With the holiday fast approaching, sometimes the hardest part is getting home. Whether you're carpooling with friends, flying home or taking a train, technology apps can make the process of getting home or getting away so much easier. Here are just a few of the top travel applications for your smartphone.
Last week, we took a look at the Tapbots family - highlighting the simplicity and design of their applications. Well, the folks at TapBots have been hard at work and recently released the newest member of their family. Introducing Calcbot, a brilliantly simple and fun calculator "robot" that takes the mindless task of calculation and makes it fun and even easier to do.
Available as a universal application for both iPhone and iPad, Calcbot takes the guesswork out of calculation providing users with an intelligent display that displays not only the numbers you press but the expressions as well. You'll never lose your place or find yourself making errors because you weren't sure how far in a calculation you were. As you work, Calcbot will display all the numbers you've pressed and live update your total as you go.
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Taking it a step further, Calcbot features a ton of advanced mathematical expressions. Instead of clouding your view with an intimidatingly advanced scientific display, formulas and functions that are not for every-day use can be found by swiping to the right.
One of the most notable features of Calcbot is the history "tape" that not only saves each of your calculations but the expressions you used to get there. Think of it like a receipt, constantly logging what you've typed and making it available for later use. Choose to use or save either the expression itself or just the result of it without a second thought.
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In addition to just viewing your expressions and calculations, you can choose to send that information via email or reusing it at a later time. Say you're keeping track of all your daily expenses. With Calcbot, you can call up your latest total easily and add to it as you need. Once you're done, it's simple to send that information to yourself or others via email. Control your experience even further with the ability to use sound effects of turn them off if you wish. Since most people use calculators for financial transactions, Tapbots also offers the option to round currency too.
Using Calcbot on your iPad offers you the same great features but a totally new experience. With the added screen real estate of the larger iPad, calculate and view your history at the same time by turning the device to landscape. In portrait mode, the app utilizes the entire screen as a beautiful, high-quality calculator. Calcbot feels right at home on the iPad and without a calculator application provided by Apple, this app fits right in.
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Like every other Tapbot app, the team takes a simple concept that has been over-complicated and brings it back to the basics. Without compromising features and detail, the developer is able to make the application very simple and fun to use. The motivation for the developers to create this app was very simple in nature and explained on their blog. In their eyes, there are two main problems with calculators:
After using the app for only a few minutes, it is safe to say that Tapbots has elegantly addressed both problems. From the blog, the developer actually had originally only developed the app for the iPad. After partnering with tap tap tap for marketing purposes, Calcbot was made universal. Once you start using it, you'll quickly see that the way it handles expressions and calculations will make you drop Apple's default app. With support for multitasking and iPhone 4's Retina Display, Calcbot looks awesome on whatever device you're using.
To make the deal even sweeter, Tapbots partnered up with Macheist to offer Realmac's Socialite for free just by spreading the word about the release. If you haven't seen it, Socialite is a wonderful desktop application for Mac that lets you manage all your social networks and news feeds from one place.
In my use, I found Calcbot excitingly simple to use and just plain fun. I'm not that great with math, so even using it with basic expressions and day-to-day calculations was welcomed. There is no learning curve to Calcbot. With a elegant interface, you'll know exactly how to use the app without reading any instructions. You'll quickly come to rely on features such as the history tape and expression view. The app is currently available for $1.99 on the App Store. Let us know in the comments what you think about it!
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With an intuitively simple interface, powerful features, expression view, calculation recall and more, Calcbot is a wonderful addition to the Tapbot family and will certainly easily replace your existing calculator on either the iPhone or iPad. Math has never been so much fun!
Rating: 9/10
With over 225,000 applications available on the iTunes App Store, there is no shortage of apps that can do just about anything. Many of these pack in the features and over time, become more and more complex. Enter Tapbots, a team of two guys who became interested in developing easy to use, focused and fun applications for the iPhone. Right now, Tapbots offers three unique apps (or robots, as they like to call them). Here's a quick look at their fun and friendly robot family.
Kicking off the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference, Steve Jobs took the stage for his traditional keynote address. It was at this venue that he announced the latest iteration of the iPhone, dubbed iPhone 4 which is being called "the biggest step" forward since the original iPhone.
The iPhone 4 provides a number of exciting new features including video chat capabilities, a front-facing camera, retina display technology designed to increase pixel saturation and increase sharpness of the display, as well as a new 5 mega pixel camera featuring LED flash. The new iPhone is powered by Apple's custom A4 silicon chip and will come with iOS 4 upon it's release. Additionally, the iPhone's form factor is noticeably thinner and features a larger battery.
Google’s recently acquired advertisement agency, AdMob announced today the release of a revised version of their iPhone OS-based advertisement SDK. The updated support will add “customized ad delivery options for the iPad”.
From the announcement:
Our new SDK is unified across all devices running the iPhone OS, which means that developers can download one binary for development across all Apple iPhone OS devices.The new SDK supports two ad formats in native iPad applications: text & tile ads and image ads. Both of these ad formats are available in the three IAB standard ad sizes: 300x250, 728x90 and 486x60.
Last night on the west coast, Steve Jobs took the stage in an interview to kick off the All Things Digital D8 conference. Moderated by Walt Mossberg, Jobs talked about a number of crucial topics such as how the iPad came about, his views on the Gizmodo iPhone situation as well as his relationships with Google, AT&T and other companies.
For more information, check out the All Things Digital website.
It's almost here! The latest iteration and brand new version of App Store Spotlight is right around the corner! So, what is App Store Spotlight? Originally starting as an Apple message board website featuring news, reviews and most importantly - application reviews for only the best apps for iPhone and iPod.
The new version of App Store Spotlight sports a completely new design, backend and purpose. More information is coming soon but you'll definitely want to bookmark this page!