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

Gamers in the house will be well aware that Mass Effect 3 is launching next month, and it will be adding a lot of new tricks to the established sci-fi game franchise. One of those tricks is going to be a third-person shooter for iPad and iPhone called Mass Effect: Infiltrator, and playing it will not only be a lot of fun in its own right, but will advance your progress in the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC game as well. As far as I’m concerned, this is the single best implementation of cross-platform gaming to date.

I’ve seen way too many game developers simply try to drag and drop the experience from consoles and PCs to mobile, but it’s obvious that Mass Effect’s developer, BioWare, understands that gaming on mobile is a different experience. Infiltrator looks like it will still be action-packed, but the fact is, gamers aren’t going to be spending hours on end playing it as they might on their proper gaming rigs. Datapad in particular looks like it will be a great way to stay involved in the game even if you can’t dedicate the laser focus needed for pitched combat. The closest any other developer has come to giving this high-quality interplay between gaming platforms is Call of Duty: Elite, and even that hinged on a subscription service to get the full functionality.

Mass Effect: Infiltrator involves rescuing prisoners from a human supremacist group on a hostile arctic planet, while collecting evidence to advance a war effort spanning lightyears. You’ll find a bunch of the same weapons and powers in Infiltrator as you would in any Mass Effect game, and likewise, you’ll be able to unlock items in the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or PC versions of the game by playing on your iPhone or iPad.

Gameplay in Mass Effect 3 will be extended in multiple directions through a system they’re calling Galaxy at War. The game’s single-player story involves you fighting an intergalactic threat called the Reapers. By playing Mass Effect: Infiltrator on iOS (or co-operative multiplayer in the full game) you increase a score called Galactic Readiness, which will ultimately influence the final conclusion of the core campaign against the Reapers.  There will also be an iOS app called Datapad to keep tabs on your Galaxy at War progress, and allow you to deploy troops to particular regions of space, as well as get messages from in-game characters.

Combined with the cool Xbox Kinect controls Mass Effect 3 is going to offer, I’ll be having a really hard time saying “no” to this game when it comes out March 6. Be sure to check out some of the sweet trailers at BioWare’s site.

Source: BioWare, IntoMobile, Kotaku

The fine folks from Firecore have been hard at work on their aTV Flash (black) package for jailbroken AppleTVs and have just released a new update that allows all-new firmware backup options, new localizations for our international readers, and playback enhancements.

The Apple TV is an incredibly inexpensive way to easily get all your iTunes music and videos onto your big screen HDTV, along with special channels like Netfix, but you only get support for Apple’s own file formats, and for channel partners they select. Jailbreaking and using aTV Flash (black) opens up entirely new worlds beyond Apple.

If you’re looking for the full change log, you’ll find it past the break. If you really don’t need the full details and just want to get yourself updated, version 1.3 is available now from the Firecore website

Need help jailbreaking your Apple TV 2? If so, be sure to check out our full how-to guide today!

Source – Firecore

Full Changelog

• Added automated firmware signature backups
• Added Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish translations
• Added support for advanced (learned) remote commands
• Added support for multiple external subtitles (movie.en.srt, movie.de.srt, etc…)
• Added support for folder based organization/playback
• Added support for embedded DVD chapters
• Added chapters section heading to Playback Menu
• Added global zoom setting
• Improved playback performance for movies with invalid timestamps
• Improved appearance of VobSub subtitles
• Improved metadata fetching for localized file names
• Improved audio track filtering
• Improved playback bar to match native player
• Improved metadata and bulk folder fetching stability
• Improved Media > Settings menu layout
• Resolved issues with folder name changing on metadata fetching
• Resolved issues with buffering
• Resolved rare DVD related crash
• Resolved floating AFP issue that was causing connection issues
• Resolved floating buffer overflow in software decoder
• Minor changes to Grid View appearance
• Minor UI improvements
• Other miscellaneous bug fixes

There was a bit of noise yesterday about a popular mobile social networking app, Path, taking the address books of users wholesale, and storing them on their servers. Despite being transferred over SSL, and the data only being used to notifications when friends signed up, Path has apologized profusely and wiped any personal address book information from their servers. A patch to their iPhone app now provides a prompt if you’re interested in receiving notifications when friends sign up.

It’s good to see Path is being clear, prompt, proactive, and apologetic about the whole thing, but the whole situation still serves as a reminder that many of these mobile apps have access to a lot of personal information, and if you’re uncomfortable with that situation, it’s probably best not to go crazy signing up for every trendy new service to come along.

Personally, I’ve already surrendered to the fact that Google has an obscene amount of insight to my life, and if a few smaller software companies do too, fine. The worst they can do is deliver ads that are more relevant to my interests, and that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.

Source: Path

“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

If you’re a Vonage user and you have an iPhone, great news — Vonage has launched a new mobile app that allows you to send text messages and make calls with other Vonage users around the world. For free. The Vonage app pulls in your iPhone’s native address book for quick access to initiating calls. Outgoing calls are recognized as originating from your usual phone number, so Caller ID on your friends’ phones should still work fine. Needing others to be on Vonage is a pretty big caveat, but even for calling regular land lines, they’re claiming rates are 30% lower than Skype. To sweeten the deal, Vonage is throwing in 3000 minutes/month of free mobile and landline calls to the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico for a limited time.

I’m not as impressed with the new Vonage app as Dell Voice, which lets you make outgoing calls to regular ol’ landlines and cell phones within Canada for free for the foreseeable future (not just a limited time). Of course, there’s no SMS text messaging included with Dell Voice, but I use instant messaging way more often anyway. Besides, if you’ve got to harass friends to sign up for a new service to get free calling anyway, wouldn’t you have better luck with pushing a more widely-recognized brand like Skype? At the very least, Vonage Mobile’s offer for free calling to land lines and mobile is pretty nice, even if it’s only for a limited time.

Head on over to Vonage for more info on the app, which is also available for Android (if you’re into that kind of thing). If you’re ready to roll, go ahead and download directly from the App Store.

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

Dell Voice launched in Canada today, allowing iPhone owners to get a free phone number with both free incoming and outgoing Canada-wide calls to land lines and mobiles alike.  The service comes complete with voicemail, caller ID, Call Waiting, and even 911 emergency calling. The VoIP app was built with Fongo, operating over a network called Fibernetics which seems well-entrenched across all of the major Canadian cities and a lot of the smaller ones. If you’re calling someone outside of Canada, they have some pretty reasonable international rates. Dell Voice provides you with a local number, and when you receive a call, it pops up as a notification on your iPhone. The call is then routed over a data connection, be it 3G or Wi-Fi – a great situation if you’re on a shoestring budget and all you have is an iPod touch. You can also port over an existing number for a one-time $25 fee.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any utilities for handling text messaging, but seeing as we don’t have access to Google Voice up here, I think we’re happy to just have access to a free VoIP phone number. It would be great to see Dell Voice to expand to include Video Calling, at which point it would be properly competing with the recently-launched Rogers One Number.  On that note, I’m really curious to hear how carriers will react to this service. I find this is a little more aggressive than Skype, since you don’t have to pay to get a number for incoming calls. The little carriers, Wind Mobile and Mobilicity, are having a hard enough time attracting customers even with absurdly cheap plans, and I worry that something like Dell Voice would cut them out altogether. Of course, the dependability of the service is yet to be seen, and if it’s not up to snuff, it might not be worth your while.

The one set-up that Dell suggests that I could see being helpful is creating a number for out of town, so if you have family elsewhere in the country, they could make local calls to you.  Dell Voice apps are available for iOS and Android, with BlackBerry coming soon. There’s also a PC app if you want to start taking calls on your computer. Head on over to the Dell Voice landing page for a closer look, or download directly from iTunes to get registered.

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

Activator allows you to launch apps or utilities on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with a quick swipe, tap, or button press. Swipe up from the bottom of your screen to quick compose a text, double tap the status bar to bring up SBSettings, or shake your device to take a screenshot. Setting up an Activator gesture takes just a few seconds and the possibilities are endless.

Install Activator

Activator can be found in your Settings app. If you’re jailbroken, chances are you already have Activator installed whether you know it or not. Many utilities and applications in Cydia, the jailbreak app store, support it, and will install it as a pre-requisite to using the app. SBSettings, which lets you quickly toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Airplane mode, among other things, is an example.

If you don’t see an Activator your Settings app, you can install it for free via Cydia.

1. Launch Cydia and tap on the **Search** tab.
2. Type in **Activator**
3. Tap on **Activator**
4. Tap the **Install** button in the upper right hand corner.

Your device will require you to re-spring (restart the Springboard, or Home screen app) after installation. Then you’re good to go.

How to configure a gesture in Activator

1. Launch the **Settings** app.
2. Tap **Activator**.
3. Choose how you want to trigger an actions.
4. Choose what you want the action to do.
5. One the supported apps show up, choose the one you want.

We typically recommend you allow Activator gestures to work from anywhere. However, you may not want this if you’re setting a gesture that slides in from the bottom or top of the screen as it can conflict with the controls of some games. There’s nothing like trying to slice in Fruit Ninja only to suddenly find yourself in a different app!

There are plenty of action options to choose from. For example, you can set up double tap on the status bar to bring up quick reply for Messages+.

Once you’re done, you’ll be able to perform any gesture you’ve specified, or call up any supported app or command on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Under iOS 5 you can even set up Twitter gestures and other system gestures like activating Siri.

If you have any favorite or especially cool Activator gestures set ups you’d like to share, let us know in the iMore apps, hacks, and themes forum.

Additional jailbreak resources:

• Jailbreak news, guides, and how to’s
• General jailbreak help and discussion forums

“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!

AssistantExtensions is a jailbreak app for iPhone 4S that greatly enhances what you can do with Apple’s Siri virtual assistant, including voice activation, app launching, translation, and more. Developers can even add their own, custom commands via a new plug-in architecture. That means, unlike the limited built-in functionality Apple provides, many more powerful, and interesting, commands become available.

AssistantExtensions bundles a number of commands together, including the ability to send tweets from Siri, and an interesting “chat mode” where Siri loads additional content so she/he can better have a conversation with you (though the server load must be heavy as it frequently experiences time outs).

For even more functionality, AssistantExtensions lets developers create custom commands and tasks using Siri. You can already use AssistantExtensions to access SBSettings to quickly toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, etc. Hopefully more and more jailbreak developers start integrating support.

Out of the box, you can use Siri to activate SBSettings toggles or launch apps without even touching your iPhone — a great way to increase efficiency when using Siri. The only issues we’ve noticed with AssistantExtensions are random conflicts with SiriToggles, although other users have seen mixed reports.

• Free – Cydia Link

If you’re looking for even more jailbreak utilities, here are the best jailbreak applications for iOS 5.

If you’re looking to get started with jailbreak, here are your go-to resources.

• How to jailbreak guides
• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes
• General jailbreak and unlock help forums

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.

“Smash Cops brings the excitement of high-speed car chases to your iPhone and iPad with top-notch graphics, high intensity game-play, and interesting (if challenging) controls.”

Smash Cops recently hit featured status in the App Store, and after playing it for a few days, I can see why. It’s a deceptively simple racing game that provides excellent controls, fluid graphics, and has some signature local evening news flair to it.

The premise is that you’re driving a cop car, and you have to chase down bad guys through a winding route, and ram into their vehicle often enough to make them crash. There’s a healthy amount of variation on this theme, including timed challenges, obstacle courses to test your finesse, and scenarios where you’re the one being chased. Whatever the goals of the level may be, you’re usually provided with helpful waypoints at intersections so you know which direction to go. There’s plenty of civilian traffic in the way, posing slight obstacles, but for the most part, they can be plowed through with little worry.

The default control scheme was fairly new to me. You press the screen behind your on-screen vehicle to adjust its steering, letting go to stop the gas, or tapping the screen with your other hand for a quick burst of speed. You can switch this up to a traditional virtual joystick, but the default is novel to play with, if nothing else. The controls are certainly intuitive, but I find they’re often more challenging than they should be. At times, you can turn a corner very sharply, while at other times, you drift and lose a lot of control. There may be a trick to this that I’m just not getting, but so far it has made nimble driving difficult, especially in the obstacle course stage. Having played a bunch of Need for Speed on the PlayBook, I think an option for accelerometer control would be really nice.

Knowing if you'll be able to make a turn sharply or if you'll need to accommodate for drift can be tricky.

The overall gameplay is still great. There’s a real solid “Channel 9 Evening News” angle, where the camera following you is accompanied by the sound of a news chopper. Many of the UI elements are fashioned after TV fly-ins. I would have liked to see a few more unlocks beyond the five cars you made available over the course of gameplay. Maybe some vehicle tweaks to increase boost regeneration, or bump speed up a notch. There are a few microtransactions available, but they feel forced. For $4.99, you can unlock all of the vehicles without having to play through the game. For $0.99, you can pick up 3 Super Cops. These are one-shot upgrades the make your cop car awesome and help you blast through tough levels. While I appreciate being able to earn these in the challenge missions, I doubt my frustration would ever reach the point of spending money to beat a level, especially if I’ve already shelled out $2.99 for the game. Now, if there was a free version of Smash Cops, maybe with ads and fewer cars and missions, microtransactions might be a more viable route. Personally, I find the gameplay is polished enough that Smash Cops would do very well as a free title.

Smash Cops features a wide variety of game modes

The graphics deserve top marks. The lighting is extremely realistic, the models are believable, the animation is fluid, and though the physics are a little exagerrated, it suits the gameplay. Fans of the Burnout series will definitely appreciate the scinematic slow-mo crash sequences. The only graphical problem I’ve had is that that after being flipped over, sometimes a robber’s car will disappear and respawn further down the road. This makes sense if the wreck lands in undrivable terrain, but sometimes it doesn’t, and the respawn screws up plans for follow-up attacks.

Smash Cops goes into a cinematic slow mo every time you flip a perp's car

The audio is decent, but I really wish there was some high-octane racing music while you play. The menu screen has some great music and gets me in the mood to race, but once the game is launched, you’re listening to a police siren and a chopper sound interspersed with the odd crinkle of smashed bumpers.

Overall, Smash Cops is a fast-paced, challenging racing game with polished gameplay and graphics. With a few control tweaks and increased depth for unlockables, I could see myself killing a lot of time with this game. For $2.99, you’ll get your money’s worth so long as losing a few times drives you to steely determination, rather than flipping over to another game.

$2.99 – Buy now

The good

• Excellent graphics
• Polished (though sometimes difficult) gameplay
• Good variety of game modes

The bad

• In-app purchases aren’t compelling
• Limited variety of unlocks
• Controls are often too difficult

The conclusion

Overall, Smash Cops is a fast-paced, challenging racing game with polished gameplay and graphics. With a few control tweaks and increased depth for unlockables, I could see myself killing a lot of time with this game. For $2.99, you’ll get your money’s worth so long as losing a few times drives you to steely determination, rather than flipping over to another game.

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

The developers of the widely-used Crytek graphics engine are trying their hand at something very new – a social network with cross-platform cloud gaming integration. The idea with GFACE is that you would not only use the desktop browser to arrange and launch matches with friends (much like Battlefield 3′s Battlelog), but the games themselves would also be rendered directly within the browser, with the bulk of the game rendering done remotely. With some OnLive-esque mobile apps, players will be able to play the same game across PC, smartphone and tablet, albeit with slightly different roles tailored to each experience. Although the screenshots here show some pretty intense games, GFACE will also be supporting casual 2D and 3D games.

GFACE  is going to be a lot more than just a gaming platform, though. First and foremost, it will be a social network like any other, complete with Google Plus-style grouping, update stream and media sharing akin to Facebook. They’re hoping to share the movie-watching experience too, much like the recently-canned Netflix party mode on the Xbox 360. Given that most of GFACE’s social features already exist in some form on other more popular networks, I suspect this browser-based cross-platform cloud gaming deal will be the big selling point for GFACE; that said, I would almost prefer it it if they cut out all of the other stuff and just stuck to games.

I haven’t had a chance to give OnLive an honest shot yet, but there are definitely a bunch of PC and Xbox games that I could see translating well to the tablet. If GFACE can offer tailored snippets of gameplay to different mobile platforms, I could see a wider variety of games becoming viable for mobile. Right now, it feels like too many devs are simply trying to drag and drop the console experience onto phones and tablets, and it’s kind of an unnatural transition.

In any case, if you want to sign up for the GFACE closed beta, head on over here. For now, they don’t have game support, but I’m sure it’s on the way.

If you’re a jailbreaker looking to add a little more speed and functionality to multitasking on your iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll want to check out Zephyr. We have talked about Zephyr before but we’ll give you a close up look at what it does and the additional functionality it provides. There isn’t much to configure after you install Zephyr which makes it easy to use and it’s fully compatible with iOS 5.

The main purpose of Zephyr is to add additional multitasking gestures to your device. It adds the ability to swipe left and right on your springboard in order to page through apps. Swiping up will allow you to close out of an app as well. This is perfect for users who may have a broken home button on their iPhone 4, are out of warranty, and don’t want to attempt a DIY home button repair themselves.

You can always choose which swipe motions you want to have enabled. Ones you don’t want enabled you can simply toggle off in Settings. In addition to enabling or disabling gestures you can also add application restrictions. This is ideal for situations where the keyboard is active and you may not want a swipe gesture to switch apps or close out the application. This is also a good option for games that require you to swipe so Zephyr doesn’t attempt to switch between applications or close it out. If you’d like to get things done quicker and have better application switching functionality than what iOS offers stock, Zephyr is definitely worth checking out.

$2.99 – Cydia Search Link

Additional jailbreak resources:

• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes forum
• Best apps and utilities for new jailbreakers
• General jailbreak discussion and help forums
• List of popular Cydia repositories

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.

Have a jailbroken iPhone and wish you could better control how your actual phone application behaves? StartDial, available in Cydia now, will allow you to alter what tabs your phone application will open and when.

StartDial is a simple tweak that allows you to chose the view to start with when the Phone application is launched.

Most people either want the phone application to launch their contacts, favorites, or the dial pad initially. StartDial will force your iPhone to load whatever tab you choose every single time.

In addition to setting which tab the phone app opens to initially you can also remove the Visual Voicemail tab altogether. This is one of the main reasons I love this modification. I never have to worry about anyone going through my voicemails if I let someone borrow my iPhone or I lose it. It’s a useful feature for users who may keep sensitive information in their voicemail.

You can also set the phone app to automatically launch to the Recents tab if you have any missed calls. So if you see that you have 4 missed calls on your lockscreen but left the phone app on the keypad tab, it will automatically take you to the recents tab when you attempt to check your missed calls.

It’s pretty simple for a jailbreak mod but packs a lot of power depending on how you choose to use it.

StarDial is already available in Cydia and will run on any iPhone running iOS 4 or higher. If you’re looking for even more tweaks and utilities to install, check out our guide to the best jailbreak applications for iOS 5.

• Free – Cydia Link

Even more jailbreak resources:

• How to jailbreak guides
• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes
• General jailbreak and unlock help forums

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

The amazingly functional and customizable BiteSMS takes on the deeply integrated and easy to use Messages+ in a battle of the jailbreak messaging apps

Are you jailbroken on iOS 5 and wondering whether you should purchase BiteSMS or Messages+? Both applications add quick reply functionality and make messaging more functional. But which is a better choice for you?

BiteSMS for iOS 5

BiteSMS has been a long time favorite when it comes to messaging enhancement applications. Many competitors have come and gone while BiteSMS seemingly manages to stay at the top of its game.

One thing that sets BiteSMS apart is its ability to customize almost every aspect of your experience. You can choose what buttons you’d like to show up on your quick reply windows such as send, open, close, mark for later, Skype, FaceTime, templates, and more. The quick compose feature provides the option of auto-populating contacts. You can choose for it to auto show favorites, the last person you messaged, and more.

If you send a lot of international text messages, Bite allows you to buy credits to use on their own network. I don’t necessarily recommend it as a way not to have traditional text messaging as the rates aren’t cheaper than most carriers domestic rates. They are, however, cheaper than most carrier international texting rates. AT&T, for example, charges $10/month for 100 international messages. After that, it’s $0.20 per message. You can set up per contact rules for sending messages as well. So if you have certain contacts in a different country, only then will Bite utilize your credits. Bite’s prices are as follows –

• $6 for 50 SMS credits
• $12 for 105 SMS credits (includes 5 free credits)
• $24 for 215 SMS credits (includes 15 free credits)
• $60 for 550 SMS credits (includes 50 free credits)
• $120 for 1200 SMS credits (includes 200 free credits)

While BiteSMS has a sleek user interface in its own right, you can definitely tell it isn’t something made by Apple. People who choose to theme and don’t like the stock look of iOS may actually prefer this. Those of you who like to stick with the stock look may have an issue with it. It’s also worth noting that BiteSMS is compatible with both LockInfo and IntelliscreenX.

Messages+ for iOS 5

Messages+ is an update of the messaging enhancement app TLert. The update not only brought a more streamline experience but deep integration into iOS 5. It literally looks like something Apple would release.

While BiteSMS aims to bring you an array of different customizations and user controls, Messages+ aims to be an easy to use add-on that just works. There’s next to nothing to configure. You just enable Messages+ and set up a quick compose gesture and you’re on your way. Messages+ also comes built-in to IntelliscreenX.

If your main reason for wanting a messaging enhancement app is to not have to stop what you’re doing to compose a message, Messages+ will provide this functionality without any added icons. It simply adds a quick reply and quick compose function to the default iOS messaging app.

While Messages+ ties in nicely with IntelliscreenX, it is not currently supported by LockInfo. If you’re a LockInfo user, BiteSMS is going to be your best option. We don’t know if LockInfo will add support for Messages+ in the future.

BiteSMS vs Messages+ – which is better?

There’s no arguing that BiteSMS still has plenty more features and controls than Messages+. It will really come down to what you personally need from a messaging enhancement application.

I personally prefer Messages+ over BiteSMS as I don’t send that many international texts and just desire quick reply and quick compose functionality. I also like the stock feel of iOS and Messages+ gives me that. There are no added icons or tons of settings to configure before you start using it. Enable it, set a quick gesture for composing, and you’re done.

There are no doubt users out there who care more about control and functionality than interface and ease of use. For those of you that think heavily of these things, BiteSMS is probably going to serve you much better over the long run. Let us know what you decide on and why. Make sure to check out our other resources below for tons of jailbreak apps, themes, tips, and more!

• Messages+ vs BiteSMS forum thread – See what our readers are choosing
• Jailbreak guides, how to’s, and news
• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes forum
• General jailbreak discussion forum
• iMore downloads section
• List of Cydia repositories

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.

Slider Pro is a lightweight but useful jailbreak mod in Cydia that lets you customize the slide to unlock text on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. It comes with a handful of great presets including adding the date and time to your lock slider. Time and date are available in a number of different formats. If you’d just like to add custom text to the slider, you can do that as well. Once installed you can just pop into your general Settings app and customize it from there.

If you’re looking to add functionality to your lockscreen but don’t want to overload your jailbroken iPhone with too many tweaks and mods which may conflict with each other or just bog down your device, then this may be the way to go. It’s especially convenient if you have an app like IntelliscreenX or LockInfo and want to hide the lock clock to create more room for additional widgets. It’ll allow you to use space that’s already there in a more efficient way.

Slider Pro is already available in Cydia and will run on any iOS device running iOS 4 or higher. If you’re looking for even more tweaks and utilities to install, check out our guide to the best jailbreak applications for iOS 5.

• Free – Cydia Link

More jailbreak resources:

• How to jailbreak guides
• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes
• General jailbreak and unlock help forums

In a recent interview, Rovio CEO Mikael Hed said that app piracy isn’t a huge threat to their signature title, Angry Birds. In fact, it may help increase their popularity. Hed draws a lot of parallels to the music industry, and sees suing your fanbase as fundamentally “futile”.

“We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans. We do that today: we talk about how many fans we have. If we lose that fanbase, our business is done, but if we can grow that fanbase, our business will grow. … Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day.”

This is pretty smart on Rovio’s part, since they don’t just have a little slingshot game now — they have a brand. That brand is proving to be way more valuable for cartoons, merchandise, and cross-licensing (like the case with Rio) than as an iPhone app. It’s on these fronts that Rovio is staying agressive.

“We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed products.”

While Angry Birds might be the exception rather than the rule when it comes to app store success stories, Hed’s mindset here should show that publishers should always be thinking beyond the app. There’s a big world outside of mobile apps, and the more of it developers can latch hooks into, the more relevant their software becomes.

Of course, smaller developers might think that’s easy for Hed and his massive pork-and-poultry-fed bank account to say. With thinner margins for their apps, and nowhere near the same popularity with which they could viably sell shirts, plushies, or other branded goods, no doubt they’re hit much harder by app piracy than Rovio.

Source: The Guardian

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.

Apple has just released an update to Final Cut Pro X, their executive video editing software suite, which adds multi-camera syncing and broadcast monitoring suport. Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 also includes enhanced XML, so it can talk with third-party plug-ins more easily. As always, there’s a bunch of great audio, animation, and color correction tools in there which professionals have come to rely on.

So, okay, okay, maybe Final Cut Pro X is a little overkill for something shot on your iPhone 4S, especially with iMovie available right on the device, but if you’re knee-deep in the Apple lifestyle, maybe you like adding an extra layer of polish to your mobile videos. Or if you just shot your new music video with a four iPhone setup and need that new multi-cam sync. (Hey, it happens!)

Even though Final Cut Pro X is clearly built for, well, pros, it’s still interesting to see some people kit out their iPhones with all manner of video-enhancing accessories. While I can’t speak much to the quality of those videos versus something done with a “real” camera, I still admire folks who try to close the gap. A full-blown version of Final Cut Pro X on iPad — even the iPad 3 is still the stuff of legend, but I’d love to see a bunch of mobile companion apps to enhance desktop publishing. Adobe’s done a lot of stuff like this, and I think a similar strategy for Apple would be a great way to keep an iPad in the workflow. Even if Apple doesn’t take up the call, maybe the enhanced XML support will enable third parties to make some cool iPad companion apps for Final Cut Pro X. There are just so many separate panes and menus to keep in order when editing video, that it would be nice to shunt a few of the less vital ones to a separate display. Full press release after the jump.

• Free trial – Apple.com link.
• $299 – Mac App Store link,

CUPERTINO, California—January 31, 2012—Apple® today released Final Cut Pro® X v10.0.3, a significant update to its revolutionary professional video editing application, which introduces multicam editing that automatically syncs up to 64 angles of video and photos; advanced chroma keying for handling complex adjustments right in the app; and enhanced XML for a richer interchange with third party apps and plug-ins that support the fast growing Final Cut Pro X ecosystem. Available today as a free update from the Mac® App Store™, Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3 also includes a beta of broadcast monitoring that supports Thunderbolt devices as well as PCIe cards.

Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3 includes a collection of groundbreaking new tools for editing multicam projects. Final Cut Pro X automatically syncs clips from your shoot using audio waveforms, time and date, or timecode to create a Multicam Clip with up to 64 angles of video, which can include mixed formats, frame sizes and frame rates. The powerful Angle Editor allows you to dive into your Multicam Clip to make precise adjustments, and the Angle Viewer lets you play back multiple angles at the same time and seamlessly cut between them.

Final Cut Pro X builds upon its robust, one-step chroma key with the addition of advanced controls including color sampling, edge adjustment and light wrap. You can tackle complex keying challenges right in Final Cut Pro X, without having to export to a motion graphics application, and view your results instantly with realtime playback.

In the seven months since launch, the third party ecosystem around Final Cut Pro X has expanded dramatically. XML-compatible software like DaVinci Resolve and CatDV provide tight integration for tasks such as color correction and media management. The new 7toX app from Intelligent Assistance uses XML to import Final Cut Pro 7 projects into Final Cut Pro X. In addition, some of the industry’s largest visual effects developers, including GenArts and Red Giant, have developed motion graphics plug-ins that take advantage of the speed and real-time preview capabilities of Final Cut Pro X.

Broadcast monitoring in Final Cut Pro X is currently in beta and allows you to connect to waveform displays, vectorscopes, and calibrated, high-quality monitors to ensure that your project meets broadcast specifications. Final Cut Pro X supports monitoring of video and audio through Thunderbolt I/O devices, as well as through third party PCIe cards.

Pricing & Availability Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3 is available from the Mac App Store for $299.99 (US) to new users, or as a free update for existing Final Cut Pro X customers. A 30-day free trial of Final Cut Pro X is available at www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial. Full system requirements and more information on Final Cut Pro X can be found at www.apple.com/finalcutpro.

Fiksu, a mobile marketing firm, released some interesting data on how much money top iPhone app developers are spending on promoting their creations. After looking at the top 200 free iPhone App Store for December, the average cost to get someone to run an app more than three times is $1.81. This is up significantly from $1.41 in November. Fiksu also determined that the App Store saw a little over  6 million daily downloads in December, helped in no small part by the oodles of Christmas sales. In fact,m the last week of December saw advertising budgets (and traffic) double. Fiksu gathered up this information through their marketing platform, which spans over 200 million downloads, and 11 billion in-app actions. App Store rankings freeze between December 25 and 28, which creates a rush to get top position beforehand, so you hold that visibility while folks start downloading apps on their new iPhones. Fiksu CEO Micah Adler said:

“For so many app brands, December is a strategically critical month for app discovery. What we witnessed during the month was a ‘land rush’ in which advertisers earnestly spent marketing dollars in order to achieve ranking before the traditional App Store freeze which then would generate substantial organic downloads through increased visibility.”

Of course, if developers just wrote good apps and dropped us a line, maybe they’d get some free advertising by way of our Daily Apps series. Jussayin’.

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

How do you record the screen of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad? That’s the question several of our readers have asked this week. Sure, you can use a fancy HDMI-out dongle and a video capture card to mirror and record your display if you have the hardware and can get it working right. But if you’re jailbroken there’s an easier way to go about recording your iPhone or iPad display.

Yes, there’s a jailbreak app for that!

Cydia, the Jailbreak app store, has a little something that should suit your screen recording needs pretty well. It’s called Display Recorder and it allows you to take screen recordings directly on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Once you’re done, you can choose to upload the screen recording to YouTube or connect over Wi-Fi and move it over to your computer.

I’ve used Display Recorder in the past for tutorials and walk-throughs. You can adjust the output quality and file type as well. The only down side I’ve found to Display Recorder is that it doesn’t record audio. I’ve always solved this problem by recording the audio with voice memos or another external microphone and editing them together in iMovie or a similar program.

Display Recorder is available in Cydia now and is already compatible with iOS 5.

$4.99 – Cydia Search Link

Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for screen recordings?

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!

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

Yahoo has announced that they’re canceling some of their mobile apps in an effort to — wait for it — keep moving and keep innovating. Some of the apps that will be discontinued include:

• Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Mim (iPad)
• Yahoo! Answers (Android)
• Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Deals (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry)
• Yahoo! Movies (Android)
• Yahoo! News (Android)
• Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone)

Yahoo has been in the mobile space for quite some time and managed to amass a good amount of apps so looking to cut some of their weight and move on isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The decommissioning of these apps, as Yahoo noted, will allow them to put more effort into creating other applications, like LiveStand in the mobile space. Of course, the apps that Yahoo! cut weren’t really up there in terms of usage and it’s hard to imagine anyone will be sad to see any of them go.

Source: Yahoo via: Android Central

Sam and Max, the quintessential dog and bunny duo, are coming back to iPhone to start the next season of their episodic game series. Episode one of “Beyond Time and Space” is called “Ice Station Santa”. The illustrious personification of Christmas has gone on a rampage, so Sam and Max hoof it to the North Pole to find out what’s going. Hilarity ensues, as it is wont to do. On top of the game, Ice Station Santa also includes a soundboard with which you can create bizarre phrases with sound bytes from characters. Beyond that, there’s a “Whack da Ratz” mini-game, where you shoot up a simple carnival game with an oversized revolver.

I’ve got a particular soft spot for the Sam & Max series, not only because I played the original PC game when I was a kid, but because the dialogue is snappy, the scenarios are hilariously absurd, and Max’s homicidal tendencies hold an indescribable charm. The one downside that I find to the new Sam and Max episodes is that if you haven’t played previous seasons, you’ll miss out on the appeal of many of the recurring characters and inside jokes. Otherwise, it’s a fine point-and-walk adventure game, with memorable dialog trees and puzzles that come at you out of left field. To get a sense of their humour, you should take a look at this comic series written when the franchise was revived in 2005.

Episodes 2 – 5 were already built for consoles and PC long ago, so hopefully we’ll see the rest of the season in the iOS app store soon. In the meantime, you can snag Episode 1 – Ice Station Santa at the link below, or get a taste of the game at the video after the jump. ”Ice Station Santa” is a universal app, so iPad owners, have at it!

• 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

Namco Bandai have released Namco Arcade to the iTunes App Store for iOS devices with a free-to-play model in effect. If you’re a fan of retro gaming, this is certainly one you won’t want to miss as Namco has re-created many 1980′s classics and wrapped them all into one app. NAMCO Arcade includes the four titles XEVIOUS, The Tower of Druaga, Motos and Phozon, and more titles are panned for future release.

The pricing structure for the included games is interesting, each day you get one free game to play and if you wish to continue – or play a different game, you can purchase play coins right within the app. Prices for the coins that allow you to play any game start at $.99 for 10 with the outright game purchases pricing starting at $1.99 and going up as high as $4.99.

In addition to the cool games available, Namco has also added Game Center integration and uploadable user data so that you may share your scores across the globe with other playing the games. Just in case you feel like bragging about your high scores. Namco Arcade is available in the iTunes App store now for free.

• App Store Link – Namco Arcade

TwitkaFly allows you to tweet from virtually anywhere with a quick swipe or tap on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. It will add a Twitter shortcut to your notification center pull down and allow you to program a quick gesture for composing straight through Activator. The interface is clean and very iOS 5 like. It isn’t bogged down with too many buttons or cheesy graphics either.

The utility supports the following features –

• Tweet right from anywhere using Activator
• QuickReply to Twitter, Tweetbot, and Tweetings push notifications
• Retweet tweets
• Tweet Photo
• Open links from tweets
• Custom animations/transitions
• Amazing notification UI
• Tweet #NowPlayingTrack
• Landscape mode in iPad
• 100% retina display support
• Blacklist users and more

Twitkafly ties into your existing Twitter app so you can handle notifications through it once you choose your client through Settings. Currently TwitkaFly supports the official Twitter app, Tweetbot, and Tweetings. I’m assuming more clients will eventually be added. It’s compatible with any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 4 or higher. The only issue I’ve had so far is when I link it with Tweetbot. Whenever I click a notification it re-springs my device. If I link it with Twitter or Tweetings, it works fine. Hopefully that’s just a bug that’ll be hammered out pretty quickly.

If you’re using LockInfo or IntelliscreenX you shouldn’t have any compatibility issues and it should just tie straight into your existing notification program. You’ll just notice the addition of a QuickTweet button in the bottom left or right hand corner of notification center.

TwitkaFly is already available for purchase in Cydia. They’ve got a lite version available for free and a paid version for $1.99. Hit the link below to check it out and then let us know what you think! You can also check out more jailbreak apps and utilities in our apps, hacks, and themes forum.

Twitkafly – $1.99 – Cydia Search 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.

Distimo released an interesting report today that examined the overall effects of different app promotions across the iPhone and iPad App Store, as well as the Android Market. One of the most striking stats from the report was that “44% of the iPhone applications that have been on sale lost revenue during the sale, and 23% saw a decline in revenue by more than 20%”.

Distimo factored in how much of a price cut each app received, and put it into the above graph. As you might expect, the sharper the price cut, the greater the revenue. The graph shows that, among those that cut their price by 80%,  just as many apps lost 20% or more revenue as gained more than 100% revenue.  On the whole, putting apps on sale is still a good thing, though; the average iPhone app increased revenue by 22%, iPad apps increased by 19%, and Android app revenue went up by 29%. As you might expect, all three categories see a significant spike on the first day.

The report also examined the effects of having apps being featured. As it turns out, Android apps see a much higher boost in rank from being feature than on the iPhone or iPad. On average, an iPhone app has its rank bumped up 15 spots in the first three days of being featured, while iPad apps go up 27. Android apps? They climb 42 spots, on average. Only 11% of featured iPhone apps climbed more than 50 ranks, compared to 26% of featured Android apps.

Any app developers in the house reconsidering putting their app on sale now? I’m definitely more inclined to do my app shopping when cuts are down at the $0.99 range, but what about you guys?

Source: Distimo

Super social and incredibly integrated IntelliscreenX takes on quick content and plug-in powerhouse LockInfo in a battle of the jailbreak notification apps

Jailbroken on iOS 5 and wondering whether you should get LockInfo or IntelliscreenX? While both are utilities that aim to give you more control over your iPhone notifications and lockscreen, they do have key differences. Which is better for you?

LockInfo for iOS 5

LockInfo by David Ashman has been a long time favorite of mine when it comes to enhancing lockscreen functionality and gaining more control over native notifications. It still lives up to its reputation under iOS 5. LockInfo is really aimed at folks who’d like to have more control of how notifications behave and how they’re presented. If you don’t want certain information in notification center, you can disable it but still view it on your lockscreen, and vice versa. You can completely customize what appears where and how.

LockInfo also has built-in support for several different messaging applications including BiteSMS, Quickreply for SMS, iRealSMS, and more. Regardless what messaging replacement app you choose, LockInfo probably has you covered.

When it comes to content, LockInfo adds a few nice features that aren’t given to you stock. One of my favorites is access to your favorite contacts directly from notification center and your lockscreen. Tapping a contact allows you to call, FaceTime, or message them. It’s a nice little feature that you wouldn’t think you needed but quickly realize you don’t want to go without.

LockInfo also works in conjunction with many plug-ins. Some are distributed by David Ashman himself while others were created by other 3rd party developers. Given the amount of time LockInfo has been around, there are tons of plug-ins and add-ons for it. Some of the most popular ones include ToDo by Appigo, Twitter, Weather, and RSS.

You’ll find a few built-in themes that you can switch between such as a classic iOS version, the classic LockInfo version, and a few more. Since LockInfo has been around for quite a while many developers have made themes for it as well. Some complete themes will even have a LockInfo theme attached. Yes, it’s that widely accepted in the jailbreak community.

IntelliscreenX for iOS 5

Intelliborn has been around for a long time and has created many apps within the jailbreak community, including the original version of Intelliscreen. While I always preferred LockInfo over the original version, IntelliscreenX has come a long way in terms of functionality. Anyone who is heavy into social media and has to have quick access to Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds will want to look no further than IntelliscreenX.

You can add all these widgets as separate pages and reply or post status updates directly from your notification center or lockscreen. The only down side I’ve seen to this is the accelerated battery drain.

Messages+ also comes built-in to IntelliscreenX as well. While I’ve been a huge fan of BiteSMS for a long time, Messages+ will definitely give Bite a run for its money. I love the tight integration with the default messaging app. There’s nothing to install and very little to configure. It just works how it’s supposed to and adds quick reply support.

Considering Messages+ is typically $7.99 on its own, you get a pretty good deal considering IntelliscreenX is $2 more. So if you’re not keen on paying for LockInfo and Bite or Messages+, IntelliscreenX may be a better value for many people.

LockInfo vs IntelliscreenX — which is better?

Both LockInfo and IntelliscreenX are highly competitive jailbreak apps and which is better can change every time one of them is updated. For now I think IntelliscreenX has an an edge over LockInfo. LockInfo is an amazing utility, but users who are heavily into social networking and Facebook will benefit more from IntelliscreenX and its tight integration with iOS 5.

If you are more concerned with having control over plug-ins and where content is presented, go with LockInfo. But for now, I’m giving my vote to IntelliscreenX.

While I may personally prefer IntelliscreenX, I know there are tons of you out there who probably disagree. Let us know what you use and why! Make sure you also check out all our jailbreak resources below for more reviews, guides, and tips!

• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes forum
• Jailbreak and unlock help forums
• Jailbreak guides, how-to’s and news

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.

Audiobooks.com is a new service for book lovers that allows you to listen to as many audiobooks as you want. The cloud-based service offers more than 10,000 titles, including the biography of Steve Jobs.

• Listen to unlimited audio books on-demand
• Easily switch between listening devices—pause your audio book on your iPhone at the gym and find your place instantly when you continue listening from your laptop at the office
• Instantly access more than 10,000 best sellers, top new releases and classic favorites
• Never have to worry about storage restraints because the content lives on a cloud

Audiobooks.com may not have an app in the App Store, but their website is optimized for mobile and works like a charm.

A subscription to Audiobooks.com will run you $24.95/month, which is actually good deal when you consider how much audiobooks cost. Not to mention, the subscription is commitment free, so you are welcome to cancel at any time.

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.

HP has made good on releasing a roadmap for their webOS open source initiative and, as part of it, have fully open sourced the Enyo 2.0 application framework. But what does all this mean for the iMore crowd? In the short term it means you’ll be seeing at least a few webOS apps made available in the App Store and in your browser. In the longer term it means you’re likely to see a day where webOS is compiled to run on other hardware, though if that’s possible with Apple’s locked-down designs is another question entirely.

We’ll tackle the apps thing first. At its core Enyo is based on web tech like everything webOS (whereas the iOS framework is based around Objective-C). Going open source means that developers who have written in Enyo can compile their apps to be loaded in a browser or on webapp-supporting operating systems like iOS and Android with little issue. In fact, it’s already happening – multiple webOS Enyo apps are available through WebKit-based web browsers — like Safari — and at least one, an Instapaper client called Paper Mache, is available now in the Android Market. Of course, there’s some tweaking that’ll have to be done to make things nice and smooth, but apps like Paper Mache look and behave (minus the lag and jitter) exactly as they do on webOS.

The second major announcement was that HP is dumping their custom kernel and coopting the standard Linux kernel for use in Open webOS. This is the basic principle behind Android’s kernel by making the switch webOS will gain support for a wide breadth of hardware. Where there’s Cyanogen for the Android Open Source Project we certainly expect the same to happen with webOS. The question is… will anybody want to install it?

“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.

Motion is a new jailbreak utility available in Cydia that makes your iPhone homescreen just a bit more interesting. While Motion may not add a ton of functionality to your device, it’s a fun tweak to play around with and show off to your friends. It basically adds transitions and effects to the movement to all of the icons on your springboard.

Motion is a tweak that makes your icons move. There are a whole bunch of settings you can use to liven up your home screen and make your icons dance around.

• Rotate: Make your icons rotate
• Scaling: Make your icons grow
• Skew: Make your icons tilt sideways
• Jump: Make your icons jump
• Transparency: Make your icons fade in and out
• Waves: Make your icons move in waves (vertical and horizontal)

You can use these settings alone, or in combinations.

Motion is already available in the Cydia store and will run on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 4.x or higher. If you’re looking for even more tweaks and utilities to install, check out our guide to the best jailbreak applications for iOS 5.

• $1.00 — Cydia Store Link

More jailbreak resources:

• How to jailbreak guides
• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes
• General jailbreak and unlock help forums

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.

Smartr Contacts, which had great success on both the BlackBerry and Android platforms, is now available for the iPhone. The company behind Smart Contacts, Xobni has not only managed to re-imagine their app for iOS devices but they’ve done so in a way that makes the native iOS address book look like a disaster by comparison.

If you’re a GMail or Outlook user, Smartr Contacts could be just the contact management solution you are looking for. Rather than just creating a directory of contacts for you, which you then have to meticulously edit, Smartr Contacts builds profiles for those you are in contact with and orders them however you wish, although the ideal situation is to have them ordered by importance. A quick rundown of the features:

• Automatic Address Book – Imagine having an address book that automatically identifies and maintains the names and contact information for everyone you communicate with.
• Smart Contact Discovery – Enabled by the Smartr Cloud, contacts are automatically discovered from email data (currently GMail or Outlook), as well as data from social networks.
• Rich Profiles – A complete profile is created for each contact, including a photo, job title, phone numbers, company details, email history, common contacts and info from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Robust Search – Search by name, initials, company, title, email, phone and more to make finding anyone fast and easy.
• Ranked by Importance – All contacts are ranked by importance, not alphabetically, so the most important people are at the top.

Having been a Xobni / Smartr Contacts user across the various platforms they offer, including their desktop solutions, I have no problem suggesting this app to anyone wishing to get a better handle on their contact management.

• Free – App Store Link

“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.

The only thing more sweet than a rampaging tyrannosaurus rex is a rampaging tyrannosaurus rex on an iPad 2 – a gift which Telltale has graciously given the world by way of Jurassic Park: The Game, Episode 3. In “The Depths”, your group is trying to escape Isla Nublar through a series of maintenance tunnels, while being hounded by a variety of nasty predators. Jurassic Park’s security system is completely shut down, so all sorts of dinosaurs are roaming about the island freely. All episodes of the Jurassic Park game are built specifically for the iPad 2, as it makes use of the dual-core processor, and has full AirPlay support if you want to enjoy the action on the big screen.

I’ve played a couple of Telltale’s games on PC, and I’m a big fan of their style, quality, and sense of humour. Obviously this game is going to be a little more dramatic, but it looks like they’ve done a great job with it. The game is stitched together as a kind of direct-your-own-movie style, where you can jump between scenes, and your actions take place in the midst of 3D cinematic sequences.

You can check out a few snippets of the iPad 2 gameplay after the jump, though it plays more like an Apple ad. The game is available for $6.99 in the App Store at the link below.

• App Store link

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