The iPhone Mom

Here’s another clever and fun app – PixyMe. With PixyMe you type in some text and the app then incorporates it into an image or photograph. PixyMe calls it “image personalization”. For example, I can type in my name and then see it in a photograph of a cake with my name as the birthday candles. Or written in the snow on a car’s windshield. Or on the back of a baseball player’s jersey as they walk onto the field. The amount of choices are overwhelming and the text blends right into the photograph and doesn’t look tacky or out of place at all. It certainly doesn’t look like a cut and paste job, it’s simply a very cool part of the image. The images are grouped into categories. There’s “What’s Hot”, holidays, celebrate, travel, animals, entertain, love, kids stuff, nature, food or sports. Literally something for just about everyone.  These categories can all be seen along the bottom of the main screen. Swipe through them with your finger. You’ll also see a favorites button along with one for camera and library. More about those later.

To create a customized photograph you first browse through the images and select the one that you like. Tap on it and then enter in your text at the bottom of the screen. I found that names and short statements worked best. If you type in too much the text in the photo will become small and make less of an impact. From this screen you tap the star at the top left and save the image to your favorites. If you were to now tap on the favorites button on the main screen your image would be there. When you’ve chosen the right text and it’s all perfect you can tap “Send” at the top right of the screen. Next comes more choices. Should you save the image and then send it out as an MMS? Do you email out your image as an e-card? Send it as an actual postcard or post it to Facebook? If you choose e-mail then you’re taken to a screen where you enter in the appropriate email addresses. Don’t forget to add some text in the message body before you tap send. When the email is delivered the message will look like a postcard. On top will be your image and underneath is your message, written next to a cancelled out stamp. It’s framed by a rectangle so it looks like a postcard.  If you’d like to post the image on your Facebook wall you’ll need to connect through PixyMe. I tried it out and all it took was entering in my Facebook login information. Lastly, you can order an actual postcard. You’ll fill out the addresses, message, etc. in the app and then PixyMe prints and sends the postcard for you. It costs $1.99 for addresses in the U.S.A. and $2.99 for other locations.

Back to the camera and library buttons on the home screen. If you tap those then you can either take a photo with your iPhone’s camera or choose one from it’s photo library. Once you’ve done that PixyMe lets you select a frame to go around your photo. These frames are different from the images you chose from earlier.  You can also enter in text to be incorporated with the frame. When you’re done you’ve got the same sending options that I mentioned above.

I’m not sure what type of magic the developers wove into PixyMe but I’m sure it took hours and hours. They’ve created a fantastic app -these images are wonderful and the image personalization is perfect. I love, love, love this clever app.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Tukaiz, LLC

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

The idea behind the FunMail app is to take an ordinary text or email message and turn it into a picture. All you need to do to begin is type in your message. FunMail will pull up several images that relate to your message. Your text will be worked into them somehow. Next you choose the image you like and then enter in the number you’d like to send the text too. You can also send it as an email, just enter in an email address instead of phone number. The app works with your contact list which is helpful. Something to note is this – if you send a text you will first get your own text asking for verification that you are the one trying to send this message.  Within this text there is a link to tap and once you’ve done that your Fun Mail text message is sent.

FunMail is a cute app and I really like the way it takes your words and fancies them up a bit. However, I don’t have unlimited texting so using up two text messages to send one isn’t going to work for me on a regular basis. I usually go over my text limit as it is. Maybe if I’m near the end of my billing cycle and I’ve got something really special to say I’ll send a special text. Thankfully FunMail lets you send emails and since those are free I can jazz up my messages to my hearts content.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Seller: Fun Mobility, Inc.

My Town provides a way for moms to store and sort contacts that are useful in their everyday mom life. The app comes with a list of categories that are ready for you to enter in contacts. Some of the categories are doctors, emergency room, library, police and fire departments, vet, schools, neighbors and relatives. There are quite a few more including “court house”. I hope that I never need to call that one on a regular basis but I guess you never know what life’s going to bring. Entering in the contacts is easy and the app has a nice, straightforward feel to it. You choose a category  and then enter in the name, phone number, address, email, website, etc. You can also add a photo.

There are a few things that I found tricky with this app. When you are entering in a phone number the app doesn’t automatically enter in the dashes between numbers. For example, you enter in 5551234 for the number 555-1234. This felt a little odd to me at first. After you enter in the information you have to restart the app before the contact shows up in your list. Once you’ve done that you’ll see a “My Town Call List” that shows the numbers you’ve entered. From here you can just tap on the name and it will automatically dial the phone number. This is great but I couldn’t find a way to see all of the other information I had entered in on this list. To see find that I had to look up the contact again in the edit screen. I know that the one tap dialing feature is nice and efficient but it might be worth one more tap so you could easily view the other information too. A suggestion that I’d like to make is to add the ability to import contacts into My Town from the iPhone’s contact list. This would be a huge help for me because it would eliminate the need to reenter information I’ve already got on my phone.

My Town has a nice feel to it and I like the idea of having the ability to keep all my momcentric contacts in a single location. The way my iPhone is setup my contacts from Gmail automatically show up on my iPhone. So I get contacts that I only email occasionally mixed in with those that I call on a daily basis. There are times when this no longer bothers me and times when it irritates me like crazy.  However, it’d be nice to have another option for seeing my most important contacts, in one place and grouped into categories that pertained to my life.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: tapunited

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

Are you someone who enjoys social networking? I recently heard about Groupie, a new app that lets you create, join and manage groups on your iPhone. At first I thought it was a way to manage groups that you were already a member of, like google groups, but it’s actually a way to create entirely new groups and connect with people via the app. I haven’t tried it out myself but it seems like a good way to try social networking out without having to use a website. Anyone tried this type of app or Groupie?

Groupie is free and available in the App Store.

Family Matters is not an app that you use to distract your kids or keep them occupied. It’s meant to help you connect with each other through actual face to face interaction.  The app features questions and activities that are designed to help you communicate with your children more effectively, learning more about them as you go.

Family Matters features questions/activities that are designed for four situations where you might find yourself sitting around with time to talk. They are: Restaurant, Road Trip, Dr. Office and a General category. The different categories have questions that relate to these situations.  The idea is to go through the app and use it to begin discussions with  your child. For example – the Restaurant category might ask you to “name your favorite food that is your favorite color” or “what is your favorite meal that your parents make you?” Some questions are lighthearted, some will foster deeper conversations. As you are going through them all you can mark activities/questions as favorites or even delete them. You can also add your own to the lists. Family Matters also features advice on how to best use the application and ideas to get you started.  I found this section be be very helpful. I’ve been told that an update featuring the category of “Airports” has been submitted to Apple and they are working on “Waiting in Line” for early 2010.

If you’re finding it difficult to really talk with your children and you don’t know how to get beyond the “How was your day? It was okay.” routine this app will get you going.  I think it’s a fantastic idea and a great way to use the iPhone as a positive tool for families. The only thing that I didn’t really care for were the graphics. I found them a little distracting and not really necessary given the nature of the app. But that’s just me. Everything else was terrific.

On a side note, the creation of this app was actually a family affair for the Weiner family. The development involved dad, mom and their three children. Pretty cool! Throughout the month of December they are donating half of the proceeds from Family Matters to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Which makes this an app that can benefit your own family while you help someone else’s.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Weiner Family Studios

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

What an awesome app!! Catalista connects you with local nonprofit groups who are in need of volunteers. It brings opportunities that you might not know about right to your iPhone. I was a little skeptical about finding anything in my area. I live in the largest metropolitan area in my state but I wasn’t sure if it was large enough to show up on the app’s radar. I was wrong. There was a wide variety of needs listed for my community. Everything from tutoring to being a Girls on the Run coach to a reader for the library’s books on tape. Not just random volunteer assignments but things that I could actually see myself doing.

Catalista is extremely easy to navigate. You can view a list of all the opportunities for your area. Or you can select areas that you’re interested in and search within those parameters. You can sign up through the app (it will direct you to the appropriate websites), share the information with friend, rate the volunteer experience or add it to a favorites list. The app itself is very nice looking and the developers have done an excellent job keeping it clean, easy to read and fun to use.

If you’re looking for chances to get out and help your community then you must get this app. It’s free and the opportunities it can provide will be priceless. Well done Catalista.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Seller: Catalista, LLC

The Me & My Grandparent app will allow you to send your grandparents personalized e-cards. You’re given 30 different “templates” with  poems and sayings. You can then personalize them with your own photos or messages.  When you are done you can post your e-card on Facebook or email it to your grandparent. If you use this app I’d suggest going to the information screen to learn what the icons at the bottom of the screen mean and how they’ll help you navigate through the app.

There were some things I liked about the app. I liked that it gives you 30 different templates to use. That’s a nice variety. I like that you are able to send out as many different e-cards as you want without limit or additional cost. I also like that you can personalize the message instead of using the sayings they’ve included.

Unfortunately there were also some things that I didn’t like about this app. First off, the background music. I’m not sure why it was included. Next, I like clean looking lines when it comes to my graphics. Many of the ones used in Me & My Grandparent were scalloped, or curved – just not my personal preference. My biggest problem came from some of the messages that were on the templates. There were some that were nice and I could see myself sending them out. But there were many that were really, really corny. And there were many that used the words “becoz, r, u, & luv”. I know we live in the age of texting and tweeting and trying to be as brief as possible, but come on!! If you’re sending a message to your grandparent there is a good chance they do not text or tweet and will read these thinking you need to be sent back to grade school.

My review of Me & My Grandparent was requested by the app’s developers. I believe they thought it would be a good fit for my readers. Which might be true for some of you. However, this isn’t an app that I can see myself using. I like the concept behind it but I’m not a fan of cheesy poems and sayings. The price also seems a bit high to me. Call me cold hearted but when it comes to my grandparents I’d rather send out an old fashioned greeting card.

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Mobile Champs, LLC