Moment Camera is a very beautifully designed camera app for iPhone that offers some nifty options lacking in the default camera app. Moment camera isn’t bundled with a ton of features to boggle your mind and instead offers only the most frequently requested options that you’d normally want to play with.
Moment Camera doesn’t come with any post-processing options — it’s designed to help you take better photos. Its UI is very clean and minimal and stays out of your way unless you really need to fidget with something. Tapping the screen lets you manually focus on anything in the frame. Tiny circles at the top include the following options:
Flash (On/Off/Auto/Continuous)
Sequential Shots (1/3/4/5/8/10)
Timer (0/3/5/10/30/60)
Grid (None/3×3/2×2/Square/Circular)
You also get the option to set the shot interval and enable the flashing of the LED light when the timer is set. These options automatically hide after you’ve set them, unless you want them back. Your photos are saved to the Camera Roll automatically.
Everything in here is fluid and works quite well. Moment Camera’s UI is subtle & very nicely executed. It’s available on the App Store for just $0.99.
Smoggy is a very elegantly designed iPhone app that offers a simple way to keep track of how the air around you is. The app is a powerful tool to monitor the quality of the air and works just as intended.
Smoggy is very similar to most weather apps available for iPhone on the App Store — you enter your ZIP code, search for your city by name or just use the current location and Smoggy will show you the stats right away. You can add multiple locations in the app. Smoggy pulls its data from close to 500 air quality stations in the United States, so unfortunately the data is available only for cities in the US. The app has a gorgeously elegant interface that shows you stats like Air Quality Index (AQI), Particulate Matter (PM) and Ozone for each location that you add in the app.
The interface is much like the cards in Google Now — stat cards are stacked on top of each other with the main one in focus while the others are faded away and appear in focus as you scroll. There’s also a list of Top 10 Best & Worst cities. I don’t know what’s happening in Connecticut, but 8 of the 10 worst cities were from this state, with the AQI between 104-111.
Smoggy also displays other stats like the current temperature, precipitation and wind. As you tap on each of the stats, the tiny icon animates, which is a nice touch. I really like the simple interface Smoggy ships with. It’s available on the App Store for just $0.99.
Pixelmator is an inspiring, easy-to-use, beautifully designed image editor built to help you create stunning new images and edit your existing photos.
Pixelmator takes full advantage of the latest Mac technologies, giving you speedy, powerful tools that let you touch up and enhance images, draw or paint, apply gorgeous effects, and just have fun with your pictures. Once your images are ready, access them anywhere with iCloud; send them to iPhoto or Aperture; email, print, or save them to popular image formats; or share them through Facebook, Flickr and more–all right from Pixelmator.
And the new Pixelmator 2.2 is optimized for the new Retina display on the MacBook Pro, with full support for OS X Mountain Lion.
We’d like to thank our friends at Pixelmator for sponsoring our RSS Feed for this week. Pixelmator has long been our favorite image-editor on the Mac and I’ve been using it since our Smoking Apples days. Pixelmator is currently available for just $14.99 on the Mac App Store, an incredibly good price for the app.
What a week this past week has been. Google made some big, mostly developer-centric announcements at I/O this year and Google Glass continues to see some interesting new apps being released for it. The Yahoo board just approved a $1.1 billion all-cash deal to buy Tumblr and all eyes are now set on what Apple possibly announces at WWDC next month. Till then, let’s see what we have on the Platter this week.
Our favorite movie library app, TodoMovies 2 got an amazing v2.1 update that rocked our socks off. With this update, TodoMovies introduces a new feature called Motion Posters. A step up from the boring & simple movie posters, Motion Posters are visually stunning videos with sound. Although these are only availble for a select few movies, they're truly awesome. The update also introduces some nifty swipe gestures to make it easy to add movies to your library from search. It's a Free update to existing users and the app is $1.99 on the App Store. Here’s an example:
Ikonica is another simple & nifty little tool that I came across earlier this week. It’s a fantastic app and a must-have for anyone who designs and develops iOS apps. Ikonica makes previewing iOS app icons on the actual device very easy.
Ikonica consists of a Universal iOS app and a companion Mac app. In the iOS app, you can choose any image from the local camera roll and see how the icon would look on the device. It automatically resizes the icon with rounded corners and as you see a preview, you can swipe the background to see how the icon would look on different backgrounds. You can also customize the background as well as change app’s name under the icon by adding a text of your own. The Mac app sits in the menubar and waits for you to drag and drop image files onto it. So if you’re designing the icon on the Mac, you can simply drag the file and instantly preview it wirelessly on iOS device.
My favorite thing about Ikonica is its use of bright colors and its deliciously gorgeous iOS and Mac app icons. You have to see them. Ikonica’s iOS app costs $3.99 on the App Store while the companion Mac app is Free on the Mac App Store.
Drops First Aid is a beautifully designed iPhone app, part of the Drops learning platform by Dynamisk Helse from Norway. The app guides and teaches you about the steps & checks that need to be undertaken in an emergency situation and does so in a very simple, easy and straightforward way. The app has been designed & developed by the talented folks at Tight.
There are no long articles to read, no 30-minute videos to sit through or no boring instructions. Drops presents simple, brief & precise summaries that teach you exactly what you need to know about the basics. There are five scenarios to learn about —
Unconscious Person
Foreign object stuck in throat
Stroke
First person at the accident scene
Internal Bleeding
Tapping on each scenario slides down the remaining cells to reveal immediate summary of steps to undertake. There’s an option to Play Through the scenario that lets you view videos & follow along step by step. The videos are professionally shot with great lighting specifically for the app using Red cameras, and they look great. You can view exactly what steps you can carry out and how to do them. Alternatively, you can read concise instructions in the text form as well. These steps may prove to be immensely useful should you find yourself in such a scenario.
The app has a very beautiful UI and a nice, elegant color scheme. It’s spiffy and works great. There’s an option to remind you again in 30 days to learn again, so you’re always up to date with the instructions. Drops First Aid is just $1.99 on the App Store.
![Traktor DJ — Play with Music on your iPad [Update: iPhone too]](http://beautifulpixels.beautifulpixels.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/traktordj-icon.png "Traktor DJ — Play with Music on your iPad [Update: iPhone too]"){kind=icon}
