App Store Apps

DEAD Room – The Dark One review: welcome to your worst nightmare

My first discovery of the fabled “Slender Man” happened a few years ago. A friend showed me YouTube videos of found footage starring a tall, thin figure with a featureless face. In the videos, the electronics of the camera would fail every time Slender Man would appear on screen. Although I knew it was make believe, it still creeped me out.

Dead Room – The Dark One is a play on the fictitious figure. Only this mysterious entity looks and moves differently. The gameplay is similar to other Slender Man survival titles, but seems to have no ending, except a bad one…

Shapematic turns your iPhone into a 3D scanner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmb5BcBZhdM

Shapematic is a new app that just launched in the App Store, and that aims to turn your iPhone into a 3D scanner. Simply snap a few pictures under different angles of the object you want to scan, and let the app work its software magic. The result will be a three-dimensional reconstruction of the object. The app also includes a feature that lets you edit your 3D photos to remove little flaws that might have showed up in the process.

The 3D models created are printing ready, and you can request a 3D print directly from the application to get the three-dimensional model shipped to you.

Download Shapematic in the App Store for $0.99.

TextExpander updated for iOS 7, adds a bunch of snippet management features

If you're going to do serious typing on your iPhone and iPad, why not save yourself precious time by having short abbreviations automatically expanded into long snippets (i.e. have 'idb' auto-expand to 'iDownloadBlog')?

Although iOS 7 lets you create shortcuts in Settings > General > Keyboard that'll automatically expand into words and phrases as you type, the basic implementation of the feature leaves a lot to be desired.

Enter Smile Software's TextExpander, a tool that gets this job done better than any other software. Available for iOS since last summer, the app contains advanced features like clipboard integration, macros and fill-in snippets. And thanks to the official SDK, third-party apps can implement TextExpander functionality to use your commonly-used strings of text.

On Wednesday, Smile updated the iOS snippet expansion utility with iOS 7-friendly design and a host of group and snippet management improvements. The app is now available in the App Store free of charge for existing customers and I've included additional tidbits right after the break...

ProCamera 7 gains TIFF and high-res Instagram support, printing, Vimeo sharing and more

ProCamera by German developer Cocologics GmbH has been featured on our 10 Best Photography Apps of 2013 list, you rated it one of the Best Apps of 2013 and it's been consistently featured throughout our ongoing iPhone photography series.

Small wonder, given ProCamera combines photo and video recording, advanced editing and sharing into a single app laden with rich controls, more than 76 pro-grade filters and effects, a dedicated Lightbox (like in Camera+), full-res photo preview and lots more.

Cocologics has pushed a major new ProCamera 7 update this morning, adding numerous nice-to-haves while implementing some nice new features like high-resolution Instagram uploads, support for the lossless TIFF file format, in-app printing, an improved Lightbox and Night mode, Vimeo sharing, Open-in functionality and lots more.

The new ProCamera 7 version 5.3 is now live in the App Store and available free to existing users. We have a few promo codes to spare so read on for the full reveal...

Fantastical 2 for iPad: the best calendar app is now available on iPad

I'd probably be wasting my time if I spent more than a few words introducing Fantastical, an app that most of us here at iDB use on a daily basis, and which we recently ranked as one of the best calendar apps for iPhone. And it's not just us!

Up until today, you could only use Fantastical on your Mac or your iPhone, but things are changing as Flexibits just released Fantastical 2 for iPad, now available in the App Store...

Day One update brings new publishing feature to iPad

Great news for all of you Day One users out there. The popular journaling app has updated its iOS client to version 1.14 this morning with iPad publishing, new photo features, and a slew of bug fixes and other improvements.

As you may recall, last month developers Bloom Built added the ability to publish journal entries to the web on the iPhone, essentially turning the app into a personal blogging platform. And now it's available on the iPad as well...

Spotify updated with major redesign and other improvements

Good news for Spotify users this morning: the streaming music service has delivered a much needed redesign to its web, iPhone and desktop clients. The new look brings the apps more in line with competitors like Rdio, and establishes a single identity across all platforms.

The redesign comes to the iPhone (it doesn't look like it's on the iPad yet) by way of the version 1.0 update. It's much darker than before, and features trendy effects like blur and rounded iconography. Spotify has also made a handful of performance and stability improvements....

Apple updates iWork for iOS and Mac with read-only sharing mode and other new features

Hot on the heels of refreshing iWork for iCloud earlier today with updated design, Retina graphics support, the ability to share view-only documents, the option to open documents directly from iCloud Mail and other enhancements, related updates to the iWork suite of applications for iOS and OS X have now surfaced on the App Store and Mac App Store.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iOS and OS X have picked up a dozen new features each, including sharing view-only documents for cross-platform compatibility across the web, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac. Your download links and accompanying release notes are right after the break...

New Comedy Central app puts all shows in one place

Comedy Central has several free apps in the App Store, each dedicated to its own show, like The Daily Show Headlines, The Colbert Report and Tosh 2.0, to name a few.

In the commendable effort to reduce user confusion and increase engagement, the comedy channel owned by MTV Networks Entertainment Group has released a new iOS app simply named Comedy Central that consolidates all their shows into one place.

The dedicated streaming app is now available to download free of charge in the App Store. Wait, you haven't heard the coolest thing: you can stream episodes of select shows free of charge, no cable subscription required whatsoever, with some caveats...

BBM updated with stickers, large file transfers and image sharing in multi-person chats

The Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry is launching a new version of its BBM instant messaging software for iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

As previously reported, this BBM edition enables popular stickers and includes a couple feature additions, such as the ability to share images with multiple parties in multi-person chats and send larger files to others.

Various sticker packs can be purchased from the new BBM Shop, with some stickers like the legacy BBM emoticons offered free of charge. It's interesting that BlackBerry partnered with brands on themed sticker packs like CosCat, Gilbert’s Tales, Bubble Bot and many more.

The new BBM 2.1 will be launching in the App Store later today...

TriBlaster review: step back in time with this retro arcade game

I can almost still smell the scent of stale popcorn and feel the sticky joystick in my hand when I play certain retro style games. At the risk of outing my age, when I was a kid, there was no such thing as home consoles. If you wanted to play a video game, you had to go to an arcade.

TriBlaster is an updated version of one of the best vector graphic 3D games of the 1980s, Tempest. Instead of a boring old fixed view, this game offers a multitude of angles to confuse and amuse you…

Help Clarc rescue his robot friends in this action puzzle adventure

Put “drunk” and “robots” in the same sentence and you’ve won me over already. That’s what the witty developers at Golden Tricycle did when they described their newest submission to the App Store.

CLARC is a grid-based action puzzle that uses spatial reasoning as a mechanism for moving from one location to the next. Where do the drunk robots come in? Well, if it weren’t for those alcohol-swilling androids, CLARC wouldn’t have had to clean up after them…