App Rush | GulfNews.com

Top Gear Magazine: Aston Martin One-77 Special (Free)

This one-off digital magazine from the Top Gear team focuses on Aston Martin’s new supercar (a snip at 1.2m). Expect lots of photos, videos and information on the car’s design and inner workings, as well as “a blast of its mighty 7.3-litre V12” engine. And since it’s free, you’ll save a few quid towards the car itself...iPad

Lots of buzz this week around Flexibits’ Fantastical, which is a smarter, whizzier version of the default iOS calendar app. That includes voice dictation, a “DayTicker” view of your daily schedule, lists of events pulled down from Facebook, and support for iCloud, Google Calendar and Exchange. If you switched to Sparrow from the iOS Mail app, this may be your next move.iPhone

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Photography app FxCamera has been hugely popular on Android, with more than 20m downloads. It’s now made the leap to iPhone, and looks to have the features to take on the established competition there. There’s a range of effects, the ability to record voice messages to accompany images posted to Facebook, and other social features.iPhone

Winnie the Pooh Wonder and Wander (Free)

Disney’s latest iOS app for Winnie the Pooh and friends looks lovely, with a characterful visual style, and lots of playful interactivity for children to enjoy. It’s less a book and more a wander around Hundred Acre Wood, tapping and swiping the scenery and characters, with additional colouring sections.iPhone / iPad

This is most definitely a niche, but a rather marvellous one. It’s an augmented reality app for people who play Minecraft, helping them project their blocky creations into the real world. And here’s the thing that is getting geeks (yes, me) excited: the ability to save Minecraft worlds to real-world locations, for other people to find and explore.iPhone / iPad

Tom and Jerry: Stickers with Sounds (0.69)

Hot on the heels of similar apps for Batman and Superman, this children’s app is the work of Night Day Studios. Kids choose characters and items from a carousel at the bottom of the screen, slap them onto scenery from the famous Tom and Jerry cartoons, then save/share the results. And if Tom and Jerry aren’t your bag, there’s a Looney Tunes version out this week too.iPad

UberSocial Pro for iPhone (2.99)

UberSocial made its name as one of the better unofficial Twitter apps, and despite ructions around how third-party apps are being restricted by Twitter, its publisher UberMedia has released a new Pro version for iPhone. It has a slick design, more rich media, and some power features still lacking from Twitter’s own iPhone app.iPhone

Talking of parents, this is exactly the kind of app that people will buy “for the children” while really intending to spend a few hours browsing it themselves. Released by the Institute of Electrical Electronic Engineers, it’s a comprehensive guide to robots from around the world with 360-degree photos, tech specs, videos and other information.iPad

Already available on iPad, 500px has just made its iPhone debut on the App Store. It’s a photo-sharing service but with more of a focus on creatives and photographers than the likes of Instagram (although that attracts plenty of creatives too). So it’s more about browsing lots of amazing photos and sharing them with friends, than snapping your lunch.iPhone

George R. R. Martin’s A World of Ice and Fire (Free)

Who’s what? Well, this is an official companion app for the books by author Martin that have been turned into an obscure TV show called Game of Thrones. Yes, that one. Released by Random House, this app has more than 540 character profiles, 380 place profiles and interactive maps great for figuring out who’s who and where they are when reading or watching.iPhone / iPad

Fodor’s City Guides - Expert Travel Advice (Free)

More Random House here, in the form of Fodor’s City Guides, which have been turned into an attractive iPhone app. It covers destinations including New York, London, Paris, Rome and San Francisco, with listings for hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs and tourist hotspots, and data drawn from Expedia, OpenTable and other sites.iPhone / iPad

Garmin BlueChart Mobile (Free)

This is a more serious affair: a marine navigation and mapping app from Garmin, which can be used to plan and view routes, read reviews of locations and hazards on the high seas from other sailors, and transfer data to Garmin’s separate chartplotter device. iPhone / iPad

Rounds Video Chat Hangout Network (Free)

This popped up in last week’s Android roundup, but it’s since been officially launched for iPhone too. It’s a free video-chat app that ties in Facebook to connect to friends. Besides basic video chat there are photo-sharing features and the ability to watch YouTube videos or listen to music with those contacts.iPhone

Perch For Your Home (Free)

Perch is another app focused on video chat, although it does it with a twist requiring an extra iOS device. The idea: “By mounting an iPod, iPhone or iPad in your home, you can easily send video messages and record memorable moments as they happen”. Which basically means wandering up to the device and talking to record a message.iPhone

The Whole Truth About Santa Claus (1.99)

One last festive children’s app for you this week, from French developer La Souris Qui Raconte. This one’s “not recommended for younger children who still believe in Santa Claus”, mind, due to its myth-scotching storyline about Santa really being a bloke called Fred who gets his mates to help deliver presents. Quirky, colourful and great fun.iPad

This is a very nifty app from British startup T Biscuits, aimed at students and academics. The idea: scan book barcodes to create automatic citations and bibliographies when working on essays, with a choice of several referencing styles (Harvard, Chicago, Oxford etc) to suit even the most demanding lecturer.iPhone

There is no shortage of nifty DJing apps on iPad, with djay the current reigning steel-wheels champion in this household. Turntable DJ Deck is talking the right talk though, billing itself as “the first professional DJ deck for iPad” with a range of pro features.iPad

Taking an iPad onto the yoga mat may sound like a strange idea, but iYoga may convince you otherwise. It’s a guide to more than 190 poses, with a motion-captured person showing you how to get each one right. Poses can be strung together into routines, and it plays nice with Apple TV to project everything onto a bigger screen if required.iPad

This is an offshoot from mobile writing site Movellas, gathering some of the poetry written by its community. That means more poems, haikus and sonnets than you can shake a stick at, with the ability to post feedback, save them to favourites lists, and get notified when a preferred poet has new verse available.iPhone

Guardian News and Media 2012

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