Lory Gil

Here is a link to my most recent App Advice review. Please feel free to rummage around my other reviews for things you may want to purchase.

IAmDungeon is a fun new game that utilizes the gameplay of Minesweeper. You know, that game that EVERYONE already has in their computer. The one you play while trying to avoid working... 

Dog Pile HD is way cooler than Angry Birds. I know some people will hate me for saying that, but I'd like to see you prove me wrong. Download the game. After you read my review, of course.

Dog Pile HD at Padgadget.com

Camera Boost is the first real-time image manipulation camera app for the iPad 2. Its kinda rad.

I have recently been lucky enough to pick up regular writing gigs as a freelancer for app-related websites. While I still plan to write exclusive reviews for this site, it will be less often. (I have a personal life, you know). But, fear not my loyal readers I will be linking my published reviews here, so you can still be privy to my genius. Here is my first one:

Robot Tycoon for iPad at PadGadget.com

I have never felt so "growed up" as I did the day I downloaded CamCard by Intsig Information Co. and now I feel like the suburbanite that everyone keeps accusing me of. Well, at least my business cards have been organized nicely.

CamCard is a business card scanner that reads the card using QR code (a digital way for mobile devices to interpret visual information, such as barcodes) in order to merge the new info into your contacts. It is the quickest way to save your new business partner’s phone number, email address, website, and company information. If your card is two-sided, you can add both images and all information on both sides as well. After the card is scanned, you can either save it within the app only, or merge it into your phone’s contact list.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how much information the app got correct. It verged on creepy. How does it know which phone number is the fax and which one is the cell? Although I was easily impressed with this technology, I was fairly disappointed in how often it got the info wrong. Phone numbers were, more often than not, correct, but names, company names, titles, departments, and addresses were almost always incorrect. I had to manually change everything.

I have a feeling that this problem could be corrected with the iPhone 4. I do not have a flash on my phone’s camera, so there are shadows when I take the picture of the card. If the picture was able to be clearer, I have a feeling the information would be read correctly more often.

The app is $6.99. I grabbed a copy when it was on sale for $0.99. I’d say, if you own an iPhone 3GS or lower, it is only worth $0.99, but if you have the 4, it is probably worth the extra money. There is a light version if you want to try it out before buying. Give it a try.

Piggie by Meiwin Fu is a simple, yet effective finance app for the iPhone. I don’t actually need this much financial help. I don’t have a lot of expenses, but there was a time when I was trying to pay off credit card debt and I could have used this app.

I love how simple it is to keep track of things. You just input your expenses, labeled and dated, and watch your monthly budget unfold. You can track purchase in the past to make sure you don’t go over budget. You can add future expenses that you know you will have, like car payments and such, and determine how much extra money you will need for daily spending.

Speaking of daily spending, Piggie will average out your daily spending and chart what percentage is being spent on what. So, you can decide if too much of your money is going to eating out.

The app is free. If you need help keeping within your budget, give this app a try. It may just save your mortgage!

The location photo app, iTravelPhoto by Dion Cho recently went on sale for free (regular $0.99). I love photo apps and am always looking for new and interesting ones to add to my, already large, collection. Being free was the clincher.

I decided to give this app a look-see just a few minutes ago. I was thinking about taking pictures of the river on my bike ride home today. So, I opened the app. It first asked to send me notifications. Denied. It then asked to use my current location. Allowed (it is a location-based app). I dug around in it for a little bit. The point of the app didn’t seem very clear, but sometimes an app just needs to be played with for a while in order for one to understand its features. Well, I’m quite stationary at the moment, so a travel app would be silly to experiment with. I closed the app, assuming I’d try it out later.

When I closed the app, I noticed that my location service arrow was on (it’s the little arrow next to your battery charge icon that usually shows up when you open your map app). I have learned from experience that the location service is a serious battery drainer. One time, I was using my map app to find my way home and it used up 1% per minute of battery life! So, I went to my multitasking bar and closed the app from there, assuming it would be a hard close and the arrow would go away. Nope. Well, I immediately hate this app, now. I turned off my iPhone (For those not in the know, hold down the home button and the wake button at the same time for a few seconds and a slider bar will appear and ask if you want to turn off your phone). Any IT guy will tell you that the first thing you do when something on your computer goes wrong is to turn it off and on again. Once my iPhone was up and running again, I was sure the location service would be shut off. Nope! I had to actually delete the app from my phone to get the location service to shut off. There is no way I will ever use it again.

In an effort to move deeper down the rabbit hole of technology, I have started using a digital bank ledger. I had trepidations at first, but iCheckBalance by Sonmbol held my hand and walked me to the other side.

The app is simple to use with minimal features. That is a good thing in my opinion. I just need an app to keep track of my bank accounts. I’m still not ready for all the bells and whistles that come along with fancy financial programs. iCheckBalance lets you input withdrawals and deposits of multiple accounts, lets you track your bills, including due dates, and lets you input account transfers. It works just like a bank ledger, except for the bill tracking part.

Most of the people I know don’t even balance their checkbook. They just check their accounts online. I’ve never felt comfortable doing that. What if there is an outstanding check that I forgot about and my account shows that I have a few hundred bucks, but suddenly I am overdrawn later that day. I feel like I have more control when I balance my checkbook. Going digital started out as an experiment in old-dog-new-tricks ideology, but has turned out to be a more convenient choice. I don’t carry my checkbook around with me, so I would have to wait to enter a purchase. Since I carry my iPhone with me everywhere, I can balance on the go with ease.

My only complaint is that there is no way to sync the information to anything. If something went wrong with the app, all of my purchases would be lost forever. Again, probably not a big deal for most people, but it scares me a little. I overcame that missing feature by taking screenshots of the ledger every once in a while and emailing them to myself. That way, there is a back-up record of my banking transactions.

The iPhone version is currently on sale for $1.99. There is also an enhanced iPad version for $2.99 if you need a larger view.  

I’ve been on a creative streak lately. Song ideas just pop into my head and I have to write it down. Of course, there are a multitude of apps to help with the song writing process, but there are also simple, unsung heroes that need to be mentioned as well, like RhymeNow- Free Edition by Purple Room Publishing. Without it, I never would have thought to rhyme shirt with introvert.

I was on a roll, the lyrics were flying out of my head and into my iPhone via Dragon Dictation when, suddenly I had a block. Sure, I could think of plenty of rhyming words for shirt, but they were all mundane and obvious. A quick search in RhymeNow and I was able to finish the chorus in a clever and witty way.

The app is simple, yet effective.  It is no different than any website-related rhyming dictionary, but it is mobile. You do not need the internet to access the 55,000 rhyming words. There are only a few free rhyming dictionaries in the app store and this one is a perfect fit.

There is a premium version of RhymeNow for $1.99 that does not have ads and offers additional features such as a “sounds like” search and a “starts with” search. Additionally, there is an HD version for the iPad. Both are very useful if you really suck at writing songs, but paying for it seems a little overkill.

Home Sharing is the joke of the century in my household. Why would I want to stream music from my computer to my ipad or iphone when I can stream it to my stereo through Apple TV or play it straight from my computer, since I have a kick-ass set of sub-woofers. Since the crutch of Home Sharing is that the computer and your iPhone both have to be on the same wi-fi network, you are restricted to the confines of your domicile (or wherever you house your iTunes). That being said, it would be nice to be able to listen to my entire music collection while away from home. Audiogalaxy By AG Entertainment is just the thing for that.

When I’m drifting off at work, I sometimes wish I had remembered to bring in my Tom Petty collection to import into my work iTunes so that I can stop listening to that same damn Tom Waits album over and over again (Rain Dogs is amazing, but gets old after 15 listens). Audiogalaxy lets me listen to the above-mentioned Tom Petty collection without having to lug a bunch of CDs around. It links the iTunes account on the computer of your choice with your mobile device. Plug said mobile device into compatible desk speakers and you have yourself a veritable smorgasbord of music without taking up precious space on your iPad or iPhone, space that can be better spent on the new Gameloft game, or room for that cookie app that Martha Stewart keeps updating all the time (man, that thing takes up a lot of space).

Some people may not have a lot of music in their iTunes library, but for those who have digitized their life-long record collection, or who download entire albums for free off various music blogs (you know who you are) having Audiogalaxy can be a great addition.

The app is free and is easy to set up, easy to use. It is not a battery sucker (I listened to music on it for 3 hours straight and only lost about 6% of my battery). It  is available for the iPhone and the iPad and can be used simultaneously on both (I tried it).