iTunes Link: Disney Story

Cost:  Free

Category:  Photography

Platform: iOS

Device: iPhone

Rating: 5/5

Review:

Description:

Story App by Disney may not be unique but it is executed very well.  The app provides you with a “Digital” photo book that you can share with your friends and family.  When you launch the app it allows you to create a story by inserting pictures or videos from your phone.  You can then add comments and text before sharing it with your friends and family 

The stories can be shared via Facebook or email. 

Note that there are limits to how much you can share per story.  20 pictures and 2 videos are max per story.  Also note that the videos can be at max 1 minute long. 

You do have themes that you can choose from and you can add unlimited pages of text to each of your stories.    

Pros:

This free app allows you to share bits of your life in a story format.  From your child’s first steps to successful Thanksgiving dinner; you can choose a moment of your life and make a story out of it.

Cons:

Limits on the number of photos and video length are areas the app can improve on.  1 minute videos are typically hard to convey the intended message.  Although we suspect with editing it can be done.  But you can’t download the video, edit it and use it in the app as only media on your iOS device can be used for Story App.

Bottom Line:

Get It.  Story App by Disney is great way of sharing a moment of your life in a stylish manner. 

iTunes Link: Pic Collage

Cost:  Free

Category:  Photography

Platform: iOS

Device: iPhone / iPad

Rating: 5/5

Review:

Description:

Often at an event you might take quite a few photos.  Then when it comes to sharing them, you might want one or two photos that capture the whole evening.  It might be tough to pick one or two pictures out, but a photo collage can be a very handy tool.

Pic Collage by Cardinal Blue offers a great app for your iPhone and iPad.  When you launch the program you just have to tap an open area to start your collage. Then you simply tap anywhere on the screen to add pictures.  The sources of your pictures can be from the Camera Roll, the web or even take pictures from the camera option.  You can then choose the collage design of your choice.

The app offers some “In-App” purchases that offer stickers of various designs and themes.  These stickers are from $0.99-$1.99. 

Once you are done with your collage you can then share your masterpiece at various social sites: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram.  You can also save to your library, Send Postcard or by Email.

Pros:

The app is designed very well, and is easy to navigate.  Also you have many options for your collage so you can fit various pictures. 

Cons:

Having a home button during your collage design process would be a great feature.  The app allows you to use the back arrow to go back a step, but a home button would be easier to navigate back and forth.  

Bottom Line:

Get It.  As far as Photo Collage Apps are considered – this is one of the better apps out there.  

iTunes Link: Google Field Trip

Cost:  Free

Category:  Lifestyle

Platform: iOS

Device: iPhone

Rating: 3/5

Review:

Description:

One of the joys of traveling is to see new things, experience something unique and taste foods that are specialty of the region; however, finding such things maybe harder to coordinate.  You may ask friends about places to go visit or eat at.  Or you can do some online searches before going on the trip.  

But Google Field Trip tries to make finding places a little easier.  The app will use your location to identify places of interest near you.  

The content is sourced from several sites which allows the aggregation of data be more useful to the user.

Pros:

Finding interesting places is hard to do; with this app it gets a little easier.  The great thing about this app is that places that have deals near you are also included which means that if you are traveling on a budget you can save a few dollars exploring nearby venues.

Cons:

The app runs on your GPS chip; which drains a lot of your battery life. When you close the app it does not automatically shut down, which means you have to do a hard shut down of the app.  

Bottom Line:

Get the app only during travel time!  The app needs some refinement on  how it is activated and shutsdown.  

iTunes Link: Photo Collage Factory

Cost:  Free

Category:  Photography

Platform: iOS

Device: iPhone

Rating: 1/5

Review:

Description:

Taking photos on your iPhone is fun and the fact that you have your phone everywhere with you, makes it easy to just snap away.  As a result you may end up with hundreds of photos on your iPhone without an easy or fun way of sharing them.  Yes you can upload them to individual photo albums or even share them on Facebook or Twitter one by one.  But what if you wanted to share a couple at one time?  This is where Photo Collage comes in handy.

There are several apps available with this feature; we looked at Photo Collage Factory.  The App is shown as a free version with variety of options for you to position your photos.  The free is very misleading.  The App comes with four collage options and the rest you have to upgrade the app.  All features/adjustments are also locked until you upgrade.  Then there is a bar at the bottom that shows ads. 

We think the app would have been good if they simply charged for it rather than the misleading label of “Free”.

Pros:

The collage options we chose worked very well with our photos and the app linked to both the photos on the phone as well as the iCloud.

Cons:

Labeling this App Free and then with every action requesting that we upgrade the app was very frustrating. 

Bottom Line:

Skip It – We can’t recommend this app mostly because the mislabeling of their product.    

iTunes Link: Skitch

Cost:  Free

Category:  Productivity

Platform: iOS

Device: iPhone

Rating: 2/5

Review:

Description:

Skitch is a productivity tool that lets you mark up your photos.  These photos can be taken from the app or imported from your iPhone or at last could be web site screen shots you have taken and stored in Evernote.  The app is tied to an Evernote account so if you don’t have one, you will have to open such an account.

If you are not familiar with Evernote, it is a cloud based app that allows you to store pictures, notes or web clippings and links while you are browsing.  It is a good tool to use if you need to store your notes for later retrieval or sharing.

And this is the big problem Skitch faces; many people would rather not use a 3^rd party site to store their photos.

Pros:

Every once in a while you take a photo that requires some mark up or a caption.  This is a free app that lets you do that.

Cons:

Linking the app to Evernote has made this app not appealing to some users.  Allowing storage of the pictures on your phone would have been a better option.

Bottom Line:

So so – If you don’t mind storing your photos on Evernote, this is a good app for marking your photos.