Software

Any Skype user can now send a video message to friends and family who are offline.

Rolled out in February as a beta preview, Video Messaging launched on Monday to all Skype users. Those of you on Skype can record a video message to share with folks who aren't available. The message then pops up for your recipients after they log into Skype.

Built directly into the Skype software, Video Messaging is accessible via Skype for Windows desktop, Skype for Windows 8, Skype for Mac, Skype for iPhone, Skype for iPad, Skype for Android, and Skype for BlackBerry.

There'… Read more

You know what my iPad doesn't have? A DVD player. So how am I supposed to watch all the great movies in my DVD collection? I'm talking "The Rock," "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Incredibles," "The Matrix," and so on. (It's true: I have awesome taste in movies.)

No doubt Apple, Amazon, and Google would love for me to buy their digital versions of all my platter-based movies, but I already bought them once. Do I really have to spend $10 to $15 to buy them again?

Not today. Movie-discovery … Read more

Fit Radio takes one of the more popular features of other radio curation services and builds an entire app around it. The result is a stripped-down music discovery and radio app that works perfectly for those who are heading to the gym and don't already have their own playlists.

The purpose of Fit Radio is to create and curate playlists of songs that are perfect for anyone going to the gym or working out at home. It combines a number of features in terms of DJ-supported playlists and custom songs to give you a choice among dozens of possible … Read more

Gif Magic capitalizes on the surge of interest in GIF animations in recent months, allowing you to make the short animations on your phone in just a few seconds. While the app has certain limitations, the resulting GIFs are spot on, providing the kind of short bursts of animation that go over great on social networks.

The core function of Gif Magic is to convert still photos or video into animated GIFs. You can either record a new video, which will then be converted instantly to a GIF, or you can choose a video or still images in your photo … Read more

iCarousel offers a quick, intuitive image search tool for your iPhone that takes only moments to set up and that works instantly for any search. The interface is designed to resemble the carousel-style sliders in iOS, but ironically loads and moves faster than most of the apps Apple integrates this feature into. The result is a fun-to-use app that has a number of instantly accessible uses.

iCarousel is a relatively feature-bare app. When it opens, select your search term and hit the button to populate a carousel of images. It takes only a second or so for the carousel to … Read more

iMajiCam does something the vast majority of image and video editors don't and shows you exactly how the content will be edited in real time. The result is a jarringly effective image and video editor with a number of features that give you much greater control over how your final creations look. While the interface is cluttered and some functions will slow the app down quite a bit, overall it is very well made.

When you first open iMajiCam, you'll notice the sheer volume of onscreen buttons. From a slide-out left menu with different app modes (of which … Read more

Instapicframe generates framed photos and other effects for Instagram, but due to a convoluted menu system and poorly-labeled home screen, it is often unnecessarily hard to use. Buttons are located in three different places, only some are labeled, and the process of actually creating and sharing an image takes much longer than should be necessary.

When you open Instapicframe for the first time you must create a project. Once you do, you will be able to choose from various frame options and then add images to those frames. Image options include images on your phone or those on your Facebook … Read more

The English Tagalog Dictionary provides a quick and easy-to-use dictionary experience on your iPhone, but has some serious issues in the setup phase, combined with a messy interface. The dictionary, itself, works as advertised and is extremely responsive, but you'll need to wade through a handful of issues to get to that point.

When you first open the dictionary, you'll need to download the actual definitions. This takes quite a bit of time, and because of the small size of the files and clear lag between device and servers, we wonder why they were not included with the … Read more

Inventory Tracker Lite provides a number of tools to enter and track items in a physical or online store on your iPhone, but provides too few features to make it a useful replacement for more robust desktop software. With a form loaded interface and no clear instructions or tutorial, it is also not a pick-up-and-use tool that can be put to immediate use in managing your business. As a result, what is a promising app proves to have few applicable uses beyond experimentation with mobile inventory management.

When first opened, you can start adding new items to the list immediately. … Read more