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
Booking.com – Hotel Reservations (v3.2)
Picked by: AliciaB
It has become the norm for specialist websites to sport an iOS version, sometimes enhancing the user experience, sometimes not. An app that enhances is Booking.com for iPhone and iPad – a one-stop hotel research and hotel reservation platform. I’m a big fan of the website so switching to the mobile apps was a no-brainer for me. The navigation is easy to follow and is pretty self-explanatory. What I really like about the app is that all imaginable options are at your fingertips. You can browse by choice of categories, filter results, check out photos, read traveler reviews or explore nearby hotels. We used the app on our recent trip to Budapest. The whole process was pleasurably painless – after finding a hotel to our liking, we booked, received the confirmation, then added it to our iPhone calendars. Both iPhone and iPad versions have the same level of functionality and are completely free on the App Store as a universal app, so I’d definitely give it a spin.
(Free) iTunes Link / US Store
Number Guru (v1.0.1)
Picked by: Joe Tomasone
Number Guru is a free reverse phone directory for iOS. If you’ve ever received a call from a number that you don’t recognize, or are perhaps getting harassing calls from, this app will let you look up the number and see who owns it, where the owner is located, and what carrier the owner uses. It’s not perfect (which is inevitable as the data changes, and especially in the age of number porting), but it’s so often quite accurate that the downsides aren’t really so bad. Plus — did I mention? — it’s free.
(Free) iTunes Link
PhotoSync (v1.1)
Picked by: jhrogersii 
Have you ever gotten tired of having to connect a cable to sync your photos and videos off your iOS device to your computer? I know I have. While we are only a week away from the official announcement of Apple’s iCloud service, here is a great little all-in-one app to meet your iOS photographic needs in the meantime. PhotoSync is a Universal app that takes some of the most common features of several photo and file upload apps, and combines them into one application.
First, PhotoSync takes care of transferring photos and videos to or from either your Camera Roll or Photo Library. You can transfer between other iOS devices and/or your PC or Mac via either direct download from a web browser, or from a free companion desktop app. PhotoSync also handles your primary cloud syncing needs, allowing you to batch upload to both Dropbox and Flickr while on the go. While both of these official apps, and many other 3rd party ones, will upload photos and videos to these services, PhotoSync allows you to do both as part of a single task, all in one app. It also allows you to upload photos while in the background, which is another big plus.
PhotoSync also has the unique ability to upload photos via FTP, making it easy to upload photos from your iOS device to a web server for adding to a web page. It also gets a bit of extra credit for allowing you to view any photo or video stored on your device with a built-in viewer, even offering AirPlay support for watching videos on a big screen through your Apple TV. For me, PhotoSync instantly took the place of two or three apps that I was using, and improved on the majority of what they were capable of in the process. If you are ready to cut the sync cable, but want a little more versatility than Apple’s iCloud services going forward, PhotoSync is a great way to do it.
($1.99) iTunes Link
CloudApp for Mac (v1.5.1)
Picked by: Thomas
My pick of the week is the free CloudApp menu bar utility for the Mac. CloudApp is both a convenient link shortener and file uploader, and one of its best features is its drag-n-drop functionality.
All I need to do with any bit of data is drag it into the menu bar and watch as CloudApp does its thing. If it’s a file, I’ll wait a moment for an upload, an then get a shortened cl.ly link copied to my clipboard for sharing. If it’s just a link that I’m dragging into CloudApp, then the resulting cl.ly link comes out instantaneously.
I absolutely love this service for instant sharing of screenshots and images over IM, and the in-app statistics have helped me keep track of which of my Twitter links are getting clicks.
The base CloudApp utility is a free download from the Mac App Store and I’m also using a free account, but there are Pro accounts with more sharing and upload privileges
(Free) Mac App Store
Super Mega Worm for Mac (v1.0)
Picked by: Alex Jordan
I loved Super Mega Worm on my iPad and iPod touch. It’s bloody, unique, and fits my criteria of being a quick gaming fix. When I saw it was now available for the Mac, via the Mac App Store, I jumped at the offer. The game itself, wherein you control a massive worm and eat the attacking humans, is comprised of 25 levels of increasing difficulty. One can sit and play through the entire game in one 30 minute setting. Although it does get repetitive, something always seems to make you want to play just a little bit more. Another thing I love about this game, is that it is stylized to mimic the 8-bit games of yesteryear. It’s not without it’s flaws- it’s almost too short, and the controls on the Mac don’t feel as natural as they do on an iOS device. At any rate, it’s still a gory blast. You can pick up a copy of Super Mega Worm in the Mac App Store.
($1.99) Mac App Store
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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