The annual Appy Awards are dedicated to acknowledging creativity and excellence in app design. READ MORE»
The annual Appy Awards are dedicated to acknowledging creativity and excellence in app design.
The Appys honor extraordinary Applications on all platforms: mobile, social and web-based. The Appy Awards are unbiased to App's format, platform or device; instead we focus on the best apps in a diverse range of categories, from Games and News, to Health and Fitness, Social Networking, Photography and many others.
The Appy Awards judging takes place in February 2013, and the Winners are announced at the Appy Awards "Get Appy" party in March 2013 at MediaPost’s OMMA Global Conference & Expo in San Francisco, CA.
Once you submit your entry, your app is automatically and instantly eligible to be featured as our “App of the Week”. As a “Featured App”, you can expect a special placement on our website, an “Appy Awards Featured App” badge for your website and promotional and marketing efforts, and a featured review article written by our team and published in the weekly “Appy Awards News” newsletter (subscribe to it below). <<CLOSE
The Appys honor extraordinary Applications on all platforms: mobile, social and web-based. The Appy Awards are unbiased to App's format, platform or device; instead we focus on the best apps in a diverse range of categories, from Games and News, to Health and Fitness, Social Networking, Photography and many others.
The Appy Awards judging takes place in February 2013, and the Winners are announced at the Appy Awards "Get Appy" party in March 2013 at MediaPost’s OMMA Global Conference & Expo in San Francisco, CA.
Once you submit your entry, your app is automatically and instantly eligible to be featured as our “App of the Week”. As a “Featured App”, you can expect a special placement on our website, an “Appy Awards Featured App” badge for your website and promotional and marketing efforts, and a featured review article written by our team and published in the weekly “Appy Awards News” newsletter (subscribe to it below). <<CLOSE
Who needs a schmancy fashion mag, when you can download the FREE Forever 21 app from the iTunes Store (available for both iPhone & iPad). Clearly 1 million fashionistas have seen the light!
but can you find a the best gas prices nearby and then plot the most efficient way to get there?? Probably not unless you have downloaded the FREE YP – Local Search & Gas Prices App. In case you didn’t realize, YP is the modernized name for Yellow Pages. Thank you rebranding.
In 24 hours I will be laid out and down for the count. Many Americans will join me, tryptophan-stuffed and glassy-eyed, deciding whether to brave Black Friday or ride it out on the couch. If you choose the couch, I have an app for that.
You’re patiently working your way through the holiday season, but family and friends have gathered, food has been devoured, and the children are running amok. It feels like millions of photos have been taken – of the food, the family and the pets, so now what? Enter the holiday savior ColorStrokes HD for iPad and iPad mini. While your Uncle Bob is comatose on the couch, open the app, snap a pic of him, then start editing. The entire rainbow is available for you to draw, shade and doodle on your photo. Add colors, effects like sepia or soft light, and adjust the size of your brushstrokes. When your uncle comes to, you can show him your one-of-a-kind, original Thanksgiving masterpiece that features his glistening drool and turkey wattle.
The app is so easy to use that the fun should be shared. Pass the iPad to the kids and let them edit the photo of Granny bent over and half way in the oven. You can take photos through the app, upload existing photos, or login to Facebook and use that photo of your dog that everyone is sick of looking at, but you refuse to backdown that Tuxford is most certainly cuter than Boo, and just because Boo is better trained to take a photo, that doesn’t mean he’s actually more photogenic…..but I digress. After you’ve perfected your photo, send it as a postcard, upload it to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr…or click print for an old fashioned kind of holiday memory.
Anyone who’s shopped at the Apple Store knows how wonderfully convenient it is for the customers and staff that the sales people can process your credit card right there in the middle of the store with a device attached to their iPhones. No lines, no hassle. Select what you want and even the receipt is emailed to you. No paper. No mess. Imagine that same convenience extended beyond the boundaries of a brick and mortar store and unlimited by type of phone.
Pay Anywhere gives you that flexibility and more. The card reader is smaller than the Apple Store’s and sleeker than Square’s and available for iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Getting started is a cinch. The folks at Pay Anywhere will set up your merchant account for you for free. You just pay 2.69% per swipe, a notch lower than the going rate at Square. Now you’re ready to accept credit cards right at the tables in your restaurant, or out front right next to cars at your carwash, or in the middle of a vacant lot at the local flea market. Literally anywhere. App features include commitment-free pay-as-you-go pricing; GPS; compatibility with cash drawers and thermal printers; text- and photo-based inventory; detailed receipt emails; built-in reporting of sales trends with “Heat Maps”; and a free merchant portal for detailed account activity – all directly within the app itself. No need to log into a remote Web site to get important sales data. It’s a feature-rich sales app that truly takes credit card processing on-the-go to a whole new, well, place, literally any place.
The irony does not escape me. I’m sitting on my couch, petting my pomeranian and watching the Olympics while yelling at Bob Costas. Cradled between my dog and a bowl of homemade chicken salad sit various Apple products. I use the iPhone for tweeting my disgust for Bob, the MacBook for reading the occasional email and an iPad for downloading apps and playing games.
This seems like an average day for most Americans. But it’s ironic because I’m playing with the ‘My Life as a Refugee’ app from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – the UN Refugee Agency, all while snuggled under my plush blanket from Brookstone with air conditioner well below 68 degrees. It’s a rough life in the first world.
Coinciding with the UNHCR’s launch of the ‘1 is Too Many’ campaign, ‘My Life as a Refugee’ takes an innovative approach to bring awareness to the awful situations refugees endure. In order to understand the issues refugees contend with, three unique stories were designed based on actual experiences. For players to empathize with the life of a refugee, they have to become one. Players begin the game by selecting a character: Merita – pregnant and in the center of a civil war; Paulo – 15 years old and forced to become a child solider; and Amika – a young mother speaking out for women’s rights. By virtually living these roles, the player is faced with making the same decisions that these individuals encounter in war-torn, poverty-stricken countries. 
Ever make one of those “flip the corners of the pages of your notebook” movies? With a sprinting stick-man, or a swimming stick-woman who gets eaten by a shark? Me too! And I used to play with LEGOs – all the time. Man, the kids today have it made! If you’re into movie-making, DC super heroes and LEGOs, get ready for the perfect storm of awesomeness…
LEGO Super Heroes Movie Maker is a free app (free! what a deal!) that gives you most of the tools you’ll need to make super-cute, super-cool, super-creative stop-motion movies on your iPhone. Check out 
Google’s Project Glass still seems light years away, and while there are many other augmented reality mobile apps out there, most fall short on the promise of a helpful heads-up display experience. Vito Technology’s Star Walk for iPad is a refreshing exception in this field. After playing with it for about a week, it is now my new favorite star-gazing app as well as the new go-to app when I want to show off what the iPad is capable of.
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.