It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Source

I was putting up my Christmas tree last night and suddenly realised that I was doing this much later than would normally be the case and that Christmas is very scarily just around the corner! Argghhh!! How did this happen? I have soooooo much to do and so little time to do it in!

I LOVE Christmas and I am pretty sure that you have realised by now that I love my iPhone - in fact, put those two things together and I am practically giddy with excitement. However, life is a little overwhelming at the moment, so I started wondering whether my iPhone/iPad and some new Christmas Apps could possibly make my life a little easier during this crazy, wonderful, hectic, fun, stressful and festive time of the year. So, I took a visit to the iTunes store...

What did I find??

Source: iTunes

I found a really cool App called Gift Plan (4.5/5 star rating on iTunes) - not only for use at Christmas but for all special occasions, ie can import birthdays from facebook and contacts, and includes notifications of upcoming events - NEVER forget a special day again (i-APPreciation Girl needs this!!). It has tabs for entering gift ideas for individual recipients as you think of them and shopping lists that support pricing, tallying and emailing gifts.
Mashable says 'gorgeous new iPhone App simplifies gift giving'.

Source: iTunes

Another App that will be good for the kids to make personalised Christmas cards and send to family and friends is the Dr Seuss Camera - The Grinch Edition (4/5 stars on iTunes) - Create zany and whimsical Grinchmas Cards - take a photo with the characters or with your own face in the cutout of a character and then decorate. This will save i-APPreciation Girl hours, as she won't have to sit down and help the kids write out individual cards - yay!  About.com says 'if you're only going to download one Christmas App this season, make it this one'.

Source: iTunes

For the iPad, I found a good App for Christmas music called ummmm... Christmas - wow, what a totally creative and original concept for a name :-)
Please don't confuse it will ALL of the other Apps called 'Christmas' (there are a LOT of them!!!). It has music and christmas stories and.... the real reason that I can't resist it - it includes the cutest cat picture ever! Ha ha - yep, it doesn't take much to win me over!

Source: iTunes - OMG... how cute!

And the last App that I wanted to share is:

Source: iTunes

Christmas Bagpipes - but only because it raises the question.... WHY? It makes my ears want to bleed just thinking about it - LOL!



There are also a lot of other Christmas iPhone and iPad Apps for Christmas games, music, recipes, card creation, gift lists and so on available at the iTunes Store.

If you know of any Apps that could help make Christmas less stressful and more organised, or simply more fun, feel free to share this information with us.

Have fun App shopping and have a very Merry Christmas!!

Until next time :-)

Yours in geekiness
i-APPreciation Girl (aka Rae)

If you can't trust your friends, who can you trust...

Hey there fellow i-APPreciators

I was sitting at home yesterday, contemplating what the topic of my next post could be about, playing with my iPhone (of course) and looking at all of my favourite Apps - when I suddenly had a thought....

One of the reasons that we use social media is to gather information from our friends, peers and networks about stuff that we want to know more about, because if you can't trust your mates and fellow users to tell you the truth, then who can you trust!

sources: picture 1, picture 2, picture 3

So I decided to pick the brains of some of my closest i-APPreciators about their favourite Apps and also review a few of my own personal favourites. So, please find below for your reading pleasure, personal, informative and 'hopefully' helpful reviews - for all of those busy people who don't have time (or maybe just the patience) to trawl through the i-Tunes store to look for great Apps ;-)

Click here to read the full reviews (rather than the snippits I have included below) and to see the rest of the reviews that I just couldn't fit in.... as I have only included one review from each category in this post.

EDUCATION

TED (ideas worth spreading) - by Jase

Access to lots of presentations on a myriad of topics.  i-APPreciation Girl LOVES TED. I cannot recommend this highly enough!

FITNESS
iFitness - by Matt:
Good fitness app for tracking fitness activities. Large range of inbuilt workouts and exercises. Tracks weight and calories, calculates BMI. i-APPreciation Girl also LOVES this App!

GAMES
Words with Friends - by Dave
Basically Scrabble with a text chat feature, enabling you to also communicate with the people you are playing with. Relaxing and stimulating (?!?! um what Dave) - totally addictive.

GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT

Onetap - by Leonie

Excellent to use for checking out the current movies that are showing and their times.

HUMOUR

Hamish & Andy - by i-APPreciation Girl

If you love Hamish & Andy then you will love this.... just hilarious!

MUSIC

Shazam - by Joel
Tells you the name of the current track that it can hear. Can be on the radio, or random music on a bus, in a supermarket etc. i-APPreciation Girl loves this App because she never needs to be frustrated again by forgetting the title of a song!

TECHNICAL
TeamViewer - by Joel
Allows you to remote desktop into computers from your ipad. Platform independant. Can access PC or Mac from your iPad.

I would also love for you to share a review too. Who knows, you may know about some amazing App that will change all of our lives!

Until next time :-)

Yours in geekiness
i-APPreciation Girl (aka Rae)