Top Twenty-Four Apps.

In the spirit of giving at Christmas, we are giving you the gift of the top twenty-four apps all in one little list.  We know... you're welcome.  You should know, though, that there was no way we were going to spend Christmas day typing a blog post (even for you), so we actually typed this last week (twice, if you need to know- we deleted the first one... nice.  Ya, we were pretty happy about that.).  So, you ask, how did we type it last week and have it post on Christmas?  Did we get up at the crack of dawn Christmas morning, rush to the computer, and hit the "publish" button?  Did we hire elves?  Did we actually type it on Christmas after all (you know, third time's a charm)?  No.  No.  And, no.  If you want to know how we did it, click here.

Anyway, on to the list.  So, in no particular ranking, but in the order in which they were published, these are the twenty-four apps we reviewed:

1.    Evernote
2.    SoundHound
3.    Better Christmas List
4.    Postagram/Sincerely Ink
5.    Lose It
6.    ePrint
7.    Pandora
8.    Words With Friends
9.    Alarm Clock
10.  Fantasy Monster Football
11.  Capture
12.  Glo Bible 
13.  Silent Film Director
14.  Grocery IQ
15.  SnapTell
16.  All Recipes/Epicurious
17.  Nike Training Club
18.  Pages
19.  App Advice
20.  Card Shark Deluxe
21.  TripIt
22.  Greeting/Holiday cards by Cardmon
23.  HootSuite
24.  BlogPress

Day Twenty-Four. App Twenty-Four. BlogPress.

[Update]: The developers pulled the app to fix continuing issues. We still love the app and are using it for this update, so we have high hopes that they will get it figured out.

We waited as long as possible to post the review for today's app because it was awaiting an update to make it stop crashing. That update came just a couple of days ago and one of our favorite apps is wonderful again. We are talking about the universal app, BlogPress. Our favorite thing about BlogPress is that we can save an online or local version of whatever post we're working on.  The reason this is key, is that it enables us to begin a post on one device then continue it on another.  The local save option matters because we can work on our post (in the subway or under a rock or wherever we don't have wifi access), save it to our device, then upload it when we're back in range of those wireless signals.  We can then modify it at will and re-save the online version for access from whatever keyboard/touchpad we happen to be using next (we're pretty mobile).  We use this app ALL THE TIME for our on-the-go blogging.  If you want to see it in action, this family here used it to share their New York City vacation with selected family and friends as it happened. It's an awesome app and definitely worth downloading if you do any blogging.  Or, even if you don't and just want a fun and simple way to document a trip... and you can check out Blog2Print, which offers to make your entire blog into a book.  We haven't tried it yet, but it could be fun for something like the NYC trip example above.  Anyway, blog on (with BlogPress).

Day Eighteen. App Eighteen. Pages.

Pages is one of the spendier apps we've purchased.  We finally broke down and bought it as a way to view and create documents on our iPhone and iPad (mostly iPad) that were nice to look at.  There are other apps that do the same thing, but none that do it in as aesthetically pleasing a way.

Pages comes with a number of different templates (resume, recipe, party invite, flyer, etc.) that can get you started on creating your wonderful document.  For an example of a quick and easy pattern that was created using Pages, look at the pdf pictured here.

There are cool features for adding media and a variety of stock tables, charts, and shapes, all of which can be modified to meet your needs.  In addition, there is a spell check and word count available, as well as adjustments for all kinds of guides, margins, and tabs.  For a very simple design, we were amazed at the number of ways we could adjust our document.

Once you've finished your creation, you can email or print it, or send it to iWork or iTunes, or copy it to iDisk or Web Dav.  We wish there was an option for uploading it to Dropbox or Evernote, but we can work with what's there.  All in all, we feel that it's been worth our money... especially on the iPad.

Day Thirteen. App Thirteen. Silent Film Director.

We decided that for Day Thirteen we'd go with a quirky little app that really does nothing other than make us laugh.  That app is called Silent Film Director.  It's a fun app that takes video (real time with your camera or from your photo library or FTP file sharing) and allows you to convert it to a silent movie in a variety of themes ranging from 20's Movie to 70's Home Video to Black & White or Sepia, etc.  You also can choose the soundtrack for your silent movie from a variety of instrumental, silent movie-ish choices.

We like the Silent Film Director app because it makes an ordinary video reel take on a whole different personality.  And, quite simply, we love the Charlie Chaplin feel it gives to our videos that makes us laugh.  You can make everyone else laugh too, because once your video is created you can email it, share it on YouTube or Facebook, or save it to your camera roll.  So, have fun with it.

As a bonus, we've included an extremely short (4 seconds?) video just to give you some idea what the end result looks like.