Kiss My Apps!

Slices is different because it has the ability to chop up your timeline into different categories - some that are pre made, and some that you can make yourself for your personal experience. As well as that, it's made exploring Twitter for the latest news/goings on so much easier, arguably better than on the Twitter website itself. The UI is simple and intuitive, and is just an all round good app.

The timeline is paper styled, which is a nice touch. You can access your notifications & messages by opening up the side menu by tapping the icon in the top left hand corner, or you can tap on their individual icons which opens them on top of your timeline so you have no need to leave the window that you're on. You can tap on an individual tweet to take you to an individual tweet view, giving you various options such as replying, retweting, sharing by SMS or email, and also giving you the oppertunity to 'Zip it'.

When you tap the Zip It icon, you're basically muting that person from your timeline without unfollowing them. If you accidentally add someone to your Zip It list, you can easily undo it simply by going onto the Zip It settings. This is definitely a feature that needs to be integrated by more twitter clients, as the only other client I can think of that has it is Tweetbot for iOS.

As well as going into the individual tweet view, you can also tap and hold on the tweet to open up a shortcut list of things to do, such as retweeting, replying and favouriting the tweet.

From your timeline, you can tap on the Timeline button and "Slice" your timeline into small portions - you can view only photos and videos, if you so desire. You can also Slice it into groups such as Tech and Science, Business and Money or Politics (these come preinstalled, you can personalise and add more whenever you want). The preinstalled Slices personalise themselves with various people that you already follow on Twitter - it can identify what categories certain twitter feeds fall into. This is where the Twitter client comes into it's own. If you only want to find out various stories on your timeline, or only want to read about certain things, this app is for you. It's definitely helpful if you follow a lot of people, and want to de-clutter your timeline.

When you go onto a profile page, you can see their background on the web version of Twitter - again, a feature I'd never seen on any Twitter client until now. It also displays all the usual stuff - bio, links, following/followers, tweets, favourites and whether they're following you or not. As well as this, you can choose "Add to Slice" where you can add them to a certain category/slice - thus integrating the Slice feature even more, and making it a lot easier for you to manage.

Now, I've left the best feature (in my opinion) until last - the Explore feature. Most Twitter apps have an explore option, but it's always very basic; not saying much other than recommended people to follow, and the Trending Topics for various places. Not with Slices. You can swipe between different categories of people to follow - Categories such as News, Live Events, Featured, Local, etc. As well as displaying the Trending Topics for any area that you want. When you select a category, you're given a list of the top Twitter accounts in that area, from which you can tap on and follow and add to any Slice that you like. Twitter networking made easy, right?

Remember the side menu I was talking about earlier? Even that is designed beautifully. It displays all the information regarding your Twitter, such as new mentions, tweets and DM's, as well as shortcuts to your Slices and the Explore feature. One feature I haven't seen in many Twitter clients is the "My Stats" page - unfortunately, every time I tried to open it, it would display for a second or two and then the whole app would crash. That's the only bad thing I can say about the app, and I'm sure a bug fix for it will be out soon! From this menu, you can also go onto your various settings such as whether you want to use Tweetmarker or not, as well as deciding your various Twitter video and photo clients, and a ReadLater login. You can also log into your Facebook from here, making it easier to share tweets.

You can also access Slices on the web, while its in a public beta at slices.me - the best part is, any changes to various slices that you make on your phone are updated on the web version, and vice versa. Easy! Now, with all these features, you may think that it will cost the world right? Wrong. It's free! There are some in app ads, but you can disable them by upgrading to the Pro version which takes takes form as an in app purchase. You can grab it on the App Store (Link), Google Play (Link) and the Amazon App Store (Link).

When I first used Picaro Play, the first thing I noticed was the stunning illustrations and the beautifully made animations in the app - visually, it's stunning and is bound to keep and child entertained for hours on end. There is a native iPad app too, so you can really appreciate the stunning graphics on the big screen, which is where I'd recommend you use this app - you really do get a better all round experience. You can really tell that this was a well thought out app and every little detail really has been considered, from the various interactions and features to the sound effects and soundtrack that you can hear throughout the app on loop.

When you start up the app, you're given a choice on how the app should work - use narration, read without narration or you've got the choice to record your own voice for the voiceover, and that will be used when the child uses the app. That's an amazing feature, utilising the devices microphone and making the app more personal for the child. You can then toggle the custom voiceover with the inbuilt voice over. The story then starts, and the voiceover comes up in a bubble on screen so you can read along with it, then it'll disappear so you can interact with the various scenes. You can tap different objects in the scene, and it'll say what it is as well as writing it - thus, helping the child to read and associate written words with spoken words.

As well as a well thought out, nursery rhyme style voiceover, there are also word games that help the child learn their first English words and letters. These are done by the voice over saying a word, and then it appears on the screen - they must then select the letters to spell out the various words (there's more than one game like this, and they're laid out in different ways depending on where in the story you are, to keep them entertained). Now, it's not all learning; there are fun games in the app too, like a jigsaw puzzle and a beat the clock style game involving a mole digging underground.

You can also stop reading at any time, and go back to that chapter at any time by tapping on the "i" icon at the bottom of the screen, and selecting the screen shot where you were last at - think of it like a contents page of a book. Another brilliant feature that has been well thought out, as most children won't just sit there and go through the whole app in one sitting.

Now, it's all well and good me singing it's praises, but I already know how to read and write so it's not really aimed at me, so I got some parents of young children to get them to use it, and tell me what they thought of it. One parent told me that their kid was engrossed by it, and they kept tapping on the characters and making them giggle, and another said that they eventually learnt how to spell the various names on the app, where they couldn't do it at first.

When I first saw the listing on the App Store, I thought it was more a kids game and I'd get bored of it after I'd played it for 5 minutes, but I was wrong - it's quite addictive and has entertained me for a while now. There's also an iPad native version, so if you think the iPhone version looks good, wait until you see how amazing it looks on the iPads massive retina display screen!

So, as I said earlier, the aim of the game is to repair the robots before they're crushed at the end of the conveyor belt. The broken part of the robot glows as it goes along the conveyor belt - to repair them, tap on the robot and select the category at the bottom of the game where you can select the individual part that the robot needs. If that's not hard enough, some of the parts look extremely similar so you don't always get it right the first time, AND there are some robots with more than one thing wrong with them. Once you fix the robot, it's taken off the conveyor belt and you're rewarded with coins that you tap on to collect and gain more points. You loose the game when 3 lives are lost (3 robots are destroyed).

My only pet peeve with the game is when the broken part of the robot glows, it's hard to see what design it is - maybe have it outlined in a future update instead?

Now, if you think that's not a challenge, you can unlock different difficulty settings after you get a certain amount of points in the easy difficulty. It goes without saying that if you change difficulty, the game gets harder - the conveyor belt speeds up, there are more robots and more things wrong with them. But, there's nothing wrong with a challenge, is there?

In terms of the UI & Graphics used, I think this game is beautifully made and the retina display on both the iPhone and the iPad do it so much justice. Down to the robots voices and the SFX/music used, you can tell that there has been a lot of thought and design choices - and I think they've made all the right decisions.

Now, as this app is only £0.69 in the App Store, don't expect it to do such amazing things as iPhoto can do - but that being said, it is a nice app to use; very straight forward and easy to use. You can tweak many things in the photo, here's the list from the App Store description:

Colour Controls

Hue Adjust

Exposure

Vibrance

Sepia Tone

Gamma Adjust

Highlights and Shadows

Straighten

When you open the app, there is no main menu, you're just taken straight into the app where you can tap on the camera icon in the bottom left hand corner and choose whether to take a new photo, use an existing one or paste a photo (one you've copied from Safari maybe?). Once you've selected your photo, you're taken to the main editing menu. Straight forward, yes?

  From here, you can tweak a number of different qualities of the photo - you can do this two different ways. You can drag the iPhone volume style bar left or right to tweak the photo, or tap the - & + buttons on the bottom of the app for more fine-tuned effect editing. My only real problem with this is when you're using the drag bar, the effect isn't applied in real time, you have to let go for the effect to be applied. I think that it should have automatic updating so you can see what effect it is having on your photo right away - this may just be a problem for me though, but it did annoy me!

The real deal clincher when I was using the app was I realised that you can only apply one effect/tweak one setting of the photo. For example, if I needed to adjust the colour and then straighten the photo, I'd have to save the colour corrected photo & then reload that into the app to straighten it. It's fine if you only need to tweak one thing on your app, but if you really do need to fix a bad photo this app isn't really for that.

  Once you're done editing the photo, there are a few ways that you can save & share the photo. You can tweet it using iOS 5's Twitter integration, link the app to your Facebook and post it on there or (and my personal favourite) you can send it straight to Instagram, opening the app on your phone with the photo preloaded. You can also email it, copy the photo and save it to your camera roll, obviously.

Rope'n'Fly was created by Djinnworks, the creators of other high scoring App Store apps such as Line Birds and Line Runners. Sticking to the same concept as the other games they've made, I thought they'd slowly run out of ideas on how to keep people entertained, but there's just something about this app that won't let me put it down! I'm not sure if it's the different modes/challenges it has or just the fact that I'm not that good at it (kills me to admit it!).

When you open the app, you can tap on a tutorial for screenshots on how to play the game, as it's not explained once you start playing. Once you're confident with the controls, you tap on Play and you're taken to the above screenshot. Here you can personalise different aspects of the game, such as the Scene that you're swinging in, what the Character looks like and even what kind of rope is used. Now, you do get some customisation for free, but if you want the full shebang, you'll need to fork out £2.99 for all the content, or £0.69 for different types (scenes, characters or rope types). Do keep in mind it is a free app though, so they have to make their money somewhere! You also select the kind of game you want, whether it be a time challenge, a distance challenge or just a free for all to see how far you can get (all game modes come free with the app, bonus!).

Once you've customised your character and game, it's on to the game itself we go! The basic idea of the game is to swing between the buildings and get as far as possible, with the buildings becoming smaller and more spaced out the further you go (what's a game a without a challenge eh!). As well as swinging between various sized buildings, you can also interact with other items in the environment, such as planes and hot air balloons. If you miss a building or just fall to the ground, you'll fall apart and the game is over. There is also a Retina display version for all those with a New iPad, and it looks beautiful! All that with a rag doll effect and real life physics applied, what more could you want?!

The whole idea behind Pocket is that you can save articles that you find on the internet that you don't have time to read. You can then access them wherever you are, if you have an internet connection or not (provided you synced the app before you lost your internet connection). It also displays them in text only with accompanying pictures, so you're not distracted by anything else. To sum it up, it's your own personalised magazine that you can update and change wherever and whenever you want.

When you've opened the app and its synced with any articles you've saved, they're displayed along with a thumbnail (usually the first image on the articles page). If, however, you don't like this layout, you can tap the button on the top left hand side and change it to a list view. From this menu, you can tap the icon next to the layout button to sort your articles between Articles, Videos and Images - always handy if you've saved a lot of articles/files and are looking for a specific type. You can also tap the Pocket logo to reveal a Menu where you can go to articles that you've Starred, and also go to your Archive where all the old article's you've read and discarded are (incase you discarded it by accident, wanted to show someone, etc).

When you tap on an article to read it, you're taken to a page like the one above. By default, it will display the article in plain text with any accompanying images - if you want to view it on the original site, just tap on the icon in the centre at the top of the page (this will only work if you have internet though). If you have difficulty reading it, have no fear - just tap on the "aA" icon in the top right hand corner, and you will have a number of options to help your reading experience - including changing text size, brightness of the screen and also a night mode (it inverts the page, making it look darker and easier to read in dark situations). Once you've read the article, you can return to the home screen, discard it (by tapping on the tick icon) or Star it for future reference.

"but how do we save articles to this amazing app?!" I hear you scream. They have that covered in so many different ways. When you open the app, if you have no articles there is a button which you can tap and it will tell you the many different ways you can save to Pocket, whether it be from your computer, tablet, phone or even via email. They have an add on for Google Chrome, and Bookmarks that you can use for any other browser that will also save the article when you click on it.

Living in London mean's that I use the Tube a lot to get about, and even though I've lived here all my life I still need help sometimes when it comes to navigating around London, and that's where Tubemap come's in handy - it's not just a one trick pony, it has many feature's on it that make it my favourite and a must have for London commuters.

When you first open the app, you're welcomed by the iconic London Underground Map, designed by Harry Beck in 1931. The only problem I have with this is that it isn't zoomed out to give you a view of the whole map in one - I don't know whether it's just me though, but I like to have an overview first then zoom in to what I need to look at. If there are any delays to a line, it'll pop up on this screen over the map and disappear after a few seconds. If you tap the menu button, a line of icons appear at the bottom of the app taking you to the app's various features such as the Line Status, which will tell you the status of all London Underground lines (both planned closures and delays).

Other feature's include a route calculator (my favourite feature) giving you the complete journey including changes colour co-ordinated like a Traffic light - Green is where you started your journey, Amber is any changes that you need to make and Red is where your journey is completed. You can also find the nearest station to you using the Find Station feature which take's your current GPS location and gives you the distance to the closest station's to you. The only bad thing I can say is that there's no option to open it in your default Map application and get directions to the station. The Departures feature gives you up to date information on Departures and Arrivals at any selected station (you can select stations by searching for them or using GPS to get the closest stations to you).

You also have the Twitter feature which when accessed displays various tweets from official TFL London tube Twitter accounts, giving you more up to date news on each line such as various delays and closures. If you tap the More option, you're given my favourite feature (that in my opinion should be on the main page, not under the "More" option) - the Oyster card balance. If you've registered your Oyster Card on the TFL website, you can put in your details and the app will get your current balance straight on the app so you can see if you need to top up at a glance. There's also options for Settings, and the ability to Share the app with friends and family with various social networking sites.

Now, Google Currents is a collection of different publications all in one app that you can customise into one magazine-like app with all the subjects that you want to read about, and have the ability to get rid of any subject you don’t care about. I liked the simplicity of Flipboard on my iPhone, and wanted something similar on my HTC where I could look to find the latest stories that interest me. 

When you first open the app, you’re taken through a setup process where you select different publications to create your “magazine” - there are well known one’s such as The Sun and The Guardian, as well as lesser known ones. Once you’ve selected them all, you’re taken to the home screen where the top stories will appear on the top of the app, where you can tap on them to get the full story or swipe across for different ones. Underneath is the “Library” where you can tap on each individual publication to get the stories from only that publisher. I like how there are so many different outlets and subjects that you can choose from, you’re really given a wide range of publications to make the app specific to what you want to read about.

If you tap the “Trending” tab, you’re taken to another set of news stories that are the most spoken about, giving you the chance to see the most important articles from publications that you may not have added in the Library. Underneath each article name is the names of the publications that have posted it - not too sure what the relevance of it is, but I’m sure Google had it’s reasons. There is also customisation for this feature too - you can add different topics to get the top news for, such as Entertainment, Technology & Science. You can also search for a specific story by tapping on the magnifying glass in the bottom right hand corner - handy for when you’re told about a story in the news and wanted to find out a bit more about it.

You can also access the Settings menu where you can set up a sync between all devices that have Google Currents on it (handy if you’ve got it on a phone and Tablet). You can also change the text size if you strain to read such a small font. Also, it has a sync now option where you can sync all changes you make to your library there and then if you wanted to continue what you were doing on another device.

Now I'm not going to deny that when I first heard about this, I was excited to review it - I love app's that load up tweets in real time, it just gives you a feeling of being completely up to date with the world. The animation of it dropping from the top of the screen also interested me, as it's nothing like any other Twitter app I'd ever seen - for iPad or iPhone. Once you've opened the app and signed in, you're given instructions on how to use the app as it's 90% swipe gesture's, there's only a few buttons on the app.

Once you've done all that, a lot of your tweet's will drop down before being completely up to date, and I'm not sure if it's just me but I got bored waiting for them all to drop down. You tap on an icon to show the tweet, and from there you can swipe from right to left to reply to that tweet. If you want to write a new tweet, simply do the same action without tapping on anyone's tweet. If you want to see your profile, just swipe from left to right to reveal it. Simple enough? Yes. 

But that's about it. You can't access your followers/following list, you can't access favourites, retweet or favourite tweets or access anyone's profile's. Now it can't be just me that think's that in a Twitter app, these thing's are fundamental elements. Also, the Tweet's aren't put in any order once they're dropped down, so if someone is writing a series of tweets on a subject, you have to hunt them down and hope you read them in the right order. Of course, on the flip side, one could argue that this is just a leisurely app that you can view your tweets in real time for browsing purpose, not for anything else.

The compose menu is also seriously lacking in some features that are important to any good Twitter experience - there isn't any location tagging or ability to upload video's/photo's to Twitter. The only thing that I like about the compose menu is that it uses the Twitter keyboard, something that some Twitter app's are staying away from (for what reason I'm not sure, I love the Twitter keyboard!).

It also come's with an in app browser, which is always handy - it's always been a pet hate in other Twitter app's where you tap on a link, it leave's the app and opens in Safari. The only bad thing I can say about the browser is that once you open it, the "Done" button doesn't work, and to leave the browser I had to exit the whole app and close it in the multi-tasking bar. Alas, it's only a bug and I'm sure there's a bug fix on the way in a future update!

When you open the app for the first time, a loading screen will open where it'll load up the latest fixtures for you, so if you're data conscious, I'd advise you to connect to wifi (it took about a minute for mine to update over wifi). Once it's updated, you're taken to the apps main screen, where you can navigate between all of its main features; News & Media, Predictions & Tables. On the home screen is where you see the source of the predictions and the 70% accuracy rate. I like the buttons on the home screen, they're bold yet simple - a recurring problem with sports apps is that they try to cram as much as they can onto the home screen, but with this app it isn't the case.

The Tables page gives you am overview of the current fixtures for the premier league, as well as the PowerTable, which shows you the strongest teams in the league in 4 tiers. Both tables are laid out well, but there's one thing missing that I'd have liked to have seen on this app; I'd have loved to have been able to go onto the tables, be able to tap on a team which takes me to a page about the team with recent scores, player information, etc.

The News & Media feature is also very well thought out, and has been executed brilliantly. In this menu, you'll get all the latest news and videos about the goings-on in the football world. It's been broken down into two sections - top stories, and match reports. Missed out on a football match but don't want to wait for Match of the Day? Just go onto the news & media section, and all the latest match reports are waiting there for you to watch free of charge. That may be my favourite feature of the app, as you can watch it over 3G or Wifi, there aren't any restrictions in place like there are in other video apps. 

Now onto the feature I was most excited about - Predictions. On a first glance, it's nicely laid out and easy to use - if you want to see live updates on a match, just tap on the match. If that match has finished, just tap on it to get all the information on it. Then I noticed that the dates were wrong on the top, and there was no way to change them, but this is a minor bug and will be fixed in a future update. Also, to take advantage of the 70% accuracy on predicted matches, you have to pay £0.69 for the predictions for the rest of the season. If you're not sure about the predictions, you can see previous matches predictions for free. The good features include live updates during matches, including all stats such as bookings.

This is the first publicly available version of Frameographer, but yet it only had 1 small bug that I found (I'll go into it later, as I'm not entirely sure if it's a bug or just a setting I can't change). 

When you open the app, you're welcomed with a beautiful HD UI, and even though there isn't much writing in the app, the icon's are so self explanatory anyone can pick it up and make their own stop motion or time lapse video's. As I've made 2 video's, they're both displayed on this screen. By default, they're named after the date that they're taken on, but you can change this easily by tapping on the name. From this window, you can create a new project by tapping the + icon, or export, change or delete an existing project. To open an existing project, just tap on it. There's also a help icon in the top left hand corner that'll show you the different feature's of Frameographer, and how to use the app as well as some handy tips!

When you open or create a new project, you're welcomed by this window. If it's a new project, you're prompted to tap the new photo icon in the top right hand corner, which will take you to the camera screen. If it's an existing project, from here you can individually look at each frame, and delete it by tapping on the bin icon on the left hand side if you don't like it. If you tap on the clock icon underneath that, you can change the FPS (Frames Per Second) of the video, to make it smoother (more frames per second) or blockier (less frames per second), bearing in mind the frame rate that the human eye see's fluid movement is 24 FPS (which is more important for Stop Motion, as opposed to Time Lapse where you're supposed to see changes in every frame). You can also play the video, export it to your camera roll or add new photo's to it from this window. It's very easy to navigate through, and no matter how many photo's I have in a project, I didn't experience any bugginess or lag whatsoever.

When you go onto the camera page, you're welcomed with this. The button's on the display are iOS Camera-esque which I like, because it feel's like this app is tied in with the operating system and give's it a nicer feel. As you can see, you can toggle a flash, onion skin (helpful for Stop Motion), grid for positioning and you can even flip between the front & back camera's. On the bottom of the window, you can toggle between Stop Motion & Time Lapse mode's by the switch on the left. When you change, a small message will come up on screen telling you what mode you're on. It also tell's you how many frames you have in the project, and how many you've taken in that specific session. One button that's not shown above is a button on Time Lapse mode where you can change the photo capture interval, and change other variable's such as how long it capture's for. Once you're ready to take the photo's, just tap the camera button.

The one thing I especially liked is that all the photo's are stored locally on the app and not saved to your camera roll - I don't know about you, but I didn't want 240 photo's that were extremely similar all on my camera roll & clogging up my iCloud storage! About the bug that I mentioned earlier - when I was doing a time lapse video, even though the flash was off, it still flashed every time it took a photo (but it didn't ruin the photo, which is what lead me to think that it's not a function that's turned off, but used to focus).

Once installed, you can activate Deck by the default gesture of swiping left from the status bar on the home screen (this can be changed in the settings, but it make's a lot of sense to pull something in from the right as that's where it's displayed). You can customise which set of option's are displayed first in the Settings menu, but I prefer to keep the default up what I want is usually in that set of shortcut's.

As you can see from the above screenshot, the Star icon take's you to a second set of personalised shortcuts - these can be various system tools, or to open applications (all changed in the Settings app). This feature's helpful if you have a lot of apps, and you want all your favourite one's somewhere that's easily accessible no matter what page of your home screen that you're on. The button underneath that take's you to the toggles - from there, you can toggle WiFi, Bluetooth, Location Settings, Volume, Airplane Mode & 3G. The 3G button isn't working natively yet, so when tapped it'll take you into the Settings where you can disable it yourself, but a fix for this should be out soon enough.

I love the general feel of Deck, from it's easy swipe in/out animation to it's button design - it's simple, yet elegant like the whole of iOS5. The only bad thing I can find about Deck is that it's only accessible on the home screen, not in apps. I think that if they fix this, it'd be one of my favourite (if not my favourite) jailbreak tweak as I'll be able to easily navigate between my favourite apps without having to come out of them first, as well as toggle my settings. If you're interested in Deck, it's in the ModMyI repo on Cydia now for $1.99 - a modest price to pay for such an amazing tweak. If you want to see it in action, check out our video below!