Author: Blancer

For those of you who are serial diarists or are always toting around a notebook in which to scribble all your genius ideas, memories or musings, why not combine your love of writing with your love for your iPhone?

Here are 50 journal and diary apps, all of them as unique as the people who will inevitably use them. And while, yes, there are even more out there — including those designed to keep track of everything from food and exercise to clothing and wine, from travel and books to hunting and fishing — I tried to limit this list to apps that were created under the general concept of recording thoughts and memories.

Now whether that’s through text, photos, videos, audio recordings, music or sketches, well, that’s up to you. And up to which app you choose. Hit the jump now to find the perfect one.

Wrap Up

Did you find one you like? Do you already have a journal app that you’re in love with but we didn’t include it? Comment to let us know your thoughts.

If only there were a way to save all your receipts from getting washed, lost in your car or buried in the stacks of paper claiming most of the real estate on your desk — in a single, easily accessible place, right?

With the Lemon app — designed to complement the services of Lemon.com — you can scan all your receipts with your iPhone and store all their details online. Keep track of your spending, create expense reports and more. Want to see how it works? Hit the jump and I’ll show you.

Your Lemon Account

To get the most out of Lemon, sign up for a free account, either through the app or online at Lemon.com.

Even if you don’t register online, you’ll still be able to access your receipts using the app, but the convenience the online dashboard provides is pretty spiffy, as it can tell you things like the total number of receipts you’ve scanned that month, how much you’ve spent, how many of your receipts are being processed and more — all at a glance.

Lemon’s core service of converting your receipts to digital data and storing them in the cloud is free, however the company does offer premium services that have a monthly subscription fee.

Scanning Receipts

Scanning receipts is a snap. All you have to do is match the edges of your receipt to the on-screen box and then click the camera button to take a photo.

Once the receipt has been captured, Lemon extracts all the important pieces of information — store name, store’s contact info, the date and time, items purchased, the tax and total amount paid — and makes tags out of them, which can be searched later.

You have to confirm that all the information Lemon has pulled is accurate — which, it regularly is, provided you took a clear photo — but if the app returns something inaccurate, you’ll have to either take another snapshot (since the app doesn’t allow for manual editing of the info, unfortunately), or log onto Lemon.com, where you can edit the receipt you want by choosing it from your All Purchases section.

For each receipt scanned you can categorize the expenses, even choosing multiple categories, such as Personal, Business, Credit Card, Check and so on. Of course, you can also create your own customized categories, if you’re keeping track of expenses for an upcoming vacation for example, or if you need to keep track of your expenses per client or per project.

By the way, if you have a receipt that’s too long to easily fit in the shot for a single screen capture, Lemon offers the option to add snapshots, although it takes some hand-eye coordination. Line up the previous image with the next image you’d like to take of the receipt, then take the snapshot and Lemon will turn the receipt into one long, seamless image.

Emailing Receipts

“But what about when I shop online?” you ask. Well, Lemon has a way to deal with your e-receipts, too. When you registered with Lemon via the app or the service’s website, you created your own personal @lemon.com account.

Each time you purchase something online, forward your digital receipts to your @lemon.com email address. Once Lemon’s system has processed them to extract all the important details as per usual (this can take a few minutes), the receipts will then appear in your Purchases section. (Any reports you run will not include your email receipt information until they are processed and shown in your Purchases section.)

And you’ll still be able to access the information from your e-receipts on your iPhone, just the same as you would any receipts you scan.

Using the Data

And here it is, the reason you wanted this app in the first place: the ability to export your expenses and create reports.

To get started, simply log in to Lemon and head to the Reports section on your dashboard. Choose a date range (weekly, monthly or all dates) and the labels you want to filter by. Lemon will generate the information you’ve requested, providing a number of different chart views, and you’ll have the option to export your report to an .xls, .csv or .pdf file and have it sent to the email of your choice.

Ideal for when your accountant or boss needs facsimiles of your receipts, Lemon can even include in the email a URL for downloading all the images of your receipts.

Conclusion

This app does all the hard work for you — reading all the details of your receipts and keeping track of how much was spent on what — and convenience is worth a lot of points.

A few drawbacks include the inability to manually edit the receipt details directly from your iPhone (you have to go through Lemon.com), as well as the inability to add multiple users and the ads you occasionally have to deal with — although the latter two issues become non-issues if you’re a Lemon subscriber. (Visit the Lemon website to see pricing for the Business Premium account and other options.)

All in all, I think this app is very useful, highly accurate, and has the potential to save me a lot of time and headache (and maybe even cash!) in the long run. Are you already using it? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

There have been plenty of games reviewed over here on AppStorm, so there are plenty of ways for you to kick back and relax. What I’d like to look at today is a way for you to get active and in shape, with the Fitbit app for iPhone. Fitbit is a relatively mature utility in the fitness space but their iPhone app is brand new.

Is this service going to help you get in shape, or is it a slouch? In my experience, it may just have the tools that you need to get up and running.

The Problem

People are becoming more and more aware of how their weight is affecting their overall health. With the rise of fitness-based services, people are beginning to take their health seriously and are leveraging the tools offered by technology in order to make changes to their everyday lives.

The traditional thought is that you need to diet to lose weight. While it’s true that this can help, you also need to be more active in your day to day life and watch what you eat every day, instead of just the days that you’re feeling a bit down about your size.

Fitbit offers a variety of tools to help you reach your weight loss and fitness goals.

Logging Activity

Key to a healthy lifestyle is an active lifestyle. It all comes down to how much you’re moving compared to how much you’re bringing on. Simple math, simple concept, but difficult execution. Fitbit makes it easy to log your activity and see just how much effort you’re putting into your health every day.

I found most forms of activity are present, from walking and running to calisthenics, working at a day job, or writing. I can’t attest to how accurate the calories burned are; I’m operating under the assumption that they’re as accurate as possible given Fitbit’s knowledge of my body (height and weight) as well as time spent working out and intensity. I’d love to have a way to monitor my heart rate, but unfortunately that isn’t possible just yet.

Remembering to log your activities has a significant psychological advantage. While it would be nice to be able to set reminders, I found that I didn’t actually need them; I became almost compulsive with logging as much as I possibly could. I’m sure that most people will have the same reaction, adding as many activities as possible into Fitbit in order to get a sense of satisfaction and a real idea of how much they’re working throughout the day.

You Are What You Eat

Of course, how much you’re moving is only one side of the coin. It’s also important to measure how much you’re bringing in, as the fuel is just as important as the output. Fitbit makes it relatively easy to monitor your calories throughout the day, with extensive knowledge of the calories present in many popular dishes from restaurants and fast-food joints.

I would have liked more generalized answers, as sometimes I had to pretend that I had eaten out somewhere when really I was cooking at home. I’m sure that this is difficult to do, but it’s an important aspect of the service that deserves to be fleshed out. I’ve found that as I cook at home more I lose more weight, and it would be nice to have the numbers to back that up.

Other applications will use other methods of tracking what you eat, and what it comes down to is personal preference. In some ways I love knowing how many calories I’m bringing in throughout the day, but I also know that calories are only part of the story.

If there’s anywhere that Fitbit needs to expand, this would be it; despite a robust offering, there’s more to food than the calories brought in and I would love to be able to have information on more generic objects.

Water

Water is what keeps you going. You can last longer without food than you can without water, and it’s important to make sure that you’re drinking enough throughout the day. Beyond that, there’s a trick to weight loss that some people still don’t understand: you need to drink more.

See, most of the time when people are absentmindedly eating or feeling hungry at odd times, they’re actually feeling thirsty. Misinterpreting this can add a ton of unneeded calories (and fat, and other horrible things) so a good rule of thumb is to drink something first and then see if you still feel hungry.

Why would you drink water instead of soda or juice? Again, because of all the things present in them. Water is calorie free, sugar free, fat free, etc. It’s everything that we want in our diets and is one of the best things that we can consume, and yet we don’t get enough of it. Fitbit’s app makes it easy to set a goal for how much water you’d like to drink throughout the day, and then log the amount that you actually drank.

Weight

This is the big one. Most often, when people talk about “getting fit” they mean “losing weight.” Monitoring your weight regularly can help you understand how what you eat and drink is affecting your body, as well as provide real, measurable feedback that you can act on.

There isn’t much to do with the iPhone app here; you can log your weight and that’s about it.

Future Updates

As the iPhone becomes more and more aware, I would love to see future updates to the app. For instance, it’s currently impossible to measure your steps with the iPhone app; I’m sure that the iPhone could be turned into a pedometer of some sort. This may go against the company’s desire to sell their own tracker (the Fitbit Ultra) but it would be a nice incorporation.

There’s also a ton of functionality on the website that can’t be accessed via the iPhone app. At this point it would be nice to have a way of viewing this extra info while I’m away from the computer, but in no way is it a deal-breaker.

Conclusion

The Fitbit app is the first app that has actually helped me get fit. Part of this has to do with the service itself; it’s a strong, stable tool that incorporates a bunch of information in order to help you become the best you possible. This iPhone app makes it easy to log my activity no matter where I am, reducing the friction necessary to track what I’ve been doing.

It’s worth mentioning the best-in-class UI as well. Everything about this app’s interface is fantastic, with friendly colors and nice details that really make the experience enjoyable during use. This further reduces the barrier to entry, and makes the app a joy to use.

There’s nothing you can get that covers the same bases as Fitbit, for free. Other apps will excel in certain areas, but Fitbit has the best overall package available. With a free web app and iPhone app, there’s really no excuse not to try Fitbit today.

For years, Apple’s worst kept secret has been the Trailer section of their website. It’s not publicized very often, but occasionally a web article will link to it, or someone will tell you about the latest exclusive feature, but it’s one of those things you kind of have to know about before you go there.

A few months back, Apple released a series of new apps designed to showcase the cool features in iOS 5, and one of them was iTunes Movie Trailers — but we’ll call it Trailers to keep things simple. At first blush, it seems like this would be a pretty shallow app with only one focus: showing you trailers. But as it turns out, there’s a lot more to the app than just some pretty videos, and I’ll tell you about them after the break.

The Basics

Yes, Trailers will show you movie trailers. I mean, that makes a lot of sense, so if you’re going to name your app with such a literal name, you’d want it to do what it says, and Trailers excels for sure.

Apple has the benefit of getting access to all of the best trailers, and as such, all of the ones featured on their website are available on the app. The featured trailer will show up on the top of the home screen first, but you’re also able to sort the flicks by genre if you so choose.

Once you pick out your movie of choice, you’re able to watch one of the trailers right there, just by touching on the title. And if that was it, I really wouldn’t be very impressed. Fortunately, it’s not.

The Continuing Saga

If you look down on the bottom of the screen, you’ll notice one of those standard bits of interface found in many iOS apps, and this is where stuff starts to change up.

First off, there’s the Calendar section, which tells you what’s coming out when. Sounds simple, right? Well that’s the gist of it sure, but think about the last time you wanted to know when that one movie was hitting the theaters and had to randomly Google names until you figured it out? Happens to me all the time. Now it’s easy, just by flipping through the calendar and seeing if something prompts your memory.

The Top 25 section is next on the list, and these are broken down into a few different sections. You’ve got the most popular trailers, the biggest ones on the weekend box office, top reviews from Rotton Tomatoes and iTunes top movies. Again, this seems trivial at first, but it comes in handy at parties or when you’re trying to prove to your boss that yes, the latest Twilight movie really did hit the top of the box office charts last weekend. As for why that happened, well your guess is as good as mine.

The Buying Experience

The next icon on the bottom is called In Theaters, and as the title would seem to imply, it’s a list of the movies that are currently in the theaters. Pick a day from the calendar bar at the top of the screen to see what’s playing this week, or select Theaters from the top of the screen and find a theater near you. This pulls up a Google map that shows you all of the theaters in your area, and from there you can choose whatever movie you want to see.

Once you’ve found a theater, you can see what’s playing and that’s neat. But, you can also touch one of the little blue buttons on each listing and select whatever showtime you want to attend. At the bottom of the screen you’ll get a little popup that asks if you want to buy tickets, and if you choose that option you’ll be whisked away to buy tickets on the company’s website.

Finally, there’s also a Favorites section of the app. In my world, there’s a few theaters that I really like to visit, and others that I stay away from like the black plague is delivered with the popcorn. If I touch the little star icon in the corner of the In Theaters section, then that theater becomes one of my favorites. Same with the movies part, making it easy for you to select your favorite movies before they come out, and then you can see what the local showtimes are at your favorite theater.

Final Thoughts

There’s not really much wrong with this app, because it does everything it says in the title and then some. The interface is nice, everything is laid out on a black background making it convenient to read in low-light situations and it’s convenient to use.

That said, I just can’t give it a full 10 score, but I don’t really know why. There’s some little nagging doubt in my head that says, “This app isn’t perfect. I mean, it’s close, but it’s not that cool.” Again, no real logical reason here, just something in the back of my head.

But don’t let that stop you. The app is free so you really don’t have much to lose, and the added functionality may make your life a little bit easier. Plus, it’s always cool to see the new trailers before they hit the screen, right?

As I was working on the ELCImagePickerController, bringing it up to speed for iOS 5, I needed to get some images inside my iOS simulator. I did some googling and came up with the handy method of dragging and dropping images onto the simulator and using Safari to save them to a photo album. This is all well and good for four or five photos, but it starts to really slow down after that. Also, if you ever run into a situation where you need to reset the simulator you’re stuck with doing it all over again. For the love of all that is automation, and of course any excuse to start new project in iOS 5, I knew it was time for a utility to handle this task for me.

With that, I give you ELCImageGrabber.

This was a quick project, so it’s not the prettiest interface, but it sure gets the job done. Tell it how many photos you want and watch as the previews go by and get stored in your photo library. The 64 images at a time limit is imposed by the Google image API for a single request, but there are plenty of ways around it. Also, I’ve hardcoded the search term in the source code, but perhaps you want rainbows and unicorns instead? I hope people find this useful and change it up to fit their needs as well. I’d love to see pull requests for any useful features that you lovely readers might add!

Get the code here!