Today's Best Apps: Jinni My TV & Movie Guide, Vinyet And Charter TV
Vinyet by Arqball ($1.99, 16.6 MB): Create awesome videos with this Vine and Instagram-optimized clip-style camcorder. Because it's designed for multiple social networks, one of the first features is a compatibility indicator, built right into the timeline. As you record, the bar starts filling in green, signifying Vine compliance. Next, the bar transforms into blue for Instagram. Once beyond 15 seconds, it turns red, which shouldn't be confused as a stop. Videos stretching longer can still be uploaded to sites such as YouTube and saved to the camera roll. Before moving along, look at the right side of the timeline. The "x" erases the most recent clip. Be careful as undos are limitless, but no redo. Towards the bottom, you'll see a gallery of filters, requiring no further explanation, and a toolbar. From left to right, there's import, stop motion control, camera switch, microphone mute/unmute, auto-focus lock/unlock, grid enable/disable, ghost mode activate/deactivate, and LED torch on/off. Of these, stop motion and ghost mode are the most unique. Stop motion control consists of a start delay and record length timer, plus optional looping for optimal hands-free capturing. Designed to help with continuation, ghost mode overlays the last frame of the previous clip on the viewfinder at medium transparency, offering easy alignment of objects. As the finishing touch, videos may be exported to the iOS camera roll or directly posted to Vine, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.
Universal:Charter TV by Charter Communications (Free, 11.6 MB): This TV service companion app makes it more convenient to enjoy the content. Rather than pecking buttons on the old-fashioned remote to trudge through the channel guide, you swiftly peruse the listings using simple and speedy swipes, drags, and taps to view details, change channels, and even set a recording schedule. Along with the full broadcast lineup, there's browsing access for the entire on-demand library, plus the Kids Zone to help find shows and movies targeted at the younger audience. As the final perk, over 100 channels are streamable to your iDevice, though availability is restricted to your home Wi-Fi network.
iPad:Jinni My TV & Movie Guide by Jinni (Free, 45.2 MB): Discover the shows and movies that best suit you and your disposition using this advanced entertainment exploration app. Similar to the Website, recommendations can come from the input of shows and movies as well as moods, plot points, actors, genres, time periods, places, and audience type. However, the app experience is far more than that. Foremost, personalization and collaboration, accomplished by tying in other services, such as IMDb and Netflix, for previous ratings along with linking social media to showcase friends' preferences and share your own. Next, some helping hands. Browse quicker and easier via the wish list, title tags, pre-filled popular keywords, or even the personality profile, and start watching immediately by selecting an on-demand provider, or just check out interesting stuff on the boob tube using the optimized for you "On TV" listing. The app requires sign in using a Jinni or Facebook account.