ANIMATION DESK FOR IPAD – REVIEW (86%)

Animation Desk for iPad is a full animation studio released by Kdan Mobile Software Ltd.

The application allows you to create simple animations that you can then export out to facebook, youtube or your photo library.

The application gets you to create a project, you are then given a blank canvas to work on, draw your first picture, then you can select the next blank canvas or duplicate the existing one. The duplication make it very easy to animate more stationary images. The previous image is visible through the current canvas so you can judge how much you want to move the image. Normally, you will erase the parts of the image that are moving and then draw them back in at a new location.

To draw is simple, just select the colour you want from the paint pots and then select a drawing tool, a pencil, a paint brush etc, then start drawing.

There are three different view modes, the desk view, the film strip view and a full screen view. Each has its advantage. The film strip is good if you want to move the images around in the time flow.

The user interface is good, and easy to navigate, however, I would have liked the colour palette to have better controls. Do not forget to press the ? in the bottom right when you start to learn the functions, flick left and right to see the various screen views.

On the upside:

• Well designed user interface.
• Excellent animation tool

On the downside:

• Wish you could export the videos are the speed you wanted some animations look better at 1/4 speed.
• Lack of options over pen/paint sizes.

Overall, this is a great animation tool, I really enjoyed putting some simple animations together, and then saving them off into my photo library. My seven year old son is also loves this application, he picked it up quickly and has been building some nice animations of his own. This is an impressive and simple application that does exactly what you would want it too.

Rating: 86%

Size: 38 MB

Price (at time of review): £0.59

Link: Animation Desk for iPad – Kdan Mobile Software LTD 

 

RUMOURS FOR MARCH 2ND 2011 – SOAPBOX

Apple have their annoucement lined up for March 2nd 2011, but what will we see at the annoucement?

Lots of people have a view, but here is ours for what it is worth.

iOS 4.3 – Will be released on the day, or a day of two afterwards. Nothing huge there.

iOS 5 – Will be demoed on stage, showing some interesting new features developers will be able to tap into.

A revamp of MobileMe / Cloud Services from Apple – Lots of possibilities here, and only Apple know for sure, most likely most of MobileMe will go free, with a paid upgrade model. Cloud storage of music tracks. Apple are also likely to put a cloud service like iDisk into iOS 5, that will compete with Dropbox and similar services.

iPad 2 – The new iPad will be unveiled it will have:

• A front facing camera capiable of HD Facetime
• Lighter in weight with the same battery life.
• Better speakers (for facetime and playing media).
• Bump in the spec, with increase in RAM, and maybe duel core processor.
• Thunderbolt support has been suggested, and seems likely.
• Pricing will remain very similar to current pricing.
• Screen will remain unchanged, just improvement in touch sensitivity.

 

FRIENDED – FACEBOOK FOR IPAD – REVIEW (83%)

Friended – Facebook for iPad is released by NapkinStudio.com

This application is a way to allow you to use all the functions of the Facebook site via the iPad. As you probably know some of the Facebook functions, especially chat, have issues of the iPad safari browser. This application is set up to allow access to these features.

When you first log into the applications you are asked for your facebook username and password, and then when this is entered you will be presented with a scaring list of security accesses you are giving to friended, but they are all understandable if it needs to access the facebook options for you. 

The application itself has a nice user interface that allows you to get to the various facebook options quickly and effectively.

The screen its laided out with recent photos to the left, the walls and feeds in the middle, and friends and chat to the right. There are several icons at the top to access your profile, friends requests, chats etc.

The only real issue I have to the layout is that there is no hint on who the pictures and friends logos are. For example I will see a nice sunset in the photos, but need to click on it to find out posted it. My friends use logos and pictures of toys for their logos, so again I have to click to find out who it is. These is not a major issue.

Out of the five times I tested the application, the chat option was unavailable two out of the five times.

All the features I tested worked nicely and made it easy to comment, like and send messages.

On the upside:

• Well designed user interface.
• Nicer to use than facebook for some features.

On the downside:

• Chat does not seem to work every time.
• A case of guess your friends at times.
• Does not seem to be a way to have multiple accounts.

Overall, I found this application very nice to use and I preferred it is several ways over the facebook application. There are some changes I would like to see, like multiple accounts, but these could be fixed in updates. The basics of the product work really well. I think this will become my default method to access facebook now.

Rating: 83%

Size: 3.3MB

Price (at time of review): £0.59

Link: Friended – Facebook for iPad – NapkinStudio.com 

 

NEWS FROM THE LAST 7 DAYS (FEB 27 2011)

Here are some of the headline from this week.

• Apple releases new MacBook Pros – including Thunderbolt
• iOS 4.3 coming very soon
• Apple preview OS X Lion to developers
• Apple announcement due on March 2nd, and it will more than likely be for iPad2
• Mobile Me disappears for Sale, is it going free or just moving to the App Store?
• Lots of fears over the new subscription service.
• Amazon poke fun at the iPad for sunny day usage.
• Hunters: Episode One – Interesting turned based strategy game, free for one hour of play.

Archos, media player and tablet makers are still doing well, financially anyway.

Xoom doing OK, but Flash still sinced off, so cannot view its own website. 

 

PHOTOSYNC – REVIEW (90%)

PhotoSync – wireless transfers your photos and video to another device is released by Touchbyte GmbH

This application is designed to easily transfer photos from one device to another, wirelessly. Whether it is iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or Mac. You make sure that location services is switched on for the application (*UPDATED – Apple require to this from applications using the Photo Library*) and you are ready to transfer.

Sync the two devices and select the phones on device A and then transfer to Device B via Wifi or Bluetooth.

This is really time saving and great if you just want to move photos onto your iPad from the iPhone while on holiday, for the whole family to look at and enjoy.

The user interface is very good selecting the photos you want from your camera roll or photo library and then transfer them over to device you sync with. 

On the upside:

• Well designed user interface.
• WiFi and Bluetooth supported.

On the downside:

• I do not like having to switch on location services to use the application (but those are Apple’s rules)

Overall, this is a great application, it does exactly what it is designed to do. The application work well in all modes and makes the transfer of photos simple and quick. I used it on a trip, took photos on the iPhone and on the journey back transferred the photos to the iPad via bluetooth so the others in the vehicle could look. If you have more than one iOS device and love photos/videos, this is an application you need.

Rating: 90%

Size: 16.1 MB

Price (at time of review): £1.19

Link: PhotoSync – wirelessly transfers your photos and videos – touchbyte GmbH