5 apps that would change the way you look at your iPhone camera

This week, e27 brings to you 5 apps that would change your experience with your iPhone camera. That little piece of technology that you hold in your hands has hidden capabilities that might rival even the most sophisticated photo-editing software!


Depending on which model of iPhone you are currently using, the resolution of your camera might differ and you might thus prefer your darling SLR or compact camera to your trusty iPhone. That might be a thing of the past once you discover the great number of photo processing apps available on the iOS! Eliminate the need to lug around your camera and do miracles with this week’s iPhone apps. With a few touches, you can make your photos unique, from adding tints to creating unique collages. You might even impress your friends with photo editing skills that can rival that of any Photoshop genius!

DECOPIC


The craze of neoprints might have abated in hot and sunny Singapore and I suspect that part of the reason is due to their sky-high prices. Do not be dismayed and give up on decorating your photos forever… this app is a great substitute for those neoprint machines. What’s more, you can have all the time in the world to decorate your photos as you please! No more beating that annoying clock ticking down as you pull your hair out with stress.

Photosynth


So you are at this gorgeous place with breathtaking scenery, you want to take a panorama shot but you realise that your camera does not have that capabilities. Do you A) Give up, B) Take the photos anyway and hope Photoshop’s “stitch” function would serve you well, or C) Whip out your iPhone with Photosynth installed and emerge with a panorama within minutes! This app is a miracle worker! I am thoroughly impressed and more than a little awed when I noticed that the panorama I took managed to capture depth. Do not miss out on the chance to take a panorama photo ever for you only need to download this free app off the App Store.

Multi-lens


Want to create a collage and yet you can’t be bothered to take the photos now and edit them later? No problem! Only 2 simple steps required to produce that perfect collage. 1) Choose a collage design, 2) Take multiple shots within the frame layout. This is great for sharing those food photos or friends gathering! Let your creative juices flow and play around with the different collage designs to create unique pieces of art.

Halftone


Have you ever dreamed of being featured on comic strips? Transform any photo of yours into something that looks like it was from a page of a comic strip with just a few taps. Change the type of paper and manipulate the mood that picture is trying to communicate. Enhance colours, increase saturation, add speech bubbles and action words… it is all fool proof! Maybe with this app, you can finally realise that dream of becoming a super hero by creating a series of photos detailing your heroic activities! Share your photos easily too, even as postcards!

Mei Tu Xiu Xiu


A picture says a thousand words… but no one said what language pictures spoke! Transcend the language barrier and embrace this great app that does everything that one can hope for. If you are looking for simply one new photography app, this should be the one. Do not be daunted by the Chinese characters, the symbols speak for themselves and with a little experience, you will definitely get the hang of it. Decorate your photos to your heart’s desires with the many options available and even create collages with a great selection of backgrounds. The only drawback is that sharing is only available for Chinese SNS but the way around it would be to save the photo and upload it!

If you like this app, do try out the other app Mei Tu GIF by the same developer. Similar to this app, it allows you to edit a video with snapshots taken live. I am still meddling around with it but so far, it has gotten my seal of approval.

There are certainly many more photography apps out there. If you have any particular favorite that I have missed in this post, feel free to comment and share!

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How to transfer apps from iPhone to iTunes

Even the most tech-savvy among us can induce the occasional face-palm by getting tripped up over pretty basic stuff that they just aren’t familiar with. Though Apple has made technology more personal and simple for millions of non-geek customers, even their systems can have a bit of a learning curve.

Take the iPhone and iTunes. As seamlessly as Cupertino has crafted the platforms, there are still some details that aren’t apparent from the get-go. One of the most requested tips may seem basic, but is no less important: how do you transfer your iPhone apps into iTunes?

Though you may not realize it at first, Apple has made it ridiculously easy to transfer iPhone apps to iTunes. There are, however, a couple of things that need to be in place first:

Sign in with your Apple ID

First, navigate to the “Store” menu entry in iTunes, and choose “Sign in” if you haven’t already. This will need to be the Apple ID that you used when downloading the apps from your iPhone.

Authorize computer

Next, return to the “Store” menu in iTunes, and choose “Authorize Computer.” If you haven’t yet done this, iTunes won’t let you transfer those apps.
If you purchased apps with multiple accounts on your iPhone, then you’ll need to repeat these first two steps with each account.

Transfer Purchases

All that’s left to do is to connect your iPhone to your computer (via USB), and let iTunes do its thing. After backing up your iPhone, it will begin “transferring purchases” into iTunes. This includes both free and purchased apps — all will be backed up on your desktop or laptop.
If you’ve previously synced your iPhone with another computer, you may see a box that says “your iPhone is synced with another iTunes library.” In this case, simply press “Transfer Purchases” and your apps will be copied.
If iTunes doesn’t automatically transfer your purchases, then you may have previously selected “don’t ask me again” when prompted about transferring purchases. The way around this is to simply right-click on the name of your iPhone in iTunes. One of the options should be “Transfer purchases from [your iPhone].” Select this.

Wi-Fi syncing

One last thing to note is that, starting with iOS 5, you can wirelessly transfer your apps from your iPhone to iTunes. In iTunes, the tab for your iPhone will have a box that says “sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi.”
Leave it checked, and your apps will be wirelessly copied to iTunes regularly (as long as iTunes is open, of course). Leave it unchecked, and the syncing will only happen when you physically connect your iPhone to your PC.

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Xamarin Delivers MonoTouch 5.2 for iPhone and iPad App Development

Xamarin’s new MonoTouch 5.2 speeds up and simplifies iPhone App Development and iPad application development.

Xamarin, a maker of development software for building cross-platform mobile apps for phones and tablets, has announced MonoTouch 5.2, a new version of its software for developing iPhone and iPad apps.

MonoTouch 5.2 delivers new capabilities to improve application performance, streamline the development process and reduce the time it takes to build iPhone and iPad apps with a native user experience.

“Xamarin’s cross-platform development products, MonoTouch and Mono for Android, provide the power of the .NET frameworks that millions of developers already use, along with complete access to all native APIs and UI toolkits for iOS and Android; this allows you to create truly unique native experiences on each operating system,” said Miguel de Icaza, chief technology officer of Xamarin, in a statement. “Now with MonoTouch 5.2, we are giving developers powerful capabilities to build better quality iPhone and iPad apps faster and easier than available anywhere else.”

MonoTouch 5.2 features MonoTouch.Dialog, a new API that enables developers to create Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) compliant iOS forms and dialog boxes, and to show table-based information without having to write dozens of delegates and controllers for the user interface. It includes UITableView support and pull-to-refresh, as well as built-in searching.

Also new in MonoTouch 5.2 is the MonoTouch memory profiler, which provides new tooling to enable developers to track managed objects’ memory usage growth, which objects are still referenced and from where they are being referenced. Other new memory features include a Generational Garbage Collector and improved Garbage Collection Diagnostics.

Meanwhile, another key new feature is Touch.Unit, a new unit testing framework for developers to perform on-device testing of individual functions and procedures in MonoTouch applications.

MonoTouch 5.2 also includes more than 300 additional enhancements that make it easier to develop great iOS applications. A full listing of new features and capabilities can be viewed at http://blog.xamarin.com.
“MonoTouch already provides a great environment to quickly build really powerful apps,” said Tony Fonager, chief technology officer of Netcoders ApS, Denmark, in a statement. “The new MonoTouch.Dialog features in MonoTouch 5.2 are a real time saver because now we can build common iPhone and iPad dialogs easier and faster without having to deal directly with UITableViews, delegates and data sources.”
Meanwhile, in December 2011, Xamarin announced the release of Mono open source .NET development platform for Android 4.0.

Xamarin announced the availability of Mono for Android 4.0, the first release from Xamarin that allows C# developers to target Android tablet devices, such as Kindle Fire, Motorola Xoom and Samsung GALAXY Tab.

With that release, Xamarin provided access to all the new features introduced by Google on their Android 4.0 operating system, code named Ice Cream Sandwich.

That Mono release featured a plug-in for Microsoft’s Visual Studio that enables .NET developers to develop applications for Android. That release also includes a new, incremental build technology that reduces debugging and development cycles, the company said.

“Thousands of developers depend on Xamarin to build the newest applications for mobile devices,” said de Icaza at the time of that Mono for Android announcement. “We bring C# and .NET to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, but we bring it with style. We provide developers with the power of the .NET frameworks that they are used to, along with complete access to all of the native APIs and UI toolkits unique to each operating system, allowing developers to create truly unique native experiences on each operating system.”

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iPhone app controls tiny Hot Wheels car

Most remote control cars come with dual stick controllers, but Hot Wheels opens up many more driving options with its iPhone controller app.

Although a little clunky to set up, Hot Wheel's iNitro Speeders gives the option of using an iPhone to control its little remote control cars. The iPhone app includes the standard dual stick controller, but also lets you drive the car with the iPhone's accelerometer, choose a predefined driving pattern, or draw your own pattern.

The iNitro Speeders car is less than 2 inches long.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Hot Wheels sent us the iNitro Speeders kit with a Ken Block Fiesta car, one style of about eight. The Ken Block Fiesta is only 1 3/4 inches long, with a 1-inch width body. The body style is very close in look to the actual car on which it is based, but the wheels stick out far from the body.

The car comes with a carrying case that serves as charger and physical controller. This case has the dual stick controller setup, with forward and reverse on the left, and turning on the right.
Push the control stick forward, and the car takes off like a shot. Hit the turn stick and it pulls 180s and 360s.

The car is a little too fast, making it difficult to control. Instead of having the front wheels actually pivot, the car turns by torque, shifting power to the left or right.

But the cool thing is the iPhone app controller. The car relies on infrared signals for its remote control,
something not native to the iPhone. So Hot Wheels includes an infrared module that plugs into the iPhone's headphone port. It is not the most elegant solution, but it works.

After a calibration function, which does not seem to make much difference, the app shows five methods of controlling the car. The first is the dual stick controller, which offers some interesting graphic choices. It works just like the carrying case controller, and is equally difficult to do much but make the car go zipping off in random directions.

The iPhone app lets you draw custom paths for the car to follow.

(Credit: Wayne Cunningham/CNET)

The accelerometer option lets you control the car by tipping the phone forward and back, right and left. This one might be easier to use for people with a fine sense of balance. However, we still found the car charging off, albeit making more interesting maneuvers that were almost under control.

An option called Slide shows something like the old Spyhunter game graphic, and you control the car by moving your fingertip up or down over the graphic. This method seemed to be the easiest for actually controlling the car.

We found the final two options the most intriguing. The first lets you select patterns, such as a figure eight or spiral, which the car will follow. The second is similar, but you can actually draw a pattern, then make the car follow it, kind of like a cross between an Etch A Sketch and a car controller.

Hot Wheels says the iNitro Speeders are appropriate for children eight years old and up. Not many children that age own an iPhone, but many a parent hands over a phone for games. And although having to attach the control module to the iPhone is a little clunky, the app gives some interesting control possibilities. It also includes a built-in racing game you can play anywhere. The iNitro Speeders are available now for $32.99.

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iPhone app uploads entire address book to its servers

An iPhone app that claims to help you "share life with the ones you love" is sharing a little bit too much information, a developer has discovered.

An iPhone app that claims to help you "share life with the ones you love" is sharing a little bit too much information, a developer has discovered.

Path is described as a "smart journal" and is free to download in the App Store. However, the current version of the app uploads the entire contents of your address book and places it on its servers, it has emerged.
Arun Thampi, a Singapore-based iOS developer, wrote on his blog that he discovered the issue by accident while implementing a Path Mac OS X app as part of a regularly scheduled hackathon hosted by Anideo, the company he works for.

"I noticed that my entire address book (including full names, emails and phone numbers) was being sent as a plist to Path," he wrote.

"Now I don't remember having given permission to Path to access my address book and send its contents to its servers, so I created a completely new "Path" and repeated the experiment and I got the same result - my address book was in Path's hands."

Dave Morin, the co-founder and CEO of Path, responded to the revelations on the blog post itself. While he accepted the allegations were true, he said that there was no underhand reason for doing so and that future versions of the iOS app would make this feature opt-in.
Another iPhone app discovered uploading address book details

"We actually think this is an important conversation and take this very seriously. We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and effeciently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more," Morin said.

"We believe that this type of friend finding & matching is important to the industry and that it is important that users clearly understand it, so we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval."

However, other commenters on the blog weren't happy, pointing out that Apple's App Store guidelines appeared to have been broken. "I'd say that 17.1 and 17.2 of the approval guidelines specifically forbids what you are currently doing," wrote David Smith, who describes himself as an independent iOS developer.

"17.1: Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used;

"17.2: Apps that require users to share personal information, such as email address and date of birth, in order to function will be rejected."

Morin doesn't respond to this point directly but does contribute to the thread again to insist that the company is working on an update. "We hope that the proactive steps we've been taking over the last couple of weeks on our Android client show we care deeply. We're hoping to have iOS 2.0.6 into the App Store process by the end of the week," he said.

Earlier in the thread, Morin offers to delete the data of anyone who has used the app. "If you would like your data deleted from our servers please contact our service team at service@path.com. We take this same policy for any of your data, if you'd like your account deleted, including all data, we're happy to do this as well.

UPDATE: The updated version of Path is now available in the iTunes App Store.

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Turn your iPhone into a contacts Metasearch engine with Smartr Contacts for iPhone-App Review

For long iPhone users have been awaiting a powerful sync capability between their phone contacts and social media contacts. This is where the Android OS has been a step ahead until the release of iPhone 4 & 4S, where the recent facebook app allows you to sync contacts and their photos seamlessly. The desire for more than just facebook and the use on older device can leave you puzzled with a lot of solutions and apps that may offer solutions but yet not keep your contacts managed at one place. Smartr Contacts is an all in one popular social network syncing app, that can aggregate all your contacts in one place, link them and allow you to contact people directly from the app.

Smartr Contacts app starts by offering you a sign up screen where you can make a Xobni account or log in to an existing account. Xobni is an universal address book management app available for all major platforms and can help you aggregate contacts from multiple social channels. You can add your Gmail or Outlook address book by granting appropriate permissions and logging in with your credentials. This will brings all your Gmail contacts to your phone allowing you to use them with your default email client on your device too. In the next step you are asked if you want to connect your LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter profile to capture contacts from them. Logging in and allowing the app to access your social network contacts will sync them to your device instantly.

Once you have added and permitted all your contact databases, the app will soon sync all the services and next time you turn it on you will be greeted with the latest updates from social networks on the home screen and a search bar which works as a meta search engine, aggregating contacts from all your networks. The search bar allows you to search and shows how many contacts are currently available in the directory. While simply tapping on it takes you to the contacts directory listed along with with photos and full name to quickly recognize.

You can add multiple Gmail/ Google Apps accounts and add/edit other accounts from the settings menu. Here you can also push the existing contacts in directory to the cloud services which make your contacts accessible from anywhere with secure access.

Smartr Contacts does a great job in aggregating your contacts in one place to quickly access and get in touch with your friends, family and colleagues. Moreover you will be able to experience the same convenience in your Gmail account on the web version, outlook client, android phone or Blackberry if you use more than one of these devices/services. Smartr Contacts is Freely available on the app store and it wont hurt to try how simple and convenient this app could be.

Screenshots from the app :

 

 

 

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iPhone App News: Facebook photo sharing app canned?

 

 

Facebook has appearently dropped its plans to launch a bespoke photo-sharing application for Apple's iPhone, according to reports on Monday

Facebook has reportedly pulled the plug on a planned photo sharing application for the iPhone App.
The application leaked last year, courtesy of screenshots posted by the TechCrunch website, but there have been few murmurs of a launch since the June 2011 report.

The screenshots displayed seemed to suggest Facebook was looking at tackling the likes of Instagram and Twitpic by offering an easy solution to sharing photos across the web, but also incorporating friend tagging options and Facebook's existing albums service.

However, a Business Insider report says that not a lot has happened since and it appears that Facebook has put the project on ice, perhaps permanently?
The report says: "Is it coming or not?

"According to a source familiar with that project, the answer is no, the app we saw in those photos this last summer is not coming.

It turns out those photos were not images of a complete and ready-to-ship app. In fact, little development work at all had been done for the app in the photos. It's most likely that the photos were renderings of what a new Facebook photos app for the iPhone could look like."

Facebook, of course, has not been the most efficient company when it comes to updating their smartphone app experience. The Facebook for Android app has long trailed its iOS counterpart, while it took the company 18 months to launch an official iPad app, which even then failed to impress the majority of users.
The report suggests that the company is still working on its photo-taking and sharing experience for its iPhone offering and an update could be in the works soon, but it won't be the promising-looking platform we saw last summer.

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