Smartphone/Tablet Apps Archives - Page 5 of 6

Vine vs. GIFBoom

June 5, 2013 TechyDad Smartphone/Tablet Apps

When Twitter released Vine, I honestly didn’t see the point. I can see having short text conversations with people, but 6 second video? I just don’t see the point. It’s not like there aren’t video apps out there already. You could easily post a short video of yourself on your YouTube channel and link to it. I understand that Vine has it’s own "social network" where you can follow people and like their videos, but so does YouTube (again, without the 6 second limitation). In the end, though, I couldn’t even try it out because Twitter released the app for iOS only and we have Android phones.

When Vine came to Android, I decided to give it a try. After all, way back when, I turned my nose up at the idea of Twitter. Why should I converse with people I don’t know using only 140 characters or less? What good could possibly come of it? Well, once I tried it, I saw the use. (Present day me laughs at six-years-ago me.) Perhaps Vine was the same thing. Perhaps, once I used it, I’d see the breakthrough social need for this and my life would forever be altered.

So I shot a Vine video and….

I’m underwhelmed.

My expectations weren’t high, but Vine didn’t even really live up to this. Yes, it’s a short video shooting tool, but taking the video just seems clunky and the purpose behind it still feels unnecessary. The more I thought of it, the more I began to think that the best use for this would be replacing animated GIFs with short stop motion videos.

Still, this seemed tedious. There was no way of re-doing a shot if you messed it up. (For example, if your hand happened to be in the shot when the camera went off.) The only solution was to stop and redo the entire Vine video.

I began to wonder. Are there any mobile tools for making animated GIFs? That’s when I found GIFBoom for Android. (They have an iOS app too.) I decided to give it a go as well.

When I first loaded the app, I noticed that it has it’s own social network. It feels almost like an Instagram app, only instead of single photos you are creating animated GIFs. You can either set the camera to take a series of photos automatically or you can take them one at a time manually. (The later is my favored method.)

Once done, you can select which photos appear in the animation (excluding, for example, that shot that showed your hand), select a filter (black and white animated GIF anyone?), and then create the GIF. You then post it to GIFBoom’s network and it can tweet out a link for you. Your GIFBoom page also includes code to embed your GIF on your website.

Here’s a little tip too. You can use GIFBoom to create the animated GIF and then back out of posting it. Your GIF will still be on your phone. On Android phones, at least, you can browse the file structure to find the animation, and send it to another app or e-mail it to someone. For example, here’s this animated GIF loaded from my phone and uploaded to my website:

Bonus using this method of embedding versus Vine or the built-in GIFBoom embed? JavaScript is not required!

Do you use Vine? GIFBoom? If so, what do you think of them? If not, do you see a point in either?

Disclaimer Even Though I Don’t Need One: I wasn’t compensated by anyone for this post. Neither GIFBoom nor Vine nor any third party asked me to do it, paid me to do it, or contacted me in any way. All of the opinions above are my own.

Counting Calories With MyFitnessPal

May 31, 2013 TechyDad Fitness, Smartphone/Tablet Apps, Weight Loss

In the beginning of May, my in-laws went to Disney World. They happened to be there during the May the 4th, also known as Star Wars Day. Disney, of course, had some wonderful shirts available for May the 4th. My in-laws asked if I’d like one and I told them to get me a size large. When they brought it back and I tried it on, though, it didn’t fit.

A couple of weeks later, thanks to warmer weather, I took out my short sleeve shirts. I put one on but it was too snug. So I put another one on and another and another. All too tight. Clearly, it was time to lose some weight.

Previously, I had success with writing down my food intake. It forces me to really examine what I’m eating and not just shove food into my mouth on a whim. However, writing food items down in a paper notebook is so pre-smartphone. I did some searching in the Google Play store and found the MyFitnessPal Calorie Counter.

After entering in my details (height, weight, etc.), MyFitnessPal told me how many calories I had every day. Then, it was a simple matter of entering what I ate into my food diary.

You can search for food.

You can enter your own food.

You can select food you’ve eaten before.

And, in my favorite feature of all, you can scan a barcode to find and enter food items.

The database of food is very extensive. I had a new variety FiberOne snack cakes and the app found them quickly and easily.

As you enter in food, the app tallies up how much you have consumed and displays how many calories you have left for the day.

You can also see a detailed analysis of your nutritional intake.

To get more calories to consume, you can exercise. Exercise is entered just like food only it adds to the calories you have available to you instead of subtracting them.

All of your data is synced to MyFitnessPal’s servers so you can enter information in multiple devices. (There are iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Phone apps as well.) There’s a lot more to the app including weight charts, but as I’ve been using this for less than a week, I haven’t used these yet.

Overall, I’m loving this app. It’s so much easier to keep track of what I’m eating than a notebook. I at first found the calorie count too low, but quickly found that my desire to eat bigger portions was more out of momentum than appetite. In fact, I’ve found that I typically end days with a few hundred calories to spare. Finally, while I can’t claim any "official" weight loss due to this being my first week of use, I checked on the scale and definitely seem to have lost two or three pounds. In any event, MyFitnessPal can be an invaluable aid in a weight loss plan.

Another App Bites The Dust – Goodbye TweetDeck

April 22, 2013 TechyDad Smartphone/Tablet Apps, Twitter

On Friday, I was checking some news items when I stumbled upon a note about TweetDeck. For those who don’t know, TweetDeck is a wonderful Twitter client that lets you read your stream easily as well as view additional columns for users, searches, or lists. This is my preferred Twitter client. I don’t know how I’d keep up to date with Twitter without it.

Unfortunately, it looks like I’m about to find out.

As of May 7th, TweetDeck’s Android, iPhone, and Adobe AIR versions will cease to function. (The web app will continue to work.) The reason behind this is the impending Twitter API upgrade. The 1.0 version of the Twitter API is being retired in favor of the new 1.1 version. TweetDeck is based on version 1.0. TweetDeck’s team made the decision to focus all effort on the web version of the application and thus shut down the rest.

First, Google Reader and now this.

Of course, this meant that I went on a hunt for a new favorite Twitter client application. My initial step was to list all of TweetDeck’s features that I liked and that I’d like to see in a new Twitter client.

1. I like that TweetDeck allows me to show lists and searches as columns. Users as columns is nice, but I don’t actually use it that often. (Mostly during Twitter parties and then I can use TweetDeck’s web version.)

2. I like getting notifications for updates not just for mentions or direct messages, but for said lists and searches as well. (Notifications for my main timeline aren’t needed. Since I’m following over 1,000 people, there’s no way I can keep up with everyone.)

3. Handle multiple accounts. (After all, I do have the @FollowerHQ account even if I don’t use it often.)

I began trying a few apps from the Google Play app store. UberSocial looked nice initially, but wound up missing key features. (Namely, it couldn’t save searches and lists as columns.) Then, I decided to try out the official Twitter app, but found it extremely limiting. (Which is odd since Twitter actually owns TweetDeck. I’d think they’d want to fold TweetDeck’s features into the main Twitter client. If they do, I’ll revisit the app, but for now it’s MUCH too limited feature-wise.)

I had a recommendation of Falcon Pro, but it costs $1.96. I don’t mind paying, but I’d like to be able to try it first. I’d hate to pay only to find out that I don’t like the application. Besides, this review says that it doesn’t have push notifications.

For now, I’ve settled on Plume. It’s not perfect. For one thing, while it lets me use a list or search as a column, it won’t show me notifications on new tweets in these areas.

What Twitter app do you use? If you are answering TweetDeck, what will you move to when TweetDeck shuts down.

NOTE: The "cutie bird" icon above is by Luen and is available from OpenClipArt.com.

Addicted To MathDuko

March 19, 2013 TechyDad Geeky Pursuits, Review, Smartphone/Tablet Apps

I have a new addiction and it is all GeekDad’s fault. Last week, GeekDad posted about how math teachers are using KenKen as a educational tool. Knowing that NHL loves math almost as much as I do (sometimes I think more than I do), I decided to try it out to see if it would be good for him.

I found an Android app called MathDuko. MathDuko follows the same rules as KenKen so I figured it would be a good app to try.

Big mistake. Now I’m hooked.

In many ways, KenKen and MathDuko follow the same rules as Sudoku. In both, you must use the given numbers only once in each row and column. However, whereas Sudoku has groups of 9 blocks (3×3) that must contain one of each number, MathDuko has a veritable jigsaw puzzle setup.

Each piece of the MathDuko puzzle has the result of a math equation and how it was obtained. For example, in the image above, a three square piece says "12x". This means that the three numbers, when multiplied together, total 12. You are limited in numbers from one to the width/height of the board. In this case, this means that the available numbers are one to seven. In the example above, this means that the numbers in the "12x" piece could be 1, 3, 4 or 2, 3, 2. (The puzzle spans multiple rows and columns. MathDuko doesn’t have Sudoku’s one-number-per-block limit. In addition, the numbers can be in any order. In the "2-" puzzle block, the answer could be 5, 3 just as easily as it could be 3, 5.

So how does the app fare? Amazingly well. You can select puzzles from easy (4 squares by 4 squares) all the way up to "ultimate" (9 by 9). A clock keeps track of how long your puzzle solving is taking. (This is a feature that can be turned off for those who don’t wish to race the clock.) You can also mark potential values as "maybe" to keep track of the many possibilities. Of course, the price is also right: The app is free.

I’d definitely recommend the app to anyone with a love of math be they in elementary school or long since graduated from college. I see much time spent figuring out MathDuko boards in my future.

App Analysis: Doodle Bowling

July 17, 2012 TechyDad Games, Review, Smartphone/Tablet Apps

When I first got my smartphone, I couldn’t wait to download apps. I’ll admit that the first app I downloaded was a game: Angry Birds Space. Since that first download, I’ve installed many, many more apps. A few I use often, some sit on my phone mostly unused, and some were uninstalled rather quickly. I’ve come to enjoy finding clever, useful, or just plain interesting apps, especially if they are ones that aren’t that famous.

I’m going to begin a series of app reviews. Some might be ones everyone has heard of and some might be more obscure. Some might increase your productivity, some might increase your creativity, and some might distract you with fun gameplay.

Though I’ve downloaded many games, I recently realized that I hadn’t gotten any bowling games. Now, I love bowling. Some of my fondest memories of my grandfather are of him attending my bowling league games and giving me advice… and then giving the other team advice when I refused to listen to him. It’s the sort of thing that was annoying then, but makes me sentimental now.

So off I went to the Google Play store to look for a bowling game. There were many to choose from, but one leapt off the page, so to speak: Doodle Bowling. When you load up Doodle Bowling, you are presented with some graph paper and a crudely drawn ball. At the far end of a pair of lines are ten pins. You "pick up" the ball by pressing on it and then flick your finger upwards to launch it at the pins. In addition, by rapidly swiping your finger left or right, you can put some spin on the ball and direct when it finally ends up. As the ball hits the end of the lane, it "rips" through the paper, sending pins scattering.

The goal of the game is the same as normal bowling. Knock down as many pins as possible. Your score is tallied just under the lane and is displayed at the end of the game.

By itself, this would be fun, but might get old quickly. To increase the replayability, there are many different themes to unlock. One turns your "graph paper lane" into a chalk board (pins disappear with a puff of smoke). One brings your bowling experience into outer space. One even lets you bowl in a normal, ordinary bowling alley. Each play earns you one credit. Each theme costs a certain number of credits. Therefore, there is an incentive to play the game over and over to unlock all of the themes.

What I most like about this game is that it is fun, quick, and simple. A single game of bowling takes about two or three minutes. There is a definite joy when all of the pins fall down and that "Strike" or "Spare" banner appears. Finally, the controls are so simple that my five year old mastered them almost immediately.

Since this is a free app, there are the requisite ads above the bowling action. However, I found these to be unobtrusive and not easily clicked by accident. (All of your interaction tends to take place at the bottom of the screen while the ads are up top.) A few ads is a fair trade for the bowling fun.

This is definitely a keeper and will surely provide the kids and I with many wonderful, pin smashing hours of fun – in 10 frame, 3 minute chunks.

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