Smartphone App Review: InstaEditor

More filter fun, more light and shade choices, with InstaEditor. Free too.

There are lots of free photo apps you can download, but one of my favourites is InstaEditor for iPhone and iPad.

Just like Instagram, it has a basic range of colour filters you can apply, but the extra bonus is that InstaEditor has Brightness, Saturation, Sharpness and Contrast settings that you can dial in.

Once you have your image – you can take a photo or choose from your library, then choose a colour filter, add backlighting, or night settings, then swipe the dashboard menu at the bottom of the screen.

Tap Brightness if you want to enhance a night time photo, or if you have something that’s looking a little washed out, dial in some extra colour saturation.

You just click Apply after adding each effect, the app saves your tweaks as you go along.

You can dab away things like Red Eye, or add a splash of white to sections of the photo too.

When you’re finished, tap Done and the photo is automatically saved to your iPhone photos. You can share it immediately, or put the tweaked image through something else like say iQuik Dof – this lets you use your fingertip to choose which section of an image is in/out of focus.

Basically this app is easy-peasy, lemon squeezy to use, costs nothing and apart from a message inviting you to play a game each time you use it, has no annoying features.

Get snapping smartphone lovers

No filters, taken at night, 40w bulb. Bit wishy washy.

Here are two pics from my iPhone 4, taken at night. First has no filters, next has InstaEditor and iQuik DoF applied.

Use the app and add some blingy bling baby.

Moneysaving smartphone apps; Onavo data saver

This is one of the best free apps I’ve used on my iPhone over the last three months. Onavo is easy to install and once set up you start saving data immediately, as it compresses all those push notifications from social networks, shrinks pictures and video and puts a handy lid on your emails too.

Compresses your data in the background and it's free - Onavo is my kind of app.

Looking at the dashboard I can see that I’ve saved 129MB of data this month, which is just over 10% of my 1GB allowance on my phone contract. Handy indeed.

Networks in the UK are slowly waking up to the idea that people actually want to use their fancy pants smartphones, which means downloading lots of data. T-Mobile have an `all you can eat’ package at present. But if you’re still locked into something with say a 500MB per month cap, Onavo is one app worth downloading right now.

You can get it for Android too.

SEO Tips: Where Our Eyes Go, Our Money Follows

One the best pieces of advice I heard on the Salford SEO and Social Media Course (#SSMM hashtag on Twitter) in 2010 was that `SEO is fundamentally about human nature – where our eyes go, our money follows.’

Of course it’s true. No matter how we pretend not to be influenced by marketing or advertising, we are creatures who follow a pack instinct – we see that others think something is useful, or enhances their social status and we want it too. We seek approval from our peers, right from childhood – often subconsciously.

You see this process in phone and gadget shops. People talk about tariffs, features, data allowances etc but the real, almost hidden conversation is about status, reputation, brand values, kudos.

PEOPLE SEARCH BY MAKE, MODEL, COLOUR – THEY KNOW WHAT THEY COVET

When you build a website, start with the basics; who will visit and why? What’s in it for them?

We are all time-poor nowadays, so websites need to communicate info rapidly and in a sensible, stylish manner. The design should reflect the brand values of your target customer, the text should echo the type of conversations you would have with your website visitors if you met them in a physical store, or maybe in a coffee shop. Relaxed, not too pushy, informed and quietly confident in your product or service.

Google Insights has a gold mine of data on searches, and it's free.

When I searched for keywords related to smartphones recently I was struck by fairly obvious things like iPhone5 searches rising on Google.

But there were also searches for mobile.me, a discontinued Apple contacts/file sharing service. Didn’t expect that. Some things in SEO are unpredictable, that’s why keyword searches are absolutely essential – perhaps twice weekly on larger sites. Unforseen events can often `spike’ searches in all kinds of things related to your core product or service. Look how an Icelandic volcano erupting spiked searches for ferry services or flights from obscure airports to the UK.

OK, back to smartphones; I found three times more people searching for `best’ or `top’ smartphone than I did for `cheapest.’ People want reviews, advice, ammo before walking into that lions’ den otherwise known as a UK phone shop. This isn’t really a price-driven product, no matter what people say to each other down the pub about contract tariffs.

If you drill down into search volumes you find models like `Wildfire,’ ‘Sensation’ or `Cha Cha’ within the HTC category. People are quite specific – they more or less know what they want – then they begin a web hunt for the best deal on that make and model. Same thing happens with cars, laptops, hi-fi, TVs, washing machines, sofas etc.

The brands who do best online are ones who spend time and money on their brand image, supporting reviewers with real credibility. Image sells, `cool’ still counts for something.

Manufacturers also need to give resellers an incentive to finally close the deal online. Because for all our specific searches, or our powerful longing for the latest feature-packed smartphone, sometimes a random shiny new bauble can catch our fickle eyes. That’s what makes us human.

We’re all search magpies.

I’m Twittering on @npointsocial BTW )

Three of the best smartphone photo Apps

One of the best features on Apple’s iPhone is the camera. Truly pin sharp images, little bit fuzzy at night maybe, but any modern smartphone makes photo sharing a joy 90% of the time. Point, shoot, edit and share – simple.

Coming from a film SLR background, the iPhone was a revelation to me; if you had told me back in 2000 that a phone could take a photo like this one of Ted on the beach, then you could tweak the image in 5 mins and share it globally, I would never have believed that possible. But it is and here are my top three Apps worth sampling if you love photography:

Use iQuikDoF to highlight one part and soften another section of your image.

1. 1QuickDoF

This is a depth of field app, which lets you throw sections of an image out of focus and highlight one area for absolute sharpness.

It can really make a big difference if you have a picture with some strong foreground interest, or maybe there’s a logo or product that you want to highlight in a commercial photo.If you use a jquery slideshow feature in your website, then this is a really easy way to make your new products, news or show coverage sections come to life.

It’s a free app, there’s a simple to use dashboard and it’s easy to save the image or choose `Share’ on the go. If you want more, there’s an iQuikDoF Pro upgrade available from the Apple App Store too.

2. Pixlr-o-matic

If you find Instagram has a limited set of features, which it does – there’s just 12 filters – then Pixlromatic might help you express your creative side that bit better. You get three scroll-thru dashboards at the bottom of the App interface, so you can choose filters, then switch to a frames selection and maybe use the `lightbulb’ option to add some kinda wacky stuff like a light `leak’ or maybe a vignette look.

Pixlr-o-matic is free and you can download it to your laptop browser, or directly to Facebook, as well as install it to your phone. If you like editing photos and you feel you need to see the image a bit bigger then this is a handy extra feature.

3. Slow Shutter

This App costs 69p but for my money, it’s worth it. The iPhone isn’t a particularly good camera at night and the flash really only works within a 1-2 metre range. So if you like taking photos at sunrise or sunset, then sharing via Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, then Slow Shutter is a handy tool.

The App dashboard lets you choose exposure times from half a second to 15 seconds, plus there’s a `bulb’ feature, just like an old SLR camera, where you select a really long exposure. But for this App to really work, you need a tripod, as I found out when I tried the classic `car light trails’ photo from a bridge.

The iPhone is so light, it's hard to keep it 100% still without a tripod

As you can see, even carefully balancing the iPhone on the bridge rail and trying to steady it by leaning against a lamp post, still resulted in a tiny degree of camera shake – so bluury image. This was using a 15 second exposure at twilight by the way.

I’ve bought a mini tripod and zoom lens kit from Amazon this weekend, so I’ll update you on how the Slow Shutter App performs with some extra gadgetry involved.

The iPhone doesn’t have a focus lock feature, as far as I know, so it may well be that the phone will keep trying to focus on a moving object using Slow Shutter. Maybe selecting the Grid option will stop this happening – testing the camera, and the App, using a tripod will hopefully reveal that it’s possible to get time-lapse images that can rival a digital SLR.

The dream photo App for me would be a `Palette,’ where you could finger-tap colours, contrast the clouds in the sky, dab at sections to filter, turn monochrome etc. Use your hand like a brush basically. A true mix between photography and art would be wonderful – give the App developers another 2 years and I reckon we will be there.

Photo sharing is one of the best reasons for buying a smartphone in my book. It’s just great fun, you can be creative every day at the drop of a hat – you don’t have a carry a bulky bag which shouts `I’m a photographer’ either.

See you on Instagram, Pinterest, plus I’m twittering on @Npointsocial

 

Essential Smartphone Apps: LinkedIn Mobile and Onavo Data Saver

There are thousands of apps out there but here are two I reckon are `musts’ for any Smartphone user. The LinkedIn app and Onavo, a slick way of saving on your data allowance each month.

LINKEDIN ON THE GO

Definitely an app designed for a touchscreen, LinkedIn does the job

Obviously LinkedIn is a network which is more business than social. Great potential for networking yourself, job hunting, recruiting staff if you’re a HR director, or showcasing your company news, events, new products etc. But for me LinkedIn’s PC/laptop site is a bit fiddly, some of the key buttons are buried in obscure places and it lacks a real intuitive feel.

But the iPhone app version of LinkedIn is about 75% better to use than the PC version of the LI dashboard. Four basic buttons to tap open; Inbox, Updates, You ( Your Profile ) and Groups.

It is really simple to `Like,’ reply or Favourite an Update from a LinkedIn contact, the search bar is at the top of page if you want to find a person in a hurry. The Groups menu has a little button showing the number of recently updated discussions – dive into Groups and the most popular discussions are set at the top of the stack. Perfect.

I love this app and best of all, it’s free. The only criticism you can level at it is that it lacks some key features, such as the ability to leave a Group say, or find a company using the search box, rather than say just a person. It is ultimately a stripped-down version of LI, but in some ways, all the better for it.

The app version of LI is more appealing than the PC dashboard

ONAVO- THE DATA MUNCHIN’ MARVEL

Here’s another really useful free iPhone app; Onavo basically shrinks your downloads from all social networks, chops your emails down and puts the squeeze on photos that you may be uploading to sites like Facebook or Foursquare.

Looking at my first month of use I have saved 8.49MB out of 16.1MB downloaded to my phone, or just over half. The greatest savings have been on my general web browsing and Foursquare use. Not surprising, as I do like to post quite a few photos on Foursquare, just to prove I am actually at that place, rather than just `checking in’ whilst stopped at traffic lights near a shop or restaurant. Oh, you didn’t know people did that? Oh yeah, there are some naughty tricks used to blag the Mayorship of Domino’s Pizza…

If you’re on a monthly phone contract for your iPhone or Android device, then there will almost certainly be a data limit on that contract. See the famous T&Cs for details. Now if that limit is fairly low, then an app like Onavo can make all the difference between an extra £5 `top up’ charge in a month, or not.

Here’s a little detail you need to be aware of though, the Android version only monitors your data – it doesn’t shrink it.

Yes, I know I’m beginning to sound like Money Saving Expert Martyn Lewis here, but if there’s a way to cut your iPhone or Android bills in this recession, then why not?

Onavo helps you keep a lid on your data transfer in the background and as a bonus, by saving you data there’s a chance the phone’s battery will last a little longer. Very useful for iPhone 3G and series 4 users, as battery life can be a dismal 4-5 hours once you begin uploading plenty of pics and watching video clips on the move.

More phone tips, reviews and general techie ramblings coming soon. Why not subscribe to the blog and win a biscuit?*

Twittering on @npointsocial
*Biscuits subject to availability, min charge of £5 p&p may apply, or I might just eat all the Hob Nobs.

My Top Rated Smartphone App – Whatsapp is 69p Worth of Genius

Almost everyone has heard of apps like Angry Birds or the X Factor app with its `Tap to Clap’ feature. But here’s an app you might not know, yet for me, really is one of the best value Smartphone apps on the market – it’s called Whatsapp and it rocks baby.

Chat, share, message anywhere, all for 69p. You gotta love it.

If you’re on a contract that limits your text messages, charges for sending multimedia messages, or you just want to connect and chat live to Blackberry users, without using BBM, then Whatsapp is the simple solution to those problems. It will save you a fortune.

It costs a one-off download fee of just 69p on iPhone and Whatsapp is free for a year on Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry, then it costs $1.99 per year thereafter.

What do you get for that? Easy to use messaging, live chat one-to-one or in groups, plus you can send video or photo attachments at no cost. You can even do all this internationally, so long as there’s a wi-fi connection you can jump onto. I love sending photos or attaching a video clip then pinging it to my friends instantly – the data transferred by Whatsapp is included in my broadband contract, so there’s no extra phone contract charges.

NO MORE MULTIMEDIA TEXT CHARGES

After years of being stung each time I sent a photo from a night out, or whilst on holiday, it feels fantastic to use Whatsapp. The sheer simplicity of use is what makes this app great; just type a brief message, select the arrow next to the chat box, choose photo/video/audio from the pop-up menu, then share that message with a fellow `Whatsapper.’ Brilliant.

Whatsapp has a really user-friendly dashboard. You can select your status, choosing from `Available,’ `At the gym,’ or even customise your own location. Keep your chat history, or clear all conversations for privacy. You can even search for Whatsapp users from your phonebook contacts list and it tells you who is using it. Nice touch. It even has a data meter, so you can check how many megabytes you’re sending.

Whatsapp is quicker than emailing and, for me, easier to use than say MSN Messenger. It’s been the best 69p I’ve spent online because it makes using the Smartphone more fun, more social.

Find out more at the official Whatsapp site.