Every week the editors at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This week’s selections include apps a beautiful iPad weather app, apps for sports and politics, a fun camera app, an app filled with inspirations, a puzzle game, a music app, and an alternative to Instagram.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

Living Earth HD – Seth Clifford

It’s been a crazy week, so I’m going simple with my pick – simple and beautiful. Leanna reviewed a weather app called Living Earth recently and after reading her post, my need to see just how great this app really was took over immediately and I downloaded it. You might find a weather app that does more or has more geeky weather options for meteorology nerds, but with the possible exception of Weather HD, I’ve yet to see a weather app this cool.

It’s a universal binary, so you get apps for both your phone and your iPad. The app has a nice forecast view as well as a cool alarm clock feature, but the interactive globe that loads live cloud and sunlight information from real-time satellite data is my favorite part. Sometimes just marveling at nature is all I’ve got the energy for.

You can read Leanna’s review for all the gritty details, of which there are plenty. I’m just going to sit and spin the Earth and hypnotize myself for a while…

$1.99 – Download Now

FCB Mobile – Chris Oldroyd

This week's pic is all about the beautiful game and the team that play’s it in the most beautiful way. My first love is my local football team Newcastle United. My second love belongs well and truly with the most famous football club in the world FC Barcelona.

Barcelona play the game the way it should be played, one touch passing, instant control but most importantly they play it offensively with open attacking football that is an absolute joy to watch week in and week out. Anyway back to the app, I have a great app on my iPhone that keeps me up to date with all the goings on at Camp Nou and its caled FCB Mobile.

FCB Mobile is the official app for FC Barcelona and includes all the latest news, match previews, reviews, player profiles, audio, video and much much more. If you are a fan of Barcelona you need this app.

$0.99 – Download Now

Contact Congress – Gary Mazo

For years, I have been preaching to my kids (as they one by one turn 18) that one of the great things about this country is that we all do get a say; that voting is both a privilege and an obligation. I also try to impart that even if the candidate we want doesn't get elected – we all have an obligation to still be part of the process and let them know how we feel about important issues.

Now, this is always easier said than done. Fortunately, there are some great apps to make being part of the process easier and more fun. I use Contact Congress by airship Software.

When you start up Contact Congress, it asks to either use your location or for you to input your home zip and then it finds your Senators and your Representative in Congress. Their political party is indicated by a little elephant or donkey and their picture and name is displayed in a tab.

Touch the tab with their name on it and you immediately have links to follow him/her on Twitter, go to his/her official Facebook page, Call Their Office or send them an email. It couldn't be easier or more convenient. Because of this app, I follow all three of my elected officials on Twitter and I have fired off a few emails and even made a phone call or two along the way when something is important to me.

And there is a very fun opportunity for an in-app purchase; you can, for $.99 "Dress up Congress" by purchasing Google eyes or Horns to put on the images of the elected officials. I actually think this is sort of demeaning and takes away from the app, but I understand the need to try to "monetize" the app some how.

All in all, this perhaps the easiest way to stay involved in our political process, and, as I tell my kids, to become part of the solution.

Have you used Contact Congress? Do you use other apps to stay politically active and involved? Sound off in the iMore forum thread.

Free – Download Now

Videoscope – Alli Flowers

Back when I had my iPhone 3GS, I found a nifty little app that let me use the iPhone camera like a kaleidoscope. KaleidoVid cased to function when Apple released iOS 4, and the dev never updated it. I was disappointed, because although it wasn’t a great productivity app, it kept me entertained for hours.

While browsing through the App store recently, I discovered several new kaleidoscope type apps, and one of them had much of the same functionality as that original app. Videoscope allows you to turn your iPhone camera into a kaleidoscope. You can increase or decrease the number of prisms by pinching the screen, and once you see the kaleidoscopic view you like, you can capture that view to your camera roll to use as wallpaper.

Videoscope has a feature that I recommend you not use if you’ve been drinking heavily or are on medication – it leverages the video camera of your iPhone and allows you to video the complete moving spectrum of the kaleidoscope. I shot some video through Videoscope while riding in the car the other night, and the results are breathtaking – and triply!

Videoscope also offers some alternate “scopes” including Pinscreen, Impressionist, and Brickbreaker. The Brckbreaker mode is particularly cool because you get to “break the bricks” by tapping on them and watching them fall away.

You are not limited to the rear camera with Videoscope. You can aim the front camera at yourself and become the Pinscreen image, or you can choose a picture from your photo library to turn into some awesome abstract art.

$0.99 – Download Now

Quotes! – Chris Parsons

Lots of people look for inspiration and motivation in different ways and one way that I enjoy is by reading quotes from others. Luckily, there is a beautiful iOS app available that offers plenty of quotes no matter what the topic may be. The app carries an obvious name, just simply — Quotes. Love, Happiness, Motivation, Inspiration. All are covered in quotes with the ability to share and save your favourites all from within the app itself. It does cost $.99 but it’s beautifully simple and enjoyable if you’re into reading quotes from others.

$0.99 – Download Now

Lawnmower Challenge – Simon Sage

This week I tried out Lawnmower Challenge, a simple puzzle game launched by a Boston indie developer at PAX East 2012. The premise is simple enough: cut all the grass in the level in as few moves as possible. Things get complicated when you throw in rocks, reeds, tall grass that you can’t walk through, mud you can’t mow through, locked gates that require keys, and impassable rocks.

It’s not fancy, but with 144 levels, you definitely won’t be left wanting for a challenge.

$1.99 – Download Now

Spotify for iPhone – Ally Kazmucha

I’ve long been looking for a way to free up some physical space on my iOS devices. While streaming services are great, what about times where you don’t want to eat up your data plan? I’ve found Spotify to be a great compromise. I’ve found most streaming services to be rather lacking or they don’t let you choose want you want to listen to. Neither is the case with Spotify. You can search through millions of tracks, create your own custom playlists, and listen in seconds.

With a premium account for $9.99/month you can stream music as well as download it to your device for offline use so you aren’t eating away at precious data. The free version is ad-supported and allows you to stream online, the unlimited version for $4.99 will allow you to stream with the iPhone or Android app in addition to removing ads. The premium version is the only subscription that adds offline mode. I’ve found that I can stream when I’m at home and just choose offline mode for the playlists I want to listen to while traveling or not near wifi. I’m saving tons of space on my iPhone by using the service.

Spotify comes with a full trial for 48 hours. Check it out and see what you think.

Free – Download Now

Tadaa – Leanna Lofte

With all the threatening on Twitter and comments to leave Instagram after Facebook acquired it, I went on a hunt for a decent alternative to Instagram. My favorite one so far is tadaa.

tadaa has a lot of what Instagram offers — only more. It’s a social network where other members can like and add comments to photos. There’s a photo feed for all the friends you follow, as well as feeds for popular photos and new members.

What I really like about tadaa is that it has a lot of built-in editing tools in addition to filters. You can crop, adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation, add a tilt-shift effect, and when adding a filter, you can adjust how strong the affect appears on your photo. You also aren’t restricted to square crops.

Free – Download Now

Tell us your pick!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

There are a wealth of note taking apps for iPad already in the App Store, but the simplicity of Daedalus Touch is what makes it so great. It’s got an excellent interface that focuses on allowing you to take notes and switch between stacks quickly. That makes it the perfect tool for taking class or meeting notes in an organized way.

Daedalus aims to make accessing and organizing easier with a stacking method as opposed to the traditional folders and notebooks method.

The main difference between Daedalus and other note taking apps is how it handles your notes. There are no notebooks or endless pages to scroll through. Instead, Daedalus sorts your collections into stacks and individual pages within those stacks. When you’re ready to start typing on a new page, just swipe to the right. Go back a page by swiping left.

The same functionality is built in to stacks. Double tap to open a stack and just scroll through the pages within that stack from left to right. To exit a stack, pinch it closed with two fingers to return to the main screen.

If you’re a student, stacks is a great way to sort notes by class. Make a stack for Calculus, Biology, Accounting, etc.. then quickly swipe between them and double tap into any stack to take more notes or view notes you’ve already typed out.

Daedalus allows you to search for keywords and sentences within stacks. You can also change font and the overall look & feel within settings.

For the most part, Daedalus keeps its options simple. There’s a basic word and character counter in the upper right hand corner of each note. You can switch between three different types of fonts and make the text larger if you’d like. Daedalus also has 4 different layouts to choose from:

• Console
• Dark
• Light
• Sepia

You can choose to turn auto-caps, auto-correction, and spell check on or off. Tapping the eye in the upper left side of the screen will lets you search Google, Wikipedia, and dict.cc for information via a built-in browser. This makes it easy to look up information without having to jump back and forth between Safari and Daedalus.

You can also tap into any stack and type a search term into the top bar. Tap return and scroll through your stack to see the instances of that term. It’d be nice to see it aggregate a list of where the term was found instead of having to page through though.

Daedalus supports both iCloud and Dropbox syncing. You can also export notes into an e-mail, text, PDF, or ePub document.

Daedalus supports syncing with both iCloud and Dropbox. You can navigate to the folder you’d like to bring down and import folders you already have into stacks. Just choose the folder you want to turn into a stack and Daedalus will do all the heavy lifting for you.

From the main stack screen you can click the sync button to sync all the stacks you’ve created or you can individually sync stacks if you’d prefer only certain stacks be saved to iCloud or Dropbox.

You can share your notes under the export menu in the following ways – e-mail, text, PDF, or ePub. You can also print and copy to the clipboard. Notice there is no export as HTML option to support Markdown. So if you need to type in Markdown, you won’t be able to export it directly from the app.

The good

• Fast, accessible interface gets you going quickly
• Excellent organization
• Selective sync is a great way to save space
• Built in browser is very convenient

The bad

• Search function could be better
• No Markdown support
• Can’t important single documents, only complete folders as stacks
• No iPhone or Mac version

Conclusion

Deadalus aims to simplify and streamline the note-taking process. For users that don’t care about Markdown support and just need the ability to take notes quickly in an organized fashion, Deadalus is perfect.

While I stil prefer applications like Byword for writing and Evernote for notes and lists, there are plenty of people who will prefer the focus of Daedalus.

$4.99 – Download Now

Additional Resources:

• Byword for iPhone and iPad review
• iA Writer for iPhone and iPad review
• iMore apps and games forums

Joe Danger, an Xbox Live Arcade game, is making the leap to iOS with fully optimized swipe and tap controls. The lighthearted romp takes a motorcycle-riding daredevil through a series of obstacles in colorful locales where you openly defy danger by doing backflips off big jumps and poppin’ sweet wheelies. While driving through a course, you’ve got split-seconds to tap on letters as they pass by. If you can spell out “Danger”, you earn one of the win criteria, while you earn another for collecting all of the stars on the course. That should offer plenty of replay value. Best of all, we’ll be able to expect multiplayer support whereby both players trying to cut one another off and compete for stars and letters.

Joe Danger’s gameplay on the iPad looked extremely smooth, and it looks like they’ve done a solid job of recreating the appeal of the top-ranked XBLA game of 2011  for mobile. There are way too many apps, like Soul Calibur, that simply drag and drop a virtual controller layer onto the game UI and expect everything to play the same, but it’s good to see folks like Hello Games are taking the time to properly make the transition to mobile. It’s also really nice to see a game that’s not about killing people for a change, but is still lots of fun to play.

The developers were specific about release dates or pricing for Joe Danger on iPhone or iPad, particularly since this is a very early look, but they mentioned that it should be available “in a few weeks time”.

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• Can’t decide between new iPad and iPad 2
• Facetime on iPad 3
• Help needed with iPhone contacts
• Star Wars Retina iPad wallpapers
• Do you ever wish for widgets?
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