Best Apps for Students

The school year is winding down, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to put away your books. Exams, papers and projects are the buzz words as April slowly gives way to May and students start drinking coffee and staying up far too late in preparation for finals. If you’re feeling a little stressed, sit back and relax. There are five amazing apps you can download to help ease the burden. Mobile application development has come a long way since IBM Simon, the first smartphone, was released in 1992 and there are tons of apps to get you through the final stretch.

• Blackboard Mobile Learn is an offshoot of the popular Blackboard software used in high schools and colleges around the nation. It’s available for iOS and Android. Use it to complete any Blackboard assignments, watch videos, read syllabi and interact with your class on the go. You must have a Blackboard account through your college to use BlackBoard Mobile Learn, so check whether you’re eligible before you download.
• gFlash+ is an app that lets you make flashcards and use them right on your phone. Forget about needing a partner or dealing with the papercuts that come from quickly rifling through a stack of index cards. Just add information to your phone and start flashing knowledge into your head. You can get it for iOS or Android.
• No notebook? No problem. Install Evernote so you always have the ability to take notes in the palm of your hand. Most people don’t forget their phone when they leave the house, but how many times have you had to borrow a pen? Evernote is available on iOS and Android, but it can also work on your computer at home.
• If you don’t feel like taking notes, try Share Your Board. The app takes a photo of a whiteboard in your classroom and changes it into a PDF file. Once you have it, you can send it to friends or use it for your own studies. The app is available for Android users.
• There’s no reason to get a backache from lugging heavy books around when you have the Dictionary.com app. Combine it with an already-installed reader and you have a mobile library capable of delivering up facts at the click of a button or swipe of a touchscreen. The Dictionary.com app can save you from misspellings and misunderstandings in any classroom. It’s available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

As a bonus, download Angry Birds. It isn’t the most popular app in the world for no reason. Use it to take a break between classes or on the bus. There’s no harm in having a little fun; if anything, it’ll make you happier and more productive. You can get Angry Birds on any platform—even the new iPad with Retina display.

So don’t let your phone or tablet be a drain on your time or grades. Instead, use it to enhance your education. By downloading apps that make you more productive, you’ll get your work done sooner and be out with friends before you know it. Isn’t that better than sitting at your desk, flipping through a notebook and trying desperately to remember where you left the notes from math last week?

Laur Niko has a Master of Science in English from a liberal arts university in Virginia. She’s been a freelance writer for three years and specializes in mobile applications, 3D gaming, education and finance.

iPad in Education: iTunes U and other ideas

Recently there's been much talk of Apple raising the educational bar yet again with quite a few app based educational innovations being announced and being spotlighted , both in the classroom and the wider iPad/iPhone hungry world. Students working on their online education will be thrilled to hear this.

iTunes U ,while nothing new to iOS education, now has its own dedicated app. University Blackboard Apps and other college based Smartphone learning efforts have been of increasing popularity in recent times. iTunes U itself has been around since 2006 and enjoyed support from many leading educators, such as Stanford who have released numerous quality lectures on iTunes U. The App is presented with the expected Apple flourishes and has multiple ways for students to interact with their lecturers and coursework. Teachers can use the app to keep students updated and keep coursework current and relevant. A useful commercial side to the app is the ability to have one click access to iTunes for any relevant course publications.
Current University offerings on iTunes U such as Harvard University's cooking and science lectures (We wonder what their 'Meat Glue Mania' lecture involves!) and Harrisburg Community College offering free astronomy courses all bode well for this app being an educators best friend.

Harrisons Medical
Textbook on iPad

Apple has been very much in the spotlight recently for other educational innovations such as their programme to transform textbook use in classroom into iPad based textbooks. While it's a noble goal, particularly given that textbooks cost an awful lot of money and are not very robust in the hands of your average pupil. The cost of an iPad is of course the biggest downfall to the iBooks based educational scheme. The iPad cost can be mitigated somewhat by schemes such as as Apple's Ipad Lease scheme for schools and the hintings of an iPad 3 that will lower the cost of the current iPad.
Textbooks in  e reader form are certainly the way forward , providing cheaper ;more robust access to educational books and more ways for students to interact with the textbooks. Such as the aforementioned iTunes U apps and numerous other Blackboard type apps. With influential names in textbooks such as McGraw Hill bringing their much lauded Medical Textbook to iPad : Harrison's for the  iPad (Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine is probably the foremost medical textbook in the world) To see such a famed textbook now being published on iPad is truly groundbreaking- on the iPad Harrison's Medical Textbook  will cost just shy of $200 whereas to buy a harcopy of the medical textbook will cost the same but you obviously won't have access to all the interactive features of the iPad Harrisons.
So is the iPad going to be as revolutionary for books as the Gutenberg Press? Only time will tell.

Mapquest on Android with Mapquest Driving Directions

Mapquest is now featured heavily on Android Phones with Mapquest Driving Directions a standard method of navigation for many drivers.

Mapquest itself has been around since 1967, the AOL online web mapping service has always been highly popular especially in USA, now that there are rivals out there like Google Maps ( a strong rival indeed , especially as the Google Maps app and turn by turn navigation are featured free on most new Android phones) Mapquest is still going strong. So lets look at the features of the popular Android app.

Based on all the rave reviews many users actual prefer this Mapquest classic navigation app to Google Nav.
It's free too, without any subscriptions or maps to pay for on download

• Walking or driving directions and navving
• Voice-guided navigation
• 1-click search for points of interest such as shopping or gas-stations
• Great word search tool
• Open sourced maps
• Live traffic and incident coverage continually updated.

Mapquest driving seems to be a hassle free experience with the only negative aspect being reported as a slight lag on older phones, which might be due to network latency anyways. The maps app will provide coverage for other countries than the USA , but having originated there it is unlikely that the map feature set for foreign countries will be as refined. If Google maps quirks aren't to your liking then definitely try Mapquest.



Also worth investigating is the new feature making waves: MAPQUEST VIBE. Giving all the latest navigation and info about the hottest and funkiest places in the area.










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definition and cool math games:

Translate Veterans Day Quotes across the language and Culture Gap

Veterans Day has come and gone this year, but this year in particular with so much universal brotherhood and charity extending across the world as we get rid of old regimes and pave the way for a free future for all made me think how something as poignant as Veteran's Day needs to be shared universally as we put aside the mistakes of the past and join not as countries but as a species for a brighter future. Once again we can turn to our Smartphones for help, our ever handy little tool that can help us to transcend barriers.

Now that's some quite bold statements right there, so how can I justify that then? Well simply put, one of the big barriers to cross-cultural friendship , even in this modern age, is the language barrier. We're fortunate though that such a trivial factor doesn't need to be as much of a burden on our understanding as in previous decades. That's quite simply because of easy to use apps like Google translate. Translate Google from Spanish to English for example and much of the Latin America/USA social divide will start to crumble.

I've got friends from Britain serving in Afghanistan right now, who on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month also shared in the minutes silence and thought not only of those in WW1 who gave their lives , but friends and comrades who had very recently made the ultimate sacrifice. British soldiers who will look at you cluelessly if you mentioned veterans day, as in Britain it is known as Remembrance Day, whereas when I was growing up I simply knew it as Poppy day and later as Armistice Day.I'll share with you some of my favourite Remembrance Day Quotations .

Veterans Day Quote:

• Courage is fear holding on a minute longer
• There never was a good war or a bad peace
• The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war
• More Powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin

Gametrender loves Smartphones: Fact. But Gametrender loves the world and people in  it more, so remember this Remembrance Day past, this Veterans' Day gone and all those to come, take your phones and research the world around you, translate your beliefs into words and remember that right now we are laying the foundations for the world of the future. Lest we forget.

Happy Veterans' Day for now and the Future

Indispensable Dictionary for playing Words with Friends

Words with Friends has taken the world by storm and it is mandatory to have a dictionary by your side when you're playing against your 'friends'. So let's look at some dictionaries for iPhone.

Oxford Dictionary for iPod/iPhone Touch

One of the first dictionaries I remember getting as a child and later using as a young student was the Oxford English Dictionary, which was at the time THE definitive English Dictionary. As the net has become progressively important though ,it has been somewhat superseded by relative newcomers such as Google Dictionary and Wikipedia Dictionary. However with a pedigree of over 100 years of compiling words this app has got legitimacy written all over it.

Download now for a definitive thesaurus and word compendium with all the authority of a true intellectual giant.

Before we move on lets give something back to those hanging with friends: Words with Q and Z: Quince; quintuplet;queen;quarry;quaff;quibble; zoroaster ;zoroastrianism;zoo;zeedonk;zenith

Words with Friends Help

Not an app but a useful site I found on the net for quick and easy access to scrabble type words: enter your words; prefixes and suffixes and voila!

Go Street with: iPhone Urban Dictionary

When you tire of being civilized and playing iPhone word games you can go all street on yo bros and flip them out with the urban dictionary. You probably won't get much Words with Friends mileage out of it but it's fun and might even help you to understand any teenagers about.

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Naming Apps WYSIWYG

Have you ever wondered where these app get their names from?The Android Market and rivals are inundated with apps so it's interesting to see some of the marketing strategies that are coming out from app developers in a very congested market. Of course major app developers always have a trick or two up their sleeve and Sony has come up with an Ace of Spades by quite simply naming one of their new apps with a foolproof name that does exactly what it says on the packaging Video Trimmer. What does the app do, trim videos of course! https://market.android.com/details?id=com.sonydna.videotrimmer. The Video Trimming app has many rave reviews and is well worth checking out.
Superb marketing by Sony, wysiwyg(what you see is what you get) is strangely enough a concept not properly explored in the App Development game as developers try more and more outlandish names to make their creations stand out. Leave it to an old grandmaster like Sony to make back to basics fashionable again. As for the app in question, its simple and trimmed and the high quality you could expect from Sony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6fUulEflgU&feature=player_embedded

Mobile Genres : Endless Running

Depending on a platforms capabilities there have always been certain genres associated with different platforms. The Nintendo Wii for example will always be associated with motion control games, normally of a childlike persuasion. Pc games will always be known predominantly for RTS and other mouse friendly games.
Touchscreen mobiles in the relatively short time they have been around have carved out a surprisingly large amount of genre niches. That is not to say that these types of games only exist on this platform but it would be hard to argue that touchscreens aren't the best suited for them.
This article is another one of our series articles in which Gametrender will discuss some of Smartphonings favourite genres. The one that is up on the podium this week is 'Endless Running'
A very reviewer friendly genre as it does exactly what it says. The character normally runs from left to right with inputs from the player normally limited to single finger jabs usually associated with an action like jumping. Scores are normally totted up by how far the character runs and the challenge is tempted up by adding obstacles along the way.
So far so simple, so you'll be asking what's good about it and why should you play it. I've chosen a brilliant endless runner called DIVERSION  https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ezone.Diversion&hl=en   as an example to show exactly how good a polished version of this genre can be.
Diversion is by far the best endless runner I've played. At first appearances it's apparent how much effort has gone into the game. The graphics are superbly rendered in 3d being easily on par with a mid generation Playstation One game. The music is all jingly and bouncy filled with adrenalin and hinting at the potential for manic kinetic energy.
The avatar you play with has a lot of personality. A female protagonist has been chosen perhaps in a cursory head nod to the legendary Mirrors Edge. The avatar its imbued with personality , and adding to the games sense of polish and fun is upgradeable. With lots of different outfits waiting to be bought or unlocked. Not only that but part of the fun is that each outfit bestows different skills which it is up to the player to find out.
On to the game itself, firstly it must be pointed out that it has lots and lots of levels, hence a lot of longevity.
Of course it wouldn't be up to much good if the levels lacked variety, but variety they do have in bucketloads-floating minse,slides,jumps,warps,ziplines to name a few. Timing is crucial on each of these as you attempt to get the highest score.

Diversion-Superb Endless Runner

And just when you thought that they couldn't possibly lavish any more love on this game then up they come with... Boss Battles! Very Impressive stuff and certainly a great poster child for app gamings beloved Endless Runner genre. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMO8g_52O2w&feature=player_embedded 
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If you like this then read our follow up post

Android Games on holiday

Mobilephones have in recent times joined the staples of a man's pocket, adding to the dynamic duo of keys and wallet most people wouldn't consider leaving the door without their mobile phones also.

These miniature computers,thanks to app access now have virtually unlimited uses: communication device,gps,alarm,camera,watch being among some of the most basic functions that we can enjoy. However there are some hard engineering facts that stop us using them to their full potential: they're just too damned easy to break!

Engineers have done a superb job in recent use in making mobile components faster,cheaper,more reliable and ever more powerful, however there is a pressing need to make them much stronger. Recently on holiday I was spending a lot of time poolside and down the beach. I'd unconveniently forgotten my camera at home, but whereas my mobile normally quite easily fills that gap I was reluctant to expose it to the sand and heat of the beach. Swimming laps in the pool I thought to myself that my experience would be enhanced if I was able to time my laps using the phone or listen to music. With its built in accelorometer it would have also been great to have an app that could analyse my swimming stroke and give me advice. That app sadly will not be invented for the forseeable future as phones are not pool friendly. Even sat relaxing around poolside I was reduced to reading a Kindle as in direct sunlight my xPeria Play's screen was just too hard to see.

Again on a bicycle tour down the Majorcan coast I was reluctant to bring the phone for fear of knocking it, on another note functions such as Google Goggles and Google Maps would have made the bike trip more enjoyable, but international internet access rates are far too steep to to be using the bandwidth for such activities.

Motorola Defy:A step in the right direction

So engineers you've created for us in the form of these great Modern Android Phones and other smartphones a new exciting generation of device, but it's akin to having a Ferrari supercar and only being able to drive it on sunny days on flat roads. There is a lot of potential being left untapped.<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/android" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://scm-l3.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=android" alt=" " />android</a>

From humble beginnings: Traditional gaming inspiring app gaming

Android gaming and smartphone gaming is arguably one of the most cutting edge fields in entertainment today, a developer has the ability to virtually create a game within a few hours, the tools and technology that developers and gamers have access evolve at a phenomenal rate. And more importantly unlike traditional gaming industries the Android market has a massive amount of freeware resource tools to draw on. But there is one issue that no amount of cutting edge tools can solve: that of creativity. The ideas of game designers must come from somewhere, recent games I've played give a very strong case for traditional non technological games being a very good source of inspiration.
  Pocket  Soccer by Rastergrid Entertainment http://rastergrid.com/blog/ especially got me thinking about this issue. The game it must be said is very good, with a slick presentation, three difficulty levels, lots of playability and polish. Of note was the way the game was played, on a simple playing field players take it in turn to push one of the players represented by a disc with the teams flag on it, to score goals. The influences are two fold with traditional football being a clear influence, flick football being another and interestingly enough the Rts staple of turn based games. Arguably without the developer drawing on these influences, whether consciously or not, the game of  Pocket Soccer would not exist.

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Crazy app downloads:Why did I do that?

Have you every looked on another persons phone? Not their messages or voicemail but actually what apps they have downloaded? It can be a very illuminating and sometimes downright scary experience. At a barbecue this past weekend it was getting to that time of night when most if not all conversations were exhausted and people were starting to deploy their smartphones enmasse. Another observation of the smartphone generation is that in one way they are very similar to baby boomers of a previous generation. It's never uncommon at parties of a certain age group for those with babies to trot them out and expect coos and aahs and suchlike from their captive audience. Well the smart phones who are infant less have found a way to retaliate! They bring out their phones, only of course if they are new and shiny enough not to be an embarrassment (the equivalent of a baby with a scary looking rash?) and like the other unlucky bloke across the room being regaled with baby stories the smartphoner feels obliged to show you what apps are on their phones. Well at this particular barbecue thankfully all the infants had been put to sleep leaving me at the mercy of a smartphoner. That is why at one in the morning I found myself being bored to death by a man smashing virtual bottles and being equally mystified as to why a thirty something year old would be deriving so much satisfaction from a talking, farting, drinking dog that you can beat up! On a positive note I was shown Sniper which is now on my to download list. It also made me realise how good the Gametrender concept actually is. Log onto gametrender.webs.com and you too could be having your own particular irritating app, drunk or sober, to bite or entertain with as you please. android games