Prizmo is an iOS app that lets you use your device's camera to scan text and do all sorts of neat things with it. The scanned text can be exported directly, or saved in PDF or image form to be sent elsewhere. But that's only the beginning. It understands over 40 languages (10 are built-in, the rest must be purchased) and it…
Checkmark 2 is the latest edition of the popular iPhone task-management app. It's been rebuilt from scratch for iOS 7 and has lots of new features to help you get stuff done. My favorite new feature is the ability to set "location groups", i.e. categories of places where you'd want to get reminded about a particular thing. Let's say you set up…
These days, who wants to plug their iOS device into a computer to back up photos anymore? All of mine end up on Dropbox anyway, so why not cut out the middle man and upload the photos directly? This is where CameraSync comes in handy. Once you've set it up with your Dropbox account (other options include Flickr, Amazon S3, Google Drive,…
Learning Japanese is a small side project I've been tackling here and there for the last month or so. You'd think that with all the language-learning apps available on the iOS App Store, I'd be able to find at least one app I'm happy with. Unfortunately, most of them are butt ugly and/or unintuitive to use. Thankfully, this is not so with…
Waterlogue is an iOS app that can make any of your photos look like gorgeous watercolor paintings. Similar to apps like Instagram, there are a handful of filters that can transform photos in various delightful ways. You can see some examples here. The app is super easy to use, fun to play with, and can add a little artistic flair to even…
As I've mentioned in the past, I do all of my writing and blogging from my iPad, using a combination of the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover and Editorial. I enjoy this setup for the most part, but the one aspect that still isn't 100% up-to-snuff is dealing with images in posts. There are various apps on the iOS App Store that tie…
Tengami is a new game for iOS (universal) that places you in the role of a samurai who must explore a mystical pop-up book world. In this world, you are able to "page" through various backdrops and interact with the various elements on-screen. It sounds a little strange on the surface, but it's actually quite relaxing and enjoyable. The textures in Tengami…
This won't be the first time we've talked about Pushpin for Pinboard, but I wanted to bring it up again for a couple of reasons: The release of Pushpin 3.0 a few weeks ago brought a completely overhauled interface to the app (particularly noticeable on iPad), along with lots of new features, such as renewed TextExpander Touch support and the addition of…
After our editor Shawn Blanc recently wrote about a new iPhone app called Reporter, I decided to check it out for myself. It's certainly a neat idea—throughout the day, it will randomly ping you with a short survey about where you are and what you're doing at that moment. (It comes with a built-in set of questions, but you can add questions…
My buddy Andrew J. Clark (of The Menu Bar fame) just released his gorgeous, first-ever iPhone app, Numerical. The tagline for the app is "A Calculator Without Equal", which is not only clever from a marketing perspective, but also true because the app does not have an 'equals' button. It simply calculates answers on-the-fly, and lets you use swipe gestures to undo,…
I use FeedPress to provide the RSS feed for my site. Although they have a decent responsive page for checking subscriber stats from my iPhone, it can be a little difficult to interact with sometimes (particularly the subscriber graph). A native iPhone app would be more preferable, and today I got my wish with the latest update to Static. It tracks statistics…
Pinswift has been one of my favorite Pinboard clients for the iPhone ever since it released a couple months ago. It has a lovely, simple interface, with robust features for power users beneath the surface. Some of these advanced features include x-callback-url support, saved searches for tags and whatnot, and full-text search (if you've paid for the Pinboard archival account upgrade). And…
Plex is one of the better solutions out there for organizing and streaming your movies and music between devices. Sign up for a Plex account, put the Plex Media Server app on your Mac, and then you can use the iOS app to stream your stuff from anywhere in the world. The iOS app also allows you to control the media being…
1Writer is one of those iOS writing apps that I always thought looked very nice, but it never provided a good enough reason to switch away from something like Editorial or Byword. You'd still have to pry Editorial out of my cold, dead fingers, but the latest update to 1Writer now puts it at least above Byword. It's now my go-to iPhone…
Chicago Avenue Moon is an unexpected new app from Junecloud—the studio behind Delivery Status Touch—that blows my mind a little. It's designed to generate a personalized soundtrack for the listener as they move about, but that description doesn't tell the whole story so I'll just quote the source: “Chicago Avenue Moon is a responsive, generative music app that gathers a set of…
For a long time now, the only RSS reader I've used on my iPhone has been Reeder. I never imagined another app would come along that would be worth switching to, but that all changed last night with the release of Unread. Unread's philosophy is all about slowing down and really reading things that are worth our attention, not just flying through…
There's certainly no shortage of great calendar apps for iPhone, but it can't hurt to try something new like Peek Calendar. On the surface it looks pretty simple, but there are some neat things under the hood. Tap on any given calendar date to "unfold" the list of events for that day, or hold on a date to create a new event.…
On the latest episode of The Prompt, Federico Viticci mentioned an iOS app called WordBook that sounded interesting enough for me to check out. It's a pretty powerful English dictionary and thesaurus, and I think it might just replace my long-running "Words to Remember" list in Simplenote. You can bookmark your favorite words and have them sync between devices via iCloud, have…
Instashare is yet another file-sharing app for iOS and Mac. You can send photos, PDFs, and more, all over a local Bluetooth connection (no WiFi or login necessary). The nice part is that the sharing goes both ways; it's not just Mac-to-iOS, but also vice-versa. It's all done via drag-and-drop—about as simple as it gets. The universal iOS app is free (with…
I've been a Spotify subscriber for a while (going on something like 2.5 years now), and although I've always loved the service, their iOS app has consistently felt a little lacking to me. I've tried Rdio as well, but never found a compelling enough reason to switch. But now I've had a chance to try out the new Beats Music iPhone app…