Reference

Find out the best apps to help you look up things when you need them, such as dictionaries and more.

Reference / Reviews
Discourse App

Discourse: A Beautiful Dictionary

Discourse AppI’m constantly looking for a good English dictionary app for my iPhone or iPod Touch. Given that English is not my first language, once in a while I will reach words that I need to look up. I imagine this to be the same with everyone, regardless of their language skill. When browsing through the new releases on the App Store, I found Discourse, an app that combines this need in functionality with an elegant interface.

Those of you who know me and have read my previous reviews here on BestAppSite, know that I am a sucker for great user interface design. To be honest, an app could have a super awesome feature, but if it doesn’t look good, I’m not getting it. Discourse has nice graphics and some nice touches to the interface, such as being able to flick between “screens” (pages) in the app.

Discourse - Emilio Peláez

Sadly there are bugs and missing words…

Overall, I am quite pleased with the app but it has a few bugs and lacks words that you might expect to be in a dictionary app. I have noticed that when looking up some sample words that when clicking on certain related words throws an error saying that the definition doesn’t exist. In this example however, the dictionary told me that the related word was “extraordinarly” which of course is missing an “i” and should not exist. Why it shows up is a major flow of the data that the app is using.

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Reference / Reviews
bigwords

Save Money on Books with the BIGWORDS.com App

click the image above to see a larger screenshot

Actually it was my daughter in college who turned me on to this App. I saw it on her iPhone and said "what's that for?". BIGWORDS.com is universal (iPhone, iPad, & iPod touch) App that allows you to turn your used books into cash by selling them and more importantly find deals on used and new books and even rentals for students. Textbooks are outrageously expensive these days and you probably only need them long enough to complete your course. So if you bought the book you need, why hang on to it after the course is over and if you're in need of a book why pay top dollar for it?

BIGWORDS.com App does all the comparison shopping for you

They don't actually sell the books directly. The app simply shows you comparison pricing and then links you to the best deals. The savings can be big. The App is pretty easy to use. You can either search by title, ISBN or author. Once you find the book you're interested in you can either tap the SELL or BUY buttons. If you like the deal you find when you tap BUY you can chose to buy it now and you'll be taken to the site offering the book at that price. If you press the SELL button you'll see a list of sites and offers to buy your book and you can then tap to sell your book on the site offering the best terms. This is an extremely useful App for anyone dealing with buying and selling books and it's FREE! That's right, the app is FREE so there's no reason not to at least give it a try to find out how much your books are worth or how much you could potentially save by shopping here first. This is a must have App for any student or parent that buys books.

You can get BIGWORDS.com here for FREE from the BIGWORDS.com

Reference / Reviews
photoshopworld

Photoshop World: The Ultimate Conference App

We're just one week away from Photoshop World Vegas and of course it's time to start locking down your schedule and choosing the classes you want to take. I remember using the Photoshop World App last year and saying "this is great, but It's missing one thing." That one thing was the ability to add things to your schedule that may not be on the official conference program list. For example, at 2PM I'm going to head over to the Adobe Booth and check out that Terry White guy :) . So while it was great being able to fill in all the classes I wanted to take, I still had to rely on my regular calendar for other meetings and activities. Well that all changes with the latest version. Shawn Welch did a FANTASTIC JOB listening to my feedback and feedback of others and updating this App to be the best conference App I've seen to date. First off it's a Universal App now, which means it's native to all iOS devices including the iPad. Secondly he added the one big thing I needed, which is the ability to put in your own custom events/meetings. That alone makes this a 5 star app for me, but Shawn didn't stop there. He added in some very cool social networking features like the ability to tweet and update your Facebook status right inside the App. He even added the ability to share your schedule with others via email or Bumping two iOS devices together running the app! Shawn thought of just about everything this time around. There's even the ability now to schedule backup classes. So if you just can't decide right now which of two classes you want to take, you can go ahead and put your first choice in a time slot and then add your second choice in so you won't have to scramble at the last minute if you change your mind. 

Classes, Instructors or Exhibitors 

You decide how you want to look up information about what you might want to see. If you like Joe McNally, then just tap his name and see all the classes he's teaching at  glance. Or if you have an empty time slot, just tap it to see all of the classes happing at that time and pick one. Of course there's an Expo floor, so you can tap Exhibitors to see who's exhibiting and where they are. Once I got my schedule built on my iPhone I was able to easily send it to a couple of friends via email (even if they don't have the App it comes over as a nicely formatted HTML email). However, I wanted to also have the same schedule on my iPad. No problem, I just used the Bump feature to share the schedule to the iPad from the iPhone wirelessly. Once it was on the iPad in the shared section, I just tapped on it to add each item into my schedule on the iPad. Very cool!

You can get the Photoshop World App for FREE here from the Photoshop

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Reference / Reviews
cultures-icon

Cultures: Flick Through the World Cultures

CulturesI was very interested when I saw the description of this app while browsing the app store one day. Have you ever gone to a country, finding yourself wanting to know certain cultural information about it? For me, personally, it is a clear yes.

What I am most interested in knowing about when I visit a new country is what not to say or do, the most common way to greet people, how tipping works and where/if you give tips and also any special laws you should be aware of. Here is where Cultures come into play.

Interface

Cultures is definitely not one of the best apps in terms of design but on a positive note, it mostly follows the Apple UI, which is again at least a bonus.

I am however slightly annoyed at the way they are displaying the content. After tapping and choosing your country and the type of culture you wish to view (which is sadly put on top of a background image of the world) you get a screen where you have the text, inside a fixed height box, semi-transparent on top of that same background image. Please, just stick to the UI guidelines, it looks much nicer and helps me read much faster.

World

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Reference / Reviews
colorexpert

Color Expert App Gives You a Color Library in your iPhone

Whether the realm is web, print, fashion or any medium in-between, today’s creative, designer, photographer, printer, or aspiring artist, will tell you how important color is. Color is all around us and whether vibrant or muted; color inspires us, calms us and causes us to act and behave in a certain way.

While nature often, so easily it seems, puts together the perfect color palette, we humans are not always so fortunate. Some of us are graceful at it and some of us are just plain color blind. We never know when or where a color will capture our attention or inspire us to use it as “perfect for that project.”
 
No credible designer will tell you that “Color inspiration only happens in the office looking at swatch books.” Far from it. So what happens when you see that perfect color or color combination while you are out and about, and you have no way to capture it? Sure you pull out your iPhone and take a photo of it. Well, now you have an image, but still, what color is that? Are you now going to go back to the office and hold up swatch books to your iPhone? Don’t fret. There is an app for that. Color Expert.
 
Color Expert by Code Line, released in 2008 and recently updated, places among it’s many features, (6) Pantone color libraries, (1) Web Safe color library, and (1) HTML color library at your fingertips.
 
Using the Color Wheel option and preset swatches, you can create unlimited color palettes, perusing color combinations in the Monochrome, Analogous, Complementary, Split Complementary and Triadic color Schemes. And let’s not leave out Custom. Color Wheel Type options are Artistic (traditional) and Scientific (based on light). Color Expert’s recent update adds a few new features and a more streamlined interface.
 
Color Expert is available at the App Store for $9.99 here: Color Expert
 
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