Hidden Gems: Overloaded On OS 3.0 News? Check Out These Apps
by Ian
June 17, 2009
This week we've I've got a hodgepodge. There are a pair of apps for the art aficionado, a great new mapping app from one of the oldest companies in the Web-based mapping business, an app loaded with how-to videos and an old Twitter app gets an awesome update.
Love Art: National Gallery, London (Free) It's an amazing feeling to be surrounded by priceless art in a museum. I always want to learn more about the artist and the pieces themselves but you usuallly have to pay at least $10 to get headphones and an awkward audio player. With the Love Art app you can just use your iPhone. You too can get a one on one tour of The National Gallery, London. Love Art is broken down by artist, including Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renior, etc. From there you can learn about the artist and their specific work through photographs, audio, video and slideshows. It is extremely easy to use. This app drew me in quickly and wouldn't let go. I'm sure this would be an amazing app to actually use in The National Gallery itself and I hope it becomes the model for apps at all museums, aquariums and science centers. Really, we needed this years ago. From the description: "This is your collection. Touch the art." What a beautiful way to describe an app. iCreated ($0.99) While you're still in an arty mood you should definitely take a look at iCreated, the newly released mobile art gallery of iPhone art. You may be asking yourself whether real art can be created on the iPhone. Well, if you haven't heard about The New Yorker Cover created using an iPhone, you should take a look at this video: iCreated, made by the same people who brought you Twittelator Pro (which should tell you this is not a poorly put together app), allows you to explore all kinds of art created using the iPhone on par with The New Yorker Cover. You can submit pieces too and find out which apps were used to make them. MapQuest 4 Mobile (Free) MapQuest had been my go to mapping Web site long before I ever knew the word Google. And here it is again, on my iPhone. Though I haven't been to MapQuest in years it's great to revisit this old friend. In fact, MapQuest 4 Mobile may very well be the go to road trip or day trip mapping application. It does some pretty cool things that might have you rethinking the use of the built-in Google-based Maps app. For one, it features the "MapQuest place carousel" along the bottom of the screen that helps you find restaurants, gas stations, shopping centers, coffee shops and more in one tap. For two, MapQuest can sync routes from MapQuest.com, an important feature for anyone planning trips ahead of time. Unlike the built-in Maps app, MapQuest has the ability to create routes with more than one stop. Other than that it functions very similarly to the Maps app you already know. MapQuest suffers one major deficiency though - it doesn't acces your address book. That unfortunate oversight is a pain because you have to manually enter many of your commonly used addresses. Overall this is a pretty slick app and definitely worth your time to try. Howcast (Free) Learn how to do anything by watching these Howcast videos. This app has enormous potential to take up more of my time than any other I've encountered thus far. It is way too much fun to shake the phone and be given a random how-to video. Videos range from useful activities to magic tricks. Each time I've tried it the resulting video has been weird yet strangely awesome. The first was how to kiss passionately. It was filled with good tips and a lot of humor. The second was how to make your eyes look bigger. Now, on a normal day, I'd never click on this video, but today I watched it. It wasn't something I'll ever use but I learned something anyway. With this app I plan to become that person who knows countless useless, silly facts, has a remedy for just about anything and can read your mind through sleight of hand. Twinkle (Free) It seems every week I'm switching Twitter apps. I've gone from Twinkle, which was my first experience with Twitter, to Twitterrific to Tweetie to Twittelator Pro, back to Twitterrific and now, again, back to Twinkle. I'll happily move back to the slicker Twitterrific or the feature-rich Twittelator Pro if they add the Facebook integration Twinkle has pulled off here. For now it's Twinkle on my home screen. It's relatively simple to update both Twitter and Facebook at the same time without using an app like Twinkle. You can set up Facebook so that anything you post on Facebook goes to Twitter and vice versa. However, I've found that some posts are appropriate for the whole world to see and some are better just for your friends on Facebook. I've wanted to be able, at the time of posting, to decide whether I want the post to go straight to Facebook, Twitter or both. And, voila, Twinkle updated last week with this exact feature. Twinkle, by Tapulous, also pulls in your Facebook news feed and lets you comment on posts. Not only that, but Twinkle one ups Facebook's own app (for the time being) by allowing you to like or dislike posts. Now there's a lot to dislike about Twinkle too. For one, it doesn't let you go over the 140 character limit when you're typing. Typically Twitter apps will let you know when you've gone over 140 characters and then won't let you post the message. Doing it that way lets you write what you want and then think of ways to cut it down. Twinkle, however, just stops you cold so you have to delete, rewrite and hope it comes up under the limit. Then there are the pervs. Twinkle links into Tapulous' own social network that lets you see the posts of people nearby. Unfortunately, this feature destroys that wonderful no-commitment aspect of Twitter. Sarah Lacy at TechCruch explained this mentality the best, "people feel like they know you [on Twitter], while you actually give up very little personal information." That changes when you've got a location attached to your posts. You suddenly have to think twice about saying something relatively innocuous, like "I'm going out for a run" when there are three different random guys within a two mile radius saying "who wants to chat?" The creep-o factor goes off the charts in Twinkle and I don't know if there's a way to turn off that part of the service. Now I know I probably just scared some of you off this app, but I'm not easily scared. So I'm going to stick with Twinkle till one of the better Twitter apps match the Facebook integration. Definitely worth a look if you're on both social networks.
