Ghostwriter is a simple photo editing app that lets you add certain ’spooky’ effects to the photos you’ve taken of your friends and family, and lets you share them. It’s not meant to be the world’s most powerful photo editing app, but it offers a variety of spooky Halloween-flavored effects which will definitely amuse kids. It is a good option for a limited budget to share in the fun of making your costumed photos just a bit creepier.

What you’ll first want to do is actually go into the settings. You’ll have to select how you want to edit your photo before you even import it. This is one of the few problems I had with the functionality of this app. Most, if not all, photo editing apps let you import your source, and then allow users to edit the effects from there. Nevertheless, you’ll want to choose your Spooky Editing options from within the settings before you import or take your photo.

There are a small selection of options to choose from. First and probably most popular will be adding text – there are six preset messages, such as “Trick or Treat,” “I Want Candy,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and more. However, do you have the option to add your own message as well. From here you can select one of the two fonts available. After you’ve chosen the text, go ahead and choose if you want some ‘Goulish Miasma,’ or other effects like ‘Diabolical Light.’

Finally, a few other options let you decide if the picture will display with a sound effect, if you want to save the originals (for when you take a photo from within the app), or reset all your options. Once you’ve make your selections, go back out to the main page, import your photo, and see your creation! You can play the sound effects over and over, if you like. You can edit the text at this point if you’re not happy with what it says (but not the font or effects). Finally, go ahead and either save your spooky creation or email it to a friend.

That’s Ghostwriter in a nutshell, a simple holiday app for Halloween – pick it up if you’re interested in a simple, easy way to make spooky theme pictures for your Halloween memories!

[ Ghostwriter Review is a post from 148Apps ]

I suppose that paper chore charts are just a hassle—or at least, that’s what Chore Pad wants you to believe. Chore Pad brings the simple chore chart, gold stars and all, to the iPhone’s screen, but with the benefits of digitization (i.e., no need to rewrite it every week!). Is it faithful to its concept? Certainly. But, amazingly enough, some things are suited best for the real world, and Chore Pad doesn’t bring a ton of new features to the table.

As far as functionality, Chore Pad has everything you need in a chore chart app. The app supports multiple users (great for if you’re a parent juggling multiple kids, I guess), and you can create custom chore lists for each of them. Chores are pulled from the “Chore Chest” and stored in a user’s list. When creating chores, you can assign frequencies (every Monday; every other month; etc) and star values. You can also enter rewards, which can eventually be redeemed in exchange for those gold stars.

Once you have the app set up, the intention is for you to log on every day, mark off chores as you do them, and slowly accumulate both gold stars and check marks (which are rewarded for completing any chore). Tilting into landscape view lets you see a week’s worth of chores and edit past dates. The app eventually awards you trophies for lots of chores completed.

While the interface is generally good, not everything works perfectly. For example, I couldn’t find a way to remove chores from my list (from the Chore Chest, yes, but not my list). Settings are tucked into the Settings app without any warning. Other than that, however, interface issues are minimal.

So that’s Chore Pad: simple and to the point. My main reservation is that entering data into an iPhone can easily become a distraction, and the app really doesn’t add enough to the traditional “chore chart” to really impress me. A to-do app will often do just as well. Still, Chore Pad does what it promises, and if you need a specific chores app, it’s a fine candidate.

[ Chore Pad Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Gmail has introduced a way to disable conversation view. This way you will have a separate message appear for replies. Personally I’m a big fan of the conversation view, but some people prefer to have responses in separate e-mails. Here is a tutorial on how to disable conversation view.

1. Go to the main Settings page in Gmail.
2. Go to the “Conversation View” section.
3. Select the option for turning it off.
4. Click Save Changes
5. To undo the changes, just go back to the Settings page again.

[Google Blog]

Some of you may already know FastSnap, an application that was previously available on Rock, which was recently migrated to Cydia. FastSnap allows you to easily capture a photo or video inside the camera.app using the volume button of your iPhone.

FastSnap also comes with a few other handy settings. With FastSnap you can also silent the shutter sound when taking a picture. This feature can be enabled from the Settings menu. To quickly launch the default camera app you can also drag your finger over the top Status bar… Read More

There have been a few apps that I’ve picked up that claim to be able to judge the distance from one object to the next, all of which have produced questionable results. The one that I liked the best was Sonar Ruler, but it wasn’t very practical to use, and became more of a cool “look what my iPhone can do” app than anything.

DAH-Measure takes the measuring app one step further by measuring distance, angle, and height, all in the same app. The developers don’t divulge how they calculate the distance, they just say that Measurements are taken using iPhone’s camera, sensors and mathematical equations.” Their goal was to make a more practical app that wouldn’t have a bunch of bells and whistles bogging it down. It was built to work, and it does fairly well.

After fidgeting with the settings, I got to where the measurement tool worked fairly well, only coming 2 ft. off the actual distance (which was 18 ft.). Height was a bit trickier, with one example coming within a foot or two of the actual target and one not coming very close at all.

One word of warning, in the settings screen you have to determine how high your camera is off the ground. Because I am an American, I switched the setting to imperial, as I like ft. better than meters. Anyways, if you use an accurate distance for “camera height from the ground” (i.e. 35-50 in.), the resulting measurements will come up pretty short. I got a more accurate distance saying that my camera was something closer to 150 in (over 12 ft.!) off the ground, obviously a crazy number. I don’t know if this is a glitch or just happened to work in my circumstance, I’m just throwing it out there.

The developers did put out a disclaimer saying that the measurements are more approximate than anything, but once you get the settings right, the results are pretty nifty.

$0.99

DAH-Measure

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-08-27 :: Category: Utilities

[ DAH-Measure – Your Invisible Ruler is a post from 148Apps ]