Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break
Feeddler RSS Reader (v1.8)
Picked by: Jay
For this week’s pick, I’m choosing a favorite that I use nearly every day: FeeddlerRSS (last reviewed here). If you use Google Reader as an aggregate site for your RSS feeds, and like the possible settings (by folders and subfolders; unread, read, and starred) then FeeddlerRSS has that same feel. The user interface is minimal which lets me focus on what I want to focus on: the title, the time, and the source. This way I can scan over a 1000 feeds in a short time. I’ve tried lots of other RSS readers for both the iPhone and iPad (including some very popular and visually stunning apps like Flipboard and Pulse), but I find that nothing compares to what I get from the universal FeeddlerRSS app.
(Free) iTunes Link / (Pro version $4.99) iTunes Link
Tiny Wings (v1.0)
Picked by: Brandon
My pick of the week is one of those apps that gets into your head and won’t let go. It’s simplicity incarnate, but maddeningly difficult at the same time. One of those apps that feels right at home on a mobile phone and wouldn’t work on any other platform. Tiny Wings is my pick of the week, because since I picked it up I haven’t been able to put it down. I love the simple gameplay, the constantly changing (daily) scenery and the fact that for some unknown reason I’m constantly striving to reach the next island. If you’re a fan of games like Canabalt …. Tiny Wings will keep you flying high!
($0.99) iTunes Link
Evernote (v4.0)
Picked by: Thomas
This week I’m going with Evernote as my Pick of the Week. It’s been quite a while since I last used Evernote (free) as my main note-taking app on the iPhone, but something about this latest re-design of the app really caught my eye. I know that Patrick covered the major changes earlier this week, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and suppose that you won’t mind reading another take on this superb note-taking service. Patrick’s was really an overview and mini-review of the new features, so I’ve written this review from the perspective of a big note-taking fanatic’s return to the Great Green Elephant.
(Free) iTunes Link
GeoRing (v2.2)
Picked by: jhrogersii
While I give all the credit in the world to Apple for bringing the smartphone into the 21st Century, there are still a handful of loose ends that remain. One of these areas is custom ringtones. Sure, Apple will let us buy ringtones from iTunes all day, but they have never given us an easy way to take our music that is already loaded on an iPhone and roll our own.
Thankfully, we can always look to developers to fill in the few gaps left by Apple. GeoRing is one such app, as it sets your entire iPhone music library free to be used as custom ringtones. It allows you to choose any song on your device to add to a randomly shuffled ringtones playlist. Not only can you choose any song you want, but you can also use a slider to determine where in each song you want the ringtone to start. This task used to take up a chunk of extra time cutting and fading in a desktop sound editor, and then re-syncing your finished product back to your phone. This feature is definitely a very welcomed time saver.
Besides the playlist capability, GeoRing can also record the time and location of all your recent calls. The locations can even be viewed on a map if you wish. Unfortunately, the app can’t access the phone number of the call, so you may have to go back and forth between GeoRing and your Phone app’s Recent Calls list to figure out exactly what phone number certain calls came from. Despite this apparent OS limitation, the call Geotagging is still a useful feature. If you don’t care for this particular feature, or are concerned about its impact on battery life, you can turn it off under Settings>General>Location Services. The ringtone feature works fine even if Location is turned off.
There is one setup step that does involve a PC or Mac, as you have to load a custom “silent” ringtone onto your phone via iTunes to be able to use GeoRing. Fortunately, this is easy to do, and the app has detailed instructions to help you along. Once you set this silent file as your ringtone in the iPhone’s Settings, GeoRing’s ringtone playlist ready to roll.
As useful as it is, GeoRing isn’t perfect by any means. Currently there is only support for one playlist, so if you make wholesale edits, you will lose all of your previous configuration. Also, you can only use your music as ringtones with in this app, and in a random playlist. You do not have the ability to associate certain songs on your playlist to contacts like you would in the Contacts app. Maybe these features can be added down the line, but even as it stands, GeoRing is definitely worth every bit of $1.99.
($1.99) iTunes Link
Jibbigo (v1.2226)
Picked by: Joe Tomasone
While most translation apps are text based (and seem to exclusively rely on Google Translate over the Internet), Jibbigo has come out with a series of translation apps that are truly unique. You simply speak a phrase into the app, and it is translated both in text and spoken form into another language. The app is self-contained, so no internet connection is required for the translation. Versions are also available to convert to and from English and your choice of several languages: Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Japanese, German, French, Korean, and Arabic. I downloaded the English-Spanish app and spoke several phrases in each language that were each recognized and translated perfectly. Yes, it’s that easy, and yes, it actually works! If you are thinking about buying one or more, now is the time – with the exception of the Japanese version, they are all on sale for $4.99, down from $27.99
($4.99 ON SALE!) iTunes Link
World Clock – Time Zones (v1.0.2)
Picked by: AliciaB
World Clock – Times Zones is my pick for this week. It’s a handy little app that tells you the current time everywhere around the world. Choose the cities or time zones you’re interested in and you’ll see them displayed in a list, with additional handy info like in which zone the city is in or how many hours difference between yours and the chosen zone. It’s easy to add/remove cities that are ir/relevant for your research. You can customize the display of the clocks, analog or digital. However, the app is lacking one thing I do need. It would be nice to be able to choose future dates to enable planning of global telephone meetings or to ascertain when an Apple event will be airing in your time zone. J
(Free) iTunes link
There you have it! Hope you enjoyed this week’s installment of Picks of the week. Please let us know what you think, and share with us some of your favorites.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
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