The iPhone Mom

The Point Inside app recently released an update that now includes over fifty airport maps. The maps work in the same way that the mall maps do, showing you the major points inside the airport. I haven’t personally tried out this update because I am only on a plane once every umpteen years. But as a mom, when I think about navigating an airport with my kids, I’d absolutely use an app that could point me in the right direction for the bathrooms. If you’re planning on summer travel give the app a try (it’s free) and then come back and let us know what you think.

Price when Reviewed: FREE

Seller: Point Inside, Inc.

Baby Travel is a travel app that has very thorough packing lists for traveling with baby. The app describes itself as “baby travel made easy” and while I don’t know if baby travel can ever be totally easy the app definitely makes the packing part simpler.

There are several different parts to the Baby Travel app. Here’s a rundown on each of them.

Packing Lists-This is where you create packing lists for your trips. Once you’ve created a list it will show up as an “active list”. When you’re done with it you can add it to the list archive and make it active again when you need it. This saves you the time of having to recreate lists. When you make a packing list you’ll give it a name and select the dates that you’ll be gone. You’ll want to enter in the number of days you’ll be traveling and the type of climate you’ll be experiencing. The app then asks you for the number of babies, toddlers, children, women and men who are taking the trip. These numbers come into play later on. Once you’ve entered in the data the app will generate a list for you. It takes the climate information and tells you what types of clothes to pack. Using the number of days you’ll be traveling it will give you quantities of items as well. If you have a baby coming along then baby items will appear on your list. The list that the app generates is very thorough. As you look it over you can delete items that don’t apply to your situation and check off the items as you pack. Baby Travel also allows you to enter in your own items so you’re not restricted to the list that they provide.

Blog – Here you can view blog articles about traveling with baby.

Helpful Sounds – This is a collection of soothing and silly sounds. I think they’re designed for times when you’re stuck in a car or on an airplane with a fussy baby. They’d be good for calming and distraction.

Social – Takes you to various social media websites.

Website – This will link you directly to the Baby Travel website.

I found Baby Travel’s packing lists to be very helpful. The items that it suggested were right in line with the travel information I had entered. Having the ability to add my own items, delete unnecessary ones and save my lists for future use makes this a great travel resource. And it’s a free resource at that!

Price when Reviewed: FREE

Seller: Jacobs Media

I think potty training is one of those secrets of parenthood that you never understand until you’ve had to go through it. And then you have another child and have to relearn it all over again because what works with the first fails with the second. And so on and on. I was so excited to train my first child, could not wait. Found myself able to wait a little longer with my second and when it came time to train my third I kept putting it off. After that it became a year long process but that’s another story. I’m going to wait as long as possible to get rid of the diapers with my baby because it’s been three years and I still haven’t forgotten what it was like when I tried it with my son.

Now if I’d had the Potty Predictor app three years ago things might have gone more smoothly.  The app works as an aid in your potty training efforts. The first week that you use the app you track when you give your child a drink. Twenty-five minutes later the app sends you a push notification telling  you that it’s time to take them to the bathroom. If you’ve got success you mark the event in the app. You can also note when accidents happen, and what type of accident it was. By tracking these things you set up a regular pattern of when your child is using the bathroom. The app is preset to switch from tracking events to predicting them after you’ve entered in forty events. At that point Potty Predictor automatically sets alarms based on what you have been entering. The more diligent you’ve been in keeping track of successful trips to the bathroom the more accurate your alarms will be. The app will give you a push notification telling you it’s time to take your child to the bathroom. Hopefully, when you heed the alarm your child will have a successful trip!

Potty Predictor comes with a built in sticker book. The stickers show up when you log a successful potty experience. There’s also happy music and encouraging words to be heard. On your iPhone’s settings screen you can customize some things about the app. You can enter in your child’s name and nickname and tell the app if you want to you it to use them in the app. The app’s default setting is to send a push notification twenty-five minutes after you give your child a drink but in the settings you can extend that time interval. You can also give yourself more than one notification at a time and turn the sound and music on and off. Finally, if forty events isn’t long enough to establish a pattern you can postpone the “Predicting” phase until up to ninety events have been logged.

I really think that Potty Predictor could be a big help to me when it comes time to eventually potty train Baby J. Much of my problem in the past was consistency and remembering when it’s time to try a trip to the bathroom. This app can help me with both those issues. Now if only it could help with lack of memory and consistency in other areas of my life!

Price when Reviewed: $3.99

Seller: Simple But Needed, Inc.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

We have four children and we have gone through a baby monitor with each child. I’m not sure why they fail on us every time but it probably has something to do with our buying cheap baby monitors. Inevitably the cord gets a short and you never know when it’s working or not. There’ve been many times when I’ve walked by the monitor and discovered it’s not on, so I go to check on the baby (because I’m worried it’s not been on for awhile) and by opening the door I wake her up. Oops!

I’ve read about iPhone apps that turn your iPhone into a baby monitor but I’ve never tried one out until now. The app that I tested is BabyPhone Deluxe (Baby Monitor). It’s easy to use, you configure the microphone’s sensitivity, enter in the phone number of another phone, turn the phone to silent and leave the room. The microphone sensitivity lets the iPhone detect more or less noise. I like less noise because I want to make sure she’s really awake and not just moving around in bed. I would suggest testing the app out before you actually use it to make sure you get the noise sensitivity set to the right level. The phone number is important because the app will call that number when it registers noise. And I probably don’t even need to explain why turning your phone to silent is critical. You wouldn’t want a phone call coming through and waking the baby up! Another nice feature is the ability to set a time delay between when the app registers the sound and when it actually calls you. I’ve got a decent delay on mine because I want to make sure my baby is actually awake before I barge in that room. You can also set the app to reactivate itself after it’s triggered. When you answer the phone you can talk to your baby over the iPhone’s speaker. This would probably calm many babies down but mine would only get more upset and wonder where in the world I was. Plus I’ve got to keep that feature hidden from my older kids or my iPhone is going to become a very expensive walkie talkie.

BabyPhone Deluxe also has a recorder that will record the noises and “talking” your baby makes. You’re able to adjust it’s sensitivity to sound and you can email out the sound clips. The app has an event log that tracks and displays everything that has gone on. You can see when the monitor was triggered and when things were recorded.

This app is $2.99 and when I add up the total amount of money I’ve spent on baby monitors it seems like a steal to me! Plus, there are no cords to mess with and no worrying about the monitors range.  Now here’s the catch for me. We don’t have a home phone so during the day I’ve got no additional phone number for the app to call. Drat! But if you’ve got access to another phone during the day and you’re looking for an alternative to a traditional baby monitor then definitely give BabyPhone a try!

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Bluefields BVBA

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

FoodEssentials Scanner version 2.0 has been released. There’s a smorgasbord of new features in this new update, all improving an already great app. I didn’t think I could do the update justice so I’m sending you to the FoodEssentials blog to read all the details.

FoodEssentials has also been generous enough to give me five promo codes to give away. I’d love hear from readers who could use some extra help checking food ingredients because of allergy issues. Read my original app review to see if FoodEssentials can help you out. If you think it will then please leave me a comment. The first five comments will receive a code. Thanks FoodEssentials!

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: FoodEssentials

I’m a fan of the Serving Sizer apps, first the regular recipe converter and then the newer converter and cookbook version. Now the developers have taken the app and done it up for the iPad. The same great features are still there but they take excellent advantage of the larger screen. In this version when you add ingredients to your recipe a box for that pops up on the screen so you don’t have to navigate to a new screen and back. You can easily search for an ingredient or scroll through the list they’ve provided. Tap on the one you want then use a simple slider to adjust the measurement, tap the plus sign and it’s added to your recipe. (Note: you’ll have to tap the plus sign on the recipe screen, not in the ingredient box. It took me a couple tries to realize this.) You can literally add ingredients without having to type anything.  It was easy to put together recipes in the iPhone version but I really like the way the iPad handles this feature.  The finished recipes look fantastic when they take up the entire screen. Plus, it’s still as easy as before to convert the recipe for a smaller or larger group. A fantastic app!

Update 4/14 – Apparently the developers already have an update underway that deals with my little quibble about adding ingredients and the plus sign. They’ve also included some other tweaks. Looking forward to the update!

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

See the app in iTunes

Seller: Creative Algorithims, Inc

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

FoodEssentials Scanner is the best app that I’ve seen for those suffering from food allergies and intolerances. It allows you to scan the barcode of a food product and it will then display all sorts of information about the food. You get your nutrient information (calories, fats, sodium, etc.) but you also get information about allergens and additives. The app will pull up the possible allergens and flag them as not listed, possible and listed. You can tap on the allergen and find out exactly what ingredient is the culprit. The same is true for the additive list. There’s no need to scan the label on your food and then search for the five syllable ingredient or additive on your own. The app does it for you. If you’d rather not use the barcode you can also search by product name. The same label information will be displayed.

When FoodEssentials finds your food it also pulls up products in the same category. I asked the developer how they choose these products and as of right now they’re pulled up in no particular order. They’re working on enabling sorting of these screens so you can see the most popular products first. That will be a nice improvement. You can flick between these screens to compare what’s in each one and this will be very useful when you can narrow the screens down to foods that are really similar. You can also scan in similar products and then shake your phone. Now all the similar products that you’ve scanned will show up on screens that you can access with that sideways swipe. This is a great way to compare what’s in different breads, cereals, ice creams, you get the idea. The app also saves everything you’ve scanned or searched for in a list.

Now here’s the part that I thought was pretty darn fantastic about this app. You have the ability to customize what you see on the labels it pulls up. You can go through each section – nutrients, allergens, additives – and turn on/off what you’d like to see. For example in my house we’ve got some dairy issues and I’d absolutely make sure that was turned on to show up. But we never eat fish and I don’t need to see that allergy so I turned it off. I think it’s terrific that you can expand (or condense) the list of what you see.

According to the FoodEssentials website a big update is coming around March 29th. They’ll be doubling the list of products and will soon be adding additional allergies.  The update should also give you the ability to select an ingredient (from more than 30,000) and make it a custom ingredient that will show up on your labels. I’ve been told that the success rate (accuracy) of the scanning is going to jump with the next update which will be fantastic.

I have a few reasons that this app is going to be a big help for me. First for my baby. I’ve mentioned before that we’ve been dealing with acid reflux and food intolerances pretty much since the day she was born. We’ve got the acid issues handled but the reflux is still out of control some days.  We’ve begun venturing into the world of baby foods but it’s slow going and we’re still on elemental formula and cereal plus a limited number of other foods. We try a new food and then cross our fingers that it’s not going to end up on the intolerant list. She usually lets us know it’s a no go when she has a big reflux flair up the next day. I’m hoping (really hoping!) that the day is coming where we can begin to try regular baby cereal and some other things. But realistically I know we’ll be dealing with her food issues for some time to come. FoodEssentials is going to be a huge help when I get the G.I’s green light to start introducing “normal” food. Especially when the new allergies and ingredients are added to the app. I’ll be able to find out (while I’m in the store) if something is safe for her or not. My second reason is personal. I’m one of those lucky (oh so lucky!) people who get migraines. It seems like I’m constantly learning about my triggers but I know with certainty that several additives/ingredients are guaranteed to make my head explode. I would love to see some sort of migraine trigger list incorporated into the app. At the very least I am hoping that MSG and aspartame make the 30,000+ ingredient list.

Sorry for the lengthy diatribe, I probably just shared much more than you’d want to know about my family’s issues. Especially all that talk about baby spit up. Right now FoodEssentials costs $4.99 and that covers a one year subscription to the app. Personally, I think the ease of use and the straightforward way the information is presented would make the price worth it for me. The updates that I’m hearing about are really going to set this app apart and I’m excited to see where it goes next.

*I really only touched on the allergy prevention potential of the app. If you’re concerned about cholesterol, saturated fat, etc. then there’s plenty of information here for you too.

*Another note – I’ve received word that the developers monitor the searches that return no results and then work on including those foods. For me those empty searches were for some store brand products. It’s good to know that these empty searches are monitored.

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: Food Essentials

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I reviewed Serving Sizer Recipe Converter back in November, 2009. It’s a great way to convert the amounts of recipe ingredients if you’re making the recipe larger, or smaller. Now comes Serving Sizer Pro and it takes the recipe conversion one step further. In this app you can enter in your own recipes, apply the conversion and convert all the amounts in your recipe at once. You don’t have to do it one ingredient at a time. Here’s what I like about this app.

-When you are entering in a recipe you can choose from a list of over 500 ingredients. Or if yours is somehow not listed you can type it in.

-When you’re setting the amount for the ingredient you use a sliding line to choose the amount and the type of measurement. For example, slide the line to choose 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, etc. Then slide the bottom line to choose teaspoons, cups, pints. I really liked this feature because it cuts down on typing.

-Once you’ve entered in all the ingredients you can view the recipe on a “recipe card” and use edit to add in the directions.

-You can email a recipe out from the app.

-When you need to make an adjustment to the recipe’s size all you need to do is tap the “serves” button on that recipe and then choose the new serving size. You can choose to halve, double, triple or create a custom conversion for the ingredients.

The only thing that I didn’t like about Serving Sizer Pro was the absence of a “done” button. After I’d enter in my amounts and ingredient names I’d look for that button and it wasn’t there on every screen. Force of habit perhaps, but I missed it. I also couldn’t find a way to convert stand alone ingredients the way you can in the original Serving Sizer but I might be missing something. This app is staying on my phone and when I find the time I’m going to enter in some of my most used recipes into the app. The ones that I come back to time and again for parties and big dinners but this time there’ll be no more scribbling fractions in my cookbook. I’m not going to show my 5th grader this app though because once she saw what it does she’d no longer listen to my talks about fractions being something I still use all the time. My credibility when it comes to math is already shaky enough.

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Creative Algorithims

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

After you’ve used Contraction Master and you’ve had your baby you might find yourself in need of Nursing Master to help you manage the feedings that will soon become a blur. Sleep deprivation is not to be messed with. The app lets you track when you start nursing your baby and the length of the feeding. You can also record which side you left off on. (Sorry menfolk readers for the inevitable TMI.) I like the fact that this app lets you record information for more than one baby. I know that if I had twins I’d seriously need help keeping track of who I fed when and what and how and maybe even why.

You’ll have the option of adding in your baby’s photo, name and gender. I was pleased to see that Nursing Master also lets you keep track of bottle feedings. You’ll be able to record what’s in the bottle (breast milk, formula, even soy formula, etc.) and how large the bottle is.  My baby was put on elemental formula when she was around two months old. For awhile I had no idea if I was feeding her too much or not often enough. Keeping track of those details probably would have saved me some trial and error. I’m not a statistics person but if you’re interested in looking at the overall feeding statistics you can do that too. You can even compare two babies. I almost forgot, you can also manually enter in feedings that you didn’t time with the app.

Nursing Master was just updated yesterday and now allows you to continue timing a feeding after you shut down the app. I think this is a great addition. There are times when I’m feeding my daughter with the bottle in one hand and my phone in the other checking email. So being able to continue to use the app while I’m doing other things is important to me. The other new addition is a number badge for the app’s home screen icon. The number shows how many babies have a feeding timer running.

I’m all for anything that makes managing newborn details easier. I haven’t tested it for weeks on end but Nursing Master seems easy to use and it kept track of all the details that I’d personally be interested in. I don’t need a ton of fluff. Just a record of how we’re all doing and whether my baby’s on track to becoming a nice, healthy chunk.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Bill Snebold Design

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

When Keith, the developer of GroceryList, contacted me about his app he’d already read my thoughts on the other grocery list apps that I’ve tried. He told me right up front that it didn’t have many of the features I’m looking for (multiple lists, syncing with another user, price information) but he also told me why he thought I would like it.  He said “it’s like a paper list, but much faster, more orderly and always in your pocket”.  I haven’t found the app yet that suits me perfectly so I thought, why not try it out?. And since one of my issues with the other apps is dealing with multiple screens to make a list I wasn’t going to say no to an app that claims to be fast.

So what did I think? Here are the things that I liked about GroceryList.

*It’s fast. The app comes with a “master list” and all you need to do to add an item to your shopping list is tap the plus sign next to it. Tap more than once to add  more than one of something. The items come with an aisle already preset. This will determine the order the items show up in for your shopping list.  You can change the aisle by tapping on the name of the item and then the blue arrow that appears. Now you can assign a new aisle and also add notes that will show up on your shopping list.

*The master list is thorough. Absinthe? Covered.  Whoppers? Yep. Trash bags? Would you like drawstring, drawstring scented, handle tie, outdoor or twist-tie? Like I said, it’s thorough. You can also add your own items to the list with the plus sign at the top right corner. All you need to do is type in your item and select the aisle it’s located on.

*I like the way the master list is organized. It’s alphabetized and the alphabet shows up vertically on the right hand side of your screen. Tap on the letter you want to jump to and you’ll get a list of beginnings of items. For example if you tap on “O” you’ll see Oatm, Onio, Ora-, Oran and Oven. Tap on the beginning that’s closest to the item you’re searching for and you’ll jump to that part of the list. It’s much faster than scrolling through a really, really long master list. You can also perform a search of the list.

*The aisle list is impressive. Usually I have to add in aisles like baby items and greeting cards but they’re covered here. You can drag the aisles up and down to rearrange how they’ll appear on your list. You can also add in your own aisles too. (To get to the “edit aisles” option you have to tap the “Go Shopping” button.)

Now for the things I didn’t like so much.

*As of right now you cannot delete items that came on the master list. You can delete the items that you add but not the original items. When you tap on the item name you’ll see a trash can icon but it doesn’t work yet. Keith tells me this is going to change in version 1.2 which should be coming by the end of next month.

*At the top of the master list is a button that says “My Common Items”. Tap on this and you’ll see a predetermined list of items. Right now you can’t manually add items to this list. But as you create shopping shopping lists the app will add the items you shop for most frequently to the common items. You also can’t delete the predetermined “common items”. Keith tells me this is also going to be changing in version 1.2. I like the idea of having the app automatically adding the items that I use most. That saves me a step but I also want some control too.

*In other apps, when you have items on your list (but you don’t have the app open) the number of items shows up in a red circle near the app’s icon. That was a long sentence. The point is, GroceryList doesn’t have that feature yet.

*The $4.99 price seems a tad too high.

Ok, now that I’ve gone through all of that I’m going to tell you that I plan on keeping GroceryList on my phone. I really like the basics of it and I think with the tweaks that are planned it’s going to be a nice, easy to use grocery list. Keith tells me that he is also working on creating a multiple list feature which is a big thing for me. I want to be able to separate my Costco list from my regular groceries. Overall GroceryList is fast, there’s something to be said for being able to create a list with a few taps and it absolutely beats a crumpled paper in the bottom of my purse.

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: Helium Foot Software