From their site:

In this episode we chat about Aperture 3, 1Password, and Apple Care. We also compare Run and Canabalt, and by compare I mean we raise our voices a couple octaves and argue which is better. The outtakes are pretty funny so make sure you stick around for them. Please subscribe to our videocast in iTunes.

Make sure to check out Macgasm.net and follow them on Twitter!

Check out the video podcast below and be sure to check out their website at www.Macgasm.net. If you’re a Twitterholic (like me) you can find the Macgasm crew at @Macgasm.

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

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!

One of the features to U.D. that I didn’t mention in my app (specifically because I hadn’t experienced it yet) is their newsletter sign-up. Towards the time of the publication of the review, I was compelled to sign up for the newsletter for a few of my favorite cities. I signed up for NYC, Boston, Miami, & Los Angeles.

Between those three cities, I get on average 3-4 emails per day from Urban Daddy. Which, isn’t quite that bad (for me anyways). I actually don’t mind getting what some might call “spam” emails. This is a great way to interact with the creators and contributors. While most social media guru’s will say that the way to interact is all on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and so-on… I still enjoy getting e-mails from people and reading up on events from my community and everywhere else.



As you can see the e-mails will pile up. I keep a lot of emails on board and like to refer back to them occasionally. But if you look closely, you’ll see that the letters aren’t just about where to get the best tiramisu! (Although I wish it was!) Urban Daddy will sent you updates on some good events in the cities selected. For example, I just received one from the NYC area about Shaq hosting an art exhibit called “Size DOES Matter” at a Chelsea Art Gallery. That’s a pretty sweet deal, being notified about Shaq curating the event. Who wouldn’t want to go see that? It’s Shaq, Superman, the Big Aristotle. Just remember, don’t touch the Shaqtus.

So while browsing through your e-mails or visiting their site, I highly recommend signing up for a newsletter for the city closest to you. I don’t even live in NYC, but I liked signing up for it just in case I wanted to venture on in to the city for some of their famous tiramisu on a Friday night. With the app and combined e-mail/website efforts, this app is one powerful force to be reckoned with. Once it goes national, watch out Foursquare & Gowalla!

TED brings together articles, videos, and audio clips together on to one little 3 inch screen with topics in the technology, entertainment, & design field. The home page brings you to the base camp of all things TED. Very simple look to it, but it all works well. Instead of bringing you the popular links, it sets up with a half screen view of “Ideas Worth Spreading” – a brief look at what TED is. Below this portion of the screen is where the latest items of TED are displayed; a quick list of about 5 items; both video and audio.

The next option on the dashboard is a Videos section. A simple tap of the screen brings you to the page filled with ‘All Videos’ on TED. Currently there are 308 videos on the app in all three TED fields. There is no organization to this list, so navigating this list can get pretty extensive but I guess the whole premise of TED is to open your ideas to the ideas inside.

Much like the video section of the app, the audio is just as unorganized. However, the collection pales in comparison to the amount of videos, so trying to find what you want shouldn’t be too hard.

To make up for the lack of organization, TED does offer a quick search tab. Although, if you’re using this app to discover ideas, the search feature is an option used all that often. Some people would argue that you could use the search for finding good videos. Those people would be wrong. It’s must easier to just favorite videos that you’ve just watched or the audio you listened to. (This is my favorite feature)

All together, the app is pretty cool. It may have sounded like I was bashing the app, but that’s just me saying it as is.

Look and Feel: The look of this is really probably too simple. It’s not at all impressive. The portion of the app that wins real points is in the transitions and opening of the video and audio items. 5.5/10

Ease of Use: This is definitely an easy app to use, although it’s not the easiest to navigate when trying to browse through articles in the massive lists. However, combining the use of search & favorites is what will make the app! 7.0/10

The Good, The Bad, and the WTF: The good. Well, the good part is that the content on TED is really amazing! I’ve been loving the app and everything I’m finding on it is really awesome and interesting. The bad is that I’d really like it to either look better, or add the ability to share to Twitter or Facebook. The WTF to this app is really just the lack of networking capabilities they could be utilizing. I’m not referring to Twitter (and other social media). I’m speaking of course about being able to save these articles to their website and utilizing ideas from such sites as blip.fm. 8.0/10

Total Score

68/100

This is a small app with a lot in it from digital cover to cover. Kindle is the app that every book lover should get a hold of immediately. You may be turned off by the small screen of the iPhone/iPod touch as opposed to the actual screen size of the Kindle, however the Kindle team have compensated for the screen size to add in some cool features and helped the ease of reading such as a magnifying glass and a highlighter tool.

But as we roll on with this app and you start adjusting to the views of each and every page, wondering what will happen on the next, you really gain a feeling of being accustomed to this app. It may not top an actual book or the Kindle feeling, but regardless of format, you’re able to read literary classics on a handheld device that you can carry in your pocket! So that means you could read any book, that you’ve purchased from the Kindle store, on the train to work, in traffic, on a plane, sitting at a restaurant, movie, the possibilities are endless.

One of the features that I love is the ‘Go to’ option. It allows you to jump to the cover, table of contents, beginning, or any page you wish to go to. Along with this feature on the task bar you can edit the views of each and every page. This means you can raise the size (or lower it) and also change the color of the text/page background color. You can choose from black, white, and sepia. Each option is really quick to change and offers opportunities to every type of person and how they enjoy reading.

All in all, this app so far is definitely my favorite out of the e-Readers. I’ve been pro-Nook before getting this and am still very interested in even buying the Nook itself, however, with this app in hand I have no instant desire to go out and buy any type of ready in the immediate future. I don’t have an abundance of time to read books all that often. Most of my reading gets done on lovely vacations such as this current holiday. With that in mind, let’s look to the scoring:

Look and Feel: This is probably one of the more simple apps I’ve come across yet. There is not very much to it, but what’s there to a page in a classic if not just the words? I could see complaining about a graphic novel looking like this. However, I’m not reading up on the Dark Knight, I’ve been using one of my favorite books, Treasure Island, for this review. Score for this gets a sweet 9.5/10

Ease of Use: This app couldn’t get any easier to use unless it read your eyes and turned the page when you got to the point. Well, maybe, I guess you could add that in the next update. However, without that, I’m still scoring this highly. For the efficiency and quickness to the app with so much information stored. Rolling with this I’m scoring this highly with the popular 9.5/10

The Good, The Bad, and the WTF: The good thing about this is that it’s completely awesome! That word is maybe understating my feelings. The only bad thing is that our screen is so small. Those who have eye problems may stray away from this because of that, however, as I mentioned you can attempt to fix this problem in your settings. Here is the best part, the WTF point of this application. The majority of books, even newer releases like Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” is less than $10. How can you beat that? Score for this is up there with another 9.5/10!

Total Score
95/100

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GALLERY

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You can find more information on Amazon’s Kindle by visiting their website here.

“Treasure Island” was purchased via the Kindle Store and is in public domain publishing.

Setup questions? Post them as a comment and I’m happy to help!

Today’s review is featuring bitAlpha’s eToDo iPhone application. eToDo is an a task oriented application helping its users add, manage, and remind themselves of upcoming tasks they may have in the school or workplace. eToDo is capable of storing, adding, editing, and repeating tasks. With that idea in mind, you’re not capable of keeping every little task and obligation in order.

I really found the application quite simple to use. There isn’t a lot to it, and I don’t think you could really ask for big changes to it. It starts when you firstload up you’re newly purchased app. You notice first, it’s “lists”. The default list is:

• Inbox
• Action
• Next
• Someday
• All
• Completed

Of course, through the settings, you’re able to go through and either add, edit, or delete these items. Upon further inspection of the lists, you notice that this is really your main base, or headquarters. As I mentioned, there is not much to this application. Just a few clicks and that’s that. If we explore the ‘Inbox’ icon you’ll be brought to a list of your upcoming, completed, and/or repeating tasks.

As you can see, this is the basic look to eToDo. It’s the beginning to a list of things to do. You can see my task in hand. “Write up eToDo review.” It’s due today, and I’ve classified it as a blog post tag. I used the computer icon to remind me that it needs to be done on the computer as opposed to any other platform. I know, I know… you’re thinking, “it just CAN’T be that easy to setup a task!” Alas, it is! When you pull up a new task, you’ll meet this screen:

Inside this window, you can select an identification icon to classify or remind yourself of a general idea about the task in order. You may also: give it a title, post a note, give it an urgency, set dates and repeating time, and also tag it. Again, nothing to it. After adding your task, let’s say you need to go back in and set it to repeat every week. It’s easy, with the click of a button you’re back in to the edit panel (below) and you can edit anything in the touch of a button or swipe of the finger.

And now, you’re wondering, you said this was a simple app, there can’t be more. And you’d be correct. We’ve started a task, and then we’ve edited it. It’s a basic app and one cute enough to love.

However, there are a few things I’m not all that fond of. For example, when it comes to dating your tasks. This is a pet peeve of mine (maybe some share it) when I set a task due next week, eToDo will set it up to say “December 10, 2009 +7 Days.” Which is fine, it gets the point across. But my peeve really hits when I think it’d be easier on the mind to say, “…A week away” or “7 Days Away.” It’s not that I’m lazy. Because I’m not, it’s just more convenient and something I, for one, am used to seeing in all of my apps. But really, this one issue in such a beautiful application? It’s hardly something sweat over. It gets the job done.

I put a lot of thought in to how I can grade the applications that I’ll be reviewing. After a few moments of thought, I came to the conclusion that these would fit best:

• Look & Feel: I’ll be looking at how the overall design is for the app. This could range from color and fonts to positioning of app items and the cute little heart I write over all my i’s.
• Ease of Use: Everybody loves things that are easy to use. The iPhone isn’t exactly the easiest thing to use. You may thing you’re a pro, but the easier an app is to use, the less you’ll notice it’s actual difficulty.
• The Good, The Bad, And the WTF: The “finer points of the app, the bad parts, and the WTF what is this doing in an app” portion is my favorite rating. It’s a simple description.

Before I continue, however, I will express my honest opinion. Before downloading and installing this app, I was weary. I googled eToDo, and I read some pretty harsh reviews, and maybe they were reviewing a previous version of the application or maybe they just didn’t like the company in general. In my case, I really loved the app and I’ll continue using it. It fits my needs as both a student and a busy person in general. I’ve been using it for school, work, and even little reminders that I need to go do small tasks like shopping or schedule appointments for a doctor or haircut. It’s such a great application, I’d recommend it. Please enjoy and here’s my official scoring for the application:

• Look & Feel: The loading screen isn’t much to look at. It’s a little TOO basic for my liking. I wouldn’t even know who created the app if I didn’t look it up. There’s just no sign of it unless you really look. (bitAlpha, btw). However, when you really get in to exploring it, you see that it’s quite pleasant. The design is edible and you can really have some fun and enjoy the backgrounds they’ve provided. No icons, or task related items feel out of place or stand out (in a bad way). Everything just has a very modern class to it and it’s very easy on the eyes. The text/font of everything is very easy to read, and well mapped out. Easily my favorite thing about the application. Score: 9.0/10

• Ease of Use: As I mentioned throughout this post, this app is so easy to use. Just a few taps of the iPhone (or iPod touch) and you’re ready to go. It takes under 45 seconds to create a new task, and even less to edit it. There could be a few additions to this section (see below). Score: 7.5/10

• The Good, The Bad, and the WTF: I’ll keep this simple. The good thing about this app is that it’s quite easy to use. I’ll say that forever. The bad is, that such a simple app actually costs money. I’ve seen a few free apps that have more to it. Although, you have to keep in mind, you are in a professional world and you’re dealing with a professional application. I don’t think the $0.99 is all that expensive for this application. I’d really through a fit if it was any higher than that. As for the WTF! moment for this post, they’re lucking out. There isn’t anything that really JUMPS OUT at me that is highly wrong. I could mention all of the little things that annoyed me, but it would be fair. Score: 7.5/10

Total Score: 80/100

Overall this app is definitely worth the buck. There may be some better apps out there, but they may be a bit more expensive. Functionality of this is incredibly easy, that in mind, I don’t think you can find one really worth the price aside from bitAlpha’s eToDo!