Macgasm

In case you haven’t noticed (just look at my Twitter avatar), I get very excited around Christmas time. If you add some Christmas flare to my favorite gadgets of all time, then you have a winner.

Using only iPads and iPhones as instruments, North Point Community Church’s iBand performed Carol of the Bells, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, and Feliz Navidad to a delighted audience.

If this got you all inspired and you want to try to create your own Christmas iBand, here’s a list of all the apps used in the video (talent not included):

SoundGrid ($2.99, Universal), NLog Free Synth (Free, iPhone), Melody Bell ($0.99, iPhone), Guitarist ($3.99, iPhone), iGOG ($2.99, iPhone), Bassist ($2.99, iPhone), Pocket Organ ($2.99, Universal), Saxophone Musicofx ($0.99, iPhone) , Percussions ($1.99, iPhone), Bebot ($1.99, Universal), Pianist ($3.99, iPhone) and I Am T-Pain ($0.99, iPhone).

You can also check out NorthPoint’s Christmas album on their website.

Do you know of any other cool acts using iPads and iPhones? Post a comment.

Droplr is a popular menu bar utility for the Mac that makes it super easy to share text, images and URLs. It’s a very convenient tool particularly for sharing things on Twitter and they just came out with a beautiful new iPhone app.

What’s Macgasmic?

Usually I don’t particularly care for developers using custom UIs just for the sake of being custom. But Droplr for iPhone is so incredibly gorgeous that it’s completely worth it. And to match the beautiful UI the app’s sounds are an absolute delight and make Droplr a joy to use

Droplr lets you access all the uploads from your Mac and also upload files directly from your iPhone. To upload something you simply select the “+” buttton on the top navigation bar and you can select an image from your library, shorten a link from the clipboard or compose a new note. It’s all very easy and quick. When you click on  ”drop” a new menu will appear on the bottom with these options: quicklook, copy link, email, send to Twitter and delete. You can also “pull to refresh” to update the app with your new uploads if you happen to add something from your Mac.

What’s not so good?

When you want to post a “drop” to Twitter you’re asked to select your client of choice. While there is a huge selection of clients to choose from if you happen to use a lesser known one you’re out of luck since there’s no other way to post to Twitter. It probably won’t be a problem for most people but I thought it was still worth mentioning.

I would also like some more organization (by folders, by type) instead of having all my “drops” in one big list. The current system is fine if you don’t have a lot of them but if you do and want to find something specific it might be a bit too much work.

Giveaway

With this review we’re also giving away 5 promo codes of Droplr for iPhone (US only). If you want a chance to win just follow these three steps:

1. Follow @macgasm on Twitter.
2. Tweet this message “Win one of five copies of Droplr for iPhone from Macgasm. Details and review here: http://bit.ly/ahyZuw”.
3. Post a comment here with a link to your tweet.

That’s it! I’ll randomly pick the winners on Friday, October 22th. Good luck!

Stylebook is an iPhone database of your wardrobe. This wonderful app is designed not only to be your virtual closet in your pocket, but also to help you mix and match your clothes and accessories to create fashionable outfits. You can add pictures of all your clothes, shoes and accessories to the app, organise them in different categories, use fashion pics as inspiration to create your outfits and there’s even a calendar to keep track of when you wore each item.

How does it work?

When you first open the app, there’s a screen that briefly explains what you can do with Stylebook. Then you have the main screen where you can choose, from the buttons on the bottom, between Closet, Looks, Calendar, and More.

From the Closet, you can upload pics of your clothes and organize them in the different categories. You can add custom categories and edit the existing ones.

Looks is where you organise your clothes into outfits. Each outfit also goes into its own category (work, evening, formal, etc.). In addition to adding clothes/shoes/accessories to each outfit, you can also add an inspiration pic (explained below).

In the Calendar, you can add what you wore each day so you can make sure you’re not wearing the same outfits too often and you can also use it to plan your future wardrobes or what you’re going to wear to an upcoming special event.

There’s also an Inspiration tab where you can add pics (from fashion magazines, friends, etc) for you to get inspiration for your own outfits.

In the More tab, there are several tips explaining how to use the app and, most notably, how to better photograph your clothes and remove the background.

What’s Macgasmic?

When you create looks, you can pinch to make items bigger or smaller which is very helpful if you photographed your clothes from different distances. You can also layer them to get a better idea of how your outfit is going to look.

The included automatic background remover isn’t perfect, but Stylebook gives you plenty of tips on how to photograph your clothes, what color backgrounds to use to make everything smoother and there’s even a manual edit mode to fix what the background remover couldn’t.

What needs work?

Currently, you have to edit out the background of each pic as soon as you upload it. There’s no option to save it so that you can edit it later. It would be better if you could photograph a bunch of clothes at once and edit them all later. This limitation is also a problem if you make a mistake while removing the background. That is to say, there’s no going back after saving the pic.

Another thing that needs work is adding clothes to outfits: you can only select one item at a time which can be time consuming if you have a look with lots of layers and accessories.

As a girl who always packs too much, I would also love a packing list feature. That way I could try to optimise my packing by trying to pack items that could be used in different outfits.

It might seem like it’s too much work to photograph and upload all your clothes. If you do manage that, Stylebook can be an amazing tool. You can use it while shopping to see how something would look with your clothes back home. You can use it to plan your outfits for the week to avoid those “I have nothing to wear” mornings. If you’re lucky enough to have more clothes than you can keep track of, it’s very useful to help you find what you’re looking for.

Giveaway

With this review we’re also doing a giveaway. If you want a chance to win a promocode for Stylebook (US only) just follow these three steps:

1. Follow @macgasm on Twitter.
2. Tweet this message “Win a copy of Stylebook from Macgasm. Details and review here: http://bit.ly/bWxzuz”.
3. Post a comment here with a link to your tweet.

That’s it! I’ll randomly pick a winner Friday, October 1st. Good luck!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Congrats to LucaDB!  We’ll be in touch over Twitter.

Photo credit: kandyjaxx

Movie Vault is an iPad library of full length movies from the last 100 years that you can stream at any time over 3G and WiFi for free. With a growing collection of 1200 movies and TV shows, it’s a great resource for fans of old films or anyone who wants to get started on the genre. At $4.99 in the App Store, it’s worth the purchase even if you’re only interested in a couple of films. Night of the Living Dead anyone?

What’s Macgasmic?

When you open Movie Vault, you’re presented with beautiful wooden shelves where the movies are displayed. When you click on one you get a pane with all the details about the movie including descriptions, actors, director, etc. All this information is fully-searchable so that each movie is just one quick search away.

To switch genre you can swipe the shelves left or right. There’s also a button on the top left corner to choose the genre you want. You can pick from Horrror, Drama, Musicals, Westerns, Comedy, and several more. Here you also have have a search button in case you’re looking for something more specific. To be honest, I felt the search button was somewhat hidden. I think it should be more obvious that this is where it is located.

In addition to the over 1200 movies currently available in Movie Vault, more movies are added all the time. Even better than that is that you don’t even need an update to get them. They will automatically appear in the app when they’re added to its database. On the top right corner there’s also a reload button in case you want to check if anything new has just been added.

What else I would like

Currently you can only display the movies by genre. I would like an option to display all the available movies and to be able to organize them by date, name, etc. to make everything easier to find. Also at this point there’s no way to mark or save the movies you want to see, so if there are a few of them you’re interested in, you have to search again when you’re ready to watch them. Another thing that would be nice is live searching, so that movies matching my criteria will appear as soon as I start typing. This might seem like a tiny detail, but what can I say? iOS has got me spoiled.

For the most part Movie Vault works extremely well. It’s very smooth and it looks amazing. The movies start playing almost instantaneously, as long as you have a fast connection, and the quality is ok considering most of these movies never came out on DVD. I’ve had the random crash, but I was told a fix is on the way.

Most of the features I’m wishing for are already planned, so I’m looking forward to future updates since this app promises to only get better and better.

Giveaway

With this review we’re also doing a giveaway. If you want a chance to win a promocode for Movie Vault for iPad (US only), just follow these three steps:

1. Follow @macgasm on Twitter.
2. Tweet this message “Win a copy of Movie Vault for iPad. Details and review here: http://bit.ly/bWxzuz”.
3. Post a comment here with a link to your tweet.

That’s it! I’ll randomly pick a winner Friday, September 10th. Good luck!

Update: The Winner!

Congrats to Jeff Please!  He has randomly been selected to win Movie Vault!  Hopefully he likes it as much as we do.

Photo credit: striatic

I’ve tried keeping a journal several times. One big problem I had was that I could never keep it organized and clean. I would cross out stuff, rip pages, put the wrong date (Yes, I’m that clueless), and forget to add stuff only to remember later when I could no longer find a place for it. My journals always ended up looking so messy that I became too frustrated to continue.

Last year, I started using my iPhone to write about my European trip. I even wrote a Macgasm post on it. It fixed my issues with traditional paper journals, but it was still a bit cramped for writing more than short notes. Then came the iPad.

To start

Chronicle for iPad is a beautiful and elegant journaling app. It allows you to easily write down your thoughts and ideas in an interface that makes it simple to keep your writing organized. There’s a built-in search feature that lets you quickly look for a particular keyword or phrase and you can browse for entries by month in addition to the list on the left panel.

One of the things I really appreciate in Chronicle is all the export features. While all the data in all your iOS apps is backed up whenever you connect your iDevice to iTunes, if you need to do a fresh restore, all that data is lost. With Chronicle, you can upload your journal to Google Docs, export them as a website or email your entries. Ideally, I’d also like the option to upload my content to Dropbox or MobileMe.

Chronicle also comes with a few nice options to customize your journal to your liking. You can choose between several fonts for your text, make it bigger or smaller and also pick a darker or lighter font. You can also change the background color, and annotate your entries with several cute icons to indicate your mood or to make an entry stand out.

You can also add pictures from your library, it’s very easy to do (although the icon could be more obvious) and you can resize, rotate and slide them wherever you want. The only thing I feel could be better is having the text wrap around the pictures.

What’s missing?

There are two main things I would like to see in this app. The biggest one is some type of sync with the iPhone version. While I primarily use the iPad app, the ability to add quick notes on the iPhone while I’m waiting in line or simply because it’s quicker than taking the iPad out of my purse, (specially since my iPhone is permanently glued to my hand) and have them automatically sync with the iPad would be ideal.

Another feature I would like is some sort of geo tagging. I love to write my thoughts and adventures while traveling, and an option to automatically add a location to my posts, next to the date, or even a map would be very welcome. If this feature is added the ability to search entries by location will be a must as well.

Overall Chronicle is a great app that I can see getting better and better. At $1.99 in the App Store it’s a steal if you’re into journaling or even if you just want something to write down random thoughts.

Giveaway

With this review we’re also doing a giveaway. If you want a chance to win a promocode for Chronicle for iPad (US only) just follow these three steps:

1. Follow @macgasm on Twitter
2. Tweet this message “Win a copy of Chronicle for iPad from @slidetorock and @macgasm. Details and review here: http://bit.ly/beRcsB”.
3. Post a comment here with a link to your tweet.

That’s it! I’ll randomly pick a winner Monday, August 23rd.

Update

Comments are closed, and we’ve picked the winner!  Congrats goes out to @newtonmota!  We’ll be in contact over twitter  with your download information!

If you’re disappointed that you didn’t win, have no fear, we’re now giving away Folio!  Go check it out.

Image credit: Digitalnative

Now the question on everyone’s mind is: does this update fix the reception issues as promised?

Well, along with taller reception bars, iOS 4.1 does includes a new modem firmware (updated to 02.07.01 from 01.59.00), presumably to improve reception. So far, some users report that they’re getting 3 bars where they previously got 5, which by itself seems like a downgrade, but it may also indicate a more accurate representation of the iPhone’s reception. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to keep the iPhone from dropping its signal when held “the wrong way”.

Old bars (red) compared to the new bars (green), courtesy of MacRumors member “macduke”

Still, one has to wonder if there’s something more to this beta coming out now considering the iPhone 4 press conference scheduled for Friday.

Other changes include:

- You can now add Favorites in the Phone app as FaceTime or Voice Call
- Parental controls now include FaceTime and Game Center
- Game Center is back wth a brand new look

- You can now turn Spelling Check off in the keyboard settings

Developers can download the beta here.

Have you found any other changes in 4.1? Let us know in the comments.

You're holding it wrong!

At last we hear from Apple: select press has been invited for a special press conference about the iPhone 4 happening this Friday.

It’s great to see them finally finally willing to speak about the iPhone troubles, specially considering how secretive they usually are. Hopefully it won’t be a one-hour conference showing us how we’re supposed to hold it.

Check back on Friday for coverage.

Source: LoopInsight

Against all odds Opera Mini for the iPhone has finally been approved by Apple and it’s starting to show up in the App Store.

I wonder if Google Voice is next…

Editor’s Note: The Opera team has been waiting for a while, and if you’re not aware of the history here, Opera has been publicly worrying whether or not the application would be denied by the Apple review team.  If you want more detail on the history between these two companies you can check a more in depth article here (It was written when Opera submitted the application for review).

Hopefully this marks the beginning of a new era for the AppStore.