you may or may not know has a new app on the market called Dream Heights that looks strikingly similar to small indie developer NimbleBits’s award winning Tiny Tower — so much so that NimbleBit has called Zynga out on the matter.

Dream Heights was released last week, albeit solely to the Canadian App Store, which is a common place for freemium apps to be tested before wider release. Since then many in the community have remarked on the similarities to Tiny Tower. While the games each have their own unique styling, the premise for them both is identical and there is no denying the similarities between the two.

NimbleBit let the community — and more importantly Zynga — know they were indeed aware of the situation, when Ian Marsh tweeted out a comedic image addressing the issue. Later Tweets from David Marsh, lent some more color to the matter, referencing Zynga’s failed purchase attempt of NimbleBit.

“Even when you refuse to go work for Zynga, sometimes you end up doing work for Zynga anyway,”

How effective NimbleBit can afford to be is a big question. No matter how you look at though, it’s a pretty shady move on Zynga’s part — even if they’re not the only ones out there doing it. Just because Zynga can copy a game doesn’t mean they should, and the fact they tried to legitimately buy NimbleBits first and failed, then copied the game, only makes matters worse.

Sources: @eeen (1), @NibmleDave

Prezo is an iPhone photography app that lets you and your friends contribute to shared photo albums. This is perfect for groups of people that are at the same party, event or vacation.

If I wasn’t already married, I’d totally encourage my guests to use this app during my wedding reception and have the photos displayed in real time on a projector.

Prezo, urban slang for “Presentation”, is a social photo sharing app that allows multiple people to contribute to the same shared photo albums. Users create photo albums, called Prezos, and share them via Facebook, Twitter, Email or SMS. Other users can view and/or edit Prezos based on permissions set by the Prezo owner. Prezo owners and contributors are notified via push notifications when Prezos are changed. Prezos can also be viewed as slide presentations at www.myprezo.com.

Imagine…

• Being at a social or corporate event where users can contribute to a shared Prezo for the event while the Prezo is being shown in real time on a large projection screen.
• Being on a vacation where all photos taken by anyone in your party are automatically shared with everyone else in your party. At the same time, people not on the trip can see your pictures in real time as they are taken by viewing the shared Prezo at www.myprezo.com.
• Creating a mobile portfolio or mobile sales presentation that can be viewed by customers and prospects.

…Prezo makes this all simple!

Prezo is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

“Classic arcade fighting game SoulCalibur has hacked and slashed its way onto the iPhone, with all of the vibrant characters and flashy moves you remember, but there are still a few gaps to fill.”

SoulCalibur recently launched for both iPhone and iPad, calling upon many nostalgic gamers to dive back into the classic 3D fighting title. The screenshots show many of the characters players will readily recognize, like the gruff samurai, Mitsurugi, the eccentric and mysterious Voldo, and the enlightened Kilik. There are 10 characters available from the get-go, with another 9 available through unlocks. All of ‘em have alternative costumes too, for those that are sensitive to combat fashion.

There are a ton of game modes, like the classic arcade style, where you plow through challengers one-by-one until reaching the final boss, a time trial where you try to get through them all as quickly as possible, and survival mode, to see how long you can play before being defeated. Practice mode is an essential and welcome addition for those that want to learn every little nuance of their favourite characters. Namco Bandai promises that even more game modes are on the way.

Unfortunately, SoulCalibur’s asking price at launch was a little on the high end: $12, and that’s with a 20%-off launch discount. That’s a hard pill to swallow when the game doesn’t offer multiplayer support, and sound quality is a little on the sketchy side…

SoulCalibur for iPhone has the traditional look, but with multitouch controls superimposed on top of the screen.

For the most part, the gameplay is fantastic and classic. You have an overlay of a joystick, and the four standard buttons – vertical attack, horizontal attack, kick, and guard. Control options let you customize button placement and opacity, as well as add a multi-button of your choice. This is particularly important, since a lot of SoulCalibur moves require you to hit two buttons at once, which is only really possible otherwise if you lay your device flat on a surface, so you’re playing with your fingers instead of thumbs. The extra button is helpful in that regard, but since you can only add one, a character’s full arsenal won’t be available to you when thumbing it out.

SoulCalibur's animations have been faithfully, beautifully reproduced

The animation is altogether great, and having played SoulCalibur plenty on the Xbox 360, I can say that all of the moves and animations have been faithfully recreated. The models themselves can be a little jagged at times, but given the speed and complexity of many of the animations, I’m happy enough that everything runs smoothly. Although the menus are laid out clearly, I occasionally had issues getting presses to register. Bigger buttons for each option would be really helpful.

Menu options are clearly laid out, though tap targets are small and can be hard to hit.

The one downer for SoulCalibur on the iPhone was the audio. The music was tinny and MIDI-style, the announcer’s audio files seemed low-quality compared to everything else, and the character taunts before and after each round are still in Japanese (even though the announcer and UI is in English). These are all things that could be fixed in a future patch, though, so I’m holding out for Namco Bandai to update the game sooner rather than later.

The lack of multiplayer is a a bit of a kick in the teeth, seeing as my favourite part of SoulCalibur, and really any fighting game, is beating the snot out of your buddies. There is Game Center support though, so at least your high scores are posted where your friends can see them and feel inadequate.

SoulCalibur supports Game Center leaderboards, but NOT multiplayer.

While SoulCalibur has buckets of nostalgia going for it, $11.99 is a lot to ask. While you won’t have as easy of a time playing on your iPhone or iPad as you would with a real console controller, you learn quickly and before long you’ll find your ass-kicking stride. There are some significant feature gaps, namely multiplayer support, but if Namco Bandai follows up with significant patches, SoulCalibur may very well merit this hefty pricetag.

SoulCalibur
$11.99 Buy now		The Good Combat animations recreated faithfully Gameplay and controls familiar and responsive Plenty of characters to unlock Universal app, works on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad The Bad Currently too expensive No multiplayer Voiceovers need improved quality and translation The Conclusion While SoulCalibur has buckets of nostalgia going for it, $11.99 is a lot to ask (and that’s the 20%-off release sale price). While you won’t have as easy of a time playing on your iPhone or iPad as you would with a real console controller, you learn quickly and before long you’ll find your ass-kicking stride. There are some significant feature gaps, namely multiplayer support, but if Namco Bandai follows up with significant patches, SoulCalibur may very well merit this hefty pricetag.

The gorgeous twitter client, Twittelator Neue for iPhone, now offers notifications as an in-app purchase. For $1.99/year, you get native push alerts for mentions, direct messages, new followers, retweets, and being added to a list (or any so desired combination). This update also introduces Timeline Galleries so that you can quickly browse through photos that have been tweeted.

I have always been a fan of Twittelator Neue’s gorgeous timeline, design, and photo integration, but have always strayed from using it as my primary Twitter client due to lack of native push. Now, Twittelator Neue will likely become my Twitter client of choice. I will admit, however, that I’m not a big fan of the little icon included in each popup notification.

In the excitement of push notifications, I almost forgot about the Timeline Galleries! This is such a fantastic new feature and is just another example of what sets Twittelator Neue apart from other Twitter clients, making it truly unique.

In celebration of this update, Twittelator is on sale for $0.99 for today only.

• App Store link

Here’s the update notes:

• Neue Notifications Available as In-App Purchase
• Timeline Galleries
• Recent User Photos
• Tweet Replies & Conversations

Anyone else picking up Twittelator Neue? What are you thoughts on the subscription model for push notifications?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Breakout Boost: This arcade classic is now enhanced with improved graphics and deeper gameplay features such as power ups, unique brick types, and Boost Control! The faster your ball goes, the more points you’ll get!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Worldictionary – Instant Translation & Search: Point your iPhone’s camera at any word and Worldictionary will instantly define and translate it. No need to manually type words or take pictures. This app will be your indispensable travel tool primed to give you translation on-the-go.

• $7.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Jump Out!: From now on, when you earn an achievement, you do not just get a medal and points – you also unlock a new game level with unique game mechanics that correspond to the achievement you received. Each bonus level lets you sacrifice everything to get a trophy. Therefore, from that point on, unlocking each new achievement becomes a key to getting even more fun from the game.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Peak Meetings HD: A powerful tool for capturing and organizing your thinking, and making meetings more efficient and effective. Update includes even more productivity enhancements including agenda view, copy, and actions.

• $12.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

The Wiggles’ Alphabet Adventure:

• $2.99 for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Microsoft has launched another app for the iPad, this time it is MSN UK. MSN UK is brings all the latest news, sport and entertainment from the UK right to your iPad.

The MSN experience is now enhanced on iPad – easily swipe to find your favourite news, sport and entertainment articles and videos. Excited about something you read on MSN for iPad? Just tap and share with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

• Reading articles on MSN for iPad feels natural, no matter how you hold your iPad – in either portrait or landscape modes. We’ve added popular photo galleries, slideshows and videos to add depth to what you’re browsing. You can even download stories to your iPad for when you’re not connected to a network later. Need to dig deeper on something you just read? We’ve built Bing right into the top of the app for easy searching.
• Popular photo galleries and slideshows
• Quick access to Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger
• View in portrait and landscape modes, whatever is easier for you
• Send feedback to the MSN team – let us know what you think

If the iPad’s Auto-Lock is set to 2 or 5 minutes, the downloading of an issue of MSN for offline viewing may be interrupted when the iPad locks the screen. You may see the dialog box showing that the download is in progress, but the background downloading of the issue may have stopped. Tap Cancel to close the dialog box. You may need to close and restart the app to resume the offline download.

• App Store link

Appigo’s Notebook app for iPhone and iPad has gone 2.0 and is now a universal app for iPhone and iPad with Dropbox support to keep your notes synced across all your devices, including your Mac or PC.

Notebook focuses on simple functionality for creating, sharing, and editing your notes. Notebook 2 now gives you an easy and convenient way to share your notes from anywhere with Dropbox sync — collaborate with friends, keep your notes on all your iOS devices, and even add, edit, and modify them on your Mac and PC.

KEY FEATURES

• Access your notes quickly
• Organize with multiple notebooks (folders)
• Share notes with all your iOS devices, your Mac, your PC, and your friends in standard text files (.TXT) with Dropbox
• Search and quickly find your notes in any notebook
• Protect your notes from others by setting an app-wide passcode

EXTRAS

• Bulleted Lists: Create simple lists using a dash, bullet, number, or letter
• Data Detection: Automatic links for phone numbers, websites, email addresses, and calendar events
• Fonts: Display notes using a wide variety of fonts and sizes
• Todo Support: Export notes as tasks into Appigo Todo (http://www.appigo.com/todo)
• TextExpander® Support (SmileOnMyMac, LLC): Set up keyboard shortcuts for rapid entry of common phrases
• Toodledo.com notes synchronization

Notebook is available on the iPhone and iPad for $4.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

WorldCard Mobile and WorldCard HD are iPhone and iPad apps that allows you to automatically add information on business cards to your Contacts by simply taking a photo. It has recently been updated with iCloud storage and syncing support.

Now excuse me, I have a pile of business cards from CES 2012 to start going scanning.

WorldCard Mobile, the leading business card scanning application for iPhone, uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to instantly transfer information from business cards to the user’s native contacts. With a simple click of the camera, you no longer have to manually input contact info from business cards or email signatures.

• Superior text recognition
• High-speed scanning & update
• Card Holder function to view & manage contact info
• Create groups of contacts with Card Holder for easier navigation & organization (school, work, etc.)
• Cover flow and List style view for contacts
• Automatic camera shake reduction
• Email signature capture
• Automatic sorting of contact data
• Merge new data into existing contacts
• Auto-image rotation when scanned sideways
• Manual cropping by finger when recognition happens partially
• Ability to differentiate business cards from saved images
• Add Social Network Function.
• Image Distortion and Enhance.
• Export card information to Excel/CSV/Gmail file.
• Batch scan and recognize.
• Support camera flash(iphone 4).
• Support data exchange with WorldCard desktop software(Open In/ import /Export / iTunes File Sharing)
• Recognition of 7 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. You can switch from one language to another just like that!
• Integrated w/ WorldCard Contacts (sold separately) to make a call, text, email or browse the company website directly from business card images

WorldCard Mobile is available on the iPhone for $6.99 and WorldCard HD on the iPad for $14.99.

• iPhone – App Store link
• iPad – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

“It’s not quite iTunes for comic books yet, but Comics and the comiXology apps like Marvel and DC are getting terrifically close.”

Comics is the best app for buying comic books — and graphic novels — on your iPad. Well, that’s not exactly true. Comics is one of the best places to buy comics, but the developer, comiXology also makes dedicated versions of the app for Marvel, DC, Dynamite, IDW, Image, and other publishers. They claim over 16,000 titles, more than enough to delight anyone’s inner Sheldon. Comics itself has a great selection of titles from several of their partner publishers and, taken together, the comiXology apps are everything you need to get your weekly fix of new releases and classic back issues alike.

comiXology's dedicated DC Comics app opens up with all the latest titles.

When you first load up Comics, or any of the dedicated comiXology apps, you’re taken straight to the store and will have various options up top for featured titles, new or recently added title, popular or best-selling titles, and sometimes free titles as well. Browse your way through or use the tabs at the bottom to jump to series (like trade paperbacks, they’re several issues collected into one easier-to-manage edition), story arcs (related issues you still have to buy and keep separately — why not just make these into series, folks?), creators (if you’re looking for specific titles by your favorite artist or writer), as well as the option to search, and My Comics/purchases to see what you’ve already bought.

The option to buy series (think trade paperbacks) in the dedicated apps like Marvel and DC is a nice addition.

There’s a ton of content to be found. Comics proper has a good sampling of titles from the various publishers. The dedicated apps for Marvel, DC, et al have loads of current stuff, most of the popular arcs and series from the last few years, and a smattering of classics (though why I can only find something like Batman: Year One as a set of individual issues in a story arc and not as a collected series is irksome — fix that DC!).

When you find what you like, it's just one in-app purchase away, just like iTunes.

When you find something you like, just tap the price to buy, same as you would in iTunes, and the familiar in-app-purchasing system takes over. Your comic issue or collected edition is downloaded straight into the app and made available on your reading shelf.

Pricing is okay. Individual issues are often $1.99 though some newer/hotter titles are $2.99 which is too high. As Steve Jobs told the music industry a decade ago, their competition is free — price things fairly and make them easily available and the market will flourish. Also, while Marvel offers true collections in their series, DC doesn’t seem to have embraced that yet which is baffling. (Prices for the Marvel series range from $6.99 for smaller, more obscure 130 page collections all the way up to $24.99 for large, popular 330 page collections like Planet Hulk). There’s also no subscription model, let alone all-you-can-eat offering.

Thumbnails of all the pages in your issue or series are just a tap away.

The reading experience is excellent. Pages are shown one at a time, or side-by-side for double-page spreads. You can also double tap to “zoom in” and show only one panel at a time. There’s no page flipping animation but swiping between pages is a breeze. You can also tap to bring up the controls which let you get info on the title, go to a thumbnail view of all pages, pull up the option for transition speed, letterboxing, etc. and get help on how the reader works.

While not extensive, basic options let you tweak the reading experience.

You can’t load your own comics, or comics you’ve bought in PDF form (for example, on Marvel’s extensive DVD volumes), but that’s what apps like Comic Zeal are for.

Overall comiXology has done an amazing job. Marvel, DC, and the other companies are also tepidly inching their way into digital confidence. It would be nice to have everything all in the Comics app and not need the separate Marvel, DC, et. al apps, for example (could you imagine if Warner, Sony, etc. were all separate iTunes app clones and we couldn’t keep our music or movies in one place?). It would also be great to see the bigger collections, absolutes, omnibuses, etc. available, discounted the way they are for trade paperbacks in comic book specialty shops. (Speaking of which, the comiXology apps go out of their way to point out where you can go buy real-world paper versions of the comics, which is both awkward and charming.)

Double page spreads look especially great on the iPad

The good

• Excellent availability of titles, especially in the dedicated apps
• In-app purchases are quick and efficient
• Reader is fluid and functional

The bad

• Having dedicated Marvel, DC, etc. apps is annoying, all content should also be in the main Comics app
• Can’t load your own comics into the reader

The conclusion

It’s not quite iTunes for comic books yet, but Comics and the comiXology apps like Marvel and DC are getting terrifically close. If you’re a general fan, get the Comics apps proper. If you’re a Marvel or DC purest, get the dedicated Marvel or DC apps. If you love everything, get them all. With day-and-date new releases and an expanding back catalog of classic stories, Comics makes iPad the premiere device for any comic loving geek.

FREE – Download

• Marvel version
• DC version

Defense zone: Hold your defence with your turrets against the massive hordes of enemies. It is up to you, commander, how to spend the resources: restore and upgrade your veteran units or to purchase some new ones.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Rewards – A reward tracker for parents: Add a reward when your child is helpful, does the dishes, helps put the trash out and many more! At-a-glance, you and your child can see how many rewards they have totalled up for the week.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

PDF Forms: A powerful software tool for work with PDF documents and forms which allows commenting on ready PDF documents, filling forms, signing legal documents such as contracts or notices and sharing processed PDF documents via email or Dropbox.

• $8.99 for iPad – App Store link

Favomatic: Provides you with an easy to use interface to create and manage launch-buttons for your favorites. Think of it as a to-do list that helps you in that daily routine. It not only reminds you to check out something you were about to forget but it also makes sure not to check it too often.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

Operation Math: Dr. Odd is on a global quest to eliminate the world’s even numbers. And it’s your job to stop him, by seeking out his secret bases, destroying his menacing mainframes and making the world a safer place for math. Complete each mission by solving the equations that lock the doors along your escape route in 60 seconds or less and earn all the uniforms and watches of a seasoned Base10 spy.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $2.99 for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Readdle’s PDF Expert for iPad has been updated with the ability to do a full text search across your PDF library. Additionally, there is a new sorting panel and a much needed eraser tool for handwritten notes and little conveniences like the ability to hit the tab key to move to the next field when filling out forms.

Here’s the update notes:

• Document Search now looks far beyond the file name. It lets you find the needed documents faster and easier than ever before!
• New sorting panel lets you reorder the files based on Name, Date or Modified Date. Just scroll the document list to the very top to reveal it, pretty much like in iBooks or Pages.
• Support of “Tab” and arrow keys on the bluetooth keyboards when filling PDF forms makes the process lightning fast.
• An eraser tool for your handwriting has arrived! It is located on the Pens toolbar and works exactly like you expect.
• Handwriting and Wrist Protection are now better than in many note taking apps.

PDF Expert is available on the iPad for $9.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Are you using Google’s digital magazine-style news aggregator, Google Currents on your iPad or iPhone? Google Currents is going on 2 months old and while it got to the market with Flipboard well ahead of it, it does have Google’s brand and power behind it. It’s also got a brand new iMore editions for your reading pleasure. Along with the launch-day Android Central edition, we’ve also added a Mobile Nations super edition, so you can keep up with all your platforms, all in one place, all for free.

If you haven’t used Google Currents yet but want to check it out, it’s as simple as downloading it from the App Store, logging in with your Google ID, and hitting the subscribe links below. If you’ve already used it, let us know if you’re still using it, or if it’s dropped off your radar.

• Google Currents – App Store link

Subscribe on Google Currents: Android Central; iMore; Mobile Nations

There’s a new virtual personal assistant in town and her name Evi. Created by True Knowledge and running Nuance’s voice recognition technology, Evi is going to give Siri a run for her money – once the servers aren’t slammed, that is.

I’ve been trying to use Evi all day, but keep getting server errors, but I’m not giving up hope. Apple’s servers for Siri were also having issues when the iPhone 4S was released due to heavy traffic, but now works like a charm. Once the servers aren’t so busy, we’ll be sure to put Siri and Evi up against each other and share the results!

Phil over at Android Central gave Evi for Android a try as well, so check that out by way of comparison.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Unlike a search engine, which simply looks for matching words and shows you a list of websites, Evi understands what you want to know and gives back exactly what you’re after.

Need to know where the nearest bank is? Not a problem. Going out for dinner but can’t decide where? She can help with that too. The more you ask, the more she will learn, and thus she is improving all the time.

• Voice or text input – Chat to Evi in plain English and she will understand
• Local information for UK and USA – Shopping, news, dining and more. Evi knows where you are and gives answers based on your location
• One tap words – Allowing you to build your question super-fast
• Built in browser – No need to swap to a different browser, view web links within Evi’s app
• A learning and adapting intelligence – Rate Evi’s answers to help her learn more about the world
• More than a search engine – Evi takes the searching out of search, able to review and compare nearly a billion facts from her database to give you exactly what you need

Evi is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Epson has recently released an app that lets you project images and files from your iPhone or iPad to a compatible Epson projector. If the projector has network availability, then beaming your photos, PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, PDFs, and more, is just a tap of a button.

Epson iProjection is an intuitive mobile projection app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Epson iProjection makes it easy to wirelessly project images and files stored on your iOS devices using an Epson projector with network availability (see applicable projectors). Move about the room and effortlessly display content from your iOS device (see supported formats) on the big screen.

• Display documents loaded in the Epson iProjection app using your Epson projector
• Display images stored in your iOS “Photo” library
• Use the built-in projector remote control feature to control input sources, AV mute, freeze, audio settings, and more
• Send files from your email or cloud storage apps to iProjection app

Epson iProjection is available on the iPhone and iPad for Free.

• App Store link

Source: Epson

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

AntiCrop is an iPhone and iPad app that will extend the background your photos as a method of “uncropping” them. It’s similar to Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5 and works surprisingly well.

When I came across this app I was immediately negative and didn’t believe it would work very well. Well, I’m impressed how it handled the photo above even though it’s not an ideal candidate for this type of manipulation. This app isn’t intended to be used on photos with complex backgrounds, but even though my photo had some buildings in the background, AntiCrop did a pretty good job! Sure, if you look closely, you can see some weird stuff happening with the buildings, but most people won’t be inspecting the photo and not even notice.

Inside this app lies a highly intellectual content filling tool that adds pixels to the expanded area of your photo. It’s highly recommended for all kinds of backgrounds and homogeneous textures. Great results are achievable when working with nature landscapes, backgrounds and much more. If you want to make some unique creations, AntiCrop can help there, too. All you need is imagination and a willingness to experiment.

• World’s first app with anti-cropping algorithm
• Uncrop photos in any direction
• Lossless straighten technique
• Attractive, easy to use interface
• Optimized for multi-core processors
• Brought to you by the developers of TouchRetouch

AntiCrop is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Kick’n Chick’nz: Medieval Karnival: A hilariously funny new game full of exciting carnival arcade style games, unique gameplay dynamics plus beautiful 3D graphics and animations. The story begins with a wee tyke named “Margie”, aye she’s a tuffy…and a spoiled one at that!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

QR Pal – QR Code Scanner and Barcode Reader: The most advanced QR Code Scanner and Barcode Reader available which enables users to scan, store, share and pay. QR Pal is the only QR Code Scanner that rewards its users for scanning and sharing with monthly cash prizes. QR Pal also includes SafeScan giving you peace of mind that your scanning is always secure. You can even compare prices of products using the in-built Barcode Reader!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Phase – Blinky’s Adventure: Built using the Unreal Development Kit from Epic Games, Phase – Blinky’s Adventure follows the voyage of Blinky, a robot sent to explore an unknown planet in search of a new home.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Icon Craft: Create one-touch shortcut icons on your home screen for actions such as making a call or sending a message.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Baby Game: Cutie Frog/Cat/Crab: A simple app that lets your child pull on a fog, cat, or crab’s eyes and lips.

• Frog, $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link
• Cat, $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link
• Crab, $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

There are hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps for just about everything — so how come the one you need, the one you know just has to be there, is so hard to find? Enter TiPb’s new weekly feature where staff and readers alike sort through the App Store and help you find just the right App for That. This week, our very own Chris Oldroyd asks:

I need an app to produce passport compliant photographs for a new passport. Any ideas?

To see what we found for Chris, follow along after the break!

ID-Photo – Biometric passport/ID photos [$1.99 - App Store link] is an iPhone and iPad app for creating passport and identification photos. It knows the sizing requirements in 14 countries and will set up your photo to be printed at the legally required size.

When taking your photo, ID-Photo overlays guidelines onto the camera so that you can be certain that your photo will meet the requirement. It also lets you make adjustments to contrast, brightness, sharpening, and grayscale. Additionally, the app has a list of tips for taking your photo and examples of both acceptable and unacceptable photos.

Once your photo is prepared, it is very easy to email or print to an Airplay compatible printer. Just tell ID-Photo the paper size and it’ll take care of the rest!

Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for Chris? Let him — and all of us — know.

Having trouble finding what you need in the app store? Head on over to our App for That Forum and let us know what you’re looking for. The iMore community will do our best to find you just the right App for That!

Birkley Breathed’s Bloom County was my two favorite comic strips growing up, and now it’s starting to become available in iBooks. From Bill the Cat’s run for president to Milo’s skewering of Senator Bedfellow to Oliver’s landing the space shuttle to Opus’… everything, it delighted me on a daily basis.

The iBook’s implementation isn’t ideal, at least in my brief skim-through — the pages don’t turn as easily as a regular iBook and instead the double page spread slides and flops, and only the first three volumes are currently available, but I applaud them getting it into the iBookstore to begin with and look forward to the whole series.

Hopefully Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, my other favorite, will join it in iBooks soon. (Like Bloom County, I bought the complete series the day it went on sale but would dearly love it in digital form as well.)

Adorn your virtual shelf with it now.

• Bloom County Vol. 1 – $7.99 – iBookstore link
• Bloom County Vol. 2 – $7.99 – iBookstore link
• Bloom County Vol. 3 – $7.99 – iBookstore link

Every week a few of us from team iMore will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

TripAdvisor Hotels Flights Restaurants – @chrisoldroyd

I have just booked our family holiday for the summer and decided to have a nose around the App Store to see if I could find any apps that could recommend places to visit and where to eat. Luckily I stumbled upon an app called TripAdvisor Hotels Flights Restaurants. The app covers all sorts or areas and does cover Pollenca Mallorca where we are heading.

You can look at hotels, restaurants and visitor attractions, read reviews and ratings left by other visitors to the area too. It is very comprehensive, has links to Google Maps for guidance and he ability to leave your own reviews too. The app has been recently updated and is now optimized for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and is completely free. If you are planning vacation, check it out, it gives you some local knowledge right in your pocket.

• Free – App Store link

Idea Sketch – @Alli_Flowers

If you like graphic organizers, you’ll love Idea Sketch. We love stuff like this in education, from K-12, but mind mapping is a concept that can be used in any profession.

If you’re unfamiliar with the basic premise, you are literally mapping ideas. Drop your idea into a shape – round, square, oblong, diamond, and link it to other ideas. Expand your thoughts until you have filled in all those loose threads.

Idea Sketch allows you unlimited canvas space, so your ideas can’t be constrained. You can pinch and zoom to see whatever you want, and you can change the colors to suit your whim. You can view in a list format as well as the “idea” format, and you can share it all via email or via Box.

This is a must for students and educators, and a great idea for anyone just trying to organize his thoughts.

• Free – App Store link

Sonic 4 Episode 1 – @jorjLim

Ever since I was younger, I have been a huge fan of the Sonic franchise. I owned the 3 main games, Sonic 1, 2 and 3, on original megadrive cartridge (remember them?). When I learnt that Sonic 4 Episode 1 would be coming to iOS, I got really excited. I got so excited that I bought the game for its full £6.99 price at midnight the day it came out.

The one thing I could never achieve on the older games, was collecting all the Chaos Emeralds. Collecting all 7, would unlock Super Sonic, a invincible, faster, yellow version of Sonic.

So when I downloaded Sonic 4 Episode 1, my one goal was to unlock Super Sonic, for the first time, ever. After months of struggling, having to re-do each level to play the special stages over and over again. I finally collected the last Chaos Emeralds.

My 8 year old self would have been so proud of this moment, finally being able to play as Super Sonic that I unlocked myself, and to achieve this on a updated version of the game, made it ever better. I got to have the thrill of nostalgia, side by side with awesome modern 2.5D graphics, on my phone!

If you are a fan of the Sonic franchise, you should check out Sonic 4 Episode 1. Its packed full of homages, references and levels from the original games and really does bring back the franchise with a modern look.

• $3.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $4.99 for iPad – App Store link

Jelly Defense – @skeetobite

My pick of the week is a new tower defense game called Jelly Defense. This is a fun, light hearted casual game to play. This game takes the traditional tower defense game and doesn’t change the formula too much. It does add a bit of an ongoing story, includes towers that are only effective against enemies of the same color (so blue towers can’t shoot against red enemies), and includes various aspects like needing to “learn” how to make new types of towers. Where it shines, however, is with the mix of background sounds/soundtrack, and the really nice, clean graphics. The stark color contrast (red and blue jelly towers and enemies, a grey background) really give the game some character, which is needed to stand out from all the other tower defense games out there. Best of all, this is a universal binary, so you can play it on any device you have!

• $2.99 – App Store link

Birdhouse – @sethclifford

I sometimes like to revisit apps that I haven’t used in a while by browsing my purchased apps on my iPhone. One that I recently rediscovered is Birdhouse. Now the thing about Birdhouse is that it hasn’t been updated in a long time. Like since the summer of 2010. But it runs fine on iOS 5 and does exactly what it’s supposed to. Which is to act as a notepad for your tweets. You can log in with multiple accounts, save drafts of your potential tweets, publish directly from the app, and back everything up via email. It’s not a Twitter client per se, as there’s no timeline to view, but it’s more of a partner to your favorite Twitter app. And yeah, lots of apps save drafts now, but the nice thing about Birdhouse is that sometimes you have an idea you want to capture quickly and don’t feel like opening up your main app and loading it, and then getting sidetracked and eating up time. It’s a single purpose app for a simpler time.

• $1.99 – App Store link

Delivery Status – @Bla1ze

Keeping track of packages for me is a big issue, not because I get a lot of them but because I live an apartment. For some reason, if I’m not watching my package delivery dates — I tend to miss a lot of packages that are scheduled to be delivered. To help keep my eye on things and ensure I get my deliveries I make use of Delivery Status Touch by JuneCloud. It supports a wide array of services such as Amazon, USPS, UPS and more importantly for me — Canada Post plus it includes Google Map integration. JuneCloud also offers a desktop solution for tracking so your iOS device is always in sync with your desktop and the cloud.

• $4.99 – App Store link

Kinotopic – @phishgirl3

I’m always looking for new ways to make pictures and videos into something more than they are, and this week stumbled on an app called Kinotopic. This simple to use app turns 3-4 second videos into a kino, or cinemagraph. If you haven’t heard of cinemagraph, it’s a photo with a small repeated movement usually confined to one detail in the image.

All you need to do to make your own kino is shoot a quick video or pick one from your library, choose your anchor frame, then highlight the portion of the image you want to show movement. The app processes it and sends your created kino to you via email. You can share on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr as well as publish your finished creation to the public stream or mark it as private. All in all it’s a fun app to use, and in my opinion worth the $1.99 price tag.

• $1.99 – App Store link

Big Lens – @reneritchie

Sometimes you just need to fake it to get it done. For all the multiple layers of glass, remarkable aperture, and overall image quality of the otherwise I-can’t-believe-it’s-a-phone camera on the iPhone 4S, it just can’t give you the depth of field — or bokeh if you’re fancy — of a fast 50 on a DSLR. Enter Big Lens, which attempts to do in post what Apple can’t — yet — do in camera. Like most post-process depth of field utilities, it’s a trick and there’s no getting around it. Just look for the tell-tale halo around the non-blurred portions — for example, around a webOS editor and his brief flirtation with a BlackBerry Playbook on a big-ass gold chain at CES 2012. But with automatic and manual modes, aperture, filter, lens, focus, and blur controls, Big Lens fakes it well. If you’re ever in one of those awkward moments where you just have to fake it to get it done, give Big Lens a go. It might just get you to good enough.

• $0.99 – App Store link

iBooks Author – @llofte

iBooks Author is the iBooks creation tool that was announced at Apple’s education event. I’ve done a little playing around with it and am really excited to start seriously using it. I’d be impressed if a simple book was easy to create, but so are books filled with animations and interactive material. I’m a college math instructor and hope to use iBooks Author to write short, supplementary books to offer to my students for free.

• Free – Mac App Store link

The Recipe Box – Jackie Wyan (Reader’s Choice Winner)

The Recipe Box is one of my favorite “hidden gem” finds. I had been looking for an app that I could easily transfer all of my old, greasy, hand-written index card recipes to, that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg, require me to ‘create an account’ online, or force me to show my admiration for an unknown cook and their favorite recipes. The Recipe Box is it. And they have a great app developer, as the thing just keeps on getting better and better. You can easil search through all your entries by all sorts of means – a search field, a ‘type’ field, an ingredient field, etc. Plus, with the use of Dropbox, I quickly copy and pasted all of my Text file recipes over to the app.

It does come with a couple of recipes to begin with, but not so many that cleaning them out is a task, and a few worth keeping to try out. Plus, as you cook your own recipes, you can easily add photos of the results to the app, resulting in a fully customized experience!

I could continue to gush on about this app, but it is definitely worth your time and the small expense. And if you have other kitchen-savvy friends, the app gives you an easy way to share with them as well!

• $3.99 – App Store link

Tell us your pick, enter to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. We’ll pick one of you and send you a shiny $10 iTunes gift certificate so you can start stocking up for future picks! Contest starts now and ends next Friday, January 13 at 12pm PT.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

Slacker Radio is one of the most popular internet radio services available in the US and Canada. It is available for free, but has limitations such as ads and a limited number song skips. Users can subscribe to Slacker Plus Radio or Slacker Premium Radio and receive the following additional features (bolded features are exclusive to Slacker Premium):

• No ads
• Unlimited song skips
• Mobile station caching
• ABC news
• ESPN radio
• Complete song lyrics
• Play songs on demand
• Play albums on demand
• Play single artist stations
• Cache albums and playlists
• Create playlists

Giveaway

The good folks at Slacker, Inc have have given us some subscription codes for Slacker Premium to give away! We’ve got three 1-year subscriptions and two 3-month subscriptions. For a chance to win, just let us know your favorite song in the comments below!

Slacker Radio is available on the iPhone and iPad for free. Slacker Plus is available for $3.99/month and Slacker Premium is $9.99/month.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

VicMan Visage Lab: A professional beauty laboratory for your facial photos. Remove pimples and wrinkles, outline the eyes and whiten the teeth in seconds, with all operations made automatically!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Super Grouper for Contacts App Groups and List Management: Create groups of Contacts and send group SMS, emails or photos in a couple taps.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Charadium II: A fast & furious draw-and-guess multiplayer game that guarantees you’ll be drawn in. Your goal is to draw a given word, and other players have to guess that word.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $2.99 for iPad – App Store link

DoReMi 1-2-3: Fun, musical ear training games challenge your children’s minds as they laugh, create, and play with moo-sical cows, boat-rowing pandas, and twinkling stars! Music lessons have never been this fun—brain-building never this effortless!

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Last Night…?: Ever woke up from a long night out without remembering what happened, or went to the coolest burger place and can’t remember where it was? Or just want to be able to monitor your daily movements if you’re a jogger or if you’re learning to drive? Then this app is made for you!

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

One of the big announcements at Apple’s Education event was iBooks Author, a Mac application for creating books and textbooks for iBooks. I could that say I spent a better part of the day experimenting and learning how to use iBooks Author, but that’d be a lie. I spent more time typing out content then I did learning how to use the app.

After creating your book, it is incredibly easy to see how it looks on your iPad. Simply plug in your iPad, open iBooks, then click Preview in iBooks Author. The app immediately starts exporting your book and, boom, appears on your iPad. When you close everything down and unplug your iPad, your book will still be accessible in iBooks so that you can take a closer look at it from the comfort of your couch.

I never imagined that creating this type of content would be so easy – and free.

• Mac App Store link

Time Warner has just updated its TWC TV app and it is now fully compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch. Since its launch back in March 2011, it has been an iPad only app, but not any longer. If you are a Time Warner Cable subscriber, you can now watch live TV, manage your DVR and change channels on your set-top box on your iPhone and iPod touch.

If you are a Time Warner Cable video subscriber, the FREE TWC TV app turns your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch into another TV screen and lets you watch selected live cable channels while in your home, through your wireless home network. Watch Bravo from your bedroom, take Food Network with you to the kitchen or catch up on CNBC news from the breakfast table.

• Interactive program guide (IPG) – up to 7 days of listings. View detailed show descriptions including box art. Option to display “HD only” or “favorites only” by creating a favorite channel list.
• Search – search for programming by title or episode name and filter results by genre
• Set-top box tuning – tap on a network logo or “watch on TV” button within the program description to tune compatible set-top boxes directly to the channel
• DVR management – schedule one-time and series recordings on compatible DVRs directly from the IPG. Tap on the “DVR” button to see a list of all upcoming recordings and make changes or cancel recordings

Doozy: Doozy is to task management what a chalkboard or whiteboard is to brainstorming. By transforming tasks and events into interactive icons, Doozy literally shows you what you need to do. Big update includes Dropbox support.

• $2.99 for iPhone – App Store link

HUDY Pro: Revolutionize your driving experience! Harness your device’s technology to transform your windshield into a cutting-edge head’s up display. This streamlined utility puts your device’s LED backlit screen and GPS capability to use brilliantly, displaying your speed and direction of travel conveniently on your vehicle’s windshield.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Time of Heros: A game with great graphics, roleplaying elements, a groundbreaking combat system and easy accessibility. Players will find themselves immersed for hours in the fantasy world of “Altland“.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

HipGeo: Lets you record what you do where ever you go – a travel blog – and share that with anyone you want.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Puggy the Monster – the Fun Bite: Come test your reacting skills with Puggy the Monster ! Puggy, a little naughty monster with magic power, loves to bite everything put in its mouth. Stick your finger in Puggy’s wide-opened mouth and pull it off before he bites it hard.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

One of the big announcements at Apple’s Education event was iTunes U for the iPhone and iPad. I’ve done some poking around the iPad version and have been very impressed.

The Catalogue is laid out exactly like the App Store and iBookstore, so everyone is already familiar with how to browse it and subscribe to courses. The iTunes U library is where you’ll find all the courses you are subscribed to and it looks similar to the bookshelf in iBooks.

Inside a course, you’ll find all the info an instructor chooses to share about the class, including catalogue information and the course outline, structure, and syllabus. Instructors can also make posts to the course with more information about lectures as well as documents and videos. Additionally, students can take notes in a designated area of the course page and quickly access all course materials.

As a college instructor, I look forward to using iTunes U as a way to supplement content and materials for my classes.

Immediately following Apple’s Education Event, I downloaded a couple textbooks from the iBookstore, namely, Geometry and Chemistry. I’ve done some browsing and am very impressed with what Apple and the publishers have done with these textbooks.

On the surface, the books look like typical textbooks, but a simple touch brings the pages to life. You can enlarge images, flip through slideshows, watch videos and examples, take sample quizzes, and more. One of my favorites features is that there are flashcards pre-created with all the terms and definitions from each chapter. You can also create your own cards from highlighted text and user-created notes.

This is just the beginning of textbooks in the iBookstore and I’m looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

“With LiveScore for iPhone you will know about every goal, yellow card, red card, substitution, you name it, seconds after they happen.”

LiveScore is a fantastic, free app for iPhone or iPod touch that provides real time scores from many sporting events around the world including tennis, hockey, and cricket; with a particular emphasis on soccer scores (or, more properly, football scores to those of us outside the U.S.). If you’re deeply invested in a certain league or a specific game but can’t be there to watch it unfold, LiveScore is the best way to follow along, right on your iPhone, from where ever you may be.

Real-time scores are delivered swiftly and reliably

The LiveScore app for iPhone (and iPad, it’s universal) comes directly from LiveScore Ltd., the inventors of real-time sports data delivery, and owners of the no.1 ranked football / soccer web site globally. That means they know what they’re doing, and you can trust them to do it well.

Scores for all the day's games are also readily available

There are no push notifications, which is a shame. LiveScore does auto-refresh when open, however, and it’s fast. Very fast. You get the scores you want, as they happen, with nothing to get in your way or unnecessarily complicate the experience.

Automatic refresh, and the interval for the refresh, can be easily configured in settings.

There are country restrictions and, as I mentioned at the beginning, LiveScore is free and the developer says it will stay that way. (Although they do promise additional features in the future will be available via in-app purchase.

Simply choose the league you wish to follow and get ready to receive your scores!

The good

• Every soccer (football) match in the UK league is covered along with most other countries.
• Also includes scores for other sports if you follow more than soccer.

The bad

• No push notifications.

The conclusion

With LiveScore you will know about goals, yellow cards, red cards, substitutions, you name it, seconds after they happen.

Free – Download

The popular Reddit client, Alien Blue, has been updated with new features and improvements including Secure SSL authentication, revised posts and comments screens, and an updated launch image.

Alien Blue is a feature packed client for browsing Reddit. It has been developed from the ground-up for an intuitive touch-screen experience.

Features:

• Retina Thumbnails (currently Pro + Retina Device required)
• Comment Link previews (currently Pro + Retina Device required)
• Secure SSL authentication to Reddit
• Revised Posts screen design
• Revised Comments screen design
• Revised Pull to Refresh

Improvements:

• Updated launch image
• Ability to jump to subreddit directly from a post
• Ability to jump to submitter’s details directly from a post
• Tapping anywhere on an inbox message now marks it as read
• Graceful degradation of graphics for older devices
• Auto-link shortening when sharing with Twitter
• Voting status now reflects in the colour of the score
• Minor visual improvements to Inbox screen
• Threaded message support for Moderator inbox
• Prioritised Oranged indicator over Mod-mail indicator

Alien Blue – Reddit Client is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

PercyFX is an iPhone and iPad app that lets you take popular movie clips and personalize them with your own messages. The folks at Percy 3DMedia created the video above from King Kong for us with a personal message targeted at iMore. To see another video they made with an even better message from Despicable Me, follow along, below!

PercyFX allows you to create personalized videos from popular movie clips and share them with your friends! They download right onto your phone and you can email them to your friends, post them on YouTube, share them on Facebook – there are tons of ways to use these fun, customized video clips!

There are lots of movie clips to personalize – movies like…

• The Fast & The Furious
• Despicable Me
• Hop
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

and classics like

• The Big Lebowski
• Back to the Future
• American Pie
• King Kong
• Sixteen Candles

PercyFX is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Google has officially launched its Orkut app for iPhone, letting users of Brazil and India’s favorite social network access the service on-the-go.

The official Orkut app for iOS connects you to your friends and family. Now you can send scraps, see your friends updates, upload photos and browse your friends albums anywhere you go. Never miss a conversation again because you are not in front of your computer: get the free Orkut app and stay connected.

• Update your status
• Check your scraps and messages
• Reply to your friends birthdays
• Check your friends updates
• Browse your friends profiles, scraps and photos
• Take new photos and upload them directly to your Orkut albums
• Share your life anywhere, anytime with the people you care about

Although Orkut isn’t as popular as Facebook in most parts of the world, the Google-owned social network that’s not Google+ has gained popularity in Brazil and India, where roughly 80 percent of its active user base resides.

Orkut is available now in the App Store and is compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch.

• Free — App Store Link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Weightless: Helps you reach your desired weight by providing the simplest possible solution to track your daily weight and view your progress.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Genius Scan – PDF Scanner: Turns your iPhone into a pocket scanner. It enables you to quickly scan documents on the go and email the scans as JPEG or PDF.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Facebook Cover Designer: Give your Facebook Timeline cover the unique and professional design it deserves.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Roads of Rome: Follow the romantic love story, take up challenging tasks set by the wise and cunning Caesar, explore barbarian lands, win recognition and achieve success in Roads of Rome, the fascinating blend of casual strategy, SIM and time management features!

• $2.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Draw War: Save Your Booty: Them filthy and dirty Vikings are trying to rob Captain Goodthrow’s booty, and it is your job to prevent those nasty sons of Odin from succeeding! You must fight the Vikings at all cost, and by using your trusty battle axe, kill them all by using your finger to draw a path on the screen to release the axe to bring’ em’ down!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

College T.A is an app to help college students balance classes, clubs, work, and social life. Manage your coursework, events, to-do lists, professors’ info, and more and keep your calendars synced in College T.A and your iPhone’s built-in Calendar app. The recent update also brings a new UI and other optimizations.

For many college students, the Spring semester is right around the corner (or has just begun), so now is a perfect time to picks up College T.A before you’re helplessly disorganized!

The life of a college student can be a confusing whirlwind that involves balancing your academic and social lives. However, College TA, the next generation of college planners is here. College TA assists users with managing their personal, social, and academic lifestyles, all on a beautiful and simplistic design.

College T.A is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

“If you already have comics in a digital format, Comic Zeal is simply the best way to read them on your iPad.”

Comic Zeal is currently the best app for reading comics on your iPad. Whether you’re a member of the mighty Marvel marauders, a dedicated DC-for-lifer, or someone who prefers the alternative and independent sequential art scene, if you already have your comics in a digital format — especially if you bought those massive Marvel DVDs containing all the early issues of Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-Men, etc. in PDF — Comic Zeal should be your go-to reader.

While reading, needful settings are only two taps away

You can sync PDF, CBR/RAR, or CBZ/ZIP files straight over to Comic Zeal from iTunes via file sharing if you absolutely have to, and with Wi-Fi sync it’s easier than ever. I just drop mine into Dropbox, hit the Dropbox app on iPad, download them, hit the action button, and tell Dropbox to open them in Comic Zeal. It would be nice if Comic Zeal could hook into Dropbox (and other online storage pools) directly, eliminating a step. Here’s hoping we get that in the future.

Grid view and display settings offer powerful organization and presentation options

Comic Zeal also has a lot of great options for organizing and displaying your comics, including by series and in a grid, so you can more easily find the issue you want, when you want. You can choose between swiping or tapping — or both — to change pages, tapping or hitting a button — or both — to show and hide the navigation tools, and a variety of other features, including zoom. Alas, you there’s no tactile way to manipulate your comics (you can’t put them into “jiggly mode to re-arrange or delete them, or put them into folders), and turning pages lacks the iBooks-style animation and doesn’t feel as crisp as it ought to.

Sadly, even the built in help can't explain the lack of iPad-like direct object manipulation

The good

• Fast, well organized, good options and controls, and did I mention fast?
• Supports popular formats like PDF, CRB, and CBZ.

The bad

• Lacks iPad-like tactile manipulation and page turning.
• Lacks integration with popular online storage services like Dropbox.

The conclusion

If you already have comics in a digital format, Comic Zeal is simply the best way to read them on your iPad.

$7.99 – Download

Updraft Jack: Get ready to run, jump and GLIDE through the jungle with Updraft Jack! You are a sugar glider fleeing from an owl in hot pursuit in this action-packed dash game.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

SoundHound: Unlimited music recognition! Featuring the world’s fastest, most accurate music identification, exclusive singing search, and now: free unlimited LiveLyrics* for over 1 million of your iTunes tracks in SoundHound Player.

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

PayBook: Allows you to easily track your worked hours, & see how much you’ve earned. You can choose to add multiple workplaces, & even use preset shifts

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

CheckIn+ HD: An all-in-one check-in app and local deal locator with augmented reality for iPad, supports Foursquare and Facebook Places. Discover the world around you and share your highlights at local bars, parks, venues, and more.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

The Little Plane – First Journey: Guide the little plane and avoid crashing into buildings. Also be wary of the mean birds – they are out to get you.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

WritePad for iPad by PhatWare has been upgraded to 6.0 and is now equipped with a new Multilingual handwriting recognition engine that supports English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

WritePad lets you take notes in your own handwriting with an iPad stylus pen or even your finger. The state-of-the-art handwriting recognition software will adapt and learn your style of writing. You can use simple gestures to select text, cut, copy, paste, and insert special characters.

• Create and edit text documents using the advanced handwriting recognition engine or iPad keyboard for text entry in landscape or portrait mode.
• Improve productivity by utilizing inline gestures, spell checker, context analyzer, and shorthand features.
• Statistical analyzer, which improves overall handwriting recognition quality by addressing common recognition errors. If this feature is enabled, WritePad will learn the user’s own handwriting style.
• Email, Tweet, Print, or post Facebook updates directly from WritePad.
• Synchronize WritePad documents with Dropbox, Evernote, and iTunes or upload documents to Google Docs.
• Translate documents to 13 supported languages using Bing Translator.
• Change WritePad’s appearance by manipulating text, page, and ink colors using the customizable Styles feature.

WritePad for iPad is available for $9.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Numberlys is an interactive story about the origins of the alphabet from Moonbot Studios. In a world where everything and everyoone are named after numbers, five friends embark on a mission to create something different – the alphabet.

I just finished watching, reading, and interacting with Numberlys and it’s a fantastic little story! The graphics are great and the narrator is just as awesome. Moonbot Studios did a great job of making this a hybrid between a book, movie, and game. It’s no question that any child would enjoy Numberlys, but most adults will too!

Numberlys presents a fanciful depiction of the origins of the alphabet and is the newest interactive epic from Moonbot Studios, the creators of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Numberlys is a story App celebration of the early fantasy epics King Kong, Metropolis and Flash Gordon with a dollop of the Marx Brothers, a splash of the Fleischer Studios technicolor Superman and a little bit of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Numberlys is huge in scope. It’s an adventure! A mystery! A game! And a story!

Numberlys is available on the iPhone and iPad for $5.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

ITGO CALORIE: The world’s first iOS Interval Trainer to feature dual music playlists and calorie information based on your exercise, in addition to the standard ITGO features of visual, beep, vibration interval change alerts and automatic fast and slow iPod music playlists switching.

• $3.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Calculator Pro.: Combines the original and scientific calculator with a large collection of beautiful themes you can choose from.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Risk: Pursue world domination with the original game of strategic conquest. Now 60% off!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

MAGapp Pro: An interactive e-magazine reader that incorporates video, social media and exciting web features into its varied publications. Don’t just read content, experience it!

• Free for iPad – App Store link

The Moon’s Lullaby: Experience the story of how fairies protect us from bad dreams. Blow into the microphone to illuminate the night’s sky and learn how the bright sun is always there to protect us, even in the middle of the night. The story ends with a beautiful lullaby and will help your child sleep safe and sound.

• $2.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Every week a few of us from team iMore will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

Airplay – @iMuggle

I never found TOO much of a need for AirPlay at home (unless I was bored and wanted to play Angry Birds on a 50″ TV). I’ve recently started doing iOS and other various types of workshops for PXLFIX and AirPlay has been great. Instead of just showing people slides (which we all know is beat your head into a desk boring) they can actually see “how” to do things. I have an AppleTV set up and I just mirror whatever I want to explain right to the TV from my iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. The best part is that they can follow along on their own devices.

I’ve gotten great feedback by doing this and plan on continuing to teach workshops this way as I find it a much more interactive way to teach. Before AirPlay, teaching certain topics took a lot of extra prep work if it was possible at all.

AppShopper – @sethclifford

I think I can safely say that one of the most excellent things about iOS as a platform is the enormous availability of interesting software to try. I’m a self-avowed app nut, always trying a million things, studying different interface choices and observing design decisions, but keeping the best of the best on my phone. The AppShopper app is a great way to stay apprised of both new releases and sales on apps every day in the App Store.

Using data from the excellent AppShopper site, the app is a universal binary that has a nice clean interface and some cool ways to customize it for a more personal experience. The app is free, and for a buck you can remove ads. I’d recommend it heartily, both because it cleans up the screen and gives you a little more room to browse, and also because Arn is a great guy and you should totally support his efforts. In addition to that, a while back the site released a tool with which you can upload your app list from your computer directly to AppShopper, and then the site will keep track of updates to your own apps without you having to open up the App Store app a million times a day to check yourself. This is also really helpful if you have a notable update to an app that’s not on your phone right now, so you can possibly give it another look and see what’s changed.

Granted, you’ll have to occasionally update the list on the site by re-running the app and re-uploading the app list to keep it current (as there’s no way for the app to track your purchases in iTunes otherwise), but the whole process takes about 30 seconds in total, so it’s not exactly a hardship. You can set up push notifications to alert you to sales or changes, create a wish list, and manage everything from a standard browser at home, syncing everything down to the app. If you’re into apps as much as I think you might be, it’s a nice addition to your devices that can snag you some great deals and keep you up on what’s going on in the App Store.

• Free – App Store link

Meme Design – @Bla1ze

Yup! I’m a sucker for meme apps but that’s ok because they allow me to create such glorious images like the the one above of our fearless leader of Mobile Nations, Kevin Michaluk. For them, I use Meme Design. It’s available free in the iTunes App Store and just in case you’re not into making your own meme’s directly, it also offers all your favorite ones as templates as well. Now you too, can share your memes across email, facebook and Twitter.

Uhh.. no one tell Kevin I posted this here.

• Free – App Store link

Foursquare — @reneritchie

I use location check-in apps for one thing and one thing only — keeping a record of trips I’ve made. I don’t care for the idea of people in general knowing where I am because privacy really does matter and anyone I want to meet knows where I’ll be or knows how to find out. On a trip, however, whether it’s a trade show like CES or conference like WWDC, I’m visiting a lot of places and need a quick and easy way to record them in case I’m ever there again and want to go back, or just want to quickly remember where I visited while I was away.

I used to use Gowalla for this, preferring their general look and take on the genre, but since Facebook will most likely suck their data dry and then dump them in a swamp, I’ve switched to Foursquare and it did the job well.

It’s more utility for me than location-based check in gaming, and while that might make it less exciting it makes it far more useful.

• Free – App Store link

FastCustomer — @andrewwray

Need to call customer service for something, but don’t want to be put on hold for 10 minutes before actually speaking with a live person? I’ve been in that situation many of times, but not anymore. With FastCustomer, you can skip the wait and have the app call you when its reached a live representative.

They have over 2,000 companies in their database, it hasn’t failed me yet when I’ve needed to call up customer service for whatever reason. Most customer service IVRs are long, annoying and not very fun. Never wait on hold or go through a lengthy customer service tree again — just have FastCustomer give you a call once it has a live rep waiting for you!

• Free – App Store Link

Mugtuk Monsters – @llofte

By itself, this app of cute little interactive monster faces is just too adorable and make my daughter smile from ear to ear when they respond to her touch. But while at CES 2012, I had the chance to meet with Mugtuk and pick up one of their accessory cases that turn these monsters into actual stuffed animals! It’s seriously one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen and I love how excited my daughter gets at every opportunity to play with it.

• Free – App Store link

Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal – Kristy_Lyn (Reader’s Choice winner)

My pick of the week is MyFitnessPal. As a new years resolution to myself I decided to get healthy. A friend recommended myfitnesspal.com, and so I searched the app store and – badda bing badda boom!

This app has all the essentials for starting out your new work out regime. I entered in my age, sex, height, weight, activity level, and goal of weight loss and it gave me a net calorie target range. Then you can add in your workouts and activity and easily customize the duration and calories burned.

For food intake, you can manually search food items that seem to be organized by users inputting their own food items which as resulted in a large data base. Upon further testing, I found the bar code scanner which makes adding eaten food as easy as a scan of a bar code.

The app graphs your workouts and food intake and shows you how much work you need to do to reach your goals. The best part is that it shows you on your daily totals exactly how much of everything you have consumed, for example, your daily total of calories, carbs, proteins, fats, sodium vitamins and so on. It shows you what you have over consumed or what you have left to consume.

Overall – a great app for my New Year’s resolution!

• Free – App Store link

Tell us your pick, enter to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. We’ll pick one of you and send you a shiny $10 iTunes gift certificate so you can start stocking up for future picks! Contest starts now and ends next Friday, January 20 at 12pm PT.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

Sketch Up is a fun little game where you must guide and combine shapes to match up similar shapes in the designated areas. The complexity of a shape is determined by its number of sides and you must combine shapes in specific ways to change its level of complexity. The goal is to put the correct number of specific shapes in the designated areas.

I’ve been playing Sketch Up periodically throughout the day and have been having a lot of fun. Only a few levels were used to teach you about the game before adding more complexity and difficulty to the levels. The goal is easy to understand, but executing a plan can be quite challenging.

Sharpen those pencils and grab a piece of paper, it’s time for a drawing duel! It’s a battle to be center stage on the page, and these shapes just need a skilled artist’s hand. Match different shapes together to complete each equation, but make sure you have the right formula. Simple shape-shading can be difficult! So dust off that protractor and grab your sketch pad! If you can use these flying shapes to your advantage, you can be master of the geometric world!

• Use your Preview Hub to see what shapes will be created
• Watch out for sticky puddles that stop shapes in their tracks!
• Smash shapes together to make new ones
• Use Shape Changers and Stops to help you create the perfect sketch!

Sketch Up is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Document Manager: An all-in-one document management solution for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. You can download documents from anywhere, store all your documents at one place and share or print documents easily and hassle-free.

• $2.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Boy Loves Girl: Unhappy with the myth that a woman is never happy, Boy embarks on an epic adventure across vast lands in search for the ultimate gift to express his love for the girl his heart desires.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

iQuick Tweet Free: A free (trial) version of the popular iQuick Tweeet!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Crazy Survival: So imagine that the world has gone mad and crazy balls are falling from heaven. What should a poor Man caught in this insane weather do? Of course run and scream!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

ComiXcape: This is the story of a little boy who loves comics and has no rivals in sling shooting. He is so keen on comics that every minute, when he is not getting into mischief, he drinks in each story of drawings. He is punished for being mischievous once, gets obsessed with a comics and turns into its character.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

When Chevy finally launched the Volt plug-in hybrid electric car, they also kicked out an app with in-car communications and monitoring subsidiary OnStar to integrate owners’ mobile phones with the vehicle. Similar to the MyFord Mobile app that Ford put out to integrate with their own Focus Electric, OnStar RemoteLink being shown off at CES 2012 hooks into the OnStar system onboard the vehicle, allowing the owner to remotely monitor the fuel levels, and in the case of the Volt, also check in on how the battery is charging, plus set off-peak charging schedule. RemoteLink also can plan routing on the phone and send it remotely to the car, saving you time the time of generally tedious address inputting when in the car.

The OnStar App is available for iPhone and Android phones and is compatible with most 2010-and-newer GM vehicles with OnStar.

• Free – App Store link

New Year Diet Month is an iPhone app that inspires and motivates you to meet your weight loss goals of 2012. Each day has a new idea, tip, insight, or direction to help you on your quest to become thinner and healthier.

This year KEEP your new year’s resolution to lose weight with the help of New Year Diet Month – a month of advice and motivation to help you on your quest for a slimmer, healthier body.

New Year Diet Month starts from when you first use the app – not from Jan 1st! – so it’s not too late to start your New Year Diet Month today! You can also unlock all days early if you’re feeling really eager – though to get the benefit of small continuous changes leading to large improvement (which is what New Year Diet Month is designed to do), try to resist that temptation and really get the best from each day!

New Year Diet Month is a collection of ideas to inspire you, insights into where you’ve gone wrong in the past, and directions to take. It presents one clear point every day to get you thinking, which, over the course of the month, will all come together to help make a new you.

Giveaway

The good folks at Breaking Art have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, let us know how much weight you hope to lose is 2012 in the comments below!

New Year Diet Month is available on the iPhone and on sale for $3.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Ford has quite the presence at CES 2012. From the slick Evos concept car to the upcoming Focus Electric (with nice mobile app integration) and 2013 Ford Fusion, Ford has a strong showing (which is impressive, when you consider that the Detroit Auto Show is also this week). In addition to the mobile integration going with the Focus Electric, Ford’s moving forward full stream with their in-car infotainment system Sync. Powered by Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Automotive operating system, Sync has been leading the in-car media game for a few years now, and the latest version naturally kicks things up another notch. Sync integrates with BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android devices, allowing a driver to control apps on the device with a combination of voice commands, steering wheel controls, and the center stack and touchscreen.

OnLive Desktop has now gone live in the App Store. OnLive Desktop is an app which will provide a cloud based Windows 7 experience for iPad users. The OnLive Desktop app will give users access to a Windows desktop experience without the need for any VNC or remote desktop connections. It is all stored in the cloud and accessible from your iPad or a desktop machine.

OnLive Desktop is a service that provides a seamless, no-compromise, instant-response cloud-based PC desktop, wherever and whenever you want it. OnLive brings to your iPad a high-performance PC experience, regardless of the content, even when interacting with fast-action media. Based on groundbreaking video compression technology, OnLive harnesses the power of cloud computing to deliver a seamless, no-compromise remote PC desktop solution.

• Instantly view, edit and create documents using actual Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Easily transfer files between OnLive Desktop and other devices
• Experience high-performance, instant-response PC applications
• Interact with lag-free animation and video

• App Store link

Run Roo Run HD is a platformer game where you, a kangaroo, must avoid obstacles by jumping, swinging, riding clouds, and launching from cannons. Each level is a single screen, not scrolling.

This is a great little game, but the main levels are not very challenging. It took me less than an hour to complete the main levels in all 20 chapters. The extreme levels, however, are very difficult – some even too difficult, in my opinion. Even though I didn’t feel particularly challenged, I enjoyed playing the game – I was able to casually play while watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica!

Your joey has been captured and you need to get him back!

Hop, skip, and jump your way across tons of unique and interesting obstacles in the Australian outback! Run Roo Run is a micro-platformer featuring single screen levels filled with unique, fun obstacles and easy to learn one-touch gameplay. Play for a few minutes, or a few hours; your journey to Sydney always picks up where you left off!

• Over 420 Levels!
• Get 10 new free levels every week!
• Over 100 extreme levels!
• Leaderboards
• Achievements
• Full Retina Graphics Support!
• GameCenter Support
• Easy to learn one-touch gameplay
• Fun power-ups including – human cannons, tire swings, ridable clouds, gravity defying umbrellas, invisibility, and much more!

Giveaway

There’s no such thing as too many casual games, so iMore is giving away 5 copies of Run Roo Run HD to you, our awesome readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below!

Run Roo Run HD is available on the iPad for $1.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Frequencies is an iPhone app that let’s you look up and store the frequencies to your favorite radio stations.

There have been plenty of times where I left the dome light in my car turned-on overnight and killed the battery. The most annoying part of this wasn’t jump or push-starting my car, rather it was finding all my favorite radio stations to save in my stereo. I wish I had this app. Next time, I’ll be prepared!

Frequencies is a simple app to find out your favourite radio station’s frequency where-ever you are. Frequencies saves you having to search for your station and lets you get back to listening.

Frequencies employs a simplistic interface so you’re never more than a tap away from finding the station you need.

• Quick and easy listing of all available stations
• Locally stored database
• Image preview of available stations
• Fast searching – don’t spend ages finding the station you’re looking for!


Giveaway

The good folks at Yoshimi Robotics have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers. For a chance to win, let us know where your from and the frequency of your favorite radio station in the comments below!

Frequencies is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The highly reputable medical source WebMD Health Corp. has released an iPhone app for parents of infants and toddlers called WebMD Baby. It includes health and wellness information, tracks your baby’s routine and records, and also includes a baby book feature.

Check out the promo video below!

The new WebMD Baby app has quick access to trusted and physician-approved baby health and wellness information anytime, anywhere. Personalized for a baby’s specific age, the WebMD Baby app delivers timely physician-approved guidance, helping parents stay informed and one step ahead of their baby’s growth and development.

• Personalized and pediatrician-approved health and wellness information for baby and toddler to keep new parents one step ahead of their baby’s growth and development, anywhere and anytime and enables more informed pediatrician visits. For babies 0-1, a new health and wellness tip is sent to the app every day, as well as more in-depth content every week. For babies and toddlers ages 1-2, information relevant to their age is sent to the app monthly. WebMD’s tips and information on the app can be easily shared through email, Facebook or Twitter.
• Streamlined search capabilities that help parents find immediate, trusted answers to their baby health and wellness questions with physician-reviewed answers. Information is organized by easy-to -understand topics (feeding and nutrition, growth and development, vaccines) and by the baby’s age, simplifying a parent’s search for trusted answers to immediate baby health and wellness questions.
• Baby routine and record keeper that gives parents and caregivers a snapshot of baby’s health and wellness by allowing them to easily record and share baby’s routine (feeds, diaper changes, sleep). A personal growth chart for baby/toddler is also integrated into the app allowing information to be easily added right from the pediatrician’s office.
• Baby book feature that allows parents to capture baby’s memorable moments including baby’s “firsts” with videos or photos taken on the spot or pulled from their iPhone library. Baby book memories can be shared with family and friends through email or Facebook as they happen.

WebMD Baby is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Snowboard Hero: An unrivalled snowboard experience with wicked tricks, insane air time and super fast downhill speed to your iPhone and iPad. Experience console-quality graphics, intuitive controls and top-notch sound in a stunning alpine setting and show the world that you are the undisputed Snowboard Hero.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Calendars – Google Calendar client: Lets you manage events both online and offline. Thanks to the unique interface you can move events simply with Drag & Drop, navigate quickly between dates, change event time, repeat schedule and reminders rapidly with custom keyboards.

• $6.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

iBookcreator: Innovative application to make books with iPhone/iPad! Produce various kinds of books, such as photo books, art books, fairy tales, cook books, PR books or manuals on your own.


• $3.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Star Marine: Infinite Ammo: The definitive Run n’ Gun experience! You play as Arc, a battle hardened drifter who is captured by an alien race in the depths of space. Arc’s capturers plan to enslave him and put his strength to work. But, Arc has other plans. He is a trained and elite Star Marine and in a fury of bullets he is going to take them all down!

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Cash Logistics: Cash Logistics is a currency calculator for estimating the physical dimensions of a given dollar amount if that amount was paid out in legal tender. It reports the number of bills required, the optimal strap division, the total weight, and the estimated space it will require. All you need to supply is a dollar amount and the specific denomination to use. It can also perform the reverse calculation if the only information known is the weight of a currency bundle, or the total number of straps.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.