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- Last Minute Christmas Card? There's an App for That!
Realizing there’s no chance of getting your traditional paper-based holiday card out this year, your only recourse is to explore electronic options. You may find just what you are looking for in one of the following three iOS app-based solutions.
A word of caution: Some of the e-card solutions utilize a server-side service to send the cards. I’ve noticed some of these solutions ended up in recipients’ spam folders, so if you’re not sure whether the message will get through, use the solutions that let you do the sending.
For the Truly Lazy Among Us
What you’re looking for is the quickest and easiest way to let your friends and family know that you’re ready for the holiday season this year. If this is what you want, then ISBX’s Build-a-Card Holiday Edition for $0.99 is just the app for you. Simply snap a photo, choose one of the design patterns, add some props, and tweet the results to all of your followers. From app store to instant online gratification in less than five minutes.
For the Slightly More Creative
Perhaps you’ve been more than a little busy this year, and you’re still looking to add the personal touch to a holiday card. But you still want to get it out to everyone before the holidays are over. Then I’d recommend Vivid Apps Christmas Lifecards for $0.99. The workflow is very closely related to that of Build-a-Card, but you have a much greater degree of control as the templates are much more involved. Where the goal of Build-a-Card is quick and easy, Lifecards provides a much deeper and more customizable result.
The sharing options are a lot more involved, too, including the ability to email a PDF version of your Lifecard. You can also save your results in high or low resolution, post to Facebook, and even upload to Flickr or Twitpic. With more than fifty customizable templates to choose from, you should be able to get exactly what you wanted out of this holiday card app.
For the Kid at Heart
There are several holiday entertainment apps for kids that will let you email an image of the artwork they create. But sticking to the theme of holiday card photo apps, Oceanhouse Media’s Dr. Seuss Camera – The Grinch Edition on sale for $0.99 is a great outlet for the kid in each of us. While not quite as extensible as the other two apps (you cannot modify the text), and your only sharing options are to save the resulting image into your photo library, email it, or copy it to the clipboard, this app does have style. It’s just as well put together as are the other Dr. Seuss apps that Oceanhouse has created.
So don’t bother ordering a set of those new fancy letterpress cards that were made available in the recently released iPhoto ’11. And forget about printing out address labels this year. From quick and easy, to deeply creative, to childishly entertaining, these three holiday photo card apps will suite almost anyone’s holiday needs.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):
- How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer's Guide
- Mobile App Developer Survey: Profiles, Platforms and Monetization
- App Developers: Are You Ready for HTML5 and Metered Data?
Переслать - Glif iPhone 4 Tripod Mount Review: Mighty Mite
The iPhone 4 is arguably the first one anyone would be interested on putting on a tripod, and that’s exactly what Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost were counting on when they designed the Glif, a dead simple iPhone 4 universal tripod mount.
The Glif was funded using Kickstarter, a platform that allows individuals to pledge contributions of various sizes towards a funding goal, usually in exchange for some reward promised by the designer, artist or engineer seeking funding in the first place. Like the TikTok and LunaTik iPod nano watch kits funded through the site, the Glif exceeded its funding goal, and is now available for purchase. But is it worth the $20 asking price?
Design and Build
As you can see in the gallery below, the Glif is incredibly simple, and features no moving parts. It’s a single pice of injection-molded plastic, with a 1/4-inch thread mount that’s compatible with any standard tripod head. It’s very small, and weighs virtually nothing, so carrying it in a pocket or an accessory pocket on a laptop case is no problem. Also, since it has no moving parts, it’s very unlikely to break under normal use conditions.
In a world of increasingly complex and complicated iOS device accessories, the Glif is a breath of fresh air. It doesn’t have any obnoxious branding, and it has an economy of design on par with Apple’s own governing aesthetic.
Function
The Glif is designed to do one thing, and it does it well. It does indeed render your iPhone 4 tripod-mountable, and it does it quickly and without requiring you to even put on a case. You just slide the bare iPhone 4 into the Glif. The accessory’s rubberized surface fits around the iPhone 4 snugly, tight enough that it won’t move around, but still leaving it easy enough to take on and off
I worried that this design wouldn’t allow me to use the Glif in tandem with a Gorillapod while suspending the iPhone 4 upside-down. As you can see from one of the photos in the gallery before, that wasn’t the case. But I still wouldn’t necessarily recommend using the Glif like this, since if your setup gets bumped or knocked, the phone could conceivably come loose.
For all other uses, however, the Glif is fantastic. It helped me take great shots in low light on both my standard tripod and using a Gorillapod SLR. It was easy to get on and off the tripod mounts, and it keeps a firm grip on the iPhone while you’re manipulating the angle of your shot or switching from portrait to landscape.
Finally, even in its secondary capacity as a stand, the Glif is quite capable. In portrait mode, the Glif cuts into the screen slightly in the bottom corner, but for FaceTime it doesn’t really impede usage. In landscape mode, it works great for watching video, and the angle is just right for FaceTime, too.
Verdict
For $20, the Glif is awesome. I had been using the Gorillamobile designed specifically for the iPhone 4, but if you already have a previous generation Gorillamobile, the Glif will work with that, saving you some money. Plus, it’ll also make your iPhone compatible with any other tripods or camera mounts you happen to have, which isn’t something the iPhone 4-specific Gorillamobile offers.
Highs: Incredible design; small and light; doubles as a stand
Lows: iPhone 4 could shake loose if knocked hard enough
As if it wasn’t enough that the Glif does its job so well, it also comes in packaging so minimal you’ll be shocked (see photo below), is completely recyclable, and is actually manufactured in the U.S. You just can’t find a better iPhone 4 accessory than the Glif for $20.
Picture 1 of 7Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):
- Mobile App Developer Survey: Profiles, Platforms and Monetization
- Research in Motion Faces Challenges Moving to QNX
- Report: High-Impact Collaboration in the Enterprise
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