AppCraver » Lifestyle

Doodle Clock – Clock-a-Doodle-do!

Jennifer Beam — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:00:58 +0000

Though there are several different clock apps available for iPhone, it’s actually kind of daunting to browse the app store for a useful alarm clock app. At least that has been my experience. After reading user-posted reviews of many of them, I simply gave up because none of them seemed quite right for me – until I came across this app. Doodle Clock is a nifty clock app that takes the practicality of a travel alarm clock, complete with the all-important “snooze” option, and merges it with a few creative options.

For some people, a creative option may not be on their list of things they want in a mobile alarm clock but it is definitely an interesting inclusion. The developer, Stephen Gray, claims to have incorporated the drawing engine into his clock app so he could take a little piece of his child’s doodled imagination with him when he travels away from home. Sweet as that inspiration must have been, I’m inclined to believe Stephen himself has a bit of a creative side, too.

The drawing engine implemented in Doodle Clock isn’t all that different from other drawing apps and though it is limited in some ways, you can still make some neat designs if you are patient and persistent. You can select from various transparencies, colors, shapes, and brush stroke sizes to doodle your own numbers 0-9, write the days of the week, and even customize those flashing dots between the numbers. Doodle Clock also allows you to customize your clock’s background. Doodle and color your own background or use a picture from your phone’s camera roll. You can create and save more than one theme and use them whenever you like.

If designing your own clock seems a bit over the top for you, there is a well-designed “sand” theme included or you can simply elect to use the default mode, which is your basic digital clock theme.

Other features in Doodle Clock include settings for 12- or 24-hour time, military time, time zones, and customization of the display format. The two biggest bonuses, in my opinion, are the ability to shut off autolock so your clock keeps ticking away, even while you sleep and the alarm with snooze function. There are only three alarm sound selections, which mimic traditional ringtone options more than alarm sounds, but they are audible and both the alarm and snooze functions work perfectly. There are on-screen instructions included that make the app easy to navigate and not at all confusing to set up or use.

If I have any complaints, it’s the inability to rotate pictures loaded into the app from the camera roll. The clock’s background is displayed in landscape mode so any pictures taken in portrait mode won’t display properly as the background. Aside from this oversight, I’m pretty sure this app is a keeper. With a launch price of just $0.99, Doodle Clock provides a great service and value. Your iPhone (or even iPod touch) becomes a working travel alarm clock as well as a creative outlet.

rating: 8/10
app_name: Doodle Clock

Italian Video Recipes Vol. 1 Displays Step-by-Step Instructions for Authentic Cooking

Keith Lewis — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:05:19 +0000

For those that like to get their inner chef on, there is nothing like finding a new recipe or a book of recipes to inspire you to create that next memorable meal. When I first heard about the Italian Video Recipes Vol. 1 iPhone app by Andrea Vettori, I was ready to start sharpening my chef’s knife and reach for my bamboo cutting board.

Italian Video Recipes Vol. 1 offers nine recipes: four starters, four first courses, one second course and one dessert. Each recipe is designated with a preparation level of difficulty. Six are categorized as easy, the others as medium. Each recipe also lists a preparation time.

The app is very easy to use. Scroll to any recipe and tap on the ingredient tab. Each ingredient is listed along with the amount needed and a colorful photograph. Only two ingredients are listed per page so you’ll have to scroll through pages to see all of the required ingredients.

After you’ve got your list, return to the start page to select the Steps tab and read the instructions — one step per page then scroll to the next. While in the Steps section you can also click the show video tab and watch step-by-step video of the narrator completing each step.

Some of these video sections are very short, as little as 12 seconds to show you the ingredients needed for the recipe or to watch the instructor crack eggs into a bowl. After each step, you must tap again to get to the next step and then again to the next step. Step by step instructions are a good idea, but Italian Video Recipes just seems to have more “steps” than necessary.

Italian Video Recipes Vol. 1 is a good concept. The ability to watch a step-by-step video prep of a recipe is a good idea — especially for beginners. Another nice feature is that all the information is stored locally on your device, so you don’t need an Internet connection to get cooking. (This also means that you shouldn’t try to install the app over WiFi because it’s a 440MB download.)

Although, I’m sure some folks will find the slow pace and super simple instructions are a benefit when learning to cook a new recipe, I found that navigating through Italian Video Recipes seemed to take longer than necessary. And, I really would like to have the choice to watch the steps straight through so I can have an overview of the cooking process.

The photos look good enough to eat and, according to the developer, all the recipes are for traditional Italian meals handed down “through generations.” She’s actually from Italy, so we can be pretty sure the recipes are authentic.

rating: 7/10
app_name: Italian Video Recipes Vol 1

Master SF transit schedule with iBART Live

Derek Walter — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:00:22 +0000

Riding the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) trains are an essential part of life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Whether you live there or plan to visit, iBART Live can help you get around a bit easier. Its best feature is real-time updates about train status that can make a difference in mauvering throughout the city.

There are two versions – a free iBart and the $3.99 iBART Live. For the extra money you get real-time arrival information (especially useful if you are as impatient as I am) and the ability to save favorite trips and stations. If you are planning a short trip to the Bay Area then the free version may suit your needs. But the live updates were pretty cool, and I thought well worth the few bucks for the upgrade.

The best feature of iBART Live was the ability to get real-time departure and arrival information from specific stations. It helps if you are rushing to catch a train and want to find out if you should break into a sprint or wait for the next one. There also is a pretty good trip planning feature; visitors will enjoy this as it can tell you what stops to take or what color train to get on in order to maneuver through the San Francisco Bay Area. Information for each station is also individually – tapping on the address pulls up a Google map of the station. The only pain is that you have to leave the iBart Live app to view the Google Map – but it was nonetheless a very cool feature to include. The iBart Live app also features include a system map, which you can pinch and pull like any page in Safari.

The map and other features are also available offline, which can come in handy given that AT&T’s service can get especially spotty in many of the BART underground stations. Another section provides service advisories to be aware of. The “more info” tab gives links to important BART and emergency phone numbers, which could be quite handy if you left your computer bag on the train.

BART offers a mobile site with some of the same information, but it is nowhere near as organized or easy to access as iBART Live.

rating: 10/10
app_name: iBart Live

Hello Vino Associates Wine with Food

Michael Alexander — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:30:16 +0000

Hello Vino, from Drive Thru Interactive, aims to answer one of life’s greatest mysteries: What wine makes a good match for a pizza with pineapple and ham? Answer: Any wine that will kill the taste of pineapple (Ba-doom!).

But seriously folks, it’s a Riesling, a sweet wine with a “peach orange blossom [to] match.” If you want me to be more specific, a good match (one of three listed) is a Knoll Riesling Loibenberg Federspiel. I have no idea what that means.

I know some of this because Hello Vino, which is free, told me so. Hello Vino is a wine-cask-full of food and wine pairings. Perhaps no other aspect of the sometimes arcane rituals of wine drinking confounds most people than what food and wine go together. Somewhere there are wine-drinking rules — by Hoyle or someone else as authoritative.

Suppose you found the bottle of Knoll Riesling Loibenberg Federspiel you purchased was decidedly delightful and delicious and you just had to tell someone. Tap the Share icon and tell your friends on Facebook and your followers on Twitter or submit your notes with a rating of the wine to the Hello Vino Web site.

According to Drive Thru Interactive, the app contains 2,000 pairings, which the company claims is the most comprehensive of these apps. I’ll get to work eating and drinking and get to you in about 6.5 years and let you know how I made out.

You also can search for a specific wine while you’re booze shopping or ordering at a restaurant.

Helpfully, Hello Vino provides pricing for each of the suggested wines, among other bits of info. I can’t vouch for the prices, but they must vary quite a bit from one place to the other. So I wouldn’t go by them solely if I were you.

I was dismayed to find typos in this app and I didn’t have to look very far to find them.

Still, if you need to know what wine goes with what food or occasion, by style and taste, and country and region, Hello Vino does that very well. It’s a good looking, easy to use app too.

rating: 7/10
app_name: Hello Vino

Find the Cheapest Fuel With iGasUp

Jennifer Beam — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:30:08 +0000

iGasUp – Though the fluctuation in gas prices is a baffling part of economics as far as I’m concerned, it stands to reason that it could be beneficial to know the prices at the local pumps at all times. Seeing as how one corner station may be higher than the next, having an app like iGasUp on your iPhone can maybe help keep fill-ups in check.

Using some form of technology that I am apparently ignorant to, iGasUp by Oil Price Information Services (OPIS) collects price data from credit card transactions at thousands of stations across the US and gives time stamped price updates throughout the day.

When using iGasUp on iPhone, GPS location is used to determine your current location and provide the 10 closest stations, the 10 cheapest stations, and the approximate distance to each. You can choose your radius for distance depending on how far you normally travel or enter the zip code for where you’ll be stopping at a later time. iGasUp can be used with iPod touch, but no data can be pulled without a wi-fi connection.

When I gave iGasUp a run through for the first time, I found that it loaded fairly quickly, but the prices seemed to be only moderately accurate, though clearly more accurate than sites that rely on user updates. The station nearest me had gas for $0.04 less than iGasUp listed, but the next nearest station had accurate pricing. I had originally set the distance to five square miles to begin with and gas prices fluctuated by about $.05 between stations. I then reset it and discovered that within 10 square miles there were stations that were as much as $0.15 cheaper than the closest one — if in fact the prices were accurate. That’s useful information, but you are relying on accuracy and your willingness to drive an extra 9.4 miles to save the difference.

A few times while using iGasUp out and about, it failed to find my current location. This wasn’t a consistent issue, but a minimal annoyance. If this happens, you can always default to entering a ZIP code, but if you’re traveling you might not know the ZIP you’re in.

Providing iGasUp can pick up your current location, you can search for stations nearby when your tank gets low. If the updated prices are accurate you could possibly save a few bucks by comparing prices before deciding to stop. From what I understand, iGasUp is a subscription based service, which you apparently get to keep for a year from the time you download it. I don’t know what happens after that time, but with summer travel in full swing, iGasUp appears to have the potential to give you more bang for your travel buck.

rating: 7/10
app_name: iGasUp

Whole Foods Market Recipes is a “Tasteful” Recipe App

Jennifer Beam — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:30:53 +0000

Whole Foods Market Recipes – As awareness in food preparation, such as gluten-free foods or diabetic-friendly dishes, and an appreciation for natural and organic foods grows, it’s not surprising to see so many companies responding in kind. Whole Foods Market has developed an app for iPhone that is designed to help those interested in preparing meals and dishes from natural and organic foods, with or without dietary preferences. Whole Foods Market Recipes is available for iPhone (3.0 only) for free and is actually an impressive recipe app for anyone.

When it comes to what comes in and out of my kitchen, I can use all the help I can get. I like to browse recipe apps like All Recipe’s Dinner Spinner and I found Whole Foods Market Recipes to be an equally useful app – especially for healthy cooking. There are several features to Whole Foods Market Recipes, but one of my particular favorites is the “on hand” feature. It allows you to enter up to three items or ingredients you already have and then supplies you with recipes containing those ingredients. Granted, the more specific you are about category and dietary preferences, the fewer, if any, results you get, but it’s a nice feature for when you’re in a dinner-prep pinch.

Other features of Whole Foods Market Recipes is to narrow your recipes search by course, category, and dietary preference. These preferences include dairy free, fat free, gluten free, sugar conscious and vegan. You can further narrow your search by breakfast, dinner, desserts, salads, and more courses, as well as budget and kid-friendly dishes. Granted, you can’t perform multiple selection searches, such as fat-free vegan, but it’s definitely covered the basics individually. There are a fair amount of unique recipes in each category and the display of recipes is quite tasteful.

Not only can you view a description, as well as photos for many, you get separate views of ingredients and preparation. The overall presentation of each recipe is quite nice, but I am a visual person and wish there were photos of all recipes. As it is, even those absent of pictures still gives a brief description of the dish.

Obviously Whole Foods Market Recipes is intended to supply recipes using ingredients that Whole Foods Market retail locations carry. You can use the app to find the nearest Whole Foods Market location, but keep in mind that the recipes aren’t limited to use only with their products. This is part of what makes it nice – no specific brand names or impossible substitutions. For free, Whole Foods Market Recipes is a well designed recipe app.

app_name: Whole Foods Market Recipes
rating: 8/10

Open Cellar Could be Your Personal Sommelier, but Only if You Read French

Michael Alexander — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:00:20 +0000

Open Cellar – You decide to pick up a nice Cabernet on your way home for that special meal your significant other is preparing to celebrate your anniversary.

What kind of red wine do you choose? American, French, Italian, Australian or Somalian? What year? What price? There are so many variables and varietals that not even the man behind the counter has a clue what’s a good wine.

Think of Open Cellar as your personal sommelier, someone to guide you in selecting the right wine, for the right food and for the right occasion. It’s essentially a database of wines recommended by Mathieu Ducrocq, the developer, and for the wines you buy and store when the time is right.

If you’re befuddled by wine, even before you drink it, this app will help you sort things out, but it’s mainly aimed at the connoisseur – someone who is particularly finicky about the wines they drink and are apt to buy bottles by the case and store them in their wine cellars. You can record notes about the wines you’ve tried, organize the wines in your cellar and view their location on a graphical display.

Thanks to my having lived in France for a few years, I read and speak French reasonably well. If you’re not so fortunate, you’re not going to find this app of much help because the most useful info — the food and wine pairing — are in French. If you don’t know what “Brochettes de coeurs de canard” are, then knowing that a Cotes du Rhone-Villages makes a good match is hardly helpful.

In addition, Open Cellar’s food-wine associations are limited to French wines. If that Cab you have a yen for is Californian (as it should be) or some other country’s, then you’re out of luck.

Open Cellar is easy to navigate and use. It ties in with a desktop version (PC or Mac) and you can sync files from one to the other. You also read and share your impressions and opinions with other oenologists.

Last, Open Cellar crashed on me, once. That could have been a fluke, but I figured I mention it in case others experience the same issue and would like to weigh in on this app.

app_name: Open Cellar
rating: 7/10

OS 3.0 Puts More Automation into the Smart House with Universal Remote Controls

Michael Alexander — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:00:42 +0000

Ever steadily, the iPhone and iPod touch are transforming into universal remote controls for home automation gear such as home theater PCs, lighting, security and other hardware systems.

OS 3.0, which Apple will release this week, has hardware interfaces that which will certainly step up the pace at which developers and manufacturers will introduce new apps and hardware with remote features and functions for the iPhone/touch. Because they work over Wi-Fi and 3G, a system in one room can be controlled from your handheld in another room.

Last week, Savant Systems, a home-automation company introduced a new family of media docks capable of distributing audio, video and lighting to any Savant interface. The company already markets ROSIE Home Automation in the App Store (for $199.99) to control it’s many HA devices.

Savant also announced Rosie On The Road, a remote access control 3.0 app featuring full access to all features and services within a home or anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi or 3G data connection. The application auto-discovers services in the home with Bonjour, Apple’s zero-configuration networking protocol.

“Every kid in the world is living with Apple… so Savant is on to something,” says David Weinstein, head of Lutron’s residential (lighting and automatic shades) system division,

Also last week, Pioneer Electronics (USA) began shipping A/V Receivers that seamlessly integrate Apple’s revolutionary iPhone and iPod into a customer’s home theatre.

Music and movies are automatically muted with incoming calls; compressed music files are greatly enhanced with Advanced Sound Retriever; consistent volume is maintained with Auto Level Control – all while the control of your media remains in the palm of your hand through the iPhone itself or the VSX-819H-K’s remote.

The real fun begins with OS 3.0 but here are some apps that already put home control in the palm of your hand:

Dozens of apps are available to control your Mac and PC and the audio and video that reside on them. No list would be complete without Apple’s Remote Control, which enables you to control music and your Mac and PC and Apple TV. Evan Schoenberg’s Rowmote is similar but is also capable of being used as a track pad. Install XBMC on your XBox, Apple TV or desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux) and control your music and TV from anywhere.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s to come.

If you own a TELETASK HA system you can view driveway cameras, automatically open the front door to let in a handyman, lower electronic shades and more using ISGUI Home Automation app.

Saturday night, when you take your weekly soak, Unique Automation’s Bathomatic will lower the plug into the drain and fill the bathtub with water to the right height and temp.

Indigo markets home light systems and with the complementary TLA Investments iHome Remote for Indigo, you can turn off the lights when you forget and turn them on on the way home.

Control4 home automation systems connect with Control UI’s Control4 My House enabling you to manage your whole-house audio/video, lighting and HVAC systems.

Exceptional Innovation’s Life|ware can also be used to control HVAC, lighting and security systems as well as Tivo DVRs, DVD players and receivers.

The list is already long as you can and we’re only scratched the surface. Most of these apps are free – mainly because they operate with usually proprietary home automation gear, but that will soon change. It could be as early as Wednesday, the official OS 3.0 launch date.

Drink Safely With DrinkTracker Breathalyzer

Amelia Sauter — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:04 +0000

DrinkTracker Breathalyzer – This might sound like a lecture, but for goodness sake, don’t drink and drive. But it’s not that easy, is it? If alcohol affects your judgment, how do you safely know if you are OK to drive when you have been drinking? DrinkTracker Breathalyzer is here to help.

With all 50 states now making it illegal to have a BAC at .08 or higher, knowing your BAC is more important than ever. DrinkTracker Breathalyzer may not be as accurate as a real breathalyzer, but it certainly gives you a better idea than guessing would.

DrinkTracker Breathalyzer is a user-friendly app developed by slappmedot.com. When you enter what you have had to drink and at what time, DrinkTracker Breathalyzer calculates your blood alcohol content (BAC). Your BAC is based on your profile where you enter your gender, height and weight. The default measurements are in metrics, but you have the option to switch to U.S. or Imperial.

DrinkTracker Breathalyzer is easy to use and allows you to add multiple profiles, though from what I can tell you can only track drinks for one person at a time. DrinkTracker Breathalyzer gives you a list of generic drinks to choose from – wine, beer, and liquor – that includes the amount you drank and the percent of alcohol in each drink. You can also add and save your own drinks.

The best component of DrinkTracker Breathalyzer is that it updates your BAC every 60 seconds, and tells you how long you need to wait before your BAC reaches your preset target, for example, .05. If you close DrinkTracker Breathalyzer, the app re-opens into your current session.

A couple of quirks: The “Done” button does not work when you are editing drinks; you need to use the “Save” button instead. Also, if you edit your profile mid-session, it does not update until you actually exit your profile (not just your current session) by opening another profile.

I am a bartender and I also teach a class on how to serve alcohol safely. In my eyes, drinking safely is higher on the priority list than making good tips or high sales. Having an app that helps calculate my BAC – or someone else’s – is important to me. There are a whole pile of BAC calculator apps out there for 99 cents, but I have only tried DrinkTracker Breathalyzer which sells for $1.99. Frankly, I am not going to bother looking at any of the other apps.

Deciding whether or not to buy DrinkTracker Breathalyzer is a no-brainer. If you are going to drink, I recommend you drink safely by using DrinkTracker Breathalyzer.

app_name: DrinkTracker Breathalyzer
rating: 9/10

CHRONIC-les Compiles Pot Possession Regs State-by-State, and Finds NORML too

Michael Alexander — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:30:41 +0000

CHRONIC-les is a compilation of pot laws state-by-state, with a quickie function to send an email to the White House to advocate the legalization of marijuana. You can also use CHRONIC-les to pull up a map to find the whereabouts of your local NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) chapter.

Agree, or disagree, the legalization of marijuana has been a hot-button issue in recent years and many states are starting to relax their laws against possession of small amounts of pot and to allow wider availability of medical marijuana. CHRONIC-les, which is more of a legal reference than a true app, seems aimed at riding the trend to relaxing attitudes toward the need for weed.

CHRONIC-les, which is the first effort from brother and sister developers David and Elizabeth Gregory, has three parts to it: The Joint, Why Legalize? and Regs.

“The Joint” section of CHRONIC-les is provides current legal news as it relates to pot possession. A bill in California introduced in February 2009 would tax marijuana and make it possible for pot farmers to obtain grow licenses, for example.

During the Presidential Election campaign, President Obama, advocated decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for nonviolent, first-time offenders. He said it did not make sense to send casual users to jail where they can earn “advanced degrees in criminality…which is counterproductive and doesn’t make sense.”

Tapping CHRONIC-les’ “HOPE” banner — you’ll find under the “The Joint” icon — will bring up a pre-written email that you can send the White House, which in part suggests legalizing and taxing weed and using the estimated $10 billion in annual revenues to help lessened the national debt.

The “Why Legalize” section, as is probably evident, argues the benefits of legalizing pot — such as reducing criminal activities associated with pot production and sales and the cost to arrest and prosecute offenders and so on. The argument in CHRONIC-les, of course, is all one sided, so you’ll need to do your own research if you download this app thinking you’re going to get a balanced view.

Finally, the meat and potatoes of CHRONIC-les is the regs section. In Massachusetts, for example, the sale of medical marijuana is not permitted, possession of less than 1 ounce is a civil offense and possession of more than 1 ounce is a misdemeanor.

Focusing on the merits of CHRONIC-les soley as an app, my advice is to donate your $1 to NORML or any other cause you believe in rather than spend it on CHRONIC-les. It’s just not all that useful and the interface and presentation are amateurish.

rating: 6/10
app_name: CHRONIC-les