The Star Walk app is full of cool features, yet easy to navigate. It launches with a comprehensive ‘Sky Live’ screen which shows the sunrise and sunset times, phases of the Moon, and visibility and elevation angles of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. You can change the current date to the previous or next day with the arrow buttons, and as you cycle through the days, you can see the Moon phases and the information for the other objects featured on the screen change as well. Once you close this view, the app takes you right to the beautiful live sky view synchronized to your location and time of day.

The live augmented reality view adds color-coded labels next to nearly all visible stars, galaxies and nebulae, and identifies major constellations and over 8,000 satellites as you point your iPad at them. You can drag and move the sky around manually and zoom in and out with a pinch of your fingers, or tilt and turn the iPad itself to have the screen view follow your line of sight using iPad’s gyroscopes and compass. The graphics quality is outstanding, and there are many intricate visual details that hint at how much work went into making of this app. For example, when one object crosses over or near another, it actually casts a shadow on it. The Sun itself casts a halo or rays and realistic concentric lens flairs which move and change as you move the iPad, a beautiful touch. But the two features that made this app stand out from other similar offerings are the Night Mode and the Detailed Info view.

The Night Mode is priceless when you are trying to locate any dim object in the dark sky while looking down at the iPad’s brightly lit screen. With the Night Mode turned on, the entire interface turns dark monochrome red, making it a lot easier for the eyes to adjust to the low light conditions. The Detailed Info is another feature sorely missing from other astronomy apps, and it allows you to pull up a detailed fact sheet about any star, satellite, nebula or galaxy by simply tapping on it on the screen, providing a link to a Wikipedia article with more information.

Other useful features include a Twitter-based ‘Star Walkers’ community, a Calendar of upcoming significant astronomical events, and an ability to save as Bookmarks any of the celestial objects you locate with the app. Overall, Star Walk is a visually gorgeous, simple and powerful application that will provide hours of educational fun for any amateur astronomer, and is well worth the $4.99 price.

The article Star Walk for iPad by Vito Technology Inc. appeared first on Appy Awards.

Whatever level of discipline you have with personal finance, every penny still counts, and Mint’s app does an amazing job helping you keep track of yours. Over the years, we’ve seen countless online services that promised to simplify the daunting task of keeping track of your money, and most have failed to deliver anything close to ideal. Then Mint rose up to the challenge and made what used to be a dreaded chore ridiculously simple and even fun. From daily account balances and transactions, to the performance of your IRA, it syncs with nearly all US online financial institutions, frequently adding support for new ones. But like a trusted family accountant, it goes beyond simply tracking your balances. It constantly analyses the bank’s fine-print terms and interest fees for all of your connected accounts, and unobtrusively suggests better alternatives, backing its suggestions by instant calculations of how much you would save in the long run by switching from the accounts you currently have.

True to the popular convention that mobile devices are best used for consuming content, and full featured PCs – for creating it, the Mint app for iPhone is more of a companion to the Mint.com website than a complete stand-alone money management tool. For starters, you need to create an account on Mint.com to be able to use the app in the first place. As another example, the app offers a simple visual way to stay within your budgets with color-coded progress bars, but you have to set those up on Mint.com website first. One feature I’d love to see ported from the website over to the app is the insanely simple tool is has for tracking your earning and spending trends. While the app does have a simplified version of this feature which keeps tabs on your bottom line since the beginning of each month, I find the omission of the website’s more sophisticated analysis tool from the mobile app unfortunate.

Those who are still weary (and rightfully so) of trusting just any old website with logins and passwords to their entire digital life can rest easy. The Mint app uses the same 128-bit encryption that most banks use, keeping your data as safe as it can get. And on your end the app is locked with a unique 4-digit PIN that you can set so that no one can get access to your information should your device get lost or stolen. Best of all, the app is completely free and has no ads of any kind, so there’s no excuse for letting your debt control your life any longer!

The article Mint for iPhone appeared first on Appy Awards.

Kiosk Pro app comes with more settings than most people might need, but the initial setup is fairly simple. You set a homepage and the Allowed Domains list to limit the sites your visitors can navigate to, or leave it empty for unrestricted web browsing. Turn on the Digital Sign mode to completely disable the iPad’s touch screen and turn it into a non-interactive digital signboard. For kiosks located in high traffic areas (like an expo hall at a big convention) there’s a helpful time-out feature – after a set number of minutes of use, Kiosk Pro automatically navigates to a “Goodbye” page and then cycles back to its preset homepage, giving more visitors a turn at your kiosk. Another awesome feature is the option to display all web pages and media from local files stored on iPad directly – a godsend for any location with spotty or slow WiFi or cell service.

For multiple kiosks deployment, even if they are in different locations, the External Settings File feature allows you to globally change any of the settings in seconds. Assign a unique ID for each iPad to change individual kiosk’s settings remotely by changing the corresponding values in an XML file and uploading it to your server. Monitor your kiosks remotely by setting Kiosk Pro to email you if your kiosk loses power. Speaking of power, the Kiosk Pro Plus version lets your kiosk take a nap with the overnight Dim Mode, setting it to automatically go to sleep and wake up at the times you want.

Overall this is one of the best apps for the job we’ve seen in a while, and it offers many clever and innovative features. For serious applications you’ll probably want to purchase once of the hardware kiosk pieces from the developer’s website, to secure the iPad itself and restrict use of the Home Button. But even without the hardware component, the app doesn’t skimp on features and offers a complete solution to turn you iPad into a professional kiosk device on a small budget.

The article Kiosk Pro for iPad appeared first on Appy Awards.

The app is really big on personalization, so the entire interface is fully customizable. Initial upload of your media files is fairly straight forward, you simply do it through iTunes while the iPad is plugged in. Once all the media is in, you can organize it into sections on the iPad, adjust the color palate and modify the font scheme. Select from one of the included background images, or upload your own to make it consistent with your personal branding.

When presenting your work to the clients, you can choose from a variety of included transitions and timing options to automate your content into a seamless slideshow. If you have a VGA adapter, you can even mirror it on a TV monitor or an overhead projector. If however you suddenly notice a mistake or decide to reposition an image while on your way to a meeting, just swap out the pieces you choose and you are instantly ready to go. We also like the way MediaPad Pro helps you stay in touch with potential clients, for that the app includes a guest book for viewers of your portfolio to sign and leave comments. You can easily keep track of who viewed your portfolio, delete individual records or disable the guestbook entirely.

Mediapad Pro was clearly born out of an immediate need for a better tool, and it shows. It creates an environment essential to people showing off their multimedia content, it’s impressively powerful, yet simple and friendly. Its modern take on the traditional portfolio format not only makes your work come alive in your hands, but also eliminates the costs of paper stock, print runs and portfolio cases, not to mention the constantly increasing costs of shipping – it’s a win-win for everyone.

The article MediaPad Pro for iPad appeared first on Appy Awards.

Topical reports from multiple news outlets are accessed and analyzed, compared and delivered in two-minute video segments. Users can filter videos and create personalized playlists, as well as rate, comment on and share videos via Twitter, Facebook and email, even access source links in transcripts. True to the app’s name, Newsy is not a new aggregator, but a news analyzer. Try Newsy now for free via App Store.

The article Newsy for iPad appeared first on Appy Awards.