If you’re buying for an amateur photographer, or a child learning French, gift-giving now easier
Gillian Shaw
Other
CABO INSIDER, IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH, IPAD
MY HOUSE BY MARIANNE DUBUC, IPAD
FILMIC PRO, IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH, IPAD 2
1 CABO INSIDER, IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH, IPAD, $2.99
If you’ve already had enough of winter and are packing to go south, here’s a handy app for Los Cabos, Mexico. It comes courtesy of West Vancouver travel writer and photographer Janice Mucalov, who has teamed up with Sutro Media to create the Cabo Insider. Just looking at the app’s photos and videos will banish the winter blues, but when you get to Los Cabos, the municipality that is home to Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, the Insider will help you find the best restaurants, special deals, interesting tours and other activities. Find every-thing from the best places on cruise stops for free Internet, to money-saving tips and special discounts for Cabo Insider users. All you need to remember is the sunscreen.
2 MY HOUSE BY MARIANNE DUBUC, IPAD, $2.99
Whether your child is French-speaking, in French immersion or you’d just like to expand their reading with Canada’s other official language, this charming iPad app based on Marianne Dubuc’s book Devant ma Maison (In Front of My House) bills itself as the first truly bilingual app for the iPad. I haven’t tested that claim but it is certainly one of the first, and it takes your child on a wonderfully illustrated tour with pencil artwork by Dubuc. If you’re looking for a little e-stocking stuffer for an iPad-using child in your life, put My House on your list.
3 ADOBE TOUCH APPS, ANDROID $9.99 EACH
Just in time for holiday photography, Adobe has launched its family of Adobe Touch Apps for Android tablets. The lineup, from Adobe’s Creative Suite, has apps that will appeal to everyone from the amateur photographer to the advanced pro who is creating websites and more. It includes Adobe Photoshop Touch, for editing photos; Adobe Collage for making – you guessed it – collages, although creations that combine images, drawings and texts are now also known as “moodboards.” There is also Adobe Debut for making presentations; Adobe Ideas for sketching; Adobe Kuler for inspiring colour themes; and Adobe Proto, an app that lets you create interactive wireframes – the skeletal framework for a website – and prototypes of sites.
4 FILMIC PRO, IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH, IPAD 2, $2,99
Thanks to a tip from one of my editors, I got the Filmic Pro when it was on a free promotion recently. Apologies that the promotion’s ended, but still, it’s worth the $2.99 for this app, which takes your iPhone videography up a notch. Or two. It takes the simple point-and-shoot iPhone or iPad 2 and gives the videographer, whether you’re a total amateur like me or not, the tools and settings of a much higher-end camera. It has three shooting modes, four resolutions you can choose from, 26 variable frame rates and a number of other features that take your iPhone video far beyond simply clicking the record button. The cool thing about the iPhone video camera is that it’s always available in your pocket or purse, so you capture a lot of great video that you’d otherwise miss.
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