A bit of background as to why I liked the idea of this app so much. When holidays and my birthday comes around, I typically tell folks instead of buying me material gifts take that money and donate it to a charity in my name. For a while my family couldn’t grasp that and I’d still get the package of socks or the new pair of dress pants. Soon enough though, they caught on and realized that the specific charity didn’t matter to me, as long as it’s a legitimate cause, but I don’t care if it’s cancer, hunger, PETA or whomever.

Now comes technology into the picture, and the Touch To Give application for the iPhone. With this app you can make a free donation to animal rescue, breast cancer research, and hunger relief; all from a simple point and click interface on your iPhone.

Along with the core donation, you can also learn how you can take further action to help others and even shop to give more through the GreaterGood Network (which is the home web presence for The Animal Rescue Site, The Breast Cancer Site, and The Hunger Site).

I love the simplicity of the app. I love the good nature and the overall purpose of the app. Looking at the numerous reviews; many seem to feel the same way. There were some early comments about the inability of the app loading properly and sporadic freezing, but I haven’t had any issues in my usage and testing.

If you’re into the idea of giving to charity I recommend checking this app out. It’s free in the App Store and you can get it at the link here.

Review post courtesy of

Ok, here I sit reviewing a website as a guest blogger for @ErinBlaskie, and of the 3 sites she was looking at I drew Placepop.

It’s basically a mish-mash of FourSquare and Twitter, and so far as I can tell, it doesn’t do either of them very well. I signed up only to find the damned thing has a city in Ghana as the default hometown of everyone who signs up. It took me a whole 5 minutes to realise this though, and a further 2 to change it. I would like to have those 7 minutes back, really, as they were really quite wasted.

Now that I have my location fixed and some of my Brampton, ON haunts added to my places, you might wonder then…’what now?’ That’s what I’m wondering myself, what is this site all about? I didn’t see an FAQ about it, so I realised I’d have to figure this one out on my own, so I decided to click on ‘find places’, thinking this would give me some clue. Guess what I found, the people who frequent this site are by and large in San Fransisco, and browsing members gave me more than 300 pages of members who joined and got bored very quickly. 20 members to a page, and maybe 20 pages of regulars, most from San Fran, almost all from the States.

What we have here at it’s core is a social scene for San Fransisco, but do keep one thing in mind; I’m doing without the iPhone app because…wait for it…I don’t have one! Yes! I’m a Blackberry user, and Apple is the only phone manufacturer not ignored which if you look at the included chart, you will understand why only an iPhone app and nothing for any other smartphone is indeed a bad idea.

Apple doesn’t even appear in the top 5, according to IDC, it gets lumped in with ‘others’, the app being little but a nod to trendiness. Maybe I’m not getting the whole experience because I lack an iPhone, I don’t know, but Placepop gives me the picture of form coming over function. The site is presented fairly well but is ultimately crippled by trying to do too much. If you want a generic ‘here I am’ site, the give it a try, it’s free at any rate.

From Livescribe’s website:

Livescribe is fundamentally changing the way people capture, access and share information with pen and paper. Founded in 2007, Livescribe has developed a breakthrough low-cost mobile computing platform which includes the award-winning Pulse smartpen, dot paper, smartpen applications, Livescribe Desktop software, Livescribe Online Community, and development tools.

Since its launch in April 2008, the Pulse smartpen has won multiple awards, including Popular Science’s Best of What’s New 2008, Popular Mechanic’s 2008 Breakthrough Award, and MacWorld’s Best of Show in 2009.

Renee Moore is a Virtual Marketing Director who works with pharmacists who make customized medications and holistic health care practitioners who love what they do but they don’t love the marketing quite as much. She has worked with over 100 pharmacies and holistic healthcare practitioners all over North America helping them to attract Moore patients, bring in Moore business, and ultimately make Moore money. You can learn more about Renée Moore at www.muchmooremarketing.com.

Now, while this app is still capable of tremendous works, please do not expect to be creating much other than some basic photo editing, and then maybe some sprucing up (if you’re in the mood to do it). You can either take a picture that you already have on your device, or you may take a new picture (iPhone users only) and edit that. When you open your picture in the application, you’ll notice the options right on the screen in menu format:

• Photo Management: Cropping, Straightening, Rotating, & Flipping
• Photo Colour Filter: Exposure, Saturation, Tint, Black & White, & Contrast
• Photo Options: Sketch, Soft Focus, & Sharpen
• Photo Effects: Effects & Borders

On the bottom of the screen, you’re able to cancel the project, revert to last modication, go forward to newest mod, and then either Save/Save & Upload. Some great options there for any style (and experience) of photographer. With the mobility available these days, it doesn’t get any more mobile than this. Imagine this. You’re on a shoot somewhere, and on the shoot, your laptop by chance loses power; battery is very very low. You have to take the train back home and it’s a 30 minute ride. You could take the photos you just took, transfer them on to your iPhone or iPod right there and enjoy your ride home while editing some of the pictures. I fooled around with some of my own photos and came up with this change.

Like I said, not much to the picture. I just added a saturation change with a few changes to the soft focus. Overall a good picture to begin with, with the outcome of another nice picture. I might not able to super impose the picture on an ex-girlfriend on the face of an ugly dog, I can spruce up pictures of this beautiful pug and upload them to my Photoshop.com account right from my iPhone.

It’s not a bad deal, and by no way is it not worth a trial. It’s a free app on the iTunes App Store and definitely among the best photo editing apps on the device(s).

Look & Feel: Now, as I mentioned, the actual Photoshop.com is more appealing in almost every way. However, with that in mind, this app is not entirely unpleasant. It has a quite good design… it just pales in comparison to it’s parent site. You won’t be blinded by bright colours, nor will you be confused by the branding of the app, it’s Adobe perfect in every aspect. 8.0/10!

Ease of Use: The ease of use of the application is rating very high. I almost wish this is how you can edit on the actual Photoshop software. You’d be able to do some real digital finger painting. This may is definitely going to be a tough section to deny a good score. I can’t find a bad thing about the usability for the app. 10/10!

The Good, The Bad, & The WTF: The good thing is that the software involved is very highly rated and powerful for a hand-held device. I experienced no lag whatsoever in my experience and found it incredibly easy to manipulate my photos with (and here’s the bad) the limited amount of options on on board with the app. As for the WTF, why is Adobe this incredibly awesome for releasing this app for free? I’ll add a bad to the WTF, because really there is a very limited amount of features to the app, and in the age of DLC, where is it for this app? 8.0/10!

Total Score

87/100

If you’d like to friend me (Erin Blaskie) on Gowalla, check out my profile here.

Watch the video demo here:

The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase.

Waking up in the lightest sleep phase feels like waking without an alarm clock – it is a natural way to wake up where you feel rested and relaxed.

Sleep Cycle has become a huge success with a #1 paid app position in many countries, including Germany, Japan and Russia.

Watch the video demo here:

You can go from jamming out to Taylor Swift one minute to rocking with Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters the next. This is the most extensive and most organized radio service that I’ve come across in my days. With a similar functionality to last.fm but a better design and range to it’s database, Slacker brings in fans to radio stations that you can create or follow so that you can listen to day in and day out.

Now, there are two different versions of the application. One, being the free version, does have an audio ad every few songs. It’s roughly a 30 second ad that just either tells you about the next song or what’s new for Slacker itself. With the free version you also get the ability to skip songs. For example, I just ran in to a Simple Plan song that I didn’t like. I was able to skip to the next one and it brought me to “Feeling This” by Blink-182.

The paid version is paid on a monthly basis. They offer unlimited song skipping, no ads, and “more”. You can sign up for a two month plan at $9.99 or the 12 month plan for $47.99. Both are great deals for somebody looking to have total control over their radio. I’m not that person. I don’t listen to the radio that often, and so far I haven’t run across a song that I don’t have in my iTunes library.

So how does this exactly work? It’s simple. When you first get on to the app, I’ll recommend signing up for the account. You can share your favorites with your friends on the site or link it to Twitter to get more of your friends involved.

From there you can do multiple things:

• Find Music
• Top Stations
• Slacker Spotlight
• Recently Played

Now, while you’d hope the recently played would hold your recently played “songs”… it doesn’t. It’ll host your recent stations instead. Which, is a good idea, because I liked every song except one or two on the ‘blink-182′ station.

The find music option might be a good option to those who have something specific in mind, but for me, I never know what I want, so I stick with the pre-made stations on the Top Stations tab or I’ll venture in to the music genre’s below those options.

But honestly, we all have that artist (or group of them) that you just can’t stand. The great feature on this app is that while you’ve already favorited some songs and bands on the app, you can just as equally ban them from the stations you’re listening to. For me, there’s no Miley Cyrus. Hold on, let me take in that moment of never having to listen to her again. Okay. I’m good. Relieved.

Look & Feel: Alright, so as I mentioned this app has a nice design to it. I like it a lot. It’s not simple at all, there is obviously a well thought out plan to this. Nothing is obscure or out of place. An instant hit. I don’t think you can really improve much from here. 9.5/10

Ease of Use: The ease of use may have been over played in the review above, however it is by no means very difficult. It’s one of those apps that, for newcomers to the iPhone, you may need some time playing around with. Once you get the feel to it, you’ll love it that much more. 8.5/10

The Good, The Bad, & the WTF: The good… well beside no more Miley Cyrus? And all of the blink-182, Jimmy Buffett, and Foo Fighters I can ever imagine? Man that’s great! The bad part is you don’t have 100% control over the songs. You can get damn close to that point with your favorites and bans list, but when I want to hear a certain playlist of songs, I may have to wait and skip through some songs to get to that point. It’s still not bad. The WTF moment in this app is really the amount of options and accessibility you have in this FREE app. With the ability to get this on your iPhone, you can plug it in to your car and have instant free radio where normally you’d have to pay for ad-free radio. 9.0/10

Total Score

90/100

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To learn more about Chris and his TOTHEGALAXY site, you can venture on over to see all of his posts, even some exclusive ones!

Check out the iPeriod app on WinkPass.com here.

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