Mapnow: Share the World Photo Album
Platform: iOS/iPadOS
Keywords: map album, travel log
Mapnow is a location-based photo sharing app, every photo and video shared by users will light up a ray of light on the world map, and the stars and dots will be intertwined and collaged together to form a global dimensional shared photo album, so that you can enjoy the real excitement from all corners of the world without going out.
The app’s homepage features a huge map of the world spread horizontally, with many shimmering spots of light on it, and photo cards hovering above them. Tap on a card and you’ll see photos and videos from the region that the user has posted in the last 30 days. Each photo is clearly timestamped and geotagged, and if you take an unprocessed photo with the built-in camera, a green marker is automatically added in the upper right corner to ensure that you’re getting the most authentic experience possible when you look at the photo. When you post a photo, the app automatically tags it on the map, and Mapnow has basic social features that allow you to like, comment on, and follow people in private messages. In addition, Mapnow offers Collections, which allows you to organize a series of photos into a collection, which can be a summary of a travel route, a map of food stops, or a category of landscapes. These collections are also shareable, and can be accessed by other users through the search function, in addition to being viewed on your personal page. In addition to global sharing, you can also form groups of friends or family via iMessage, Meta Messenger, or Whatsapp. Tap the lower-left corner to switch to group mode, and the map will only show what’s been shared within the group.
In addition to sliding and zooming, the map on the homepage can also be displayed more richly with the three widgets in the right hover toolbar: the pin button allows you to add landscapes or countries of interest, for example, if you want to experience “facing the sea, flowers blossoming in the spring”, you can check beaches and oceans from the points of interest, and the related photo cards will pop up when you slide the map; the globe button simulates the corresponding effect, making the map shrink vertically. The globe button will simulate the corresponding effect, shrinking the map to the smallest scale vertically and moving horizontally from west to east at a constant speed; and the location button will quickly move to the current location area after you click it, so that you can quickly check the latest photos posted around you. If you’ve traveled the globe and want to record your footsteps and share what you’ve seen with others, or if you just want to see the world from the comfort of your own home, Mapnow might be a good choice. You can download Mapnow from the App Store.
Snapseek: Retrace the Journey of your Digital Life
Platform: Android
Keywords: digital records, quantified self
When we check our social networks or shop for takeout goods, most of us just take a glance, but when we suddenly remember what we’ve seen and want to trace it back, we find that we can’t find it anymore. Currently there is a solution on the market that records screenshots of what has been displayed on the screen and provides a variety of query methods, such as Rewind on macOS and Windrecorder, an open source application on Windows. Now there is also a developer who has developed a similar app “Snapseek” on the Android platform. Before we can use it, we need to add the apps we want to record (e.g. social apps, etc.), enable a series of permissions, and make sure Snapseek stays in the background. After that, Snapseek will be able to continuously record the screen content when we use a specific App.
As for the principle of using Snapseek, it’s not that mysterious, Snapseek needs to use system accessibility to take screenshots automatically, and the trigger condition is every time we use our finger to operate. Therefore, Snapseek has some limitations, including the fact that it can’t record DRM-protected content, it can’t record dynamic content such as videos, and if you’re used to scrolling the screen with a swish, Snapseek won’t be able to keep on scrolling. If you’re used to scrolling the screen, Snapseek won’t be able to record the scrolling process. Snapseek supports OCR for content recognition of saved usage records, so all we need to do is to enter the content we want to check in the search box, and Snapseek will show you all the screenshots that contain that content. Now you can download Snapseek on Google Play, the free version supports recording two Apps, pay for the premium version to unlock the number of limitations.
HabitKit: Helping Good Habit Formation
Platform: Android, iOS
Keywords: habit formation
Habit formation is never a one-day process, only by relying on persistence and continuous internal motivation, we can develop good habits. There are a lot of apps on the market that focus on helping us develop good habits, and most of them are designed with a well-designed punch card interface and gamified incentives to motivate us to keep on punching the clock. Today’s HabitKit is no exception. After all, when it comes to habit formation, relying on your cell phone as a self-control killer is a necessity. Of the many habit forming apps out there, HabitKit is instantly recognizable because of its relatively simple interface and the way it presents punches in the form of a heatmap. Like other apps, HabitKit allows you to customize the date between habits, the number of times you can expect to complete a habit per day, and even the icon and color when adding a habit. If you want to get reminders, it’s also up to the task.
The key thing to introduce is the way it presents the data. In HabitKit, each day is presented as a small pigeon, and for each corresponding habit clocked in that day, the grid can be manually lit, and as we keep clocking in, the grid will be filled up more and more. For habits that only need to be completed once a day, the color of the grid will always remain the same. For habits such as “Drink 8 glasses of water”, HabitKit will use a plus sign and a circle with assigned progress in the upper right corner of the added habit card, and every time we click to complete the corresponding habit, the progress of the circle will be updated, and the color of that day’s grid will be deepened, and over time, the grid may be presented in different shades, so that we can naturally know how many times a day we have completed these habits.
There are many interactive details hidden in HabitKit, for example, in HabitKit’s detail interface, we can click on the past date to punch the card, if it is a case of multiple punching, we need to click multiple times, if the number of times recorded exceeds 6, the application will present the number of times punching the card in the form of “dots + numbers”, to avoid the embarrassing situation of needing to count the dots. Finally, the app also provides statistics and presentation of our overall punch card situation, and even supports us to generate sharing cards to record our own punch card results, and the final chart will be very beautiful. You can download and experience HabitKit through the Play Store, App Store, the basic features of the app are free, and advanced features are on a subscription basis.
Blackmagic Camera 1.3: Adds Audio Monitoring, Focus Switching Controls, and 48mm Lens Support
Platform: iOS
Keywords: mobile photography
Vanilla：Blackmagic Camera, a third-party iPhone photography app developed by renowned imaging company Blackmagic Design and officially recommended by Apple, has recently received version 1.3 of its update, which adds new features such as headphone audio monitoring, focus switching control, and 48mm lens support. Blackmagic Camera has been updated to version 1.3 with new features such as headphone audio monitoring, focus switching control, 48mm lens support, and optimization of existing features such as landscape/vertical switching speed, media item loading speed, and HDMI transmission latency.
First of all, Blackmagic Camera has added support for headphones in audio monitoring. I tested it with my AirPods Pro. After connecting it to my iPhone, I opened Blackmagic Camera’s settings, and then turned on “Audio Monitor” in the audio section, and then “Audio Output” automatically switched to my AirPods Pro, so I could send the audio to my AirPods Pro by clicking on the “Audio Output” button, then clicking on the “Send” button. After clicking on “Audio Output” and then clicking on the “Send” button, you can switch the monitoring device to another device. In practice, there are still some delays when using a wireless device for audio monitoring, so it should be better to use wired headphones. Secondly, Blackmagic Camera supports focus switching control in the new version. Currently, we can tap the viewfinder frame in Blackmagic Camera for point focusing, at this time the viewfinder frame will show AE/AF, if we move the viewfinder frame at this time, then Blackmagic Camera will re-do the autofocus. Press and hold the frame, AE/AF Lock will be displayed on the screen, at this time move the frame away and then move back to the subject, you can observe that the focus point is retained. Tap anywhere in the viewfinder frame again and the focus lock is canceled.
Finally, Blackmagic Camera supports the 48mm lens (2x lens) found on the iPhone 14 Pro series and iPhone 15 Pro series. In both landscape and portrait modes, we can tap the “Lens” button and switch between focal lengths. However, currently Blackmagic Camera only supports point switching between lenses, and does not support infinitely adjustable for now. Blackmagic Camera can be downloaded for free from the App Store and is free to use without any in-app purchases.
Spark Mail for Teams: Team Collaboration in a Shared Inbox
Platform: iOS/iPadOS/macOS/Windows/Android
Keywords: inbox, mail
Have you ever encountered such a scenario: team members need to check the team mailbox in the mail, resulting in the need for us to send the public mailbox account and password to a specific person to log in, and if the received mail needs to be handled by more than one person often can only be forwarded to deal with the form of cc’s, in the team collaboration in fact, not efficient, but also prone to cause a variety of information security issues. In fact, the best way for the public mailbox is to share it within the team, which is also a new feature recently introduced by Spark Mail: shared inbox, this feature allows the team to access a specific inbox at the same time, authorized team members can view this shared inbox in their own Spark Mail, effectively avoiding the public mailbox information security problems. This effectively avoids the information security problem of public mailboxes. Of course, if you only support multiple people to view the shared inbox at the same time may not be able to really talk about the realization of efficient teamwork, Spark Mail can also be assigned to the public inbox of the mail to the relevant team members, the assigned members will see the content of the assigned mail in their Spark Mail’s shared inbox, and you can also set the deadline for processing, requiring members to view and process the mail before the deadline. You can also set a deadline for processing, requiring members to view and process the email before the deadline. Sometimes we also need to discuss an email internally, for example, if we need to discuss a candidate’s resume among members in a recruitment mailbox, we can comment and discuss the email directly in Spark Mail, which is much more efficient than forwarding the email to an internal collaboration platform and then opening a group discussion. If you need to draft a new email externally as a shared inbox account, you can also invite team members to write it together, or even allow them to send it directly. Shared inboxes are currently only supported for Gmail accounts, and this feature requires a Spark Mail Team Pro subscription, which is currently priced at €6.99 per month per user. You can download Spark Mail from the official website.
Other App Updates
Documents (iOS): Updated to v8.11 to convert voice recordings, podcasts and any other audio or video content to text, with support for distinguishing and categorizing multiple speakers when transcribing audio.
iMazing: v3, featuring a new interface design, support for transferring files and media resources between devices, more flexible local backup options, the ability to export iMessage, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, and powerful tools for organizations to manage and configure their devices.
Vivaldi: Updated to v6.7, Vivaldi brings built-in memory protection, the ability to sleep or hibernate inactive tabs based on a timeout, built-in reader support for auto-detection of feeds and support for subscribing to get notifications, and support for SplitView in the Mac version to allow for tiling of multiple apps on a single screen. SplitView is supported in the Mac version, allowing multiple apps to be tiled on one screen.
Published by Tony Shepherd & last updated on April 30, 2024 3:12 am
