- iPhone App of the Week
It’s become all the rage to post what music you’re currently listening to. Whether to Facebook or Twitter, Serenade can fulfill your social need to express your individuality. This app is slim, sleek and simple to use. Just open the app with a song playing and it will gather the song info and a link to its iTunes Store page. With one tap you’ve posted it to Twitter or Facebook either with or without your personal message attached.
It even has some other nifty features built it including a karaoke mode, the ability to copy the song information and the iTunes like to the clipboard and a sort of instant playlist feature. Best of all, it’s free!
Price: Free
Apple has continued to update some minor features of the iTunes store, this time the layout of App pages. The app information is now displayed above the screenshots, which is more in line with the positioning of iTunes Notes for music. The screenshots themselves are not arranged in a scrollable line instead of the previous ‘click to advance’ method. Again in line with the way music pages are laid out, the user rating for each app now appears down the a left hand column, along with the basic app information. Finally, the app icon in the top left hand corner is larger.
Voila! One newly refreshed app page layout.
As a student, writing is a large part of what I do on a daily basis. Whether it be essays, reports or just homework, I’m always typing away. The internet is a distracting place as you are well aware, and the temptation to sneak a look at Facebook or the internet window behind your document becomes too great a lot of the time. Thus, I am always looking for new ways to focus my attention on my work.
Enter ‘Ommwriter’. The weird name comes from a meditation exercise in which the phrase ‘omm’ is hummed in an effort to clear one’s mind. Following this philosophy, Ommwriter’s soul purpose is to create a serene, tranquil environment in which to write until your heart (or essay word limit) is content.
Once you realize that Ommwriter isn’t a word processor, but a writing companion, you begin to see its true value. Its minimalist, and flaunts it. You’ll find Ommwriter amazingly simple and clean, offering only three fonts, three font sizes and three background images. Even the scroll bar is only a few pixels wide. What you won’t find it any formatting options, fancy graphics, imaging or even headers. There isn’t even a spellchecker built into it. Why? I guess because all of those features add clutter, something which Ommwriter goes out of its way to reduce.
“Find, it looks really boring. What else?” you may ask. Well before you jump to conclusions, Ommwriter has a few cool and unique tricks that set it apart from other writing programs like WriteRoom. Ommwriter has a series of ambient music tracks and key stroke sounds built in to bring you into your writing frame of mind. Seven of each for you to explore and enjoy, each beautiful and relaxing in its own way.
Of course, some people will find the sounds dreadfully annoying and will go out of their way to avoid it. But for me, Ommwriter provides a soothing, calming and distraction free environment. As a writing companion, Ommwriter is fantastic. It knows its place in a person’s workflow, and neatly fits into it, molding itself perfectly into the roll.
Ommwriter is currently in beta, and you can pick up a copy from their website. I don’t know when the final version will ship, all I know is that I can’t wait!
I think this puts in proportion just how many apps I have downloaded for my iPhone.
