I’ve always had a love for pool. I’ve never been particularly good at it, but that hasn’t stopped me from spending countless hours racking, breaking, and putting a little “English” on the cue ball. Recently a friend of mine told me that he has been absolutely addicted to this pool game that he put on his iPhone. I’ll try any App once so I downloaded it and man was he right! I haven’t been able to put this game down! Any free time that I have I’ve found myself grabbing my phone for the next challenge. With multiple “billiards”, people from around the world to play with, and the ability to challenge your friends 8 Ball Pool will keep you playing and coming back for the foreseeable future.

How It Works

8 Ball Pool uses an in depth yet easy to understand system to make game play lifelike. You start at a level 1 player meaning brand new to the game with no experience. The game gives you a set amount of coins, which are the virtual currency used to buy your way into rounds and thus becoming half of the prize winnings. As your play increases, and as you win more games you advance your ranking. On top of advancing your play and coins you also gain new “billiards” to play at (requiring a higher buy in) allowing you to play against more advanced competitors. The points, and wins add up quickly as you make your way through the billiards from London, to Moscow, and beyond.

The competitors come from all over the world. When you select to play a random person you are given the luck of the draw of competitors. You may be a level 5 player playing a level 15 player or higher. The game syncs real time with it’s servers so you have to have an internet connection of some kind.  Additionally you can challenge friends however this really works best when the friend is with you because the game has a time limit (we’ll get to that later) and you both have to be active.

Game Play

Who breaks is randomly decided unless you rematch an opponent in which case you take turns. After the break whoever puts in the first ball decides who will get what set of balls to shoot for. The game is played by moving the virtual pool stick around the screen to get the proper shot of the ball you want. Once the proper angle has been obtained force for the shot is controlled by “pulling” down the pool stick on the left side of the screen. The further down you pull it, the harder it will get hit. “English” is applied by tapping the white cue ball in the upper right corner of the game and then placing the red dot on the cue ball appropriate to where you want your English applied. Be careful to monitor the green ring that is slowly disappearing around your name when it’s your turn. This is your timer. If you don’t shoot the ball before the green ring runs out, your forfeit your turn and your opponent has “ball in hand” which means that they can place the cue ball anywhere on the playing surface that they would like for their next shot. All of the normal rules of pool apply to this game. You have to hit your own ball first when taking a shot (stripes or solids), the 8 ball is shot last, and you don’t want to “scratch” or put the cue ball in a pocket. Because of the timer game play moves fairly quickly and the quick tempo keeps the game fun. I sometimes wish that they would have given a little more time on the timer but I think that’s to be expected.

The Bottom Line

This is a very, very addicting game, especially if you enjoy pool at all. I think I have spent quite a few hours playing this game already and I’ve only had it a week or so. The challenge of winning the games, advancing your player ranking, and unlocking new billiards makes for an exciting and rewarding game that will keep you coming back day after day.

You can get 8 Ball Pool for your iOS device from the iTunes store for $.99 here:

I’ve been a fan of the Google Search App for iOS almost from the beginning. Sure Safari and Google Chrome have a search feature built right into the browser, but the dedicated App offers many more features. For one, when I sign in with my Google ID I get access to my search history even if I did the searches on my notebook/desktop. The app also supports voice search. What’s new in this 3.0 version is the integration of location based Google Now. These cards can start you off with the current weather conditions and traffic conditions. Beyond those basics you can see what local restaurants are in the area as well as sports scores and breaking news. I tend to use a couple of other apps to get this kind of info, but it’s nice having all there at my finger tips when I go to search for something. Also if you search for a business location or other destination, Google Search integrates nicely with the Google Maps app on your iOS device. Just tap and you’re on your way with turn-by-turn voice directions.

While I like having Siri built-in to iOS, Google Search is definitely right on par in terms of usefulness. I wouldn’t want to give either one up.

Get Google Search featuring Google Now on iPhone or iPad here for free:

Dropcam HD has quickly become my new security camera of choice. It streams HD to the cloud and allows me to check in on things when I’m away. They even offer DVR like functionality for motion detected events. However, until their latest update Dropcam always ran continuously, I don’t really need two of my three Dropcams to run when I’m on site. I really just need them to run when I’m away. Since I come and go and different times on different days, the new scheduling feature doesn’t quite work for me either. However, they also added a “location” based feature and this will be great for me. Basically I set all of my Dropcams to turn on and broadcast whenever I leave the building. Since it’s based on the location of my iPhone 5 I can set this up once and never have to think about it again. This will also potentially cut down on bandwidth use and privacy concerns for people that don’t want to be “recorded” while they’re at home. Dropcam was already an excellent solution for offsite or onsite monitoring and now it just got a lot better. You can see my original Dropcam HD review here and you can get a Dropcam here.

It seems to be an obsession with many people to share photos of the food that they are about to eat on social media. Either you have a friend that does it or you’re that friend that does it. I’m not sure what the point really is unless you’re into food photography. We even make jokes about it. I hear people say things like “I don’t want to be on Facebook or Instagram because I don’t care what you had for lunch!” Nonetheless, social media sites are loaded with pics of FOOD! Well if we can’t stop people from sharing photos of their meals the least we can do is give them a way to make those pics look better. As you may have guessed, yes there’s an App for that. It’s called InstaFood. I reviewed InstaWeather Pro a while back and I love that App. The same developers make InstaFood so I decided to check it out. This App works similarly to InstaWeather. You can either take a photo with the App or load one in from your Camera Roll or Albums. Once the photo is in place then it will automatically detect your location and from there you chose from a variety of different skins/text to overlay on your photo. The pic I took above was actually my dinner from a few weeks back in Los Angeles. Since location information was in the metadata of the pic, InstaFood picked that up automatically. You can even use the built-in Foursquare support to choose the exact restaurant you are in to have that name appear on the pic. Once you’ve added the skin of your choice and customized it to your liking you can immediately share it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare.

If you’re gonna show us what you’re eating, at least do it with style. This is your app!

P.S. I actually did love my salmon dinner at Cafe Sierra in the Hilton Universal City. Highly recommend it! Just sayin’

I look forward to going to Photoshop World each year and presenting. One of the tools that helps keep me on top of things that are going on is the official Photoshop World Conference & Expo App. Each year there are updates to the App, but this year the author (Shawn Welch) redesigned the App from the ground up. The new design is definitely easier to navigate. It’s also better looking. The App lets you see up to the minute messages from the conference organizers. You can see the Classes, Instructors, Exhibitors and most importantly the “My Schedule” feature. With the My Schedule feature you can add classes to your schedule based on available time slots. While I like the improvements in this feature, there is one change that I don’t like. I miss having the ability to fill a time slot with a custom meeting or event. With this update you can only choose from the available classes so that’s a bit of a step back for me. However, one thing that kinda makes up for it is that the App now syncs with iCloud. This means that I don’t have to manually create the same schedule twice on both my iPad and iPhone. I added a class on the iPad and it showed up in the appropriate time slot on my iPhone 5. It also has a 10 minute before the class reminder feature. I’d also like to be able to customize this to make it 15 minutes to an hour depending on the session.

UPDATE: Shawn has informed me that there is a way to do custom reminders by scrolling down to the bottom of an event and changing it there.

All in all the update is better and more stable than the previous version. I hope that Shawn adds back in the ability to add custom time slots (hint hint), but if you’re going to Photoshop World and you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch this is definitely worth a download.

Burner solves an interesting problem. The idea behind the App is that once you download it to your iPhone and set it up you can create a temporary (burnable) phone number that you can use when you don’t want to give out your real phone number. For example, I’ve never sold anything on Craig’s List because I didn’t want to give out my personal contact information. I didn’t want people coming to my house or having my home/mobile phone numbers. I solved the coming to my house problem a couple of years ago by moving into my own photography studio. Now I have a business address that people can come to. However, the phone number issue still remained. If I put up a classified ad I want people to be able to contact me about the product I’m selling all the way through the sales process. After the deal has concluded I don’t want anyone else calling me about it. This is where a burnable number comes in. The Burner App allows you to create temporary phone numbers that you can use to dial out on and the caller-ID will reflect that number as well as receive calls on that number that ring through to the App on your iPhone with push notifications. While the App is Free, you buy credits via an in-app purchase to setup numbers for 7, 30 and 60 days with various amounts of talk time. 3 credits set you back $1.99, 8 credits for $4.99 and 15 credits for $7.99. The pricing is not bad and the “Standard Burner” for 5 credits and it will last you for 30 days or 50 talk minutes or 150 texts. You can create the number in the area code of your choice.

When you set up the App it will need your real phone number as a point of reference and they promise to keep it secret. Other than that the setup is very straight forward. You even get a test number to play with for 24 hours. You can burn the number at any time and use the number can be used for texting too.

One of the ways I get my inspiration is by seeing the brilliant work of others. I also learn every time I see one of my colleagues present. I’ve been with Adobe for almost 17 years and I can remember the days of the printed “Adobe Magazine”. The Adobe Magazine stopped being published years ago when the web was all the rage. Now we’re in the era of digital publications on tablets and with that said there’s a NEW Adobe Magazine called Adobe Inspire. Adobe Inspire Magazine is a free publication on the iPad. It’s created using Adobe InDesign and the Digital Publishing Suite. The content is geared toward informing, enlightening, and inspiring creative professionals and hobbyists. Documenting the best of web and interaction design practices for over 10 years, each bimonthly issue features articles, tutorials, and videos by experts about new and emerging technologies as well as best practices to help you excel at your job. Learn about Adobe Creative Suite tools and services as well as web standards, design styles, and prominent artists who create compelling projects. The iPad edition of Inspire Magazine contains bonus features not found on the companion website. Best of all Adobe Inspire is FREE!

The Pantone Libraries have been a standard in graphic design and printing for as long as I can remember. Although I don’t spec out colors day to day as I used to earlier in my career, there are times that I get stuck trying to figure out what colors to use for a design I’m doing. I’m VERY color challenged when it comes to doing design work. Even when I have the main color I want, I’m not good at picking out the complimentary colors. My friend Sydney showed me the myPantone App and I had to download it that night. It does the obvious. You can browse through the swatches and lookup colors by numbers. That’s no different than having a Pantone swatch book in front of you. What made me download the App as soon as I could was the integrated camera feature. Using the camera on your iOS device you can snap a photo and then use your finger to sample the colors in the photo and the app will find the closest Pantone color to the color sample that you chose. That’s really cool, but to make it even better the App gives you not only the matching Pantone color, but you can also get the Lab, sRGB, HTML (Hex), and CMYK values. This is awesome for web design too. For example, you could walk into a business and snap a couple of photos of their existing decor. Then you’ll have the swatches needed for designing their marketing materials as well as their website. Palettes can be shared via emailed or printed as well as sent to another device in range. Colors can also be saved as Favorites. There’s even a new SkinTones Library.

One thing you have to realize is that your iPhone is NOT color calibrated and lighting conditions for the photo will also make a difference especially if the white balance is off. Since your camera is NOT perfect, this will always be just an estimate and not an exact science. It ill help get you in the ballpark faster than manually searching. However, even with those caveats I would say that this is a must have App for designers. What I would like to see is Universal version that is native to iPad.

Share your color palettes via email

Animal Eyes is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and you can get it here: