For a long time, Calvetica has been the most praised calendar app available for the iPhone. Fast, yet feature rich, beautiful, yet minimalist. It’s no wonder Calvetica was recommended by so many. Its only downfall? Followers of Mysterious Trousers’ amazing calendar app were left longing for a native iPad version to grace their 9.7 inch display.
Well, the wait is over. Mysterious Trousers have released version 4.0 of Calvetica and not only does this new version make the app universal, it boasts a complete overhaul of the entire design, doing the impossible and making Calvetica even more beautiful! Calvetica is finally the only calendar app that you need!
It’s kinda crazy to think, but our little internet startup, Envato, has been on the air now for five years. We started back in 2006 as four very enthusiastic and totally green entrepreneurs with a shoestring budget and a love of the web. Fast forward five years and while we’re hopefully a little less green, we’re still incredibly passionate about Education, Marketplaces and the web! It’s been an amazing time and we’d like to share a look inside our Melbourne HQ offices, some stats about Envato and a big thank you to the community.
Recent times have seen an explosion in the number of iOS games released which fall into the ’freemium’ category. This type of game is free to play, but will often tempt you to purchase extra, ‘luxury’ currency from within the app. You can spend this luxury currency to obtain better or rare items, advance through levels with quicker progress or just make the game a whole lot easier.
Typical freemium gameplay consists of performing ‘farming’ actions, these are actions where the player must return to the game a set time later to receive their reward. Generally, this reward will consist of experience points to increase the players level and/or some form of currency. Examples of such actions include; collecting rent, tending to animals, or even the literal farming of crops such as in the widely popular ‘FarmVille’. Completing these actions will allow the player to level up, unlocking new content and keeping the player interested in the game.
Read on to discover 15 of the best freemium games for the iPad…
As a device that begs to be touched, it’s little surprise that there are plenty of tablet-style “drawing” applications available on the App Store. Some focus on a sketching and artistic approach, where others strive for accuracy and precision. Although you’ll never get the same level of accuracy that you’d have with a dedicated graphics tablet, some of these apps manage to pull off a great experience.
Today, I’m going to be taking a look at Bamboo Paper, developed by the tablet manufacturer Wacom. It’s encouraging to see the company moving into this market, expanding from their traditional tablet line-up. They do, unsurprisingly, produce a pen accessory to go with the app, but we’ll get to that in due course…
This week I’m on a mission to find out what type of iPad case is most popular among the discerning readers of iPad.AppStorm. I’m sure most of us will have a case that we use from time to time to protect the iPad in transit, but which type is the most prevalent?
For the sake of simplicity I’ve taken the executive decision to exclude the Smart Cover from the equation, I was coming up with far too many variables! In my mind if you have an iPad 2 you almost definitely have, and use, the Smart Cover and if you don’t, you don’t.
Besides, you probably use a case in addition to the iPad – I just wouldn’t feel comfortable putting my iPad in my bag with just its (expensive) Smart Cover on.
I know that when I first got an iPad I had a hard time deciding what case would be the right one for me, I’m fortunate that I chose wisely – I’ve only ever bought one zip case and it fits the iPad 2 and Smart Cover like a dream.
Did you face a case dilemma? What did you go with? I seriously have no idea what will come out on top here!
Feel free to comment below with your thoughts, especially if you have a case that fits none of the descriptions!
So far we have focused on pure handwriting apps during our review series: the point with those apps was to actually use your finger or a stylus to write on the iPad. Today’s review looks at an app that takes the concept even further and adds true text recognition to the mix.
WritePad and PhatPad, both by the same developer, share common ground but differ in the scope of features offered – ranging from simple text recognition up to complex note taking with the addition of images and much more.
Sharing in 140 characters or less is the name of the Twitter game. The platform simply exists and the users make it whatever they want it to be. We’ve seen a wide variety of uses as Twitter’s popularity has increased, from breaking news to sharing pictures of your dog (and everything in between). It’s safe to say that we are still discovering ways to utilize Twitter.
I’ve been a Twitter user for couple years and I’ll admit that I’ve had moments in the past were I wasn’t sure I really understood what Twitter should be used for. I was always looking for what it should be used for. I just went with it and continued on in my semi-active, mostly observational state. After a while I began to notice how much less I was using my RSS reader and instead going to Twitter for some Web reading. I was following people that interested me and they shared a lot of links to things I found interesting as well.
You may have heard the argument that Twitter is going to kill the RSS reader. Now, while I don’t think that is necessarily true, I do think that it can fill a need for a lot of people. Tweed is an iPad application that brings us a step closer and attempts to cut out the fluff and just deliver those links. Can it replace my RSS reader? Let’s find out!
Winners Announced
Thanks to everyone who took part in the giveaway this week, and special thanks to the kind people at Readdle! I’m excited to let you know that the winners have now been chosen. Congratulations are in order to:
Eric
Nate
Stephanie
Well done to the lucky winners, and we’ll be in touch soon. Sorry to those who missed out, be sure to check back for more great competitions!
Old Competition Post
This week the organised among you should be rejoicing, we have a great calendar app, namely Calendars, up for grabs! The kind people at Readdle have given us 3 promo codes to giveaway to some lucky readers, scroll down to see how to enter.
Calendars an elegant and easy way to use Google calendar on your iPad, and allows you to manage your calendars online and offline. It has an unique interface that allows you to move events with simple drag and drop, and navigate between days, weeks, and months, just like in the Calendar application on the iPad.
It also allows you to add attendees to new and existing events -and save time with the history list, which lets you easily invite the same people again.
Many people wonder how they could justify the purpose of an iPad, not only to themselves but also to others (I’m sure there’s been many-a-spouse that was upset by the half-grand their significant other dropped on an iPad). Many reviews focus on the technical aspects of Apple’s game-changing tablet, but very few discuss how someone can work the iPad into an existing workflow.
That’s where I come in.
As someone who does the occasional design project and who has been looking for ways to better integrate my iPad into my workflow, it’s only natural that I would start looking for a photo editing app. Recently, there have been several great reviews of photo editing apps such as Photoshop Express and PhotoToaster, which have their own advantages and disadvantages.
However, another app that deserves notice is PhotoForge2 from GhostBird Software. With great app store reviews from professionals and beginners alike, this app is extremely powerful and adds some functionality that exceeds many others in the same category. With complete layer support, adjustments, and effects, this app proves to be versatile and well worth the price.
Keep reading to see all of the features this app has to offer, and how it can easily be your complete photo editing solution on the go.
