Weekly app picks. You want ’em, we got ’em. We’re a little short on app choices this week, but we think the ones that are here are worth mentioning. As a good follow-up to last week’s post we have another voice recorder, and March Madness is on so we’ve got something for the basketball fans as well.
Hang around with us after the break and see how we did with this week’s picks.
Casey Rendon – Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder
A good audio recording app is a necessity for me, especially during school. I don’t always pay attention during lectures, so I have to make sure the recordings I take are clear and of high quality. Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder does everything I need, and does it well. One of my favorite features is that it records directly into MP3 format, saving tons of space over time. To save even more space, you can adjust the quality of the files by changing the bit rate. For phones that have more than one microphone, you can toggle between them for audio input. If the sound you’re recording is too soft or loud, you can also tweak the gain to adjust recording volumes. Make sure to try the app out using the free version first. If you like it, you can buy the full version to enable unlimited recordings, pause function, and up to a 320 kbps bit rate.
Download: Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder (Free)
Sean Brunett – NCAA March Madness Live
March Madness is one of the best weekends in American sports. It’s when 64 of the best college teams play in a single elimination tournament. To fully enjoy all of the games, you’ll want to check out the official app, NCAA March Madness Live. With the app, you get live scores, live game feeds (any game on CBS is free, any on the other networks requires a paid subscription), live audio feeds, an up-to-date bracket and the ability to share to your favorite social network. With so many games going on simultaneously, it’s often difficult to keep up. This app helps a lot. I used it on Thursday to watch games on my Nexus 7 while watching other games on the TV. It worked great!
Download: NCAA March Madness Live (Free)
Richard Devine – WeVideo for Android
WeVideo has had a basic video editing app available in the Chrome Web Store for some time now, but the free app has now also made its way to Android — albeit in limited form at the moment. And that’s the biggest drawback right now, it’s limited. Officially supported devices are limited to the Samsung Galaxy Note, Note 2, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Nexus and the Google Nexus 4. It is still a beta product though, so we’d expect better device compatibility in the coming weeks and months.
Those who can use it, will see a great looking video editing app. It’s relatively simple, but does allow for some trimming and editing of your mobile video clips, as well as in-app recording. Throw in some background music tracks, some of the pre-installed ‘styles’ and cloud syncing, and WeVideo is actually a pretty fun little app to mess around with.
Download: WeVideo for Android (Free)
Andrew Martonik – NFC TagInfo
I recently received a new transit card, so my natural first reaction was to try and scan it using my Nexus 4’s NFC. Hopping into Google Play, I found NFC TagInfo and it worked like a charm in my application. A few swipes over the card and I was given every piece of relevant information on the card. Like most times that you get NFC to work right now, it kind of feels like magic.
There’s some fun novelty uses for NFC TagInfo, but you could also put it to good use if you’re trying to configure our own NFC tags or find one out in the wild. It’s not the prettiest app ever, but what matters is the information it gathers and displays is very useful.
Download: NFC TagInfo (Free)
Jerry Hildenbrand – Crackle
2013 is going to be the year of 1080p displays, and that means you’ll want to watch video clips and movies on your Android devices even more than you do now. A great way to do that, one that doesn’t seem to get enough attention, is with the Crackle service.
Crackle is free, and it’s a great cross-platform way to watch TV shows and films on your tablet, desktop, or smart phone. You’ll not find every first run movie, but there’s bound to be something you want to watch when you have time. It shows as compatible with all my devices (one of the few apps that can boast this), and the price is right.
I’ve been using the Android app as well as the Chrome extension for a while, and have found the service as good or better than comparable offerings like Netflix. Give it a try, as you don’t have anything to lose if you don’t find something you like.
Download: Crackle (Free)
Phil Nickinson – EXIF Editor and Viewer
I’m extremely lucky to have this ridiculously awesome job that lets me travel all over the world and take pictures of some incredible places. And I love sharing those pictures. But when I’m home, I’d prefer to not have the precise coordinates of my living room (or, ahem, occasionally my bedroom) broadcast all over the Internet, ya know? I don’t have a good workflow for turning geotagging off and on. It’s usually buried in the camera settings, and I try to stay out of those whenever possible. Some services, like Google+, allow you to hide location data after publishing a image. But not all. So this week I’ve tried stripping the GPS info out of the EXIF data. It’s not something I need to do all that often. But when I do want to edit the EXIF fields, I want to do it quickly.
EXIF Editor and View is a simple and intuitive application. Tap a field to edit or remove it. Then choose whether to save as a new image, or to overwrite the original.
It’s an extra step, but it’s easy, and it’s good for my piece of mind.
Download: EXIF Editor and Viewer ($1.93)
Happen to miss previous editions of our weekly app picks? You can check them out right here. Our continuing weekly app coverage can also be seen right here as well.