SplashData let us know that, with the release of SplashPhoto and SplashNotes, they’ve finished porting their well-known suite of mobile applications to the iPhone:

SplashPhoto features easy sync with the desktop companion, and integration with Flickr and Picasa for photo sharing. SplashNotes sync with the desktop is even better because it’s easy to take notes on a laptop and then take them with you on your iPhone — or vice versa.

Check out their complete — and extensive — lineup of apps at SplashData.com, including one of their favorites, Birthdays:

It tells you how many days are left before your friends’ birthdays. It automatically pulls in birthdays from your contacts.

If you’ve tried any yourself, drop a us a comment below and let us know how it worked for you!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

QuickApps: SplashPhoto and SplashNotes Round-out SplashData iPhone Offerings

It seems that e-book readers are going to be technology’s next big thing. With the Kindle being named Oprah’s favorite gadget and other e-book reading devices battling for pole position, the e-book reader is populating daily culture. But who wants to pay that much money for a dedicated reading device that is admittedly limited and still has no true standard format?

Insert iPhone. We all know that the iPhone does a great job in converging multiple devices, why not add being an e-book reader to its capabilities? Obviously we won’t have any e-ink technology in the iPhone but the e-book readers in the iPhone, Classics and Stanza, offer ease of use and a great free selection—plus you don’t have to plop down an extra 400 dollars to read a book.

See what we think of Classics and Stanza in our App vs App!

Design

Classics is wonderfully designed. Upon starting the app, a virtual bookcase filled with the covers of popular books gives you your reading options. The interactive bookshelf definitely makes for a virtually pleasing layout—it gives a experience similar to grabbing a book from your shelf, but in this case, tapping will suffice. You can also rearrange the books in any order, though the obvious flaw is when more books become available this design layout may not be the most effective to navigate.

What’s great about Classics is that the look of the pages seems carefully designed and well implemented. The pages look like pages of a book, complete with a clothlike texture and instant readability. Another great touch is the flipping of the pages, swipe from right to left to move pages in the most accurate rendition we’ve seen in an e-book reader.

Stanza makes up for what it lacks in groundbreaking design by offering seemingly limitless customization. If you want the color of the words a certain hue of grey or the background completely black, you have the option to do so. This amount of customization allows you to create layouts that better suit your eyes.

Stanza’s library page is akin to the iPhone’s setting page—effective and efficient but hardly awe inspiring. It gives you a basic list to select from and it’ll narrow your selection from there. Overall, it works but it definitely feels like you have to learn how to use the controls before you read, rather than just get to reading right away.

Usability

Classics notable feature is its ability to realistically flip through pages. Because there is no customization options whatsoever in Classics, Classics needed to nail this feature to warrant any type of consideration. Luckily, they absolutely nailed it. The animation and physics of turning the page are extremely accurate and if you’re sliding the finger to turn but decide not to, it follows your movement and the page falls back in place. You really have to give it a try, it’s the most accurate representation of page turning that I’ve ever seen.

Also, I found that the overall page design of Classics was fairly easy on the eyes. It uses a tan/brown mix of colors to create a more paper-esque texture to the page. It almost looks cloth like. Overall, Classics did a wonderful job in presenting themselves and I enjoyed reading from the application.

But by no means is Classics perfect. It doesn’t have a great selection, offering only a handful of “classic” novels and it offers no customization whatsoever. There is no ability to customize page layout, to change fonts, no ability to add books—you really have to run with what the developers designed for you. You can’t even change the font size, so you’re stuck turning pages at a pretty fast rate. So though Classics looks great, it is definitely limited.

Stanza on the other hand, is completely customizable. You can add books, newspapers, magazines, and thousands of books from different publishers. The sheer number of books is simply staggering, you can always find something to read.

Also, you can customize the page layout to fit your eyes’ preference. The text color, background color, link color, font, font size, alignment, line spacing, margin width, images, and controls—it can really be tweaked to whatever you prefer. Want to read with a black background and white text? By all means! Black Helvetica text on a red background with justified alignment? Sure!

But in the end, I still preferred the overall look of Classics standard page layout over Stanza’s customizable options. No matter what I did, and I tried to emulate Classics, it just wasn’t as easy on the eyes. Also, turning the page is nowhere near as pretty. It only slides out in Stanza.

But the unarguable advantage of Stanza is its ability to add books. That makes it a much more powerful reader and definitely lengthens the life span of the application. You’ll never be able to read everything that the folks at Stanza offers because it really has a library worth of literature! 

Final Thoughts

So I guess what it really boils down to is: do you want an e-book reader that looks good with a limited amount of books or a fully customizable reader with limitless options of reading material?

In conclusion, I think having a greater selection wins out. The fact that Stanza can add a variety of books, newspapers, and magazines to your library makes it the winner in this week’s App vs App. The complete customization of the page layout also deserves kudos because it lets the reader decide what he or she wants to see.

It’s hard to knock Classics though. As a reading application, it deserves stellar marks for nailing the physics of turning the page and offering such a great, easy on the eyes, page design. Even though customization is huge in e-book readers, the stock look of Classics is still by far the best look in comparison with the two.

But Classics falls short by not offering a wider reading selection. It simply can’t seriously compete as an e-book reader when you can only read the same “classic” books over again. I love this application and think the developers did a fantastic job, but the lack of selection makes it hard for me to give my full recommendation. I definitely think it still merits consideration as the most exciting reader app for the iPhone. But as it stands now, Stanza has still got it beat.

Classics Rating

Stanza Rating

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App vs App: Classics vs Stanza eBook Readers for the iPhone

Ahh, sports. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. If you are old enough, you probably remember the “agony of defeat” guy – painful on more than one level (for him, and for you if you are old enough to know what I’m talking about). I love me some sports, and thankfully there are some great sports apps for the iPhone. Two of my favorites are freebies – Sportacular and SportsTap. Which one has the edge? Who comes out on top as being more competitive and “sportier?”  Who hits the shot at the buzzer FTW?! Check out the App v. App after the break!

How Do They Compare?

Sportacular

I will say up front that I carry a little bit of bias here. I’ve been using Sportacular for quite a while now and it’s become a personal favorite of mine. Brought to us for free via the App Store by Jeff Hamilton, Sportacular is packed with useful features for the sports enthusiast while still maintaining a simple, clean interface.

Sportacular offers regular updates to scores, team standings, stats, and news covering several of the major professional and collegiate sports. Updates come every 30 seconds so you know what’s going on as it happens. The major sports that are covered are MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, PGA, LPGA, and NCAA football and basketball. Season and game stats are now available for MLB, NFL, NBA, and the NHL.

It gets even better – Sportacular provides access to league and conference standings, the NCAA Top 25 updated daily, team schedules, NHL scoring and penalty details, NBA latest plays, and even BCS standings. There are other user features available for the sports diehard. If you are into fantasy sports and need to keep track of your favorite teams and players, Sportacular provides a means of creating custom groups for tracking teams and players so you can make important decisions for your fantasy team. Sportacular is now also part of the Citizen Sports network for even MORE access to all things sporty!

Having so many features and tools are just half the battle. The other half is won with a good user interface. Along the bottom of the screen you will find Scores, Standings, Schedules, Stats and More. All are self-explanatory, and More gives you access to News, a Featured Product (as I write this, my current Featured Product is a 49ers shower curtain on sale at Amazon.com – woohoo!), the Sportacular Blog for updates about the app, the list of Sportacular-related web apps, and App Info. 

For me, ease of use and having access to updated sports information that I want with a clean, attractive, and efficient interface wins the day. If you don’t have Sportacular already, I highly recommend it. 

SportsTap

The other favorite sports app on my iPhone is SportsTap by Mobile1Sports, LLC. Like Sportacular, it provides access to scores and stats for the major sports but also goes a bit further by offering even more: MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NASCAR, Formula One, IndyCar, AFL, CFL, PGA, LPGA, ATP, WTA, MLS, and top futbol leagues from around the world. If sheer number of sports alone is used to determine a winner here, then SportsTap would come out on top. However, it’s much more than how many sports a sports app provides access to – it’s HOW the information is delivered.

In addition to scores and stats for all the aforementioned sports and leagues, SportsTap also provides detailed box scores, in-depth team and player statistics, season statistics, and even league transactions for many of the leagues. The information can still be considered “real time”, but is updated slightly less frequently than Sportacular – 60 second vs. 30 second updates.

I do like the main screen for SportsTap. It is very iPhone-esque with icons for each of the sports along with notifications in the upper right-hand corner of each icon for any new news items or events. The interface for SportsTap is also pretty clean, but I think it lacks the same intuitiveness that Sportacular offers. For example, to return to the home screen, you tap the SportsTap icon in the upper right-hand corner of whichever screen you happen to be in at the time. There is also a tiny “Home” icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Instead, it would be nice if there were “back” arrows to return to the previous screen rather than have to start from the Home screen again. The devil is truly in the details.

To SportsTap’s credit, I do like the “Feedback” option on the Home screen. From here, you can contact the developer for questions or comments. Although well-intentioned, it’s a shame that a Feedback icon takes up space on the Home screen because, really, how often will you provide feedback?

Like Sportacular, SportsTap also offers the option for setting up Favorites to track your favorite teams, regardless of sport or league. I also give SportsTap the edge for providing more detail for upcoming games – not only can you access the spread and see who is favored, but scrolling down reveals the past history between the two competing teams and a very detailed game preview.

Conclusion

It’s truly hard to go wrong with either Sportacular or SportsTap if you are a sports fan and want all your sports goodness on the fly, conveniently on your iPhone. Given that they are both free and take up little memory space, it’s not a tough decision to make to keep them both on your iPhone. However, this IS App v. App, after all, and THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! So, even though it offers fewer sports by focusing on the more prominent professional and collegiate sports, I have to give the nod to Sportacular as the winner here. The simple, clean, and efficient interface and ease of use makes Sportacular a more enjoyable app, in my opinion. But hey, don’t just take my word for it. Try them both out and tell us what YOU think!

Sportacular Rating

SportsTap Rating

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App v. App: Sportacular and SportsTap

I love me some crossword puzzles. You can keep your silly Sudoku, I played enough logic games getting my philosophy major from a department that didn’t go for them crazy postmodern language games (seriously, the folks at St. Thomas love them some logic). I love having crosswords on my smartphone because it’s the perfect ‘quick game’ app: you can spend two minutes or twenty on them, there’s many new and free ones available every day, and they fend off cognitive decline in old age (Seriously, speaking of Catholics, look into the “nun study“).

Anyway, point is I want my crossword puzzle app to be awesome. So this week’s App vs. App is crosswords. Today’s contestants: 2 Across (1.2.2) by Eliza Block and Crosswords (1.13) by Stand Alone, Inc. Which one will better serve your word-puzzle fetish? Read on!

Getting Puzzles

Both 2 Across and Crosswords allow you to download around a dozen different free crossword puzzles, many updated daily. These puzzles are in the .puz format — which I know because I spent many an hour hunting for .puz files back in my days as a PalmOS Treo user (full disclosure, the best PalmOS cross app is developed by Stand Alone). It’s a standard crossword file format that can be made available for download by any crossword app and can either be free or by subscription (i.e. both can download the NYT puzzles if you’ve subscribed).

Both apps allow you do download these free puzzles as often as you like and also give you access to download a nearly unlimited number of puzzles by going backwards in time. 2 Across gives you a decidedly-standard-iPhone method of selecting a source, drilling in, and then choosing the date you want to download. Just press the “+” button at the bottom center and away you go.

It’s a simple system that’s very iPhone-esque in its UI and methodology (remember that, it’ll be a trend).

Crosswords has the same functionality — the ability to download any single puzzle from essentially the same sources and also the ability to download from previous dates. But Crosswords improves on the whole process in two ways. One: instead of using the standard iPhone ‘dial’ date picker, it presents you with a month view, allowing you to tap multiple dates very quickly. You find these by pressing the “+” button in the upper-left of the puzzles list. Two: the best thing about Crosswords is that there’s a big old “Get Todays’ Puzzles” at the top of your puzzle list every day. Quick, convenient, and automatic. Love it.

Managing Puzzles

Both 2 Across and Crosswords have a nice, clear list of your saved puzzles. Both show your progress — 2 Across uses a pie-chart and Crosswords a status bar. You hit the edit button to delete puzzles. Here again, 2 Across utilizes familiar iPhone elements and is clean and simple.

Crosswords listing also uses some iPhone UI elements, but it’s not as ’standard’ as 2 Across. For one thing, there’s that “get puzzles” button I mentioned. For another, there are a lot more buttons on the Crosswords listing. This can be a little jarring for some, but once you figure out what everything does (note that one of the buttons is ‘help’), it’s pretty great. You can sort by date or by last played. The last crossword puzzle you were playing is always indicated by a checkmark, and those status indicators are nice.

Doing Puzzles

Turns out you use a crossword app for more than downloading, tracking, and managing puzzles! Both apps have great crossword-playing abilities, though again you’re going to run into some differences.

The same theme I’ve hit in the above sections applies to the crossword itself. 2 Across utilizes some very standard iPhone elements and has an immediate and intuitive feel to it. You can pinch-zoom, it has a standard iPhone keyboard, there’s buttons for useful bits like looking at all the clues, looking at them in split-pane, switching to ‘pencil’ mode, and so on. You can show and hide the keyboard, enter multiple letters in a square, and you can even swipe in the ‘clue area’ to jump between clues

In all, you’ll spend perhaps more time than you might like zooming in and out and so on, but here again I find this to be like standard iPhone apps. It might not be the most efficient way of doing things, but it’s certainly intuitive.

Crosswords, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. I hated Crosswords in its 1.0 version because its default way of doing things were very un-iPhone-like and it also seemed to suffer from crashes. At 1.13, however, things are noticeably improved. Where 2 Across uses the standard iPhone UI bits, Crosswords uses them and also tosses in all sorts of other options.

The downside here is that you really need to take a half dozen visits to the settings when you first start using Crosswords, because the different options can be confusing and some of the defaults are annoying (I’m looking at you, compact keyboard option). That said, once you know what all the options and features and widgets are, you simply enable the ones you want and disable the ones you don’t. After that, Crosswords can do, erm, crosswords in pretty much any way you like from the intuitive, iPhone-esque methods that are similar to 2 Across to a more traditional method that utilizes a floating directional pad for switching between clues.

There are also tons of nice and useful touches like the clue view showing you the letters you’ve already entered for a word. Unfortunately, I did run into more pauses and slowdowns in Crosswords than I did in 2 Across, so there are some bugs yet to be tracked down from that 1.0 release.

On the other hand, landscape mode! There’s not as much functionality when you’re in landscape mode, but it’s a neat option and a nice alternate view.

Conclusion

2 Across is $5.99 and Crosswords is $9.99, but for a crossword junkie like myself (Jai Alai!) 3 bucks is much less important than playing my puzzles quickly and easily. In that regard, both apps do make the grade. In point of fact, after several weeks I still can’t fully decide which one I like best and haven’t banished either from my iPhone. I don’t recommend this method, however.

The good news is that both apps have a ‘lite’ version which you can try for free to see which you like better before you lay your money down.

The thumbnail difference is this: 2 Across is intuitive, iPhone-like, and easy to use. Crosswords is a little too complex and option-heavy, but more powerful. I consider myself a ‘power user’ with smartphones (but not Crosswords, yet. I’ll get you, Sunday New York Times!), so Crosswords is likely to get the ’stay’ on my iPhone.

2 Across

Pros

• iPhone-like UI
• Snappy
• Simple to learn

Cons

• Have to manually download puzzle-by-puzzle and day-by-day
• No Landscape mode

Crosswords Rating

Pros

• Landscape Mode
• Lots of options

Cons

• Some occasional lag and missed-taps
• Lots of options

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Crosswords vs 2 Across: iPhone App vs. App

[This is an iPhone blog App vs. App review! Last week, we ran our Shazam vs. Midomi showdown, with Midomi scoring the win. But which commenter won an iTunes gift certificate? Congratulations Patrick! Want your chance to win the winning app this week? Comment below!]

Ever used a laser pointer? Ever used a wireless mouse? Ever wish you could have both in one and more? Well, there are some apps on the iPhone that allow you to do just that! These devices work great! They turn the iPhone into a remote mouse with a virtual touch pad. You use your finger to control the mouse; left-click, right-click, scroll, it makes no difference! You can even create macros to automate launching applications! Let’s take a look at two of these apps: Air Mouse [iTunes Link] and Snatch [iTunes Link]

Function

Snatch (ver 2.1): This app offers a slightly different approach. You get your track pad, but lose out on the laser pointer. But what do you gain? Macros baby! That is right, you can program Snatch to launch your favorite apps with the touch of the screen!

Specifics

The “laser pointer” feature is quite nice. It uses the accelerometer in the iPhone to track your movements onscreen, thus replicating the effect of a laser pointer with your mouse. Simply point the iPhone at the screen and make your gestures; tilt to the left or right, up or down and the on-screen cursor responds accordingly. I found this to be effective, but a little fickle and practice is definitely need, but it does work as advertised. Having the instant switch feature really enhances its usefulness as well. Switching on the fly from pointer to mouse is really an added bonus.

Snatch (ver 2.1): Though similar to Air Mouse, Snatch offers a few more  configuration options for the remote mouse. For instance, you are not limited to just portrait, you can also use landscape as well. How many mouse buttons would you like? You can create up to three virtual buttons with Snatch.

Multiple mouse buttons one of the advantages over Air Mouse; there are more options too. Air Mouse offers virtual no options where Snatch gives you just about any option you can think of. Let me give you a small selection:

• Button placement (top or bottom)
• Inertia (on/off)
• Speed
• Cycle between text or numerical keyboard
• Plus a few others!

{Update: For those that are interested, there is also a free version of Snatch that can be found here [iTunes Link]. It is missing scroll, keyboard and macro functionality, but hey, it is a free mouse }

Configuration

One more thing, and this is really important: These apps only work on your LAN. For example, you are at your house and the computer and iPhone are using Wi-Fi though the same router. These apps MAY NOT work at say, Starbucks or your corporate environment. However, Snatch does offer the ability to create your own Ad-Hoc network with your Mac, so this is not much of a problem for Mac users.

Conclusion

Air Mouse Rating

• Solid app
• Fast
• No-hassle setup

Snatch Rating

• Portrait and landscape
• More configuration options
• Macros

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App vs. App: Air Mouse and Snatch