NFL All Of The Time On Your iPhone and iPad

Here in Cincinnati, it's hard to be a NFL fan… Really hard… But we do the best we can to support our Bengals. Even as hard as the Bengals make it, I still like to follow what's going on around the NFL, particularly our division. Thanks to the NFL, we have NFL '11 for the iPhone and iPad to handle all of our Professional football needs. Like any App developed by a major entity (think Facebook, MLB, Twitter, etc.) expectations were high for me when I downloaded NFL '11 and it didn't disappoint.
Tons of Features Packed into One App

I don't know about you, but the first thing that I want to see when I fire up any sports App is the current score for my preset favorite team. As much as I hate to talk about what I don't like in an App almost first in the review, there is only ONE thing that I don't like so I hope you'll forgive me .;) I'd really like to see the ability to have more than one favorite team (especially on the iPad). I have a few teams that I follow, so it would be a nice inclusion.  Okay, done with what I don't like, on to what I DO like, which is everything else! The ability to set your favorite team is there, and when you launch the App that team's current score and live game activity (if a game is being played) shows up immediately

Beyond your favorite teams, there is a scores section that shows the scores for the rest of the NFL. Tapping the game time to the right of any game brings up one of my favorite parts of the App, the alerts box. Inside of this box you can tell the App to alert you when the game Starts, there is a scoring play, highlights happen, when the quarter is over and what the score is for that quarter, or when the game is over and what the final score is. All of these alerts are sent via Push so you never miss an important event in your selected game!

.Of course like you would expect there is a news section showing you not only the entire league news, but also an option to quickly see just your favorite Team's news. There are lots of times when you want to quickly see what's happening with your favorite team, this makes it easy!

Personally, I don't get into Fantasy football. My brother (and I think half of the rest of the US) however really gets into it. NFL '11 has you covered. At the bottom, one of the main tabs is Fantasy 2011. From here you can log in to your fantasy league and… Do whatever it is that you do in Fantasy football.

Not to be forgotten there are options to see the schedule for the rest of the year for all of the teams, highlights, video clips, and photos from that week, buy tickets, shop at the NFL shop, and visit the about section for the App.

CardMunch – Business Card Reader by LinkedIn

Recently I reviewed a new business card reader by Readdle that uses OCR to translate the picture of the business card that you take to text. OCR is not perfect and therefore will usually require some manual checking, verifying and corrections. These corrections are made by you, a human. What if you could hand a stack of business cards to your Administrative Assistent and have him/her enter them for you? If you've got an Admin, then you probably can. For the rest of us it's up to us to get our Contacts entered on our own. One of my readers suggested that I take a look at CardMunch, so I did.

CardMunch uses humans :)

The big difference between CardMunch and all the other Business Card Reader Apps is that when you take the picture of the business card with CardMunch, it uploads to a LinkedIn powered service that employs real human beings to transcribe the business card, proof read it and then send it back down to your iDevice with a push notification to let you know it's done. Best of all it's FREE! Wow! Once you upload the photo of the card via the App it can take anywhere from 10-20 minutes on average to get the transcribed card back. However, in every one that I've tried to date they have come back 100% correct requiring no further editing on my part. You are required to have a free LinkedIn account to use the App. Since the cards are being transcribed by humans it doesn't matter how complex the card is in terms of hard to read graphic backgrounds that would confuse the OCR based solutions. Once you get the transcribed card back down into the App you can then choose to add it to your iOS Contacts or just keep it in the app. Bonus Tip: When you turn your device to landscape orientation it gives you a cover flow style view of all your scanned cards. Cool!

Sounds great! What's the downside?

While this is very magical and seems perfect, there is one bit of concern and that is that you are submitting your business cards/contacts to a 3rd party. This may be a concern to those who have Privacy issues in general.

IP Camera Viewer

IP Camera ViewerLast year I did review on iCam and I've been very happy with that App. I'm still happy with it. However, earlier this week a colleague turned me on to IP Camera Viewer. While both Apps allow you to view and control your remote IP Cameras on your iOS devices, IP Camera Viewer has one distinction and that is it works directly with the cameras themselves. My Panasonic cameras all have their own webservers built-in. This is how the cameras can be viewed in a web browser. With iCam you setup their server app on your computer and your iOS Devices communicate with that server. The obvious disadvantage in this is that you need to have a computer on and have access to it (opening the right ports on your firewall) over the internet. I still like iCAM because it can do things like record and transmit a serious of stills if it detects motion. It can also send push notifications. However, for those looking for a more simple solution that doesn't require a server, IP Camera Viewer rocks! IP Camera Viewer can not only view the cameras, but it supports panning them as well if the cameras themselves offer that feature.

Setup multiple cameras and camera groups

I have a set of cameras at home and another set offsite in my photography studio. I like the way IP Camera Viewer can have groups that you can switch between. This way if I want to watch the cameras at home I can switch to the "Home" group. Setup was extremely simple in that all I had to do was put in the url/IP address of each camera, port number and user name and password. IP Camera Viewer supports hundreds of different camera models natively. Once the cameras are setup you can view them and control them from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from anywhere that you have an internet connection. I was pleased with the performance once I got the cameras setup. The initial model selection could use some improvements as it takes a while to scroll through the list of brands to get to "Panasonic." A search would work great in that dialog.

You can get IP Camera Viewer for $2.99 here from the 

              

R.I.P Steve Jobs

R.I.P Steve JobsWe pause today to bring you sad news about, and pay tribute to, the reason that this site exists. By now I'm sure you have heard that yesterday Steve Jobs passed away.  If it had not been for Steve Jobs vision for the iPhone, iTunes, and ultimately Apple the world wouldn't have the iPhone and there would be no Best App Site. Gizmodo has one of the most touching goodbyes that I have ever read. It's definitely worth a read. So I ask that you take a moment to remember Steve Jobs, and the wonderful things he did not only for Apple, but for humanity. You will be missed.

iPhone 4S and what you need to know…

Happy iPhone day! Well actually, happy day after iPhone day. By now most of you know that Apple was releasing a new version of the iPhone on October 4th and for those of you who don't, welcome back from under the rock (kidding). So what's new and why do you care? I'll share all of that and more so read on.
Bring On the Power!

There are many, many new features on the new iPhone 4S. Even though the outside looks the same, inside it is a much improved, much more refined, and a whole lot more powerful!

Lets jump right into the most important improvement in my opinion. The dual core A5 processor. This will be the first iPhone with a dual core processor. Also included is 1Gb (up from 512Mb) of ram. These two things coupled with the dual core graphics translate into a much faster, more robust iPhone. Games are going to fly, videos will have a smoother playback, and photo editing possibilities will grow tremendously. It's an exciting time to be both and iPhone user, and an iPhone developer. Along with the other performance improvements, the Addition of the 64Gb model doubles the largest previously available model.


The Good Gets Better

The camera on the iPhone has been, hands down, the most well received and most used of all of the smart phones on the market. With not only the impressive quality of the image files, but also the quality of the Apps available, the iPhone has become the mobile camera of choice for people world wide. Mashable reported recently that the #1 camera used to produce images on Flickr is the iPhone. Apple realizes all of this and has really outdone themselves with the iPhone 4S. It has a completely new 8-megapixel camera taking 3264×2448 pixel pictures. It is supposed to be 30% faster and sports a new backlit image sensor allowing it to take in more light. Along with this is a new f/2.4 lens to go along with the image sensor.


Get It Faster!

Everyone remembers Antennagate. You know hold the iPhone4 just so and watch your bars drop down until you lose signal. Not wanting a repeat of that fiasco, Apple has a new antenna system that not only ensures no signal loss from holding the phone a certain way, but also adds some much needed features. The new antenna system allows the iPhone 4S to switch between two antennas for better sound quality and a much faster download speed. This new system allows for a speed increase double of what it is with the standard iPhone4. Remember that these are theoretical speeds so the actual speed will most likely be much lower. Still, there will be a noticeable speed increase. While this isn't quite 4g speed, it's a whole lot better than standard 3g.

iPhone Gets A Personal Assistant

Named Siri, Apple also released it's new personal voice assistant for the iPhone 4S. Able to understand natural voice commands, Siri is the new voice assistant that allows you to interact with your iPhone on a whole new level. As a demo, Scott Forstall (of Apple) asked Siri "what's the weather like today" to which the iPhone responded with what the weather was like. It's not limited to weather however. Siri is able to transcribe text messages, search Wikipedia, Google Maps, and much more. Siri is referred to as in "beta" however this only means that Apple will continue to add features and languages as they go.


The Bottom Line

I love the new iPhone. Not so much because I have to have the latest and greatest, but because I could really use the increased performance, and better camera. There were some other notable announcements today including iOS 5, iPod Nano, and Cards (not so sure about the usefulness of this last one personally) but the big announcement was the iPhone 4S. So what do you think? Is this enough of an update for you to upgrade from your current phone? Let us know in the comments section.

 

Contract Maker ELITE is the Ultimate Contract Maker for iOS

I started using my iPhone to create model releases a few years ago Photographer's Contract Maker. The idea was great to have them digitally sign and generate a PDF emailed both the model and me all directly from my iPhone. While I still do that same thing today on my iPad, I realized that there are so many other uses for paperless contracts and documents that go beyond just model/property releases. While I do use Easy Release for my Model Releases, I use Contract Maker ELITE for everything else. With this App you can create just about any custom form, contract, agreement, etc. that you will ever need. The number of available customizable fields is staggering. You can choose from over 500 of them to build your multiple page contract.


My favorite use is print releases

I have a standard print release form that a client can use to show a service provider that they have the rights to have the image(s) printed. I was doing these by hand in Adobe InDesign, generating PDFs and emailing them to the client or print provider. Then I realized that I could be doing these on my iPad. Within minutes I had it setup by copying my existing Print Release's text into the App and then I added the custom fields that I needed. Now whenever I need to generate on one of these I can do so right on the spot and PDF it to whoever needs it. Although I haven't started renting my out just yet, I'm sure when the time comes I will create a rental agreement that the renter has to sign. You guessed it. I'll be doing that agreement as well in Contract Maker ELITE.


The Bottom Line

For anyone (not just photographers) that need to generate agreements/contracts or other forms and you want the ability to customize it extensively, Contract Maker ELITE is the "Best App" The new Font formatting Placeholders address my longest standing complaint of the contracts looking to "plain". It was also great that the developer worked in my feature requests of letting us create 2 column contracts as well as Contracts that can be forced to fit on one page (if you like). He even added GPS place holders so that you can have the geo location automatically added to the Contract for where it was signed. There is a lot to love about this App.

You can get Contract Maker ELITE for $19.99 here from the iTunes