Software

Music curation services and software have made it possible to personalize your listening experience, even for free on radio services like Pandora. Songza is the newest in curated listening, providing a list of different radio-style stations that play music according to your current mood and location, as well as what you are doing.

The idea behind Songza is simple. Open the app and set the day and time (it does this automatically, but you can change it). Next, define what you are doing--whether working, in need of an energy boost, drinking coffee in an upscale café, hanging out with … Read more

The iPhone has a perfectly functional, but generally very sterile audio recorder. It works well for what the device is designed for--taking quick notes-- but it's not necessarily a good browsing or sharing tool. So RecordIt Lite offers a more user-friendly design and some additional features to make the process of recording audio and sharing those recordings easier. The free version, however, does little to differentiate itself from Apple's recorder, making it a judgment call on whether you want to change.

The app is simply designed to look much like other Apple apps--with the notepad feel of many … Read more

Animoto is one of those apps that open numerous new possibilities in terms of what you can do with your iPhone camera. The idea is very basic. You can create videos with your photo library or video library, snipping and cutting clips together and then laying them over background tracks, and add additional effects to create a complete video you can then share.

When you open Animoto you can choose to register for easier sharing and syncing or you can use it as a standalone app. Whatever you choose, you can immediately access your photo library to create a new … Read more

There are dozens of photo editing apps on the App Store, many of them free. But far too many of those free apps are lacking some of the basic functions that are needed for a photo editing app to be useful, or they have cluttered, hard-to-use interfaces. BeFunky Photo Editor has none of those issues, and combined with Facebook sharing, channels to view and share photos through the app, and much more, it is one of the better options on the App Store.

The BeFunky editor is a dual-purpose tool. The first role of the app is to connect you … Read more

The built-in camera for the iPhone is a great tool, allowing millions of people to take high-quality photos and share them near instantly with friends and family when on the go. But the actual app used to take photos is fairly limited. Fortunately, there are dozens of tools on the App Store that provide additional options for things like focus lock, exposure control, and white balance, including Camera Plus.

This version of Camera Plus is the lite version of the app so some of its more robust features are still missing; but even as a free app, it provides more … Read more

More than ever before, smartphone users are sharing their experiences through photo and video on networks like Instagram and Facebook. Naturally, that popularity has spurred the creation of hundreds of apps that attempt to do something very similar. Such is the case with Quick Lomo, an app that applies a simple filter to each of your photos before uploading them to your social media profiles via Steply.

Quick Lomo is a simple app with only a handful of options. You can choose a photo in your library or take a new one and apply one of three filters to it (… Read more

There are thousands of resources to replace the background images on your iPhone, from apps to Web sites to your own photos. However, if you want to create a thematic look on your device, the easiest way to do so is with a tool like Pimp Your Theme. Providing a collection of different background and lock screen backgrounds, easy installation, and sharing features, this is a very good app for someone that wants a change for their device's background.

Pimp Your Theme offers a fairly simple solution when looking for new background or lock screen images for your phone. … Read more

One of the biggest weaknesses of the iPad and iPhone platform is the lack of storage that most entry-level devices have. You'll almost certainly need a cloud solution to ensure you can store as many files as possible for future access, especially if you use either device as a work tool. That said, there are quite a few cloud storage options. So what makes CX a viable alternative and should you consider it over Dropbox, Box.net, iCloud, or any of the others?

When you open CX for the first time, you'll find a quick tutorial showing you … Read more

Very few people have unlimited data for their iPhone, so a tool like Data Usage is very useful, showing you quickly how much you've used and how close you are to your limit.

Data Usage provides only what it promises to show you. There are two readouts on the screen--one shows how much data you have used and the other shows your limit. You can change either number with the tap of a button and the graphic at the top will show you visually how close you are to your limit. In tests, the meter proved to be fairly … Read more