This week’s roundup includes two new apps that promise to revolutionize the way you get your headlines. Read on!
News Pro, the free news aggregation iPhone app from Microsoft, launched in Version 2.0 this week and added two new features: “Groups”—basically a social networking function that lets you discuss the news of the day with the app’s other users, and a personal news bot named “Roewe” that tries to find you the news of your choosing.
Summit is also a free news aggregation app, this time for iPhone and iPad. It gives you the news in bite-sized chunks: Boiling down the day’s top stories to summaries that keep you abreast of the news without drowning you in it.
Another weather app: The $2 Aerium offering for iPhone goes for “pith” as its defining feature—open it up and you’ll see the current temperature, a short, clever message telling you how to dress for the day, and the forecast for today and tomorrow. It also includes a Notification Center widget that alerts you to possible rain.
Clawtar ($6 for iPad) is a “a musical instrument and MIDI controller with an adaptive interface.” The interface is laid out with the keys and buttons placed where your hands might most naturally rest on the iPad screen, meaning it’s not only musical but ergonomic, intended to let you play by touch instead of sight.
Mr. Crab 2 (freemium, for iPhone and iPad) features, natch, Mr. Crab and his friends as they solve puzzles, battle enemies, and generally try to save crab babies.
MuseCam (freemium, for iPhone and iPad) calls itself a “next generation image editor”—you can spend money on your preferred filters designed to emulate film, or create your own custom-made efforts to have in the app library. You can also edit colors, use a “split toning” tool, and (of course) crop, rotate, or tilt the image.
Wrio Keyboard ($3, for iPhone) features a honeycomb layout and “large keys with a shape that matches your fingers eliminate typos and increases typing speed.” Most intriguing: Developers are promising the keyboard will soon inlcude “personalized auto-correction” that adapts to how you use language. That could be a big duckin’ deal.
Instead of “getting things done,” the aim of Wildfulness ($2, for iPhone and iPad) is to get things zen. It features a half-dozen hand-drawn landscapes, and a variety of accompanying soundscapes—from thunderstorms to rustling leaves and more—to help you chill.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.