Guest Author

Create impressive HDR photos with your iPhone and Aurora HDR

Smartphones have come a long way over the years. With advanced mobile technology we also have amazing and powerful apps. It’s the combination of these two that makes taking great photos with our phones possible. But when it comes to HDR photography, what do you do if you don’t own a camera or you left it at home? Why not use your iPhone for HDR?

We always have our phones with us these days. This means if you’re out and about and want to take a few photos, this is where your iPhone can give you amazing results when it comes to capturing and creating HDR photos.

After all, the iPhone is arguably the most popular camera in the world. Maybe the popular saying is correct: “The best camera is the one you have with you.”

In this post we will use a couple apps to create impressive HDR photos. We will first shoot photos on iPhone using an app called PureShot, and then we will edit these photos using Aurora HDR for Mac.

How we built the iDB app – part 2: from design to code

This is a guest post by Giulio Michelon, proud designer and CEO of Belka, the Italian studio that designed and developed the iDB app. We've asked Giulio to come here and share his experience developing the app, from the initial concept to the final product. Part 1 was published last week, and part 3 will be published next week.

In the previous part, we talked about the lo-fi design, which mostly iterates on the basic ideas and concepts. In this part I will talk about the high-fidelity design and the actual implementation of the product.

How we built the iDB app – part 1: concept and design

This is a guest post by Giulio Michelon, proud designer and CEO of Belka, the Italian studio that designed and developed the iDB app. We've asked Giulio to come here and share his experience developing the app, from the initial concept to the final product. In part 1, Giulio will talk about concept and design. Part 2, and 3 will be published over the next couple of weeks.

iDownloadBlog’s app started with a concept from Sebastien: he asked us to build an app to discover the latest news for his blog in a fast and convenient way. He mentioned us some example of the result he wanted to see: something similar to Tinder, but for news.

Circul8: an outstanding theme for iPhone and iPad

There are countless amounts of themes already available for iPhone/iPad with more emerging each week. It starts getting harder to find a theme that is truly worthy of your iDevice. That's where we come in... Introducing Circul8. A theme that is well crafted with the perfect minimalism for a simple but effective look.

The best part? It’s free...

LS Climacons, a tranquil theme for your Lock screen

Well it’s Monday and most of you are returning to work or school and gearing up for the week ahead. What’s going to help, you ask? Well another theme post from your friends over at iDB of course! In this series we lay out instructions on how to turn that boring stock Lock or Home screen into a beautifully crafted setup. The Lock screen has been neglected by Apple long enough so lets make it feel special for once.

Let’s get started…

LS Lyra 5, a clean and minimal theme for your Lock screen

Welcome to our third post about the wonderful world of iPhone Lock screen mods! In this series we lay out instructions on how to turn that boring stock Lock screen into a beautifully crafted setup. The Lock screen is literally the first thing you see every time you turn on your iPhone so why not make it look as pretty as possible. Let's just get started...

Wannabat Season turns fast-paced baseball into iOS eye-candy

Vitusoft’s new 3D, one-on-one baseball app Wannabat Season gives the sport a new, stylish attitude and it’s fast-paced game design is perfect for those with an action addiction.

Wannabat brings baseball to a gritty urban environment, and foregoes the stadium for the street. Instead of famous names and jerseys, players can expect to face off against a slew of opponents who ooze style, while players design their own character to compete — both in terms of fashion and field domination.

Don’t jump the gun in Keri Racing

Keri Racing, from Neowiz Internet (the same company that brought us London 2012, the official iOS game of the Olympics), takes on the hottest social network game hits by combining multiple genres in one fun new universe. Whether you’re a solo player or prefer to help friends and compete with them, Keri Racing has you covered.

Named for the cute cartoon birds that serve as mounts for racing against both the AI and friends in real-time, Keri Racing combines farming, being a business mogul, pet raising, RPG-esque stats building, and action-packed interactive racing to provide a unique social and racing experience. But the main goal here is to dominate the racing circuit by raising and racing your pet keris...

Solar: where weather melts with design

Since the dawn of the smartphone, one of the most basic informative features that everyone loves having at the tip of their fingers is weather. Regardless if you’re planning your day, making small talk, or just really into meteorology, accessing weather info almost instantly is key.

Solar is described as a hyper-sensorial, interactive display of the day's weather, rendered in dazzling colorscapes. It has no vector polygons, no dew point calibration, and it doesn’t remind you if you need to wear a jacket. It is, very simply, an exquisitely minimalistic designed weather forecast app – a modern accessory for the aesthetically inspired adventurer...

The Stocks app kinda makes its way to the iPad in iOS 6

A few stock applications that were on the iPhone never made their way to the iPad. Indeed, the Weather, Stocks, and Clock apps for example have been nowhere to be found on the iPad since its launch in 2010.

With the introduction of iOS 6 beta though, Apple has officially brought the Clock app to its popular tablet – see our video walkthrough. Even though you won't find its icon anywhere, the Stocks app also makes an appearance...

iOS 6 lets you easily tell new apps apart

In case you weren't sure what apps have been newly downloaded on your iDevice, iOS 6 is making this clearer than ever as it now displays a little blue "New" label in the corner of the app icon.

I'm not sure it's going to be one of those life changing new features but I like how it makes it clear that you have downloaded an app and haven't launched it yet...

New in iOS 6: App Store app doesn’t close anymore when downloading an app

One major annoyance I had with iOS so far is that anytime you download an application from the App Store, the app would close and take you back to the Home screen. If you want to download a new app, you have to launch the App Store app again, and repeat the process.

iOS 6 puts an end to this small nonsense and now lets you download as many apps as you want without closing...