VicMan Visage Lab for iPhone is an app that will give your portraits a complete makeover with just the tap of a button. I'm always fairly skeptical of these types of apps because they have the potential to produce results that look very fake and overdone, but not VicMan Visage Lab -- the results are very good!

VicMan Visage Lab includes two sample photos, one of a man and another of a woman. Here's the before and after on the woman model.

Here's the before and after on the male model.

Pretty good, huh?

Using VicMan Visage Lab is extremely easy. Just select the photo you wish to edit and let the software work its magic. When it's done, it'll zoom in on the photo and briefly show the original photo before applying the retouches.

The retouches that VicMan Visage Lab applies are skin makeup, eye makeup, teeth whitening, shine removal, wrinkle smoothing, and color enhancement.

After the retouches are completel you can pinch to zoom in and out of the photo and tap the little snapshot in the bottom left corner to switch between the original and retouched version.

If you are unhappy with the results, you can choose specifically which effects you want to apply. Unfortunately, this doesn't give instant feedback, so you'll have to wait for the retouching to happen again. This also means that there isn't a way to compare between different combinations.

VicMan Visage Lab also includes some effects that you can apply to your photo. A few of them, like Sunny Colors and Glamour Effect, are subtle but have a great impact on portraits. Other effects include Black & White, Retro Sepia, Poster Look, Xmas Bokeh, In the Wave, and Light Bokeh.

Now, I know that seeing great results on photos that were included with the app may not be very impressive, so here's a before and after comparison of a photo of me.

For this photo, I disabled Shine Removal and Wrinkle Smoothing because I felt they made my face look flat and lack dimension. I also applied the Glamour Effect.

The good

• Works surprising well
• Can select between 6 different retouching tools
• Many of the filters are subtle, yet awesome

The bad

• Each time you want to select a different combination of retouching tools, it goes through the entire process over again with no way to compare the different results
• Filters take too long to apply

The conclusion

VicMan Visage Lab is a fantastic app for improving portraits by removing flaws and giving them that extra little oomph. If you're planning to participate in this week's portrait iPhoneography contest, this is probably a great app to pick up!

VicMan Visage Lab comes in three different versions. The free version is ad supported and does not include all of the filter effects. The Pro versions have no adds and includes all the filters. The iPhone only Pro version of VicMan Visage lab is $0.99 and the universal version for iPhone and iPad is $1.99.

Free for iPhone & iPad- Download Now

$0.99 for iPhone - Download Now

$1.99 for iPhone & iPad - Download Now

The Google Search app for iPhone app was recently updated with a complete redesign that makes searching on Google a rather pleasant experience. It features a very stylish and snappy UI that's bound to impress anyone who uses it.

The home page of Google is very clean and Google-esque with barely off-white background and the Google search field directly in the center. Along the top of the screen you'll see what account you're logged into and find access to settings.

On the bottom of the screen you'll see icons for Apps, Voice, and Goggles. The apps section lets you access all the Google Apps on the web: Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Google+, News, Reeder, Photos, YouTube, Translate, Offers, Tasks, and Blogger. You can also find a list of other apps that Google has available in the App Store with direct links to download.

The Voice icon lets you perform a voice search. Just speak what you'd like to search for, and Google Search will type it into the search field for you! It's been extremely accurate in my experience.

Google Goggles is a neat feature that performs a search based on a photo you took. For example, if you want to look up a book, just take a photo of the cover with Goggles and Google will find it for you.

As you type into the search field, Google will automatically display popular search terms. If you see the one you want, just tap it instead of typing it completely out -- it's a huge time saver. When you perform the search, the results will be displayed in a similar fashion as on the web and Mobile Safari. Along the bottom of the screen you choose what kind of search you'd like to perform (web, images, places, news, etc…), but as you scroll down, the controls disappear. Google refers to this as auto full screen. As you scroll up, the controls will reappear. It's very cool.

When you tap on a result, the webpage will open in a tab on top of your results and a very thing blue line will progress underneath the tab while the page loads. Auto full screen works on web pages as well.

When the controls are displayed, you can navigate between pages, refresh the page, open in Safari, share via email, or perform a word search on the page. When doing a search, each appearance of the word will be placed in a yellow box. You can either scroll through the webpage to find each instance of the word, or tap the arrows next to your search to jump to the next/previous time it appears.

Search for images with Google Search is absolutely gorgeous. The photos are displayed as a collage. The collage is separated into distinct rows, but not all the rows are the same height. Each row will contain anywhere between 1 and 3 images in their original crop ratio. I think this is much more interesting than showing each photo cropped as a square.

The good

• Beatuiful design
• Extremely fast
• Voice search is very accurate
• Image searches are stunning
• Web access to all Google Apps
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• Can't have more than one tab

The conclusion

I never used to use Google Search for iPhone, but now I find myself using it quite often. The experience is much better than Safari -- and it's super fast!

Free - Download Now

iMore is here to help you play God, build cities, and run commercial empires with these top free simulation games for iPhone.

Last week we featured the best free iPad games, but there were a few new categories there that weren't in my original best free iPhone games post. One of those categories is simulation, where your micro-management skills pay the virtual bills. Some of these will look familiar, but others may be new to you. Keep in mind that all of the current picks here are free-to-play, but subsist on in-app payments for various non-essential perks, so if you're not a fan of being nickeled-and-dimed, this list might not be for you. Buckle up hit the jump to see our favourite free simulation games for the iPhone.

Tiny Tower

Tiny Tower is a really simple social management game with 8-bit-style graphics. Your job is to populate a tower with bitizens, assign them jobs relevent to their skills, keep their respective businesses stocked, and build more floors on top of your building. Over time, your bitizens earn you money which can be spent on purchasing new stock for various types of stores, or for putting the next storey onto your tower. You'll need to ferry bitizens from the ground floor with the elevator if you'll ever want to move new people in, plus once in awhile VIPs will provide you extra bonuses, like knocking off a few hours from your restocking time.

Tiny Tower occasionally gives you Towerbucks for handling the elevator, which can be used to hurry restocking, construction, or elevator upgrades. Towerbucks can also be bought through in-app purchases.

• Download now

The Sandbox

The Sandbox is clever mix-and-match game with an 8-bit art style. You take the role of an almighty creator trying to combine various elements in the right order at the right spot in order to complete a puzzle. Those goals can be as simple as evaporating water and as elaborate as discovering electricity. In that sense, there's a definite Doodle God vibe, except this is a lot more fluid. Beyond painting element-infused pixels, you also have control over a wide variety of environment elements, including temperature and weather. The real magic of The Sandbox is that elements all behave as you expect them to - trees catch fire if you turn up the world temperature, dirt falls when you paint it in the sky, and electricity surges through metal and shoots off the ends of wires with sparks. Given, all of that action is in chunky pixels, it's still all very believable. Outside of the puzzles, you can also go freestyle to make your own creations and share them online in the burgeoning pixel art gallery.

Though The Sandbox is free, new elements are unlocked with mana points, which are awarded as you play through missions or bought through in-app purchases. Mana points can also be used to purchase hints for particularly tricky puzzles - luckily the hints aren't too expensive. There's Game Center support here to track achievements, but it's not Universal, so unfortunately no enjoying this one on the big screen.

• Download now

My Country

My Country is a city simulation game where you build businesses, attract residents, and connect with neighboring communities. It's about as close to a full-featured, free version of the premium SimCity game as you'll find. Sure, there are some of the FarmVille trappings of having to tap on buildings to collect revenue, but there's a ton of depth to the resource structure; for example, to run a business, you have to gather up equipment either through other business or upgrading residential units to hire the required professionals. You need to juggle ecology ratings and electrical demands as your city expands from one era to the next. As you complete missions, you gain experience points, level up, and unlock new buildings to propel your metropolis to further heights.

The in-game cash you earn from running businesses within your city (or country, once it gets big enough) is generally what you use to expand and unlock new buildings, but you can also use the premium CountryBucks currency to complete most of the same tasks.

• Download now

Order Up!! To Go

Order Up!! To Go is a cooking and restaurant simulator that tests your time management skills. The gameplay is twofold - for one, you're working on building up the reputation and menu for your restaurant, always with an eye to the next establishment, so there's a fair bit of budgeting involved. The cooking itself is very similar to the Cooking Mama series in you cut tomatoes with downward swipes and flip burgers with curved swipes (though I wouldn't mind some accelerometer control for that). What really keeps the game fun is the variety of other mini-games and the great humor both in the writing an art style. Smaller nuances, like recognizing customers as they come in and using the appropriate spices adds even more depth to the frantic gameplay.

You earn silver coins through regular gameplay, which can be used to buy your ingredients, access new restaurants, and hire extra help, but you can speed up the process with premium gold coins acquired through in-app purchases.

• Download now

The Sims FreePlay

The Sims FreePlay is a classic life simulation game where you tend to a collection of virtual people, each with a variety of needs and colorful spectrum of personality quirks. You do everything from steering their conversations with other Sims, decorating their home, getting them to work, and making sure they bathe regularly. A recent update even added the ability to play as and care for child Sims. As you guide your Sim to accomplish daily tasks, you gain experience points, level up, and unlock new items. Unlike the old Sims games that had a handy fast-forward button, activities in The Sims FreePlay all happen in real-time, so when you put your little people to sleep, they're gone for 8 real hours.

As you play, you earn Lifestyle Points, which can be used to immediately satisfy your Sim's needs and quickly complete tasks. Those can be bought through in-app purchases, alongside the game's currency, Simoleans, which your Sims earn through various kinds of work.

The UI is better-suited for the iPad; on the iPhone, I find gameplay a little cramped, but everything is still there, and in the world of simulation games, there's really no contest. Saved games can be manually synced to the cloud between iPhone and iPad, but that can prove to be a hassle if you switch back and forth a bunch.

• Download now

Your favorite sim games for iPhone?

Facebook is the most popular photo sharing service on the web so it comes as no surprise that they released an app dedicated to the photo aspect of Facebook -- it's called Facebook Camera. With Facebook Camera, you can easily share multiple photos to Facebook, add filters to them, tag your friends, and view a newsfeed restricted just to photos posted by you and your friends. And, of course, you can also leave comments and likes on photos.

The main screen of Facebook Camera is the news feed, except that this news feed only contains photos, not status updates and links like in Facebook for iPhone. You can sort the stream to show photos posted by your friends or just your own photos.

The appearance of the photos in the stream is similar to the new look that was recently implemented into Facebook for iPhone. The photos are full-width and wider than the white background. Each photo is also cropped as a square.

At the bottom of each photo you'll see a thumbs up button to "like" it, a comments button to leave comments, and the number of likes and comments is also displayed. When you tap on the numbers, a popup will appear that shows who liked the photo as well as all the comments. You can also leave a comment of your own. This button actually does the exact same thing as the speech bubble button.

Tapping on the photo will display it on a black background with the caption at the bottom as well as buttons to "like", comment, and tag.

At the top of the feed, you'll see a strip of photos from your Camera Roll and a button to launch the camera. Sliding down on the news feed will slide it off the screen so you can scroll through all the photos in your Camera Roll.

Tapping a photo will display it bigger and allow you to crop, tag, or add filters to it. These filters are remarkably similar to Instagram's filters, but this is to be expected since Facebook recently purchased Instagram. Once you've edited the photo to your liking, you can select it with the checkmark button or share it. If you select it, you'll be taken back to the grid of your Camera Roll photos so that you can repeat the process with more photos.

Once you're ready to share the photos, just tap the share button. This screen looks similar to the photo sharing screen on Facebook for iPhone. It will display small thumbnails of all your selected photos, let you say something about them, add a location, add friends, and adjust privacy settings.

The good

• Beautifully designed
• News feed displays either your friends photos or just your own
• Upload multiple photos at once
• Edit photos by cropping and adding filters
• Tag friends
• Adjust privacy settings before posting
• Leave comments and likes on photos

The bad

• Speech bubble and comment/like count buttons perform the exact same thing

The conclusion

I must say that I'm rather surprised with how much I like this app. I do nothing but complain about Facebook for iPhone, but Facebook appears to have done an outstanding job with Facebook Camera. It's not an Instagram replacement, but it's as great addition to Facebook. Now I'm just curious to see how long before these filters become available on the web version of Facebook.

Free - Download Now

Bump is a very popular iPhone app that people use to share information like photos and contacts by "bumping" their phones together. It used to be restricted to only iPhone users, then it appeared on other mobile platforms, and now you can share photos with your computer.

To share a photo, you must first visit https://bu.mp/ on your computer's browser. You don't even have to connect your iPhone to the same wifi network.

Next, you open Bump on your iPhone, swipe to the right to see your photos, and select which photos you want to share. To "bump" with your computer, you simply tap the spacebar on your keyboard with your iPhone.

The first time you do this, you will be required to accept the bump both on your iPhone and your computer, but this is only for the first time. Although Bump claims you only need to lightly tap your keyboard, you actually need to do it harder than you may have been expecting. Basically, the bump needs be be strong enough to be noticed by the software.

Onc the bump is complete, you'll see the photos appear on the website with options to download them all or download individually. You can also just simply drag the photos to your desktop (or other folder) to quickly save them.

As of right now, only photos can be bumped to a computer. You cannot share contact information, nor can you chat with the Mac. I don't see either of these as a problem, since users will typically be using this feature to share their own photos to their own computer. Most people have contacts synced with their computer and there's no reason to chat with yourself.

Personally, I'm very excited about this update and have bookmarked https://bu.mp/ on both of my computers.

Free - Download Now

The SuperTooth DISCO is a stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) speaker system for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Mac and similar devices that promises bigger, better, and more booming sound than the Jawbone JAMBOX. But is the increase in size worth the reduction in portability?

The SuperTooth DISCO is a lot of Bluetooth speaker to love!

Because the iPhone and iPad aren't exactly renowned for the quality of their speakers, many of us have come to rely on external audio devices to give our iOS devices a much-needed kick in the bass (among other things). While there are plenty of options, including AirPlay speakers, it's convenient to have a sound solution that's as mobile as our mobile devices. Something we can use both when we're at home on Wi-Fi and when we're out and about with no Wi-Fi in sight. That makes Bluetooth still a viable, useful option, and that makes something like the SuperTooth DISCO ideal.

And if it's a multitasker -- something you can hook your friend's non-Bluetooth iPod classic or nano up to via good, old-fashioned hardwire, so much the better.

Connect via Bluetooth at home or on the road, or hook up via audio cable if you're old school.

According to SuperTooth, the DISCO features 28 Watt RMS audio power. That includes the internal Subwoofer amplifier power 12 Watt RMS, and the Internal Left and right audio power amplifier: 2 x 8 Watt RMS. The subwoofer speaker uses the Neodyne high efficiency system, and the left and right speakers are full range with parabolic membrane. All of the speakers magnetic shielded

A large, easy to use control wheel decorates the front of the SuperTooth DISCO. It includes a volume knob as well play/pause, skip back/rewind, skip ahead/fast-forward, a bass button, and an on/off/stop button. There's also a Bluetooth connection and battery level indicator.

Around the back is the charging port and charge level indicator, and a 3.5mm stereo line-in connector.

The control wheel is easy to use but cuts out when you're using the line-in input in the back.

The nickel metal hydride battery life for the SuperTooth DISCO is rated at 3-4 hours on high volume and up to 10 hours on medium volume. Stand by time is rated at 1500 hours and charge time at 3 hours.

On the other hand, all of that performance comes at a price -- the size. The SuperTooth DISCO is 2.5 lbs, and 3.5 inches high, 2.75 inches thick, and just over a foot long.

That means those hoping to stash the SuperTooth DISCO in a purse or messenger bag may be disappointed. This is large bag or big backpack only.

Maybe for just that very reason, the SuperTooth DISCO comes with a protective carrying case with openings for the ports and the speaker.

The good

• Excellent sound
• Comes with protective case
• Works with both iOS and non-iOS audio devices

The bad

• Large size may limit portability

The conclusion

The SuperTooth DISCO isn't a Bluetooth speaker I can sneak into my jacket pocket, but it's absolutely what I want when I'm driving around in a jeep, or at home and just want the whole place flooded with music.

With great music comes great size, however, and that's not going to suit everyone. When I want massive music from my tiny iPhone, the SuperTooth DISCO is both big and beautiful.

$118.14 - Buy now

Convert photos and drawings into coloring pages that can be printed and colored with real crayons

Printy is a cute little app that will turn anything you take a photo of into a coloring page that can be printed on real paper and colored with real crayons. It's is incredibly easy to use and does an equally incredible job at producing colorable PDFs.

There's literally only four screens included with Printy. The first one let's you choose between taking a photo or choosing one from your Camera Roll. In the next screen, you move and scale your photo to fit in the square. Yes, you must crop your photo to square.

Once you accept your crop, you'll be shown the first draft of your coloring page. There are two sliders you can adjust to make it look better. The first slider controls the thickness of the black lines and the second slider controls the darkness of the image.

Once it looks best, tap the checkmark to generate the final high resolution image. You should notice that the lines smooth out and look better than in the previous screen. You can then choose to print the image to an AirPrint compatible printer or email it has a high resolution PDF. Here's an example of a PDF created by Printy.

My only real complaint is that once you print or email the image, you can't save it anywhere. At the very least, you should be able to save it to our Camera Roll, but even better would be if you could export to a folder in Dropbox dedicated to Printy PDF files.

The good

• Does an amazing job
• Fine tune the image by adjusting the thickness and darkness of lines
• Print to AirPrint compatible printer
• Email high resolution PDF

The bad

• Forces a square crop
• Can't save to camera roll
• Dropbox support would be awesome

The conclusion

I am very impressed with how well Printy works. Now, if you try to take photos of things that aren't flat or that have have too much detail, the results will not be as great. But keeping in mind that the purpose of Printy is to create coloring pages, probably for a child, you wouldn't be taking photos of these types of things anyway. I anticipate that my daughter will want me to take photos of characters in her books when she gets to the coloring age as well as use screenshots from her favorite apps and books on the iPad.

$0.99 - Download Now

Motion Math: Wings is an iPad game with the focus of increasing conceptual understanding of multiplication. The goal is simple, tilt your iPad to guide the flying bird to the biggest number.

The catch is that the number isn't typically represent by its normal written form. Sometimes the numbers may presented as a grid of dots, a group of dots, a small group of dots preceded by "2 groups of", and more. There's a total of six different visual forms that a number can take. It's your job to fly the bird into the larger number. As the difficult increases, so does the speed of the bird and the size of the numbers.

As a math instructor, I can confidently say that lack of conceptual understanding is why so many people struggle with mathematics. Unfortunately, this often starts at a very young age, but games like Motion Math help fill that gap. Instead of just memorizing that four times 6 is 24, players will need to also be familiar with the many different visual forms that this operation can take. The mental exercise will absolutely have an impact on your child's understanding.

Motion Math: Wings may be free to download, but it's by no means free. The free download comes with the first island of 5 different levels of difficulty. These 5 levels can be played as many times as you wish and should be enough for you to decide if you want to purchase more levels. There are three different areas of learning that you can purchase: pre-multiplcation ($1.99), basic multiplication ($2.99), and advanced multiplication ($2.99). Or you can buy all the levels for $6.99.

The good

• Both educational and fun
• Numbers are represented six different visual forms
• Develops conceptual understanding
• 10 levels of difficulty
• players win feathers and twigs to color the bird and build its nest

The bad

• Boring graphics

The conclusion

Motion Math: Wings isn't your typical boring arithmetic game. Instead of sticking with the traditional form of numbers, Motion Math includes many different visual forms to represent numbers which will result in an increased conceptual understanding of arithmetic, versus just memorizing what the outcomes should be.

Free - Download Now

The classic and terribly addicting game Bejeweled by PopCap has made it's way onto the iPad. Bejeweled Blitz has been available on the iPad for quite some time, but the new Bejeweled HD offers 4 games modes: Classic, Butterflies, Diamond Mine, and Zen.

The general goal of all game modes of Bejeweled is the same: match gems that are the same color by swapping pairs of adjacent gems. There are two different ways to swap a pair. One is to tap one of the gems you wish to be included in the swap (it will be highlighted by a square around it) then tap the other gem you want to switch it with (they must be next to each other). The other option is to touch the first gem and drag it into the position of the other one.

The minimum number of gems of the same color that must be touching in order to qualify as a match is three. But if you create larger matches, you will get more points and gems with special powers.

In the Bejeweled Classic, the goal is to simply perform as many matches as you can. As you earn points, the bar at the bottom of the screen fills up and as time passes, the bar goes down. Your ultimate goal is to fill the bar before it drains.

In Butterflies mode, you start with one colored butterfly on the board. You can treat it just like a gem by matching it with same-colored gems. If the butterfly is included in a match, it gets set free. If it's not included, it moves up the board. Every move you make also introduces a new butterfly to the bottom of the board. If a butterfly reaches the top, it gets snatched up by a spider and the game is over.

In the Diamond Mine mode Bejeweled, the jewels are placed underground with a few layers of dirt at the bottom. Making matches along the bottom of the mine, will dig the dirt deeper. Each time all the column get below the line, you will be awarded 25 more seconds and the dirt will come up. You goal is to play as long as you can before the time runs out.

Zen mode is the "stress-free" mode of Bejeweled that doesn't have any pressure. There's no time limit, the bar at the bottom does not decrease, and there's no spiders taunting you at the top of the screen. Just sit back and relax and try to make the best matches you can.

As you may have notice, one of the most popular versions of this game, Bejeweled Blitz, is missing from Bejeweled HD. It is, in fact, represented on the main screen, but it's not actually included. Tapping on the Blitz icon will take you to the App Store to purchase Bejeweled Blitz separately (it's free).

The good

• Four games modes: Classic, Butterflies, Diamond Mine, Zen
• Fun
• Addicting

The bad

• Blitz mode is a separate app

The conclusion

I've always been a huge fan of Bejeweled and it's great to finally have more than Blitz on my iPad. My new favorite game mode is Diamond Mine. The Butterfly Mode is also very fun. Ok fine, I like all game modes of Bejeweled HD!

$3.99 - Download Now

Cuboid is a fun 3D puzzle game for the iPhone and iPad of flipping and rolling a cuboid through a maze-like puzzle placed in the setting of mystic, ancient ruins.

Cuboid is available on the iPhone and iPad as a universal app, but the screenshots in this review will be from an iPhone, only.

For those who may not know, a cuboid a rectangular solid that is in the shape of a box. In this game, if you were to cut the cuboid in half (longways), the result would be two cubes.

The goal of the game is simple, roll the cuboid through the puzzle so that you get it to fall through the square hole. It's possible to roll the cuboid off the board, so be careful!

As you progress through the game, new elements such as buttons and teleports will be introduced to the game. When this happens, Cuboid has you play a simple tutorial level so that you understand how the new addition to the game works.

Once you succeed, you will receive 1-3 stars based on how many moves it took you to reach the goal. If you complete the level in the least number of moves possible, the level will also be marked as "etalon". (An etalon is actually a physics device used to measure wavelengths, so I'm not really sure why this word is used.)

If you're stuck and can't figure out how to beat a level, Cuboid includes a hint button that will quickly show you how to beat the level from the cuboid's current position. You are only given a few hints for free, though. If you want more, you must purchase them from the Cuboid Store.

Which brings me to the parts of Cuboid I do not understand. As you play the game, you earn coins. If you tap the button that says how many coins you have, or you tap the hint icon when you don't have any left, you are taken to the Cuboid Store. I was expecting to be able to purchase hints with the coins I've earned. Nope. My choices are to buy hints or to buy coins… but I can't figure out what I can do with my coins! Why do I want to buy 1500 coins for $4.99? As far as I can tell, these coins don't actually have a purpose.

The other horrible thing about Cuboid is ads. Not so much the ads themselves (all ads are always horrible), but the fact that it's not clear how to get rid of them. I've searched through every menu and there is no obvious method of purchasing an upgrade to remove the ads. However, through some trial and error, I discovered that if you tap the X on an ad, you'll get the offer to remove ads for $0.99. It's well worth the $0.99, in my opinion, but I can't believe how difficult it was to find this in-app purchase.

In general, everything except the actual gameplay is very poorly done. There's no written directions to be found (and that's a shame, because I'd really like to know why HeroCraft is using the word "etalon" when perfectly beating a level). I would also like to know what all the icons mean in Settings. Music, sound, and hints was easy enough to figure out, but I'm not really sure what the movie icon is for. Despite the ample space on the Settings screen, there is no written description for what settings are actually being changed.

When tapping the ribbon on the main menu, you are taken to the ranking section in Game Center for Cuboid, but there doesn't appear to be any way to exit this screen. It turns out that the "Done" button is just invisible. If you tap in the upper righthand corner, it briefly appears and activates.

The good

• Awesome graphics
• Addicting
• Challenging
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• No clear, written out directions
• To purchase the upgrade for no ads, you must tap the X when an ad pops up
• Not sure what the movie icon in settings represents. Again, no words to describe what it is
• Game Center ranking page has an invisible Done button. You can't see it, but if you tap in the upper righthand corner, it briefly appears and activates.

The conclusion

Luckily, none of the bugs I experience affect the actual gameplay of Cuboid. Cuboid is a very fun game and I really like how they've added a star value to each level. This allows the game to be played leisurely with the goal of just passing each level, or competitively with the goal of reaching "etalon" status for each level. With that said, HeroCraft does have some serious issues they need to address, mainly the horrible discovery of upgrading to no ads and giving an actual purpose to coins.

Free - Download Now

You’ve got the new iPad, you have tried out your front facing camera with FaceTime, but now you realize that many of your friends don’t live in the iOS world. So, how can you video chat with your BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Phone friends?

The good news is that there really are a bunch of options for video chatting with Android, Windows Phone and Windows and Mac PC users.  The bad news is that there aren’t, as of yet, a bunch of great options.   We will take a look at a good cross sampling to help give you some choices in the realm of video chat. The only caveat here is that you will need to pick an app tied to a service that your friends actually use or are willing to use.

Using Skype on the iPad

Finding and Adding Skype Contacts

1.  If you are not already in Skype, tap the Skype icon from your Home screen and log in, if asked.
2. Tap the Lists key along the left hand margin.
3. Tap one of the Contacts lists displayed, then touch the the “+” icon  at the top
4. Next, touch the Search Skype Directory and type someone’s name, email address or Skype Name. Tap Search to locate that person.
5. Once you see the person you want to add, touch his/her name.
6. Check the picture to make sure you have the right individual.
7. Tap Add Contact at the top.
8. Adjust the invitation message appropriately.
9. Tap the Send button to send this person an invitation to become one of your Skype contacts.
10. Repeat the procedure to add more contacts.
11.  When you are done, touch the Back key at the top or the Skype directory key if you are not already in your Skype group.
12. Tap the Contacts group you just added top from the Lists screen to see all new contacts you have added.
13. Once this person accepts you as a contact, you will see him listed as a contact in the group from which he/she was invited.

Making Calls with Skype on Your iPad

1. If you are not already in Skype, tap the Skype icon from your Home screen and log in, if asked.
2. Tap the Lists button.
3. Tap a Contact Group to see your contacts.
4. Tap the contact name you wish to call
5. Tap the Video Call or Voice Call button. Sometimes, you don’t want to “show yourself” so a voice only call can be helpful.
6. You may see a Mobile or other phone button. Making any other kind of call requires that you pay for it with Skype Credits.

Easily switch cameras using the Skype app

Switching Cameras with Skype

Free - Download now

Fring for iPad

Fring is a popular Android video chat app that has been around for a while for iOS users.

The killer feature of Fring is that it supports group video chat for up to four users simultaneously.

Like Skype, you can call landlines and other phone numbers for discounted rates – but our interest today is in video chat. Fring also works over 3G and 4G networks as well as over WiFi.

Adding friends in Fring

You add friends in Fring by looking for their User-ID. You can also add your networks, which will bring in your contacts. You can add your Address Book, your MSN Live account, ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo or AIM.

Add contacts from many different networks

Placing a video call

Options on a call

Tap the Group video button and select participants. You can touch the + button to add friends to the call.

Tap the Group icon to start a group call in Fring

Get Fring here:

Free - Download now

ooVoo Video Chat for iPad

ooVoo is a newer service which tried to one up Fring by enabling group video chat for up to 6 people at a time. ooVoo has apps available for smartphones and tablets (iOS and Android) and Macs and PC’s. On Macs and PC’s, you can have up to 12 people on a video chat.

ooVoo also work over 3G and 4G networks as well as WiFi.

Adding friends to ooVoo

When you first start up ooVoo you are asked to upload your address book to their servers to look for friends. You can always Deny this request and input your contacts manually – or Allow it and ooVoo will search for your friends.

Choose to Allow or Deny ooVoo to upload your contacts and look for ooVoo users

Once ooVoo finds your contacts, you can choose which ones to add to your address book.

Placing a Video call

Just select someone from your Contact list and select Start a Video Call. Once they answer, the call is in session.

Options on the call

Using the Group Call option

Choose multiple users to initiate a group call in ooVoo

Get ooVoo here:

Free - Download now

Yahoo! Messsenger for iPad

People still use Yahoo! People even still use Yahoo! Messsenger, so having the option of video chatting with Yahoo! Messsenger friends is a great option for your iPad.

With Yahoo! Messenger, video calls and chats are free to your Yahoo! Messenger contacts. Yahoo! also gives you the option of low cost calls to  landlines and mobile phones as well as free international texting to a few places.

Adding friends to Yahoo! Messenger

When you sign into the Yahoo! Messenger app, all of your Yahoo contacts will show up. You can also add contacts individually by touching the + icon at the top right of the app.

Placing a video call

Tap the video camera icon to initiate a video call on Yahoo! Messenger

Options on the call

Yahoo Messenger is available here:

Free - Download now

Vtok – Google talk video calls on iPad

If you are a Google voice user, you might want to check out Vtok as an option for video calling using your Google Voice account.

As long as your friends are Google contacts using Google Video and voice chat- you can talk to them – and see them – for as long as you’d like.

Adding Contacts to Vtok

Simply sign in using your Google sign in information and all your Google contacts will show up.

Tap the + button at the top right to add contacts individually.

Placing a video call

If your friends are online, the video camera icon turns green. Simply touch the icon to start the video call.

Tap the green video camera to initiate a video call on vtok

Options on the call

Very much like the other apps, you can Switch the camera, Mute or end the call.

Vtok is available here:

Free - Download now

Tango Video Calls on iPad

Tango is yet another variation on a theme of apps that can be used cross platform for making Video calls. Tango adds some new features, such as the ability to send free video messages as well.

Tango works over WiFi as well as over 3G and 4G networks. Tango is an iPhone app that you need to run in 2x mode to fill up the iPad screen.

Adding contacts to Tango

When you first set up Tango you will be asked to let Tango match up your address book with emails and phone numbers of registered Tango users. If you allow Tango to do this, you will see all of your contacts who also have Tango accounts when you login.

You can also touch the + (invite) icon to send an email invite to friends to join you on Tango.

Placing a video call

The Tango video chat screen

Simply touch the Video icon next to the contact you wish to call and the video call will initiate.

Options on the call

Tango options are pretty limited. You can Switch the camera view, Mute or End the call.  The one thing that Tango adds is sort of a gimmick, but it can be fun; that is called Tango surprises. Tap the icon with the stars and you can choose animated surprises -  like balloons  - to come down during the call. You can purchase more surprises in the Tango store.

Tap the Surprises icon and choose from animated options like balloons

Tango is available here:

Free - Download now

Conclusions:

After looking at all these apps, there are certainly options for iPad and iPhone users if they want to video chat with non-iOS friends and family.

The simple reality is this; if your friends and family have an iOS device, you are hard pressed to beat FaceTime for ease of use and call quality. The one downside to FaceTime is that it can only be used over WiFi.

If your friends or family members are  non-iOS users, Skype may very well be the best alternative of the bunch.  It is popular, easy to set up and use and the picture and audio quality was generally pretty good – both over WiFI and over cellular networks.

Among the other Video chat services, the bottom line come down to where your friends, colleagues and families are.  If everyone is on Yahoo!, then maybe Yahoo! Messenger makes sense.  If everyone is on Google, then Vtok might work.

If group video chat is important to you on your iPad or iPhone, both ooVoo and Fring offer easy group video chat.  The challenge is that you need to get your friends and family to join the service and learn a new app.

Tango, Fring, Google (Vtok) and Skype are available as mobile apps for most, but not all platforms. Skype is not on BlackBerry and while it is on Windows Phone, it still can’t run in the background, which limits its usability on that platform.

Since each of the apps is free, try them out, see where your friends are and then enjoy yet another feature that helps make the iPad and iPhone so incredibly versatile.

Are you currently using a Video chat app regularly on your iPad or iPhone? Have you tried any of these out and can share your experiences? Let us know in the forums.

I've been using Tom Bihn Ristretto messenger bags for a few years now. When my original was stolen, I promptly bought another. I've used them for everything from going to the local coffee shop to going to Macworld and WWDC. 99% of the time, my Tom Bihn Ristretto goes where I go, because it carries most of the stuff I need to do my job.

The only problem I've had with the Tom Bihn Ristretto is the front organizer. The models I owned all left it open, barely covered by the flap that secured the two main and single zippered top pockets. That meant, while the pen holders and iPhone compartments were convenient, I couldn't store anything in them for fear it would fall out.

Now, based on similar feedback, Tom Bihn has redesigned the Ristretto and attempted to make a great messenger bag even better. Did they succeed?

The Ristretto is a vertical messenger bag, available for iPad, 11-inch MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Air or Pro

The Tom Bihn Ristretto comes in 3 sizes, one optimized for the 9.75-inch iPad, one for the 11-inch MacBook Air, and one for the 13-inch MacBook air or 13-inch MacBook Pro. If you only ever want to carry around your iPad, or similar sized tablet device, the smallest of the Ristrettos is a slick, sophisticated option. I need both my iPad and my MacBook with me, so I've always gone with the 13-inch Ristretto. That they have options is the important part. You get only exactly the amount of messenger bag you need. (I've even used the 13-inch Ristretto to cart around my 15-inch MacBook Pro in a pinch, though it's not ideal and I wouldn't recommend anyone trying to get regular use out of that scenario.)

The Ristretto is a vertical messenger, which I far prefer. The outside is made of U.S. 1050 denier ballistic nylon, which Tom Bihn claims has "twice the abrasion resistance of 1680 denier fabric". After two years of heavy use, my original Tom Bihn looked as good as when I'd bought it.

There's a pocket on the back of the Ristretto, suitable for some papers or analog reading material -- they type you're forced to endure doing takeoff and landing. It's open, so don't put any valuables in there.

A flap folds over the top and buckles to keep the Ristretto closed. It's a good, strong plastic buckle that holds securely. I did once have one break but after contacting Tom Bihn they sent me an immediate replacement.

The main, laptop pocket is padded, according to their website, with 6mm of open-cell foam laminated with 4 Ply Taslan on the outside, with super-soft brushed tricot inside, and 6mm of closed cell foam on the back. An extra, internal flap folds over to hold everything snug as a bug in a rug. If you buy the proper Ristretto size for your iPad or MacBook Air, the fit is excellent.

The secondary pocket, the one I use for the iPad, doesn't have the same padding and soft interior, and it's far roomier than an iPad requires, but it's the most secure, most convenient place to put it. I've occasionally snuck a friend's Air in their when we travelled together, but I wouldn't recommend doubling up regularly.

The new Ristretto puts the organizer safely inside the zippered pocket.

The third, zippered pocket on the Tom Bihn used to have the organizer open in front of it, leading to the problems I mentioned above. Now the organizer is back inside the zipper where it belongs, and instead of being a single linear zipper, it's now a bigger, rounded compartment with a pair of zippers. That's right -- it's all grown up. It even uses a #8 YKK Uretek splash-proof zipper.

This is where I keep all my secure-ables: MagSafe power adapter, iPad charger (which I use for both iPad and iPhone), USB ethernet adapter, headphones, etc. While my main iPhone 4S is always in my pants or jacket pocket, I do sometimes have my old iPhone 4 in the Ristretto iPhone pocket, if I need it with me for some tests or reviews I'm working on. I also keep extra business cards and Mobile Nations and iMore stickers for serendipitous giveaways. A regular pen (to fill out analog forms like customs declarations) and a stylus (currently the Jot Pro) fill out the compartments.

There's an O-Ring in the zipper pocket as well, for which Tom Bihn offers a couple of optional extras, including a variety of wallets, pouches, and key holders. I've gotten one of the pouches and tried it, but stopped. It didn't fit my use case.

There's a strong handle on top of the Ristretto and a waist strap to keep it secure for walking or riding.

Regardless of the pocket, the new Tom Bihn Ristretto holds everything securely yet still keeps it readily available. The included waist strap can be used to keep the Ristretto secured for long term walking or riding, and can be positioned high or low on either side. There's also a strong handle at the top to make it easy to pick up or hold when you have to.

For the shoulder strap, you can choose between the standard and the absolute. The standard is 1.5" wide and nylon. The absolute is a bigger, thicker, better padded version. I prefer the absolute, especially when I'm spending 12 hours walking during a trade show. It's an additional charge ($20) but well, well worth it. (Just make sure you change shoulders regularly so you stay Superfunctional.)

For colors, you get your choice of black/steel, forest/steel, olive/cayenne, steel/iberian (gray). Green and blue options are also shown on the website but don't seem to be available to order (yet?). This review unit is black/steel. The ones I've bought myself were olive/cayenne. They all look great,

The good

• Excellent design and craftsmanship
• Organizer secured inside zippered pocket
• Extremely comfortable, even for prolonged use

The bad

• Nothing left for me to complain about

The conclusion

The Ristretto doesn't fit everything I need -- it's way too small to hold my DSLR and lenses, for example. But that's the point. Hiking packs are hiking packs for a reason. The Ristretto is what you use when you want something light and essential -- something to carry only what you need, that doesn't make you regret buying an Air or an iPad because of the bulk and weight the bag adds right back to it. It's zen.

If you're looking for something in old worn leather, or something with loud patterns, look somewhere that is else. If you want a comfortable, stylish, svelte way to carry around your iPad, iPhone, and optionally, your MacBook Air, get the Tom Bihn Ristretto.

$125 - Ristretto for iPad - Buy now

$125 - Ristretto for 11-inch MacBook - Buy now

$135 - Ristretto for 13-inch MacBook - Buy now

The Weather Channel for iPhone is the most popular alternative to Apple's built-in Weather app and it recently received a complete makeover. It still has all the great features of the previous design, but the new UI is much more beautiful and user friendly.

The main screen of the Weather Channel displays the location (with zip code) and the temperature in a nice big font. In smaller letters underneath the temperature, you'll find what the temperature "feels like" and the high and lows for the day. If you tap the + sign, you'll find more detailed information for wind, humidity, UV index, dew point, visibility, pressure, and sunrise and sunset times.

The background of the home screen will change depending on the time of day and current weather conditions. You can also customize it with your own photo.

In addition to the current conditions, The Weather Channel also has tabs for the hourly, 36 hour, and 10 day forecasts.

The other sections in The Weather Channel are Map, Video, Social and In Season.

The Map tab lets you layer radar, clouds, radar/clouds, temperature, feels like, 24-hr rainfall, 24-hour snowfall, and UV index over the map. There is a key at the top so you know what the colors on the map represent.

The Video section is filled with must-see, local, and world videos as well as videos that are on TV.

The Social tab lets you read tweets about the weather both nearby and regionally. You can also check out photos taken by other Weather Channel users in the iWitness section.

From the In Season tab, you can check pollen, hurricane, and tide forecasts. The pollen and hurricane forecasts include maps and diagrams and are very informative. The marine section breaks the down sea, waves, wind, and high tide information into a nice, easy-to-read 2-day forecast broken down into separate morning, afternoon, even, and night sections.

The good

• Much better design than before
• Current, hourly, 36-hour, and 10-day forecasts
• View maps of clouds, radar, and more
• Videos
• Read tweets about the weather
• View photos taken of the weather
• Check pollen, hurricane, and tide forecasts

The bad

• Ads are annoying. I would gladly purchase an upgrade that removed them.

The conclusion

The Weather Channel for iPhone was always a good weather app, but now it's a great alternative to Apple's built-in Weather app. The new UI is much better -- both on the eyes and to use.

Free - Download Now

Instacast, Downcast, and Pocket Casts all bring podcasts directly to your iPhone and iPod touch, which is one of the best ways to enjoy them when you're in the car, working out, sitting in the office, or simply lounging around the house. While all three allow you to browse and search for podcasts, which one has the best features geared towards the most users?

Let's listen and find out!

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: Navigation and interface

When it comes to podcasting apps, it's important to have an app that not only lets you listen to the podcasts you already know and love, but search for and discover new ones as well. Of course, it also has to be visually pleasing and easy to navigate. Sometimes too many features and too many options are a hindrance and not a help.

Instacast's interface is super clean and very simple. Adding podcasts and browsing for new ones takes only a few taps. You can also sort by genre to refine what kinds of podcasts you're interested in.

Instacast has an easy to navigate interface that's streamlined and simple. Upon launching the app you'll be presented with a list of your current subscriptions. You can tap through the top tabs to view playlists and bookmarks as well. If you'd like to create playlists, you can do so easily but you'll need to purchase the premium in-app upgrade.

Tapping the "+" button in the bottom left of the main page let's you add new content. You can search through popular audio and video podcasts as well as sort by genre or search if you already know what you're looking for.

Downcast's main page and search page are easy enough to navigate but once you start digging through settings and other options, it can become cluttered and confusing.

Downcast also has a super simple layout. The tabs along the bottom are pretty much self explanatory and even those new to podcasts should have no trouble finding their way around the main portions of the app. Tapping into a podcast and tapping on an episode will cause the episode to play. This is a bit odd to me as I'd expect tapping into an episode to bring me to a detailed information list and show notes followed by an option to play.

You can tap the info button to view info but this feels like a more awkward layout. Once you've selected a podcast or viewed info, show notes and information are then presented.

As you start to get into other tabs, it can get a bit more confusing. While you don't have to pay an additional fee to create playlists, the amount of options presented is overwhelming and is probably unnecessary for most users. Those could be buried deeper for power users so the higher level remains cleaner for general users.

The settings sections of the app allows you to fine tune many things including refresh frequency, how you want the app to handle new episodes, and specific player controls such as skip intervals.

Pocket Casts has the most appealing interface of all three but may feel limiting to power uses.

Pocket Casts is by far the most visually appealing of the podcast apps. When you first launch Pocket Casts you'll be presented with your list of podcast subscriptions. Tapping on the tiled button again will switch from titles and descriptions to a list view of episodes. (You can toggle these views from the top as well.) Selecting a podcast will give you a list view of all the episodes in that group.

The top of the screen also gives you a quick view of how many podcasts you have total, how many are physically downloaded, and how many you haven't finished listening to. Tap on any of the numbers at the top to view only those episodes. The second tab shows you what is playing, allows you to skip and stop, and gives you access to show notes.

Finding podcasts to listen to is easy with Pocket Casts. Either search for what you're looking for at the top or browse categories. When you find one you want to subscribe to, just tap add.

Settings is also easy to navigate and doesn't present overwhelming options. This may feel limiting to power users who want to tweak every last option, but its the better choice for most users who just want to play their shows.

When it comes to navigation and which app is more visually pleasing, Pocket Casts nails it on both counts.

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: Listening to shows and viewing show notes

No matter how slick the interface or granular the settings, a podcast app has to be judged on how easily it lets you play shows, control the playback of shows, and access additional information like show notes.

Instacast's player is not only visually appealing but gives you the most information in the most efficient way.

Instacast has a great player that's easy to use and nice to look at. It hides unnecessary controls out of view until you need them. Along the bottom you'll only see the play, skip, and back buttons. Slide them up and you'll see other controls you can use to fine tune scrub or jump back. While Instacast still seems to be struggling to nail proper touch targets for some of their controls, they're intuitive and when they work, they work well.

Accessing show notes in Instacast is simple. Tap the top left arrow on the play screen and you'll be brought back to the info screen, or choose the list icon in the upper right and view all links and bookmarks from the show notes. If you want to view a link within the show notes, clicking on it will bring up a built-in browser. You never have to leave the app while listening and following along but if you choose to close the app, Instacast will continue to play on in the background.

Downcast gives you the most player controls and options in one windows but feels cramped.

Downcast's player has a pretty straight forward player but it tries to pack too much onto one screen. You'll find the skip controls towards the top and some other controls towards the bottom. Show notes are located in the middle of the screen (when available). Downcast also has a built-in browser so clicking any links will take you to them within the app.

If you like having all your information on one screen at the same time, Downcast will give that to you, but at the cost of looking overly cluttered.

If you decide to exit Downcast, audio will also continue playing in the background until you choose to stop it.

Pocket Casts player shows a good amount of options, though some controls feel hidden.

Pocket Casts is less cluttered than Downcast but still squeezes a lot of information into a small amount of space. However, some of the controls feel hidden.

Tapping the left or right of the screen while playing a podcast brings up skip controls -- skip back 10 seconds or forward 45 seconds. Swiping to the left will bring up show notes. However, the show notes feel a bit cramped as they only populate the center of the screen.

Tapping any type of link will pull you out of the app and into Safari, while Pocket Casts will continue to stream in the background.

So this round goes to Instacast. It has the nicest experience when it comes to actually listening to podcasts and reading show notes.

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: Streaming and downloading

Most podcasts in most podcast apps can be streamed or downloaded. Both serve a useful purpose. Streaming can save you local storage space on your iPhone, which can be particularly important if you have 16GB but still want to watch a lot of video shows. It can also give you access to the show you want, when you want, even if you're on 3G. Downloading means you have the show on your iPhone whether you're online or offline, and can be done ahead of time over Wi-Fi so you don't use up your 3G data.

Instacast allows you to easily control how you want new episodes handled, including separate options for audio and video shows.

Instacast allows you to easily choose whether or not you'd like to be able to stream or download when on a cellular (3G) network. If you don't want either of these options enabled, just tick them off and your podcasts will only download or stream when Wi-Fi is available.

If you don't want podcasts to physically download to your iPhone and prefer to stream, you can disable that within settings as well or tell Instacast to only download the most recent episodes.

Downcast's settings panel is again cluttered but gives you many options when it comes to streaming or downloading.

Downcast also lets you choose how you want it to handle podcasts when Wi-Fi is not available. If you don't want episodes to automatically download you can set it to never, or you can set it to only download when Wi-Fi is available. Otherwise you can stream when you'd like or decide to download at a later time.

Pocket Casts' streaming and download settings are much easier to navigate and presents options in an easy and streamlined way.

Pocket Casts won't automatically download episodes to your iPhone. It will add them to your subscriptions and you can stream them any time, or you can manually choose to download episodes when you like. You can also view how much available storage you have, and what episodes you are currently downloaded and stored locally on your device. If you're concerned about storage, you can also set cleanup to remove older episodes to conserve space.

While Instacast, Downcast, and Pocket Casts all allow you to adjust settings, Downcast continues to be the most confusing of the three. Instacast and Pocket Casts offer the easiest ways to manage download vs streaming when it comes to handling your content. Tie.

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: Syncing between iOS devices

If you listen to a lot of podcasts and have both an iPhone and an iPad or iPod touch, you'll probably want the ability to pick up where you left off no matter which device you're on. That's where syncing comes in.

Instacast and Downcast both support iCloud sync for playlists, settings, and subscriptions.

Instacast and Downcast both support iCloud syncing and have iPad apps. While the Downcast app is a universal binary for both iPhone and iPad, the Instacast HD app is a separate purchase.

However, iCloud data syncing is still problematic and it doesn't work all the time. Apple needs to fix this.

Instacast has a music library feature that allows you to import your existing podcasts from iTunes into Instacast.

Instacast also allows you to sync podcasts from iTunes that may not be available as a standalone podcast feed. The Music App tab will show any podcasts that you've imported from iTunes. The first time you open the app it will ask you if you'd like to import any existing podcasts from iTunes into Instacast. Currently it only supports audio and not video. If you've got audio podcasts you listen to that may not have a direct podcast feed and are only available in iTunes, you can use this section to import your podcasts so you don't have to use two apps to listen to podcasts. You can also search for that podcast within Instacast's catalog and if it finds it, you can subscribe via the app and not have to use iTunes.

Pocket Casts currently doesn't offer sync, or an iPad app, but they do have an Android app.

When it comes to syncing, Instacast offers the best support. (When iCloud works.)

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: Playlists

If you subscribe to tons of podcasts, playlists become increasingly important. Instead of scrolling through endless lists of shows, you can set them up to give you what you want, when you want it, in a nice and orderly manner. And that makes how playlists are managed an important consideration as well.

Instacast makes it simple to create a regular playlist or a smart playlist.

Instacast offers complete playlist support only if you're a premium subscriber. To create a playlist just tap the Playilst tab from your main screen. You can also tap the "+" button in the bottom corner to create a playlist. Name it and then check off the subscriptions you'd like to be a part of that playlist.

Smart Playlists are also supported by Instacast. Just choose to create a smart playlist instead of a regular one and you can automatically tell Instacast which types of podcasts to group in that playlist. For example, I've got one set to filter partially played podcasts by oldest first. It's a good way to remind me that I've got podcasts I haven't finished listening to yet.

Downcast has tons of settings when it comes to creating playlists.

Playlists within Downcast are a more customizable and allow you to group podcasts in several different ways. You can choose which podcasts you'd like included and then narrow that by which individual episodes you'd like to include by status. If you don't want played podcasts showing up, you can tick it off. If you don't want streamed podcasts showing up in a certain list, turn that off as well.

Most users probably won't use the extensive features that Downcast offers and, not surprisingly, they may appear confusing to those who are new to podcasts. Advanced users will appreciate the flexibility.

Pocket Casts doesn't have the native ability to create playlists but the organization of the app may make them unnecessary for many.

Pocket Casts doesn't support playlists as far as I can see. So if playlists are a feature you need to stay more organized, I'd rule out Pocket Casts as an option. Update: Pocket Casts does have playlists, they were just well hidden. I would, however, argue that the Pocket Casts interface is so simple and clean and easy to navigate that you may find yourself not even needing playlists.

When it comes to playlists, even though they cost extra, Instacasts has the best, simplest support.

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: New episode notifications

If you look forward to your favorite podcast becoming available each week, it's always good to have push notifications to remind you when it's ready for you to listen to.

Luckily, Instacast, Downcast, and Pocket Casts all provide push notifications and provide them well. Pocket Casts takes it a step further and handles them server-side.

Tie with a slight edge to Pocket Casts.

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: Cost

Good apps should obviously cost more than bad apps, but all other factors being equal, what each podcasting app costs should factor into your consideration.

Instacast is $0.99 for the basic app, and an additional $1.99 for full playlist support (dubbed Instacast Pro). If you want iPad support, that'll cost you another $4.99 for Instacast HD. So, depending on your needs, you're looking at anywhere from $0.99 for he basic iPhone and iPod touch app, to almost $8 for the full Instacast "suite".

Downcast is $1.99 and is a universal app for both iPhone and iPad.

Pocket Casts is also $1.99 but is iPhone and iPod touch only.(There's also a free version, Pocket Casts Lite, that you can try before you buy.)

Instacast vs. Downcast vs. Pocket Casts: Conclusion

Instacast, Downcast, and Pocket Casts all provide a better and more powerful podcast experience than Apple's built-in iTunes and Music apps.

Pocket Casts has the best, most disciplined interface and is the simplest and easiest to use overall. If you're brand new to podcasts and just want something that works elegantly and well, check out Pocket Casts.

Downcast is the opposite -- complex to the point of being cluttered. That makes it best suited for power users who want to control and tweak as much as possible, and value accessibility over elegance.

Instacast is expensive if you want the full package, but it's also the best overall podcast app for iPhone right now. It strikes the best balance between simplicity and features, making it easy to use but still powerful. For most users, most of the time, Instacast is podcast app to get.

Instacast - $0.99 - Download Now

Downcast - $1.99 - Download Now

Pocket Casts - $1.99 - Download Now

Additional resources:

• Pandora vs. Slacker vs. Spotify: iPhone streaming music app showdown!
• Dropbox vs. SkyDrive vs. Google Drive: iPhone cloud storage app showdown!
• Instapaper vs. Pocket vs. Readability: iPhone read later app showdown!
• Even more app reviews

ScreenDIY is an iPhone app that lets you create unique Lock screens and Home screens from a wide variety of designer wallpapers, shelves, frames, icon skins and more.

The home screen gives you 5 different options: App Shelves, Icon Skins, Background, Lock DIY, and Home DIY.

The App Shelves, Icon Skins, and Background sections are simply backgrounds and cannot be customized. ScreenDIY has a good variety of backgrounds including many girly ones.

When viewing a background, you can view it with sample icons to get an idea of what it'll really look like on your Home screen.

In addition to the basic backgrounds, you can also make your own Home and Lock screens from the DIY sections of ScreenDIY.

In the Lock DIY section, you can mix and match backgrounds (excluding ones with skins and shelves) and calendars and frames. You can also choose one of your own photos from your Photo Library to use as the background. When creating your Lock screen, you can preview what it will look like with the time, date, and slide to unlock UI of the iPhone's Lock screen.

Customizing your Home screen is very similar, only instead of calendars and frames, you have icon skins and shelves.

The only real disappointment with the DIY sections is that you have to scroll through the all the choices. There's no option to browse through a gallery of choices like there is in the other sections.

The good

• Lots of backgrounds
• DIY sections allow for my customization
• A good selection of girly choices
• New backgrounds added weekly

The bad

• No iPad support

The conclusion

ScreensDIY is a great app for creating custom Home screens and Lock screens. I like to regularly change my backgrounds and really like the choices that ScreensDIY has to offer. It's also great that the devs are keeping the content fresh by regularly adding new backdrops.

$0.99 - Download Now

Now you can manage your Facebook business and fan Pages with a dedicated app that lets you view insights

Facebook for iPhone and iPad has a slew of problems, but now poor Pages management can be crossed off that list with the introduction of Facebook Pages Manager for iPhone. It's very similar to the normal Facebook app with the addition of being able to view Insights about your Page and manage admins.

Before Facebook Pages Manager, users would have to use the original Facebook app to view their Pages, but didn't have any access to admin controls. Now when you visit your Page with the Facebook for iPhone, you'll see an announcement at the top announcing the new app with a link to App Store.

As previously mentioned, Facebook Pages Manager is very similar to its older brother with the side-panel design and profile page view. Just like the main Facebook for iPhone app, Facebook Pages Manager also doesn't show the cover photo to your Page.

There is one thing you'll notice missing from Facebook Pages Manger, though -- messages. At the top of the screen you'll find the buttons to see who has recently liked your Page and notifications, but the messages button is absent. This is a shame, especially since Facebook's dedicated Messages app also doesn't support messages for Pages.

When viewing your Page's timeline, you can sort by everyone's posts, posts made by your Page, or hidden posts.

From the side-panel, you can select between the Pages you manage and look at the Insights for the selected Page and manage its Admins.

The Insights screen tells you how many likes you have, the number of people talking about your Page, weekly total reach, and a graph of your trends.

The good

• A dedicated app for Page management is great
• Facebook for iPhone users are already family with it
• View Insights, including graph of trends
• Manage admins

The bad

• No cover photos
• No access to page messages
• Can look up photo albums
• Can't upload photos to a specific photo album
• No iPad support

The conclusion

I'll admit that when I first heard that Facebook released a new app, I let out a little groan. But once I realized it was an app for managing Pages, I actually got a little excited since managing Pages on the main Facebook app is terrible. So far, I'm impressed with Facebook Pages Manager -- just rather surprised that they left out messages. But I guess I'd rather them leave it out then to introduce it with a bunch of bugs. Hopefully Facebook updates it soon.

Facebook Pages Manager is not yet available in the US App Store, but it should be soon. It's available now! Go get it!

Free - Download Now

Blogshelf II is a fantastic way to discover and follow websites and blogs

Blogshelf II is the successor to Bloglshelf, a uniques RSS and blog reader for the iPad. Imagine iBooks filled with blogs -- that's Blogshelf. It's a gorgeous and relaxing way to stay caught up with your favorite websites.

The main screen is a bookshelf, similar to iBooks, filled with all the blogs and websites you are following. To rearrange their placement on the shelf, simply hold your finger down on a blog to enter the edit mode.

At the upper right hand corner of each screen of Blogshelf, there is a question mark that when tapped, fades the screen and adds white pulsating circles to important areas of the page. Tapping one will give you instructions and information about that region. I really like this implementation of help.

When viewing a blog, you'll see a clean list of its post, each displayed with a thumbnail of the first image of the story. Tapping the website's name will let you edit its settings, including cashing behavior, how often to update, the ability to disable thumbnails, and more.

When reading an article, the page is very clean with option to change the font type and size. You can scroll through the article by swiping up and down, and switch between articles why swiping left and right. I really like reading articles on Blogshelf, but I don't like how it handles photos. Here's an example of an article I wrote on iMore, yesterday.

Although both of the photos shown were originally the same size, Blogshelf is showing them sized differently. At least when you tap them, thought, they become nice and big, like this.

One of the really neat features of Blogshelf is the that it's very easy to discover new blogs and websites by tapping Subscribe from the main blogshelf screen. Just like in iBooks, the bookshelf will flip around to reveal a subscription "store".

From here you can browse through featured blogs and top blogs by category. You can also search for a specific website and connect with Google Reader and Blogger to subscribe to blogs you've subscribed to on those services. (Tip: if you browse to the Apple category in the Top Blogs tab, you'll find iMore!)

Unfortunately, I must now tell you about another issues with photos. When looking closer at a blog that you may want to subscribe to, tapping on an article will bring up a popup that lets you scroll through the post. Often times, the photos will appear distorted, like this.

Although the picture issues are a little annoying, I trust that the developers can quickly fix these bugs.

The good

• Great way to discover websites
• Pretty
• Support for Google Reeder and Blogger

The bad

• Has issues with photos

The conclusion

There are lots of different RSS readers in the App Store, but I really like Blogshelf's approach -- it's relaxing. My absolute favorite feature of Blogshelf, however, is blog discovery. The blog "store" is really awesome and I've discovered some great websites because of it.

Free - Download now

iMore compares pro-level iPad stylus pens -- Pogo, Kuel, Jot, and Bamboo -- and tells you which one is best, and which one is best for you

Apple might have said "yuk!" to stylus pens but users are saying "yes!" in ever greater number. Apple might have had a point, back in the days before iPhones and iPads, when pointy old resistive stylus pens had to be used just to get outdated touch screens and inscrutable interfaces to work. But now there's a new generation of stylus pens for the new generation of capacitive touch screens. These stylus pens don't have to be used -- we want to use them. We want to use them for speed and accuracy, for comfort and creativity. We want to use them for take hand-written notes, to draw and paint, and to game. We want to use them to such an extent that, for many users, it's no longer a question of whether we should use a stylus pen -- but which one?

To answer that questions, iMore took a look at four of the most popular, high end stylus pens on the market -- The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro, the SGP Kuel H12, the Adonit Jot Pro, and the Wacom Bamboo. We took a look at the build quality, durability, and capacitive performance of each one, and we tested them using Noteshelf and Penultimate, Procreate and Paper by 53, and Zuma's Revenge and Words with Friends.

And here's what we found...

iPad stylus hardware comparison

How a stylus feels and how it holds up is as important as how it works. If its not comfortable in the hand for long periods of time, you won't keep using it. If it doesn't hold up to heavy use, you won't be able to keep using it. Now the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro, the SGP Kuel H12, the Adonit Jot Pro, and the Wacom Bamboo are all pretty much pro-level stylus pens, which implies better quality, and longer lasting materials. But how do they compare?

Wacom Bamboo stylus

The Wacom Bamboo stylus looks like a standard, straight-barrel pen with feed. It has a milled aluminum body with a satin-textured finish, and comes in black, white, blue, green, pink, and orange. The tip is completely soft to the point of being mushy, and it's the shortest of the stylus pens we tested.

We found the Wacom Bamboo to be the least comfortable of the group. The short length and the sharp feed made for a bad combination. The completely mushy tip was also a disappointment, as it provides almost no push-back without excessive pressure.

Because it's soft and oh, so mushy, there could be some concern about durability. We didn't have any problems at all, however.

• Wacom Bamboo Stylus for iPad review

Adonit Jot Pro stylus

The Adonit Jot Pro feels like a mechanical pencil or drafting pen, complete with a thin, hard metal tip... topped with a round plastic disk. There's a screw cap to protect the tip, and the The body is aluminum and steel, and will stick to the magnets around an iPad 2 or new iPad display. There's a rubber black grip area, and the metal section comes in black, silver, red, or blue.

Immediately familiar to anyone who's done technical drawing or drafting, the Adonit Jot Pro may take some getting used to for everyone else. The hard tip provides immediate pressure feedback but isn't quite as smooth as the other stylus pens. The disk provides excellent visibility for detailed line work, but doesn't feel natural for softer applications, like brushwork. It's also noisy when tapping or swiping, which can be distracting in a quiet setting.

Also, if the disc becomes damaged, the hard tip can cause scratches. As long as you pay attention, however, you can get replacement tips and avoid any problems.

• Adonit Jot Pro stylus for iPad review

SGP Kuel H12 stylus

The SGP Kuel H12 is built like a premium, high-end pen, complete with an elegant feed and a gently curved body and a tip that extends from the body with a twist. The silicon coated, high polymer tip is soft but it has a rigid insert roughly 2/3 of the way down. It comes in black, white, and silver.

Anyone who enjoys a good pen will enjoy using the SGP Kuel H12. From the weight to the material, it just feels right. The tip is soft but not as bad as the Bamboo, and quite smooth. While the width of the body can obscure the screen at times, overall it's very comfortable.

Some people have reported problems with the thinness of the tip, but ours has held up well. Just make sure you twist the pen to withdraw the cap if you intend to put it in a bag, pocket or purse. If you do have a problem with it, there's no way to replace just the tip.

• SGP Kuel H12 stylus for iPad review

Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro stylus

The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro eschews the standard pen shape for a long, tapered, forward weighted design. It has a solid aluminum unibody with a black, ergonomic grip. The tip is soft but becomes rigid about 1/3 of the way in. It has small holes punctured in it which Ten One claims increases capacitive performance. It comes in any color you want as long as that color is silver.

While the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro doesn't look or feel like a traditional pen, it's still very comfortable to use. The front weighting means you can let gravity do some of the work for you, and even though the tip is soft, only the topmost part has any give. That makes for excellent performance.

Because of the perforations, the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro might be subject to wear and tear, but our review units have been fine even under heavy use. You can also buy replacements tips, should you experience any problems.

• Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro stylus for iPad review

The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro, the SGP Kuel H12, the Adonit Jot Pro, and the Wacom Bamboo are all well constructed and they all use high quality materials. The Wacom Bamboo is the least comfortable based simply on the short length and sharpness of the feed. The Adonit Jot Pro will appeal most to technical writers and artists. The SGP Kuel H12 is fantastic, especially if you like the feel of a real pen. My personal favorite is the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro. Then length and curve make it decidedly un-pen like, but also extremely comfortable. Replacement tips is icing on the cake.

Four way tie, with a slight edge to Adonit Jot Pro and Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro for the replaceable tips.

Note-taking stylus comparison

If you're looking for a stylus for long form note-taking, look no further than the SGP Kuel H12

One of the primary uses for stylus pens on the iPad is note-taking. Whether it's simply to scribble down a few words or diagrams, or to write out long form text, a good note-taking stylus has to be comfortable and smooth, and well suited to both print and script.

The Wacom Bamboo is okay for note-taking. The completely soft tip doesn't provide the best feeling, and the capacitive performance isn't the best of the stylus pens we tested, but once you start writing script, you can keep it flowing. Print is a little more hit or miss.

The Adonit Jot Pro is good for very precise, very technical writing. The slightly rougher feel of the disk isn't the best for script, but if you're doing something very detailed or specific the accuracy could make up for it. However, and the hard metal tip creates a tapping sound when writing short strokes or block letters.

The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Plus is excellent for note taking and is my personal favorite for quick note taking. The front weighting combined with the high level of capacitive performance makes it easy to start writing, and the smooth tip combined with the more solid base means it's easy to keep going. The extra length also allows for a little calligraphic flair, if you so choose.

The SGP Kuel H12 is Mobile Nations' favorite stylus pen for long form note taking. The solid, real pen feel makes it incredibly comfortable to use and the quality of the tip make note taking a breeze. If you want to write a short book with your stylus, the Kuel H12 is the one to consider.

With the caveat that the Adonit Jot Pro might better please precision note-takers, and the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro those who want a little more calligraphic flare, the SGP Kuel H12 wins the note-taking crown.

Art and drawing stylus comparison

The Wacom Bamboo is once again just okay for art and drawing. The short length and the mushy tip give less range and require more pressure to get solid feedback, which hurts the overall experience. Once you get a line going, it's fine, but putting paint on a page takes more effort than it ought to.

The SGP Kuel H12 is better for art and drawing. Its slightly longer and more curved, so it feels better, and the tip requires slightly less pressure than the Bamboo to get a good capacitive connection going. It works well for both line work and for brush work.

The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Plus, by virtue of its long length, allows for really good lines and brush strokes. Again, the weighted top and the rigidity beneath the tip means it does a lot of the work for you, and it works well at almost any angle. For painting type applications, it's the best stylus we tested.

The Adonit Jot Pro simply excels at line work. Anyone who's ever done technical drawing, drafting, penciling, or inking work will feel instantly at home. The clear plastic disk at the tip lets you easily see exactly where you're working, and the Jot SDK means apps like Procreate can be especially tuned to work brilliantly with the Jot Pro. For anything detailed, the Jot Pro is best in class.

Both the SGP Kuel H12 and Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Plus are great general purpose stylus pens to use for art, and of the ones we tested, were the best for brush work as well. When it comes to any kind of line work, however, the specificity of the Adonit Jot Pro can't be beat.

Gaming stylus comparison

The Adonit Jot Pro remains accurate thanks to its plastic disk, but that same hard disk can be very annoying when tap, tap, tapping away on your iPad during games like Zuma. For Draw Something it wasn't bad, but not as good as the soft tipped stylus pens for so casual a use.

The Wacom Bamboo finishes its streak as the most consistently okay but not great stylus we tested. For gaming, the mushy tip resulted in lower registry of capacitive contact than any of its competitors. The short body was also the least dynamic and least comfortable when used for extended gaming, though the soft tip was nicely quiet.

The SGP Kuel H12 was good for gaming, though the thickness of the body obscured more of the screen than I'd have liked. It had the second best capacitive registration average, however, and was easily comfortable enough to use for even long -- long -- gaming sessions.

The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Plus was excellent for gaming. Out of all the stylus pens we gamed with, it had the highest accuracy and reliability, almost always hitting what I wanted and causing the iPad's capacitive touch sensors to register that hit successfully. The long length made reaching all areas of the screen quick, and the ergonomic design remained comfortable from beginning to end. This is my go-to gaming stylus.

While the SGP Kuel H12 put up a valiant fight, the Ten One Design's combination of forward weighting, excellent range, and awesome accuracy gave it the winning score.

Cost

The Wacom Bamboo performed the least well in our tests, yet costs the most at $29.95. Conversely, the SGP Kuel H12 was one of the best, yet only costs $19.95. The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Plus and Adonit Jot Pro are in between.

Prices can vary a lot in the accessory market, and you can find sales that radically change the equation, but in general terms and unless you need something very specific, the SGP Kuel H12 is the best bang for your stylus pen buck.

Conclusion

Based on our results, and though several iMore staffers like it quite a bit, the Wacom Bamboo just doesn't match up to the other pro-level stylus pens on the market, and costs the most as well. Not a good combination.

If you're detail oriented and primarily do a lot of technical writing and drawing, the Adonit Jot Pro the best stylus for you. While it's not great at gaming, it'll do in a pinch, and note-taking works well enough when you get use to it. When our Editor-in-Chief wants to draw, he draws with the Jot Pro.

The SGP Kuel H12 is great, all around stylus pen. If a traditional pen look and feel is what you want, and long form note-taking is what you need, the Kuel H12 is the one to get. It's also a Mobile Nations favorite.

My favorite stylus of the four is the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro. It doesn't feel like a traditional pen, but it consistently produced the best results for me in general, and was the best stylus pen we tested when it came to gaming.

So this is how it plays out -- the Adonit Jot Pro is very good but is more of a specialist tool. You'll know if it's best for you. It then comes down to the SGP Kuel H12 and the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro. The Kuel H12 is cheaper, but the Pogo Sketch Pro has replaceable tips. The Kuel H12 feels more like a premium pen but the non-traditional design of the Pogo Sketch Pro has several advantages. Since they both perform so well yet look so different, you can probably tell at a glance which one you prefer. Many here at Mobile Nations love the Kuel H12. But at the end of the day, due to its excellent design and superior overall performance, the winner of our shootout is...

The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro.

$29.95 - Buy the Wacom Bamboo now

$27.95 - Buy the Adonit Jot Pro now

$19.95 - Buy the SGP Kuel H12 now

$24.95 - Buy Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro

Stunt Pear is a physics-based puzzle game where you catapult a cute little pear to smash, bounce, and spin your way through 144 levels. The objective is easy, get the pear in the barrel -- but that's easier said than done with gears, cannons, bubbles, tires, pinball bumpers, skateboards, and shopping carts as obstacles.

Stunt Pear is a universal app for the iPhone and iPad, but all the screenshots shown in this review will be from the iPhone.

Controlling the pear in Stunt Pear is very similar to Angry Birds. Just pull the pear with your finger and stretch out the rope to the desired length and angle, then let go. In every level, there is a bucket somewhere and it's your goal to get the pear in the bucket. Often times, this involves using various obstacles to your advantage or perfectly timing a spin or bounce.

A great feature of Stunt Pear is that as you're adjusting your shot, the power and aim (or angle) is displayed at the top of the screen. If you pay attention to this while you play, it will help in making the appropriate adjustments during your next try.

One of the things that annoys me about Stunt Pear is how it handles zoom. When the level starts, it's zoomed out so you can see the entire level. After a few seconds, it slowly zooms into the pear on the catapult. But by then, you're probably already adjusting your shot and may have been relying on the pulled back zoom to adjust your aim. So then you have to waste time to throw away the shot and reset, then tap the screen to zoom out. It would be much better of Stunt Pear kept the zoom the same, whether that's close or far, and left it up to the player to adjust the zoom, preferably by pinching.

Stunt Pear features 144 levels between 8 courses. As you beat levels, new courses get unlocked, and the good news is that you can unlock all the levels pretty quickly which allows you to skip levels if you get stuck. You can also choose to play a level at random.

The good

• Fun
• Good graphics
• Challenging, but not too hard
• Displays power and aim when setting up shot
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• Zooming is annoying. Would prefer a the more standard pinch-to-zoom method.

The conclusion

Stunt Pear is great little game. It's casual and the levels are short, making it easy to pick up and play for just a few minutes. But it's also addicting, so if you want to play for a long period of time, that shouldn't be a problem either. Plus, the little green pear is just adorable!

$0.99 - Download Now

iMore’s authoritative guide to the very best, absolutely free games for your iPad

Looking for the very best free games for your iPad? Whether it's strategy, shooter, sports, casual, physics, action, role-playing, racing, word, or sims, iMore has carefully collected dozens of our favorite free iPad App Store games and listed them below for your playing pleasure.

We'll be updating the list regularly, and adding new games and new categories, so bookmark this page and check back often!

Although you can absolutely play all of the games listed her for free, most of them are built on in-app purchases. That means you may get annoyed by "freemium" up-sells or be limited by "lite" content. Still, they're a great way to test the waters and have some fun before deciding to buy or unlock full versions.

For more free apps, check out our complete free iPad apps article, and for iPhone and iPod touch users, check out our free iPhone apps and free iPhone games listings.

Without further ado, here are our favorite free games for iPad.

• Best free strategy games for iPad
• Best free shooter games for iPad
• Best free sports games for iPad
• Best free casual games for iPad
• Best free physics games for iPad
• Best free action games for iPad
• Best free role-playing games for iPad
• Best free racing games for iPad
• Best free board games for iPad
• Best free word games for iPad
• Best free simulation games for iPad

Best free strategy games for iPad

Spice Bandits

Spice Bandits is probably the best tower defense game I've ever played. You take on the role of an adorable little space pirate who plunders various locations on Earth to gather up as much spice as possible. Of course, pesky humans aren't interested in letting you get away with that, and attack your various strongholds in waves while you defend with all sorts of upgradeable alien towers. Maps have a variety of themes and terrain qualities, making every round a new experience. Over time, you gather spice which can be spent on new kinds of turrets (provided you're a high enough level and have the prerequisite turrets purchased). Spice can also be used to deck out your alien avatar in some swanky threads viewable by friends in competitive and co-operative missions through Game Center.

As you level up, you get upgrade points (which can also be bought with spice) to customize your play style as you see fit - cheaper turrets, faster rate of fire or more mesmerizing disco music are just a few options. Spice Bandits lets you buy spice through in-app purchases, which also eliminates ads between levels.

On the iPad, Spice Bandits makes excellent use of the bigger screen, and the devs have made a lot of user interface changes so you can see more of the action. Spice Bandits also lets your port over your game progress from the iPhone version easily through their Crystal network and cloud saving; it's universal too, so there's only one download to manage across devices. Though the graphics aren't fully optimized for the new iPad, an update which partially optimizes them for the big Retina display is on the way.

• Download now

Battle Nations

Battle Nations is a great mix of real-time strategy with lots of resource gathering and turn-based military combat. The goofy graphic style and hilarious dialog keep things fresh between firefights, and since resources are produced over the hours between sessions, you'll be checking in on your camp often.  Battle Nations hosts player-versus-player combat with select friends, staged as "live fire excerises". You'll probably want to sink a reasonable amount of time into the single player campaign first so you can level up and unlock the advanced structures and units to reduce your buddies to piles of ash.

Battle Nations is monetized with Nanopods, which you can buy through in-app purchases, earn through gameplay, or be rewarded by watching video ads. These are used to hurry up production on particular tasks, like healing troops at the hospital or training new units. Nanopods are also used to to construct unique buildings, which are often just super-charged versions of standard ones.

There's no Retina Display support for the iPad just yet, but when zoomed out all the way, I find the graphics are still very sharp. There's supposed to be Game Center support for sharing achievements and whatnot, but it doesn't seem to be working right now. It would be handy to have that enabled for finding friends to play against, but I'm sure it's coming in due time. Finally, Battle Nations is universal, and syncs up gameplay across iOS devices thanks to the developer's own registration and cloud saving service.

• Download now

Hero Academy

Hero Academy is a turn-based, multiplayer-only tactical combat game that pits cartoony armies against one another. Each side gets five actions points every turn to move their troops, kit them out with gear, cast spells and otherwise attack opposing units on the board. Each online player (either random or a designated buddy) has one or more crystals they must defend while trying to destroy the other side's. You can also win by running your opponent out of reinforcements, as each side only gets so many of each type every game.

Hero Academy includes The Council army (humans) for free, but charges for the others, such as Dwarves, Dark Elves and The Tribe (orcs). You can also pay for fancy army-themed avatars as well as taunts to make your soldiers jeer after a turn.

On the iPad, Hero Academy supports cloud saving, Game Center, and is universal. Unfortunately, it isn't fully optimized for the new iPad's Retina display due to the ton of extra effort required to recreate their hand-drawn art assets. Robot Entertainment has their own registration process, so when you log in on other iOS devices, your purchases and current games are loaded in. Not much has changed looks-wise from the iPhone version, so some of the elements feel slightly oversized, but overall, the gameplay is solid as ever.

• Download now

Best free shooter games for iPad

Gun Bros

Gun Bros is a dual-stick shoot-em-up where you and your brother-in-arms (either AI or through online multiplayer) blast through waves of incoming enemies across a variety of themed planets. Each level you earn coins to spend on guns and gear to change your damage output, speed, health, and other characteristics. You also gather up a mineral called Xplodium, which can be refined into coins; you can purchase higher grades of refineries which can provide a higher coin output. A recent update added the ability to turn on your bro and go head-to-head in deathmatch mode if you're feeling less than friendly.

Warbucks are a separate type of currency used to buy particularly high-end gear. You can earn them through in-app purchases, watching video ads, or converting a ton of the regular coins at the bank.

Even though Gun Bros isn't full optimized for the new iPad's Retina display, Game Center integration is great. If you've got friends that play, it's really easy to jump in with them for a few rounds, and you're actually offered greater mission rewards for playing with more friends. Gun Bros supports cloud saving and is universal to boot, which makes playing on both iPhone and iPad a breeze.

• Download now

MetalStorm: Wingman

MetalStorm: Wingman is a flight combat game with full multiplayer support, AirPlay compatibility and accelerometer and swipe controls.  As you play through the campaign mode, head-to-head multiplayer dogfight mode, or endless survival mode, you earn credits which can be used to buy various types of missiles, cannons, and new jets focusing on defense, agility, or firepower. Don't get too trigger-happy, since your ammunition is limited. If you're not into shooting down your buddies, you can also invite Game Center wingmen to play through the campaign levels co-operatively.

A lot of the hardware upgrades require you to use premium coins, which are sold in batches for $0.99 and up or earned through regular gameplay.

MetalStorm: Wingman has full support for the new iPad's Retina display, which is a welcome sight on this list. The co-op nature of the game also gets its hooks into Game Center for matchmaking, though I found cloud saving functions were inconsistent - be warned if you're prone to hopping between your iPad and iPhone a bunch.

• Download now

Frontline Commando

Frontline Commando is an on-rails third-person shooter about a gung-ho military man left behind enemy lines. You dodge behind cover with single taps, and pop out to take aim and eliminate nonspecific middle eastern insurgents. Don't get too attached to that wall you're hiding behind though, since it can be destroyed as a firefight drags on, and grenades can quickly flush you out into the open. When you level up, new weapons are unlocked for purchase, plus you get a few bars of gold, which can be used to buy premium items. Weapon upgrades span assault weapons, sniper rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers, each with their own set of damage, clip size, reload speed, and accuracy attributes.

You can also increase survivability with medkit purchases and body armor upgrades. When things get too hot, you can buy airstrikes to clear out the immediate area. Both "war cash" and gold can be bought through in-app purchases.

Frontline Commando performs great on the new iPad with full support for Game Center, cloud saving to keep your game synced up with your iPhone campaign, and they've just recently updated with Retina-optimized graphics, a new map, and fresh power-ups.

• Download now

Best free sports games for iPad

Baseball Superstars 2012

Baseball Superstars 2012 is a whimsically exaggerated baseball game with Japanese-style characters and dialog. While the game keeps tabs on minute details, such as batting averages, running speed, stamina, and confidence levels, there are some more cartoony encounters with "super players" that wear outlandish costumes and wield the unlikeliest of powers. As a batter, you can control where you swing by tilting the iPad, but don't worry, you won't actually have to swing it like a bat - just tap the screen at the right moment. Pitching is done through a series of swipes within a target box. You'll encounter plenty of challenges, including injuries which require recuperation in a hospital, managing your team roster, and playing against friends online. Personally, I found this game impossibly hard when set on normal difficulty, but I'm positive baseball fans will appreciate the amount of detail in this game. After putting some time into Homerun Battle 2 Free, it's clear that Baseball Superstars 2012 is the top free baseball game on the iPad, but for more baseball-themed apps, check out our ballgame roundup over here.

Through in-app purchases, you can get G points, which are spent on character items, training sessions to improve your stats, or even buy whole levels for your batter or pitcher.

The pixelation oreplef the old-school graphics are really apparent on the iPad's larger display, but the animation remains high-quality. Game Center integration doesn't extend beyond achievement tracking, and while cloud saving is available, you have to make sure you have a Gamevil account active and manually upload game data to and from your iPhone.

• Download now

NFL Pro 2012

NFL Pro 2012 is a full-fledged football game complete with leagues, playbooks, and extensive rosters based on real players and teams. Your players gain experience and level up as you go, letting you improve their stats in a number of areas, like run blocking, catching, awareness, and agility. Every down, you pick a play available (either offensive or defensive), and while you manually control one player, the AI handles the rest. Controls during play are dead simple, but most of your time will be spent flipping through and picking plays. Unfortunately, your selection is really limited to start, and it takes an obscene number of premium credits to permanently keep playbooks.

Every game you play uses up energy, which you can replenish over time or through in-app purchases. Experience points to level up your players can also be bought, along with credits to buy new playbooks, stadiums, gain access to new teams, divisions, and conferences, and extend quarter lengths.

Unfortunately, there's no cloud saving, though NFL Pro 2012 is a universal app. It doesn't seem like there's any update to Retina graphics, which are likely headed to EA's premium titles first. There isn't even any Game Center support, which makes me think NFL Pro 2012 is due for a big update soon.

• Download now

Real Soccer 2012

Real Soccer 2012 offers a wide variety of gameplay types in a fast-paced, realstic package. The core controls are laid out with a standard virtual joystick and sprint, pass and shoot buttons, but progresses in complexity with fancy gesture-based maneuvers. You can unlock a variety of different cups, starting with International, and working your way to Asian, African, American, and European cups, plus there's regional league play unlocked as you play and level up. Just remember that you're limited by how many matches you can play by a stamina rating, which recovers over time. Loading screens have bits of trivia, and occasionally test your own football, err, soccer knowledge with a multiple choice quiz.

Playing Real Soccer 2012 earns you coins which can be used to purchase new soccer balls that provide a variety of different bonuses, like extra XP per match. "Cash" is Real Soccer 2012's premium currency, which can be traded in for international teams, additional stamina, team stat boosts, access a few select stadiums, and even the ability to clear all yellow cards.

On the iPad, Real Soccer 2012 boasts universal status, but no love with cloud saving, Game Center, or Retina iPad optimization. Real Soccer 2012 is in a tight race with Pro Evo Soccer 2012, which, though "lite" and saving most of its leagues and progression for paying customers, has a really great Flick Soccer-style penalty kick drill.

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Best free casual games for iPad

Bejeweled Blitz

Bejeweled Blitz is a lightweight version of PopCap's famous gem-matching puzzle game. You're served up a board of colored jewels, and you can swap the position of any two that are next to each other with a tap or a swipe, but only if it lines up three or more of the same type. Matching sets then explode in glitter, serve up points, and as the the gems above drop down into place, more fall in from the top. The catch is that every round only lasts a minute, so the pressure is on to match up as many jewels as possible. PopCap keeps you coming back for more with a shot at a daily giveaway, the value of which increases by how many consecutive days you've played.

You earn coins through gameplay (which can also be bought through in-app purchases), which are spent on various pre-game power-ups and the occasional rare gem which can supercharge your next game in a number of flashy ways. Of course, if Bejewled Blitz isn't enough for you, there's the full iPhone version available for $0.99 with a bunch more game modes.

Bejeweled Blitz has graphics that are optimized for the new iPad's Retina display, is universal, and though there's no Game Center support, the game ties in very closely with its Facebook counterpart and lets you sync up your progress across devices that way.

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Trainyard Express

Trainyard Express is a routing puzzle game where you simply have to draw down tracks to get trains from point A to point B. Things get tricky once you have to start merging trains, combining their colors to get to the right end-point, and deal with overlapping tracks switching at the right time.

Trainyard Express is one of the few "lite" titles on the list, meaning there's a full version available for $2.99. Even though the 60 stages in the free game might not seem like they have a lot of replay value once you solve them, there's an expert mode unlocked once you beat the game that keeps tabs on how many tracks you lay down and how long it takes for the trains to get to their destination.

Trainyard Express has a great, simple art style with assets that are optimized for the new iPad's Retina display, and there are no ads to boot. There's no Game Center support unfortunately, but you can share your unique puzzle solutions at Trainyard's website as well as on Facebook. There's also the option to switch players locally if someone else wants to solve the puzzles without seeing your solutions.

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Temple Run

Temple Run is a dead-simple platform game where you sprint through ancient ruins while being chased by spirits displeased that you just swiped their idol. You turn corners, duck under obstacles, and leap over pits with swipe gestures while collecting coins along the way. There's a bit of accelerometer control, so you can snag coins in the middle or to the left or right side of corridors by tilting the iPad, but for the most part, you're just relying on twitch reflex swiping. Gameplay can be extremely bite-sized, but still amply rewarding.

The coins you collect while temple-running (or in-app purchasing) can earn you power-ups like speed boosts, new unlockable characters, and even exclusive wallpapers.

On the iPad, Temple Run fares reasonably well, offering the same fast-paced gameplay as the iPhone version, complete with Game Center leaderboards and achievements. The game's universal, and though my upgrade purchases transferred over, the game didn't seem to recognize the achievements I had earned. There's no word on whether the graphics have been updated for the new iPad's Retina display, but Temple Run still holds up extremely well in the looks department for casual gameplay.

Best free physics games for iPad

Cut the Rope: Experiments Free HD

Cut the Rope: Experiments Free HD is a popular game that involves dropping a piece of candy into a hungry green creature's mouth by slicing rope with swipe gestures. While the candy's dangling and swinging, you use nearby tools such as suction cups and air puffers to move it around obstacles, like hungry spiders and destructive spikes. If you can get the candy to pass through any of the three stars on the level before feeding Om Nom, you gain bonus points and bragging rights, but they are strictly optional objectives.

Though you only get 12 levels in the free version, the full game with 125 levels is only $1.99.

Cut the Rope: Experiments Free HD on the iPad supports iCloud sync and Game Center, which might not be particularly useful for such a short game, but at least it's there if you end up shelling out for the full version. We actually experienced some severe wonkiness playing the standard Cut the Rope Free HD game on the new iPad; not only is it not optimized for the high-resolution display, but the game can't even render properly on a big Retina screen. On the plus side, Experiments runs fine, despite also being unoptimized.

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Fruit Ninja HD Lite

Fruit Ninja is a well-known slice-and-dice game where you swipe through various kinds of fruit as they sail through the air. You get bonus points for chopping through four or more fruit at once, but you have to make sure to avoid the bombs that get tossed in every now and then.

In the free version, you get Classic mode in which you only get to let three fruit hit the ground. The paid version, available for $2.99 (currently on sale for $0.99), includes a Zen mode where you cut up as much fruit as you can within a limited time frame, split-screen multiplayer, and special fruit like the freeze banana, which slows the movement of everything on the screen, making for easy targets.

The Fruit Ninja experience really excels on the big screen, despite not being a universal app (and thus no cloud sync) and graphics that haven't been updated for the new iPad. The core gameplay is there, and so is Game Center support, which is all you really need to show fruit who's boss.

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Angry Birds Free

Angry Birds is the quintessential physics game for iOS, wherein a group a birds suicidally fling themselves into rickety buildings so that the pigs inside that stole their eggs can suffer a terrible, terrible demise. Every level you get a selection of birds that you slingshot towards structures at varying angles and velocities. The birds available each level can have different properties - for example, the yellow one dive-bombs when you tap the screen while it's in mid-flight, while the blue one splits into three. You're scored based on how few birds you use to clear the level, as well as how much destruction you cause in the process. The only thing that really matters is that all of the pigs in each level get eliminated.

The free version of Angry Birds gives you a total of 24 levels, but you'll need to drop $2.99 in order to get tons more. Keep mind that there are a lot of different free versions of Angry Birds available, including a seasonal one and one based on the Disney movie Rio. Try 'em both if you're looking for variety. Keep in mind that you'll have to put up with some pretty obnoxious banner ads while you play the free versions.

Angry Birds is a lot easier to play on the iPad since you've got more room to adjust angle and the strength of your slingshot. So far, it looks like only Angry Birds Space is optimized for the Retina iPad, unfortunately. Rovio is particularly bad about charging extra for the "HD" versions of their titles, so don't expect a universal version any time soon.

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Best free action games for iPad

Jetpack Joyride

Jetpack Joyride is a side-scrolling evasion game with simple one-button controls and a great sense of style. You play as a rebellious bureaucrat named Barry who's tired of the work at his top-secret military lab, and decides to snag the company's experimental jetpack for a jaunt through the facilities. Holding your finger on the screen puts the gas on the jetpack, letting you elevate over obstacles such as laser security systems and incoming missiles. Along the way, you'll also be able to snag other experimental vehicles, including the Crazy Freaking Teleporter, and the Profit Bird which is powered by pure concentrated sarcasm.

You're rewarded coins based on how far you make it through before wiping out, but can also pick up loose coins throughout the level. You even earn more through completing missions, like high-fiving the scrambling scientists on the ground floor. Those coins (which are also available through in-app purchases) are spent on new jetpacks, outfits, and recently gadgets.

Jetpack Joyride will be sharp as a pin on the new iPad thanks to Retina-optimized graphics, plus there's Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements. It's a universal app, but I've had mixed results with cloud sync; it managed to get my rank and cash from my iPhone game, but didn't register some of my previous gadget purchases.

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Wind-up Knight

Wind-up Knight is a whimsical running game where you're on a gallant quest to save the princess, as is often the case. The hero continually moves forward, while you're in charge of slaying evil chickens, protecting your little toy head from falling debris with a shield, leaping over yawning chasms, and rolling under treacherous traps. You have to make sure to be speedy too, since the knight is only wound up so much, and he'll run out of steam if you dally or don't pick up fresh cranks.

Gathering all of the coins in a level and finding a hidden cards rewards you with notes which can be spent on items like new helmets and swords. As you might expect, those notes are also purchasable through the App Store. Though you're welcome to buy later levels through in-app purchases (and they push a 30%-off bundle deal pretty aggressively in your first play-through), you can unlock them if you absolutely master every chapter in each book. This is really challenging though, which will be a turn-off for casual players that aren't willing to pay for the other books, but a great incentive for hardcore gamers.

Wind-up Knight enjoys seamless iCloud sync and is a Universal app, so you can keep playing on your iPhone while away from the iPad. Game Center is around for the sake of achievements, but there's nothing in the way of multiplayer, which is too bad, because I'd love to see how my friends kit out their knight and their top scores on each level as I'm playing it.

Despite its kid-friendly graphics (which are polished and gorgeous, though only partially optimized for iPad-sized Retina displays), Wind-up Knight has some great grown-up humor; even if you're pretty sure you won't buy the later books, it's worth giving a try just for the GeoCastles gag.

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Cordy Sky

Cordy Sky is a jumping game where you're an adorable little robot trying to get from the ground of an alien planet to a docked spaceship so you can continue on your intergalactic mission. Small bouncy platforms aid your ascension, but be careful, otherwise you drop down to the earth and have to start all over again. Luckily, you have a fellow robot called Volt that can grab you if you drop too far, but only if you've collected the appropriate token while climbing skyward. Your trip is split up into five sections, the end of each being marked by a fuel cell you need to get the spaceship running again. Controls are are either through virtual buttons, tilt, or swiping. I prefer to use tap controls on the iPad version rather than tilt, but the option's all yours.

As you go, you collect gears, which can buy one-time boosts, permanent power-ups, or vanity costumes. Of course, you can always just buy gears through in-app purchases, but you can get by perfectly well on your own. Don't let the cute graphics fool you, though - this game has plenty of challenge to it.

Cordy Sky on the iPad is universal, and I managed to get the important stuff imported from my iPhone game. A stray forum mention said that the game was updated to optimize the graphics for the new iPad, but I haven't been able to find any official confirmation.

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Best free role-playing games for iPad

Dark Legends

Dark Legends is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in a modern world of vampires, zombies, and other supernatural menaces. It's made by the same guys behind Pocket Legends, but this iteration is decidedly more gory. The branching quest structure is simple, and has a nice combination of time-based tasks with static rewards, and combat missions that you can enjoy through either online multiplayer or solo gameplay. The control scheme is the standard virtual joystick layout with quick access to vampire powers on one side, including a one that lets you pounce on an enemy and drain them dry once you've worked up enough bloodthirst with your melee weapons. When you're not questing, there are shared areas in which you can hang around and shop, as well as player versus player arenas where you can test your mettle.

Going through missions uses up limited energy, which regenerates over time, or you can instantly recharge with the premium platinum currency. Platinum can also be used to buy some pretty classy-looking vanity items.

Although the polygon count isn't particularly high in Dark Legends, the textures are optimized for the new iPad. There's no Game Center support, but since you're logging on through a separate account whenever you play, you can pick up and drop off between iPad and iPhone as you see fit.

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Six-Guns

Six-Guns is an open-world multiplayer western. You embark on missions for beleaguered commonfolk, handling the likes of bandits and supernatural nasties to bring some iotum of peace to the wild west. Combat is straightforward third-person revolver shooting with a virtual joystick and a few buttons. You're rewarded for your deeds, of course, and can use the coin you earn to equip new weapons, fresh threads, and buy new horses to expedite your trips between towns.

In addition to being able to buy in-game currency through in-app purchases, you can also get Sheriff Stars, which access high-end gear and auto-complete missions, though you can also earn them through watching ads. You're even able to buy experience points and health boosts, if you're having trouble getting through a particular quest.

Six-Guns is optimized for the new iPad's Retina display, and since you're logging in through Gameloft's service, there's no problem picking up where you left off on any iOS device.

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Heroes vs Monsters

Heroes versus Monsters is a party-based hack-and-slash fantasy role playing game with simple controls, a cute style, and tons of customizability. You command a party of four heroes with an intuitive drag-and-release control scheme. All of your standard classes are there, like warriors to soak up the damage, clerics to keep them alive, and various kinds of damage-dealers ranging from archers to fire mages. Scouring the world, you find new monsters to slay, more loot to plunder, more heroes to recruit, and along the way you gain experience, level up, and unlock powers best-suited to your playstyle through an extensive tree of powers.

The coins you earn through gameplay let you buy phat new equipment for your party, but you can also buy your gold pieces through in-app purchases. All of the gear you equip is nicely represented on your heroes. The only real downside I've seen so far are that you'll also have to deal with an ad along the bottom which so far as been for the same app time and again. It's also worth noting that Heroes vs Monsters is pretty much a complete clone of a premium title called Battleheart; if you're willing to shell out three bucks, you might rather it go to the those who cooked up the original idea.

There's also a significant border around the outside, which I assume is a relic from the iPhone port, since there's no support for the high-res Retina display on the new iPad. There's Game Center support anyhow, and it's universal, but no cloud syncing, unfortunately.

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Best free racing games for iPad

Forever Drive

Forever Drive is a sharp, polygonal top-down racing game with a cool abstract art style. The controls are simple and fluid, with options for tilt, tap, or d-pad. You're scored based on how many stars you pick up and how tightly you hug highlighted shoulders, but don't get too wild; you have a limited amount of time to get through as many tracks as possible. That means you need to drive smart and avoid the civilian traffic that explode in a Tron-esque display if you so much as nudge them.

One of the core elements of Forever Drive is the track builder. It's pretty simple - you draw a line from one end of a square to the other, pepper some scenery along the sides, and the highlighted turns, varied elevation, stars, and extra traffic are added in automatically. You then have the option to share these tracks online, which then randomly compose the arcade mode of other players. When you play, you get fed a series of user-built tracks which you can rate up or down after you're done driving them.

There are also weekly leagues where you have a chance to win in-game currency, with which you can buy a few unlocks, but the vast majority of car bodies, variations, and paint jobs are earned by gaining experience points throughout gameplay. If you're impatient, you can always buy credits through in-app purchases.

Forever Drive is a universal app with cloud saving, so no worries about saving your progress on the iPhone version. Game Center leaderboards are supported, plus OpenFeint if you're into that kind of thing. There aren't big-screen Retina graphics just yet, as the developer just got the new iPad recently, but maybe we'll see an upgrade soon.

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Road Warrior Racing Free

Road Warrior Racing Free is a side-scrolling racing game set in a gritty Mad Max-style future. As you race through arid badlands, you try to make use of your car's side-mounted miniguns, missile launchers, and other assorted weaponry to take out the competition, while hoping they don't do the same to you. You don't have to worry about acceleration while playing since the game puts the foot the floor for you automatically; all you have to worry about is blowing up anybody who tries to pass you and possibly doing a sweet frontflip while diving off a mesa. You're offered up a variety of different maps every time you play, each one with a different level of difficulty and special rules, like no weapons.

You earn in-game cash as you play, which can be spent on new weapons, armor upgrades, new chassis, paint jobs, and lots of other items to pimp your ride. Of course, you can also buy the in-game cash to speed up your advancement.

Right now, Game Center support is limited to leaderboards, but the developer is promising live multiplayer soon - it's already on Android. It doesn't seem like there's any cloud saving support even though it's a universal app, but that hardly puts a dent in Road Warrior Racing's badassery.

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GT Racing: Motor Academy Free+ HD

Motor Academy Free is a more down-to-earth, mostly-realistic racing game. Starting off, you earn various licenses by learning how to drive different classes of cars. After that, you're off to the races, winning tours, special invitation events, and completing contracts. The coins you earn there let you buy a variety of recognized brand-name cars, like Bugatti, BMW, Bentley, Jaguar, Ford, Chevrolet, and Audi. They even kindly give you the option to rent cars for a round if you don't have enough to buy it outright. Even this racing game has some RPG mechanics in it, including quests which you complete, and leveling up to unlock new cars and courses.

Coins are earned through regular gameplay, while in-game cash is mostly bought through in-app purchases, which you can trade in for new cars or select upgrades to parts like brakes and suspension.

There's no cloud syncing here, so get comfortable playing on either your iPad or iPhone for the long haul. There's also no Game Center hooks, but Gameloft still does a decent job of handling online multiplayer on their own.

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Best free board games for iPad

Poker by Zynga

Poker by Zynga is a simple but polished Texas Hold 'em game for iPad and plays cross-platform with folks on Facebook. The game has been out for a long time, so boasts a full feature set - you can add friends, find tables within your comfort range, and even give other players gifts for display, like drinks, or a box of tissues if they're having a particularly rough run. The one downside to Poker by Zynga is that you'll have to have a Wi-Fi connection active in order to play, and as fun as it is playing with real people, they can just as often be aggravating.

Though you're given a stack of chips to start, and can earn more through various ads and daily giveaways, you'll have to shell out real cash for chips when you run out, just like a real casino.

The iPad version of Poker by Zynga doesn't use Game Center since it relies on its well-established Facebook users to keep playing, and there's no mention of Retina iPad support, but it's not particularly needed to enjoy the game. Keeping up with games across iPad and iPhone was easy as pie since they're both connected through your Facebook account.

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Shadow Era

Shadow Era is an unabashed homage to Magic: The Gathering, a fantasy tradeable card game where two heroes command armies and arcane powers to slay their opponents. Every turn, you're given the option to discard a card, which adds to your resource pile. The more resources you have, the more allies you can summon and spells you can cast from your hand. Creatures under your control have power and health values which can be influenced with enchantments, but the real fight is between each side's individual hero cards. Each one has 20 health, and whoever dies first loses.

Shadow Era sells booster packs and whole decks of cards through in-app purchases, which you can mix and match as you like to create a deck best suited to your play style. You can also earn the premium in-game currency just by playing and leveling up.

On the iPad, there's a ton of screen real estate which allows you to see the whole board at once with minimal camera angle switching. The card graphics have been fully optimized for the new iPad's Retina display, plus on top of standard Game Center support, Shadow Era has its own cross-platform multiplayer network so you can play with your cards no matter which device you happen to be using.

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BoardBox

BoardBox is a highly-polished collection of classic board games, including chess, checkers, go, tic-tac-toe, reversi and backgammon. There are a bunch of interesting variants, including some more exotic games like Chinese chess, and a handful of very nicely rendered boards and pieces to pick from. There's a handy little sidebar included which lets you save games and look up rules through the Wikipedia article.

On the downside, there's no AI player for those days that you're on your own, and when it's eventually included, it will be an in-app purchase to activate. At least all you really have to put up with are small banner ads at the bottom of the screen, which can be disabled for $5.99 (which seems like a lot to me).

There's no iPhone version of BoardBox, so you'll have to take the whole iPad with you to play on the road. Though there's no Game Center support, online multiplayer is available over e-mail - clunky, but it works.

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Best free word games for iPad

Charadium II HD Free

Charadium II HD is another take on Pictionary where you try to draw something after picking one of a small group of words, and your partner online has to guess what it is. Both players are rewarded points for how quickly they answer, and can even lose points if it takes too long, but at least you're given hangman-style hints as time goes on. Stars are showcased in your profile, which are given by other players that are particularly impressed with you. Charadium II Free is a really nice alternative to Draw Something, and in my opinion, the better option of the two for a number of reasons. For one, Charadium II replays are viewable online, which allows you to share them on Facebook or wherever else you like. Secondly, Charadium II doesn't try to nickel-and-dime you for individual colors; once you upgrade from the free version, not only do you get a full pallette, but also a bunch of different brushes, letting you get really creative. Finally, there are lots of great game modes, including live public rooms where anyone who's online can jump in and guess what's being drawn, private games with your personal friends, and the standard drawn-out turn-based matches.

Besides having the usual "lite" version trappings of holding features hostage, you'll also have to deal with the occasional video ad and banner. At least they don't harass you for microtransactions.  The full version isn't insanely priced, though a tad high at $2.99.

Game Center is ripe with achievements for this one, and as you plow through them, you go up ranks (which don't seem to do much of anything other than look pretty in your profile). Charadium II HD Free supports the new iPad's Retina display, so your fine artistry and that of others will really pop on the big screen. It's not universal, but I don't think this is the kind of game you really want to be playing on your iPhone anyway.

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Words with Friends HD Free

Words with Friends pits you against friends on Facebook and elsewhere to a friendly word scramble game where you're given a set  of tiles with letters (each with a corresponding score), and you have to arrange them on a board to make the best word you can. The board is peppred with bonus squares which can multiply the value of letters or whole words if you're lucky enough to land on them. Each side goes back and forth planting words and picking up new tiles until the whole board is full or there are no more new tiles to draw.

Although I understand that Words with Friends is the most popular and polished Scrabble-ish game available for iOS, and as a wordy dude, I should be into these kinds of games, I actually hate them with a burning passion. Why? Because people win by jamming letters together for the highest points, and hoping the server accepts whatever they put in. In that way, I definitely prefer real Scrabble, since you're relying on proper vocabulary skills and only occasionally having to put up with friends pulling seemingly made-up words out of thin air; in Words with Friends and all video games like it, obtuse words outside of any normal vocabulary are the norm. That said, even if you're losing, odds are good you will learn all sorts of new obscure words - just don't expect the round's outcome as any kind of reflection of skill.

Words with Friends HD is monetized through ads and two kinds of in-game purchases: the Word-O-Meter, which helps you find better words, and the Tile Pile, which can let you know which letters are still left to pick up. Of course, they'll also kindly remind you to upgrade to the ad-free pro version for $2.99.

In any case, It's great being able to see the whole board on the iPad version; on the iPhone you're continually zooming in and out. There's no Game Center here, but Words with Friends HD Free is cross-platform with Facebook, which opens up your pool of opponents considerably. Despite not being universal, a common log-in system means you can pick up your matches across devices and stay in sync.

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Prose with Bros Free

Prose with Bros is best described as online competitive fridge poetry. Two partners, either found through Facebook or a random pairing, are given the same set of 50 words. They have to arrange those words into the most interesting combination possible, and once submitted, other players get to vote on which of the two they prefer. Random pairs show up for you to judge as soon as you launch the game; you can even have a creepy robot voice read the entries out loud to you. After 12 hours of voting, the winner is decided. Even if you don't win, you can still earn Kudos from other users, which are shown off in your profile. Previous prose is saved in the cloud for posterity, just in case you need to show it off later. I'm a huge fan of this game, and have seen some pretty hilarious phrases cobbled together.

The best part about Prose with Bros is that there isn't any catch - no microtransactions, no ads, no nothing, just fun. There used to be a paid and an ad-supported version, but they took out the ads in the last update in April. Why? Maybe they hate money. I'm cool with that.

Prose with Bros is universal and syncs games nicely across devices once you're registered. There's no Game Center support to help you hook up with other iOS bros, but finding them through the Facebook integration is easy enough. The graphics aren't exactly mind-blowing, but you don't need much for a word game.

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Best free simulation games for iPad

GodFinger All-Stars

GodFinger All-Stars is a fun little world control game where you tend to a little planet full of villagers. By spinning around a cross-section view, you make sure they're happy and productive, and check in on them time to time to collect the gold they generate. That gold goes to upgrading their homes which can house more people, who then, in turn, produce more money. Of course, you have to tend to their needs, like providing rain and sun for the farms, as well as altars to worship you from. To accomplish all of this, you execute gesture-based miracles with long presses and swipes. These miracles burn up Awe points, which regenerate over time, or can be bought through the app store. GodFinger All-Stars recently included a fun little endless climber side-game where you can earn some additional gold by hurling one of your followers through the heavans.

Over time, you complete missions, gain experience points, and expand the surface area of your planet. You can have a lot of fun around your world by raising and lowering the ground, decorating the area, and flinging your hapless devotees beyond the horizon.

Godfinger All-Stars isn't universal, but it saves all of your log-in information on their own network, and lets you visit the planets made by your friends, even without Game Center support. It doesn't seem like things are optimized for the new iPad just yet, but these guys put a ton of emphasis on graphics, so I expect an upgrade soon.

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The Sims FreePlay

The Sims FreePlay is a classic life simulation game where you tend to a collection of virtual people, each with a variety of needs and colorful spectrum of personality quirks. You do everything from steering their conversations with other Sims, decorating their home, getting them to work, and making sure they bathe regularly. A recent update even added the ability to play as and care for child Sims. As you guide your Sim to accomplish daily tasks, you gain experience points, level up, and unlock new items. Unlike the old Sims games that had a handy fast-forward button, activities in The Sims FreePlay all happen in real-time, so when you put your little people to sleep, they're gone for 8 real hours.

As you play, you earn Lifestyle Points, which can be used to immediately satisfy your Sim's needs and quickly complete tasks. Those can be bought through in-app purchases, alongside the game's currency, Simoleans, which your Sims earn through various kinds of work.

The UI is scaled very nicely to the iPad, but unfortunately the graphic elements aren't optimized for the new iPad yet. Also, I didn't have any luck getting my saved progress from the iPhone version over to the iPad, so don't count on any cloud sync here.

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My Clinic

My Clinic is a comic hospital business sim where you manage and staff a fledgling facility, treat incoming patients, and research new treatments. The ailments you treat range the whole spectrum of goofiness, such as emergency calls for sore throats and dealing with broken nails of debutantes. At any given time, you'll have a random assortment of patients that you can chose to see, each with varying treatment times, experience rewards, medicine costs, and payment structures. Patients have one or more critical moments throughout their treatment time where you can buy and apply specialty medicine to speed up recovery time. Once treated, you get paid based on how quickly you treat the patient. The more often you treat a particular case, the better your doctors get at it, and can finish them lightning-fast once they become experts. As you complete missions, you're regularly rewarded with various power-ups, which can improve staff efficiency, speed up equipment delivery time of new equipment, help you find new doctors more quickly. Earning experience points and leveling up will unlock new types of patients that visit your hospital, as well as the research paths and equipment to treat them.

The game developers are based in Russia, so every once in awhile you'll see some broken English, but on the whole, these guys have managed to strike a great level of humor and sufficiently tweaked the FarmVille game mechanic to keep things interesting.

You occasionally earn gold coins through gameplay, though they're primarily used as premium currency that you buy with in-app purchases. Coins can speed up task completion, be used to buy vanity items for the front of your hospital, and a few other odd higher-end items.

There's only an iPad version of My Clinic, so no bouncing back and forth with your iPhone, unfortunately. Game Center support is included so you can create medical associations with your buddies, and hire them in your hospital. That way, you earn a cut from their cashflow if they're lower level than you. There's no mention of Retina iPad support, but as is, the game looks just fine.

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Your favorite free iPad games?

Of course, there's an insane number of free iPad games out there, and we're always looking for more. Feel free to leave a comment with your favorites, as we'll be updating this list regularly. We'll be including some of our top free real-time strategy, rhythm, and location games down the line.

Rene Ritchie and Leanna Lofte contributed photos for this post

Animal lovers, Cutest Paw for iPhone and iPad is for you! It's a fun app that's filled with thousands of photos of cute animals ranging from the common household pet to exotic animals like tigers, orangutans, pandas, and foxes.

Cutest Paw lets you sort photos by newest, popular, random, or animal type. The photos are organized into 3 columns, but each picture is a scaled down version of the original crop ratio, giving each page a collage feel. It's much more interesting than cropping everything to a square like many apps do.

When you tap on a photo, the photo is displayed nice and big with the caption under it. From here, you can "hug" it (similar to "like"), save it to your camera roll, share on Facebook, or leave a comment (must connect to Facebook first).

I have two complaints with individual photo pages. The first is that in order to go back to the results page, I have to scroll to the bottom and tap Back. I wish there was a back button at the top of the screen or even a gesture (like pinching) that took me back. On a similar note, in order to scroll, you cannot have your finger touching the photo (which often times takes up most of the screen). Instead, Cutest Paw requires you to be touching one of the small areas on the outside of the photo in order to scroll.

If you don't want to go back and select a photo, but want to simply browse through them all, swiping left or right on the photo will move to the last/next photo.

To sort the photos by animal type, you must go to the Search tab. From there, you'll see categories for dogs, cats, user submissions, mice, rabbits, squirrels, birds, monkeys, hedgehogs, tortoises, pigs, ducks, foxes, orangutans, pandas, bears, tigers, otters, ferrets, and deers. You can also type in a custom term to search through Cutest Paw photos.

To share your own photo, head to the upload tab. You must have a free account with Cutest Paw in order to upload. Once you upload your photo, you can view in the "Your Uploaded Photos" section so you can easily check on your photos and how many views and hugs they've received.

The good

• Lots of adorable animal photos
• Sort by newest, popular, random, or animal type
• Share your own photos
• Save photos or share to Facebook
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• Can't scroll down with finger on picture, must be on the background
• No landscape support
• Performance could use a little work

The conclusion

Cutest Paw is a must-have app for animal lovers and kids. The quality of photos can be hit or miss from the newest and random sections because these include user submissions, but when viewing specific categories, the photos are generally very good.

Free - Download Now

Clipping and saving coupons is the most classic way of saving money, but in today's digital world, it feels rather archaic. SnipSnap for iPhone lets you say goodbye to physical coupons by taking photos of them to carry with you at all times and store clerks can scan the processed bar code right on your iPhone.

To add a coupon, you simply take a photo of it, or "snip it". SnipSnap will then process the coupon for you by converting the barcode on the photo into one that can be scanned by a store clerk (this process may take a few minutes). SnipSnap will also look at the dates valid and display when the coupon is redeemable or expires on the main Coupons page.

When viewing a coupon, you'll see all the details like minimum spending requirements. You can also look up the important dates, bar code, promo code, offer details, consumer restrictions, and retailer legal. SnipSnap also allows you to mark coupons as a favorite and share to Twitter, Facebook, or email.

When redeeming a coupon with SnipSnap, you have two different options for the clerk. The easiest one is the barcode which can be scanned by a store scanner. If that doesn't work, you can also display the coupon's code in nice, big, easy-to-read text. And if the store clerk is still a little suspicious of your coupon, you can show them the photo you took and allow them to pinch and zoom to see the details.

Another cool feature of SnipSnap is the Discover tab that shows coupons being snipped by other SnipSnap users. You can also use the search field to search for coupons at a specific store. I really like this feature, but sometimes I get coupons that are one-time use only (like on a receipt) and don't want to share it publicly in fear of someone "stealing" it. SnipSnap does allow you to disable sharing snipped coupons to the community pool, but I wish it'd let you do it on an individual basis.

A feature that makes SnipSnap way better than keeping track of physical coupons is that it will remind you when a coupon is about to expire. You can choose the notification to be sent at 1-3 days or 1-2 weeks before expiration. Additionally, when you arrive at a store that you have a coupon for, SnipSnap will send you notification reminding you of your coupon.

The last thing I want to mention is that SnipSnap does not work with "manufacturer coupons". This is not a fault of SnipSnap, however. These coupons require stores to collect coupons and return them to the manufactures. Until manufacturers change their rules about these coupons, I don't expect to see manufacturer coupon support anytime soon.

The good

• Quick and easy to use
• Processing only takes a few minutes
• Reminders when coupon is about to expire
• Location reminders
• Discover coupons being snipped by other SnipSnap users

The bad

• Can't edit sharing options when uploading coupon. Must set a universal setting.
• Not compatible with "manufacturer coupons" (because these types of coupons must be physically collected and turned in to the manufacturer by the store)

The conclusion

Personally, I've never been much of a coupon user unless they come through my email inbox because I can't keep track of them nor remember to bring them. Now that I have SnipSnap for iPhone, I look forward to the savings in my future. But if I'm not careful, I may see myself making unnecessary purchases due to me "not wanting to miss out on a deal" before my coupons expire!

Free - Download Now

The Ten One Design Pogo SketchPro stylus is a fantastic all-around style, with all around best in-class performance

Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro, part of the Pogo Sketch line up of stylus pens, is one of the best we've had the pleasure use with the iPad. It's not as cheap or as specialized as some of the competition, however, so does the quality make up for it?

Rather than a traditional pen, the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro is longer and more tapered, yet still comfortable.

Unlike some other iPad stylus pens, the Pogo Sketch Pro doesn't look like a traditional pen. It's longer and far more tapered than most. It's got a solid aluminum unibody and an excellent ergonomic grip. This puts the weighting far more forward than most other stylus pens, and that's a good thing. It lets the weight of the tool do a lot of the work for you.

The tip is special designed and patent pending. While it's a soft Ten One claims this makes the Sketch Pro effective at every angle, and the "most sensitive on the market". Our tests showed the Pogo Sketch Pro had excellent capacitance, and all-around the best we've tried to date. To achieve this level of performance, the tip has holes in it. That does raise some concerns over wear and tear, but you can buy replacement tips from Pogo. Unlike some of the other soft tip stylus pens we tested, the Pogo Pro tip doesn't have a lot of give, so you don't have to push as hard before you get solid feedback.

The unique Pogo Sketch Pro tip provides excellent capacitive performance over a wide range of angles thanks to its unique tip design.

The Pogo Sketch Pro is available in any color you want, provided that color is black and silver. This matches a lot of the Apple aesthetic, especially if you have a black iPhone or iPad, but it's limited compared to other pro-level stylus pens.

For note-taking, the Pogo Sketch Pro is very good. We had no problem writing long form notes. If you're used to a more standard pen shape, you might not like the Pogo Sketch Pro feel as much, but the results are top notch. For art tasks, it's okay. It's not as good as a hard-tipped stylus for line work, or a softer tip for brush work, but the sensitivity makes it good enough for both. For gaming it's great, and the accuracy really pays off. Out of all the pro stylus pens we tried, the Pogo Sketch Pro is our favorite for gaming.

The Pogo Sketch Pro is an excellent all around stylus but is especially good for gaming.

The good

• Excellent sensitivity
• Good ergonomics
• Great gaming stylus
• Replaceable tips

The bad

• Okay but not excellent for art

The conclusion

The Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Pro stylus is simply one of the best iPad stylus pens on the market. While it doesn't feel like a traditional pen the way the less expensive SGP Kuel H12 does, its long, tapered design is really comfortable. We absolutely love it for gaming, and it holds its own in note-taking. For art it's more than serviceable, but for dedicated line work you're still better off with the Adonit Jot Pro. For general use, however, the Pogo Sketch Pro is absolutely one of the best.

$24.95 - Buy now

Planning events and get-togethers is never a fun task because it's difficult to find a date and time that works for everyone. Invy removes this stress by doing the hard work for you. All you have to do is create the event with several possible dates and invite your friends. Once everyone responds, choose the date that works for most people.

When you first launch Invy, you are prompted to choose which email you want to be associated with Invy. You can add more emails as well. So if you plan to receive invites from both your personal and work emails, you can add both accounts to Invy so that all your invites are in one place.

The design of Invy is very clean and modern. On the main screen, you'll see all your invites and events. When creating an event, you are prompted to enter a title, location, and select recipients. Then you choose as many possible dates as you want. Obviously, the more dates and times you choose, the better chance you have one of them working for everyone.

Left: invite on the web. Right: invite in Invy for iPhone

When you send the invite, all the invitees will receive an email, and if they use the Invy app, they'll also receive a push notification informing them of the invite. For those who don't use the app, they can just click the link in the email to view the invite on the web. The web is formatted to look exactly like the app. Invitees must then check the boxes for the dates they're available.

If you select a date that conflicts with an event in the built-in Calendar app, Invy will warn you of the conflict. This is super cool, except for the part where Envy considers all-day events, including birthdays and holidays, as a schedule conflict.

Invy also includes a chat room for each event, so that invitees can discuss details (or whatever they want). This can be done both from the iPhone app and the web.

Once everyone has RSVP'd (or it's time to make a decision), you can view the invite to see who has RSVP'd to what dates and tap "choose this date". Once you do so, all the invitees will receive a notification (either by iPhone or by email) informing them that a date has been picked. Invy will also add the event to Calendar for you.

The good

• Pretty and modern UI
• Quick and easy to use
• Invy checks Calendar for schedule conflicts
• When you select the final date for an event, Invy adds it to Calendar
• Chat with invitees

The bad

• Invy considers all day events, including birthdays and holidays, as dates that you already have plans

The conclusion

If I ever have to plan any sort of meetup, even just coffee with a few friends, I'm turning straight to Invy. It's super easy to use and makes it much easier to figure out when everyone is available than speaking to each person individually. In fact, I'm now hoping that I'm given the task of choosing a date for some get-together just so that I have an excuse to use Invy. Is that weird?

$1.99 - Download Now

Noir Photo is a fantastic iPhone and iPad app for converting your photos into monochromatic images. This includes black and white conversions with the ability to add sepia, silver, blue-gray, or chartreuse tints to further set the mood.

Noir Photo has a very simple and easy to use UI. At the top of the screen, you'll see your photo. On the iPhone, if the photo is portrait, it will rotate to landscape so that you can see the entire image. The bottom half of the screen is where you'll find all the editing tools. Along the top of this section is 6 preset buttons. After choosing the one you think best works for your photo, you can fine tune the inner exposure, outer exposure, and contrast with the dials. You can also use pinch to zoom on the photo to fine-tune the placement and size of the vignette and drag the points to adjust its shape. Lastly, you can choose from the four different tints: sepia (brown-ish), silver, blue-gray, or chartreuse (green-ish).

You can also view your photo in full screen by hiding the editing controls. In full screen mode, you can still adjust the vignetting and choose from the presets. You cannot fine-tune the exposures and contrast, though.

Personally, I would rather have access to the different tints than the presets when in full screen mode. After I've adjusted my photo, I like to switch into full screen mode to get a closer look and see if it looks right. Because the presets are also color coated, I tapped them thinking I could see what my photo looked like with a different tint. To my dismay, all my settings I just finished perfecting got undone in favor of the preset. Noir Photo does not have an undo button, so this is annoying, to say the least.

The good

• Fast
• Easy to use
• 4 different tints
• Adjust outer/inner exposures and contrast
• Adjust the vignetting
• Maximum 2592x2592 output resolution
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• No undo button

The conclusion

Noir Photo does a great job at monochromatic and black and white conversions. If you're participating in this week's black and white photography contest, you may want to check this one out.

$2.99 - Download Now

Svpply offers fun, beautiful, and social way to shop from a a curated collection of products and stores from around the world from your iPhone and iPad. Featuring over 70,000 stores and brands and 1.1 million products, a gorgeous UI, and a way to follow what your friends buy and want, Svpply is a shopper's dream come true.

Svpply is broken down into six categories: men's women's, tech, media, home, art, and other. Selecting one of these categories will break down into even more categories, making it easy to shop for a specific type of item. Selecting a most specific sub-category isn't a requirement, however, so if you just want to browse general categories, you can.

In addition to browsing by category, Svpply also lets you search. I found this to be the only way to could shop for children and baby products, as there is no category for kids.

When viewing an item, a larger version of the photo is displayed, as well as it's price range, name, and which store it's from. You can then choose to mark it as something you want, collect it into a personal collection, or buy. Tapping buy will send you to the vendor's website in the built-in browser. Unfortunately, this is the only way to actually view more photos of the item. I wish Svpply gathered all of the photos from the store's website, not just one.

If you keep scrolling down the items page, you can see which people want it and browse through similar items. If you added the item to a collection, you can also view that collection. Lastly, you can view any comments that have been made about the item and leave a comment of your own.

Once you've marked some items as "want" and created some collections, you can head over to the "You" tab to view these items. There is also a category of things you own, but I cannot figure how to actually add items to this category.

The feed is where you can see the activity of your friends (who have been added by connecting your account with Twitter or Facebook). You can filter your feed by category, gender, and price. As you scroll through your feed, you'll the products that your friends have recently said they want with options to want or collect them yourself.

The good

• Adds a social element to shopping
• Beautiful UI
• Create personal collections
• Lots of categories and sub-categories
• over 70,000 stores and brands
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• No kids category
• Must tap buy and visit vendor's website to see more photos
• Can't figure out to mark that you own an item
• Can't connect to both Twitter and Facebook, only one

The conclusion

I really enjoy using Svpply to window shop for anything from clothing, shoes, decorations, and art. I haven't actually purchased anything yet, but Svpply is working as a bookmarking system for me to reference when I'm ready to buy. Creating personal collections reminds of Pinterest -- in a good way.

Free - Download Now

SGP Kuel H12 stylus for iPad is one of the best all-around stylus pens on the market and is especially good for long form note-taking

The SGP Kuel H12 takes all the elements of a classic capacitive stylus and knocks each and every one of them out of the park when it comes to build quality and usability. And it has a lower price than it's pro-level competition. So what's the catch?

A classic stylus in every sense of the word. the SGP Kuel H12 is made with a plated brass body and a silicon coated, high polymer tip designed to almost float across the surface of your iPad. From weight to curves, it feels like a high-quality pen, and even twists to retract and protect its capacitive tip.

The SGP Kuel H12 stylus feels like a premium pen, yet is less expensive than it's competition.

Available in black, white, and sliver, the SGP Kuel H12 stylus doesn't have any special rubberized grip area, but the combination of its shape and its size make it comfortable to use, even for extended periods. While the tip is soft, it doesn't collapse in all the way like some other styli do, which makes it a little easier to use under pressure. It's also fairly sensitive, so touch input registers quickly and overall accuracy is good as well. While some users have complained the material of the tip wears out too quickly, we haven't had any problems with our review units.

When it comes to hand-written note-taking, the SGP Kuel H12 is Mobile Nations' favorite stylus. The folks back at headquarters have a special fondness for styli and have tested them extensively and when they want to write serious notes, for long periods of time, they reach for the H12.

If you're looking for a stylus for long form note-taking, look no further than the SGP Kuel H12

When it comes to gaming, the smooth tip of the SGP Kuel H12 reduces tapping noise considerably, but the overall design can sometimes cover too much of the screen. For art, it's okay for line work but not as good as a hard-tipped stylus. However, it's much better for brush work and other, softer paint-like applications.

The good

• Excellent for long-form note-taking
• Feels like a premium pen
• Incredibly good value for the price

The bad

• Good but not great for gaming or art

The conclusion

The SGP Kuel H12 is one of the best stylus on the market for note-taking, and is an excellent all around stylus. It looks and feels like a high quality, premium pen. It's not as great for drawing as the Adonit Jot Pro, and not quite a sensitive as the Pogo Sketch Pro, but given it's low price point and exceptional quality, it's the best bang for your stylus buck.

$19.95 - Buy now

If you're looking to bake some delicious cake, pastries, cookies, or breads, look no further than The Photo Cookbook - Baking for iPhone and iPad. It's packed with gorgeous photos of not only the final product, but also of what each stage of the process should look like.

The Photo Cookbook - Baking is a universal app for iPhone and iPad, but I'm going to be using screenshots from the iPad version. Both versional offer the exact same functionality and content.

On the home screen of The Photo Cookbook - Baking you'll see four different columns, each one representing a different category: cakes & traybakes, pastries, small cakes & cookies, and breads. Each entry is represent by a gorgeous photograph of the delicious product. You can also scroll each column independently. There are 15 recipes in each category, totaling 60 total recipes.

When viewing a recipe, you'll first see a list of all the ingredients followed by a photo of all these ingredients separated into their portions. Tapping on one of the ingredients in the photo will pop up more info about it, including another photo, description, preparation, and designations.

As you scroll down this page, you'll see all the steps in the recipe. With each step, there is a photograph of how your creation should look at this stage of the baking process. Some of the steps are shown side-by-side, while others are shown full-width. At the end of each recipe, a gorgeous photograph will demonstrate what your final baked good should look like. For example, check out these double ginger cupcakes.

Yum!

At the top right of the screen, there are three icons that let you mark the recipe as a favorite, take notes, or email the ingredients list. In a perfect world, The Photo Cookbook - Baking would be able to create a new Reminders list titled "double ginger cupcakes" and list out all the ingredients needed. But, alas, the iOS 5 SDK does not allow this. Maybe in iOS 6?

The good

• Gorgeous photography
• Easy read and follow steps
• Pictures of ingredients in their portions are helpful
• Pictures with each step is helpful
• 60 recipes in 4 categories

The bad

• Would like to see more categories and recipes. No pie?

The conclusion

I feel like The Photo cookbook was designed specifically for me. Although I don't like to cook, I love to bake, and I also refuse to use cookbooks without pictures. I want to know what the final product is supposed to look like, and The Photo Cookbook - Baking takes that idea way farther by showing photos of ingredients and how your creation should look at each stage - and these photos are gorgeous!

Now excuse me. I have some double ginger cupcakes to make.

$4.99 - Download Now

Going to the supermarket has finally reached the 21st Century, thanks to the iPhone and Stop & Shop

If you live in New England, New York or New Jersey and shop at Stop & Shop, now you not only can you bring your own bags, but you can use your iPhone to scan your groceries and then check out of the store. When it works, it is a blast.

Now Shopping apps aren't new –- we highlight some in our recent best free apps post.  The nice thing about shopping apps is that they can really make our lives easier and allow us to see the iPhone for the productivity tool it can be.

I’m usually a pretty agreeable and social guy –- I like to talk and spend time interacting with friends and family; I just don’t enjoy interacting with most people who work at the grocery store or retail stores. When I shop (which I hate to do) I definitely employ the male stereotypical “hunter” mentality. I go in knowing what I want, I find it on my own, I buy it and I leave. Pretty simple.

Grocery shopping used to be a challenge for me – so I would make it a game with my kids. My goal would be to get in and out of the super-market without having forced human interaction with anyone. Usually I failed miserably.

Then, our local Stop & Shop introduced those little Scan it “guns” that you check out with your card, scan your stuff and then check out at a self check out. For the most part, this was a good solution – but you had to walk around with those dumb looking “wands” that inevitably ran out of charge or malfunctioned.

Stop & Shop has introduced the new SCAN IT! mobile app for iPhone and Android. The concept is pretty simple – download the app, input your loyalty card number and then connect to their special WiFi network in the store. Use the phone to scan your stuff and then scan an “exit code” and pay at a self-checkout. Sometimes, however, things in concept work better than they do in reality.

Once the app is downloaded, you will be prompted to input your Stop & Shop loyalty card number so that when you use the app –- it always knows who you are and credits your account with the loyalty points and coupons. Once the app is set up and ready to go, your phone will automatically connect to the Scan It mobile WiFi network in the store – you just need to make sure that you have WiFi turned on and have your phone set to discover available networks. .

Touch the Scan button to begin your shopping trip. Scanned item and any discounts are shown.

Once you are connected, just touch the Scan It icon along the bottom row. The screen changes and a yellow Scan   button appears. Touch the Scan button and simply point your iPhone screen at the bar code of the product you wish to buy. Any in-store promotions are automatically reflected in the price and the item gets scanned and put into your cart automatically. Just let the camera focus on its own on the bar code and it scans it, applies discounts and puts it in your cart – very simple and cool.

One of the more annoying features of the app is that occasionally as you walk by something that is on sale a loud cash register sound is played and a coupon for the sale item shows on the screen. You can always just ignore it – but clearly it tries to get your attention to things on sale and it does a pretty good job of that.

Promotional offers pop up when you walk in front of things that are on sale. Touch the Cart button to check and see what you have already scanned.

You can always touch the Check Cart button to see what you have in your cart, what your running total is and how much you have saved on this trip. There is also a button to tap to remove an item from your cart – just touch that button and scan the item you want to remove – so far, pretty simple and lots of fun.

Achilles was the classic Greek hero – part of the Trojan war and prominent figure in Homer’s the Iliad.  Achilles had that one weak spot, however –- an arrow to his heel did him in. The “Achilles Heel” of using the SCAN IT mobile app is the checkout.

In fairness, I had several successful checkouts using the SCAN IT! app.  There is one flaw in the system, however, and that is that when you scan the “end shopping trip” bar code with your iPhone, you are still then required to produce your physical loyalty card and scan that at the register. It makes much more sense – since they system already knows your card number – to have your final scanning using the phone accomplish that task – but, the extra step, and, thus, the need to still have your plastic loyalty card with you – makes this somewhat cumbersome at checkout.

I can live with all that – but one recent experience at the checkout was absolutely maddening. I scanned the “end shopping” code with my phone and I then got a code displayed on my screen.

The LCD screen on the register said “Assistance Needed” which is code word for the dreaded audit. An employee comes and has to manually scan five or six items to make sure you are not defrauding the system. I get it – but it happens every fourth or fifth trip to the store, which is annoying.

The dreaded secret code for "you have been audited". So much for getting out of the store without talking to any employees.

Using the iPhone and SCAN IT! app, however – the experience shows all the flaws in the system. First and employee came over and said “I don’t know what to do since you used your phone.” So, a second employee came over – now forcing me to interact with yet another grocery store employee – and said:” I need to take your card and go get a scanning wand and come back.” So, the iPhone app, which is supposed to eliminate the need for the card and the scanning wand, now created a situation where the card and the wand were necessary to check out. The employee scanned the requisite number of items with the wand – which is so 2011 – and then I had to rescan my plastic card and then I could check out. Essentially, for that trip, the app on the iPhone was almost useless.

The good

• Very convenient
• Easy to set up and use
• When it works, it makes shopping almost fun

The bad

• The checkout process is not well thought out
• When it works, it makes shopping almost fun

The conclusion

While SCAN IT! mobile shows lots of promise, there are still a few bugs to work out - especially the entire checkout process. This is a very usable app and really shows how stores are quickly understanding how consumers want to use their phones as productivity tools to make the little things in life easier - like grocery shopping.

Free - Download now

Do you use a grocery checkout app for your iPhone? We’d love to hear your experiences in our forums.

Same gorgeous gravitational Astronut action of the iPhone version, now in impressive iPad size.

Astronut for iPad is an interstellar treasure of a game. Created by the amazing Iconfactory, the talented team behind Twitterrific and Ramp Champ, the premise is as simple as it is fun. You ricochet through deep space, using the gravity of planets and other celestial bodies to slingshot you in just the right direction to avoid hostile aliens and inhospitable singularities, and collect shards and other rewards.

Initially released for the iPhone and iPod touch, the iPad version takes all of the fun of the original and kicks it up to warp speed on the bigger, vaster iPad screen in full on Retina glory. What's more, if you already have the iPhone version, you can use it as a controller for the iPad version.

Play mechanics remain the same as the iPhone version. As your Astronut hurtles through the void, you can jump from one celestial body to another, and turbo charge your jump when your boost is available. Because the iPad is physically bigger than the iPhone, the controls have been repositioned. You hold the iPad in portrait mode and tap the virtual buttons on the side. Bonus levels can be controlled by tilting the iPad. (Or, as previously mentioned, you can also use the iPhone to control the action.) They're clear and consistent enough that, after a few tastefully inserted tips fly by in the early levels, you'll be all set.

Astronut boasts 6 sectors and 24 levels. Unlike the iPhone version where you can upgrade to the full version of Astronut via in-app purchase, the iPad version charges you up front and gives you all the levels right away. There are 40 challenging achievements to unlock, and full Game Center support so you can not only beat your friends, but let everyone know you beat them.

The design is gorgeous, as you might expect from an Iconfactory app. But Astronut is not just pixel pretty -- the sound design is fantastic as well.

If you liked Astronut on the iPhone, you'll love it on the big iPad screen. If you haven't tried Astronut yet, the iPad version is a great way to start.

The good

• Looks great, sounds great, plays great
• Casual but captivating
• iPhone controllable

The bad

• Settings are buried (I'm scrounging here.)

The conclusion

There are few things better in this world than native iOS games made by native iOS developers. From pixel to bit, Astronut for iPad captures every spark of awesome ignited by the iPhone original and translates it perfectly the iPad. I still can't tell you who'd win in a fight, a caveman or an astronaut, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Astronut is all win.

$1.99 - Buy now

The Google+ for iPhone app received a major makeover earlier today, and boy is it beautiful! The new Stream shows off large photos and includes many new little animations that really catch the eye.

Each story in your stream is topped with the author's profile photo and name. Behind the name is a dark, transparent bar that also displays a zoomed, horizontal chunk of the user's profile picture. As you scroll through your stream, the photos in these banners will also scroll every so slightly. It's not super obviously, but if you pay attention, you'll see it.

While scrolling, when you reach a new story you haven't seen on your screen, yet, the banner will quickly fade into the screen slightly enlarged, then quickly fall back down to normal size. I think this animation is very cool, but others have complained that all the new movements make them dizzy.

If the stories published on your stream are photos, or links with hero photos, then the pictures will be displayed in full width, front and center. At the top of the photo, you'll see the caption or comment about the story. In the bottom left you'll see a comment button and count, and in the bottom right is the +1 count. Tapping the +1 count will add a +1 on your behalf.

I'm going to pause for moment here to mention something about sharing links. If you share a link to Google+ from the plus.google.com interface, Google+ will grab an image from the article to display with the link. But if you paste a link into the sharing screen with the Google+ app for iPhone, it displays as just a simple, boring hyperlink. (See the screenshot of Rene's status above). Lame.

When sharing a status or photo with your circles, you can choose which circles to include, whether or not to attach your location, and take a photo from within the app, or choose one from your Camera Roll.

From the main menu, you can quickly access you Stream, profile, messenger, photos, and circles. You can also turn on Instant Upload to sync the photos on your phone to a private Google+ album, video chat with up to 9 friends with mobile Hangouts in Messenger, chat with multiple friends at once, and check out Nearby and What's Hot streams.

The Good

• Gorgeous
• Instant Upload syncs photos from your phone to a private Google+ album
• Video chat with up to 9 friends with mobile Hangouts
• Chat with multiple friends at once
• What’s Hot and Nearby streams

The Bad

• Sharing links doesn't include a photo
• No iPad support

The Conclusion

I've very impressed with the new and improved Google+ for iPhone app. It's absolutely stunning and a joy to use. Sure, it has some annoyances like not showing photos when sharing a link, but it's still an improvements over the previous version. My biggest gripe about Google+, however, is the lack of users and activity. If all my friends and family used Google+, I'd be all over it. Unfortunately, they do not. So it looks like I'm stuck with Facebook for now.

Free - Download Now

Getting ready to take the written driving exam to get or renew your license? For many of us, this exam is very stressful and difficult to pass since it always asks questions involving scenarios that we don't regularly encounter. With DMV Genius, you can study for this exam while on the go.

DMV Genius is a free app to download, but restricts you to just one exam from three states. For $2.99, you can unlock four more exams in any state. Each state is a separate purchase.

Each sample test comes with 20 multiple choice questions. These questions are tailored specifically for your state and are very similar to what you would see on the real exam. In fact, many of the questions are identical to questions you'll encounter on the on the actual test.

Each question in DMV Genius has 4 multiple choice options. Simply tap the answer you think is correct. If you're right, it will highlight with green and receive a little checkmark. If you get the question wrong, a pop up will appear telling you you're wrong and an explanation of the correct answer. The selection will also be highlighted with red.

With each question, you can also ask for a hint.

Once you answer all 20 question in DMV Genius, you'll be informed if you failed or passed and the statistical breakdown of your score. Each time you retake a test, the questions get shuffled.

The Good

• Awesome way to prepare for the written driving test
• Questions are real questions that may appear on your test
• Hints and explanations for each question

The Bad

• If a choice is too long, it scrolls

The Conclusion

DMV Genius is a fantastic way to study for that pesky writing driving test, especially for teens or anyone who's taking the test for the first time. And since it's on your iPhone, you can study while experiencing those horrid wait times at DMV right before your test!

Free - Download Now

The Adonit Jot Pro stylus for iPad is best in class when it comes to high precision, detailed writing and line work

The Adonit Jot Pro is not your regular iPad or iPhone stylus. Instead of a round, mushy finger-sized capacitive tip, it has a very thin, very hard tip like a mechanical pencil, with a large, round, transparent capacitive disk on the end. It's odd looking and odd feeling at first, especially compared to other pro-level capacitive styli on the market. But does it hold up?

More of a specialty stylus than a general purpose pen, the Adonit Jot Pro is best in class when it comes to certain, specific applications, namely fine, detailed line work, but falls behind the likes of SGP, Ten One Design, and Wacom in others for brush work or other staccato applications.

More than any other stylus, the Jot Pro resembles a traditional mechanical pencil or fine tipped pen. With a disk on top.

The Adonit Jot Pro looks the most like a traditional, fine tipped pen (except for the disk at the end, of course). It's got a nicely weighted aluminum and steel body that comes in metallic black, silver, red, or blue, and a slightly curved, black rubber grip that's comfortable even for extended use. The body is magnetized so it can stick to the new iPad and iPad 2, and it has a cap to protect the metal tip and plastic disk from damage when it's being carried around.

It's the tip that makes the Adonit Jot Pro really stand out, and it's a decidedly mixed blessing. For precise, detail oriented drawing, drafting, and other forms of line work, it's absolutely best in class. It feels like the right tool for the right job because it feels like the tools traditional artist have been using for those jobs all along. The plastic disk makes it easier to see through than the fatter, rounded nib found in other popular styli, so you can be more accurate with placement. Because it's not mushy like a silicone tip, it doesn't require a lot of pressure to register. Those are all huge advantages for the Jot Pro.

The Adonit Jot Pro includes a cap to protect the tip and is magnetic so it can stick to the new iPad and iPad 2.

But all of that comes with a price. First, the disk is a slightly "scratchier" feel too it when you drag it along the iPad or iPhone display. That takes some getting used to. It's simply not as smooth as a silicone tipped stylus. You might even hate it at first, but chances are it will grow on you if you give it time. Second, it's noisy. While soft tips cushion the sound, the Adonit Jot Pro's hard tip does not. So if you're doing a lot of small actions, you're literally tapping out a drum beat. If you're in a quiet area, that really stands out. Third, the same precision that works so well for line drawing doesn't feel as good for brushwork in painting apps.

The same holds true for note-taking. For those who want incredibly precise script, the Adonit Jot Pro works really, really well. For sticklers who want the most detailed strokes imaginable, the Jot Pro will be perfect. For those who want to just scrawl down a few block letters, you're getting more tapping noise than smooth movement.

While the Jot Pro's hard metal tip works great for line work, it creates an annoying tapping sound when used for gaming.

Interestingly, Adonit had released an SDK (Software Developer Kit) so app developers can make their apps work better with the Jot Pro. For example, the excellent drawing app, Procreate, uses the Adonit SDK. That means, theoretically, Procreate will work better with the Jot than another app, like Paper would. We found the Jot to be excellent for line work in both Procreate and Paper, however, so the Jot-optimized apps should be looked at as more of a bonus -- a good thing working even better.

The good

• Unique tip design is excellent for detailed line work or writing
• Transparent disk allows for exceptional accuracy

The bad

• Tapping sound is noticeable in quiet areas
• Not as good for brush work

The conclusion

The Adonit Jot Pro is the best stylus you can get for illustration and precision lines. If you want to produce highly detailed, draft-quality work, the Jot Pro is for you. If you want to game, take lots of short notes, or paint, it's not going to be a great choice for you. That's the price of being unique and excelling at one thing rather than trying to be good enough at everything. If you want a more general purpose stylus, look at the SGP Kuel H12 or Pogo Sketch Pro. If you want precision penmanship, get the Jot Pro.

$27.95 - Buy now

If you want to add some color to your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S but don't feel comfortable doing a full-on DIY color modding and voiding your Apple warranty, Slickwraps might be just what you're looking for. You get a similar style to color mods without the risks of actually modding. Apply them just like you would any screen protector or shield, and when you're done, you've got what appears to be a completely color modded iPhone.

Slickwraps come in a wide array of colors and textures. You can choose from solid colors, carbon fiber, glow, brushed metal, fur, and several others. You can even get a blank canvas pack that allows you to draw on them before applying them to the back of your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S (great choice if you're an artist or know an artist you can sweet talk into making you a custom job!)

Each Slickwrap comes with the following items -

• Front wrap
• Back wrap
• Bezel wrap
• Screen protector
• Cleaning Cloth

Some kits are back only while others cover the entire iPhone. Just make sure you're aware of which kits are which. The full kits will come with everything listed above. Other kits may not have a front piece, such as the canvas version.

I tried out two different Slickwraps - solid colored pink and blue carbon fiber. The solid colored versions are a bit harder to apply due to the material. It's a bit stretchy and it's not as easy to line it up perfectly. The whole process took me about 30 minutes on the pink version. The carbon fiber only took me about 10 minutes and lined up perfectly from start to finish.

Before starting, making sure you use a cleaning cloth (there is one provided) to wipe down your screen and back plate to ensure that no dust or debris gets trapped under the Slickwrap. You may see bubbles from dirt or dust if your iPhone isn't cleaned off properly prior to application.

I suggest beginning with the front and back pieces first. When you're done applying those, then move on to the bezel.

The bezel portion is on a sheet that will supply you with all the trim pieces you need. The middle piece is universal and will be used for both iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users. The volume button portion is different so you'll need to pay attention to what version you need to apply. The upper sticker is for AT&T iPhone 4 users only. The bottom sticker is for Verizon iPhone 4 and all iPhone 4S owners. When you're done, you should have one sticker left over.

While Slickwraps may prevent against minor scratches, I wouldn't expect much more than that. They're mainly made to stand out more than they are to protect.

I did try to use bumpers on both versions. The solid colored Slickwraps are thin enough to fit a bumper on normally and comfortably. The bumper fit with the carbon fiber version but it was a bit tight.

Yes, a bumper will cover up the trim pieces so you'll have to decide if you'd rather have the trim or a bit of protection. I don't normally have a case on my iPhone as I prefer the stock look more than anything. And the trim pieces are just too cool to cover up in my opinion.

Case compatibility will widely vary depending on what kind of case you're using and how tight it is around the iPhone to begin with.

The stock Apple dock shouldn't give you any issues. I tested it with both the original solid color variant and the carbon fiber version, which is a bit thicker, and had no issues easily sliding my iPhone in the dock and back out.

The back of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S is super simple to DIY replace. Ordering a colored back adds a third color to the mix and may be something a lot of users may want to play around with.

While trying out the blue carbon fiber Slickwrap I also threw on a solid green back. It added a bit more color and really made the back pop out even more. If you're aiming to make your iPhone stand out, adding a colored back is a great way to compliment the Slickwrap.

The good

• Fairly easy to apply, no need to use water or any kind of liquid.
• Much cheaper than a complete color mod.
• No voided warranty.
• Unique and highly customizable.

The bad

• Solid colored versions are a bit thinner and somewhat stretchy causing application to be a little harder than textured variants.
• The bottom trim piece covers the screw holes. Not a big issue for most but if you want to change out your back, most users may find that a little annoying.

Conclusion

A lot of iPhone owners will appreciate being able to add color and variation without the price tag of a color modification which easily runs well over $100 from most reputable iPhone repair shops and online sources.

Slickwraps are a great way to make your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S stand out and require no tools or DIY knowledge. These are by far the best no-tools required color kit option I've come across so far.

Buy Now

If you're a student taking a math class, there's a good chance you could benefit from a graphing calculator. Unfortunately, such devices are very expensive, but the good news is that there are several app solutions for your iPhone and iPad -- the best being Quick Graph.

Quick Graph is a fantastic graphing calculator that lets you graph multiple equations at the same time, change their color, and also view the mathematical notation of equations being graphed by nicely formatting fractions and exponents You can toggle equations on and off by tapping the symbol that looks like an eye.

When you add or edit an equation, a keyboard pops up with math symbols, operations, and functions. There are six available variables: x, y, z, r, theta, and phi, depending on if you are graphing 2D or 3D equation in rectangular or polar form.

After adding an equation, you can change its color from the 24 preset colors or from the color wheel. You can also adjust the opacity which is great for graphing inequalities.

In addition to graphing equation, you can also solve them. For example, if you want to solve 2x+5 for x=10, you type "x=5;2x+5" and the answer will appear right below your entry.

To trace a graph, simply hold your finger down on the screen and the points associated with the x value of where your finger is will pop up. If you have more than one equation, points will appear on all of them. The coordinates associated with the points will appear over the points.

You can also interact with the graph by pinching to zoom in and out and scrolling to pan around. If you want to reset the window, just tap the refresh button.

As previously mentioned, you are not limited to just 2-dimensional Cartesian graphs. You can also graph in polar form and 3D. Interacting with 3D graphs is quite awesome. I am impressed with how smooth the Quick Graph runs when rotating the object around.

One of the great (paid) features of Quick Graph for instructors is the support for VGA out. However, when projecting the app, only the graph is shown. This is disappointing because it would be helpful for students to be able to see how equations are entered since it can sometimes be tricky. Seeing which equations are graphed and the colors associated with them is also helpful for students.

Advanced Features

Quick Graph is a free app that includes a lot of features. However, if you want to plot more than six equations at once, graph inequalities and implicit equations, use 2D tracing and independent 2D zoom, and project the app with VGA, you'll need to pick up the $1.99 in-app upgrade. I must say, I am very impressed with how much is included for free and find the $2 purchase to be quite a steal.

The Good

• Rectangular an polar forms
• 2D and 3D graphing
• Dark and light themes
• Includes a very helpful user manual
• Advanced features are only $1.99
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The Bad

• Does not support iPad Retina display
• VGA out only displays graph. No mirroring option.

The Conclusion

Quick Graph is a fantastic graphing calculator for the iPhone and iPad. It runs super smooth and, as its name implies, is super quick. The biggest disappointment for me is that Quick Graph doesn't yet support the new iPad's Retina display, but I'm sure it's coming, so I still recommend that every math student and instructor pick this one up.

Free - Download Now

The Wacom Bamboo is a popular pen stylus for iPad and iPhone. It's a longtime favorite of several of iMore's editors and contributors, and comes from one of the most trusted names in digital pen technology. However, the Wacom Bamboo is facing intense competition from several other pro-level capacitive stylus companies. How does it stack up?

The Wacom Bamboo isn't the most sensitive, comfortable, or stylish stylus we tested, but it is durable.

Decidedly middle of the road. The Wacom Bamboo isn't a bad stylus for the iPad or iPhone, but it isn't a great one either, at least not when compared to the higher-end offerings from SGP, Adonit, and Ten One Design.

In terms of style, the Wacom Bamboo looks like a typical pen, complete with feed and straight barrel. It's got a satin-textured and milled aluminum body and comes in a wide range of color options, including black, white, blue, green, pink and orange. You can also get a Duo version that has a real ink pen on the opposite end.

The Wacom Bamboo is well put together and feels like it's built to last. Even the capacitive tip, which on some pens can tear or wear down, holds up remarkably well to extended use.

The Wacom Bamboo is well built and good looking, but isn't inspiring.

Where the Wacom Bamboo suffers a little is comfort during extended use. While some people love straight barrel pens, we prefer more rounded, more ergonomic curves. The Wacom Bamboo is also shot by pro-level stylus standards, and that combined with the sharpness of the feed made it harder to get into a comfortable position and more likely to become uncomfortable over time.

Where the Wacom Bamboo suffers a lot is in its capacitive quality. In our tests it worked okay but not great across the board. The tip was the mushiest we've used and that meant we had to push more, longer before it would start to register. Once it did register, it moved well across the glass, but any time we lifted it we had to go through that sinking, mushy tip push again.

For script writing this wasn't a huge issue because the pen tip remains in contact for extended periods. For print writing, where the pen tip leaves the iPad screen more often, it was considerably more annoying. That was even more true for standard navigation and gaming, where each and every tap and swipe required pushing just a little too much to get it to sink in and register. For drawing apps it was the same story again -- okay but not great performance and too much pressure required any time the tip had to be re-introduced to the iPad screen.

While the Wacom Bamboo's tip moves smoothly, it's too mushy for serious work and the short length may be a deal breaker for some users.

The good

• Large amount of color choices
• Durable

The bad

• Capacitive tip is too mushy
• Pen design is too short and straight, feed is too sharp

The conclusion

The current Wacom Bamboo stylus for iPad and iPhone is serviceable but not inspired. In every way we measured, with the exception of shortness, the Wacom Bamboo has been eclipsed by more comfortable, more capacitive, and generally better performing competitors. If you simply want an okay general purpose stylus to keep with your for occasional hand-writing note-taking, drawing or otherwise creating art, or simply playing games, and you have to have it without any hint of a curve to its barrel, the Wacom Bamboo is a serviceable choice. Otherwise check out the other options first and make sure you don't like something by SGP, Adonit, or Ten One Design better.

$29.95 - Buy now

Twitpic for iPhone had the potential to be a really neat app and a possible Instagram alternative, but it missed the mark on too many levels

Twitpic is one of the most popular photos hosting services for Twitter and now they've released their very own iPhone app that lets you browse through the photos of all the people you follow on Twitter who have shared their photos with Twitpic, add comments, as well as add filters and effects to your own photos to share to Twitter and Twitpic.

Sounds a lot like Instagram, doesn't it? In fact, it's very similar, but I'm not ready to call it an "Instagram Killer" -- it falls short in too many ways.

There are three different types of feeds with Twitpic: your main timeline, the popular stream, and streams for individual users. All off them show rectangular thumbnails of the photos with a little icon that shows how many comments have been left on the photo. For the timeline an popular streams, you will, of course, also see which user posted the photo and their profile photo.

Tapping a photo will open it on a black background, and after a brief pause, the toolbars and caption will appear, and after another short pause, will disappear again. You can tap the screen to bring up the toolbars at anytime and tapping the comments icon will bring up all the comments for that photo and allow you to leave a comment of your own.

Unfortunately, comments on photos must have been made with the Twitpic app. I would've like to see all Twitter @replies to the tweet that included the photo be marked as comments in the Twitpic app. Since most people see Twitpic photos in Twitter, it makes perfect sense.

One thing that sets Twitpic apart from Instagram is that there are more editing options available. The "Add Effects" screen has tabs for effects, enhance, crop, orientation, and brightness. Crop, orientation, and brightness should be self-explanatory.

In the enhance screen, you can choose auto, night, backlit, or balance, and the effects tab has 10 different filters you can choose from. They're OK. Nothing amazing, but not terrible.

What is terrible, is the naming inconsistencies in the Twitpic editing screens. When you first take or choose the photo you want to upload, there is a button in the top right hand corner called "Add Effects", but this screen has five different tabs, one of which is called "Effects". When tapping on one of the tabs, the navigation arrow in the toolbar to take you back is called "Editor". But wait, I thought that was the "Add Effects" screen? Sure, I know what they mean, but it's the little details like this that make me think the app was thrown together.

The other thing that annoys me about Twitpic is the edits are destructive. Once you hit "Apply", there's no turning back. Returning back to that screen doesn't let you adjust your edits, just layer on new ones. The biggest problem with this is with effects. A lot of the effects apply some sort of special edging to your photo, which is fine, until you decide you want to crop your image. You'll either crop it completely away or, depending on how you crop, only crop it off a couple of the edges. The only way to fix it is to start over and make sure you save adding the effect for last -- even though it's the first tab. Yet another thing that makes me ask "was this app really put through proper testing?"

Once you have your photo edited to perfection, you can share it to Twitter with Twitpic and… that's it. Your photo isn't even saved to your Camera Roll! And what about the unique twitpic.com URL that is assigned to each photo? Nope, nowhere to get that either. What Twitpic was thinking, I have no idea. I guess they want to be greedy with your photos and not only not give you the means to share directly to another network, but not even let you share your photos separately to somewhere else like Facebook or Instagram.

The Good

• Browse through the Twitpic photos of who you're following on Twitter
• Upload photos to Twitpic and share to Twitter
• Edit photos with minor adjustments and add filters/effects

The Bad

• Inconsistent naming
• Destructible edits
• Can only share to Twitpic and Twitter
• Doesn't save to Camera Roll

The Conclusion

Twitpic for iPhone had the potential to be a really neat app and a possible Instagram alternative, but it missed the mark on so many levels it's not even funny. The editing experience is terrible and the restriction to only sharing to Twitpic and Twitter and not even your Camera Roll is a deal breaker for me. If they wanted to be exclusive to Twitter, they could've at least pulled in the replies to the tweets with Twitpic links to the comments, but not even that's the case.

Sorry Twitpic, that's three strikes -- you're out.

At least it's free - Download Now

Microsoft SkyDrive, Dropbox, and the newly introduced Google Drive all focus on storing your data in "the cloud" (i.e. in massive data centers) instead of on a physical hard drive in your home or office. That means not only can you free up some valuable internal storage space, but enjoy the piece of mind that comes with solid off-site backup, and the convenience of accessing your files from all your computers, many of the your devices, and almost any web browser. While Dropbox, Skydrive, and Google Drive will all get the job done, which one is the best choice for most iPhone and iPad users?

SkyDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive: Interface and Experience

While you can access Dropbox, Skydrive, and Google Drive via the web, that's not usually not the best option for iPhone and iPad users. Apple severely limits what web browsers can do in iOS, so while web sites are great to view supported files, they're not much good for anything else. That means the first thing most iPhone and iPad owners will do when choosing a cloud storage service is to look at their native app offerings.

SkyDrive allows you to view files on your iPhone and iPad in either list view or as tiled icons.

SkyDrive is a universal app for iPhone and iPad users. The overall interface is incredibly straight forward and easy to use. Upon signing into SkyDrive, you'll be presented with your files and folders. You can choose to view them as a list or a grid. Tapping into a folder allows you to view the contents and open any documents inside that folder. You can also upload pictures to SkyDrive or create more folders.

If you need to edit a document, you can open it in a supported app by tapping the export button. Unfortunately you won't be able to sync changes back or save back to SkyDrive unless the individual app supports saving to SkyDrive. This is both a limitation of iOS and a product of SkyDrive's popularity relative to DropBox.

Dropbox's user interface is easy to navigate on both iPhone and iPad. Browse all your files via the main tab or star documents you frequently access for quick access from the favorites tab.

Dropbox functions in a very simliar way to SkyDrive and is also available for both iPhone and iPad. That's not surprising -- there are only so many ways to make a file browser. In the Dropbox app you can navigate through folders and mark things as favorites. Doing that stores a file locally for quick viewing later, even if offline. You can also pop into settings and set Dropbox to cache a certain storage amount locally for even quicker access to files you view regularly.

You can upload pictures and videos to Dropbox from within the app, but nothing else. (Again, that's an iOS restriction.) You will, however, be able to view many common files types from your iPhone or iPad such as Word, Excel, PDFs, and many image file types. You can also send supported files to other apps for editing or viewing.

Even though Google Drive doesn't have an iPhone or iPad app (yet), you can still access your Drive files via mobile Safari. Not the best solution for most but the up side is unlike others, you'll be able to actively sync and edit documents without using 3rd party applications.

Google Drive doesn't have a native iPhone or iPad app yet. (Google says they're working on it.) You can access your Google Drive files via mobile Safari though. It's not the most intuitive or functional solution and it has to make you wonder what exactly Google was thinking when they released Drive without an iOS companion app. (It's not like they lacked the time or resources to get it done for launch day.)

As a work around, you can use the Google Search app which provides access to Google Apps. It's not a full solution but it works. You could also add a homescreen bookmark to Google Drive for quicker access.

Until the iOS app arrives, iPhone and iPad users will probably shy away from Google Drive. Dropbox is easy to use but could definitely make do with an update. Right now, SkyDrive has the best design and interface.

SkyDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive: Features

While SkyDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive are all cloud storage and sync services, they all work differently and offer a different set of features. Before you decide which one is for you, you need to figure out exactly which features you need most.

SkyDrive allows you to view most file formats and also supports media streaming. Sharing documents is easy. Open the document you'd like to share and you can send a link, view and edit permissions, and share with others.

SkyDrive boasts online file collaboration, public file sharing, and version tracking. You'll be able to edit files online via the Microsoft Office web apps, or from your computer via the traditional Microsoft Office suite, and have them all on your iPhone or iPad when you need them.

If your main purpose is to use a file storing service to free up space on your iPhone or iPad, SkyDrive can help you do that with built-in media streaming, which means you can upload music and video to SkyDrive and stream it into the app on your iPhone or iPad.

Dropbox allows you to easily upload video and audio content from your iPhone or iPad. It also supports media streaming and many other file types for easy access to the most common file types.

Dropbox also offers built-in media streaming in their iPhone and iPad app. You'll also be able to share files and folders online, create share folders publicly, and track document versions. However, Dropbox doesn't include the ability to edit documents via web-based apps, nor do they have their own desktop suite. You need to open any documents stored in Dropbox in a local editor on your desktop or mobile device.

Google Drive may not have a native app but the ability to edit documents and spreadsheets in mobile Safari may be a draw for some users. Some features are not supported in mobile view like spreadsheet view so you'll need to use the desktop version which is a bit clunky on an iPhone or iPad.

In addition to lacking an iOS app, Google Drive doesn't currently support media streaming. So, if you were hoping to unload some music and videos to Google Drive, that's not an option yet. You will, of course, be able to access everything on your iPhone or iPad via mobile Safari but that isn't an ideal solution. Google Drive does enjoy Google Docs support, however, but unlike SkyDrive it doesn't offer a native desktop document editing suite.

Google's lack of an iOS app hurts it again here. When it comes to features, Dropbox and SkyDrive are extremely comparable but Dropbox's inability to let users edit files on the web gives SkyDrive a slight edge.

Skydrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive: Workflow and syncing

While mobile document creation has come a long way, most iPhone and iPad users will most likely still spend most of their time creating documents on their Windows or Mac PC, and will definitely need to access them there. So, a seamless workflow between desktop and mobile apps is a must.

SkyDrive's web interface, integrated with Microsoft Office Online

SkyDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive all offer both a native app for Mac and Windows as well as a free web portal. When it comes to the native Mac and Windows apps, all three apps have almost identical interfaces and functionality. They seamlessly integrate with your file system. You'll just notice a new folder in your main tree of files. They'll also all add a system tray icon to your Mac or Windows PC for quick access.

Google Drive's online interface, integrated with Google Docs.

To use these services from your Windows or Mac PC, you simply drag and drop, or copy and paste your files into the folder, and then work them the same way you did previously. You won't notice any difference, but the files and folders are syncing your data constantly with each respective cloud service.

When you return to your iPhone or iPad to pull up a document, it'll just be there. And if you ever need to access your documents from someone's else's Windows or Mac PC, you can do so easily by accessing the web based version of SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive.

Dropbox's online interface, not integrated with anything.

Google has the better desktop clients but their lack of an iOS app kills the overall workflow model. Dropbox has great apps but once again doesn't have online editors like Microsoft or Google. That makes SkyDrive the winner.

SkyDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive: 3rd party app compatibility

Many iPhone and iPad apps integrate support for cloud storage. If you're looking to use text editors frequently, for example, it will matter a great deal which services are supported.

While SkyDrive and Google Drive are fully functional cloud services in their own right, neither enjoys anywhere near the support of Dropbox. Dropbox has simply been around a long time an many developers have chosen to embrace it. In fact, for many apps, you won't find support for many cloud services outside of Dropbox (and Apple's iCloud, which is not exactly the same).

Dropbox by far has the best support from other app developers.

SkyDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive: Storage space and pricing

Using SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive means you get online storage that can free up local drive space, you get online backup that can keep you files safe, and you get remote access that lets you get to your files no matter where you are. All of them offer some amount of free storage, and the ability to buy more to suit your needs.

SkyDrive gives you a generous 7GB for free. If you'd like to add more storage on top of that, this is what you'll pay:

• 20GB - $10 per year
• 50GB - $25 per year
• 100GB - $50 per year

Dropbox gives users the smallest amount of free storage, coming in at only 2GB for a free account. They do offer a referral program that'll allow you to rack up an additional 250MB for each individual you refer up to 8GB total. Otherwise, to buy additional storage, here's what you're looking at:

• 50GB - $9.99 a month or $99 per year
• 100GB - $20 a month or $199 per year
• 1TB+ team accounts - $795 per year for the first 5 users

Google Drive gives you 5GB of free storage from the start. After that, here's what you can expect to pay -

• 25GB - $2.49 a month
• 100GB - $4.99 a month
• 200GB - $9.99 a month

There are sometimes special promotions or cross promotions where you can get additional storage bonuses for free, sometimes for a limited time. It's hard to predict when these will happen or for whom they'll apply, but it's worth doing a web search before paying just to see if there are any special offers available.

Otherwise, Dropbox makes for the most expensive service by far and gives the least amount of free storage to new users. Conversely, SkyDrive offers both the highest amount of free storage and the cheapest price for additional storage. However, Google Drive is extremely competitive, so if you're already a Google user, there's no compelling difference.

SkyDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive: Conclusion

If you take each individual category and weigh them equally, it looks like SkyDrive is the winner here. But not all categories should be weighed equally. A lot of free storage is great. Cheap additional storage is great. Arguably better desktop apps and inarguably better online document editors are great. But none of that matters if you need your cloud service to be supported by your iOS apps and that support simply isn't there.

Until Google Drive gets a proper iOS app with streaming media support, it's impossible to recommend it as anything other than a secondary or tertiary backup service to drop extra copies of your files for extra safe keeping. If you're already a heavy Google user, especially a Google Docs user, the free service is there for the taking.

If you're brand new to cloud storage and all you want to do is offload some media and documents to free up space on your iPhone and iPad, SkyDrive's combination of free storage and low additional storage costs make it the best option.

If you need to have your docs and data available in your iOS apps, then even though it's more expensive and doesn't have an online editor built in, Dropbox is still the only way to go.

Everyone's individual needs and priorities will be different, but for right now, for most users, most of the time, especially if you don't need anything more than the free storage they offer, Dropbox remains the best cloud storage solution for iOS users. iPhones and iPads are app-centric devices, and that's still where Dropbox shines.

SkyDrive - Free - Download Now

Dropbox - Free - Download Now

Google Search - Free - Download Now

Additional resources:

• Dropbox for iPad review
• Instapaper vs. Pocket vs. Readability: Read later app for iPhone shootout
• Pandora vs. Slacker vs. Spotify: iPhone music streaming app shootout

Pad & Quill are purveyors of fine, Minnesotan, handcrafted iPhone and iPad cases, namely the Little Black Book, Contega, and Octavo. Last summer we took look at them for the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and MacBook Air, and last month we looked at the updated Contega for the new iPad. But that wasn't all P&Q had up their sleeves for 2012. Not content with their existing Baltic Birch and Spanish leather concoctions, they went back to the bindery and returned with something richer and even higher end -- the Little Luxury Book for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S and the Octavo Luxury for the new iPad.

The same great Pad & Quill designs in new, luxury leather models

The Little Luxury Book comes with all the usual, fantastic Little Black Book fit, finish, and features, only wrapped in thick, buttery mahogany brown or onyx black leather. If the original Little Black Book didn't look enough like a premium wallet to you, the Little Luxury Book certainly will (especially when you slip some money and/or credit and debit cards into the pocket).

The Octavo Luxury case likewise brings with it everything you know and love about the original Octovo, only now swathed in genuine leather the color of French roast. If the regular Octavo harkened back to an academic's moleskin, this one presents as an executive's journal or ledger.

As always, the hand-craftsmanship is spectacular from stitch to emboss.

The good

• Everything that was good about the Little Black Book and original Octavo cases
• High end, hand crafted, genuine leather

The bad

• Book-style design won't be for everyone
• Premium line will be for fewer still

Conclusion

The Pad & Quill Octavo Luxury case for iPad and Little Luxury Book for iPhone take high end, high quality accessories to the next level. If you're a fan of traditional, book-binding style iPad and iPhone cases, and you want the best, most premium finish possible, then you want these cases. But if that's what you want, you probably knew it already, right?

$119.99 - Octavo Luxury Case for iPad - Buy now

59.99 - Little Luxury Book for iPhone - Buy now

i Learn With - Planet Boing! HD is part of a series of iPad apps that combine learning with fun for toddlers and young children. This particular app in the series is great for the younger players and is the central zone for both parents and kids with a free-play environment filled with lots of bright colors, music, and interactivity.

Before jumping into the fun, bouncy, colorful world, you can customize your character's look. This includes the shape of the torso, head, feet, hands, ears, and more, as well as his or her color. You can also roll the dice for a random customization.

When making customizations, you'll discover some that aren't available. If you tap it, a window will popup tell you how to unlock the item. This typically must be done by completing levels in other apps. This is a great way to motivate your child to play these learning games, but it can also get annoying for the younger kids who don't understand why the window popped up or what it says.

The main part of this app is Planet Boing, the fun world where you take your character to bounce around and gather bubbles that release things like music, shapes, characters, colors, and more. You can drag your character around the world with your finger or flick the character and watch him or her fly and bounce around.

In addition to interacting with your character in Planet Boing, you can also interact with different elements in the world, like trees and flowers, by tapping on them. You can also add more bubbles to the screen by tapping on the magic chest.

One of the fun elements of Planet Boing, is that if you have the new iPad or an iPad 2, you can use the front-facing camera to bring the fun to your world. My daughter thinks this is just hilarious.

In the Parents Center, you can see how your child is progressing in the other "i Learn with" apps and see recommendations of which apps you should get next. (Must register for a free account). These other apps are only $0.99 each and offer a lot of fun, educational content. I'll briefly share some features of i Learn With Boing: Ice Land Adventures! with you.

i Learn With Boing: Ice Land Adventures!

i Learn With Boing: Ice Land Adventures! has three main mini-games: Letters, Phonics, and Words.

In the Letters game, you have to pick the polar bear that's holding the letter shown at the bottom of the slide and guide him down the slide to help him collect all the ice cream balls.

In the Phonics game, you are given a sound, like "ma", and one letter of that sound. It's your job to fling your letter at the penguin that has the other letter on his hat. For example, if you are given the letter "a" and the sound "ma", your goal is to use the slingshot to hit a penguin with the "m_" on his hat.

In the Words game, you are given a word with a blank spot above each letter of the word. This word is actually on the back of a whale, and there are seals swimming in the water with a letter on each of their hats. It's your job to drag the penguins to their corresponding spots on the whale. When you get it right, the whale jumps up in excitement.

The Good

• Colorful
• Musical
• Fun
• Parents section is helpful for tracking kid's learning

The Bad

• Too much nagging to register and download other apps
• The location of the register button on the home screen is in the same location as the home button on the other screens. Young children like to push buttons over and over again, and my daughter hits the home button several times to go back to the home screen, but ends up at the register screen and gets frustrated.

The Conclusion

At only 20 months old, my daughter really loves this app. It may seem boring to the average adult, but for a young toddler, bouncing characters around on the screen and seeing bursts of color and shapes provides endless entertainment. She's still a little to young for the educational apps in the series, but I'm sure she will love them once she gets a little older, especially since she's already familiar with the characters.

i Learn With - Planet Boing!, Free - Download Now

i Learn With Boing: Ice Land Adventures!, $0.99 - Download Now

The Ness is a both a gorgeous and effective way to find places to eat near you

The Ness Dining Guide for iPhone is a gorgeous way to discover restaurants and cafes that you'll like. The Ness will make recommendations based on the ratings you've given to various places. You can also read reviews, add reviews of your own, and browse photos from Instagram that are matched with the places in Ness.

The first time you launch Ness, you will be asked to rate a bunch of places near you. You must give 4 or 5 stars to at least 10 locations before Ness has enough information to start giving recommendations.

The search screen is the main screen on Ness -- and boy is it beautiful! It features six pages, each with six categories. Each category is represented by a tall, gorgeous, and vibrant mouthwatering photo. You can tap on a category or type into the search bar in the center. The results page uses the photo for that category in the background and has the results overlaid on top of it. Each result shows its star rating and how far away it is from you.

Tapping on the place is where you'll find more information like contact info, your rating, reviews of "what's good" and "what's bad", how many times it's been mentioned on Facebook or Twitter, and a photo gallery of photos from Instagram that are matched with the place.

From the side panel, you can refine your personalization by rating more places, check out where your friends are going from the newsfeed, edit your profile, add friends, and look up your saved places. Unfortunately, The Ness doesn't let you connect with Twitter, so you can only add friends from Facebook, or via text message or email.

The Good

• Gorgeous, mouthwatering photography
• Makes recommends based on what you do and don't like
• Share favorite locations with friends
• Views photos from Instagram that are matched with the places on Ness
• The more you use it, the smarter it gets
• Connect with Facebook and Foursquare

The Bad

• Can't connect with Twitter

The Conclusion

You're probably sick of me saying it, but The Ness is beautiful! With these types of apps, the experience improves as more users jump on board, so please, pick this one up!

Free - Download Now

With OmniGraphSketcher for iPad you can create stunning, impressive graphs and charts with ease

OmniGraphSketcher is an iPad app that makes it easy to create gorgeous and precise graphs with lines, curves, shaded regions, and more. Instead of using specific equations, like a graphing calculator, OmniGraphSketcher let's you use multitouch gestures to chart your points and draw cuves and bar graphs.

OmniGraphSketcher comes with four sample documents so that you can easily see how they are created or just manipulate them as your own. You can use these as templates be duplicating the document you want to use before editing it.

There is also a fifth document that works like a tutorial and explains the different tools included with OnmiGraphSketcher and how to use them.

To create a text label, just double tap the screen. You can edit the font type, size, color, and choose the exact (x, y)-coordinates for the label.

To create a line, select that drawing tool and tap the screen. This will place a marker for your first point. You can drag this around precisely where you want it to be -- the exact (x, y)-coordinates will pop up as you drag around the marker and it will also snap to coordinates that are marked on your axes. Once you have it placed where you want, tap the location you want your second point to appear and adjust it like you did the first time. You can do this as many times as you want. When you're ready for the lines to be drawn, tap the last marker and the dotted lines become solid and each of the point markers become actual points.

An alternative method to selecting specific points to plot is to simply freehand the curve and OmniGraphSketcher will smooth it out into a beautifully for you. This is great for the times when precision is not important, but when want to use your graph to explain a concept or general idea.

The line style can be changed to be linear or curved and you can change it from being a solid line to one of the multiple dotted line styles. You can also adjust the thickness, and color, and whether there are arrows at the ends. You can make similar adjustments to the points as well as enter their exact (x, y)-coordinates. This helpful for those times when you may be plotting points that are hard to precisely drag to. For example, if you wanted to plot the point (2, 47.5) when the range of your y-axis is 0 to 1000.

Speaking of the x and y-axis, you can adjust their ranges by simply double-tapping the first or last number on the line and typing in what you want to change it to. You can also drag an axis after selecting it to get the same result. When an axis is selected you can also adjust the tick mark spacing.

In addition to creating curves and lines, you can also make bar graphs with OmniGraphSketcher -- and it's super easy. After plotting your points, simply choose the option that looks like a bar graph from the point's option menu. You can choose either horizontal or vertical bars and adjust their thickness and color.

To shade a region of your graph, tap the shading tool. Then tap a boundary point of the desired region and drag your finger to another boundary point, pause, and drag to the next one. Once you've selected the desired location, release your finger to complete the shading. OmniGraphSketcher lets you adjust the the color and opacity of the shaded regions.

If you're creative with your use of lines, curves, and dots, you can also use OmniGraphSketcher to sketch piecewise functions. As a math instructor, this excites me because this is very difficult to do with traditional graphing calculator apps and programs. No longer will I be hand-drawing these types of graphs for quizzes and exams -- I'll create them with OmniGraphSketcher instead!

The Good

• Beautiful
• Easy and intuitive to use
• Different line and point styles
• Create horizontal or vertical bar graphs
• Freehand sketching
• Sketch piecewise functions
• Adjust x and y axes
• Import from iDisk or WebDAV
• Share to email, photos, iDisk, WebDAV, iTunes
• Send to another app as a graph, PDF, or PNG (including Dropbox)

The Bad

• No native DropBox support

The Conclusion

I'm not going to lie, when I first picked up OmniGraphSketcher, I was a bit disappointed. I wanted the ability to graph specific equations. But the more time I spent with OmniGraphSketcher, the more I liked it and appreciated it's value of not also playing the role of a graphing calculator. It's a very simple-to-use and gorgeous app that creates very impressive graphs and charts. You may not be able to graph complicated equations, but that's ok -- there's graphing calculators for that.

$14.99 - Download Now

Okay, this one got me right in my geek heart. An iPhone case with Han Solo on the back. Frozen in carbonite. Just like in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. I can't really do a proper review of this iPhone case. At least the case part. Don't get me wrong, it's serviceable enough -- a slim, well fashioned black skin case. But it's nothing more than that. And why should it be? This case is all about Solo.

High resolution, photo-realistic printing makes carbonite Han Solo almost look 3D (he's not)

The high resolution Han Solo pictures dominates the Han Solo Groovin in Carbonite - Star Wars Parody Case for iPhone. It's photo-realistic and it looks great. It looks so good, in fact, you might think it's a carving. You might think it's 3D. It isn't. It's just a picture. Yet it's still impressive. Most impressive.

It's available on Etsy from iCaseSeraSera and comes with black, white, or clear sides. The Han Solo image is printed onto an aluminum insert that fits the back of the molded plastic case. The current version features carbonite Han Solo rocking out to an iPhone. (That's one of the things I like best about Etsy -- small batch products can be updated frequently and so there's always something fresh and new.)

Beyond the Han Solo, you have a fairly typical, slim, skin case

The good

• Perfect for Star Wars geeks

The bad

• Won't appeal to non-Star Wars geeks

Conclusion

If you're an iPhone user and a total Star Wars geek, check out the Han Solo Groovin in Carbonite - Star Wars Parody Case for iPhone.

You love it.

I know.

17.99 - Order now

The Daily was the very first custom daily news app created for the iPad back in 2011, and now you can get all that great content on your iPhone. The Daily for iPhone is beautiful and extremely easy to use app for Newsstand -- no fluff or complicated UI's to distract from reading your news!

If already have a subscription to The Daily for the iPad, your subscription will carry over the iPhone for no additional cost. A subscription to The Daily is $1.99/mo or $19.99/yr. If you don't want to pay for the subscription, you will still have access to great, daily content, just not all content.

When browsing through The Daily, swiping left and right will switch between categories and swiping up and down will scroll through the stories in that category. The categories include news, business, gossip, opinion, arts & life, apps & tech, sports, video, and pictures.

To read a story, view a photo, or watch a video, you simply tap on it. The Daily include 3 different font sizes that can be changed while reading each post. You can also read comments and leave a comment of your own. For stories you want to share with your friends, you can easily send them to Facebook, Twitter, or email with just the tap of a button

This really is The Daily in a nutshell. It's super easy to use and very basic -- which is a good thing.

The Good

• Swipe up and down to scroll through stories in a category
• Swipe left and right to switch between categories
• multi-panel UI to quickly jump to a category
• Read and leave comments to stories
• Beautiful photos
• Videos
• 3 different font sizes
• Share to email, Facebook or Twitter

The Bad

• I have no clue why "Switch to New Issue" is displayed. Tapping it does nothing.

The Conclusion

The Daily is a great news app for the iPhone with great journalism. If you don't want to sign up for a subscription, you'll still have access to great, free daily content. Not only is the content great, but the UI is as well. The Daily found a great balance between being visually appealing, simple to use, and efficient.

Free - Download Now

Apple's iPhone 4S has been on the market for 6 months already and the Samsung Galaxy S III doesn't even hit store shelves until the end of May. Yet the iPhone 4S remains the best selling handset in the world and the Galaxy S III claims to be the best handset on the planet, period, so let's put them head-to-head, Mobile Nations style.

The Galaxy S III is curved and plastic, the iPhone square, glass, and steel

(Technically Phil is using a Verizon iPhone 4 in the video, but lack of a SIM-card tray aside, it's physically identical to an iPhone 4S, and that's the phone we'll be talking about here in the text).

It's immediately obvious just how much bigger the Samsung Galaxy S III is, with a whopping 4.8-inch, SAMOLED PenTile screen. The Galaxy S III is so big, it looks like you could hollow it out and use it as an iPhone case. For people who don't have a tablet, this is as close as you can get without become a... Galaxy Note. On the downside, some (yours truly included), far prefer the color and pixel perfection of a non-PenTile iPhone- or HTC One X-style LCD LED display.

4.8-inches of Samsung SAMOLED PenTile display vs. 3.5-inches of Apple Retina LCD

Unfortunately, Samsung still seems to be clinging to their Hasbro-style plastic casings, which are frankly terrible compared to the glass and stainless steel feeling of the iPhone, not to mention the unearthly good plastics Nokia and HTC have been using these days.

The software side is a bit of a mixed bag for the Galaxy S III as well, with the latest version of Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich all loaded up, but hidden beneath Samsung's TouchWiz. While intended to give a more consumer-friendly (i.e. Apple-like) look and feel, it also gives a slightly out-dated, Gingerbread-esque vibe to overall experience. Pro users will no doubt prefer stock (and will no doubt flash to that, or something close to it, at their earliest opportunity). The rest includes some interesting, innovative features like talk to wake, accelerometer switch from texting to talking, as well as versions of Siri and iTunes Match once again cloned directly from Apple's 2011 keynote.

The iPhone 4S is still running iOS 5.1, which is either familiar and comfortable, or stale and boring depending on your take.

Samsung likens their Galaxy to a river stone in the rain; the iPhone is an homage to classic Braun and Leica

The bottom line, however, remains the same -- Samsung makes fantastic, futuristic, totally uninspiring devices. They can spin out specs so impressive they literally make your nose bleed, but they don't really know how to innovate. Every atom and pixel just sort of reminds you of something you've seen before from Apple or Nokia or someone else. They're mechanics more than artists. Of course, that matters more to gadget divas than to mainstream consumers. That's why Samsung sells tens of millions of these big boys, and why -- like Apple -- they're actually profitable.

Still, this time around I think HTC stole a step on Samsung. The One X just looks and feels like a better next generation Android phone. (I've argued the Nexus One was far better for it's time than either the Nexus S or Galaxy Nexus as well -- Nexus one was a look ahead to what Android could be, Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus were both summations of what Android currently was.)

Speaking of which, neither the Galaxy S III nor the One X are Nexus devices, however, so if/when Google announces Android Jellybean, it might well be a race to see who gets it first... or last... or never.)

Either way, we're going to have to wait until June to see iOS 6, and likely October to see the iPhone 5,1. Right now the new Androids are hitting the market against the old iPhone, which is a good bit of counter-programming. The more interesting war will be fought this fall, and Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 might just make it a 4 way race this time.

As always, watch the video, check out the pictures, and let us know what you think.

Samsung's newness might give it an edge for now, but Apple's 2012 iPhone is still 6 months away...

Samsung has announced their next generation flagship Android phone, and as expected it's the Galaxy S III (no, they didn't go with "the new Galaxy"). Android Central is covering everything live from London and they've already gone over all the big stuff. On the hardware, Alex Dobie says:

The Samsung Galaxy S III is perhaps best summarized with three S’s -- sleek, sexy and shiny. It’s available in two colors -- pebble blue and pearl white, and both versions feature the same glossy plastic finish with a metallic trim around the side. It’s a fingerprint magnet to be sure, but the Galaxy S III certainly isn’t lacking star quality -- it looks and feels like a high-end device, and Samsung’s made a clean break with some of its older design language in this new flagship product.

Sadly, it doesn't look like they upgraded the plastic of their casing to match the Nokia Lumia 900 or HTC One X, which means I'm still calling Hasbro on the feel. However, everything else looks significantly great. As for the software:

The new design language is most evident in the new TouchWiz lockscreen, which ripples like a pool of water when activated. Audio cues, too, take on a more naturalistic approach, with droplet sounds punctuating UI interactions like menu selections and button presses.

Also, the TouchWiz launcher has been re-vamped, but the changes are largely cosmetic -- different icons, different chrome, but functionally very similar to the way TouchWiz’d ICS operates on the Galaxy S II. You’ve got seven home screens by default, customizable with the usual plethora of bright, vivid widgets (yep, TouchWiz is colorful as always). There’s a neat 3D transition effect when jumping from panel to panel, and thanks to the bleeding edge hardware inside the phone, all this visual finery flows off the screen at a buttery-smooth frame rate.

Android Central has literally a ton more coverage, including a monstrous gallery and a bunch of video.

• Samsung Galaxy S III gallery
• Samsung Galaxy S III software hands-on
• Samsung Galaxy S III hardware hands-on
• Live in London: Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012!
• Samsung Galaxy S III specs

Head on over there now, drink it all in, and then come back here and let us know what you think. Will the Galaxy S III slow down iPhone 4S sales in the short term? Will it force Apple to raise the bar even higher for the iPhone 5?

InstaGamer is a great companion to Instagram that lets you play the traditional matching game with photos from Instagram

InstaGamer is a fun iPhone and iPad game that's just like the classic matching game, only the things being matched are instagram photos. You can play with photos from the popular feed, specific tags, your own feed or photos, or photos you've liked.

Before you play a game, you must select which photo set you want to play from. The popular and featured sets come with InstaGamer for free. The featured set lets you choose from a list of popular tags.

In exchange for $0.99 as an in-app purchase, you can play with photos from your feed (the people you follow), your photos, photos you liked, or search for a specific tag.

After you've chosen your set, InstaGamer to choose 20 random photos from that set. Once it's done, you can scroll through all the photos before tapping play. This is probably a good idea so that you're familiar with the photos before starting the game. It might be helpful to know if there's any similar looking photos. Not to mention, it's a great way to look at Instagram photos!

Each game is a four by five grid with two copies of each of the 10 photos and you simply tap the squares to flip over the photos. You choose photos in groups of two, and if they don't match, both of them flip back over. When a match is made, those photos permanently stay facing up. Once all the photos are matched up, you've won!

At the end of each game, you are given a score somewhere between 0 and 1. Specifically, this number is 10 (the number of pairs) divided by the number of tries it took you to win. So the closer you are to 1, the better you did. As you play more games, you'll see your scores charted on a graph so you can see if you're improving. You'll also be given a quote that is somehow related to you score. For example: "What's got nothing on you!", "Nice Work!", and "A honeybee can fly at 15 mph" are all quotes that I've seen.

The Good

• Very fun
• Neat sounds
• Can access popular and featured sets for free
• Looks amazing
• Full version is only $0.99

The Bad

• Doesn't support landscape orientation

The Conclusion

InstaGamer is a great twist to the classic matching game. Using you and your friend's photos makes the game much more interesting and the little words of encouragement make you want to play over and over again. Although you have to spend $1 play with photos from your feed, it's worth that $1.

Free - Download Now

Squiggles! for iPad is an adorable children's game that instructs the child user to draw squiggles on pictures so that they can come to life. For example, after drawing squiggles behind a few cars and tapping "GO", the squiggles will act as springs that push the cars across the screen -- with sound effects and all.

Squiggles! includes an intro video of a little monkey and bunny explaining what a squiggle is, how they can be large, small, colorful and be used to make spaghetti, clouds, cotton candy, or anything to make pictures come alive.

There are six different pictures included with Squiggles! In the one shown above, you are supposed to draw cotton candy for the kids. (In the screenshot, the cotton candy has already been drawn in). You can do it very simple with just some little squiggles on the sticks, or you can get more detailed and add even more to the scene. There's no limit on the creativity. Tapping go on this picture will make the kids float up in the air with their cotton candy.

The Squiggles! includes 4 different drawing mediums and 10 colors. You can also delete all your squiggles at once with just the tap of a button and save your drawings to your Squiggles! gallery. In addition to drawing, Squiggles! also allows user to add cute stickers to their pictures.

The Parental Zone is where you'll find the Squiggles Gallery, options, and ability to share pictures to Facebook, Twitter, email, or pinter.

As if the really fun pictures that come to life wasn't enough, Squiggle's also includes a book featuring Bobu and Miku from the intro video. It's interactive and incorporates squiggles into the story. You can choose to have the book read to you or to read it yourself. If you choose to have it read to you, you still have to turn the page. This is great for kids who want to interact with the story before turning the page, but I wish there was a way to have the pages automatically turn for the younger kids or to share with Apple TV.

The Good

• Pictures come to life with squiggles
• Six different pictures
• Bold, bright, and colorful
• Parental Zone lets you share pictures with Twitter, Facebook, and more
• Intro video is very cute
• Includes a fun book

The Bad

• "Read to Me" book feature doesn't have an option for automatically turning pages

The Conclusion

I'm just going to come right and say that Squiggles! shouldn't be free. I'd easily drop $5 on it for my daughter. It's very fun and exciting for kids to see their drawing come to life. Combined with the video and book, Squiggles! is a must-have iPad app for children.

Free - Download Now

The popular music streaming service Spotify has updated their app with proper iPad support. Now you can enjoying millions of songs and discover and share music on your iPad's larger screen. The iPad version isn't simply a big version it's iPhone counterpart either -- it's optimized to take advantage of the larger screen and looks amazing.

A Spotify premium subscription is needed to use the service on the iPhone or iPad, but you can try it out for free for 48 hours -- and can be extended to 30 days. The free trial didn't work for me the first time I logged in, but once I logged out and back in, it worked like charm.

On the What's New tab, you'll see a bunch of album artwork along the top that can be scrolled though. These are new songs and can be played instantly. As you scroll through the page, you'll discover trending playlists and top tracks among friends, new releases, and trending playlists and top tracks near you.

Tapping any of the music or playlists will slide out a panel on the right that lets you find out more about it and stream it if you wish.

If you're listening to music, you'll see the "now playing" toolbar at the bottom of every screen. You can also blow this up to full screen so that you can view the album artwork nice and big and in all its glory.

From the Playlists tab, you can access playlists that you have set up on iTunes and playlists you've created with Spotify. Selecting a playlist will also slide out the window on the right and display a collage of artwork of songs that appear in the playlist as well as a lists of the songs in the playlist.

The People tab is where you go to see what your friends are listening to. If you connect Spotify with Facebook, all your Facebook friends who use Spotify will automatically show up in your list. Tapping on a friend will again slide out the column on the right and display your friend's top tracks, top artists, and published playlists.

In Settings, you can enable offline mode, switch to a private session (which expires after 6 hours of inactivity), choose whether you want to show what you listen on Facebook, and more.

The Good

• Clean, pretty, and easy to use UI
• Multiple panels are very well implemented
• Lots of album artwork
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The Bad

• Must have a premium subscription to use Spotify mobile. No free radio available.

The Conclusion

Spotify did a fantastic job with this app. There is a sense of uniformity when using it and the multi-panel design is very implemented. My only issue is that if you don't have a premium subscription, the app is completely useless. Spotify really should include free radio in their mobile apps.

Free - Download Now

Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify are three of the most popular streaming apps available. But which one is the best option for iPhone users?

While iTunes is the undisputed king of digital music, it doesn't offer streaming or subscription services, leaving the field wide open for a wide variety of contenders, including Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify. That's important because not everyone wants to buy their music. Some iPhone users want more variety and a better way to discover new music, or simply re-discover old favorites. That's because music is personal. It has to suit both our general tastes and our mood at the moment. A good streaming music app needs to reflect this. It needs to have music available that we like, when we like, and the better it does that job, the better it is.

Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify each have their own unique take on streaming music, but which one does it best?

Pandora vs. Slacker. vs. Spotify: User interface and experience

When it comes to streaming music, users want to find what they want to listen to easily and start listening quickly. If you have to dig through tons of menus or spend lots of time figuring out how to find music, you're just as soon switch to something else. It needs to be accessible and even better -- customizable.

Pandora is extremely easy to navigate and use but doesn't have a ton of options. Pick from a station, like or dislike items, and create stations from a track or artist. Other than that, functionality is pretty limited.

Pandora's layout is relatively straight forward and simple. The first tab will aggregate all the stations you've listened to and a "quick mix" that will play a mix of your stations. You can tap the edit button and easily remove anything you don't want. The next tab allows you to add new stations. You can search by either artist or genre. Tapping on a station or artist will instantly start streaming that content. It will also add that station to your playlist tab.

The bookmarks tab does exactly what you'd expect -- it allows you to bookmark tracks and artists. This feature is handy if you want to keep lists of tracks for future purchase (you can jump straight into iTunes from Pandora to buy content). While Pandora doesn't allow you to go back and stream that exact track, you can create a station based on that artist or track. This is great for fine tuning the Pandora app to play content you like. Make sure when listening to tracks that you use the thumbs up and thumbs down feature to filter in content you're more likely to enjoy and filter out things you don't like.

The free version of Slacker shows ads along the bottom. Paid users won't see these. The main menu is where all your content will be located which makes the app extremely easy to navigate through. Overall, it flows together nicely.

Upon launching Slacker you get a home page that allows you to browse some pre-defined stations or create your own custom stations. Premium users will also have the option of creating custom playlists (that's a feature Pandora does not offer in their iPhone app).

After choosing a station or creating a custom station, you can like or dislike songs or artists just as you can with Pandora. When disliking a track, you can either dislike just a specific song or the artist in general. So if you detest Rihanna in all forms, just block her from ever showing up for you in Slacker again.

Slacker also gives you the ability to check out what artists and tracks are featured on a station. Tapping into a station allows you to view info on the station, check out the artists, and check out the song list. Tapping the play button next to the station name will instantly start streaming that station. Overall, the entire layout of Slacker flows nicely. There aren't tons of menus to navigate and all of your presets and content are accessible via the main page.

While Spotify is the most pleasing to the eye, the functionality is still rather limited. You can't search by genre or listen to pre-populated stations. You'll need to create playlists to get going.

Spotify for iPhone is quite a bit different when it comes to overall design and the manner in which you interact with your content. The main homepage shows you a slider of top tracks and new releases with news underneath. The first tab shows any playlists you've created as well as your inbox, starred, and local tracks (we will get more into these later). The next tab allows you to search for artists, tracks, and albums. Once you find what you're looking for you can either stream it, add it to a playlist, or star it to play it later.

Spotify also integrates Facebook to allow you to view what your friends are listening to under the Friends tab. You can, of course, disable this feature (if, like some of the iMore staff, you don't want your friends to know you secretly listen to the Spice Girls...)

I actually prefer Spotify's layout and interface to the others but there's one big downside -- you can't browse genres. If you don't know what you're looking for or find things in "what's new" or "what's hot", there's pretty much no other way to find music from the iPhone app. This doesn't make for a great experience.

Between the three, Pandora is somewhat plain and Spotify lacks the ability to find music productively. Slacker is a nice middle ground. It doesn't overwhelm you. It might look a bit busy at first but after using it, everything just flows nicely together.

When it comes to user interface and experience, Slacker takes the prize.

Pandora vs. Slacker. vs. Spotify: Content

Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify all focus on music, yet present content in very different ways. If you want a random selection and don't care for playlists, Pandora provides that. But if you want to customize your listening experience right from the start, Spotify and Slacker are the best bets.

Pandora for iPhone has tons of presets to choose from when it comes to radio stations. But if you want to be able to customize your listening experience, there aren't many controls to help you do so other than liking or disliking tracks and hoping it'll play more of what you like.

Pandora at its core is an online radio streaming service. You can choose the types of music you like as well as like and dislike individual songs or artists. If you come across and artist or song you really like, you can listen to a mix based on that song. What Pandora doesn't do is give you the option to add individual songs to playlists and make your own. It attempts to learn what you like by the ratings you give content. Sometimes those ratings aren't so accurate.

If you want a more radio-like experience and don't want to put too much work into finding and playing content, Pandora is great. Beyond that, it's lacking features even for premium users.

Slacker for iPhone comes equipped with radio stations just like Pandora. You can also like or dislike artists or tracks. Paid users can also favorite tracks to play instantly later or cache stations for offline playback as long as you've got storage room on your iPhone.

Slacker is simliar to Pandora from the standpoint that you browse through stations and like or dislike artists and songs. From there, Slacker will show you custom content based on your own tastes. You can like and favorite songs which will show up under your favorites section off of the main menu. If you are a premium subscriber, you'll be able to listen to songs on demand.

Slacker allows offline streaming of up to 25 stations at a time (as long as you have room on your iPhone to store the content). You'll need to be a plus or premium member, but you'll be able to listen to your favorite stations without using up your data plan. To access stations you've saved for offline playing, just select the cached content section on the main menu and you're good to go.

Spotify for iPhone doesn't have presets built-in. You'll need to add playlists and customize your experience. You can actually only access Spotify from your iPhone if you're a premium subscriber. This may be a road block for users who don't necessarily wants to pay to stream.

Spotify concentrates on a more tailored experience. When it comes to the iPhone app, you can either search for content to play one song or album at a time, or build playlists. There are no stations to weed through or genres to choose from. This may be a deal-breaker for users who want the ability to browse music instead of having to find something specific. There are many times I just want to start playing music and don't really know exactly what I want to listen to. I just know what type of music I want to listen to.

If you'll only be using your iPhone to stream, Slacker will provide you with the best content selection and ways to sort and listen offline. While they don't have custom playlists, you can favorite songs you hear that you like and listen to and access them under your favorites tab on the main menu.

When it comes to content, Slacker wins.

Pandora vs. Slacker. vs. Spotify: Cross-platform syncing & streaming

If you plan on listening not only on your iPhone but on your computer or other mobile device, such as an iPad, you may want to consider what each service offers on other platforms, especially if you're contemplating a premium membership.

Pandora One gives you access to Pandora's desktop application for Mac and Windows. While it's better than web-based streaming, it's very minimal and nothing to get too excited about.

Pandora has a wide array of mobile apps available for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. You can also listen online. When you sign into your account all your information and saved content will be there.

Pandora One is Pandora's premium subscription model. It gives you access to the desktop application for Mac or Windows. The desktop app really isn't anything to get excited about and s quite dull. There's not much to interact with and it doesn't offer you any particular benefits over using the web-based player.

Slacker doesn't have a native Mac or Windows application but you can stream directly from the website. Paid users will not see any ads after logging in.

Slacker also has applications for most platforms and a few more than Pandora offers, namely a native iPad client. They also offer support for Windows Phone 7, Nokia, Palm, BlackBerry, Android, and many more. Slacker will save all your content under your login and it will be there regardless what app or platform you sign in to.

Slacker does not have a Mac or Windows app but you can, of course, stream straight from their website.

Spotify for Mac is by far the best way to enjoy streaming to your computer. If you spend a lot of time on your computer and need a good client, Spotify is what you want.

Spotify also supports popular platforms such as Windows Phone, Android, BlackBerry, and iPad.

While I have an issue with Spotify's lack of a search feature on the iPhone, it makes up for that with the Mac and Windows app. It's by far the best desktop app of the three (especially considering Slacker doesn't even have one). You can view popular playlists, star tracks, see what's popular in your area, and monitor what your friends are listening to.

My favorite feature of Spotify's desktop app is the ability to wirelessly sync your starred tracks and playlists whenever your iPhone is on the same Wi-Fi network as your desktop computer. I frequently use this feature when I'm listening to music in the office or at home. I'll star music that I particularly like and have my iPhone set up to download starred tracks for offline use. I launch Spotify while on my network, the desktop app recognizes it instantly, downloads any changes, and I get in my car and start listening without having to worry about using my data (offline mode requires premium subscription).

You can also use the Spotify desktop client to sync local tracks from your computer. It'll pull everything in from your music library. While I don't typically use this service, it will be a nice addition for users who don't have to have to manage music in two separate apps. Spotify can handle it all.

When it comes to cross-platform support, Spotify takes the win due to their robust Mac and Windows app. When they launch their anticipated iPad app, it'll just be that much better. The iPad app is available now.

Pandora vs. Slacker. vs. Spotify: Audio quality

One of the most important aspects of listening to music for many is how good it sounds. There's no exception when it comes to streaming content. It's really hard to give a consistent rating considering many things can influence the actual rate at which music stream, such as your internet connection and whether or not a specific track is even available in a higher quality format.

Pandora streams at at average rate of around 64kbps for free listeners on the web, and at 192kbps for premium subscribers. They make no guarantee about mobile listeners, such as iPhone users, considering so many external factors can affect the bit rate.

Slacker doesn't have much information on the exact rate at which they are streaming but they do say that regardless of what platform you are streaming on, you should experience "near-cd quality" audio.

Spotify is a bit better at explaining what they stream. Premium users can get up to 320kbps on the desktop app and within the iPhone app. Of course, actual quality may vary given internet connection and other variables. They say the typical average and free users usually get around 160kbps.

Spotify wins when it comes to audio quality.

Pandora vs. Slacker. vs. Spotify: Pricing & features

While content is super important, so is the price you have to pay for it. While Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify all have a free ad-supported version, they also all offer premium subscriptions.

Pandora's premium service, Pandora One, weighs in at $36 a year or $3.99 per month. So if you can buy yearly, you'll get a bit of a discount. Pandora One will get you the following additions over the free version:

• Higher quality streaming - 192K bits per second
• Removal of ads
• Unlimited skips per day (but you'll still be limited to 6 skips per hour due to licensing issues)
• Access to the desktop player
• Extended timeout (listen up to 5 hours while not by your computer or iPhone)
• Custom skins

Slacker has 2 subcription models to choose from. The $3.99/month plus subscription will get you the following over the free version:

• No ads
• Unlimited song skips
• Mobile station caching (offline playing)
• ABC news
• ESPN radio

The $9.99/month premium subscription will get you everything listed above as well as the following:

• Songs on demand
• Albums on demand
• Single artist stations
• Caching of albums and playlists
• Create custom playlists

Spotify also has two subscription models outside of their freemium model but we're only going to cover the $9.99/month version because, sadly, that's the only version that will even allow you to stream to your iPhone. There is a 48 hour free trial if you'd like to check it out first. Just download the app to activate your trial.

• Manage your local MP3s
• Take your music abroad
• Artist radio
• No ads
• Play local files on your mobile device
• Offline mode on your desktop & mobile
• Enhanced sound quality & content

Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify all provide access to play content through your home or office systems such as Sonos. They're all widely accepted and you shouldn't run into issues with any of them when it comes to a lot of the popular music systems.

When it comes to price, Slacker offers the most for only $4/month but Spotify offers much more in their $9.99/month package. You'll just have to weigh out what you need and what services you'll really use. Go with the one that has a better value for you personally.

When it comes to cost, it's a tie between Slacker and Spotify.

Pandora vs. Slacker. vs. Spotify: Conclusion

Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify all offer streaming experiences in very different ways. I can't help but feel that Pandora is lacking when it comes to functionality and customization. I know many users just want to listen and go, but access to previously listened to songs and stations would be a welcome addition.

Slacker provides a nice streaming service for free with an easy to maneuver through interface. You can even get offline caching for only $4/month. That's a very sought after feature for many users who want to be more conservative with their carrier data. You won't get it cheaper than you do with Slacker.

Spotify is the new kid on the block but packs a punch. While I think they have the best desktop experience of all three, we're talking iPhone app here. And sadly, that's lacking. There is no way to browse for and discover music. That's a deal-breaker for me. So is having to pay $9.99/month just to use the iPhone app. If Spotify could fix these two issues by beefing up the iPhone app and giving iPhone users access either for free (ad-based) or at a cheaper rate, they'd be the best choice, hands down.

Only one of these apps seems to be a happy medium between discovering and customizing the streaming experience, and that's Slacker. It'll suit most users needs and offers the flexibility most users need.

Slacker is the best streaming app for iPhone.

Pandora - Free - Download Now

Slacker - Free - Download Now

Spotify - Free - Download Now

Since Instagram still has no official iPad app of their own, Iris App is a fantastic alterative

Instagram may not have a native app available on the iPad, but Iris App is here to fill that void. You may not be able to upload photos to the popular photo sharing service, but Iris App does allow you to browse your feed, featured photos, "like" and comment photos, and more.

Along the left hand side, you'll see a thin column that give access to your main feed, featured photos, your profile, search, and the photos you've liked.

Your home feed is displayed as a grid of polaroids. Each Polaroid shows who's photo it is and the number of likes and comments. These images are nice and big and the design is very clean looking. If you want to "like" the photo, just double tap! You can also tap the heart and a sidebar on the right will slide out that lists all the users who have liked the photo, links to their profiles, and the option to "like" the photo. Tapping the speech bubble is very similar, except for comments. If available, you can also view the photo's location on a map.

Tapping on a photo will slide a larger version of the polaroid up from the bottom of the screen that looks exactly the same with the addition of an excerpt of the caption. Which leads me to my biggest disappointment -- if the caption is more than about 40 characters, the only way to view the caption is in the comment view. I think captions should be viewable from the polaroid/thumbnail view. I like to see caption as I casually scroll and browse through my feed.

If you tap on a user's avatar, you'll be taken to their profile. Along the top, you see their name, bio, number of followers and following, a button to follow/unfollow, a "thumbs-up" to recommend the user via email, and a button that lets you view all the user's photos on a map.

The photos in profile mode are displayed much smaller than on your main feed -- there is 4 photos per row vs. two photos per row. But there's a trigger on the bottom of the sidebar that lets you switch to the larger, more detailed thumbnails if you prefer.

The featured photos and liked photos pages also feature these smaller thumbnails, but oddly, there is no option to view them larger.

The Good

• Pretty
• Browse main feed, featured photos, profiles, and favorites
• Like and comment on photos
• Search for users and tags

The Bad

• Can't tap tags
• Can't change thumbnail size for main feed, featured tab, or favorites tab (main feed is big, featured and favorites are small)

The Conclusion

I often use Instagram to browse through photos even when I'm not sharing my own photos and have always longed for an iPad version. Given the fact that Facebook now owns Instagram and that the Facebook iPad app took ages to release, I'm not expecting an official Instagram iPad app anytime soon. I'm just glad to have Iris App as a fantastic alternative.

$1.99 - Download Now

Contacts Journal is a CRM (contacts relationship management) app for your iPhone and iPad. It allows you to log information about your contacts, add to-dos associated with them, and even attach documents to specific contacts. You can add contacts from the built in Contacts app (and keep information in sync between the two apps), or add contacts separately that you don't want in your main Contacts app.

Contacts Journal is available for the iPhone and iPad (separate purchases), but all screenshots in this review will be from an iPhone. Both versions have the exact same features.

Adding contacts to Contacts Journal is very easy. You just tap the plus sign and either manually add a contact, or select some or all of all the people stored in the built-in Contacts app. When you add contacts that were already stored on your iPhone or iPad, Contacts Journal and Contacts will stay in sync.

The contact screen shows the photo you have stored for that person as well as buttons to call, message, or email that contact from directly within the app. You will also find buttons that cycle between logs, to-do's, and documents that you have associated with that individual. To add an entry or document, simply tap the plus sign.

When adding a to-do, you can choose to sync it with the built-in Calendar app and also to receive a reminder notification. You can also choose specific locations for your logs and to-do's.

The easiest way to add a document to a contact is to browse to the document from somewhere else on your iPad, like email or Dropbox, and "Open In" Contacts Journal. You will immediately be prompted to select a contact to attach the document to. The other option is to directly send a document from your computer to the app by connecting both devices to the same Wi-Fi network and typing a special URL into your browser.

The Logs and To-do tabs are simply filled their respective lists. The Maps tab show a map filled with green, red, and purple pins. The green ones represent the addresses that you have stored for your contacts. The red pins indicated places that have to-dos, and purple pins are places associated with a log.

Contacts Journal let's you backup and sync your data with Dropbox. Unfortunately, Dropbox sync is not automatic and you must manually force Contacts Journal to send or receive data from Dropbox. When I expressed my concern about this to the folks at zaal, however, they let me know that the reason for this is because an automatic sync would take up a lot of data. The good news is that Contacts Journal does add a badge to the more tab of the app with the number of changes that I have not been synced with Dropbox. This works as a great reminder -- especially for people like me who must make sure all badges get cleared.

It's also unfortunate that Contacts Journal doesn't support iCloud sync, but the developers let me know that this is actually something they are diligently working on, but are running into issues due to bugs on Apple's end. Once those are worked out, iCloud sync will be available in an update.

The Good

• Add logs and to-tods to contacts
• Attach documents to contacts
• Create groups of contacts
• Keeps contacts synced between Contacts Journal and built-in Contacts app
• Keep devices synced with Dropbox

The Bad

• Dropbox syncing isn't automatic. Must manually send and retrieve data.
• iPad version has a boring UI
• No paid universal for iPhone and iPad version available, even though the lite version is universal

The Conclusion

Contacts Journal is a great way to manage important information about contacts, make notes about meetings and assign documents to them. I'll admit to approaching this app with a "when will I actually use this" attitude, but my thoughts changed as I started exploring the app. Personally, I will probably use Contacts Journal to manage photography clients and attach contracts and receipts to each client as well as make notes about the photo sessions and client requests.

It's somewhat annoying that the iPhone and iPad version are separate, rather expensive purchases. I'm willing to pay a premium price for premium software, but since the iPhone and iPad versions are virtually the exact same app with no UI differences, I would've liked to see a universal version available, even if at just a discounted price than if I were to buy them separately.

The good news is that there is a free, universal version of Contacts Manager available for the iPhone and iPad that restricts you to just 10 logs, to-dos, and documents. It's a great way to take the app for a test drive and see if it'll meet your needs.

$9.99, iPhone - Download Now

$9.99, iPad - Download Now

Free Lite universal version - Download Now

Here's another gem to add to your puzzle game collection - Polymer for iPhone. In Polymer, your goal is create shapes, called polymers, by sliding around the rows and columns. A polymer isn't complete unless all the ends (which are marked with black dots) are closed.

As I was playing polymer and thinking about what I was going to say in this review, my mind kept wandering into thoughts of a Rubik's Cube and the similarities it has with Polymer. I was pleased to discover Polymer's description in the App Store claims the game "combines the logic of Rubik’s Cube, the sliding mechanism of Chuzzle, and the creativity of Lego." Bingo - that's a perfect description.

Polymer has three game modes, but only one of them is initially available. It's called Two Minutes, and as its name implies, you are given two minutes to create as many polymers as you can. To create a polymer, you simply slide around the rows and columns to match up the pieces. All the black dots on the pieces must be connected for a polymer to be complete -- or, as I like to think of it, all the ends must be closed up. Larger polymers give more points.

The more you play, the more points you earn and the more features you can unlock, including additional shapes (which make game-play more difficult), and more game modes. If you're impatient, you can also unlock these features with in-app purchases, but it's not required.

The other two game modes are called One Polymer and Bombs. In One Polymer, you have as much time as you want to create the biggest, highest point-value polymer that you can. In Bombs, you must destroy the pieces that are bombs before they destroy you. Again, these game modes will be unlocked as you earn more points by playing the game, or you can unlock them for $0.99 each.

There is also an in-app store where you can purchase other color schemes for $0.99 each, or you can unlock all content, including all game modes and color schemes for $2.99.

The Good

• Very fun and challenging
• Great music and sound effects
• In-app purchases aren't required to gain content
• More color schemes available as in-app purchases

The Bad

• Two minutes is great, but would love to see longer time options

The Conclusion

Polymer is my new go-to puzzle game. It's a lot of fun and very challenging. Combined with the beautiful colors and awesome music and sound effects -- I'm hooked.

$0.99 - Download Now

One of my favorite PDF annotating apps for iPad, Remarks by Readdle, just got even better with the addition of automatic two-way Dropbox syncing. With the new update, a new, blue folder named Remarks and labeled with Dropbox will appear in your notes once you link your Dropbox account with Remarks. Any notes you create in this folder will automagically sync up with Dropbox -- you no longer have to manually send a note to Dropbox. It works like a charm.

When I compared Remarks with Noteshelf and Notability, one of my complaints about Remarks was that the handwriting wasn't all that spectacular. The good news is that this update has also brought major improvements to the handwriting, bringing it up to par with all the major iPad handwriting apps.

These two additional features are huge improvements to Remarks and I'm looking forward to even more updates. I already know that the next one is going to be pretty awesome.

As mentioned above, I have always been a huge fan of Remarks. As a math instructor, I frequently use it to handwrite solutions to quizzes, exams, and worksheets that I then make available to my students in electronic form.

Giveaway

The good folks at Readdle have given us 5 promo codes for Remarks to give away to you, our awesome readers! For a chance to win, just head on over to the iMore forums and leave a comment in the official giveaway thread letting us know why you'd like to win a copy of Remarks and what you plan to use it for.

ENTER NOW

$4.99 - Download Now

iMore’s authoritative guide to the very best, absolutely free games for your iPhone and iPod touch

Looking for even more free games for your iPhone or iPod touch? It goes without saying that the iPhone and iPod touch are a massively popular gaming platform -- and you told us they deserve more than a small mention in our top free iPhone apps post. So, we dove back into the App Store and found the very best free strategy games, free shooter games, free sports games, free casual games, free physics games, free action games, free role-playing games, and free racing games for iPhone and iPod touch!

Expect regular updates and fresh category additions down the road as well. Keep in mind that most titles listed here thrive on in-app purchases. You can absolutely play them for free, but you may get annoyed by "freemium" up-sells. Others are "lite" versions with limited content, and while they're also completely free, you'll be limited in what you can do. Still, they're a great way to test the waters and have some fun before deciding to buy (or unlock) full versions.

Without further ado, here are our favorite free games for iPhone.

• Best free strategy games for iPhone
• Best free shooter games for iPhone
• Best free sports games for iPhone
• Best free casual games for iPhone
• Best free physics games for iPhone
• Best free action games for iPhone
• Best free role-playing games for iPhone
• Best free racing games for iPhone

Best free strategy games for iPhone

Hero Academy

Hero Academy is a turn-based, multiplayer-only tactical combat game that pits cartoony armies against one another. Each side gets five actions points every turn to move their troops, kit them out with gear, cast spells and otherwise attack opposing units on the board. Each player (online, either random or a designated buddy) has one or more crystals they must defend while trying to destroy the other side's. You can also win by running your opponent out of reinforcements, as each side only gets so many of each type every game.

Hero Academy includes The Council army (humans) for free, but charges for the others, such as Dwarves, Dark Elves and The Tribe (orcs). You can also pay for fancy army-themed avatars as well as taunts to make your soldiers jeer after a turn.

• Download now

Spice Bandits

As you level up, you get upgrade points (which can also be bought with spice) to customize your play style as you see fit - cheaper turrets, faster rate of fire or more mesmerizing disco music are just a few options. Spice Bandits lets you buy spice through in-app purchases, which also eliminates ads between levels.

• Download now

Triple Town

Triple Town is a simple puzzle game where you place various kinds of greenery on a small grid so that you can line up three of a kind and have them merge into another object. For example, three patches of grass make a shrub, three shrubs make a tree, three trees make a house, and so on. Occasionally, you'll have to put down bears, which block building on squares until you're able to corral them into a confined area. You keep building until you run out of squares to build on, which actually takes awhile since the board is continually shifting with sets merging together and opening up space.

Triple Town is monetized by providing only a limited number of placements. Your move count regenerates over time, but you can pay for more turns, or simply buy unlimited turns for $3.99. The coins you earn through gameplay can also be spent on buying particular items, like bots, which can eliminate pesky bears with a single tap.

• Download now

Best free shooter games for iPhone

Gun Bros

Warbucks are a separate type of currency used to buy particularly high-end gear. You can earn them through in-app purchases, watching video ads, or converting a ton of the regular coins at the bank.

• Download now

MetalStorm: Wingman

MetalStorm: Wingman is a flight combat game with full multiplayer support, AirPlay compatibility and accelerometer and swipe controls.  As you play through the campaign mode, head-to-head multiplayer dogfight mode, or endless survival mode, you earn credits which can be used to buy various types of missiles, cannons, and new jets focusing on defense, agility, or firepower. Don't get too trigger-happy, since your ammunition is limited. If you're not into shooting down your buddies, you can also invite Game Center wingmen to play through the campaign levels co-operatively.

A lot of the hardware upgrades require you to use premium coins, which are sold in batches for $0.99 and up or earned through regular gameplay.

• Download now

Frontline Commando

Frontline Commando is an on-rails third-person shooter about a gung-ho military man left behind enemy lines. You dodge behind cover with single taps, and pop out to take aim and eliminate nonspecific middle eastern insurgents. Don't get too attached to that wall you're hiding behind though, since it can be destroyed as a firefight drags on, and grenades can quickly flush you out into the open. When you level up, new weapons are unlocked for purchase, plus you get a few bars of gold, which can be used to buy premium items. Weapon upgrades span assault weapons, sniper rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers, each with their own set of damage, clip size, reload speed, and accuracy attributes.

You can also increase survivability with medkit purchases and body armor upgrades. When things get too hot, you can buy airstrikes to clear out the immediate area. Both "war cash" and gold can be bought through in-app purchases.

• Download now

Best free sports games for iPhone

Baseball Superstars 2012

Baseball Superstars 2012 is a whimsically exaggerated baseball game with Japanese-style characters and dialog. While the game keeps tabs on minute details, such as batting averages, running speed, stamina, and confidence levels, there are some more cartoony encounters with "super players", with ridiculous anime costumes and powers. As a batter, you can control where you swing by tilting the iPhone, but don't worry, you won't actually have to swing it like a bat - just tap the screen at the right moment. Pitching is done through a series of swipes within a box. You'll encounter plenty of challenges, including injuries which require recuperation in a hospital, managing your team roster, and playing against friends online. Personally, I found this game impossibly hard when set on normal difficulty, but I'm not a sports guy. Baseball fans will love it, though. For more baseball-themed apps, check out our ballgame roundup over here.

Through in-app purchases, you can get G points, which are spent on character items, training sessions to improve your stats, or even buy levels for your batter or pitcher.

• Download now

NFL Pro 2012

NFL Pro 2012 is a full-fledged football game complete with leagues, playbooks, and extensive rosters based on real players and teams. Your players gain experience and level up as you go, letting you improve their stats in a number of areas, like run blocking, catching, awareness, and agility. Every down, you pick a play available (either offensive or defensive), and while you manually control one player, the AI handles the rest. Controls during play are dead simple, but most of your time will be spent flipping through and picking plays. Unfortunately, your selection is really limited to start, and it takes an obscene number of credits to permanently keep playbooks.

Every game you play uses up energy, which you can replenish or time or through in-app purchases. Experience points to level up your players can also be bought, along with credits to buy new playbooks, stadiums, gain access to new teams, divisions, and conferences, and extend quarter lengths.

• Download now

Real Soccer 2012

Real Soccer 2012 offers a wide variety of gameplay types in a fast-paced, realstic package. The core controls are laid out with a standard virtual joystick and sprint, pass and shoot buttons, but progresses in complexity with fancy gesture-based maneuvers. You can unlock a variety of different cups, starting with International, and working your way to Asian, African, American, and European cups, plus there's regional league play unlocked as you play and level up. Just remember that you're limited by how many matches you can play by a stamina rating, which recovers over time. Loading screens have bits of trivia, and occasionally test your own football, err, soccer knowledge with a multiple choice quiz.

Playing Real Soccer 2012 earns you coins which can be used to purchase new soccer balls that provide a variety of different bonuses, like extra XP per match. "Cash" is Real Soccer 2012's premium currency, which can be traded in for international teams, additional stamina, team stat boosts, access a few select stadiums, and even the ability to clear all yellow cards.

• Download now

Best free casual games for iPhone

Tiny Tower

Tiny Tower is a really simple social management game with 8-bit-style graphics. Your job is to populate a tower with bitizens, assign them jobs relevent to their skills, keep their respective businesses stocked, and build more floors on top of your building. Over time, your bitizens earn you money which can be spent on purchasing new stock for various types of stores, or for putting the next storey onto your tower. You'll need to ferry bitizens from the ground floor with the elevator if you'll ever want to move new people in, plus once in awhile VIPs will provide you extra bonuses, like knocking off a few hours from your restocking time.

Tiny Tower occasionally gives you Towerbucks for handling the elevator, which can be used to hurry restocking, construction, or elevator upgrades. Towerbucks can also be bought through in-app purchases.

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Draw Something

As is, Draw Something provides only a limited palette of colors, but you can buy more through in-app purchases. You can also buy bombs, which are used to offer a fresh selection of words if you're drawing, or eliminate letters to chose from if you're guessing.

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GodFinger All-Stars

GodFinger is a fun little world control game where you tend to a little planet full of villagers. By spinning around a cross-section view, you make sure they're happy and productive, and check in on them time to time to collect the gold they generate. That gold goes to upgrading their homes which can house more people, who then, in turn, produce more money. Of course, you have to tend to their needs, like providing rain and sun for the farms, as well as altars to worship you from. To accomplish all of this, you do these gesture-based miracles, but they burn up Awe points, which regenerate over time, or can be bought through the app store.

Over time, you complete missions, gain experience points, and expand the surface area of your planet. You can have a lot of fun around your world by raising and lowering the ground, decorating the planet with appropriate and flinging your hapless devotees beyond the horizon.

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Best free physics games for iPhone

Cut the Rope Free

Cut the Rope is a popular game that involves dropping a piece of candy into a hungry green creature's mouth by slicing rope with swipe gestures. While the candy's dangling and swinging, you use nearby tools such as magic hats and air puffers to avoid obstacles, like candy-devouring spiders and destructive spikes. If you can get the candy to pass through any of the three stars on the level, you gain bonus points and bragging rights, but they're strictly optional.

Though you only get 18 levels in the free version, the full version with 250 levels is only $0.99.

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Fruit Ninja Lite

Fruit Ninja is a well-known slice-and-dice game where you swipe through various kinds of fruit as they sail through the air. You get bonus points for chopping through four or more fruit at once, but you have to make sure to avoid the bombs that get tossed in every now and then. Different kinds of bonus fruit can really help out, such as the freeze banana, which slows the movement of everything the screen, making for easy targets.

In the free version, you get Classic mode in which you only get to let three fruit hit the ground, but the paid version, available for $0.99, includes a Zen mode where you cut up as much fruit as you can within a limited time frame, among other game modes.

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Angry Birds Free

The free version of Angry Birds gives you a total of 24 levels, but you'll need to drop $0.99 in order to get tons more. Keep mind that there are a lot of different free versions of Angry Birds available, including a seasonal one, a space-themed game, and one based on the Disney movie Rio. Try 'em all if you're looking for variety.

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Best free action games for iPhone

Jetpack Joyride

Jetpack Joyride is a side-scrolling evasion game with simple one-button controls and a great sense of style. You play as a rebellious bureaucrat named Barry who's tired of the work at his top-secret military lab, and decides to snag the company's experimental jetpack for a jaunt through the facilities. Holding your finger on the screen puts the gas on the jetpack, letting you elevate over obstacles such as laser security systems and incoming missiles. Along the way, you'll also be able to snag other experimental vehicles, including the Crazy Freaking Teleporter, and the Profit Bird which is powered by concentrated satire.

You earn coins based on how far you make it through, but can also pick up loose coins through the level. You even earn more through completing missions, like high-fiving the scrambling scientists on the ground floor. Those coins are spent on new jetpacks, outfits, and soon gadgets, all available through in-app purchases stored in The Stash. Of course, you can buy more coins through in-app purchases, too.

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Temple Run

Temple Run is a dead-simple platform game where you sprint through ancient ruins while being chased by displeased spirits. You turn corners, duck under obstacles, and leap over pits with swipe gestures while collecting coins along the way. There's a bit of accelerometer control, so you can snag coins in the middle or to the left or right side of corridors by tilting the iPhone, but for the most part, you're just relying on twitch reflexes. Gameplay can be extremely bite-sized, but still amply rewarding.

The coins you collect while temple-running (or in-app purchasing) can earn you power-ups like speed boosts, new unlockable characters, and even exclusive wallpapers.

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Cordy Sky

Cordy Sky is a jumping game where you're an adorable little robot trying to get from the ground of an alien planet to a docked spaceship so you can continue on your intergalactic mission. Small bouncy platforms aid your ascension, but be careful, otherwise you drop down to the bottom and have to start all over. Luckily, you have a fellow robot called Volt that can grab you if you drop too far, but only if you've collected the appropriate token while climbing skyward. Your trip is split up into five sections, the end of each being marked by a fuel cell you need to get the spaceship running again. Controls are are either through virtual buttons, tilt, or swiping.

As you go, you collect gears, which can buy one-time boosts, permanent power-ups, or vanity costumes. Of course, you can always just buy gears through in-app purchases, but you can get by perfectly well on your own. Despite the kiddy graphics, the game is actually pretty challenging at points.

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Best free role-playing games for iPhone

Six-Guns

Six-Guns is an open-world multiplayer western. You embark on missions for beleaguered commonfolk, handling the likes of bandits and supernatural nasties to bring some iotum of peace to the wild west. Combat is straightforward revolver shooting with a virtual joystick and a few buttons. You're rewarded for your deeds, of course, and can use the coin you earn to equip new weapons, fresh threads, and buy new horses to expedite your trips between towns.

In addition to being able to buy in-game currency through in-app purchases, you can also get Sheriff Stars, which access high-end gear and auto-complete missions, though you can also earn them through watching ads. You're even able to buy experience points and health boosts, if you're having trouble getting through a particular quest.

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Star Legends

Star Legends is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online sci-fi game where you partner up with fellow intergalactic travelers to take on a variety of space menaces. You build an avatar with a few basic options, like hair style and face type, then embark on quests to earn experience points, level up, gain new abilities, and earn equipment. The social element is very rich, with full support for guilds, and plenty of common spaces. Every mission you play is automatically instanced, so others people freely spawn in to help you out. Daily missions, implant crafting, and a ton of people to chat with insure you'll always have a reason to come back for more.

Platinum is the premium in-game currency, and is shared across accounts if you happen to play Pocket Legends as well. You can spend it on vanity items, like fancy jetpacks and robot pets, but you can also spend the the coins you earn through regular gameplay to keep your equipment in good repair and up-to-date.

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Zenonia 4

Zen and gold can both be bought with real cash. Zen points are used to purchase expanded inventory space and special power-boosting gems (among other things), while gold buys more mundane gear. Some kinds of armor can only be acquired through player versus player battles, but it's entirely possible to stick solely with the single-player campaign.

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Best free racing games for iPhone

Forever Drive

One of the core elements of Forever Drive is the track builder. It's pretty simple - you draw a line from one end of a square to the other, pepper some scenery along the sides, and the highlighted turns, varied elevation, stars, and extra traffic are added in automatically. You then have the option to share these tracks online, which then randomly compose the arcade mode of other players. When you play, you get fed a series of user-built tracks which you can rate up or down after you're done driving them.

There are also weekly leagues where you have a chance to win in-game currency, with which you can buy a few unlocks, but the vast majority of car bodies, variations, and paint jobs are earned by gaining experience points throughout gameplay. I was really happy with Forever Drive, and I'd go so far as to say it's one of the better games I found when hunting for the best free iPhone games out there. Definitely check it out.

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Snuggle Truck

Snuggle Truck is a simple side-scrolling racing game where you're trying to drive a bunch of stuffed animals to the zoo in a pick-up truck without having them bounce out of the back along the way. It sounds like it's for kids, but the game was originally called Smuggle Truck, where the premise was to get Mexicans to America where a better life awaited them. Obviously Apple wasn't a fan, so the developer changed it up, though the core gameplay remained the same. You tap left or right to put your foot on the gas or back up, and tilt your iPhone to make sure your truck lands evenly when sailing through the air. Like Forever Drive, there's a treasure trove of user-generated courses, all ripe for the downloading and rating. You can build your own courses, complete with power-ups, obstacles, and waypoints where new fuzzy animals are tossed at you to catch in mid-transit.

Through in-app purchases, you can drive flashier pick-up trucks, but the vast majority of content is thankfully available for free.

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GT Racing: Motor Academy Free+

Motor Academy Free is a more down-to-earth, mostly-realistic racing game. You earn coins by completing tours, special invitation events, and completing contracts. Starting off, there are a bunch of levels where you earn various licenses, which help you learn how to drive different classes of cars. Coins let you buy a variety of recognized brand-name cars, like Bugatti, BMW, Bentley, Jaguar, Ford, Chevrolet, and Audi. They even kindly give you the option to rent the car for a round if you don't have enough to buy it outright. Even this racing game has some RPG mechanics in it, including quests which you complete, and leveling up to unlock new cars and courses.

Coins are earned through regular gameplay, while in-game cash is mostly bought through in-app purchases, which you can trade in for new cars.

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Your favorite free iPhone games?

Of course, there's an insane number of free iPhone games out there, and we're always looking for more. Feel free to leave a comment with your favorites, as we'll be updating this list regularly. We'll be including some of our top free real-time strategy, rhythm, word, simulation, location, and drawing games down the line.

Rene Ritchie and Leanna Lofte contributed photos for this post

Snapseed is a photo editing app for iPhone and iPad that not only offers tons of features, but is extremely easy to use. Not familiar with RGB Curves, histograms, and other professional editing tools? Not a problem! What makes Snapseed so great, is that anyone can pick it up and produce amazing results even if they aren't familiar with professional editing techniques.

Snapseed is a universal app for iPhone and iPad, but I will be sharing screenshots from the iPad version in this review. The iPhone version has the exact same features.

General layout

The layout of Snapseed is very straightforward and easy to navigate. In landscape orientation, you'll see a two-column sidebar of editing tools on the left and your photo on the right. In portrait orientation, the photos is on the top and a scrollable toolbar with your tools is on the bottom.

The editing tools are displayed as simple thumbnails with their names clearly labeled and an image that's related to the adjustment type. This is a refreshing approach as many photo editing apps use a bunch of icons who's meanings you have to memorize.

There are 13 different adjustment tools. With all of them, swiping up and down lets you chose the enhancement that you're editing and swiping left and right adjusts that chosen enhancement. This gives Snapseed a very clean UI that's free of sliders and other distractions.

Another feature of each tool's screen is the Compare button. Holding this down will show what your image looked like before applying the tool you're using. To compare with the original image, hold down the Compare button on the main screen.

Auto Correct

The first and most basic available tool in Snapseed is called Auto Correct. It consists of two enhancements: contrast correction and color correction.

Selective Adjust

Selective Adjust is a fantastic tool that lets you focus your adjustments to a specific area, called a control point, of the photo. You can add as many control points as you wish. Pinching and zooming will adjust the size of the control point and while you do so, Snapseed will show a red mask over your image so you can see exactly where the adjustments will take place.

If you look closely, you'll see that this mask is actually bigger than the circle. This is because the circle designates where the photo will receive the adjustments at full strength and where the fading will begin. Without a good fade, the images would look terrible with a focused editing region. Snapseed does a fantastic job of fading so that your image looks good.

The adjustments you can apply to each focus point are brightness, contrast, and saturation.

Tune Image

Snapseed's Tune Image tool lets you adjust the brightness, ambiance, contrast, saturation, and white balance of your photo.

Straighten & Rotate

The Straighten & Rotate editing tool let's you, well, straighten and rotate your image. You simply swipe up and down or left and right to straighten. The new cropped region will be kept straight and your image will tilt behind it. Unfortunately, you cannot fine tune the final crop by moving the image around. Sometimes there's room to shift the crop left or right, but you can't.

Crop

Snapseed comes with 7 different crop ratios -- 14 if you count landscape and portrait orientation of each ratio separately like many apps do. You can also constrain the crop to the original ratio or use free transform.

Detail

The Detail tool is where you go to adjust sharpening and structure of your photo. What's extra special about this tool, however, is that it comes with a loupe that lets you zoom in on a section of the photo so that you can get a good look at the pixels and how sharp they are.

Black & White

As expected, the Black & White section of Snapseed lets you convert your photo to a black and white image. It has six different presets: neutral, contrast, bright, dar, film, and darken sky, and five different color filters: neutral, red, orange, yellow, and green. You can also make adjustments to the brightness, contrast, and grain.

Vintage Films

The Vintage Films tool in Snapseed is basically 9 different vintage filters that you can apply to your photo as well as 5 different textures. The adjustments that can be made are brightness, saturation, texture strength, center size, and style strength. The center size adjustment is Snapseed's way of referring to the strength of the vignette.

Drama

Drama is yet another set of filters: two each for drama, bright, and dark. The adjustments that can be made are saturation and filter strength.

Grunge

The last set of filters is Grunge -- and grunge is the perfect description for them. Instead of a popup of filter options like the previous filter packs, the Grunge tool actually uses a slider to change the style. This lets you fine tune it to the exact color that you want. It also comes with 5 different grungy textures that make your photo looks like it's been through quite a beating. The other adjustments you can make are to brightness, contrast, texture strength, and saturation.

Center Focus

The Center Focus tool is similar to Selective Adjust in that you have a center point with an adjustable radius around it. The difference is that the things are you are adjust about this point are blur strength and outer and inner brightness. Snapseed also includes 6 different presets if you don't want to spend time find the perfect combination of adjustments: portrait 1, portait 2, vignette, blur, old lens, and foggy.

Organic Frames

In the Organic Frames section of Snapseed, you'll find 8 different frame styles with the ability to adjust their width and offset.

Tilt-shift

The final tool in Snapseed is Tilt-Shift. People love adding fake blur to their photos and Snapseed definitely does not disappoint in this department. In fact, since this section includes a radial (circular) blur, there is a lot of similarities between this and blurring effects you can do with the Center Focus tool. The linear tilt-shift is different though. With both types, you can adjust the transition, blur strength, brightness, saturation, and contrast.

The Good

• 13 different editing tools, most of which include many different adjustment options
• Share to email, Flickr, Facebook Twitter, printer, or "Open In" another photography app
• Compare button lets you quickly and easily see how your edits compare with the original photo
• Universal for iPhone and iPad
• Supports the new iPad's Retina display

The Bad

• Can't move the cropping region when straightening
• Blurring with Center Focus and Tilt-Shift are very similar

The Conclusion

Snapseed is a fantastic photo editor that's powerful, yet easy to use. Snapseed is best for users who want to play around with adjustments, but who don't understand (nor care to understand) how to use more advanced and professional tools. Snapseed makes it easy for anyone to beautifully and artistically edit their photos on their iPhone or iPad.

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OneReceipt is an iPhone app that gives you a very organized way of keeping track of and saving receipts. It will automatically grab emailed receipts (from, say, Amazon or iTunes) from your Gmail account and add them to your OneReciept account or you can take a photo of a physical receipt.

When you sign up for a free OneReceipt account, you get to store your receipts in the cloud and access them from the web on the OneReceipt app. This service is technically still in beta, but it's off to a great start. You will also be given an @onereceipt.com email address for you to forward receipts that were sent to a different email account than your Gmail. OneReceipt will then automatically add them to your collection of receipts. Unfortunately, Gmail is the only email service that can be synced with OnceReceipt.

The personal @onereceipt.com account is a great idea, but it still needs some work. I forwarded an iTunes receipt from my iCloud email to my personal OneReceipt account, but it's showing up in the receipt list as being "unparsed". This is strange, because the iTunes receipts that were already in my Gmail account when I performed the initial sync were parsed perfectly. So it seems that OneReceipt is just not correctly handling the quote syntax that is commonly associated with email forwards. I imagine this is something that OneReceipt can easily fix. Even though these receipts are unparsed, I can still view the forwarded email receipt with OneReceipt.

For in-person shopping, you can take a photo of your receipt and send it to OneReceipt and they'll process it for you. I tested this out with a two different receipts, but they are currently still processing. The strange thing is that even though I did this only a few hours ago, the date on my iPhone that is being shown is "yesterday", but on the web, it's "today". Just another little bug that needs to be worked out. (I'll update once the receipts finish processing).

If taking a photo of a receipt isn't an option, or you just don't like that option, you can also manually enter a receipt. The disadvantage to this method is that you are not able to add each item on your receipt. If all you care about is the total, then a manual entry works just fine, but sometimes you also need to save the prices of each individual item on the receipt. Those are the times that photos are the superior option.

After a receipt has been added to OneReceipt, you can categorize and tag it so that it's easily searchable. OneReceipt will also create spending summaries that you can view on the web that breaks down your monthly spending amounts by totals and category.

The Good

• Automatically retrieves receipts from your Gmail
• Receipts stored in the cloud and accessible from the web
• Personalized @onereceipt.com email address to forward receipts to
• Spending summaries
• Take photos of receipts and OneReceipt adds it automatically
• Manually add receipts

The Bad

• Only supports Gmail
• Not all forwarded receipts are recognized by OneReceipt
• Can't force a sync to look at past emails again

The Conclusion

Even though OneReceipt has a few kinks to work out, I'm still impressed with it. The app and service is completely free, so it's not like you've got anything to lose. Keeping track of receipts is something I'm terrible at, yet need to do for many of my jobs, but I expect to be much more organized with them now that I have OneReceipt.

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One of my favorite iPad photo editing apps, Photogene, has finally been updated with support for the new iPad's retina display. Photogene is a full featured photo editor that allows you to make a lot of common adjustments, add special effects, and make collages.

Presets

If you're looking for a way to quickly add an artistic look to your photo, Photogene has the following presets:

• Colors: cool, warm, crimson sunrise, improve dark photo, day into night, landscape
• B&W: simple, high contrast, extreme, light, dark, dramatic, infrared
• Vintage: noir, 20's vintage, 40's vintage, 70's vintage, lomo, cross processed, morning glory, redscale, retro, golden, old pink
• Frames: classic, classic 2, gloss, gloss 2, glow, glow 2, glow 3, drop shadow, fade-in, thin line
• Fun: oil painting, cinema, stamp, psychedelic, pencil sketch, reflection, dream, mars, icon, foggy, sunset, and purple haze.

You can also create your own presets.

Crop

Photogene comes with 6 different common crop ratios, but the really neat feature is the one that lets you create your own crop ratio. The ratio choice with a star will let you choose between 1-20 for your width and height. So if you want to crop your photo with a 5:11 ratio, you can!

Rotate

The Rotate tool is pretty self-explanatory. You can rotate in incriments of 90 degrees, flip horizontally or vertically, and straighten (or tilt) your image. Personally, I think the straightening tool would be better placed in the cropping section since using it results in a cropped image. In fact, the crop and rotate tools could actually be grouped together in the same section.

Adjustments

The Adjustment section of Photogene for iPad is where you'll find tools for clarity, brightness, colors, sharpen\denoise, histogram, RGB, and curves.

The clarity tool has a single slider.

The brightness tool has sliders for exposure, contrast, shadows, and highlights, and an auto option.

The colors tool has sliders for saturation, vibrance, color temperature, and tint.

The sharpen tool lets you adjust the sharpen amount, sharpen radius, luminance denoise, and chroma denoise.

The histogram lets you adjust the ends and middle of the histogram and also has an auto option.

In the RGB section, you can adjust the red, green, and blue offset levels.

Lastly, the curves tool will overlay the curves grid over the photo and let you adjust it how you wish.

Retouches

The Retouches section of Photogene is very extensive. It includes healing and red eye tools, masks for dodge, burn, clone, blur, grayscale (selective coloring), and effects. The included effects are dream, painting, comics, posterize, sepia, smooth, pixelate, dynamic curve, light up, cross process, redscale, and extreme B&W. When applying a mask, you can adjust the brush's size and opacity and choose to see your brush strokes by tapping contour. You can also choose to invert your mask.

Text

Photogene for iPad allows you to add various text bubbles and annotations to your photo in the Text section. The text boxes and bubbles are fully customizable with the ability to edit the color of the outline, fill, and text, add shadowing, choose fonts, and adjust the justification. You can also adjust the size and rotation of the shape.

For annotations, you can add arrow, circles, rectangles, and other shapes and adjust the color and width of the outline.

Enhance

The last section of Photogene is called Enhance. It is here that you'll be able to add vignette, tilt-shift effects, gradients, frames, filters, and more. The available filters are the same as the effects that can be painted in the Adjustments tab. The difference is that adding a filter applies the effect to the entire photo instead of just the area that you paint.

Collages

Photogene also includes a few templates for turning your photos into collages. Just select which photos you want to build into a collage and Photogene will do it automatically. It will then show you a list of other available templates. There is only 3 templates of each size (meaning 3 templates for 3 photos, 3 templates for 4 photos, etc), but you can purchase 61 new templates for $1.99.

With each collage, you can editing the outline width and color, add an inner shadow, and choose between 6 ratios. You can also add text bubbles and annotations just like you can in the Text Section of Photogene.

Go-PRO features

Everything mentioned so far in this review comes included in the $2.99 version of Photogene for iPad. It's quite a steal if you ask me. But if you're looking for even more professional tools, there is a Go-PRO version available as an in-app purchase for $7.99. This brings the following addition features: star-ratings, watermarking, FTP history, RGB curves, JPEG quality, white-balance color picker, custom localized effect, and IPTC sets and batch paste.

Star rating

When browsing through photos in your albums, holding down your finger on an image will pop up a menu that lets you rename the photo, view metadata, or export. In the metadata screen, you;ll find the general information of the photo and the Exif, IPTC, and GPS info. You can also assign 0 to 5 stars to the photo. Then you can choose to arrange your photos by star rating.

Watermarking, FTP history, JPEG quality, and IPTC sets and batches

If you have a watermark for your business, Photogene Go-PRO lets you easily add your watermark automatically when exporting. You can adjust the opacity, padding, relative size, and choose between 9 different positions. Unfortunately, this process must be done automatically and Photogene doesn't offer a large preview of what you can expect the watermark to look like on your image. If you have a light, transparent watermark (like iMore), then it's very hard to see the watermark in the tiny preview thumbnail.

I hope to see a more advanced watermarking system implemented in the future.

In addition to adding a watermark upon export, you can also setup Photogene to save FTP configurations that you've exported images to.

Photogene GO-PRO also allows you to adjust the quality of exported JPEG files.

If you store IPTC info into your photos, you'll be happy to know that with Photogene for iPad Go-PRO, you can create IPTC data sets and copy them into any photo that you wish. It's a great time saver.

RGB curves

The extra RGB curves feature of the Go-PRO Photogene package adds the options of adjusting the curves for red, green, and blue separately from the general curves.

White-balance color picker

The white-balace color picker feature of the Go-PRO add-on in Photogene for iPad is a great way to adjust the color balance of your photo. There are also sliders for color temperature and tint, but the color picker at least gets you in the correct neighborhood. To you use it, you simply hold your finger down on a neutral-colored area of the photograph.

The Good

• Packed with robust editing tools
• Includes easy to use presets and filters
• Works directly with iPad's photo library so you don't need to import photos
• Collages
• Non destructive editing
• Go-PRO in-app purchase adds even more features
• Supports the new iPad's Retina display

The Bad

• Waiting for adjustments to take place can sometimes take a long time because actions happen in real time
• Straightening tool would be more appropriately placed in the cropping section

The Conclusion

Photogene for iPad is one of the best photo editing apps on the iPad. It is full-featured with loads of editing tools ranging from basic, one-touch filters and effects, to more advanced tools like curves, histograms, and healing. And I'm not one to often discus the price of an app, but considering you can pick up Photogene for iPad for less than the cost of a fancy drink at Starbucks, I'd say it's quite a steal. Add on the Go-PRO in-app purchase, and you've got yourself an excellent photo editor.

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If you're planning a trip to a national park or want to learn more about one, National Parks by National Geographic is a gorgeous guide for your iPhone that offers beautiful photography and loads of information, including photo tips, park secrets, must-see attractions, and things to do.

Included with National Parks is one free guide to the national park of your choice. Additional guides can be downloaded for $0.99 or $1.99 each. Park info, camping and lodging information, maps, weather, stats, and a few photos are included with each national park without purchasing its guide. Included with each guide is photo tips, park secrets, what to see, and what to do sections as well as many addition photos. These photos will also be added to the photos section of the app.

When viewing a national park's page, you will find a photo gallery at the top that can be scrolled though. Tapping on the photo will strip away the distractions by opening it on a black background and also give more information about the photograph in a caption underneath it.

Back on the main screen national park screen, the photo gallery is overlaid with a weather icon and a stats icon. Tapping on these will pop up their respective information. The weather section shows the current conditions and a 5-day forecast. The stats section shows the number of visitors, the park size, and the local time.

The Photo Tips section of National Parks is very cool. The Yosemite guide includes 5 photos with the photographer of each photo giving information about the shot, including GPS coordinates, time of day, camera details (camera, ISO, focal length, shutter speed, aperture), and difficulty. Following this information is the photographer's write-up about the overview of the setup and a list of bullet points for getting the shot. It's extremely helpful and I suddenly have a huge urge to go to Yosemite to take photos.

The Parks Secrets section is simply a list of random fact about the national park. For example, one of the nine secrets for Yosemite is that the giant sequoia trees can live to be more than 3,000 years old.

The What To See section is a basically the same photos in the initial gallery presented as a list and location's name. Tapping the photo will, again, open it up on a black background and include a button that lets you see it on a map.

In the What To Do section of National Parks, you'll find a list of common hikes and places to visit in the park. Tapping one will provide a nice write-up of why it is something you should do.

The parks included in National Parks are Acadia, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Death Valley, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains, Haleakala, Hawai'i Volcanoes, Joshua Tree, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Shenanadoah, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion.

The Good

• Gorgeous UI
• Stunning photography
• Photo tips are awesome
• One free guide, each additional guide only $0.99 or $1.99
• Add attractions to your itinerary
• Works offline

The Bad

• Photo gallery and What To See sections are basically the exact same thing, just presented differently

The Conclusion

National Parks by National Geographic is a must-have app for anyone planning to visit any of the park included in the app. The guides will help you plan your trip and makes sure you don't miss any of the must-see and must-do attractions.

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Dock is an iPhone app that acts as as screensaver of information when your iPhone is not in use. While your iPhone is docked at your desk, Dock will scroll through weather, RSS, Twitter, Facebook, Clock and Stock widgets.

Dock is a very simple and easy to use app. You can either have Dock scroll through the information in one widget (like tweets from Twitter), or you can have Dock randomly scroll through information from all the widgets you've selected. If you are interested in something that scrolls by, tapping it will give you more options. For example, you can enlarge photos, reply to tweets, "like" Facebook photos and comment on them, and more.

In Settings, you can choose to have the information scroll by every 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 seconds and mark which widgets you want active. You can also adjust the refresh rate of each widget, but unfortunately, the fastest refresh rate for Facebook and Twitter is 5 minutes. I'd like to see that reduced down to at least a minute.

My other little complaint is that Dock doesn't include a light colored theme. I have never been a fan of light-on-dark color schemes because it hurts my eyes and makes me squint (I have very sensitive eyes).

The Good

• A great way to use your iPhone when you're not really using it
• Information is displayed big and is easy to read
• Can post status to Facebook and tweets to Twitter

The Bad

• No light colored theme. Only white-on-black.
• Slow refresh rates

The Conclusion

Dock turns your iPhone into a fantastic little utility while it's docked. It runs great and displays information nice and big so that it's easy to read.

$1.99 - Download Now

The Choiix Power Fort 5600 mAh by Cooler Master is an external battery pack charger for your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Unlike case charges such as the mophie juice pack, because it's USB based the Power Fort will also work with Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and most other gadgets, as well as accessories like Bluetooth headsets.

The Power Fort has a built-in lithium ion battery that takes about 6-8 hours to fully charge and Choixx claims it lasts for about 500 charging cycles. Once it's fully charged, it can re-charge most modern smartphones about 2 to 3 times for a total of about 28 hours of usage. An iPad 2 or similar sized Android tablet gets up to 6 hours and a Bluetooth headset, almost 140 hours. Handy LED indicators on the top show you how much charge remains in the Power Fort.

A special bypass circuit design in the Power Fort prevents any damage from over charging or charging/discharging, so you don't have to worry about your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad taking any battery life hits. The Power Fort also has short circuit and over heating protection built in, and you can charge your iPhone, iPod touch and iPhone while charging the Power Fort.

The good

• Provides a lot of power
• Holds charge well
• Compact and easy to carry

The bad

• One more thing to carry

The conclusion

The Choiix Power Fort 5600 mAh by Cooler Master is a good choice if you want a powerful yet compact external battery to take with you when you'll be out and about for an extended period of time. It's also good if you have several different types of gadgets and accessories and need one, flexible charging solution to handle all of them. It is one more thing to carry around, but without power, so is a dead iPhone or iPad...

$69.99 - Buy now

Addidoku is new puzzle game that has some similarities to Sudoku, but is also very different. In each level, you are presented with a several numbers set in a broken up grid. The goal is to group the numbers so that they add up according to the rules of the game. Each number can only be in one group and each puzzle has only one solution.

So what exactly are these rules? Well, in each group of numbers, all of the numbers (except for the biggest number) must add up to the biggest number. For example, the numbers 3, 2, 6, 1, form a group because the sum of 3, 2, and 1 is 6. You can also pair numbers, like two 5's, because 5 equals 5. The numbers 4, 3, 5 do not form a valid group because 4 plus 3 does not equal 5.

Only numbers that are adjacent to each other can form a group. This means that if a number is diagonal to your group or separated from your group by a space, it cannot be added to your group.

That's it! The rules are simple, but the levels are challenging. Even though they're challenging, they're completely doable which makes the game extremely addicting. Because each level can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, you are always willing to play "just one more".

The Good

• Challenging
• Addictive
• 60 puzzles for free
• 140 additional puzzles available as in-app purchase

The Bad

• None

The Conclusion

Addidoku is such a fun and addicting puzzle game! The object is both familiar and unique at the same time. It's also challenging -- something I find essential in a good puzzle game. It took a lot of self control to pry my hands off my iPhone to write this review.

Now excuse me while I play "just one more level" of Addidoku.

Free - Download Now

The Bible is the most read book in the world, and tiny Bibles with microscopic text have always been popular because of their portability. But, now, today, thanks to ultra-portable devices like the iPhone and iPad with their awesome Retina displays, and apps like Olive Tree's BibleReader, the Bible is more portable and easier to read than ever.

If you search for Bible in the App Store, you will be flooded with an overwhelming amount of app choices, from good to bad to just plain different. There are so many that it's almost impossible to figure out which one to get. So I went on the hunt for the perfect Bible app. It had to gorgeously rendered, packed with features, highly customizable, and run perfectly smooth. And I kept coming back to Olive Tree's BibleReader for iPhone and iPad.

Olive Tree BibleReader is a universal app for the iPhone and iPad, but I will be using screenshots of the iPad for this review. The iPhone version has the exact same features as the iPad version.

The integrated in-app store

Included in all of the Olive Tree Bible apps is an integrated store where you can buy more books including other version of the Bible, commentary, reference materials, devotionals, and more.

All books that you purchase will be synced to your Olive Tree account so that you can download them to another device at no additional cost or re-download them if you accidentally delete them or need to restore your iPhone or iPad.

Split screen UI

One of the really neat features of BibleReader is that you can split your screen into two panels. If you're using BibleReader in portrait, the screen will split horizontally, and when in landscape, it will split vertically. In each panel, you can have any of the books you have in your Olive Tree Library.

Here's a few different situations that one may find the split screen to be useful:

• While at church, your pastor has one main passage that he's covering, but also references other verses. You can use one panel for the main passage, and the other to browse to the other verses.
• You want to compare two different versions of the Bible side-by-side -- basically converting BibleReader into a parallel Bible.
• You want to read another book, like a devotional, while having your Bible open to reference at the same time. Or maybe the Bible is the main book you want open, and you want to have easy access to a reference book.

If you don't want the split screen, you can simply slide the one you don't want off the the screen. This is also nice in case you want the split screen, but not the entire time. You can keep your secondary book open in the second panel, but keep it hidden until the moments you need it.

You also have control of where on the screen you want the split to take place -- it doesn't have to be directly down the middle.

Navigation

It's no secret that Bibles are huge and that people don't typically read them from front to back like other books. Often times, someone is looking for a specific book, chapter, or even verse in the giant book, so having a good navigational system is extremely important for a Bible app -- and Olive Tree has nailed it with BibleReader.

The "Go To" button at the upper-left of the screen is how you navigate to a specific section of the Bible. Tapping it will pop up a menu that lists all the books of the Bible in chronological order. You can also pull it down to discover a search field that allows you to type in the verse. It does recognize abbreviations, so, for example, "1 Cor 13:4" will take you to 1 Corinthians 13:4. You can also choose to see the books of the Bible displayed as a grid with their abbreviations.

Another trait that most Bible's have are superscripts that reference other relevant verses. In a printed version, you would check the bottom of the page to check the reference, then flip to the verse. With BibleReader, you simply tap the superscript and a list of all the verses associated with the nearby superscripts will appear. Tapping on one of the verse references will navigate to that verse right inside of the popup. It's very cool. You can then either read it in the popup, or choose to have it opened in the main or split window.

Highlights, underlines, and notes

People love marking up their Bible with highlighters, underlinings, and notes -- BibleReader lets you do all these things.

To select a verse, you simply tap on the verse number. Or if you want more or less than one verse, tap your finger on a word to select it, then drag the handles to extend your selection. You then see a popup of choices: copy, highlight, note, bookmark, or share. These choices are pretty self explanatory.

Highlights in BibleReader are so much cooler than with physical highlighters. You can choose for your highlights to have a traditional look, or you can customize the intensity, color, and highlighter style. For underlining, you can have the underline look like it was made with either a thin highlighter or with a pen. You can do this every time you add a highlight, or you can create your favorite looks and save them for quick access.

When you create a note, a little note icon will be placed in front of your selection as an indicator of there being a note present. Tapping the icon will popup the note.

Customizations

One of the great features of Olive Tree's BibleReader is that its look is very customizable. The default look is very traditional and easy to read, but if you want to change the font type, size, color, or background, you can. Want the words of Jesus to be in something fun like pink or green? Not a problem!

You can set different customizations for each of the three different window types: main screen, split screen, and popup.

Which version?

Olive Tree has many different Bible versions available in the App Store and making a decision on which one to buy can be a big overwhelming if you don't know which version you want, or if you're interested in more than one version. The good news is that since each app allows you to sync your Olive Tree library, it ultimately doesn't matter which one you choose.

If you are only interested in a specific version, I recommend just buying that one as it will be the quickest way to get it on your iPhone or iPad.

The most confusing part of the available apps is that it isn't clear what the difference is between the free Bible+ version and $0.99 BibleReader version. BibleReader includes the ASV, KJV, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary, and Jamieson, Faucett, and Brown Commentary. Bible+ comes with ASV and KJV and the Matthew Henry’s concise commentary is available for free in the integrated store. The Jamieson, Faucett, and Brown Commentary is also available, but not free. So, to sum it up, the main difference is that BibleReader comes with The Jamieson, Faucett, and Brown Commentary.

The other difference is, of course, what it will be named on your Home screen. For example, since I purchased NIV BibleReader, the icon on my Home screen is called NIV BR.

The fact that there are so many apps is confusing and overwhelming. If you're at a loss, I recommend just downloading the free version and browsing the in-app store for what you want to purchase.

The Good

• Content is stored locally to your iPhone or iPad, so an internet connection is not required
• Highly customizable
• Lots of highlighter and underlining options
• Two pane UI is very convenient.
• Keep notes and customizations synced between devices
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The Bad

• Too many apps to choose from. Would be less confusing for users if there was only one app.

The Conclusion

Olive Tree's BibleReader is a fantastic Bible for your iPhone and iPad. The Bible has always been one of those books that I wanted to continue to read in print because of how much marking-up I like to do and I always thought it felt more personal. Since discovering BibleReader, it's the only Bible I ever read. I even bring my iPad to church and make notes and highlights into the app while my pastor gives his sermon. And not to brag or anything, but I can also navigate to verses faster than anyone else with BibleReader on my iPad.

Bible+, Free - Download Now

BibleReader, $0.99 - Download Now

NIV BibleReader, $9.99 - Download Now

All Olive Tree Bible Apps - App Store dev page

NoiseHush stereo headphones feature neodymium magnet drivers and advanced engineering to deliver a great audio experience whether used with your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. I'm going to review a couple of their models, starting with the NoiseHush NX26 Hi-Fi stereo headphones.

The NoiseHush NX26 headphones are for high-performance audio that promise deep bass, low distortion and a wide dynamic range. They eliminate noise, making sure no matter what you're listening to, music or video or someone else at the end of a call, you're not distracted by a lot of external chatter. They have an adjustable headband and an over-the-ear design that delivers good sound and strong bass. The microphone also claims to be acoustically tuned to filter out external noise so the people you're talking to hear you, and not the racket around you.

While the NoiseHush NX26 are a lot of headphone to love -- they're big, really big -- but being over-the-ear lets them deliver really rich, really clean sound. They don't fit as tightly as some other headphones, however, so if you're seriously getting your headbang on, you'll need to be careful so you don't know yourself out. (Kidding!)

I use similarly sized headphones for podcasting on a regular basis, so for around the house it really doesn't bother me. I wouldn't use them to go jogging or in the gym, but if I really wanted to enjoy my favorite music or a movie with amazing sound design, these would be the headphones Id' use.

The good

• Over-the-ear design is comfortable
• Sound quality is excellent

The bad

• Loose fitting
• Large

The conclusion

The NoiseHush NX26 are good headphones for the price. The size and design won't appeal to everyone -- these aren't your Apple earbuds, and thank goodness for that! -- but for those who like the form factor, they'll appeal a lot. Combining long-wearing comfort with excellent sound quality the NoiseHush NX26 are an excellent pair of headphone to keep at home for the stuff you want to listen to most.

$69.95 - Buy now

Panes is an iPad app that lets you easily multitask between Twitter, Facebook, RSS, the web, and more. All of your widgets can be found at the bottom of the screen, like a dock, so that the one you want to switch too is literally just a tap away.

The widgets included with Panes are Twitter, RSS, Facebook, weather, web, YouTube, tasks, notes, units converter, calculator, stopwatch, calendar, Google reader, Read It Later (now Pocket), stocks, clock, and Simple Note.

The UI is very basic and easy to use. Along the bottom of the screen is your dock of widgets, similar to the dock of apps on a Mac. What's great about Panes, is that I actually don't have much to say about it. It does exactly what you expect. Panes doesn't run perfectly smooth, but still pretty good. Some of the widgets, like Stocks, could include a little more information, but since the idea behind Panes is to multitask, you probably don't want want all the features of every service included in it. If you need more functionality, you can just hop over to a dedicated app for that and give it your undivided attention.

Although Panes does what it claims, and does it well, I'm not that compelled to use it. I guess I just don't find it too difficult to bring up the multitasking bar by double tapping the home button and switching to the app I need, or better yet, just swiping with four fingers to my most recently used app. This is my personal opinion, however, and I understand how others may be very excited about Panes and its implementation of widgets.

The Good

• Widgets for Twitter, RSS, Facebook, weather, web, YouTube, tasks, notes, units converter, calculator, stopwatch, calendar, Google reader, Read It Later (now Pocket), stocks, clock, and Simple Note
• Switching between widgets is very fast

The Bad

• Boring UI
• Scrolling isn't perfectly smooth

The Conclusion

If you've been desiring an app that lets you multitask between different services and task that you regularly do on your iPad, Panes does a great job.

Addenda

Panes comes from the legendary webOS developer, Inglorious Apps, and was built using the now open source webOS framework, Enyo. While Apple, unfortunately, has very strict rules as to how widget systems can be implemented on iOS, it's fantastic to see webOS developers and webOS style apps live on after HP's disastrous and, frankly, disgraceful handling of so elegant and innovative a platform.

The Easter Egg

Because of these strict rules by Apple, the developer behind Inglorious app was not able to release the real, original version of Panes into the App Store, so he included an Easter Egg that transforms Panes into the app that it was supposed to be that he's named the Developer's Cut. With the Developer's Cut version of Panes, you can have multiple widgets shown at once. Suddenly, the UI becomes much less boring! The name "Panes" also makes a lot more sense.

To unlock the Developer's Cut, all you have to do is email Inglorious Apps, and the dev will reply with directions on activating it. You can do this from directly within Panes.

$3.99 - Download Now

Instapaper, Pocket (formerly known as Read It Later), and Readability are all great ways to "read later", or time-shift the Web articles and other content you don't have time to read now. (Think of them as TiVo for the web.) Some are highly focused on text, others also prioritize photos and videos. Some are highly focused on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad only, others offer more cross-platform and Android support. Each one tries to solve the same problem -- letting you enjoy the content you want to enjoy, when you want to enjoy it -- but goes about it in a different way. So which one does it best, and for whom?

Note: Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability all have support for both iPhone and iPad but we're focusing exclusively on the iPhone versions for this shootout.

Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability: Design & Interface

Reading is a personal experience for most of us, and one that should always be be enjoyable. More than likely, you'll want to kick back and relax while catching up on the day's stories. While content is king, the experience you get while interacting with that content can be just as important for most.

Instapaper for iPhone uses a standard list view for separating sections. Clicking into the Read Later section presents you with a list of articles. The main page also contains any folders you've created listed at the bottom. While useable, the interface is rather boring.

Instapaper approaches saving articles in a fairly straight-forward way -- the table view and the file system. You can create folders on your iPhone to categorize and archive articles. Tap into the section you'd like to view and tap on an article you'd like to read. Your top tab, labeled Read Later, is where you'll find all the articles you've saved to the service. Articles are displayed in an a stripped down format, devoid of ads and other cruft, and that makes them really easy to read.

Instapaper also integrates a feature called tilt scrolling that, as the name implies, will scroll the page up and down as you tilt your iPhone. Tab into font settings to switch from light and dark mode, change the font type (with some beautiful new typefaces to choose from), increase or decrease font size, change line spacing, and to widen or narrow margins. Overall, Instapaper does a good job of formatting articles nicely. I have run into a few issues with how it formats images or headers on websites which can be bothersome at times.

Readability's name is well suited as it's obvious that their main goal is to make articles as readable as possible. This includes making menus and navigation as unobtrusive as possible while you're reading content.

Readability approaches things a bit differently when it comes to menus and organization. The main home screen will aggregate a list of your saved content. Tapping on the reading list button will allow you to navigate to items you've marked as favorites or view archived articles.

Readability also allows you to switch between light and dark modes and change the font to customize the experience. Their font choices are beautiful but not always optimal for long form reading. Where Readability really shines, however, is how it makes sure the focus is on having a seamless reading experience. When you tap into an article all the menus and navigation options disappear, leaving you with nothing but the content you want in front of you. Tap anywhere on the screen to bring up the menus. Swipe to the right to bring up your main reading list again.

Pocket for iPhone takes a new approach with their re-designed and re-named application. The interace is very clean but colorful and useful at the same time. Organizing articles by tags, archiving or deleting them, and changing settings is straight forward. Pocket also makes it easy to switch between a scaled down and full blown version of a web page with the tap of a button.

Pocket has newly designed interface to go with its new name. Just like Readability and Instapaper, you can change the margins, fonts, switch from dark to light mode, and customize the experience. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.

Pocket treats photos and videos as first-class citizens alongside articles. You can sort by articles that contain images, video, or just plain text articles. You can also bulk edit from the main screen. Simply tap the edit button and either trash articles, mark them as read, or tag them with categories.

When inside an article, Pocket allows you to quickly switch from a scaled down version and the full blown web version of a saved clip. And toggling between them is super fast. It's also great at rendering inline images, and is really smart about what content should and shouldn't be presented.

While all three have easy to use interfaces, their designs are very different. Instapaper is almost old-school in its presentation, but incredibly focused in its choices. Readability looks very good but the edge goes to Pocket which has the best mix of presentation of functionality. The ability to easily edit and sort articles is great and the interface is both powerful and accessible.

Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability: Cross-platform support

If you have multiple devices, whether it's an iPhone and iPad, or iPhone and Kindle Fire, or some other combination, being able to access the content you saved on the platforms you use is important. Here's what Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability support:

Instapaper

• iPhone
• iPad
• Kindle Fire

Readability

• iPhone
• iPad
• Android
• Kindle Fire

Pocket

• iPhone
• iPad
• Android
• Kindle Fire

Instapaper doesn't provide official support for Android and none of them seem to officially support BlackBerry or Windows Phone. So for now, it's a tie between Pocket and Readability as far as native mobile app support goes.

Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability: 3rd party app support

In order for a "read later" service to be of service, it has to be readily available from the apps you use all day. Because Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability have all been around for a while, in one form or another, you can find support for all three services in many of the most popular Twitter, RSS, and similar apps.

Tie.

Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability: Desktop Support

Instapaper, Readability, and Pocket all provide web browser plug-ins to easily save content to read later, and all offer a web-based way to access this content when and where you want to access it. Just like the mobile apps, however, the experience will be different across each client.

Instapaper on the web sticks to the standard format of just listing articles on a page. You can click into them to view the full blown desktop version or view a text version as well. It gets the job done but it's nothing too exciting.

Instapaper's website sticks to the standard table view of articles. Clicking one takes you to the full article. You can also choose to view a text version or to archive it. It gets the job done and does it well but just like the app, it isn't very exciting to look at.

Readability on the web provides a simliar experience to Readability on the iPhone. The layout and icons are very simliar and easy to find. Each article also has sharing options directly underneath it.

Readability's website also provides an experience that's a closely tied to their iPhone app, and that makes it really usable. It doesn't hide navigation the way the website does, but due to the bigger canvas they have to work with, that's not a problem. You can find your main navigation off the to left and each article will have sharing options and edit options directly underneath it. Easy to use and easy to maintain.

Pocket provides an experience on the web that's a bit different. It looks almost exactly the same as the iPhone and iPad interface. The experience is seamless regardless what device you're reading on. Users will appreciate that.

Pocket's website also tries to be as close to the mobile experience as possible. At least when it comes to layout and format. You can, of course, view full blown articles but the layout feels very simliar. You actually don't even feel like you're on a website for the most part. It feels like you're browsing right from your phone but with the bigger screen real-estate of your computer monitor. Same functionality, same basic layout, just full blown articles.

Since the websites all mirror the apps to a greater or lesser degree, just like with the app, Pocket has the edge here.

Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability: Cost

If cost is a factor to you, you'll be happy to know that both Pocket and Readability are available for free. (At least up front, at least for now.)

Instapaper costs $4.99 but it's a universal app so you'll only need to purchase once. There's also an optional subscription service that offers additional functionality.

Readability also has a -- now optional, still controversial -- subscription service.

Some users will no doubt prefer the presumed security that comes from paying for an app or service, most just want free stuff, no questions asked.

Tie between Readability and Pocket.

Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability: Conclusion

While Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability all have great native apps, fantastic web sites, and excellent services, they all come to the table with very different focuses and approaches.

Power iOS-only users might love Instapaper's thoughtful functionality and no-frills design, while cross-platform users might find it too austere and limited.

New users might take a liking to Readbility's good looks and high level of integration, while power users might find it a bit limited. (Their business model, which we won't get into here, is also a turn-off to some.)

Cross-platform and multimedia users might enjoy Pockets wider device support, slick interface, and first-class handling of photos and videos. Dedicated iOS-centric, article-centric users might not like the broader focus.

So which is the best?

Pocket.

The re-design brought with it much greater attention to detail and it really shows. Pocket provides the best design and user experience for the broadest base of users, both on the app and on the website.

If you're already all-in on Instapaper and video isn't a priority for you, there's no reason to switch to anything else. If you want more than articles, or you're new to the whole idea of "read later" and time-shifting content, give Pocket a go. It's free, so there's no risk to try it out, and you may be surprised how quickly you start saving things you happen upon on the web.

If you've been "reading later" for a while and have a personal preference, let us know why in our iPhone apps forum.

Pocket - Free - Download Now

Readability - Free - Download Now

Instapaper - $4.99 - Download Now

If you've been on the hunt for an app to replace Apple's Clock app, Timegg for iPhone is a beautiful choice. It features a very stylish, easy to use UI and allows you to set up to 8 custom alarms, 8 custom timers (with intervals), due date reminders, and interval reminders.

When you first open Timegg, the interface is overlaid with help on how to use the app. It's very informative and is easily accessible for future reference.

At the top of the screen, you'll see the settings for the currently selected timer or alarm. Below that, you'll see a big dial with all the cost alarms, timers, or reminders inside. In each corner, you'll see an icon that represents each of the alarm types: Reminder, Alarm, Timer, and D-Day. You can also swipe along the top to switch between categories, if you prefer. In the center of the dial is a giant ON/OFF button that lets you enable/disable the currently selected alarm. If an alarm is set to off, holding your finger down on the circle associated with it will pop up options to edit or delete the alarm.

The alarm in Timegg can be customized to go off on any combination of days of the week. For example, I have one alarm for Monday-Thursday, one for Friday, and a third one for Saturday and Sunday. With each alarm, you can also choose if you want to have the ability to hit snooze. You may want to turn snooze off for alarm that are not intended to wake you up.

The sound options include with Timegg are nothing amazing. Most of them are really annoying. I prefer to wake up to something that doesn't want to make me throw my iPhone against the wall, but Timegg doesn't provide many such options. The makers of Timegg must really like animal sounds, because out of 16 provided sounds, 6 of them are of birds, cows, dogs, and ducks. As far as I'm concerned, all 6 of these sounds are worthless. Every alarm is also required to have a sound. There isn't a vibrate-only option.

The timer options in Timegg are very nice. You can set up to 8 presets for the things you time often. For example, I have one timer created and labeled for coffee, and another for laundry. With each timer, you can give it a label and also set an interval timer. For example, you can set an timer to go off in 1 hour, followed by 4 more timers every 10 minutes.

Timegg uses the term "D-Day" to refer to due date alarms, so don't confuse this with the Invasion of Normandy during WWII. A D-Day alarm is simply an alarm that reminds you of an important date (like your anniversary) one, seven or fifteen days before it arrives. Unfortunately, you can only set one alert for each D-Day.

Reminders in Timegg are actually rather disappointing. The reason is because you can't set a reminder for a specific time or day. The way that reminders work is that you set it up to remind you about something in intervals of 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month. The countdown will start as soon as you set the reminder. You're better off using Apple's Reminders app, instead.

The Good

• Stylish
• Set up to 8 alarms
• Preset up to 8 timers
• Set alarms for important dates 15 days, a week, or a day in advance
• Can disable/enable snooze for each individual alarm

The Bad

• Reminders must be set as a countdown. Reminders in general could us a lot of work.
• Not a wide variety of alarm sounds
• Sound effects (navigational) are audible even when iPhone is on silent
• Alarm, due date, timer, or reminder must be set to OFF in order to edit or delete
• Every alarm must have a sound. No vibrate-only option.

The Conclusion

Timegg is a great iPhone app for setting alarms and timers. The UI is gorgeous and very easy to use. Unfortunately, the reminders are essentially useless and have less features than Apple's Reminders app. Due date options are also very limited. But if you're looking for great alarm and timer settings that are better than Apple's Clock app, Timegg does a satisfactory job at just a buck.

I should also mention that Timegg must be running in the background in order to work. So if you want to rely on Timegg to wake you up in the morning, double check that it's running. If you have to turn off your iPhone for any reason (including resets), you must re-open Timegg. This is a condition of the iOS SDK and is out of the developers' control.

$0.99 - Download Now

Debt Snowball+ for iPhone utilizes the snowball method of paying off debts to help eliminate them faster and cut down on the amount of interest paid over the life of a loan. If you need a quicker way to pay things down, or feel as if you're paying on loans and just aren't getting anywhere, apps like Snowball+ like this can help you set attainable goals within your budget.

Choose which method of debt snowballing you'd like to use. You can also view how applying additional payments will affect the life of the loan and how much money you can save.

For those not familiar with how debt snowballing works, it is based on the concept of paying something off and using that payment amount to apply towards another debt once it is paid off. You start by choosing whether you'd like to pay large debts off first or smaller ones. Typically, paying off smaller debts first will free up money quicker to apply towards larger debts but paying off larger debts first tends to save you more money as you're most likely not paying as much interest. Whatever method is right for you is what you should use.

Choose a category of debt you'd like to track and pay off - then enter the details of the debt in order for Debt Snowball+ to track it and help you pay it off quicker.

Debt Snowball+ allows you to enter your debt information into the app and categorize each one accordingly. You can set up payment reminders and record additional payments you decide to make. Once all your information is input you can tap on your total debt amount at the top to receive some interesting information. Move the slider up and down or key in amounts to see how much making an additional payment will save you money and time wise.

Once a debt is paid off in full, the concept is that you will then apply the amount you were paying towards the debt that is now paid off to the next debt in line. In essence, you can just pretend you still have the same amount of debts to pay, you're just applying more to each debt as you knock other debts out.

Use the app to determine how much money you can save if you add additional payments. Also record and track payments to see how snowballing your debt is helping you pay things off faster and more efficiently.

I've found Debt Snowball+ to be a great way to track debts on an ongoing basis as well as an easy way to calculate how much to apply in extra payments if you've got some extra coin laying around. I don't really use the reminders within the app as I've already got calendar alerts set up for bills in the default calendar app. I'm assuming most other people will too so that feature seems a bit redundant.

The good

• Great way to track debts
• Easily calculate extra payments

The bad

• Reminders may be redundant

Conclusion

If you're looking for a good way to pay off debts quickly and need something that'll help you be a bit more conscious about your debt to income situation, Debt Snowball+ is a nice way of getting an overall picture of your situation so you can make an educated decision of what snowballing method will work best for you.

$0.99 - Download Now

Put all the articles, videos, and pictures that you can't get to now, right into your Pocket so you can enjoy them later

The service formerly known as Read It Later has been updated with a new look, a new name, and a new price -- it's called Pocket, and it's free! With Pocket, you can save articles, photos, videos, and just about anything you encounter on the web and social networks for offline viewing at your leisure and convenience, on your iPhone, iPad, or other devices.

The new layout on the iPad has a collage-sytle interface that gives spotlight to the images associated with the articles you save. It's very pretty and especially nice for users who plan to save a lot of images (from, say, Flickr) to their Pocket account. But this layout comes at the expense of informational density. Images take up more space than words, after all. So, Pocket also has a list view. This list view also displays small thumbnail images with each item, but it's a lot more condense than the other view. It's also the only view available on the iPhone. Personally, I really like seeing the images, but I'm sure there are users that would prefer a concise, text-only list -- which is not available.

You can sort your saved items in Pocket by articles, videos, or images, and you can also choose to allow Pocket to decided the best view to download for each item. In Article View, all the ads and sidebars of the original website are stripped away, leaving just the content of the article. It looks very nice.

If the saved item is not an article, Pocket will display the content in its original web view. Unfortunately, not all website articles are correctly being registered as articles by Pocket and default to Web View.

When viewing an article, there are options to adjust the font size and type, screen brightness, and toggle night time reading mode. Unfortunately, there are only two fonts to toggle at this time.

The Good

• Beautiful design
• New layout displays images and short excerpts of saved items
• Condensed list view with thumbnails available
• Sort by articles, videos, images, or all items
• Adjust font size
• Night reading mode
• Supported by hundreds of apps

The Bad

• Only two fonts
• There isn't a simple list view without images available
• Doesn't always recognize articles as articles

The Conclusion

Pocket is a great way to save content from the web for viewing at a later time. The interface is both functional and pretty while still being extremely simple to use. It is also already supported by hundreds of apps (most of which still refer to the service as "Read It Later", but that should change quickly). Now that it's free, there's no reason to at least give it a try!

Free - Download Now

You've read our original iPhone 4S review and our iPhone six months later round table, but as always the take that matters most is our community's. We asked the iMore Nation how the iPhone 4S was holding up for you some six months later, if it was still competitive, and if you'd still recommend it to a prospective new iPhone buyer. And boy did you answer!

Are you still satisfied with the iPhone 4S?

The question was simple: six months after the release are you, the members of the iMore Nation, still satisfied with the iPhone 4S?

• 56% said extremely, nothing else comes close
• 23% said mostly, aging well but getting old
• 11% said meh, starting to look around for alternatives
• 10% said not at all, they regret getting it

iPhone 4S community review: Six months later

And here's a sampling of what the iMore Forums are saying about the iPhone 4S, six months later.

All I can say is that the iPhone 4S is so much more than I expected. Still reasonably priced. Easy to use. Easy to sync all of my Google contacts, calendar and of course Gmail. FaceTime. Great camera and a beautiful device.

• TurboTiger

I think the 4S is still very competitive in today's market. The speed of the A5 chip rarely leaves me waiting for anything. If someone asks me what kind of phone to get I generally ask them what they like to do with a phone. If they like to take pictures or videos, I show them what the 4S can do. If their life centres around Google and its products, I suggest an Android device, but I let them know about the 55 or so hardware devices running the Android OS and (in my opinion) how buggy it can be. I also inform them of Apple's "closed ecosystem" which I've never really been a fan of, but like Bla1ze once told me, "at least they have an ecosystem".

I must admit, I've really come to appreciate Apple, their products, and the ecosystem. There's a reason they're the most valuable company in the world. So, how do I like the iPhone 4S six months later? I... love...it.

• mcmillan27

The iPhone 4S in my opinion is still the best mobile device out to date (that I've used). Nothing even comes close to it in terms of usability--let alone the sheer beauty of the device. I do think; however, that the HTC One X is going to give the 4S a run for its money. At the same time though, its slightly an unfair comparison for the two devices. The latest iPhone was launched in October of last year, then the HTC One X is literally fresh from the factory.

After six months I can still say that I'm highly satisfied with the phone. I was looking towards a GSM Galaxy Nexus for a while, but once I saw an announcement about the One X, I was more interested in that. I'm probably going to pick up a One X on AT&T once its released--but after about a week of use, I'll most likely be reaching for my iPhone yet again. It simply works.

• circlez

Screen clarity - Nobody can touch it. Camera - Nobody can touch it. Battery life - No Android can touch it. Processor - Not the best but not the worst. Siri - Is my best friend. Use it a ton. Gaming experiece - Nobody can touch it

Yes I would still recommend it. It just works.

• Garz

More on the iPhone 4S

• iPhone 4S review
• iPhone 4S buyers guide
• iPhone 3S new users guide
• iPhone 4S six months later round table
• iPhone 4S forum

Image credit: iDoodle by Jason Harrison

The Antique model Steampunk Case for iPhone is one of a few handcrafted iPhone cases by Paul Marsh's Blujoos. Each model is a special edition, limited to 50 pieces, and designed to give your iPhone a unique look you just won't find anywhere else. A model and prop maker from the film industry with over 20 years and 25 films and TV series to his credit, Marsh is pouring every bit of that skill into these cases and it really shows. These aren't stickers -- these are actual 3D castings!

The models are built using carefully chosen parts from watches and clocks, and then a platinum silicone mould is created from the model. Marsh casts the individual cases from a tough, UV protected polyurethane and then -- get this -- impregnates them with metal powders. That's real brass, real bronze, real copper, and real iron powders. That's what gives them the incredible look of rusted, corroded metals. It's beautiful destruction and The effect is simply stunning. It looks like something out of fantasy, like the kingdoms busily assembling themselves during the opening credits of Game of Thrones...

There are currently two models available on Etsy, the Antique which I'm reviewing here, and the Salvage which has a more coppery, almost Lost City of Atlantis look to it.

Both are gorgeous and both are extremely limited, so if you like them, pounce on them soon.

The good

• Exquisite craftsmanship
• Incredible finish
• Unique look and feel

The bad

• iPhone can shift slightly in case
• Bulkier than a mass-produced skin

The conclusion

I absolutely adore the look of and feel of the Antique Steampunk iPhone case by Blujoos. Paul Marsh has put together something more than an accessory -- he's put together a real work of art. If you're a fan of the Steampunk genre, or of fantasy or sci-fi model-making techniques, or simply of unique craftsmanship and amazing design, check out Marsh's work on Etsy now.

$64 - Buy now

SpellTower for iPhone and iPad is a fun word game that adds a fun twist to the classic word search game. Instead of being limited to spelling words vertically, horizontally, and diagonally, you can choose your letters in any direction.

Specifically, if the next letter in your word is in one of the 8 surrounding letters, then it's fair game. Perhaps an easier way to explain it is -- any word that is able to be spelled by sliding over each letter, in order, without lifting your finger, is playable in SpellTower.

There are other little rules for scoring and clearing rows, but SpellTower does an excellent job of explaining them in the tutorial.

SpellTower has 5 different game modes. Tower Mode the most relaxing and pressure-free. You are simply given 150 letters and it's your goal to spell as many words as you can.

Puzzle Mode reminds me of Tetris. Each time you make a word, a new row is added and your goal is to prevent any of the columns from reaching the top.

If a letter has a small letter in its tile, the number represents the shortest length your word must be in order to use that letter. In Ex Puzzle Mode, there are a lot more of these letters than in Puzzle Mode.

Rush Mode has the same overall objective as the Puzzle Modes, except that instead of adding rows every time you make a word, SpellTower adds a new row after a set amount of time. This is by no means a leisurely game mode!

The Good

• Fun
• 4 levels of difficulty
• Challenging
• Includes helpful tutorial
• Multiplayer over bluetooth
• Night mode

The Bad

• No online multiplayer

The Conclusion

SpellTower is a very fun game. I've always had a slight aversion to word games, because I'm typically very terrible at them, but I actually really enjoy playing this one. SpellTower is the best word game I've ever played.

$1.99 - Download Now

iMore's authoritative guide to the very best, absolutely free apps for iPhone and iPod touch

Looking for great free apps for your iPhone or iPod touch? The App Store is home to over half a million apps and games, and a surprising number of them are available for free. That's free as in free of charge to buy, free of subscriptions to use, and free of any crippling or time-bombing to make you pay later. They're just free. But which free apps are the best? Which are the top free apps you just absolutely have to download right now?

That's where iMore comes in! Here's your ultimate, authoritative guide to the top, 100% free iPhone and iPod touch apps for social networking, IM and communications, education, entertainment, finance, fun and games, health and fitness, kids, music, navigation and location, news, photography, productivity, reading, shopping, sports, travel, and general utility.

Whether you're new to iPhone or iPod touch and looking for a fast, free way to get started with apps, or you're just bored and looking for a little free fun, check out the apps below. And hey, since they're free, you can download them all!

(Also, be sure to check out our best free games for iPhone rundown for even more great free iPhone apps!)

iMore app

What better way than to keep up-to-date with all the latest free iPhone app and game news than with iMore's own, absolutely free iPhone app! Not only that, you'll also get breaking news, helpful how-tos, app and accessory reviews, instant access to our podcasts, and more! This is the very best way to enjoy the best of iMore right on your iPhone!

• Download Now

Best free social networking apps for iPhone

Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social network on the planet, and it's always been one of the most popular free apps on the iPhone. Inside the free Facebook app, you can update your status, view photos, and check into your location. You can also keep up with your news feed, messages, events, pages, chat, as well as upload your photos and videos, and much, much more. (And if you're looking for more friends, check out our Facebook name swap thread!)

• Download Now

Twitter

Twitter and the iPhone go together like chocolate and peanut butter, and the free, official Twitter app for iPhone is the best way to get started finding cool celebrities and interesting internet personalities to follow, and trending topics to get involved with. (And be sure to check out our Twitter name swap thread to find other iMore members to tweet with!)

• Download Now

Pinterest

Pinterest is the new, rapidly growing, free social network that lets you pin photos, articles, recipes, or anything you think is cool, to your virtual pinboard. With the free Pinterest for iPhone app, you can view the pins of your friends, repin, like, and comment on your favorite pins, and pin directly from your camera.

• Download Now

More free social networking apps

• Best free social networking apps for iPhone

Best free IM and communications apps for iPhone

Skype

The free Skype app for iPhone lets you make free audio and video calls and exchange text chats from your iPhone to other iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users, as well as Android, Mac, Windows, and millions more Skype users around the world. You can also buy Skype credits to call conventional phone numbers at really low prices.

• Download Now

imo instant messenger

imo is a great, free iPhone app for those who love traditional instant messaging (IM). imo supports Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Skype, MSN, ICQ/AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, Hyves, VKontakte, Myspace, and Steam. You can send text, images, and voice as well.

• Download now

GroupMe

GroupMe is an excellent free group messaging app for iPhone that communicates over both data and SMS. GroupMe perfect for coordinating big events with friends that aren't all using smartphones. GroupMe generates a phone number which collects and forwards free messages to those authorized to be a part of the group. Those that do will be able to take advantage of a few extra features, like location and picture sharing.

• Download Now

Best free educational apps for iPhone

iTunes U

The free iTunes U app for iPhone gives you access to courses from universities and schools. These courses are completely free and even include assignments. iTunes U and the instructors provide course materials, including audio, video, books, documents & presentations, apps, and books. iTunes U includes over 500,000 free lectures, videos, books, and other resources on thousands of subjects from Algebra to Zoology.

• Download Now

SparkNotes

SparkNotes is one of the most popular study guides for literature, Shakespeare, poetry, philosophy, drama and short stories. With the free SparkNotes for iPhone app you can access 50 pre-installed study guides in your library and hundreds of study guides online. You can also check-in at the place you're studying and indicate what subject your studying which could then result in impromptu study sessions with other SparkNotes users studying the same subject at the same place at the same time.

• Download Now

Flashcards+

With school comes lots of studying. One of the most common studying techniques is to use flashcards. With the free Flashcards+ app for iPhone, you can say goodbye to the stacks and stacks of flashcards that accumulate over the course of a semester and use electronic flashcards on your iPhone instead. The beauty of Flashcards+ is that you have your flash cards with you wherever you go, which means you'll likely squeeze in more mini study lessons throughout your day and end up with better grades as a result!

• Download Now

Best free entertainment apps for iPhone

Crackle

While apps like Netflix are free, you still have to pay for a subscription to actually use them. Not so with Crackle! The free Crackle app for iPhone lets you watch hours and hours of Hollywood movies, from Resident Evil to A Few Good Men, and TV Shows from I Dream of Jennie to the Tick, absolutely free. And it supports AirPlay so you can watch on your big screen TV.

• Download Now

IMDB

IMDB's free iPhone app means you're always only a few taps away from the latest show times, trailers, movie and TV rations, and cast and episode lists. It's the perfect couch-side companion for any serious entertainment buff, and the perfect mobile app for cinema buffs!

• Download now

TED

The free TED app for iPhone blurs the lines between education and entertainment, showcasing riveting talks from experts in the fields of technology, entertainment, and design. With the TED app, you can browse their complete catalog of talks, bookmark and download your favorites, and share individual talks and playlists with your friends. It's like holding genius in the palm of your hand. For free.

• Download now

Best free financial apps for iPhone

Paypal

Love it or hate it, Paypal is the internet's default currency and the free Paypal for iPhone app is the best way to manage your Paypal account on the go. Whether you're sending or requesting money, checking your balance or reviewing your past transactions, or looking for a local retailer who takes PayPal, it's right here, right when you want.

• Download Now

Bloomberg

Bloomberg for iPhone is a great way for casual traders and investors to interact with their stocks and stay up to date with world news. Whether you need to casually monitor stocks on your iPhone or just find the urge to check out financial news, the free Bloomberg app has you covered -- for free!

• Download Now

Mint.com

The free Mint.com for iPhone app gives everything you love about the web site on the go and in the palm of your hand. You can track, manage, and budget your money, connect your bank, credit, and other financial accounts, and safely, securely keep it with you wherever you are. It also syncs with the Mint.com website so you're always up-to-date.

• Download now

Best free games for iPhone

For dozens of additional free iPhone games, check out our best free iPhone games special feature!

Angry Birds Free

The free Angry Birds app lets you play one of the most popular games in the world right on your iPhone -- for free. Yes, it is supported by adds, but you'll be too busy catapulting birds and destroying pigs to even notice them!

• Download Now

Draw Something Free

Draw Something is a sensation and you can play it on your iPhone for free with Draw Something Free. In Draw Something, you have a partner and you take turns drawing pictures with the goal of getting each other to guess the correct word. Just like Angry Birds Free, Draw something Free is supported by ads.

• Download Now

Hero Academy

Hero Academy is a great turn-based free iPhone game where you and a friend (or random partner) take turns moving and attacking each other with various army pieces on a checked board. You have a set number of action points with which to move your pieces, bring in fresh ones from your stash, upgrade your pieces, and, of course, attack. The main goal is to either whittle down a few crystals on your opponent's side of the board, or run them out of troops.

• Download Now

More free games

• best free games for iPhone

Best free health and fitness apps for iPhone

RunKeeper

The free RunKeeper for iPhone app uses your iPhone's built in GPS technology to track your running, walking, cycling and other exercise activities. RunKeeper also syncs up to its own web portal where you can view your history and stats in more detail. Integration with Facebook and Twitter means you can even show off your fitness prowess to your friends!

• Download Now

WebMD

WebMD is a reputable and accurate online source for medical facts and advice, and with the free WebMD iPhone app you'll have complete access to mobile-optimized health information and decision-support tools including WebMD’s Symptom Checker, Drugs & Treatments, First Aid Information and Local Health Listings.

• Download Now

Fooducate

The free Fooducate for iPhone app contains a wealth of information and user reviews about many of the foods we consume on a daily basis. Fooducate stresses the importance of eating foods that are good for your body as a whole. Sure, a calorie is a calorie, but if you give your body calories from better quality foods, you get the benefits of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that artificially processed foods with lots of additives, high fructose corn syrup, and other “empty” calories just can’t match.

• Download Now

Best free kids apps for iPhone

PBS KIDS Video

The free PBS KIDS Video app brings all your child's favorite shows right to the iPhone or iPod touch. Curious George, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That, Dinosaur Train, SUPER WHY!, Sesame Street and Wild Kratts and are all here and ready to entertain and educate.

• Download now

Curious George at the Zoo

If your child is interested in animals, then Curious George at the Zoo is a great free iPhone app to educate and entertain them. Explore an interactive 3D zoo, learn about and interact with the animals, watch videos and play games, all on the iPhone or iPod touch.

• Download now

ABC Letter Tracing

The free ABC Letter Tracing app for iPhone is perfect for pre-schoolers just learning to write. It has both upper and lowercase letters, along with helpful voice-overs and illustrations of items that begin with each letter.

• Download now

Best free music apps for iPhone

Shazam

How many times have you been listening to the radio, or attending a party, or watching TV when you hear a song that you like but have no idea what the name of the song is or even who the artist is? With the free Shazam app for iPhone, all have to do is let your mic listen to the song for about 30 seconds, and Shazam will tell you exactly which song it is!

• Download Now

Slacker Radio

Don't have much music stored on your iPhone? Don't fret! With the free Slacker Radio iPhone app you can stream radio to your iPhone for free. The Slacker music library features millions of songs from thousands of artists and you can customize your own radio stations with your favorite artists and songs. In addition to music, you can also listen to ESPN Radio, ABC News, comedy and more.

• Download Now

TuneIn Radio

The free TuneIn Radio app for iPhone gives you on-the-go access to over 50,000 radio stations worldwide. From the local station where you may live now to the far away station where you may have grown up or simply visited and always remembered, TuneIn radio has over 120,000 free shows for you to choose from, right on your iPhone.

• Download now

Best free navigation and location apps for iPhone

Waze social GPS & traffic

The free Waze app for iPhone uses Open Street Map data, which means you're contributing to building a map as you drive, and you also get to view the things added by others. The crowdsourced nature of Waze lets users share information about traffic jams, accidents, speed traps, and other pertinent data. It includes standard turn-by-turn navigation, but the accuracy can vary depending on the quality of the maps in your area.

• Download Now

Foursquare

Foursquare is free app for iPhone that lets you check into the places you go, and see which friends are there now, or may have been there in the past. It's a great way to keep track of trips and photos of the places you've visited, and a fun way to earn badges and share and receive recommendations for where to go next.

• Download Now

Poynt

Poynt is a free location-based search app for iPhone with dedicated channels to a variety of different kinds of content. What makes it better than just a Google Maps search is that each experience is very closely tailored, so searching for a movie will immediately bring up options to buy tickets from your phone or view a trailer, while restaurant listings will include reviews and the option to reserve a table.

• Download Now

Best free news apps for iPhone

Flipboard

The free Flipboard for iPhone app shows you the news that matters to you, along with recommendations from your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram friends. That makes it a dynamic, up-to-date, but highly personalized magazine, right in the palm of your hand! It's also makes it easy to share the stuff you like most back with your friends and social circles.

• Download Now

Pulse News

Pulse News, from Alphonso Labs is an awesome free newsreader for iPhone that brings all your news together into one place. With Pulse News, you choose the categories you want to display and the specific content for each section. For example, you might want to add a Gaming, Sports, News, Tech, Science, Art and Design any number of additional categories.

• Download Now

AP Mobile

The free AP Mobile app brings the Associated Press right to your iPhone. With comprehensive, timely coverage of local and global news it's not like having a newspaper or TV station in the palm of your hands -- it's like having their news sources. Plus, if you find yourself in the middle of the news, you can even send the AP your tip!

• Download Now

Best free photo apps for iPhone

Instagram

Instagram isn't just a free iPhone app, it's one of the most popular social photo sharing networks on the planet. It features a large selection of vintage, hip, and fun filters as well as the ability to add the tilt-shift effect to your photos. You can also follow friends and photographers, "like" photos, and leave comments on them. (If you're looking for more great iPhoneographers to share with, check out our Instragram name swap thread!)

• Download Now

Pic Stitch

There are a lot of collage apps in the App Store, but what's great about Pic Stitch is that it's free! With Pic Stitch for iPhone, you can create beautiful collages that tell a story in just a few taps. It features 32 different layouts and after you've finished your masterpiece, you can share it to your favorite social network or another photography app.

• Download Now

Camera Awesome

If you're looking for a free app that offers more than the built-in iOS Camera app, look no further than Camera Awesome. This fantastic free iPhone app not only gives you a lot of powerful editing tools and filters, but it also gives more control while taking photos as well by allowing you to select separate points for focus and exposure.

• Download Now

Best free productivity apps for iPhone

Adobe Reader

With the free Adobe Reader app for iPhone, you can have all your PDFs in your pocket. What's more, you aren't limited to just viewing PDFs, but you can annotated them with text, handwriting, strikethroughs, highlights, and more. You can also fill out forms and add your signature.

• Download Now

Evernote

Evernote isn't just a great free note-taking app for iPhone. It's a great free note-taking app on almost every platform. That means no matter where you are, or what device you have access to, your notes are always there for you. You can also add pictures and search for text in the images, add voice notes, and easily share what you've collected.

• Download Now

Dropbox

The free Dropbox for iPhone app gives you access to all your files stored in your Dropbox account (free up to 2GB). You can mark items as favorites to store them locally on your iPhone for offline viewing, save photos and videos to your Dropbox account, and easily share them with family, friends and colleagues.

• Download Now

Best free reading apps for iPhone

iBooks

iBooks is Apple's free ebook and PDF reading app for iPhone. It's a stylish way to read not only books purchased from the iBookstore, but all the free books from the massive Project Gutenberg library as well as any of your own ePub or PDF files.

• Download Now

Readability

Readability offers a gorgeous way to read articles from your favorite website without the distraction of ads and other fluff -- for free! You simply set up your free account and add articles with a bookmarklet . A lot of other apps, like Twitter, off Readability support so that you can add articles directly from those apps.

• Download Now

Kindle

The free Kindle App for iPhone is Amazon's ebook reader. Unlike Apple's iBooks, Kindle is cross-platform. If you already have a large Kindle book collection, free or otherwise, or you just want to keep your options open for the future, Kindle is a great choice.

Best free shopping apps for iPhone

Apple Store

The free Apple Store app not only lets you shop Apple's online store from the comfort of your iPhone, but it actually lets you purchase accessories via your iPhone, iTunes account, and EasyPay at the Apple retail store. You can also make an appointment at the Genius Bar an automatically check in when you arrive.

• Download now

Etsy

Etsy for iPhone is a free app that gives you access to 11 million items from some of the internets most eclectic, most astonishing artisans and craftspeople. You can browse, you can buy, and if you're a seller, you can manage your Etsy account right from your iPhone.

• Download now

RedLaser

With the free RedLaser app your iPhone transforms into a powerful barcode and QR code scanner. If you see an item at the store, simply scan it and get instant results from Google, TheFind, eBay, Milo, American Express, and many more. It's one of the easiest ways to compare real-world prices online -- and it's free!

• Download now

Best free sports apps for iPhone

ESPN ScoreCenter

ESPN ScoreCenter is a free iPhone app that brings you the latest scores, standings, and news for dozens of sports and hundreds of teams around the world. If you have a free myESPN account, you get automatic access to all your favorites. If you don't, you can choose baseball, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, rugby and soccer teams to follow right on your iPhone.

• Download Now

MLB.com At Bat

Although it has premium options, the free or “lite” version of MLB at Bat for iPhone still gives you access to lots of great content. You can watch the scoreboard during every game, see news and highlights from recent games, buy tickets to upcoming games and check in around the league for other scores and highlights. While diehard baseball fans will want to buy the full app, the Lite version is great for casual fans on the go.

• Download Now

NBA Game Time

NBA Game Time is sort of like MLB.com At Bat – but for basketball. During games, you can follow along practically play by play, seeing who is on the court at every moment and who is scoring plays. You can also check the scores around the league, watch video highlights, check the standings, look at the schedule for every team and get information on each arena, right from the free iPhone app!

• Download Now

Best free travel apps for iPhone

Yelp

If you're searching for a place to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, the free Yelp for iPhone app will provide you with a map or list of exactly what you're looking for. Each location is also filled with reviews by users who have been to that place before. When you decide on a place and have finished your visit, you can leave a review of your own for other users to read when in the same predicament that you were in.

• Download Now

TripIt

The free TripIt app for iPhone, when paired with a free TripIt account, becomes your virtual travel assistant. Simply email any flight or hotel confirmations to TripIt and they'll automagically get logged and displayed on your iPhone, along with helpful maps and additional information to make your travel safer and easier.

• Download Now

Google Translate

While there are a lot of language courses and travel references available for the iPhone, the free Google Translate app lets you find the right phrase, in the right language, right when you need it. Text translation is available in 64 languages and voice translation in 17. Yup, you can talk instead of type! Fantastique! Hen hao!

• Download now

Best free utilities for iPhone

Find my iPhone

The free Find my iPhone app by Apple will help you locate your iPhone in the unfortunate event that you misplace it or it gets stolen. You can track your iPhone from another iOS device or from the iCloud website. You can also send a message and alert to your iPhone to help you find it or to provide contact information in the even that someone found your iPhone. If you're concerned about the security of your data, you can remotely lock your iPhone or even wipe it with the free Find my iPhone app.

• Download Now

Remote

Apple's free Remote app lets you control your iTunes or Apple TV right from your iPhone over your local Wi-Fi network. Browse or search your iTunes library or Apple TV content, choose songs, TV shows, or movies to listen to or watch, and control playback, skipping, and more.

• Download now

The Weather Channel

Apple's built-in weather app is great and all, but sometimes you're looking for more information about the weather than this app can provide. The Weather Channel app is a great alternative. It features interactive maps and radar, severe weather alerts, and hourly and 10 day forecasts. You can also watch videos of breaking news and weather coverage and upload and view photos of the weather taken by other users. And you get all of this for free!

• Download Now

Your favorite free iPhone apps?

Did we miss any of your favorite free iPhone and iPod touch apps? If so, head on over to our iPhone apps and games forum and add yours to the favorite free iPhone apps list! We'll be updating this post often, so your pick could be next!

Rene Ritchie, Ally Kazmucha, Gary Mazo, and Simon Sage contributed to this article

The editors and friends of iMore and Mobile Nations weigh in on the reliability and relevance of Apple's 2011 iPhone 4S six months after release

6 months ago Apple released the iPhone 4S. Some of us bought it immediately. Some of us waited. Some of us still haven't decided. Since Apple only releases one new phone a year -- if that -- the longevity of any new iPhone model is really important. So we polled the staff here at iMore, our compatriots from the Mobile Nations network, and our friends from the podcasts to find out how the iPhone 4S was holding up. Are we still happy? Is it still our one and only? Or with all the hot new devices on other platforms, are we harboring any secret lust in our hearts?

• iPhone 4S review
• iPhone 4S 2 months later: Mobile Nations round table
• iPhone 4S buyers guide
• iPhone 4S forum
• Top 10 iPhone 4S tips and tricks
• Top 10 iPhone 4S apps
• iPhone 4S accessories at the TiPb store
• iPhone 4S accessories at Amazon.com

Georgia, iMore

The iPhone 4s was a wonderful upgrade to the iPhone 4. With Siri, the new camera I am more than pleased. It has amazing apps and games, and the choice of accessories just can't be beat. And as much as I love my iPhone 4S, it's the apps and accessories that make me love it even more.

Seth Clifford, Nickelfish and Iterate

Six months into owning the iPhone 4S and my experience isn't any different. I'm still very much enjoying the device, despite the introduction of its larger, sexier sibling (iPad with Retina Display) into my life. At its core, it's quite simple: I measure how great a device is by a few key metrics.

• Does this device allow me to manage my life in a better way?
• Do I enjoy using this device on a daily basis or is it a series of compromises?
• Does the software available continue to meet my needs?

Those seem like pretty obvious things to think about, but if you really examine them closely, you'll discover a lot about how you use your device. For me, experience is king, and the 4S brings it in spades. Terrific camera; still unparalleled in a mobile device at this point. Siri integration; the cause of great consternation at times, and childlike wonder at others - net result, however is that I still like her. Antenna upgrade; this phone is so much more capable than the iPhone 4 in terms of reception, my only regret is not switching carriers yet (but that's a much longer story). And software? I've tried every platform, and while you can get a lot of things in a lot of places, you simply don't have the variety of choice and selection that you do on iOS. Add to that a predilection toward purchasing lovely apps, and it's pretty clear where my bread's buttered for now. I play with everything I can get my hands on because I'm curious, but no single device or platform can perform (for me) as well as this one. The iPhone 4S remains the best iPhone I've ever used, hands down.

And now that I've seen what LTE can do for iOS, I can't wait to see what's coming next.

Marc Edwards, Bjango and Iterate

I consider the iPhone 4's hardware to be Apple at its very best. At the time, there was nothing that felt lacklustre or in need of improvement. The iPhone 4S extended and improved in some vital areas — the camera really is significantly better. It doesn't yet feel like it's on par with top point and shoot cameras, but the gap is closed enough that I now don't own a separate small camera.

I never had any antenna issues with the iPhone 4, so there's been no significant change for me with the iPhone 4S — it's been smooth sailing all the way. Siri is still a bit of an unknown. I've used Siri quite a bit for dictation, which I didn't think I'd do. However, battery usage seems noticeably higher with Siri running, so it's currently disabled on my phone. Hopefully battery tech will improve in the next update to the point where I can leave Siri on. Overall, and in hindsight, the iPhone 4S is the best pocket computer I've ever owned.

Leanna Lofte, iMore

When the iPhone 4S released, my biggest concern was if I was going to actually use Siri. The idea of "her" seemed great, but would the novelty wear off? Would I still be using Siri 6 months later?

Turns out the answer is yes.

I use Siri on a daily basis to set alarms, timers and appointments, send messages and make phone calls. It may sound stupid, but after six months, I can't imagine not having Siri.

And of course I'm still in love with the camera on the iPhone 4S. But that's a given.

Chris Oldroyd, iMore

Six months after the launch of the iPhone 4S and I stand by everything that I said two months after the launch of the iPhone 4S. I am still happy with it as it’s the best smartphone on the market by a mile but it just wasn’t much of an upgrade from the iPhone 4. Siri is turned off on my iPhone 4S as most of the time it just doesn’t work for me or anyone else that I know in the UK. It is in beta for a reason; it needs a lot more work. The camera is the one saving feature that makes me smile, it is simply awesome.

I sold my iPhone 4 before the iPhone 4S was announced. Because of that I had no choice but to upgrade. If I hadn’t sold it, I would still be more than happy with an iPhone 4. In my opinion the iPhones 4S is a great upgrade for those with a 3GS or earlier iPhone, but just not worth it for those already with an iPhone 4!

Gary Mazo, Mobile Nations

Like many of you, I stood in line and waited (not so patiently) for my shiny new iPhone 4S. I had the iPhone 4 (and the 3GS before that) but I just had to have the better camera, faster processor and, of course…Siri.

So, after about six months, the time for evaluation is upon us; did this phone meet all my expectations? Does it meet all my needs? Is it better than anything out there?

Well, let’s start with expectations. For the most part, the 4S did meet my expectations. I expected it to be faster –and it is. I expected it to have a great camera – and it does. I expected it to look just like my old phone – and it does.

Does it meet all my need? I would say that it does. I truly manage my life on my iPhone 4S. I no longer pack a separate camera as I find the iPhone camera, HDR and using the guides very effective for almost any picture I need to take. Since there truly is an app for just about anything – I have yet to feel like I really need to do something on my iPhone but am unable to do it. Siri can be awesome – like dictating text messages in the car – but it can also be frustrating as the voice recognition is still not perfect. I find I am using it less and less each day.

Is it better than anything out there? That’s the big question. The short answer is that if I could have only one phone I would still go out and buy the iPhone 4S. The longer answer is that there are things I am starting to see on other platforms that I would really like to see on my iPhone. I would love to see something like the People hub on Windows Phone 7.5 or the unified Contacts app on the BlackBerry PlayBook. To me, those contact apps trump iOS.

On my desk at the moment sits a BlackBerry 8520, a Nokia Lumia 900, a Samsung Galaxy Note, an iPhone 4S and a couple of tablets as well! The only phone I enjoy holding and using as much as my iPhone is the Lumia 900. I can say that I actually prefer the polycarbonate uni-body design to the glass and steel on the iPhone. I also really like the UI on the Lumia. iOS is starting to get “stale” for me; Windows Phone is moving beyond icons to more intuitive gestures and an interface that is very cool, very hip and fun to use.

So, I still love my iPhone 4S but I am starting to look forward to something new and different in my next iPhone – I would like a polycarbonate shell, a UI upgrade, all the current great apps and…a slide out BlackBerry keyboard so I can finally type long emails.

Ally Kazmucha, iMore

I don't think my impression of my iPhone 4S has changed much from my initial impressions. I still think I got what I bargained for and exactly what I expected. I don't notice a huge speed difference between my iPhone 4S compared to the iPhone 4 but I didn't expect one.

I'm still blown away by the camera in the 4S and I find myself using it quite often for quick shots on the go. And I'm always impressed when I upload them to a computer. The quality is just stunning and it has made me want to utilize services like Instagram more than ever.

I also find myself using Siri quite often. I know some users seem to have issues with Siri understanding them but I've found that if you treat her like a person (no, I'm not joking) and talk to her in full sentences, she understands you better. Breaking things down seems to only confuse her. I constantly find myself using Siri to set reminders, dictate e-mails or texts while on the road, and to find phone numbers and search the web from my home screen. I can honestly say I'd miss the functionality if I didn't have it anymore.

Other than that, I find my experience to be exactly as it was on my iPhone 4.

Kevin Michaluk, CrackBerry.com

Every time I pick up the iPhone 4S, I find myself wishing the display was bigger. It feels so small these days, especially after spending time on a device like the Galaxy Nexus (who's screen is arguably a little too big). I really hope we see a bigger display on iPhone 5. I'm also finding Siri just doesn't yet fit into my mobile lifestyle. I never find myself instinctively using it, and even when I put it to use it's more of a hassle. In retrospect, I probably could have stuck with my iPhone 4 another year and waited for the iPhone 5, vs. going to the 4S.

Mickey Papillon, the Cell Phone Junkie

Has it been six months already? Feels like the 4S was just releases, yet like I've had it for years. And I guess both feelings are valid, as I've strayed from iOS a bit over the last four months, though ultimately now find myself back with the 4S as my main device. The overall elegance and simplicity of iOS, coupled with the solid hardware of the iPhone 4S make it still the most well rounded device in my book.

During my time using both Windows Phone and Android recently, I realized there are some features and small things that add up to what makes the iOS ecosystem so great. You have iMessage, Reminders and Find my Friends. While each of these are services that can be found with third party apps like Google Talk, Wunderlist and Latitude, the version for the iPhone are superior.

Then there's the camera. An 8MP unit that works better than any other camera I've used on a mobile device. And with a family, the importance of having the best camera available is on the top of my list. Add in that all the photos are synced through Photostream to my iPad and Mac, and this is the best combination for photos.

Siri - Yep, its there, and yes I use it. Not as much as I did when I first got the phone, but mostly for dictation of messages or adding reminders when on the go.

Antenna - no issues, it works fine, with or without a case. A novel concept...

Overall, my wandering cell phone junkiness has led me in a circle, back to using and loving the iPhone 4S. As someone that constantly writes about and reviews phones from various platforms, I find myself yearning for something new and exciting. However, at the end of the day, there just is nothing that can beat it.

Chris Parsons, Mobile Nations

The iPhone 4S was the first iPhone that I actually managed to purchase on launch date. I got a 16GB white version and it has been rock solid for me. No issues with the device at all in terms of hardware. The camera blows away any other device I have used thus far. Siri and I have issues. She's not living up to her potential in my opinion -- and yes, I am keeping that beta tag in mind.

All that said; I still live in a world where I must carry 2-3 devices at all times. iOS works for some things, BlackBerry works for some things and Android works for some things. The iPhone 4S doesn't solve all my problems or fill or my needs for a mobile device but in the full aspect of things, it is my "most used" device these days. It always comes down to my iPhone 4S and whatever other device with me. The iPhone 4S is the only constant.

Rene Ritchie, iMore

6 months later and a new generation of competition is staring down the iPhone 4S. On one side we have latest, greatest Android devices from HTC, spearheaded by the HTC One X and on the other, the first real hero device from Windows Phone, the Nokia Lumia 900. Taken spec by spec, feature by feature, each of those devices and their respective operating systems have aspects that surpass the iPhone 4S. When taken as a whole, however, this year like every year before, none of them come close to eclipsing 6 month old Apple technology.

The Retina Display is still one of the best in the industry, the 8 megapixel camera is still among the best in mobile, the quality and quantity of apps and accessories are still second to none, and accessibility features and customer service provided by the Apple Store are simply unmatched.

That's part of the value Apple instill in the iPhone 4S. Buy it in October, 2011 and it retains an incredible amount of its value and relevance in April, 2012. There aren't many other devices on the market that can make that claim, and there are very few not made by Apple. Those are real specs and those are real features that matter to real consumers.

Sure, compared to an iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S isn't and wasn't a huge upgrade and that exactly proves my point, given the iPhone 4 was released in June, 2010, almost 2 years ago.

Now, in the mid-point of Apple typical product release cycle, is the iPhone 4S still a good buy for a prospective new iPhone owner? Or should they wait for the next generation iPhone, potentially to be released this coming October? My boiler-plate advice remains the same -- if you absolutely need a new phone now, today, buy the iPhone 4S and you'll be incredibly happy. It's still among the best phones, and is the best supported phone, on the market today. If you can wait, then wait as long as you possibly can. If you can wait another 6 months, you'll likely get an even better iPhone.

Your review, 6 month later?

So that's our take on the iPhone 4S now that it's been on the market for 6 months. But we want to know -- what's yours? If you have an iPhone 4S, are you still happy with your purchase? Is it still competitive with the newer phones on the market today?

If a friend, family member, or colleague asked you for a recommendation, would you tell the to get an iPhone 4S? Save some money and get an iPhone 4? Get an Android or Windows Phone or BlackBerry device instead? Or wait for the next generation iPhone in another 6 months or so? What's your iPhone 4S review, 6 months later?

Jump on over to the iPhone 4S Forum and let us know!

There are a wealth of note taking apps for iPad already in the App Store, but the simplicity of Daedalus Touch is what makes it so great. It's got an excellent interface that focuses on allowing you to take notes and switch between stacks quickly. That makes it the perfect tool for taking class or meeting notes in an organized way.

Daedalus aims to make accessing and organizing easier with a stacking method as opposed to the traditional folders and notebooks method.

The main difference between Daedalus and other note taking apps is how it handles your notes. There are no notebooks or endless pages to scroll through. Instead, Daedalus sorts your collections into stacks and individual pages within those stacks. When you're ready to start typing on a new page, just swipe to the right. Go back a page by swiping left.

The same functionality is built in to stacks. Double tap to open a stack and just scroll through the pages within that stack from left to right. To exit a stack, pinch it closed with two fingers to return to the main screen.

If you're a student, stacks is a great way to sort notes by class. Make a stack for Calculus, Biology, Accounting, etc.. then quickly swipe between them and double tap into any stack to take more notes or view notes you've already typed out.

Daedalus allows you to search for keywords and sentences within stacks. You can also change font and the overall look & feel within settings.

For the most part, Daedalus keeps its options simple. There's a basic word and character counter in the upper right hand corner of each note. You can switch between three different types of fonts and make the text larger if you'd like. Daedalus also has 4 different layouts to choose from:

• Console
• Dark
• Light
• Sepia

You can choose to turn auto-caps, auto-correction, and spell check on or off. Tapping the eye in the upper left side of the screen will lets you search Google, Wikipedia, and dict.cc for information via a built-in browser. This makes it easy to look up information without having to jump back and forth between Safari and Daedalus.

You can also tap into any stack and type a search term into the top bar. Tap return and scroll through your stack to see the instances of that term. It'd be nice to see it aggregate a list of where the term was found instead of having to page through though.

Daedalus supports both iCloud and Dropbox syncing. You can also export notes into an e-mail, text, PDF, or ePub document.

Daedalus supports syncing with both iCloud and Dropbox. You can navigate to the folder you'd like to bring down and import folders you already have into stacks. Just choose the folder you want to turn into a stack and Daedalus will do all the heavy lifting for you.

From the main stack screen you can click the sync button to sync all the stacks you've created or you can individually sync stacks if you'd prefer only certain stacks be saved to iCloud or Dropbox.

You can share your notes under the export menu in the following ways - e-mail, text, PDF, or ePub. You can also print and copy to the clipboard. Notice there is no export as HTML option to support Markdown. So if you need to type in Markdown, you won't be able to export it directly from the app.

The good

• Fast, accessible interface gets you going quickly
• Excellent organization
• Selective sync is a great way to save space
• Built in browser is very convenient

The bad

• Search function could be better
• No Markdown support
• Can't important single documents, only complete folders as stacks
• No iPhone or Mac version

Conclusion

Deadalus aims to simplify and streamline the note-taking process. For users that don't care about Markdown support and just need the ability to take notes quickly in an organized fashion, Deadalus is perfect.

While I stil prefer applications like Byword for writing and Evernote for notes and lists, there are plenty of people who will prefer the focus of Daedalus.

$4.99 - Download Now

Additional Resources:

• Byword for iPhone and iPad review
• iA Writer for iPhone and iPad review
• iMore apps and games forums

Wrap your new iPad in handcrafted leather and birch with Pad & Quill's classic Contega case

The Pad & Quill Contega case for the new iPad updates their iPad 2 case for Apple's third generation tablet. Granted, it's not a major change -- they've teased that will come soon enough -- but it does make the adjustments necessary to get an already fabulous case working on the latest iPad. That makes this review really simple: if you loved the Contega on your iPad 2, you'll love it on your new iPad. If you didn't try it on your previous iPad, or this is your first iPad, and you're a fan of the moleskin look and feel, then you're in for a real treat.

Grooves inside the front cover let you stand your iPad up at two convenient angles

Pad & Quill cases are lovingly created by Mr. & Mrs. PQ in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and locally handcrafted out of the finest Spanish bonded leather and single sheet Baltic birch. They're traditional, artesanal, beautiful. Like we said in our previous review, there's just something about wrapping Apple's latest glass and aluminum technology in old world materials...

The Contega is P&Q's higher end case and has several great features, both carried over from the previous generation and new for the new iPad model. The Baltic birch frame is now stronger than ever and has a Sure-Lock bumper system to hold your new iPad securely in place. The cover contains the same kind of magnets as Apple's own Smart Cover, so opening and closing the Contega turns your iPad on and off, just like the Smart Cover. It's got a sound channel that redirects as much of the iPad's tiny speaker back at you as possible, and a cutout for the camera so you don't have to remove your new iPad to use the much improved new camera. And the Contega also includes a secret hidden pocket for your secret hidden papers!

The Pad & Quill Contega case for the new iPad is black on the outside but hides a colored heart within -- camden blue, cranberry red, field green, plum, and french roast are your options. (Those last two are new to the new model.) Because of rather cunning grooves inside the cover, you can also use the Contega to prop up your iPad for easy video watching -- at two different angles. Flip it over, and the cover works to hold your iPad at a better typing angle as well. Close it up, and a handy elastic snaps around to hold it closed.

If you love the idea of new age tech wrapped in old world beauty, the Pad & Quill Contega is for you

The good

• Stunningly beautiful design
• Amazing craftsmanship
• Can be easily positioned for easy typing or video watching
• Hidden pocket for papers

The bad

• Leather and wood is bulkier than plastic film

The conclusion

Because of it's relative bulk and classical design, and the premium price for such a premium product, the Pad & Quill Contega will never appeal to every iPad user. Nor should it. Art isn't about mass appeal. It's about being authentic and making a statement. For those who want to carry their iPad around with the comfort and flair of an old world book, the Pad & Quill Contega remains the gold standard.

$99 - Buy now

Update: The fine folks at Pad & Quill have been gracious enough to send us a coupon code for iMore readers! Just enter iMR31 on checkout and received 10% off the Octavo and/or Contega cases for the new iPad (3rd generation).

Speed 2 for iPad is a new iPad app that converts your iPad into a speedometer while you drive. It features a gorgeous UI that integrates with Google Maps and will make you want to install your iPad directly into your dash.

Speed 2 has 4 main elements: the maps which take up the top third of the screen, and the compass, speedometer, and odometer in the bottom third of the screen. This area is like your dash. On the speedometer, you'll see a red marker that can be moved around. If you exceed the speed marked, the app will emit an alarm sound to alert that you're going too fast.

If you swipe your finger up the dash, it will slide up to reveal some options. Under the compass, you can select true or magnetic north. Under the speedometer, you can select an analog or digital display and enable/disable the speed limiter. Lastly, from this menu you can reset the trip or total of your odometer and select if you want to allow the app to track in the background.

Speed 2 require GPS as this is how it determines how fast you are traveling, so it's only compatible with 3G and LTE iPads. You also must have your 3G or LTE enabled in order for Speed 2 to work. This also means that Speed's performance is dependent on the strength of your connection. On Verizon LTE, Speed 2 worked perfectly for me.

The Good

• Gorgeous UI
• Slide-up panel is very convenient. It's nice to not have to navigate to a separate menu
• True North or Magnetic North
• Analog or digital
• Alarm will sound when you exceed a specified speed
• Tracks in the background
• Includes trip odometer
• Tap the speedometer to switch between miles, kilometers, and knots

The Bad

• Cannot insert addresses and map out directions

The Conclusion

Combined with an iPad car mount, Speed 2 will be a great speedometer for your car. The UI is gorgeous and being able to view Google Maps at the same time is awesome. It's a shame that you can't retrieve directions to a destination, but Speed 2 can pair nicely with a turn-by-turn navigation app running in the background.

Now excuse me while I hunt for the best iPad car mount...

$2.99 - Download Now

Byword, iA Writer, and Elements definitively compared to find out which type-written text editor and note-taking app is the absolute best for your iPad

Taking and sharing notes is a vital part of what many users will want to do on their iPad. We've already taken a look at the best handwriting app for iPad, but what about the best typing and text editing notes app? Let's find out!

The iPad App Store is filled with an incredible amount of high-quality text editing and note taking apps. There are so many that the problem isn't finding one -- it's finding out which is the best! Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, features and support. After a lot of heavy sifting, it came down to three contenders: Byword, iA Writer, and Elements.

Byword vs. iA Writer vs. Elements: Design

Byword is an app you can just open and start using right away. There's nothing tricky or complicated to learn, and everything you need is right in front of you, right where you expect it to be, all the time. Because the interface is so unobtrusive, you can really focus on the writing.

While all three have a great overall design, Byword has a slight edge due to the simplicity and clean interface. There's literally no learning curve.

While Byword and Elements not allow you to change the font or margins, iA Writer does not. Ai Write does, however, have a feature called Focus Mode that fades everything away except for the sentence you are writing. This is great way to avoid distraction and concentrate on the work. Since iA Writer's default font may not appeal to everyone, however, this doesn't make up for their lack of settings options.

iA Writer allows you to easily access files and the organization is simple. Users won't have design issues with any of these apps but Byword just seems to be a bit more thought out.

Elements has a few more options than Byword but also has few more controls to learn.

While Elements has a great interface, a lot of things users may need to interact with are buried in the settings menu. This is especially noticeable if you need to access documents across an iCloud or Dropbox account.

Byword, which is configurable yet still clear, powerful yet still usable, is the best when it comes to interface and design.

Byword vs. iA Writer vs. Elements: Markdown support

Markdown may not be important for every user but for those users who have come to depend on it for everything from blogging to writing to creating richly formatted emails, it's very important.

Byword and Elements both support Markdown and both apps allow you to access a Markdown preview straight from the edit screen as well as copy the HTML to your clipboard or export it.

Byword Markdown preview can be accessed by tapping on the settings menu within any document and tapping "preview markdown". iA Writer does not support Markdown at all.

iA Writer does not support Markdown preview. You can, of course, type in Markdown with iA Writer, you just won't be able to preview it inside the app. And if you're new to the Markdown language or want to start learning, that may not be a good thing. For writers that prefer having everything formatted so publishing or exporting is as simple as a button tap, Elements or Byword would be a better choice.

Elements allows you to view a preview of your Markdown content with just one tap. From there you can copy to HTML or exit preview and continue writing.

Byword also adds a line above the keyboard that gives quick access to many Markdown functions. Just slide the word count away to the left and you'll see keyboard shortcuts. Swipe one more time and you'll get popular options such as header tags, insert image and link code, and lists.

That's why, when it comes to Markdown support, Byword, its ease of use, and its shortcuts gives it the edge over Elements.

Byword vs. iA Writer vs. Elements: Organization

Byword, iA Writer, and Elements are all pretty much the same when it comes to organizing notes. They'll create default folders either natively or wherever you choose to store them, whether it be iCloud or Dropbox.

As with Byword, you'll need to choose a different directory within Elements in order to access different documents. iA Writer has the edge due to the extreme ease of browsing files across all syncing services without the need to change any settings.

All three also support the creation of your own folder or folders in Dropbox. That way, regardless of which text editor you're using, you always know where your notes are. This is especially convenient if you use a different notes editor on your iPad than you do your iPhone, smartphone, or Mac or Windows PC.

Byword allows you to change the default directory quickly but you'll need to navigate to that syncing folder each time and change the location which may be bothersome to certain users.

iA Writer is the easiest app to navigate. You can access any .txt file within your Dropbox account with a simple menu tap. If you saved something in a different location, no problem -- just go grab it from wherever it is.

iA Writer allows you to easily navigate around all your Dropbox documents for text files. The others aren't as intuitive when it comes to navigating around folders.

If you're storing things natively and don't plan on syncing, Byword, iA Writer, an Elements are all tied when it comes to organization. All of them provide an easy way to organize and access files natively. iA Writer, however, has the advantage when it comes to organization and accessing online files. If you have everything you write in one folder, you shouldn't have an issue with any three apps. iA Writer just makes it simpler to access things that may not be in the default path.

Byword vs. iA Writer vs. Elements: Syncing

Byword, iA Writer, and Elements all offer iCloud, Dropbox, and iTunes sync. All three apps perform well and sync seamlessly with Dropbox. Changes are brought down pretty much instantly. Byword does have the option to manually sync. So if automatic syncing isn't something you want, Byword may be a better option for you.

Byword vs. iA Writer vs. Elements: Cross-platform editing

Byword, Elements, and iA Writer are all universal apps, so if you buy them for your iPad you can also use them on your iPhone or iPad touch at no additional charge, and if you're syncing with Dropbox or iCloud, any changes you make on one device will be reflected on the others. Likewise, if you're saving everything in .txt format, you won't have any issue opening a document on your Mac or Windows PC with a native word editor.

Byword and iA Writer also have apps for Mac users as well. Elements does not. So if you'd like consistent environments between all your devices, Byword and iA Writer are probably the two apps you'd want to look at.

Byword vs. iA Writer vs. Elements: Cost

iA Writer is by far the cheapest of the three note-taking apps at just $0.99. Byword sits in the middle at $2.99. Elements is on top of the price range at $4.99.

Byword vs. iA Writer vs. Elements: Conclusion

While Byword, iA Writer, and Elements are all excellent choices for editing and sharing text, Byword is currently the best choice. It is a great balance between functionality and simplicity. It syncs everything seamlessly, and it's incredibly easy to get started with. Just choose your syncing option, a folder you'd like to save things to, and start writing.

If you are more concerned about writing without distraction, iA Writer may be a better choice (provided you can live with Markdown previews). If you want a dark mode to work with and a bit more customization, Elements is a great choice (provided you don't want a Mac client to go with it).

If you just want a well round, well supported text-editor for your iPad, get Byword and get writing.

Byword - $2.99 - Download Now

Elements - $4.99 - Download Now

iA Writer - $0.99 - Download Now

Mac companion apps

Byword for Mac - $9.99 - Download Now

iA Writer for Mac - $8.99 - Download Now

Additional Resources:

• Byword for iPhone and iPad review
• iA Writer for iPhone and iPad review
• iMore apps & game review forum

One of the advantages of having a camera on your iPhone and iPad is that you can you use it with great apps like Scanner Pro that let you take photos of documents to "scan" them and store as PDFs. The result looks just as if you used a physical scanner to do the job.

To use Scanner Pro, you simply take a photo of the document you wish to scan, or upload a photo that you took at an early time from your Camera Roll. After you take the photo, Scanner Pro will automatically detect the edges and put a box around it. If it needs adjusting, you can simply drag the edges and corners to where they should be. In my experience, the detection has been very good. Even when I intentionally did a terrible job at taking the photo, Scanner Pro found a way to make it work.

Even though I took a terrible photo, Scanner Pro did a great job detecting the edges and produced a "good enough" result.

Scannner Pro also allows you to choose the document size before accepting the scan. Choosing an accurate paper size and border for your page is important for having the best looking scanned document for your result.

Tapping Done will bring you into the next stage of the scanning process. This is where you can decide if the document will be in color, black and white, or simply look just like the photo. You can also adjust the brightness and contrast to make sure the final documents looks good. Tapping Done at this stage will finish the scan.

After you've scanned your documents, you can share them to Dropbox, Evernote, or GoogleDocs. Scanner Pro also includes the "Open in" button so that you can open you scanned documents in any other apps that support PDFs.

The Good

• Easy way to scan documents on the go
• Does a fantastic job
• Auto edge detection is pretty accurate
• Set page size
• Support for multi-pate documents
• Option for password protection
• Sync with Dropbox, Evernote, and GoogleDocs
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The Bad

• Edges can't go off the screen, so make sure your document is completely visible in your photo

The Conclusion

Scanner Pro does a great job at scanning documents into electronic form. It's a perfect solution for people who don't have access to scanner or for those time they're away from their scanner. I'm beginning to think I didn't need to purchase that all-in-one printer I bought last month.

$6.99 - Download Now

Thanks to its big, beautiful screen, the iPad is a great way to read traditional Newsstand-style magazines in a new, digital way. Because the iPad is online, however, and can be hooked into everything from RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, it can also be a lot more. It can be a dynamic, personalized magazine filled with things that are important to you, recommended by the people you trust most, or updated based on your previous likes or dislikes. Flipboard, Zite, and Pulse have all sought to make dynamic, personal, sometimes even social magazine apps for the iPad, and they've all gone about it in a different way. Which one is the absolute best? Lets take a look!

User Interface

While all three have great layouts, you can literally see the attention to detail in Flipboard. Everything from the way pages flip downwards to how tiles fold to reveal sections is beautifully done.

Flipboard, Zite, and Pulse all have great interfaces that makes it easy for readers to navigate around and explore news and social sites.

Flipboard is just fun. The cover page is full of big, bold squares and rectangles that highlight photos and images and give you categories to choose from. You navigate by literally flipping the boards to drill deeper into sections and stories. The layout inside the sections is crisp and clean and you can easily flip through until you find a story that catches your eye. Tap a story you like and you're zoomed into a full-screen view. If you want to move tiles around or don't want a specific section, hold down on a tile just like you would to move around app icons on your homescreen. You can then move them around and delete sections you aren't interesting in reading (you can always restore them later via settings if you'd like). Once you're done deleting and organizing, just tap any tile to exit edit mode.

Zite keeps things simple by using white space so there is no distraction from content. Click into an article or view more of a category using the main navigation bar on the left. There's nothing to find hidden away. It's simple and clean throughout.

Zite uses lots of white space and it's Top Stories page looks like the table of contents of a contemporary, modern magazine. Sections are off to the side and rendered in big, beautiful type, and individual stories are shown in a spartan, stripped down, almost "read later" style.

Pulse has the most going on in terms of homescreen layout. While some users may consider it to be too busy, others may like having access to more information in just a few flicks.

Pulse has the densest cover page of the three, and is set on black instead of white. Not only does it fit a lot of content onto one page, but you can swipe through any of the horizontal sections to see even more stories. Tap on one you like and a panel slides over to show you the story. You can swipe sideways inside the panel to move between stories, and because the cover page remains visible, keep swiping between the sections as well to keep browsing even more quickly.

All three are very well designed. However, the award has to go to Flipboard. Everything from the carefully crafted icon to the way pages flip and tiles fold down to view sections is beautiful and intelligently thought out. It's one of those apps that you want to use just because the interface is so enjoyable.

Content

Flipboard allows you to add, order, and remove topics and sections that you want to read. Beyond that, there isn't too much customization for content.

Content is king for a reason. No matter how beautiful an app may be, if there's nothing in it, its value will be limited. When it comes to content, Flipboard, Zite, and Pulse all have their strengths and weaknesses.

Flipboard integrates RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well. So if you're looking for an app that allows you to not only keep up with news but with friends and family, Flipboard offers an incredibly personalized experience.

Pulse takes it a step further than Flipboard and allows you to search for feeds or search from recommendations. But unless you know exactly what you're looking for, you won't get customized content.

Pulse allows you to add individual RSS feeds on their own as well as browse for news. There is no Facebook and Twitter integration, though you can sign in with your Facebook account. Pulse will provide suggestions for feeds but nothing that's very customized.

While all three allow you to pick general news feeds, Zite takes it one step further by allowing you to rate stories and authors. It will then show you more of the content you like and less of what you don't like.

That's where Zite comes in swinging. While Flipboard and Pulse basically pull in the information you've already decided you want to look at, Zite aims to personalize and improve your reading experience over time. When you first launch Zite you can grant it access to your Twitter, Google Reader, Delicious, and Read it Later accounts as a starting point. From there it'll provide you news that it thinks you'll enjoy. If you find a story you don't care for, tap into it and give it a thumbs down. Zite will then stop showing you stories simliar to those. If you find a story, subject, or writer you enjoy following, give them a thumbs up and Zite will pull in more articles that are simliar or by the same author.

Flipboard's Facebook and Twitter integration means you get to see things your friends and the people you follow like. With Zite, you get to see things their continuously refined recommendation engine thinks you'll like. I've found tons of new sites, stories, and writers I enjoy thanks to Zite that I may never have found otherwise, and since I already use Facebook and Twitter in their own sites, I don't feel like I'm missing out by not having them in Zite.

That gives Zite the edge.

Social sharing

You can share stories you enjoy straight to Twitter or Facebook from Pulse with the tap of a button. It does not, however, provide the deep integration for Twitter and Facebook so your streams populate in your feed like Flipboard does.

Zite, Pulse, and Flipboard all allow you to share stories to Facebook, Twitter, read later services, email, and many more. So there's really no clear winner in this category. Whichever one you decide to use, you'll be able to share things with anyone or any social circle you'd like. All three also support Instapaper and Read It Later.

Flipboard allows you to comment on stories as well as share them. You can also integrate your social networking feeds so you can keep up with friends straight from your main screen.

While Zite and Pulse only allow you to share stories to Facebook and Twitter, Flipboard actually allows you to pull in your Facebook and Twitter feeds. They'll filter in just like news. You can also see who is tweeting stories and you can comment on them as well as @ reply the creator if they're integrated into Twitter. So when it comes to social, all provide integration but Flipboard provides a more in-depth and personal experience.

When it comes to social networking, Flipboard gets the cake.

Cost

All three applications are free in the App Store so if you're debating between one or the other, there's really nothing to lose. Just download all three and stick with the one you find suits you the best.

Tie.

Conclusion

Flipboard is very well put together and integrates social networking in a way the other two don't. If you're heavily tied to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, this should be your go-to app. It's also got a unique layout that the others can't quite compete with just yet.

Pulse aims to pack a lot of information on the main screen by using tiles that slide horizontally and vertically. While quick access is important, so is what the app looks like. And to many users Pulse will be a bit too busy. If you're a power reader, you'll likely love Pulse. If not, it can be too much.

Zite has the simplest interface of the three and lets you really concentrate on reading. It may not be as fancy or fun, but for people who just want to read without distraction, it's fantastic.

While Flipboard, Zite, and Pulse all make reading news on the iPad an amazing experience, how they handle content is an important part of what makes one better than the other. For this reason, Zite takes the win. It's not only personal to each user, but it grows more personal over time as you use it. The way it recommends new content is something none of the other apps provide. Bottom line, Zite is the best social magazine app currently available on iPad.

Zite - Free - Download Now

Pulse - Free - Download Now

Flipboard - Free - Download Now

Additional Resources:

• Which magazine style news app do you use on your iPad?
• iPad apps and games forum
• Even more iPhone and iPad app reviews

The most popular photo sharing website is Facebook, yet uploading more than one photo at once is a repetitive process -- you must select each photo one at a time. PixUploader for iPhone does a much better job at streamlining the selection process and will even automatically select your most recent photos when you launch the app.

PixUploader is extremely easy to use. You can set up PixUploader to automatically add the most recent 1-8 photos in your Camera Roll when you launch the app. If you decide against uploading a selected image, you simply flick it away. To select more photos, just tap Add Photos.

Before starting the upload, you can select which Facebook album to upload the photos to, add cations, and tag your friends. If you tap on one of the thumbnails of the photos you've selected to upload, the image will open full size with a caption field to fill in. If you tap on the image, a list of your Facebook friends will slide up so that you can tag them in your photo. PixUploader will show a gray square on the area you can expect the tag to appear. Tapping this square will give you the option to delete the tag.

When your photos are ready to upload, just simply tap Upload and PixUploader will immediately start uploading them. They'll be uploaded one at a time at an acceptable rate. Eight photos will take more than a few seconds, however, but the good news is that PixUploader will continue uploading in the background if you want to switch over to another app.

The Good

• Easy to use
• Fast
• Upload up to 8 photos
• Add captions
• Tag friends
• Select which album to upload to
• Uploads in the background
• Choose to have PixUploader to automatically select your most recent 1-8 photos at launch
• Has two color schemes: blue and orange

The Bad

• Why limit to only 8 photos?

The Conclusion

PixUploader is a great way to share multiple photos to Facebook at once. The ability to add captions and tag friends makes it so you don't have to make any changes to Facebook after the photos have been uploaded. There have been many times that I only shared one photo to Facebook because it takes too long with the Facebook app. Now, I'll just use PixUploader.

There is also a free version of PixUploader that has a max limit of 4 images at a time and does not allow you to tag your friends and it's ad supported. The free version is a great way to test out PixUploader before you commit to buying it, though.

$0.99 - Download Now

Free - Download Now

Adobe Reader for iPad has recieved a great update and now allows users to fill out PDF forms, and mark them up with sticky notes, freehand annotating, highlighting, underline, and strikethroughs.

When viewing a PDF with Adobe Reader, you can tap the screen to bring up the toolbar at the top of the screen. This includes buttons for selecting the page turning style (continuous or single page), sharing options, text search, and annotation.

The annotation button replaces the toolbar with a new one that includes buttons to add notes, highlights, strikethroughs, underlines, signatures, and freehand drawing. For highlighting, striking, and underlining, you simply have to drag your finger across the text, and Adobe Reader will automatically add the markup as if it had been done with a word processor.

The freehand drawing isn't anything amazing, but it works find. The strokes aren't amazing, but they also aren't terrible. The biggest disappointment is that there isn't a zoom tool for smaller writing and there isn't an undo button.

When adding a signature, Adobe Reader will pop up a screen for you to sign. You'll want to make your signature nice and big so that it looks good. Once you're done signing, you can adjust the thickness before entering it into the document. Adobe Reader will keep your signature saved so that you can quickly and easily add it to another document (or the same document) in the future.

If you tap on a signature or handwritten annotation, options to change the color, thickness, and opacity will pop up. You can also drag them around, adjust the size, or delete them from your document.

Filling out forms is as simple as tapping the fillable field. The keyboard will slide up, allowing you to type into the field.

The Good

• Great tutorial PDF included
• Easily mark up PDF content with sticky notes, the freehand drawing tool or the highlight, strikethrough, and underline tools
• Add comments anywhere in your PDF file with sticky notes
• Fill out PDF forms
• Use Ink Signature tool to add signature or send PDF files to others for electronic signing using Adobe EchoSign

The Bad

• No zoom-in tool for handwriting
• Can't undo

The Conclusion

There are better PDF annotation apps out there, but most of them come at a price. If you're looking for a free solution, Adobe Reader will get the job done.

Free - Download Now

The SGP GLAS.t Screen Protector is simply the best iPhone screen protector I've ever used. By far.

If you switched from a phone with a plastic screen to the iPhone's spectacular glass screen, then you know how different the feeling is. It's like night and day. Glass is just so much easier to slide, swipe, pinch, flick and use than plastic. For everything from basic navigation to good old game plat, glass is the feeling you want. And it's exactly the feeling the SGP GLAS.t Screen Protector for iPhone gives you.

Although I've used a lot of screen protectors and films over the years, I've never stuck with any of them precisely because they made my beautiful glass iPhone screen feel like cheap, sticky plastic. Every swipe just felt wrong. The SGP GLAS.t Screen Protector suffers from none of that. It feels almost exactly like the iPhone screen. The reason for that is simple -- GLAS.t has a hardness of 8-9H, which they say is three times stronger than regular PET film.

That also makes it incredibly scratch resistant, so contact with keys, loose change, and other common pocket objects isn't a problem. It is a high-density material, however, so if you drop it from high enough it could chip -- but better the inexpensive, easily replaceable GLAS.t than your expensive, not easily replaceable iPhone screen and digitizer, right? The GLAS.t is also specifically designed to break into small, non-sharp pieces so it's not as dangerous as a traditional glass product.

The GLAS.t sticks to your iPhone by virtue of a strong silicon adhesive and once in place it transfers capacitive touch input effortlessly between your finger or stylus and your iPhone. I noticed no missed multi-touch moments or any lag whatsoever. Because it's a solid layer, it will add slightly more thickness (0.4mm) to your iPhone than the almost two-dimensional plastic films, but the difference in tactile feel more than makes up for it. It eclipses it.

While thicker than a plastic film, you'll be too busy loving the feel of the GLAS.t to notice!

Because of the thickness, however, SGP includes several Home button extenders that you can use to make the Home button easier to press. You don't have to use them, they just turn -- for lack of a better term! -- your iPhone Home button from an innie to an outie. You get black, white, pink, and green options. I much prefer the basic black one.

The GLAS.t is also oleophobic, just like the iPhone screen, so it repels oil and finger smudges and is much easier to keep clean. (SGP nicely includes a microfiber cloth to help with just that.)

Included in the GLAS.t package is the screen protector itself, a microfiber cleaning cloth, a cleaning wipe, and 2 white, 2 black, and 2 colored Home button extenders.

The good

• Feels just like iPhone glass -- spectacular!
• Oleophobic for easier cleaning
• Scratch resistant

The bad

• Not as thin or chip-resistant as plastic.

The conclusion

The feel of glass is just so much better than the feel of plastic that once you try the SGP GLAS.t I don't think you'll ever be able to go back. It's easy to put on, easy to clean, it's scratch proof, and it just looks and works so much better than a plastic screen protector. The best compliment I can give the GLAS.t is that after a while it doesn't feel like you're using a screen protector at all, it just feels like you're using the same silky smooth glass surface you've always been using.

It's the best screen protector I've ever used (and a lot of us here at Mobile Nations are now absolutely hooked on them).

$29.95 - Buy now

Being in a gritty far-future sci-fi universe with big honkin' guns doesn't mean politeness goes out the window, just wait your turn to blow the bad guy away.

Hunters 2 is a relatively new game for iPhone which corners a very specific (but hardcore) niche. It's a turn-based tactical combat game where you tailor futuristic mercenaries with your choice of skills and gear over the course of several harrowing missions. You have a squad of troops that are set up on terrain with a square grid, who each take turns moving, shooting enemies, healing, defending, and engaging in all sorts of other maneuvers. As you play your soldiers gain experience points, eventually allowing them to level up and giving you the option to tweak their specialties. You also win cash for completing levels, which can be spent on upgrading gear. Of course, you can always buy in-game money with real cash through in-app purchases if you're the impatient type. You can also win in-game money and loot for clicking on mobile ads. Overall, I found Hunters 2 wasn't too pushy with those kinds of microtransactions, which is always nice. Once you've plowed through the single-player campaign, there are five fresh missions available daily. Unfortunately, there's no multiplayer just yet, but honestly, the AI is challenging enough as is. It's a Universal app, so you can play it on both iPhone and iPad after buying it once, plus there's full Game Center support for leaderboards.

The story of the game takes place in a dystopian future where corporations rule the galaxy, and mercenaries are hired to implement their will. Early on, your ragtag team is double-crossed by an employer, and they quickly get roped into a conflict against a burgeoning alien menace. Throughout the game, you'll deal with vicious aliens in close combat as well as other soldiers competing for your contracts. The story isn't what really makes Hunters 2, though - it's the fine-tuned gameplay. Seemingly insignificant strategic decisions, like moving that extra square or not facing the right direction while defending can make or break a mission. Establishing line of sight is a huge part of the game, and often you'll encounter tight passages where your own allies will block off support.

Getting clumped together can limit your firing options.

Veteran gamers familiar with older titles like the original Fallout, X-COM, and Syndicate, will be well-versed in the turn-based combat/role-playing playstyle. What really differentiates it from the more casual games like Hero Academy is that your characters progress, gain skills, and expand their equipment over time. It doesn't take long before you become really heavily invested in team members; after playing Hunters 2 for a few hours, you'll be visibly wincing when your favourite guy goes down. Personally, I like spending time meticulously deliberating on my next move, but some may find that pace of gameplay too slow and plodding. Replay of campaign missions might also not be quite up to snuff, since enemy positions remain more or less the same. Rodeo Games offers increasing difficulty levels, including a hardcore mode where soldiers die permanently if they go down in a mission, but I find it challenging enough as is that I have to repeat most levels at least twice. The real replayability comes from the daily missions.

You may quickly find yourself spending just as much time shopping for guns as playing.

The amount of customization adds a ton of depth to gameplay, but may be a bit too much for casual players. Let's take talent trees for example. There's one generic set of talents that you can pick for any of mercenaries. They span the usual areas - increasing hitpoints, increasing damage, etc. Every soldier has access to two other skill trees with more specialized abilities, such as scouting, survival, or support. Depending on which combinations of talent trees a soldier has access to, they get a cool (but mostly useless) title, like Arbiter, Devastator, Stalker, or Sentinel. What this boils down to is that every time one of your soldiers levels up, you have to pick between at least 14 different talents, on top of equipping new weapons you've found, bought or crafted. Multiply that by however many soldiers leveled up in a given mission, and you can be quickly overwhelmed with options.

The few 3D cutscenes that are included are really impressive.

The music in Hunters 2 is subdued and ominous, and is wonderfully paired with graphics ripe with gritty textures. Although the game itself takes place in a mostly-unimpressive 2D plane, zooming in and rotating the map is extremely fluid, the wide array of high-tech gunfire has impressive lighting effects, and the 3D models used in gameplay and on the title screen are very impressive. Though there are a lot of things to manage between missions, the user interface has been laid out intelligently, and lets you kit out your team with minimal fuss.

The good

• Deep, rich gameplay
• Excellent sound and graphics, despite 2D layout
• Unobtrusive but beneficial microtransactions

The bad

• Complexity may be overwhelming
• Pacing may be too slow for some
• A little on the pricey side

The conclusion

$4.99 - Download Hunters 2 Now

After the big news that Facebook acquired Instagram, some users rushed to delete their Instagram accounts because they were unhappy about the deal and don't trust Facebook with their photos. But where are these users to go? I set out on a hunt for a good alternative to Instagram for these users and found picplz.

Like Instagram, picplz is a social photo sharing app that includes several filters that can be applied to your photos. You can follow your friends from Facebook and Twitter, "like" photos, and leave comments.

One of the things I like about picplz is that you are not restricted to square crops. In fact, picplz includes a slew of editing tools, including cropping. Additionally, you can rotate, add memes, draw, adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and colors, add text, repair redeye and blemishes, whiten teeth, blur, sharpen and flip. There are 9 different filters to choose from, either with or without a frame. picplz displays them as 18 different filters though, instead of just have an option to trigger the frame on and off for each filter. This is annoying and gives you the false impression of having more filters to choose from than you do.

The Interesting tab in picplz is similar to Instagram's Popular tab and displays the photos as thumbnails. Tapping on an image will display a larger version of the photo with the caption above it. The font size of the caption is rather large, and with long captions, it's not very visually appealing. Underneath the photo, you'll see the buttons to "like" the photo and add it to a collection. If you keep scrolling, you can leave a comment at the end of the list of usernames have liked the photo. As you can imagine, sometimes this list can get rather long.

When you're ready to share your photo, in addition to the picplz network, you can share your photos to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare, and Dropbox and check-in to Foursquare.

Another thing I really like about picplz, is that when someone clicks on your link from a computer, the browser window that it opens in allows picplz users to "like" and leave comments on your photo without having to use the app.

The Good

• Lots of editing tools
• 9 filters
• Can include location with photo uploads
• Can create collections
• My Network, Interesting, and Activity tabs
• Check into Foursquare

The Bad

• Captions have too large of font
• List of "likes" has the potential of being very long and annoying to scroll through
• Cannot select a photo from camera mode. You must instead navigate to your Camera Roll from the more tab. It's unintuitive.
• Filters aren't clearly labeled unless selected

The Conclusion

picplz is not Instagram. It's not as good as Instagram. But it has great potential as an Instagram alternative. In fact, it has some features about it that are better than Instagram. The UI needs a little work, but it's still a great app, and if you're an ex-Instagram user who is not happy with their deal with Facebook, you should give picplz a try.

Free - Download Now

Khan Academy is well known in the education world as being a fantastic resource for students to watch videos to learn more about topics covered in class. It's also great for non-students who are just thirsty for knowledge and want to study a subject on their own time. And for free. The Khan Academy iPad app is the best way to put learning in your own hands.

Khan Academy covers a massive number of topics, including K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even the humanities with playlists on finance and history.

Each video can be streamed to your iPad or downloaded for offline viewing. If you wish, you can even download all the videos in a topic at once so that you don't have to click each one individually.

Most, but not all, videos include subtitles with each video. This is extremely helpful for those times that you can't understand what the instructor was saying, or if you don't know how to spell some term that the instructor said but didn't write down. These subtitles are shown underneath the video and can be scrolled through.

If you log into Khan Academy, you can keep track of your progress and earn achievements for watching videos and completing topics.

As of now, there are not any practice exercises available in the Khan Academy app, but they promise to bring them soon.

I've always been a fan of Khan Academy and recommend it to all my students as a fabulous resource. The instructors are very qualified for the subjects they are teaching and do a great job at explaining and making the topics interesting to learn about.

The Good

• Over 2700 videos
• Covers a lot of topics
• Most videos include subtitles
• Share to Facebook and Twitter
• Free

The Bad

• Not all videos include subtitles
• Exercises are not yet available

The Conclusion

Khan Academy is a fantastic app for any one who wants to learn. It doesn't matter if you're a small child, college student, or a seasoned adult who hasn't been in a classroom in 30 years, Khan Academy is for everyone. And best of all -- it's free!

Free - Download Now

The Calculator app is one of those iPhone apps that didn't make it's way onto the iPad. It's a shame, because a lot of people, including students, travelers, and home book keepers would get a lot of use out of it. The most popular type of calculator is a scientific calculator -- it can do more than the basic operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing), but isn't as different in approach as an RPN (reverse Polish notation) or as advanced as a graphing calculator or CAS (computer algebra system). So which iPad app is the best scientific calculator? Calcbot by Tapbots.

One of the great features of Calcbot is that it has large buttons, making it very easy to make entries. In portrait mode, the calculator takes up the whole screen. Along the top is the output screen of the calculator. Under that, you'll find the positive/negative, parentheses, and EE buttons. These are the elements that remain static.

The area of the calculator that contains all the numbers and operations is scrollable. Swiping to the left will reveal all the scientific functions. The up-arrow button on the scientific page will replace the trigonometic functions with their inverses, and the logarithm and exponential functions that are base e change to base 2. Visually, these are all the buttons that are light blue in color.

As you press buttons on the calculator, their symbols will appear in small, light blue letters at the bottom of the calculator's screen. This is extremely helpful for keeping track of which button you've pressed last. The tracking will reset every time you press enter, when it then gets transferred to the tape.

To see the tape, rotate your iPad to landscape. The calculator will become slightly smaller and the tape will slide in from the right. The tape keeps track of all your calculations, including all the buttons that were pressed to get the results. Holding your finger down on an entry pops up a menu to either Use Result, Use Expression, Copy, Send as Email, or Delete. Using the result or expression will automatically add your choice into the calculator. You can also paste into the screen of the calculator or into another app.

The Good

• Large buttons
• Keeps track of buttons pressed
• Beautiful UI
• Landscape orientation reveals the tape
• Every button emits a subtle sound -- true to Tapbots style (can be disabled)
• Option to round for currency
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The Bad

• Must sacrifice having all the buttons on one screen for the larger buttons

The Conclusion

Calcbot by Tapbots has been my favorite calculator on both the iPhone and iPad for quite some time. It does what I need and does it well. Unfortunately for students, Calcbot likely will not be able to replace a physical calculator because most teachers will not allow the use of iPads during exams.

$1.99 - Download Now

I want to watch something on TV but I can't. PVR. Boom. I can watch it when I want. I want to read something on the web but I can't. Read later. Boom. I can read it when I want. I have an idea but am in no position to leverage it at the moment... Go to anyone of a dozen note-taking or mind mapping or sketching apps that are generally far too feature-filled and cumbersome to get into, out of, and triage things in just exactly the way you need to triage them. This is still a problem that needs better solving.

Enter Drafts for iPhone by Agile Tortoise, which aims to be a staging ground for singular thoughts, an incubator for moments of insight, a way to capture ephemera. It's a new riff on old jazz. I used Birdhouse for this type of thing for a long time, then switched to Simplenote, then a variety of Dropbox-enabled text editors. Now I often use Siri to quickly add items to an "Ideas" list in Reminders. But Drafts makes a compelling (use) case.

Drafts is no easier to get stuff into than any of my previous solutions, and is actually slightly more difficult than Reminders thanks to Apple not yet providing a mechanism for Siri to inject content into App Store apps (though you can certainly use Dictation once you manually tap into Drafts and the appropriate or new draft). However, it's quite a bit more powerful to get stuff out of.

Open Drafts and start typing. It shows you the word count and letter count, and at the touch of the page icon, shows you a list of previous drafts.

At a touch of the Action button, anything in the current draft can be tweeted using any account already set up on your iPhone, or sent to some of the Twitter apps installed on your iPhone (Twitter and Tweetbot show up for me, Twitterrific and Twitterlator Neue do not), or it can be emailed or copied to the clipboard. It also supports John Gruber's Markdown syntax, and can preview it or convert it to HTML and email it or copy the converted text to the clipboard.

With the tap of an action button, drafts can work wonders like sharing to Twitter, emailing, and converting from Markdown to HTML

Granted, when all I want to do is jot down an idea, plain text is king, but having Markdown built-in is a nice bonus. So is having both a character and word counter visible.

You can choose between several themes including the default light brown, a darker sepia, a grayscale variant, and an inverse night variant. You also have a bakers dozen of fonts to chose from, in small, medium, and large sizes. It's the usual suspects, but that doesn't make them any less welcome.

Drafts comes with 4 themes and a selection of 13 fonts so you can craft your environment as meticulously as your ideas.

Drafts isn't perfect. While the user experience is excellent the user interface could stand another round or two of polish. There's an oddness to the weighting and alignment of elements in the tool bar, and the contrast of the texture behind it. The Markdown icons, challenging as they may be, suffer from an awkward text overlay. And the app icon itself could do a much better job conveying just how well thought out an app this is.

There's no iCloud and no sync yet, so outside of sharing via the action items detailed above, Drafts is a silo unto itself. There's also no hint as to whether or not Draft's actions will be extensible via URL scheme, the way Launch Center's are. It would be great to be able to send Draft text to other editors, note-takers, task-managers, etc.

The good

• Easy in, easy out.
• Powerful action options.
• Markdown support.

The bad

• No sync options
• Actions not extensible

The conclusion

Drafts is fast and crisp and solid where it counts. There's no sync or extensibility yet but Markdown and excellent sharing actions make it a powerful idea pad for thoughts you don't have a chance to collect right now. Just jot them down in Drafts and they're time-shifted for you to collect later.

$0.99 - Download now

Bloomberg for iPad is a great way for casual traders and investors to interact with their stocks and stay up to date with the news they care about the most.

The App Store is chock full of applications to help investors and traders manage their portfolios directly from their iPad. While some applications provide a wealth of information and are geared towards brokers and users with extensive portfolios, most users just don't need a $100 application to check in on their stocks. I've found Bloomberg for iPad to be a good compromise between usability and information overload.

Whether you need to casually monitor stocks on your iPad or just find the urge to check out financial news, Bloomberg provides the best of both worlds combined with an easy to use interface. I've found that some of the applications in the App Store are quite hard to navigate and may be confusing for many users to figure out. Sometimes too many charts and graphs can be overwhelming. Bloomberg gives you what you want to know right up front.

Navigation

The main page of Bloomberg for iPad provides a quick overview of news, currencies, stocks, and equity indices.

Upon first launching Bloomberg for iPad, you'll be presented with a home page that shows top news stories, some stock information, and a menu along the bottom that allows you to delve deeper into different categories of information.

This is where you can go to customize your experience. Say you don't have bonds but own stocks. You can choose the stocks section and add stocks you own to the app. You'll then see that information populate in the home screen. The real time tickers will continuously update for you on the home page as long as you've got an active internet connection.

Stock info

Tap into any stock you'd like to view more information about its position in text and graphical format. You can also read more information about that company.

You can tap into any news story or stock directly from the main page. Tapping into a stock will present you with a large well laid-out graph showing a 1 year overview of that stock's position. You'll also be given some general summary information along the bottom about that particular stock and the company itself. On the right hand side you'll see some broken down time period graphs. You can tap these to enlarge them further.

Supported exchanges

Bloomberg supports many different exchanges and allows you to view overall postion for each one.

Bloomberg provides information for all major stock exchanges and several smaller exchanges. Some of the most popular ones supported are -

• Dow Jones
• NASDAQ
• S&P 500
• BE 500
• FTSE 100
• TSX

There are many more supported exchanges too. You can also view futures for all exchanges as well. Tapping into any exchange will provide you the same history information that tapping into an individual stock would provide.

Stocks

Add any stocks you'd like to monitor and they'll aggregate into the My Stocks page. You can also enter your position and price to view a summary of your position on each exchange via the My Stocks Summary feature.

Bloomberg allows you to customize your own stocks within the application. Just tap the My Stocks icon from the main page. Tapping the edit button in the upper right hand corner brings up a list of stocks you've added. You can add stocks as well as put in your position and price.

The term position in this instance means the quantity of securities you own. For example, if you own 200 shares of Apple stock, 200 would be your postion. Then you would input the price you paid per share. For in depth investors who trade regularly, they may need a more powerful tool that breaks out information better.

On the main My Stocks page you can tap the bottom My Stock Summary tab to bring up a summary of your current position given the information you input. It will break it out by exchange and give you an overall position. It will show you an overview of how many securities you own, the net change, overall change, what your securities are currently valued at, and your total profit and loss.

Currency Exchange

View currency exchange rates live and set your native currency by dragging it into the top position under the edit menu.

Bloomberg supports and updates live currency values within the app as well. You can set your default currency and it will then show you how your native dollar compares to monetary amounts around the rest of the world. To do so, just drag your home currency to the top of the list when in edit mode. This information will also populate within the main page as well for a quick view.

Just like stocks and other sections of the app, you can edit the currency order. Just move them up and down with the vertical stacked bars.

News

The built-in news section provides up to date world and financial news that you can edit and customize to view what interests you the most.

While the main page shows top news, you can also tap into the news category and view a breakdown of news by section. This is also customizable. Tapping the edit button in the top right will let you move the sections you care about most towards the top and the ones you don't really have an interest in towards the bottom. This makes it a bit easier to find stories you want to read.

The Good

• For a free app, Bloomberg provides enough information for most users
• Provides lots of customization options so you can make the app your own
• Stock summary is a nice way to quickly view overall position if you hold securities
• Graphs are easy to read and follow
• Summarized information provides a nice overview that may help potential investors make an informed decision about what direction a company is heading and whether it's a good time to invest

The Bad

• Users with extensive portfolios will probably need more information than what Bloomberg provides
• The ability to hide news sections you don't care for would be a nice addition instead of just having to move them to the bottom of the feed

The Conclusion

Bloomberg for iPad is a great way for casual traders and investors to interact with their stocks and stay up to date with the news they care about the most. While it may not be perfect for everyone, it provides a wealth of information that will suit mainstream users just fine.

If you're more interested in world and financial news than you are stocks, Bloomberg doubles up as a great resource for such information. It ties news and the stock market together in a fluid way that users will appreciate.

Free - Download Now

Figure is a great new app that puts music creation into the hands of everyone, even non-musicians. It has a very unique interface that's easy to use and makes creating music a lot of fun. You slide your finger around a pad to play bass and lead, and tap columns to play the drums.

What makes Figure so great for non-musicians is that you will always be in the correct key and play to the beat. You get to be creative with the pitch and tones, but Figure will always make sure that your choices are "correct" musically.

For base and lead, you can choose from many different rhythm styles and timing, specify the range of notes you want the pad to represent, and select how many steps you want in an octive. Switching into landscape will remove all the distractions of the controls and give you more room to move your finger precisely where you want it on the pad.

For drums, you get to play kick, snare, hats, and cowbell and choose how many of each are played in a measure if you hold your finger down.

Hitting record will let you layer the three different instrument types and it will automatically loop your song. You can make adjustments in real time so that you're fully away of how your changes affect your song. The types of changes you can do include the tempo and key. You can also add pump so that your song sounds like club music.

This is an app that you need to see in action, so make sure you check out the video below!

The Good

• Puts music making in the hands of everyone, even non-musicians
• Musicians will still enjoy it
• Landscape mode lets you focus on your pattern
• Always in key and on beat
• Bass & lead parts use Reason’s Thor synthesizer
• Drums powered by Reason’s Kong drum machine

The Bad

• Can't save music
• Can't share music

The Conclusion

Figure is a really fun and surprisingly addicting app. Creating music has never been so easy, and it's a great way for non-musicians to get a feel for creating music and beats.

$0.99 - Download Now

I'm not going to lie, settling on one single app to label as "the best" weather app for iPad wasn't easy. On one hand I had a collection of feature-packed apps that provided every little detail about the weather, including videos and interactive forecasts. On the other hand, I had a group of apps that didn't necessarily have as many features, but were beautiful, easy to use, and fit the needs of most people. After reminding myself that I was looking for best, not most feature-filled, it was easy for me to give Living Earth HD for iPad the title.

Living earth HD is a simple yet gorgeous weather app. In the background, you'll see the earth. If you wish, you can have it spin slowly around its axis with the tap of the button. You can also pinch to zoom in and out of the globe and swipe to rotate it. As the earth rotates, you'll discover that Living Earth shades the half of the earth that is not currently being hit by sun. You can also center the globe on your current location.

As the earth rotates, you'll see which part of it is currently being hit by the sun.

In the upper righthand corner, you'll see an icon that represents the current conditions and the current temperature, the high and low for the day, and sunset and sunrise times. If you tap this area of the screen, a new section will pop up below it and give you some more details about the weather, and a 10 day forecast.

The info at the top of this section includes the humidity percentage and wind speed. Tapping any of the days in the 10-day forecast Will break down the forecast into 2-hour intervals.

Living earth will break down the 10 day forecast into 2-hour intervals.

In the upper righthand corner you'll find the time and date. Tapping it will make it bigger.

In the bottom right corner, you'll see the name of the city you are currently viewing information about. Tapping on the name will pop up a list of big cities in the world that you can switch to. This list is customizable.

In the lower lefthand corner, you'll find five, dimly lit buttons: location, settings, camera, rotation, and alarm. The settings will be where you go to choose units of measure and toggles for live clouds, sunrise times, bright night clouds, gestures and more.

The camera button is essentially a way to share a screenshot of your current screen with Facebook, Twitter, or your Camera Roll.

The alarm clock is what makes Living Earth more than just a weather app. You can also use it to wake you up in the morning! Even though it's not Living Earth's primary function, it is still a great alarm clock. You can have set up custom interval times (much like Apple's Clock app for iPhone), choose between 7 different piano and harp sounds, or even wake up to your own music. The snooze intervals are between 2-30 minutes. The only really disadvantage to this alarm clock, is that you can not set up multiple alarm. Just one.

The Good

• Gorgeous
• 10 day forecast with 2-hour interval breakdowns
• Alarm clock
• Interactive earth
• Fahrenheit and Celsius

The Bad

• Can only set one alarm

The Conclusion

Living Earth HD for iPad is a stunning weather and clock app for the iPad. It may not have be jam packed with ever feature imaginable, but it does its intended job both flawlessly and beautifully.

$1.99 - Download Now

If you just bought a new iPad and have searched in vain for the built-in Apple Voice Memos app, here’s some bad news — there isn’t one. Apple chose not to include it on the iPad. Luckily for us, however, App Store developers are here to fill that void. In fact, the developers of Audio Memos for iPhone and iPad know exactly how to do it right.

Multiple versions

There are three different version of Audio Memos, a free version that offers not much more than the ability to record a basic memo, a $0.99 version that give a couple more features and the ability to buy extensions as in-app purchases, and a Pro, $9.99 version that includes all the available extensions.

This chart compares the features of the three versions available and also lists the price of each extension.

Notice that if you choose to purchase all the extensions of the $0.99 version, you get all the features of the Pro version, but ultimately pay $1 more for it. So think carefully about whether or not you're going to want all the extensions or not before making a purchase.

With that said, the $0.99 version does allow you to try all the extensions for free for 15 days. So if you're not sure if you want them all, you can think of it as a $1 trial.

Since a lot of the commonly desired extensions are only $0.99 (like trimming and markers), grabbing a few of them still keeps the price of the app at an acceptable amount. It can potentially get rather expensive, though.

Recording audio

The Pro version of Audio Memos and the $0.99 Voice Activation extension gives you have three different options for recording your audio. You can do it by simply pressing a button to start and end your recording (the option that comes free), set a threshold, that when reached, will start your recording, or set a timer for when you want the recording to begin and end.

There are three different quality levels to choose from: 11025 Hz, 22050 Hz and 44100 Hz. You can also adjust the volume of the audio, but be careful with this as it can easily sound very distorted. In my experience, as long as you're near your iPad or using a headset, you shouldn't have a problem with the audio level.

If you want to use a bluetooth mic for your recordings, there's an option that lets you do so.

Trimming audio

Available in the Pro version or as a $0.99 extension, you can trim the beginning and end of your recordings. Doing so is very easy to do and is similar to trimming videos with the Camera and Photos apps. Simply drag the handles at the ends of the clip to the desired location. As you do, the time location will pop up. You can also slide the whole clip around which is great for those times you need a clip that is an exact length.

You can also lower the quality of the clip to reduce the files size and choose to save as .wav or .aac. The saving can be done as a new file or as a replacement for the clip you've edited.

Inserting markers

The ability to insert and navigate between markers is available in the Pro version or as a $0.99 extension. It provides four additional buttons to jump between markers, add a new marker, and select a marker from a list. Markers can be added either during the recording or after and a description can be associated with each one. For another $0.99 you can insert photos as well. (The pictures extension is available as a standalone that works like a marker without a description, but the markers extension is required to easy navigate between markers).

The Good

• Free version available that does the basics
• Great UI
• Good quality
• Potential of being fully feature-packed
• Having extensions available as in-app purchases can potentially save you money if you only want a few of them
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The Bad

• Doesn't support the new iPad's Retina display. Yet.
• A bit pricey once you start adding up all the extensions.
• "All extensions" in-app purchase should not be $9.99. It should be $8.99 so that the total cost of the app and extension is the same as if you purchased the pro version.
• Should have more features included in each extension. For example, the markers and photos extensions should be grouped as one extension. Multiple selection and Voice activation shouldn't even be extensions - they should be included in the $0.99 version.
• Doesn't support the new iPad's Retina display, yet

The Conclusion

Although I'm rather annoyed with how many of the features of Audio Memos come at an additional cost, I cant deny how well the app is made. If you're looking for a powerful voice recorder for your iPad, Audio Memos will not disappoint -- often times great software comes at a price.

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$1.99 - Download Now

$9.99 - Download Now

Have you recently purchased your first DSLR and feel a bit overwhelmed with all the various settings? CameraSim for iPad will help you overcome your fear of venturing away from the auto mode of your camera by visually explaining how different controls affect your images. CameraSim essentially lets you simulate taking the same photo over and over again, but with different settings, and instantly shows you what you could expect the photo to look like.

At the top of the app's main screen, you'll find your viewfinder, and in it you see a little girl swaying back and forth holding a pinwheel that's being spun by the wind. At the bottom of the viewfinder, you'll see a light meter and your current settings, just as you would in your DSLR's viewfinder. The bottom half of the screen gives you access to all your virtual camera settings and the shutter release button.

The settings that CameraSim let you adjust are lighting, distance, focal length, ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. You can also simulate being in Aperture or Shutter Priority modes, or go fully manual. There is also a switch to toggle using a tripod or not.

In Aperture priority, you will have control over all of the settings except for shutter speed. The reason it's called Aperture priority, is because the main element that you control is the aperture. The camera will then choose the best shutter speed based off the aperture that you want to use. Similarly, Shutter Priority mode gives you control over everything except for aperture. In manual mode, you have full control over all settings. Your DSLR also has all three of these modes and they're typically labeled as A, S, and M.

If the tripod is turned off, then in addition to the motion of the girl and pinwheel, you will also have to consider motion of the person holding the camera -- you. When turned on, you don't have to think about that element and only need to consider the girl and her pinwheel.

I will not give you a lesson on how all the different settings actually end up affecting the image, except for mentioning that, visually, your settings will determine how much of your photo is in focus and if you are able to freeze the motion of the girl and/or her pinwheel. When you take a photo, CameraSim will show you what your photo would look like with the settings you chose and give you feedback. If it's great, it will say so, and if could use a little work, CameraSim will give you some pointers for improving your shot.

I think CameraSim has done a great job of accurately demonstrating how different settings will impact your photos. My only complaint is that the lighting slider isn't very realistic. It accurately affects how you must adjust your settings for different lighting conditions, but the image doesn't change with the lighting conditions. Even when set to "dim indoors", there a blast of sunlight hitting the side of the little girl's face.

Other than that, however, CameraSim is a fantastic tool for learning how the different settings of your DSLR will impact your images. I just wish there was more than one scene to choose from. The photo of the girl is great because you can really get a feel for blurring your background and freezing motion, but I'd like to see at least one scene for each of the 6 lighting options.

The Good

• Great way to learn how different settings affect the final image
• Accurately represents the results you'd expect from a DSLR
• Help screen is very helpful

The Bad

• Only one photo
• Lighting slider isn't realistic
• Doesn't keep a log of settings you've tried
• Does not support the new iPad's Retina display, yet

The Conclusion

I think this is a fabulous app for beginner DSLR users who want to learn how to use their camera. The instant feedback and tips are quite helpful. I'd venture to say it's even a must-have app for beginning photographers who are confused about settings and uncomfortable using their camera in anything but auto mode.

$1.99 - Download Now

Easter Sunday is less than a week away, which means it's time to start coloring some eggs! Egg Dyeing 101 from Martha Stewart Living for iPhone will help you create the most beautiful eggs on the block.

Egg Dying 101 is organized into 4 tabs: Home, Gallery, Basics, and Favorites. The home tab is basically worthless -- it's just a photo (albeit, a beautiful photo) that says "Egg Dying" over it. The information button is also on this page, but that could've easily been put somewhere else.

The Gallery tab is where the fun starts. It's here that you'll find 20 different categories of 101 egg designs with step by step directions and sometimes video on how to achieve the look. The categories include basic dipping techniques, various masking techniques, embossing, embellishing, and even creating egg creatures. For each egg creature, Egg Dyeing 101 includes a template that can be printed with AirPrint or emailed. Each of the egg designs can also be emailed.

The basics tab is where you'll learn, well, the basics for egg coloring. This tab is broken down into 5 categories: Basic Recipe & Color Wheel, Egg Glossary, Blowing Out an Egg, Drying Pin-Board, and Sources.

The Basic Recipe & Color Wheel section includes three charts for light, dark, and neon hue colors. Each chart includes 12 colors, the number of drops of dye needed for each color, and the number of minutes you need to let the egg soak to achieve the desired color.

Blowing an egg is a technique for removing the contents of an egg so that you can save your creations for the years to come. This section of the app teaches you how to do it and includes a video.

The best way to dry your eggs in on a pin-board, so the Drying Pin-Board section is where you go to learn how to make one.

My only real complaint is that Egg Dyeing 101 is not universal for the iPhone and iPad. I'd rather have my iPad setup as a reference while coloring eggs than my iPhone. It's also easier to share the iPad's larger screen with the family.

The Good

• Gorgeous photos
• Clear instructions
• Well done videos
• 101 different egg designs
• Lots of dye recipes for every color in the light, dark, and neon hues categories

The Bad

• Home tab is pointless
• Not available for iPad

The Conclusion

My daughter is still a little too young to take part in the whole egg coloring experience, so I wasn't planning to color eggs this year, but Egg Dyeing 101 from Martha Stewart Living for iPhone is making me seriously reconsider that decision.

$0.99 - Download Now

Instagram's developers hinted their new Android app might be better than their existing iPhone app. So is it, and if so, how?

While over 15 Million iPhone users have enjoyed the social photo sharing app, Instagram, for quite some time, just today Instagram for Android hit the Google Play Store. Over 430,000 Android users had registered to be notified about the app's release, and the developers even hinted it might back a few features iPhone users were without. So does it?

First off, a few tabs look a little different between the Android and iPhone versions of Instagram, and the layout has been adopted to fit the Android screen format, but noticeably missing are the tilt shift and circle blur options. Some social features are missing as well, namely Flickr and Posterous.

There has been some reports of the Android version being slower than that of the iPhone version but, realistically that all depends on which Android device and which version of the Android OS it's being run on. For what it's worth, Instagram on Android is optimized to run best on Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich builds, but it will run on anything Android 2.2 and above, though results may vary. Although there have been some compatibility problems, Instagram for Android has already been updated to address a few of them, though not the HTC One X.

Overall, the Instagram team did a great job of keeping mostly everything intact for their new found Android base and it will no doubt, become one of the top download in the Google Play Store despite the fact that Google and various other Android OEM's have been adding built-in filtering options to the Android camera application for quite some time now.

So what exactly were/are those features that would make the Android version of Instagram better than the iPhone version? No idea. The feature that makes both versions better is finally having a bigger device footprint for Instagram -- iPhone and Android users can share and like and comment on way more photos by way more mobile photographers than ever before. And that's a win for both platforms!

If you just bought a new iPad and have searched in vain for the built-in Apple Clock app, here's some bad news -- there isn't one. Apple just doesn't think the Clock app looks good on the big screen. Luckily for us, however, App Store developers don't share that belief. In fact, the developers of Night Stand for iPad show just exactly how to do it right.

Main screen

Night Stand for iPad is so much more than a basic alarm clock. In addition to the time on the main, rather gorgeous, display, you can also see the date and current weather conditions. There are also four widgets that can be enabled at the bottom of the screen for Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and Weather.

Behind the main clock, Night Stand for iPad will play through your defined slideshow. It comes preinstalled with beautiful videos and has more available for purchase. Each movie series is $0.99, or you can buy all four series for $1.99. If you prefer a slideshow of still images, Night Stand for iPad also includes 3 beautiful images with more available for purchase. You can also have a slideshow of your own images if you prefer. The interval times for your slideshows can be anywhere from 1-60 minutes.

Sliding your finger up and down the main screen will adjust the screen brightness and flicking left and right will hide and show the clock display.

Widgets

The Twitter and Facebook widgets let you view recent posts and status updates from their respective social networks. Tapping one of the posts will popup a built-in browser and displays how that post looks on the web. If you want to reply, like, or comment, you'll need to login to the social network in that browser. To the left of each of the widgets, you'll find the button that lets you tweet or post to Facebook.

The RSS widget is tied to Google Reeder and displays recent posts from your feed. Tapping on a post will also slide up the article in a nice, stripped-down, easy to read view. To view the article in safari, tap "Full Article".

The weather widget displays a 10 day forecast of the weather. Include with each day is the general weather (partly cloudy, clear, light rain, etc), the low and high tempertures, wind speed, and times for sunset and sunrise.

Alarm Clock

The alarm clock lets you add multiple alarms seth with custom repetitions, similar to the iPhone's alarm clock. Night Stand for iPad includes 9 alarm sounds, many of which are actually very load, alarming, and annoying. I mean, seriously, who wants to wake up every morning to the sound of a smoke alarm going off? (Immediately after typing that sentence, my husband piped up that he loves the annoying sounds for an alarm, so apparently some people do like them). Many people actually prefer waking up to music, so Night Stand allows you to add music stored on your iPad to wake up to. However, if you want to wake up to music, you have to make sure Night Stand is actually running on your iPad overnight. Otherwise, Night Stand will send a notification to wake you up instead.

In the alarm settings menu, you'll find the options to shuffle your selected music, the duration of snooze, and if you want the alarm sound or music that you chose to fade in over time, so as to not startle you awake. The durations range between 6 seconds to 30 minutes.

Sleep Timer

In addition to serving the purpose of waking you up in the morning, Night Stand for iPad also has a sleep timer so that you can listen to music while you fall asleep. The interval times range from 5 minutes to 23 hours and 55 minutes. Wow.

The Good

• Gorgeous
• Include Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds
• Ability to tweet and post to Facebook
• Included movies and images are beautiful
• Inclusion of weather is very convenient
• Can wake up to own music
• Can have slideshows of personal images
• Supports Fahrenheit, Celsius, miles and kilometers
• Includes alarm clock and sleep timer
• Multiple alarms
• Can make the main clock small and position in the upper right or left corner

The Bad

• Not enough alarm clock sounds. Should have more subtle ones.
• The popup for Twitter posts isn't scaled properly. You have to scroll right to see the entire tweet.

The Conclusion

Night Stand is a gorgeous alarm clock for your iPad. I love how it isn't just a clock, but a host for all the things I like to check before rolling out of bed. I used to use my iPhone as my alarm clock, but with the discovery of Night Stand, my iPad will be playing that roll from now on instead.

$2.99 - Download Now

Kaleidoscope Camera is an iPhone app that will turn your iPhone's camera into a machine that transforms your environment into a geometric work of art. We usually only think of using the iPhone's camera for taking photos and recording video, so it's cool to find another fun use for it.

Kaleidoscope Camera is actually a very basic app. All of the UI elements appear on a single screen. When you open the app, the camera is immediately put to work and the geometric video immediately starts. In the corner, you'll see a little box that shows what your camera is actually looking at with a white triangle spinning inside of it. This area inside the triangle is the area that Kaleidoscope Camera is actually using to produce the image. Tapping the main view will toggle preview on and off and tapping the preview will switch between the rear and front-facing cameras.

If you were using a physical kaleidoscope, you would spin it around while holding it up to your eye to watch the shapes spin and change. To mimic this effect with Kaleidoscope Camera, you simply use your finger to "spin" the camera. You have control of the speed and the zoom.

On the bottom of the screen, you'll see the four different modes and a camera button. Tapping the camera will capture a still shot of what you currently see on the screen and pop up a menu to save to your Camera Roll or to send to Facebook, Twitter, or email.

I was very impressed that even at night with only one light on in my living room, Kaleidoscope Camera was still able to produce great results.

The Good

• Four different modes
• Interactive
• Sharing to Facebook and Twitter

The Bad

• None

The Conclusion

Kaleidoscope Camera reminds me the days of being a kid and running around playing with a cheap $1 kaleidoscope -- only it's better.

$1.99 - Download Now

"Evernote is hands down the best way to take and organize notes on the iPad whether you're in class, in a meeting, or on the go. Pair that with the ability to use Evernote across any platform available and it simply can't be beat."

Taking notes on the iPad is a great way to save on the amount of physical paper you have floating around and a much easier way to stay organized. There's so many note taking apps in the App Store that choosing one can be a bigger task than anything. Syncing notes across all your devices and organizing them has never been easier when you use Evernote for iPad. If you prefer typing out your notes instead of using a handwritten notes app, Evernote is the best choice.

Quickly type out notes and tag them accordingly for quick access from any device with Evernote installed

Whether you need to take freeform notes, create checklists, or upload pictures - Evernote's got you covered. The best part about Evernote is that they've got a client for pretty much any platform you'll be using. I frequently take notes on my iPad in meetings or during consults. When I get back to my office they're already synchronized and available on my iMac. From there I can share them via e-mail, Twitter, or Facebook or send them directly to my printer. If you've ever had to take minutes for a meeting it's never been easier to send notes out to all attendants before you even leave the meeting.

Upon starting a new note in Evernote you'll notice that you've got the option to add them to notebooks and add tags to notes. This makes searching and sorting less of a task and super simple. I've got several types of clients from consulting to web design. I simply tag the note appropriately in my work notebook and I can find their notes in just a few taps from anywhere inside Evernote.

Quickly snap an image of an item, tag your note, and save it for later viewing or price comparing

I've also found Evernote to be a great place to store information such as serial numbers or photos when price shopping. Just take a quick photo inside a new note and tag it however you'd like. I love doing this when shopping for electronics or other items that I want to check prices for at multiple places. It allows me to easily compare prices without hand typing information that's already on the price tag.

View and organize notes by notebook, shared status, tags, and even more with Evernote for iPad

While Evernote is free to use you are limited as to how much storage you can use in one month. A free account gives you 60MB a month worth of storage. It'll reset every month back to zero. If you plan on taking more text notes than anything a free account will suit you just fine and you'll most likely never come close to hitting that cap, unless you're a note taking maniac. If you plan on saving a lot of images or screen caps to Evernote, you can probably come close to that cap and may want to consider upgrading.

For $5.00/month or $45/year you'll get 1GB of storage upload space per month as well as many other premium features including the following -

• Offline access
• No ads
• Extensive note history that allows you to view past versions of your notes (good if you're collaborating with others)
• 50MB uploads per note
• Pin lock allowing you to lock your Evernote application to prevent unauthorized access
• PDF search

I personally have always used the free version of Evernote and I've never hit the cap. 60MB may not seem like a lot of space but if you're only snapping a few pictures here and there and most of what you'll be doing involves taking text notes, a free account will serve you great. While the free version is ad-supported, you'll only really see ads on the PC or Mac version of the client and they're tucked away in a corner and extremely unobtrusive.

The good

• Great user interface across all platforms that's familiar when you jump from one device to another
• A free account will be sufficient for many users
• Fast syntonization across all your devices for easy access to your notes from anywhere
• Multiple notebooks and tags make organizing your notes super simple

The bad

• No way to passcode protect your notes unless you pay for Premium which is a bit of a let down

Conclusion

Evernote is hands down the best way to take and organize notes on the iPad whether you're in class, in a meeting, or on the go. Pair that with the ability to use Evernote across any platform available and it simply can't be beat. Whether you use an iPad and an iPhone or an iPad and an Android or BlackBerry, Evernote has you covered.

What are your favorite note taking apps for your iPad? Is Evernote your favorite or do you think something else deserves the title title for best iPad app for note taking?

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LockScreen Lab is an iPhone app that lets you design custom Lock screens that can include important information like a calendar, contact info, to-do list, and your blood type. This is great for people who have a passcode setup on their iPhone, or if you just want to make it easy for someone to contact you when they find your iPhone.

There are four different types of objects you can add to your design: contact information, to-do list, calendar, and text box. For all objects you can adjust the color and opacity.

For contact information, there are 4 different styles to choose from -- two horizontal ones (one with one line, another with two), one that's a corner banner, and the fourth is actually a way to display your blood type and looks like a red liquid drop.

Text boxes allow you to adjust the font size, alignment and opacity. The todo lists are kind of neat, but you have no control over their size. There are 4 different looks for your lists: check boxes (that can be checked/unchecked), bullets, stars, dashes, and Apple symbols.

Lastly, there a four different calendars to add to your lock screen backdrop: two vertical ones and two horizontal ones.

One thing I noticed about the objects is that you cannot adjust their size. For example, in my Lock screen, I have my email address on the bottom and a calendar on the left. They are both designed to be full length/width, so the banner with my email address overlaps with calendar making it so I can't see one of the days. I'm a little OCD with stuff like this, so the overlap is drying me nuts.

The Good

• Easy to use
• Includes great little objects
• Customization for colors and opacity
• Access to Photo albums

The Bad

• Can't adjust the size of objects

The Conclusion

LockScreen Lab is great app for creating custom wallpapers for your Lock screen. I had never considered including information like my blood type and an emergency contact, before, but since I have my iPhone setup with a passcode lock, I'm going to always make sure I include this information from now on. LockScreen lab makes this easy to do.

$1.99 - Download Now

The extremely popular social photo sharing service Instagram now has a very serious competitor to it's own app -- it's called Gramory. Gramory offers a superb way to browse through Instagram photos. One of the huge features that is not present in Instagram's official app is the ability to browse by trends.

Gramory has a very nice, multi-panel UI. The left panel is where you'll be able to choose how to filter the photos that you're browsing though. You can look through your own photos or feed, the popular photos, photos that you've liked, or even see what tags are trending and browse through those images. Regardless of which view you choose, you'll see them all presented as thumbnails. This is awesome because it lets you see 20 photos at once on a single page so that you can select which ones you'd like to see larger.

When viewing a photo, you'll see a large version of the photo as well as all the comments that have been made on that photo. If you pull the screen down, you'll see the hidden icons that let you share the photo to Twitter, Facebook, Messages, or Mail. You can also like the photo or leave a comment. If you tap the little thumbnail icon in the upper righthand corner, a right panel will slide out that displays thumbnails of that user's Instagram photos.

Despite how awesome Gramory is, it's still not a replacement for the official Instagram app. It doesn't allow you to post photos, nor can you see a nice list of recent comments and likes made to your photos.

The Good

• Multi-plane UI
• Browse photos by "me", popular, feed, liked, or trends
• Search users and tags
• Thumbnail view

The Bad

• Cannot post photos to Instagram
• Cannot view a list of recent comments and likes made to your photos

The Conclusion

If you're a big Instagram user, you must start using Gramory. It's offers a new and better way to browse photos posted to Instgram.

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