The Artist's Picks: RealCalc

RealCalc:


Hello all, and welcome to the Apocalypse! Which is evidently not happening. (If it was happening, then you wouldn't be reading this, so I'm safe :P)

Continuing last week's talk about calculators, here we have RealCalc, an app that pretty much turns your smartphone or tablet into an old-school scientific calculator.

It's pretty cool when you first look at the screen-- it looks exactly like a calculator, no  status bar or anything!

As you can see, it has a pretty fleshed-out group of features, and works very well in my experience. My favourite thing about the interface is that you can press and hold on a button and it will activate the yellow secondary function without having to reach up and press the SHIFT key first.

Since it is just a scientific calculator, there is no fancy graphing mode or anything, but for basic calculations it excells.

Also, it works at night, unlike those old scientific calculators which had solar panels on them. It has no ads, but doesn't come with fraction support; you have to buy the Pro version for that.

Anyways, see you next week for more of my Android favourites.

The Artist's Picks: handyCalc

handyCalc:

http://dft.ba/-handycalc

Welcome back to another Artist's Picks.

Lets talk about calculators for a bit. handyCalc is simply the handiest calculator you'll ever need. Ever. It has graphing capability, it's able to solve algebraic functions, and even has a currency converter. 

No matter what your need is, handyCalc delivers, from simple calculations to advanced transcendental functions.

In addition (ha ha, a pun!) to the regular keyboard of numbers and arithmetic signs, you can access the range of advanced mathematical functions like the trigonometric operators and higher power exponents. If you can't find a certain function, you can type yours in using a QUERTY keyboard. This keyboard is also used to input variables so you can solve complex equations like:

If only I had something like this while going through high school!

When calculating, you also can get little popups before you hit the equals button, like the value of your last answer if you're including it in the current calculation, or, in this case, it states the sum and average:

You can also graph functions about x, but I find that the graphing option is a little lacking compared to other calculator apps on the Play Store. It's still massively better than my old TI-84 though.

This calculator has no ads at all, so download it for free and take advantage of the handiest calculator ever!

The Artist's Picks: Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber

Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber:

http://dft.ba/-ultimate-lightsaber

Welcome back to another Artist's Picks, and as you can see, I managed to get Star Wars into my recommendations!

But seriously, this app is super fun. Pretty much what this does is turn your phone into a mini lightsaber. You can set any colour imaginable, and even change the hilt design.

When you activate the lightsaber by tapping on the screen, it starts up by making the characteristic hummmmm noise we're all familiar with. When you swing your phone, the app makes a very cool vwummm noise, like in the movies. The best part is when you swing downwards hard enough, the sound the phone will emit is what happens when two lightsabers clash in the movies, and if your phone has a flash, it will light it up.

If you're feeling in the mood, you can also set the app to play background music; which includes many of John Williams' classic pieces. (My favourite is Duel of the Fates, the battle theme in Episode I)

The cumulative effect of all this is to provide you with the sensation of holding a lightsaber (or as close as you can get without an actual laser sword), and it's pretty fun to just swing it and pretend you're a Jedi (or Sith).

If only I'd had this when I was a kid!

It is ad-supported, but still free, so go to the Play Store and start swinging your very own lightsaber!

May the Force be with you, and see you next week!

The Artist Picks: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Welcome back to The Artist's Picks. An offline dictionary is what's being reviewed today, and I must say it comes in handy an awful lot.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

http://dft.ba/-merriam-webster

One of the awesome things about the Internet is that you can look up any word, any time. No more lugging your dictionary around when the time comes to crack open a big technical book. However, sometimes the Internet is unavailable; you're out in the woods camping, or simply out of range of WiFi when someone asks you to look up what 'excoriate' means.

So I present to you the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the mobile counterpart to that big book that you likely have on your bookshelf in one place or another. This app has definitions to almost every word imaginable, and so far I have not run up against any words it doesn't know.

It supports voice search, and also has a 'word of the day' which gives you a random word every day. In case a simple definition is not enough, the app can also tell you the word's pronunciation, its origin, and it even has a built in thesaurus.

But the absolute best thing about this app is that it stores all of its considerable amount of definitions offline, so you don't have to look for Internet access next time you need to look a definition up. However, storing all this data does make it one of the larger-sized apps out there. However it only comes to about 120 megabytes in total, so unless you're really tight in terms of internal storage, you should be fine.

Like every other app I review, it is free and waiting for you to check out!

The Artist's Picks: Bump

Happy Friday, and welcome back to the Artist's Picks. I'm reviewing Bump today, a pretty cool file-sharing app.

http://dft.ba/-bump-app

In the eventuality you want to share pictures with someone, your only option is usually to email the shots to them. You could also post the pictures to Facebook, but what if your friend wants the pictures you took to be downloaded to their phone? Well, just start up Bump, and tap your phones together and you're done! The photos are magically transferred over.

Photos aren't the only things you can Bump. You can also transfer contact information and app suggestions. You can even transfer your pictures to your computer, if you go to http://bu.mp and tap your phone on your spacebar.

I don't use this app too often, but in case I take a bunch of photos with a friend and want to share them quickly, it's good to know that I have it installed.

If you're like me and enjoy sharing photos quickly and instantaneously, go ahead and download this app.

Android Apps Galore

Remember when that good old saying "there's an app for that" came out and the only company that could actually say that and not be lying was Apple? Then Android popped out of no-where and slowly started amassing thousands of apps. And those apps grew exponentially in number. Apple's have too, but not quite at the same speed as with Google Play. Now, as of September 2012, Google Play has over 650 000 apps with over 25 billion downloads! Those figures are still lower then the App Store's 700 000 apps and 30 billion downloads. But the point here is that Android is getting close to Apple's iOS. Android already dominates the market as far as market share goes, and it will be only a couple more months now till Android dominates in apps too. The glory days are soon upon us.