Storehouse is a neat new app for iPad that makes it super easy to create long-form stories that can be shared with the world. Using a combination of text, videos (30 seconds or less each), and photos (pulled from your camera roll, Dropbox, Flickr, and Instagram), you can put together something like this. Or this. Everything can be resized, moved around, and…
I recently linked to an app called Command-C that allowed you to copy and paste between Mac and iOS devices. It's an awesome thing to have, with one caveat: it won't work on any WiFi networks where multicast has been disabled, and thus, Bonjour connectivity (which is the case at my local coffee shop). In those cases, your devices won't see one…
My wife and I are big fans of Disney's theme parks. We actually intend to visit Disneyland and California Adventure later this year, which will be a perfect time to try out this brand-new Magic Passport app for iPhone, designed by the awesome folks at Pacific Helm. Here's how they describe it: “Contained inside your Magic Passport is a list of all…
Blur is a universal iOS app that does one thing well: it lets you custom-blur images to be used as wallpapers for your device. Tip: have a normal image set as your lock screen wallpaper, then use a blurred form of that same image as your home screen wallpaper. This works exceptionally well on iOS 7 devices. Blur is only $0.99 on…
Every now and then, I need to insert some unicode characters into something I'm writing — for example, , ★ , ♫, ™, etc. Typically, I either use CopyPasteCharacter (along with its companion iOS app) or a custom set of TextExpander snippets to get the job done. But today, there is a new, free app for this purpose: Simbol for iPhone.…
Thanks to a review by Federico Viticci, I got to hear about an awesome app for Mac and iOS called Command-C. It allows you to push the contents of your clipboard between devices over a local network. Thanks to the backgrounding features of iOS 7, you can share between an iPhone and iPad without even having to open the app on the…
nvNotes is a note-taking app for iPhone that was inspired by apps like nvALT, Notational Velocity, and more recently, the new Writer Pro. This is one of those apps that mostly stays out of your way so you can focus on what's really important: your notes. The few features that come into play while you're writing are: Word and character count. A…
Eastgate, the folks behind note-organization app Tinderbox, have put on a winter holiday sale featuring several awesome writing apps for the Mac. The sale includes Tinderbox itself, Scrivener, Scapple, DEVONthink Pro, and Nisus Writer Pro. In each case, you can use the promo code WINTERFEST2013 to get 25% off the normal price. These are some great apps for writers (especially Scrivener) so…
Sometimes a new writing app comes out that has everybody talking about it for a while. Right now, Writer Pro, the successor to the ever-popular iA Writer, is the new hotness. This app is designed around the four basic stages of any writer's workflow – note-taking, writing, editing, and reading – each of which is represented by a different typeface and color.…
MarkDrop is a new text editor for Mac OS X (10.8 and above) that combines Markdown with Droplr for easy sharing and storage. The left pane, with its monospaced text and format-highlighting, is where you'll do your writing. The right hand pane provides a real-time preview of your Markdown output. Once you've composed something in MarkDrop, it can be saved directly to…
My friend Patrick Rhone is known for many things, one of them being a to-do system called Dash/Plus that was designed for people who like to manage task lists with pen and paper. Think of it as a collection of various bullet points you can use to denote the status of items on your to-do list. Today, Patrick announced that the Dash/Plus…
AppViz is a popular sales-tracking tool for iOS developers that I believe dates back to 2009. Yesterday, The Iconfactory announced AppViz 3, the latest and greatest iteration of the service yet. The Mac app has been completely redesigned, with easy-to-understand graphs and statistics about how your apps are doing on the App Store. You can monitor in-app purchases, read reviews of your…
Runtime is a new run-tracking app for iPhone, built specifically for iOS 7 and the iPhone 5s' M7 chip. It records the places, routes, and even altitudes where you do your running/hiking/jogging/etc. For each session tracked, it will show you where you ran (in orange), where you walked (in yellow), and how many steps you took. Each 'run' can also be shared…
It's not been mentioned here before, but unless I'm mistaken, all of us here at Tools & Toys use Delivery Status Touch to track our various shipments. I certainly can't think of a better option, because you can add tracking numbers from just about any delivery service out there and it will work like magic. The app just got even better too,…
Spark Camera is a new iPhone app that makes it super easy to make great-looking video clips, up to 30 seconds in length each. If you've ever used Vine, the interface will feel a bit familiar, as your method of recording is merely holding your finger on the screen. Let off the screen and the recording pauses, allowing you to set up…
Terminology, the best iOS dictionary app on the market, turned 3 yesterday. The all-new version is a $2.99 universal app that sports an all-new iOS 7 UI, but so much more. In addition to a great offline dictionary and thesaurus, Terminology 3 can search Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Google and other common reference sites. With iCloud, the app can sync favorite terms and histories…
Reconnaissance for iPhone is a new RSS app that ties into your Feed Wrangler account. It's the first iOS app I've seen designed specifically for Feed Wrangler outside of the official app, and it looks very nice. Actually, it just pushed out a redesign yesterday, which is what you see in the screenshots above. Reconnaissance integrates a little more deeply with Feed…
Pedometer++ is a free new app for iPhone that should appeal to fitness-minded nerds, and it's made by none other than David Smith. It pulls data from the iPhone 5s' new M7 coprocessor – the always-running, low-power chip that measures motion data from the accelerometer, compass, and gyroscope – and as the name suggests, it uses that data to turn your iPhone…
Brett Terpstra's awesome Markdown-preview app for Mac, Marked, has been updated to version 2. For those who don't already know, Marked acts like a sort of extension for any Mac text editor, allowing you to preview your Markdown-formatted plain text in its rich-formatted state, every time you save your document. The preview can be customized to look however you like, even as…
Remember that Snake game that used to be on Nokia cellphones back in the day? Nimble Quest is an iPhone game that combines the mechanics of Snake with those of a 16-bit RPG. You choose a hero, hit Play, and it puts your character on an open field with enemies continually spawning across the map. Swipe in different directions to move your…