Reviews
A few weeks ago I reviewed Mr. Number a reverse number lookup App for the iPhone. The only real problem with that App was the number of free lookups you received. The first 20 were free, after that they were $.05. Since then I have found Number Guru. This is the App that I really wanted. Unlimited number of searches, great user interface, and a really great database of numbers to search from.
Interface is King!
I like smooth, easy to use, and easy to understand interfaces. Number Guru is a strait to the point App. launching it puts you right into the main tab ( and the main reason for using the App), the number lookup. Laid out just like the dial pad of the iPhone, you simply type the number you want to look up including the area code and hit GO. Number guru claims to have a 99% landline coverage, and 50% cell phone coverage. They make it a point to note that they don't have Verizon numbers in their database as Verizon doesn't give out customer numbers.
There are two other tabs available within the App. Support and History. History is just what it sounds like. Here you will find all of the numbers that you have previously looked up. Pretty strait forward. Support is more of a frequent asked questions section. It does offer the help email address if there is something that they haven't covered however the App so simple I can't imagine that there are many questions sent to that address.
I knew there was a catch…
So nothing is truly free. There are no Ads within the App, there is no limit to the free searches, and the App itself is free. Where's the catch? Every time the App is shut all of the way down, and started up again it asks you for to allow it to add your contacts and their numbers to the database. I'm not aware of any other use than just adding to the database, however I chose not to share my contacts numbers. My contacts are important to me and I don't share their numbers with anyone.
Conclusion
Need a reverse phone number App? Want it for Free? This is the App for you! Just be aware of what you're agreeing to share with the App.
UPDATE:
The day this review went live, Number Guru made an update to the App to remove the "add your contacts" feature. This was the feature that I most disliked.
You can get Number Guru for the iPhone from the iTunes store for free here: 
While it's true that the iOS does a decent job of auto correcting common typos and even suggesting alternative words, sometimes you need a real dictionary. Since the iOS doesn't have one built-in I've been in search of the BEST one. My current pick is Merriam-Webster Dictionary HD. This is a fast, clean reference tool. You can use it off-line to look up definitions, but if you want it to pronounce the word then you'll need an internet connection. My guess is that in order to keep the size of the App relatively small they only include the text. Once you find your word's definition, you can tap on ANY word in that definition to look up that word's definition. This is a really nice touch. It took me a minute to figure out how to select text to copy it since every word is tappable. You have to double tap outside of the text area to bring up the selection rectangle. You can also do a Voice Search and there is the ever popular Word of the Day. There's even a recent History to quickly get back to words you've looked up in the past. You get Synonyms and Antonyms, but no Thesaurus. All in all it's a good Dictionary option for the iPad.
You can get Merriam-Webster Dictionary HD for Free here from the
Get the iPhone/iPod touch version here from the
The other day I was having lunch with David Ziser and he was going on about his favorite new iPad App, Zite. After hearing him talk about how much he liked it and how it blew the competitors away, I figured I should try it. Zite is a customizable magazine App for the iPad. Not the first of it's kind but definitely the best. With custom content addition, auto learning, and an awesome interface this is my new favorite Magazine App.
Auto learning
The first thing that struck me as different about Zite was it's auto learn feature. Not really auto learning so much as it takes your interests from either Twtter, or Google reader (whichever you decide to log in with) and creates custom content for you. You don't have to sign in with these services to to use Zite however. You can skip this step and choose your content categories manually. I signed in with my Twitter account and Zite determined that I like Gadgets, Macs, Photography, Social media, technology, etc.. All of these things were correct. I was thoroughly impressed with this feature, and could have spent hours reading up on the content that it provided without and addition input from me.
Choosing More Content
While the auto learning feature did an outstanding job of picking categories and content that I enjoy, there were still a few things that I wanted to add from their list of sections. Doing so was easy. At the bottom of the sections list on the right side of the screen is a customize option. You are then presented with a list of different popular categories. I added Fashion (something that I want to keep up on for fashion photography), and Sports.
The second part of adding more content is adding custom content. Under the same "customize" option on the right side of the screen you find a "enter your own" box. This box allows you to type your own content interest and search it. I added Adobe, Photoshop, iPad, iPhone, iOS Apps etc.
Quality User Interface
One of the nicest parts of this App is the user interface. It has a distinctive magazine feel to it. Articles are laid out in Top Stories format (all topics mixed up), or by section. Choosing a specific section will get you expanded content on that particular topic that may or may not be covered in the Top Stories section. The transition between articles is smooth and the page turns are precise and handled well within the App. There aren't a lot of unneeded buttons or tabs to clutter the screen. Zite has done a wonderful job with this setup.
Conclusion
The auto learning feature, coupled with the ability to add custom content, combined with the slick user interface makes this my new favorite custom magazine App.
You can get Zite for the iPad from the iTunes store for free here:
I fly quite a bit! My last couple of years of air travel could make the Up the in Air (George Clooney) character envious. One of the ways I stay on top of things while flying is to use the Gogo inflight internet whenever it's available. Luckily I fly Delta 99.9% of time domestically and they have outfitted the majority of their fleet with Gogo. While I'm usually connecting via my MacBook Pro, there are times when I've taken trips with just my iPad. Their new Gogo Inflight App makes logging on so much easier. While you could certainly log on from your web browser, having their App means that your user name and password is saved and then you're just one tap away from connecting each time. With the Gogo App getting on is less taps. Just fire up the App and connect! That's it. Even though your browser can save your user name and password, logging on from your browser requires additional steps to connect such as entering the 6 random characters to verify that you're a human. This is a universal App and therefore it's native to iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. If you are a frequent Gogo user this free app will get you connected the fastest. While the App is FREE, the Inflight internet is not.
You can get the Gogo Inflight Internet App here from the
It's Friday… Why not talk about something light and fun?! A few months ago my brother sent me a picture of himself from a trip with his fiance to her home town. This particular brother is 6'0 tall and 175-180lbs soaking wet, but in the picture he looked 300lbs! I was hooked. I thought how funny it would be to take pictures of my friends, kids, and myself stretching the faces to cartoonish size.
It's A Novelty but it's Fun
Let's be honest. Fatbooth is a novelty. It's not something that has any real practical use, but it's a lot of fun. The really great thing about this App being a novelty though, is that the designers could spend a lot of time making it do the one thing that it was built for really, really well. Loading an image into the App is really, easy. You can either use the built in camera on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and take a picture with the built in camera App, or you can choose an image from your image gallery. The developers recommend a front facial image for the feature recognition algorithm to work correctly. Let's talk about that algorithm for a minute. It works remarkably well. The App places feature markers where it thinks these features are. You of course are able to move the feature markers if they haven't been placed in the correct spot, but I have found that the App does a pretty good job of locating the points on it's own. It looks for the eyes, mouth and chin, so these aren't too difficult to find.
If you don't like what the image looks like after the transformation, you can shake your iOS device to return to the original image and start over. Of course there are multiple ways to share your newly created image with the world. You can save it to your camera roll, post it on Twitter, Facebook, or email it.
I have to tell you, this app does a pretty good job of making your image look like you only a lot heavier. I posted the image of myself from the top of this review on my Facebook Page and had people that have known me for years believing that I was stung by a bee. 
For the cheap price of $.99 it's worth it just to see what you would look like +300lbs.
You can get Fatbooth for your iPhone or iPodtouch for $.99 from the iTunes store here:
You can get Fatbooth for your iPad for $.99 here:
While on my most recent international trip there was one App that I realized I didn't have for my iPad. I didn't have an iPad native currency converter. While I happily use Convertbot for all my unit conversion needs on the iPhone, they have yet to make an iPad native version. So I went in search of one for iPad. As you might expect there are several to choose from. Since there was one that caught my eye and it was free I decided to download it right there on the spot in the airport. The problem I have is that when I go to a country for the first time I may not even know what their currency symbol is. This usually means that I have to Google it first before I can even use Convertbot. Then I usually set the conversion to $100 US so that I'll know approximately how much walking around money I may need to withdraw from an ATM for taxis and such. XE Currency so far has fit my needs very nicely. Not only can it display 10 different currencies at once, you can search for the currencies that you wish to display by the name of the country. That ends my need to Google them. As you might expect the App automatically gets the current exchange rates automatically over the internet and you can refresh it as often as you like. You can also use the built-in calculator to figure something out before doing the conversions. You can tap on any of your displayed currencies and enter an amount in that currency and all the other currencies will reflect the conversion.
It's slick and it works! My only minor complaint about the app is one of aesthetics. One thing that bugs me is that while I don't mind the limit of 10 currencies displayed at a time, I do find it a little distracting that those 10 don't fill up the display. There is space left over that you could easily fill with 2 more currencies. This begs the question of either why is there a limit of 10 or why not design the UI so that those 10 take up the whole display? Like I said, it's a very minor complaint. Otherwise I LOVE using this App and best of all it's FREE! I didn't need to look any further. It does all that I needed.
You can get XE Currency for iPad for FREE here from the
You can also get XE Currency for iPhone/iPod touch for FREE here from the
Since 2005 Mashable.com has been the go to news source for me about technology, social media, startups, and gadgets. When I got my first iOS device Mashable! was one of the first Apps I went looking for. I thought I loved Mashable! before, but the iOS App, particularly the iPad version is THE best way to view the content from the site.
The UI is Made With You in Mind
The user interface of the Mashable! App is designed with the end user in mind. The default content view is ALL when you fire up the App. Because the App is iOS4+ compatible it will "remember" what section you were in if the App is just running in the background. I prefer the All view because they have such a wide array of content I'm afraid that I would miss something important if I were constantly viewing content in just one section. The content sections are divided into 11 different tabs. Each well thought out and containing content worthy of it's very own area. The titles range from social media to startups. If it's important in the world of technology, they cover it.
Other Sections
There is an "Other Sections" area of the Mashable! App that I find very useful. The first tab is Trending. This includes just what you would expect, the trending, or popular articles on Mashable!. I like this section because content is constantly being updated on the App and sometimes I miss it. If it was a particularly good article, or something that was really important, it will be in the trending articles.
The Lists tab holds exactly what you would expect. Mashable! is always creating lists for it's viewers. So many in fact that they need their own section. These lists will reside under the main topic that their content places them in, but the Lists tab will house all of them. These lists range from "8 tips for nailing your next startup job interview", to "57 new digital media resources you may have missed". I love lists. I love this section
We've all read how to articles. Wouldn't it be nice if you could find all of your favorite how to tech articles in one place? With the Mashable App you can! The how to's range from job interviews, App creation, business, etc. Pretty much anything you can think of in the tech or social media world, they have a how to for it.
The next two tabs are great resources. They are Twitter, and Facebook guidebook's. Everything you need to know about Facebook and Twitter is housed in these guidebooks. The best part about these guidebooks is their fluidness. If things change on Facebook or Twitter(they always are) the guides change. Great resources.
The last two sections aren't all that useful to me. The announcements, and Twitter List Directory tabs just don't usually hold a whole lot of content that I'm interested in. The Twitter List Directory didn't even work for me the last time I clicked on it, so I really don't find it useful. 
Conclusion
Chances are if you're reading this blog you're a tech person. At the very least you're interested in what's going on in the world of mobile devices. There is so much good content to take in on Mashable! that this a "must have" App. There's a reason it made the Top 100 of the year list.
You can get Mashable! for the iPhone from the iTunes store for free here:
You can get Mashable! for the iPad from the iTunes store for free here:
We're on iOS 4.x and there are a few things that still haven't been implemented into Apple's Mobile OS. To this day the built-in Mail client doesn't have any support for multiple Email Signatures. While you can certainly create multiple email accounts, the default email signature for each of them will still be "Sent from my iPhone" or "Sent from my iPad", etc. You can change this signature to whatever you want it to say including clever messages like "Sent from my iPhone, typos and all". However, what you can't do is assign a different signature to each email account or have a selection of signatures to automatically insert into an email message. I have 5 different email signatures that I use regularly on my MacBook Pro, but have no access to those signatures on my iDevices.
Email Signature Pro Saves the Day
My good friend Sarah K noticed that my signature coming from my iPad 2 was pretty generic and turned me on to Email Signature Pro. Email Signature Pro allows you to create up to six custom signatures complete with not only text, but also your photo, a second custom image, as well as social media icons complete with active hyperlinks. As a matter of fact while all of this is doable on the desktop, it's so much easier to create these signatures in the App.
Once you create your custom signature(s) you can then launch the app and tap one button to copy any one of your signatures to the clipboard. Then you can switch to Mail or any other App and paste it in. This is handy when replying to an email. However, if you are creating a new email from scratch you can tap the "insert Signature into New Email" button for the signature you want to use and the App will generate a new email (either in the App or using the Mail client-your choice) complete with your custom signature right in the body of the email. You can also export your custom signatures to your desktop/webmail client with images and links.
While the App is really slick and provides all the features I want, I do have a few gripes. First off there is no native iPad support. Don't worry, the App works just fine on the iPad, but it would be nice to have it in native iPad size. My second and larger gripe is that the App crashes a lot. I have found that when switching screens if you have an image setup and you don't wait for that image to display the app will almost be assured to crash. Luckily everything is preserved and all you have to do is re-launch it. Also you would probably only see this crash during the creation/editing of your signatures and not during the day-to-day use. I'd really like to see this bug(s) fixed and the App updated to be a lot more stable. My last couple of suggestions to the developer would be to spruce up the social media icons a bit. The colors seem very muted and I'd also like to see a sizing option for the custom graphic. It appears to only support one size and it's a bit too large for my taste (I know that clients usually say, "make the logo bigger!" However, it's not always what we want).
Overall Email Signature Pro provides a feature that should be built-in to iOS. Until Apple builds this in I'll be using Email Signature Pro.
You can get Email Signature Pro for $4.99 here from the
Over here at Best App Site we pride ourselves in bringing you the best Apps on the market. Because of the nature of business, most Apps that are really good cost something. Before you fill our email box I know that there are a ton of Apps out there that are awesome and are free but most of those Apps are developed by large corporations like Facebook, or Google. That said, Navfree is the BEST free Navigation App that I have ever seen. One of our readers Bryce Allaire suggested this App to us, and I want to say thanks to Bryce for that! This App has most of the features that our favorite paid navigation App Navigon has, with the great price point of Free. If you've been looking for a turn by turn navigation App but haven't wanted to shell out the money, read on, this might be the App for you.
Almost Everything You'd Want
When I first fired up Navfree I wasn't expecting much more than a map that offered turn by turn directions. What I found was a really full featured App that had some things that I would consider must have's in a $30-$50 Nav App, but certainly wouldn't have expected them to be housed within a free version. Not only does Navfree offer Google search for points of interest, but it offers Facebook and Twitter location posts as well. There is access to your music right from the home screen, and a 2d option just a tap away. It has a standard navigate to address option, a point of interest option, as well as favorites, and recent destinations. Pretty much everything that you would expect in a turn by turn Nav App. Almost…
There are a few key things either missing all together or rough around the edges. First, there is no option to select a contact's address from your contact list. This is big for me because I have tons of contacts that I have yet to visit, however I have their address. I use this feature all of the time in my primary Nav App. The second thing I found a little lacking was the address input. There are times that I know the city, and I know part of the street name, but not all of it. Or sometimes I know the city and the street name but not exactly how to spell it. My favorite Nav App allows me to input the City name and as I'm typing the street name will show me all of the streets that start with that particular letter. This is huge for me because (and this is bad I know) I never really listen fully to people when they give me directions or addresses. If I do, I rarely ever write them down. So what usually happens is I remember kind of what the street name is but not exactly. You can see how this can lead to a problem. In Navfree's defense, it's free! If Navfree was what I was using on a day to day basis for navigation, I would probably start listening and writing down addresses. A couple of things Noted by Bryce who recommended this App to us. First, Bryce says that it didn't include any highway direction. It tells you that you're on highway i75 for example, but not in which direction you're going on that highway (it does however have a compass built in so I don't think this would be too big of a problem). Second, Bryce says that it doesn't know all of the toll roads. I can't confirm this as we don't have any toll roads in Cincinnati, but in my testing the App knew all of the road names around here so that was a positive sign.
Ads
You didn't think you get everything for free did you? Navfree has in App advertising in the form of banners. The good news? With an in App purchase for only $3.99 you can get rid of those ads.
Perfect for you?
Is this App the perfect Navigation App? Nope. It is however the absolute best one for free that I've found. If you are dead set on not paying $30-$50 for a turn by turn Nav App, but still want to know where you're going, Navfree is for you. All I would recommend is this; be sure to write all of your addresses down so you can fill them in to the App.
You can get Navfree for the iPhone from the iTunes store for free here:
You can get Navfree for the iPad from the iTunes store for free here:
Just like Terry, when I look for a new App it is to solve a problem, or entertain me. After all why else would you want an App? It has to do one or the other otherwise I’m not interested. The other day I was at a photoshoot without my laptop and I needed to look at and move a file on the backend of my WordPress website. I had my iPad, and my iPhone with me. This was definitely a problem that I wanted to solve with a quality App. After a few quick searches I found FTP On The Go. There were two versions, Free and the Pro $9.99 version. I went with the Pro version because I wanted an App that worked on the iPhone as well as the iPad (universal binary). Only the Pro version is a universal binary. The free version is not designed for the iPad’s larger screen. This App has the look and feel of Fire FTP, my desktop FTP client. FTP On The Go does absolutely everything I need and more.
Functionality
The main things that I needed from an FTP client on my iOS device had to do with viewing, moving, and deleting files from my directory. There are a lot more features contained within this App however I simply don’t use them. Upon firing this App up you have to provide your ftp server address, your user name, and your password. Once you hit connect you will see the familiar screen similar to the one you see on your desktop FTP client, and the image you see above. From here you can access each folder within your directory, as well as the files contained within those folders. You can add any files to the FTP directory that you have saved on your iPad as you would with a normal desktop Client. You click on the Apps tab within iTunes to add files to the iPad. Along with adding files you can also save any file from your FTP directory to your iPad within the App.
Great things that I don’t use
I’m not a programmer. I don’t do any text editing of the code within my site. If I wanted to however, and if I wanted to do it on my iPad, this App is the one to do it. It offers a built in text editor that allows you to download, edit and re-upload the text file right to your site. Also built in is a browser allowing the user to view the changes within the App. On the iPad, the App allows you to view and edit many files at once.
FTP On The Go Pro is for You
This App is perfect for anyone who wants to access, and/or edit their FTP directory. With all of the built in features including automatic image resizing, smart replace protecting your files from being corrupted if an upload is interrupted. This is the most full featured FTP App available in the iTunes store. If you have a need to access your files from your iOS device, this is the App for you.
Download FTP On The Go Pro from the iTunes store for your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch for $9.99 here:
