Daily App Digest – June 18, 2012

Dreamix Studio is pleased to announce the release of Album App V3 with HD albums and Editing Studio released on iPad. Album App is an iPad app designed to create full featured digital albums. It gives you full control again and takes away the "unconnected" feeling you have creating an album with your PC mouse. Organise your best memories in Album App for iPad, now with a brand new version of this complete photo album creation suite!

Thanks to the touch-screen, you can use your fingers to place, size and rotate your photos on the iPad. Album App delivers 100  functions in an easy to use package, for the original photo album feel in a digital world. Album App allows you to build, present and share your albums on the fly – even friends and family without Album App can enjoy your albums.

Free/download

Independent developer Paul Gee today is proud to announce version 1.0.2 of EyeStalk for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. EyeStalk is a Whovian’s dream come true transforming any iOS device equipped with a camera into the EyeStalk of the Doctor’s deadliest enemy. Using image processing EyeStalk can process any image/video and apply one of five styles, ranging from 1960’s black and white to the latest Paradigm vision system. A live overlay gives a preview of the processed image to line up the perfect shot or capture the perfect video.

Simple on-screen controls allow full control of the camera’s flash mode, the option to switch between rear and front cameras (where available), access to the iOS photo library to view photos/videos taken or apply effects to previously taken photos/video using the iOS camera app or EyeStalk itself. The ability to swipe left or right to change camera effect allows the user to quickly switch EyeStalk mode.

$1.99/£1.49/download

Hindsight Labs LLC today is proud to announce the release of Paprika Recipe Manager 1.6.0 for iPad. This update includes redesigned high resolution artwork, which adds full retina display support for the new iPad. Also included is enhanced VoiceOver compatibility, and support for 15 different languages, bringing Paprika to a worldwide audience.

Redesigned Artwork:
In addition to creating high resolution artwork for the new iPad’s retina display, we also introduced several user interface improvements to make the app more user friendly, and more consistent with the other versions of our app. These tweaks include: relocating the recipe action buttons to the toolbar, consolidating the notes and nutrition editing panels with the directions panel, introducing a more streamlined recipes listing, and improving support for gestures, such the ability to swipe between weeks in the meal planner and pinch to display recipes in a condensed list.
$4.99/2.99/download

Independent app designer Dante Varnado Moore of Paragoni, LLC today announces Songwriter’s Pad, a suite of free and paid apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Songwriter’s Pad is a professional song writing app used by Grammy award winning songwriters and novices alike. It includes chord notation, a rhyming dictionary, thesaurus, digital audio recorder and a backing track player that allows you to import beats and instrumentals. It also includes a unique word and phrase idea generator designed to inspire creative expression and eliminate writer’s block.

Songwriter’s Pad is "an invaluable creative tool for the songwriter" and "it contains all of the essential tools that a songwriter needs in one easy to use app" says app designer Dante Varnado Moore.

Moore, an amateur music producer and songwriter was inspired to create the series of apps after being disappointed with the poor usability and high price tags of traditional songwriting software.

$9.99/£6.99/download

emendo Media today introduces Templates for PowerPoint Pro 1.0, their collection of 10 ‘business class’ templates designed for the professional use with the various Office and PowerPoint compatible applications available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. With more than 150 different slides, the template collection significantly expands the possibilities of private users and business people to create visually highly effective and influential sales pitches, corporate presentations, strategy documents or project proposals. All templates provide slides including graphics, pictures, tables, diagrams, charts, quotes, and more. Each template is quickly exported to the user’s favorite mobile Office application
.
Templates for PowerPoint Pro enables the user to browse through the available designs and slide layouts while getting a sneak peek next to all choices in the preview window. The chosen template can be easily exported into the user’s favorite Office application and altered there. A list with compatible Office applications is included within the rescue section of the Templates application with direct links to the App Store.
$4.99/£2.99/download

Viscuit Creative, Inc., a burgeoning software, digital publishing solution, and applications developer, is excited to announce the launch of Collins PictureCard 1.21 onto the App Store! Compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, Collins Picture Card is a unique language education utility geared specifically towards young children. Kids taking their first steps towards learning how to read and write in English can do so via a diverse array of visually engaging exercises and lessons that make learning fun! Offering overviews of both American and British English, Collins Picture Card is available for download in the App Store for $2.99 in the Education category.

Developed by Viscuit Creative with content and support from the globally renowned Collins educational brand, Collins Picture Card focuses its efforts on introducing kids to the five hundred words shown to be most useful to them as they develop verbal and written language skills. Children can learn and practice writing, reading, and comprehending words one at a time to keep things flexible, and features a uniquely intuitive user friendly interface to ensure kids can navigate through the app effectively without constant oversight by an adult. Straightforward gesture-based controls were implemented in Collins Picture Card in order to help kids as well.

$2.99/£1.99/download

Gamelion is pleased to announce their critics’ favorite game, Monster Shooter: The Lost Levels, is now available for free on iOS devices. Monster Shooter allows the player to follow the steps of Dum Dum, a space goon whose cat has been stolen by aliens. This is a great opportunity for everyone to experience the  highly polished and totally ad-free premium version of possibly the best mobile dual-stick shooting game ever. This is a time limited offer and once it’s over the application will return to its normal price.

Put a funny story together with execution and players get an experience that positively reminds people why they enjoy cartoons and what made Ren & Stimpy so awesome. The story drives the events and takes the player across three planets. Each of the planets offer a unique architecture across 20 levels. A 4th planet with newer seen before enemies has been already announced and will be available soon as part of update within next weeks.
Free/download

Fueled by an unhealthy obsession with football (aka soccer in the U.S.), Peow! Peow! Studios today launches Countdown To Brazil + Trivia 1.0, a free iPhone app that keeps users up-to-date with all of the exciting World Cup news unfolding, includes over 300 World Cup trivia questions and counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to the world’s most widely viewed sporting event.

On June 12, 2014 sport’s greatest tournament – the highly anticipated 20th World Cup – kicks off in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Peow! Peow! Studios’ Countdown To Brazil + Trivia app allows football fans worldwide to:

*Get the exact time remaining to the start of the opening game
*Share that time with their friends and followers via Facebook and Twitter integration
*Test their football knowledge with 300+  World Cup Trivia questions
*Read all of the latest World Cup-related info through the app’s incorporated news section

$0.99/£0.69/download

Manage Magz by NDNWare LLC 1.0 is a simple and easy way for iOS users to manage their magazine subscriptions. Users can store subscription dates, account information, expiration dates, reminder dates, annual cost, publisher name, url and more, to ensure all information relating to active magazine subscriptions can easily be retrieved when needed.

To avoid a subscription accidentally expiring, push notifications can be enabled to alert when a subscription is soon to expire, and even set to remind again tomorrow, to ensure nothing gets forgotten. All data can also be synched with a Dropbox account, either for backup or to easily retrieve on another iOS device.

Feature Highlights:
* Store magazine subscription details
* Fields include: subscription dates, account information, expiration dates, reminder dates, annual cost, publisher name and url
* Set notifications before subscriptions expire
* Sync with DropBox

$1.99/£1.49/download

Mobile software development firm, Orange Group Apps today is excited to announce the release of Hawaiian Postcard 1.0 for iOS. Hawaiian Postcard is the first app of its kind allowing users to create and send Hawaiian-themed digital postcards for free. For those vacationing or living in Hawaii, the app provides an instant and postage-free way to send beautiful postcards to their friends and loved ones.

To create a Hawaiian Postcard, users first choose a Hawaiian Island (Maui, for example). They then select a photo from their camera or Photo Library to place onto the postcard. Hawaiian Postcard then automatically adds beautiful images around the photo, forming a collage.

Images added to the postcard are from the island chosen by the user. Users can change photos by double-tapping. Like a real postcard, users can add a special message to the recipient. The postcards can be sent via e-mail, shared on Facebook, or saved to a user’s Photo Library to be viewed or shared later.

Hawaiian Postcard is the third Hawaiian app created by Orange Group Apps. The first was Hawaiian Words,  a searchable dictionary with audio pronunciation for hundreds of Hawaiian words, sayings, and common phrases. The second was Hawaiian Names, an app which allows users to find and pronounce their Hawaiian name. Both are available for free on the App Store.

Free/download

Backgammon is one of the funniest and oldest games in a convenient format. You can play matches anywhere with your friends and you don’t have to carry heavy game board with you. Now the full version is available for your device. You can use this app to play against another person on the same device. Beautiful graphics and animation please the eye. The well designed guide helps you learn the game.

Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games in the world.

Although luck is involved and factors into the outcome, strategy plays a more important role in the long run.With each roll of the dice, players must choose from numerous options for moving their checkers and anticipate possible counter-moves by the opponent. Players may raise the stakes during the game. There is an established repertoire of common tactics and occurrences.

$0.99/£0.69/download

Screen Time has received great reviews from users and bloggers in its inaugural year and now its developers are releasing much anticipated updates based on feedback from parents. Beginning this week with a top priority feature, parents will now be able to add screen minutes manually. But "there’s more to come", Rod Liberal, creator of Screen Time says "I’ve received hundreds of emails from parents who love the app. They’ve provided great ideas for improvements and new features to help with maintaining healthy screen time habits for their children."
Screen Time has also received numerous positive reviews from prominent bloggers around the Web:

$0.99/£0.69/download

Codium Labs today announces Babelshot 1.3 for iOS, a major update to their travel app that allows users to take a photo of printed text in any of 36 languages and quickly get a translation into any of the 47 other languages. Featuring offline optical character recognition, the app employs the Google Translate web service in its back end. The upgrade includes support for non-Latin character sets, such as Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and Korean, and very high accuracy OCR, achieved by support for improved, high-resolution cameras and faster processors in iOS devices.

When introduced in 2009, Babelshot 1.0 was the first app of its kind, and the first app ever implementing OCR on any mobile platform. Since that time, the app has steadily evolved, and now with improved hardware comes a major upgrade to the app that provides a significant jump in performance.

Optical character recognition is a daunting challenge, even under the best of conditions, as with 300 dpi scanned text and a personal computer. Now with Babelshot, users can expect comparable results by virtue of 5  megapixel, built-in cameras, and dual core processors. The app’s text recognition function relies on Tesseract OCR, highly regarded software originally developed by HP, coupled with a custom image-processing engine.

$2.99/£1.99/download

Electronic timing was used for the first time one hundred years ago at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Initially, the well-known telecom company Ericsson was tasked with developing the technology, but it was the Swedish inventor Ragnar Carlstedt who eventually delivered the final product. Using his expertise in electromechanics, he developed a system where reference clocks automatically started at the firing of the gun.

At the same time, Carlstedt introduced another revolutionary invention; the finish line camera. The 1500 meter Olympic final was excruciatingly close with Arnold Jackson from Great Britain winning by only 0.1 second. But it was impossible to decide on the silver medal since the two Americans Abel Kiviat and Norm Taber finished side by side. For the first time in history, the outcome of an Olympic event had to be settled based on a photo finish when Kiviat was judged to be "slightly ahead".

The significance of these two innovations led a major newspaper to write: "Electronic timing at the Olympic Games. Simultaneous timing and photography of contestants. A brilliant idea!"

$1.99/£1.49/download

CourtTrack, the inaugural app by PerfectTrack has recently launched on the Apple App Store. Priced at just £0.69 / $0.99, the app allows tennis players, coaches, parents and fans to track the points scored in a tennis match. Based on these points, the app calculates a number of statistics and presents them to the user, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. You can view statistics for the whole match, or for individual sets. This shows the user where to concentrate to improve their match play, and helps to identify where time should be spent in training.

CourtTrack has an unobtrusive and simple data entry screen, meaning that you can continue to watch or participate in the match as quickly as possible. Undo and Redo support means that correcting your mistakes is just as easy!

CourtTrack also supports backing up your matches, players and data to iCloud, meaning your previous statistics and historic matches are kept safe.

The app is fully localised for Spanish and French users, with German localisation coming soon. Improvements to the app and new features (that are available free to anyone who purchases the app) are coming soon and include:

Download

This app has been endorsed by the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant who organised the river pageant held in London, UK to celebrate the Queen’s 60 years on the throne and 50% of the profits go the Thames Diamond Jubilee Foundation supporting good causes in the Commonwealth. 

The user is taken on a multi-media journey along the river, reading information and viewing photos of 60 iconic London landmarks along the way. A great tool for tourists planning their trip to London or those that are interested in London and its history.

Beginning with the contemporary buildings and modern architecture of Chelsea Harbour and ending with the iconic 126 year old Tower Bridge, the App navigates the river and its historical surroundings through stunning photographs, narrative text, audio clips, music and video.

The App has been designed to be engaging, entertaining and educational for people of all ages from all over the world. Whether you’re a Londoner wanting to know some interesting facts about your own city, or a viewer from afar, the App showcases the Thames and its surroundings at its best.

$2.99/£1.99/download