BIG news today from Amazon – after what has seemed like eons, they finally released Amazon Cloud Player for the Apple iPhone. Having used Apple iTunes along with Amazon – because they often charge less for downloads and they work across any device, I was always looking for a convenient way to access my Amazon downloads without having to re-sync my device. Amazon seems to have been listening with Amazon Cloud Player.
Here’s a quick rundown on their new app.
What I like about this app:
One of the biggest challenges with using Facebook on your mobile phone is that the current functionality does not lend itself to being very useful. If you’re just going to use it to share photos and to update your friends on what you’re currently doing, it works great; however, when you add in the ability to manage Facebook Pages, things get complicated.
For anyone who has a Facebook Page, you know how important it is to be able to respond to fans and also to be able to track how well your page is doing, if it is being seen, and if fans are engaging with your content. Luckily, Facebook seems to be listening and announced Facebook Page Manager last week, which serves as a separate app for managing your Facebook Pages from your iOS device.
What I like about this app:
As we spend more time on Facebook, connecting with friends and liking lots of Facebook Pages, it becomes a little cumbersome to manage all of the updates that come through our Facebook Newsfeed like photos, videos, status updates, deals and links on a daily basis.
When you add in going mobile and trying to check your Facebook Pages when you’re on the go, you’ll quickly notice that unless you’ve spent a lot of time organizing your friends and pages into interest lists, you’ll spend more time scrolling and less time actually consuming updates from your friends and the pages that you have liked.
Fortunately, there’s an app for Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users that makes it very easy to separate out your Facebook Pages called alerts for Facebook.
What I like about this app:
While the Apple iOS eco-system is rock solid, sometimes we just want to personalize it some. Unfortunately, the only customization we have are the ability to change the wallpapers and lock screen among a few others.
For anyone who is a regular sender of text messages, the standard blue and green text messages make it difficult to share your enthusiasm with the person you are texting. For example, say you want to send someone a birthday cake in your text message – you couldn’t. You’re relegated to just typing happy birthday. How fun, right? Fortunately, there’s now an app for that called Color Text Messages+ for iOS.
What I like about this app:
Today, Face.com launched version 1.0 of their new facial recognition app. for the Apple iPhone. After spending just a few minutes with this new app, I can tell you I came away extremely impressed. So what does it do?
The KLIK facial recognition app let’s you take photos using your iPhone’s camera, but with a catch. Not only does it let you take photos, but it also has the ability to identify friends’ faces from their Facebook photos and to tag them. In addition, the KLIK facial recognition app also pays homage to Instagram by letting you add “face filter” photo filters – try saying that one three times!
What I like about this app:
Continue reading App of the day: KLIK facial recognition
Often times when we do repetitive tasks, such as checking our favorite social networks on a daily basis, things become mundane and sometimes we need to change things up. For those of you who have become comatose from the linear view of Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter streams, here’s an app that should breathe a little fresh air into your social experience – Flipboard, a social news magazine.
What I like about this app:
How many of you saw yesterdays eyetrack study on the new Facebook Timeline and where our eyes are immediately directed towards? You guessed it, the Facebook Timeline Cover photo area is the top place for drawing attention – and it rightfully should be, because it is significantly larger. Unfortunately, while there is a lot of clear evidence that suggests we should spend time creating compelling Facebook Timeline Cover photos, I have come across a lot of people who have yet to take advantage of this or they have produced work that isn’t up to par. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression – make it a lasting one, so let’s get started using the FREE Facebook Timeline cover photo app.
What I like about this app:
Continue reading App of the day: Facebook Timeline Cover Slicer
Those of you who have seen my office know that I take a lot of notes – at one point, they were on my computer, on my iPad, on papers from conferences and strewn across my desk. That was until I decided to get organized with my notes. If there is one thing that I find helps keep me organized, it’s having a great notes app – especially considering that I take my iPad. For some time, I’ve kept a handful of apps around for doing the standard task – one for sketching out ideas, another for recording voice memos (not just where I parked, but new ideas I thought about, along with notes from conferences I have attended). Unfortunately, having too many apps to essentially do the same thing – take notes – means there’s a lot of maintenance involved and so I wanted to simplify things.
Enter Notability app for iPad.
What I like about this app:
For those of you who have followed the Apple iPhone and iPad since they first launched, although the products have gotten better (and insanely more popular), one thing that has remained is their lack of Adobe Flash support. What this means is that you can’t visit websites that are build entirely in flash (see here), play many of your favorite Facebook games, such as Farmville, or watch Hulu. Fortunately, there are a few alternatives, such as iSwifter (read my review); however that app only works for the iPad and it only works if you’re using a wireless network. For those of you who want the best app, I recommend Photon Flash Player (download). Not only does it give you all of the functionality for your iOS device, but it’s also very inexpensive, considering it’s the best flash player app on the market.
Today’s app of the day doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it’s from a company we know very very well – Google. They have come up with an app for both Android and iOS users called Google Goggles, that let’s you use your voice to search the web! Now I know what you’re thinking, that’s it? Nope.
Google Goggles, in addition to offering voice search, this app also let’s you take a photo of something and it will search the web for that item – I know, it’s mind-blowing how it works!
For those of you who need to see this in action, I’ve included a short video below along with my thoughts on this app below.
