While I do most of my shopping online there are times that I do need to pick things up in person. Anything to get me in and out of a crowded store is always appreciated. The Apple Store App has been good for purchased Apple and 3rd party products online, but now the App has been updated with features to make it more usable when you are visiting a brick and mortar Apple Store too. The first new option is "EasyPay" (self-checkout) and you can do this directly on your iDevice. All you need to do is enter the store, connect to the Apple Store WiFi and then most shelf items (accessories) can be purchased right from your device. You scan the barcode, sign-in with your Apple ID and pay for the item(s) using your saved credit card. This is great for those times when you want to run in, pick up something quick and get out. Note that Apple doesn't allow you to do this for the more expensive items such as iDevices and computers. For those high ticket items you will still need an Apple Store employee to ring you up.

The next update involves ordering items, but having them shipped to your store instead of your home/office address. I gave this a shot while traveling and had the item shipped to the Apple Store in the city that I was visiting. Once I got the email letting me know that my item was in, I headed over to pick it up. Once I got to the store and connected to the WiFi there I got a push notification letting me know that my item was ready and that Brandon would meet me near the front door to give me my item and I could leave. Very cool and convenient.

While these updates are nice to have the native iPad version of the Apple Store App is still missing in action. 

You can get the Apple Store App for Free here from the 

The official Twitter App just went to 4.0 with some facelift and speed enhancements. The update specifically targets the iPhone (iPod touch) with no mention of when the iPad will get these changes. In any case the update provides some speed tweaks and new tabs. Now you have a Connect Tab that more closely matches the experience on Twitter.com where you have an Interactions tab and Mentions tab. The Discover tab lets you search as well as it shows you trending stories, suggestions on who to follow and the ability to Find Friends and Browse categories. Lastly the Me tab shows your stats, Direct Messages, Drafts, Lists, Saved Searches and the ability to switch between accounts. A single tap also lets you  view your profile. This seems like a nice update and we'll have to wait and see how they implement these changes on iPad.

You can get the Twitter App for Free here from the 

Normally around this time of year I'd recommend a new holiday shopping list App. However, my recommendation remains the same as last year. Gift Plan is still my top pick. Why? It just works! Gift Plan is not tied to any particular holiday. So you can use it all year long for any occasion. You can import your contacts or your Facebook Friends. It will automatically pick up their birthdays and start the countdown until their special day. You can create different lists for different occasions and add people to them. You can put in a person's sizes, likes and ideas. Another reason I like this App so much is that it's more aesthetically pleasing than many of the other ones that are so plain-jane. You get nice big photos of your contacts as well as the ability to take pictures of the gifts you want to buy. 

The latest version adds:

• Tally for each person per occasion in Shopping 
• Fully opaque password
• Ability to Add photos  of gifts

You can get Gift Plan for $2.99 here from the

What about iPad users?

Alas Gift Plan is still an iPhone/iPod touch native App only. It can work on iPad, but is not a universal or native iPad App therefore it will be in the small iPhone size on iPad. If you have your heart set on an iPad gift list app, then I'd go with mGifts – Gift List Manager. You can get it here for $2.99 from the 

A couple of days ago OmniFocus was updated to its latest version, adding support for amongst some other things, Siri. Not having an iPhone 4S myself, I can't judge how well it works, but the idea appeals to me a lot.

Being able to through Siri create a new to-do item, on the go, without having to touch my phone really makes Siri become more of my personal assistant.

All Siri-created to-do items are saved to your inbox just like any quick entry items would have been. You can then choose to file them under projects and contexts just like you would any other item.

Additionally, OmniFocus has fixed a few bugs and changed the way items are sorted in Forecast mode, displaying inbox items at the top followed by other due items.

As usual, this version of OmniFocus is available as a free update that can be downloaded from the  
. If you don't have the app already, it sells for $19.99.

My favorite Turn-by-Turn voice GPS Navigation App has just been updated with a slicker, smarter interface. The 1st big change is that App has been cut down significantly in size. The North America version used to weigh in at about 1.7GB. Now the update is about 44MB in size. How can it get so small you ask? The good folks at Navigon took a brilliant approach in letting you selectively download the states/providences that you need. This is AWESOME! If i'm never going to drive through Alabama or Arkansas then why have those maps taking up space on my device? You can pick which states to download whenever you want.  You do have to be in Wi-Fi to download a state, but once it's downloaded you won't need a data connection at all to use the App. I downloaded Michigan (36.9MB) in a matter of just a few minutes over my WiFi/Cable connection. The next thing I noticed was that the new app launches SIGNIFICANTLY faster. Perhaps this is due to the weight loss I'm not a fan of GPS apps that require a constant data connection as the maps are in cloud. Navigon's new approach is a perfect blend between the flexibility of only loading what you need AND not requiring a data connection to use the App once the maps are on your device.

Nice and clean UI

I'm a User Interface (UI) freak and have never been blown away by any GPS navigation system. I'm not saying that this new interface blows me away, but it's certainly WAY cleaner than before and probably will send several competitors back to the design boards. The menus are animated, but not in an obnoxious way. I like the little pull downs to quickly access things you need while navigating. Most of all I like not having to dig through several menus to find the things that should be at the top level. Great job!

The same In-App purchases are available and yes it will allow you to restore the ones you've already purchased. In my case I got the Lifetime LIVE Traffic, Panorama 3D view and Radar Info. They've added a new one called FreshMaps XL that gives you a 1 year quarterly Map update with not only new/changed roads, but they promise tons of POI additions/updates. It's only $14.99 but I'll pass on it for now since this update includes the latest maps for free!

There is one gotcha with this update! The 1st and only problem I've run into so far is that you lose all your saved Favorites. That really sucks since there is NO WARNING! When you fire up the new app they're just not there anymore. I'm hoping that this is just a bug and that they can fix it so that anyone else that's upgrading will be able to either keep their Favorites or back them up and restore them. Navigon shame on you for not warning us about this or allow saved Favorites to come into version 2.0. Otherwise, this update rocks!

UPDATE! The Favorites ARE there! They just won't show up unless you download the Maps/States that they are for. Makes sense, thanks goes to David Lumsden for his troubleshooting help in the comments below! Now I'm even happier about this update!

Price drops until November 30th:

Navigon North America is now only $39.99 

Navigon USA is only $29.99 

Navigon My Region is now only $19.99

East

Central

West

I'm happy to announce an important update to my Learn the Adobe Creative Suite with Terry White App. Most importantly this update addresses a video playback bug introduced in iOS 5 that prevented you from being able to see the video and only hearing the audio. This update also adds:

• Retina Display Graphics
• A new tab bar interface
• Swiping to the left and right from the episode detail page will go to the next or previous episode
• UI enhancements
• Faster show loading
• Minor bug fixes

Thanks for your patience and support! You can get the App as a free update if you already have it or for $1.99 here from the 

All Is Fixed!

When Apple released iOS 5 a few weeks ago for all iOS devices a lot people reported that Google Voice was broken and crashed. This isn't an uncommon thing when major updates like this are released, however for a major App like Google Voice this is a huge problem. Many, many people including myself use the Google Voice App on a daily basis so this was a huge deal. Google ultimately pulled the App from iTunes leaving many people to turn to Alternatives.   Google just released 1.3.1.1891 which fixes the crashing issues.  Normally we wouldn't post an update if there weren't a bunch of improvements or a complete overhaul, but this is such an important App for a lot of people that it merited a post letting everyone know that it was fixed. To see Terry's original review of Google Voice click here. 

My favorite photography App hands down is Instagram. I first did a review of it back in April here. Today Instagram got a significant upgrade both aesthetically and "under the hood". The aesthetics include a new icon, new buttons, and controls placed in just the right spot to be useful. You can follow ME on Instagram by searching for JLYKINS.

Upgrades

The first thing that I noticed after downloading the update is the speed improvement. The Camera loads quickly, the filters take effect in what seems like half of the time it previously took (actually Kevin Systrom says that the filters are 200 times faster), and saving the images even seemed to go faster. Speaking of filters, there are 4 new filters added with this update. They are Amaro, Rise, Hudson, and Valencia. These new filters are different enough from the previous ones to really add some nice new choices. New filters aren't the only improvement in the filter department though. Because of the improved speed, Instagram now supports LIVE filters! This means you can see how the final product is going to look before you ever take the picture.

Also new is an improvement to the tilt-shift feature. It's totally revamped with a new brush shape, live viewing (just like the filters)and a new overlay to display the area being blurred. Not only do you get the original rectangle shape for the tilt shift, but you also now have the option of a round brush. This gives you a whole new level of control and tons of new possibilities.

Not to be forgotten are the changes made to the border control. You can now turn borders on and off for each filter that has them by default.

Another cool feature is image rotation. You can now turn a photo 90degrees at a time once you've taken it. This is going to make for some interesting viewing angles.

The last feature that I am really glad that they added is the ability to save your images in high resolution. Traditionally they're 612X612, now you can save at 1936X1936 to the camera roll (note that the images uploaded to the sharing service are still 612X612).

With the new improvements on top of the solid foundation that Instagram already had, this is an easy App to fall in love with. I really enjoy this App, and apparently 9million other people do too!

You can get Instagram for your iPhone from the iTunes store for Free here:

As most of you know I've been using Model/Property Release and Contract Apps on my iPhone and IPad for a couple of years now. With each new update these Apps get better and better. Easy Release has been a favorite of mine for a while now because I just love the way the final release is formatted. However, one of things that it has lacked over the competition is more customizable fields. With 2.0 not only does Easy Release catch up in many key areas, but with a low cost in-app purchase you can go nuts with customizations!

✔ New, simpler user interface for managing and editing brands and custom release templates. 
✔ You can now add any data field from your release to the legal text, using a complete set of placeholders. 
✔ You can add "notes" for any release. These will not be included in the PDF file, but will be included in email you send from Easy Release. 
✔ Support for the Advanced Customization Pro-Pack. The Advanced Customization Pro-Pack is a $3.99 upgrade available via In-App Purchase. 

Advanced Customization Pro-Pack 

The Advanced Customization Pro-Pack brings professional customization features to Easy Release.

✔ Multiple Brands 
You can define more than one brand, and easily select the brand you want on a per-template and per-release basis.

✔ Optional Fields 
You can turn off some of the old built-in fields, and/or turn on some new built-in fields. 
- You can choose to turn off Witness, Gender and/or Ethnicity. 
- You can turn on Shoot End Date, which allows your release to cover a range of dates, rather than just a single day. 
- You can turn on Other Names. This adds two fields to your release: Stage Name and All Other Names. Use this to help collect required 2257 information for your models and performers. 
- You can turn on Compensation. This adds two fields to your release: Amount and Tax ID. 

✔ Custom Fields 
If the built-in fields are not enough, you can now add custom fields. 
- As many as you want 
- Three types: Text, Long Text, and Date 
- Specify a label and default value for each one 
- You can mark any custom field as 'required' 

✔ Import/Export Custom Versions 
Share custom templates via email. Recipients just click on the link in the email to import your template. <-This is a biggy for me keeping the same release forms on multiple iDevices!

If you've been waiting to get a Model/Property Release App, then wait no longer! You can get Easy Release for $9.99 here from the 

Dropbox Update

Recently one of my favorite Apps/Programs got a big update. Dropbox has been my favorite cloud based sharing service for some time now. It's FREE (for a 2GB account) and expandable to 100GBs. Sign Up For A Free Account Here.  One thing that I've always wanted though was the ability to upload BULK files instead of one at a time.  You've been able to upload files for a while now, but they were uploaded one at a time which was tedious and time consuming. No more! With the dedicated upload comes the ability to select multiple files for uploading at one time! Another big improvement and welcome addition is the ability to import files from other Apps such as Mail and more! Since Dropbox is a universal binary, these improvements are included for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

You can get Dropbox for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch from the iTunes store for free here: