RetroGram is a new iPhone app that lets you layer multiple vintage filters onto you photos and share instantly to Instagram. It comes with 12 filters with dozens available as in-app purchases.

What I love about RetroGram is that once you have your photo edited like you want, sharing to Instagram actually takes you out of RetroGram and opens the photo in the Instagram app. This allows you to add an Instagram filter or effect before posting to Instagram. If you have other photography apps installed, you can also open your edited photos in there instead of Instagram.

Designed specifically with Instagram users in mind, RetroGram delivers the most realistic and professional vintage style photo filters available on the app store.

Why settle for 1 filter? RetroGram lets you combine 2 or more filters, to create your own unique pieces of art! Get started right away. RetroGram comes with 12 professional filters pre-installed, and dozens available to download via the app’s Retro Market.

• 12 free filters, designed especially for Instagram fans.
• A completely unique UI.
• Share directly on Instagram.
• Beautifully created and professional photo filters.
• Filter Market – update weekly with new filters for download.
• Super easy to use and delivers awesome results.
• Snap a pic or choose from the camera roll.
• The definitive retro effects app, photography enthusiast will love to discover.
• Inspired by old-school Instagram users who love giving their work a vintage look.

RetroGram is available on the iPhone for free.

[App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Pod Odyssey is a new iPhone and iPad app by Coffee Pot Labs. The goal of the game is to guide a lost space POD though the levels while completing missions and avoiding danger.

I’ve enjoyed my short time playing Pod Odyssey. The tilt controls are difficult to master, but with time and practice, I believe they would be the best choice. I don’t that have kind of patience, however, so I chose one of the many different touch controls options and was able to instantly enjoy the game.

Use your galactic pilot skills to guide a lost space POD through a series of jagged cosmic mazes, evil missile-shooting robots and homing space spiders.

• 27 unlockable levels
• Addictive & Challenging game play
• Tilt controls
• Touch controls (several alternatives)
• Dual mission goals
• Easy controls (a 6 year-old can play)
• Unique Sci-Fi graphics and artwork
• Custom soundtrack & SFX
• EMP to knock out enemies
• Power Shield

Giveaway

The gold folks at Coffee Pot Labs have given us 5 promo codes for Pod Odyssey to give away to you, our awesome readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below!

Pod Odyssey is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

[App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Infinity Blade 2 looks great. Can’t wait for December 1.

We all know the iPhone 4S camera can replace most point and shoot cameras in a heartbeat. But what about for professional photography? Does it make the cut for on the go photography or does it still leave something to be desired?

Ryan Bolger, a personal friend of mine, is a professional photographer and local gallery owner. He has been patiently waiting to pick up an iPhone until he thought Apple got the camera feature right. I suggested that he pick up the iPhone 4S and give it a chance as a camera to use while on the go.

Over a month later he has nothing but positive things to say about the iPhone 4S camera and the quality of the images that it produces.

So I’ve been holding out for years. I’ve had an upgrade ever since the original Iphone came out & I decided that I was going to wait until the camera was where I wanted it & knew it could be. The iPhone 4S has changed my creative life in a very big way. The App Store has also opened up my eyes to a whole new creative & visual world. The ability to capture, ratify, & share my creative life with a few simple taps has helped me in my quest of trying to make the world a better place through my art.

Within the first week of my new marriage to this phone I took over 2,000 photographs. I’m amazed at the detail & the versatility of the iPhone 4S’ camera. I’ve even used it on some paid client assignments. That’s how much I trust it as a professional photographer.

I just read an article last night that photography was one of the things Steve Jobs aimed to re-invent. As a guy whose life revolves around photography and has since childhood, you’ve already done this Sir. So thank you Steve Jobs and thank you Apple.

Be sure to hit Ryan’s gallery of photos at the link below. The first 200 to 250 photos are all taken and edited on his iPhone 4S.

Source: RJB Imagery

I re-installed my iPhone the other day, re-downloaded Netflix, entered my username and password… and was promptly kicked out of the app and into Safari, and asked to login to Facebook. Something similar happened on my iPad, but because I was already logged into Facebook I was instead kicked out into Safari and asked to add some ridiculous Netflix app to Facebook.

I can’t emphasize enough how horrible a user experience this is. A first time user experience should be as darn near frictionless as possible. It should be about the app and service, helping you to use it successfully and immediately. Kicking your new users out of your app is inexcusable. Kicking them into Facebook is even worse. Despite its popularity, not everyone uses it. Some people are highly opposed to using it for various privacy reasons.

For someone like my mom, that would be a brick wall and phone call to me — something she’s never had to do on the iPad so far.

From the bungled price hike to the embarrassing Qwikster flip-flop to the perplexing release of a revamped Android tablet app before the much, much, much (much) better selling iPad, Netflix should be far more concerned about providing a great experience to the users that have stuck with them than about pushing their self-service social initiatives. Instead, this looks like just one more misstep.

What the heck is wrong with them?

eBay has updated its iPad app and it now includes a new feature for its U.S. users called "Watch with eBay". Watch with eBay lets you easily find items related to what you are currently watching on television.

Watch With eBay is a new and fun way to discover items from the wonderful to the unexpected, all based on what you’re watching on your television. After a few quick setup steps, you can browse and view eBay search results based on any television program currently playing in the United States*. You may find DVD sets, signed photographs from your favorite actor or athlete, movie scripts, coffee mugs, jerseys, collectible pieces, and more!

The update also includes one or two bug fixes as well as the Watch with eBay feature. eBay says that the Watch with eBay feature is U.S. only due to current program data constraints. It does say it may bring the feature to more countries later on.

[App Store link]

If you’re jailbroken on iOS 5 you’ll want to check out BlurriedNCBackground, a neat little tweak that makes Notification Center that much cooler. BlurriedNCBackground simply makes the background of notification center blurry instead of the default Apple background. Once you install it there’s nothing to configure. Just drop down Notification Center to see the new look.

If you want to change the blur level and customize it further you can do so via Settings. BlurriedNCBackground is available now and is a free download from Cydia.

Cydia Search Link

The biggest gift of the year, as far as TiPb is concerned, is a brand new iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Apple TV. But with so many iOS devices on the wish list this year, how do you know which one to get and for whom? Well sit back, relax, and let us do the heavy gift lifting for you this year — with our 2011 holiday guides!

And hey — if you already have all the iOS devices you need, no worries! We have a full slate of 2011 gift guides coming your way!

iPhone

The iPhone was the first and in many ways remains Apple’s flagship iOS device. It’s highly portable, always connected, has the best design, fit and finish in the business, and the largest app and game catalog on the planet. It manages to be both easy to use and accessible to first time smartphone users and powerful and productive for power users alike.

The iPhone 4S has a dual-core processor, making it the fastest iPhone ever, along with a startlingly good looking 960×640 Retina display that looks more like paper than pixels. It’s 8mp camera and 1080p video camera are good enough to be on a point-and-shoot, and it includes Siri, the world’s first intelligent assistant that keeps track of your appointments, reminds you of your tasks, sends you mail and messages, and does a host of other tasks with charm and wit straight out of a Pixar cartoon.

It does require a carrier contract with a voice and data plan, however, which isn’t insignificant, and if you’re not buying with a subsidy, the initial price can be quite high. Apple also only makes one kind of iPhone, so anyone looking for a bigger screen, a keyboard, or anything other than an iPhone needs to look elsewhere.

iPhone 4S comes in black or white, 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB, and is available on AT&T and GSM carriers, as well as Verizon and Sprint in the US. While the iPhone itself is the same, they’re typically locked to a specific carrier and can’t be switched between them. Apple has also kept last year’s iPhone 4, and the 2009 iPhone 3GS around at reduced prices. If saving money up front is important, check them out as well.

• Full iPhone 4S review
• iPhone 4S buyers guide
• Get an iPhone 4S from Apple, local carriers, and electronics stores

iPod touch

The iPod touch might seem like an iPhone without the phone, and there’s a lot of truth to that. You can get 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB storage options, just like the iPhone, and now you can get it in black or white, just like the iPhone as well. It can run the same apps and games as the iPhone, including the built in ones like Mail and Safari, read the same eBooks, show the same TV, movies, and videos, and play the same music.

But that “without the phone” part is important. It’s significantly cheaper — don’t look at the iPhones subsidizes carrier price, count in the 2 years of voice and data plan and it can be a couple thousand dollars cheaper. It does use slightly lower end parts to keep the price tag low, like a screen that’s still a 960×480 Retina display, but doesn’t have the same fancy inter-plane switching (IPS) technology built in. But it’s also thinner. Almost impossibly thinner.

The iPod touch is perfect for people who want access to the App Store and iTunes Store, and all the great content that comes with it, as well as apps for everything from Netflix to Kindle, but don’t want or need a phone and phone contract. That includes kids (Nintendo and Sony are hurting for a reason), people who already have a phone but want an iOS device, and people who want a light, highly portable, multifunction device for the living room, travel, etc.

• Full iPod touch review
• Get an iPod touch on Amazon.com

Alternatives: Amazon Kindle

iPad

When Apple introduced the iPad, some people knocked it saying it was “just a big iPhone” — turns out that’s exactly what it was and why it’s been so successful. While it does pretty much everything an iPod touch can do — or an iPhone except for the phone part — and runs all iPhone apps, it also runs tens of thousands of iPad specific apps, custom built for the bigger, more expansive 9.7-inch screen.

For email, web browsing, eBook reading, and gaming it can be a much easier, more immersive experience, though the size makes it better suited to feet-up, at rest use rather than feet-down, on the go use. The size also makes it heavier than an iPod touch, and you can’t just throw it in a pocket and be on your way.

But oh, when you’re sitting down. Everything from curling up with a great movie to controlling your server over remote desktop from poolside to playing a first person shooter on the plane to building a presentation at the coffee shop, it’s a fully mainstream computer appliance in your lap.

Just like the iPhone and iPod touch, it comes in black and white, in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions. Unlike the iPod touch, in addition to the Wi-Fi version, there’s also a 3G-enabled model that works on either AT&T and international GSM carriers, and a CDMA version on Verizon.

For people new to computers, for kids or seniors more comfortable with the bigger screen, for those who need more than a small mobile screen but nothing as complex as a laptop, the iPad is an excellent choice.

• Full iPad 2 review
• iPad buyers guide
• Get an iPad on Amazon.com

iPod nano

Although the iPod nano looks like an iOS device — especially with the 2011 software update — it doesn’t really run iOS and can’t run App Store apps and games. It can play iTunes music, however, as well as FM radio and several other handy, ultra-portable things like a pedometer.

It’s not as expensive as a full iOS device, however, and clips easily to your clothes to take with you on everything from a walk to a workout at the gym. It can also be worn as a watch, thanks to a variety of accessory makers, and Apple has recently added a bunch of great new clock faces for just that, including Micky Mouse!

• Full iPod nano review
• Get an iPod nano on Amazon

Apple TV

Apple TV is perfect for anyone who has a large iTunes library, and/or an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and wants an easy way to get all their TV, movies, music, and even apps and games onto their big screen HDTV. You can easily stream anything from iTunes and most everything from your iOS devices to an Apple TV over Wi-Fi. Start watching a show or playing a game on your iPhone, come home, hit the AirPlay button and keep watching or playing right on your television. It really is just that easy.

Even if you don’t have iTunes or an iOS device, Apple TV is an incredibly simple way to watch YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, and iTunes rentals on your television.

• Full Apple TV review
• Get an Apple TV on Amazon.com

Alternatives: Roku Player, Boxee Box

Gone are the days when AT&T and AT&T alone was so blessed as to have exclusive access to Apple’s iPhone. Now you can, if you so choose, have your iPhone 4S on Verizon or Sprint, a regional carrier like C-Spirt, or even run it unlocked on T-Mobile.

AT&T still offers the fastest data speeds, with HSPA 14.4. Verizon claims the best network coverage. Sprint is the only major carrier still offering unlimited data to new iPhone owners. C-Spire is the only small carrier to pick up the iPhone 4S to date. T-Mobile… you have to work for it and it’s EDGE only, but that means you must really love them to stick with them!

But now that you have a choice, TiPb Nation, we’d like to know who you chose and why? Was it speed? Was it coverage? Was it data? Was it customer service? And did you switch from a different carrier to get iPhone 4S on your current carrier? As always, vote in the poll up top and give me the details in the comments below!

Randomly accurate rumor site Digitimes claims Apple, attempting to solve the challenge of backlighting a 2048×1536 Retina display for the next generation iPad 3, has panel suppliers working on two prototypes — J1 and J2.

Apple is currently giving two tablet PC projects codenamed J1 and J2 to its upstream partners for development. The sources revealed that the major differences of the new tablet PCs compared to the previous model are their size, specifications and technologies.

Since the new tablet PCs have a higher resolution, Apple has demanded the design of the light source to be changed from a single LED light bar to two LED light bars on the left and right sides of the machine, but since the method of adopting two LED light bars has created difficulty in shrinking the machine’s thickness, some vendors have come out with designs that only adopt one light bar, but are packing two LED chips into one package.

9to5Mac has found references to a J2 codename in iOS 5 strings, along with another, currently unknown device reference — T39. (Start your Apple TV 3 or Apple television rumors…)

Apple has worked on multiple contending prototypes in the past, so regardless of the details, this is what we’d expect to see from Apple in the months leading up to a new device launch such as iPad 3 this spring.

Source: Digitimes, 9to5Mac

Apple has announced that it will be holding a one day holiday shopping event on Black Friday which just happens to be this Friday November 25^th.

Mark your calendar now, and come back to the Apple Online Store for the special one-day event. You'll discover amazing iPad, iPod and Mac gifts for everyone on your list.

The banners have appeared in the UK and a few other Apple online stores but nothing as of yet in the US store. If you are planning on purchasing any iPad, iPod or Mac products, it may be worthwhile holding off until Friday. It looks like Apple may have some bargains to entice you to part with some of your hard earned money!

Source: Apple Store UK

Georgia and Rene discuss strategies for coping with the holidays, including dealing with family, friends… and the in-laws. This is ZENandTECH!

• Our podcast feed: Audio | Video
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Hosts

• @GeorgiaTiPb (Georgia)
• @reneritchie (Rene)

Contact

You can reach all of us @ZENandTECH, via email at podcast@zenandtech.tv, or leave a comment below!

Thanks everyone, you’re the best community on the web and we love having you with us!

Disclaimer

While Georgia is a therapist, she’s not YOUR therapist. Everything said or implied on this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. And shouldn’t be taken in any way as a replacement for proper, professional care.

Credits

Music is Peace on Earth by wellman.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Full Fat, the creators of Flick Golf and Flick Soccer, have brought a new flicking game to their lineup – Flick Quarterback! In Flick Quarterback, you are the quarterback of your favorite football team and it’s your job to pass – er, flick – the football to receivers and dodge defenders.

NFL Flick Quarterback is the first game to put the guts and glory of offensive passing in your hands. Be the QB of your favorite team – pass to receivers, dodge defenders and make amazing trick shots.

The incredible flick and ‘after-touch’ controls that have made users across the world love Flick Golf and Flick Soccer are now powering this awesome football-throwing experience.

• Complete passes to try for the highest score in Playmaker
• Face your opponents, avoiding their intelligent movement and interception skills
• Juke oncoming defenders to avoid getting sacked
• Throw as many passes as you can into the trash can in Trick Shot
• Play during the day or night, and even take on the natural elements – can you stand up to the wind like the toughest of NFL QBs?
• Pick your favorite team and customize your jersey name and number to become the QB you've always dreamed of becoming
• Play among beautifully rendered 3D stadium environments
• More than 120 unique football player animations
• Dancing cheerleaders before the game
• Game Center leaderboards and achievements
• Stunning high resolution graphics
• Enhanced for iPad 2

Giveaway

TiPb knows how much our readers love football, games, and free stuff, so we’re gifting 5 copies of Flick Quarterback! For a chance to win, let us know which football team is your favorite and which version you prefer – iPhone or iPad.

Flick Quarterback is available on the iPhone for $2.99 and on the iPad for $4.99.

[iPhone App Store link] [iPad App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Apple has begun airing another new iPad 2 commercial, again voiced by Peter Coyote, and this time called “Love”.

For some it’s a lifelong passion [shows basketball plays]. For others, it’s something discovered yesterday [shows music mixer]. We all have things that speak to us [shows 3D car model]. They drive us to get up early [shows landscape painting]. And stay up late [shows iMovie]. Getting lost in the things we love has never felt quite like this [shows dinosaur animation].

Again, it’s filled with what the iPad 2 can do, with real people in real situations solving real needs. This whole series of ads has been very strong, and it’s smart of Apple to continue them.

Curious how to change the amount of lines shown on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch email preview? If you get a lot of email, it is really handy to see a preview  of the first few lines to know if it is important enough to read and deal with. If you’re concerned about privacy, you may prefer to display nothing at all. Out of the box, the iPhone and iPad only show the first two lines of text from an email but that can be changed to show much more, or nothing at all.

• Click on Settings
• Click on Mail, Contacts and Calendar

• Scroll down to Preview
• Click on Preview
• You will now see a screen that lists the number of lines of text you will see in an email preview

• If it is set on two lines, this is how it will look

• Change the setting to your preferred amount of lines, four in this example
• When set at four lines, you can now see much more of the email message without opening it.

That is all there is to it, simple but a very handy tweak.

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