With the huge boom in deal sites led by Groupon and LivingSocial, it was only a matter of time until someone started aggregating all the coupons and deals in one place. The Yipit mobile app offers a clever, interactive solution. Earlier: Finding the Best Mobile Apps for Your Needs Not only can you sign up for Yipit like any other deal service, but you can also search by category and location. Taking advantage of the iPhone's "Where am I now?" functionality, Yipit can show daily deals near you. The rub for suburbanites: Deals are much more dense the closer you get to the city. (See the …

Who doesn’t love a Secret Santa? It’s that time-honored office tradition of exchanging clandestine gifts with strangers or co-workers or strange co-workers. For the uninitiated: Names are assigned, a spending limit is set and outrageous gifts are given anonymously. The tradition is as time-honored as bad decisions made at the holiday party. Secret Santa usually works best when a benevolent holiday dictator makes sure everyone has a name and everyone follows through. It’s a ritual that requires a Master of the List, a Keep of the Secrets — that is, until everyone finds out anyway. But that’s …

Since I started this column, one of the most-asked questions I get is, "How do you decide which apps to review?" That is actually simple: I review the ones I use, apps that people recommend to me or ones that I find. How I find them breaks down into two camps: New apps (which I find in the online Apple Store) or ones I stumble upon using another app. Namely: The Discovr App ($1.99). This mobile app — using a technique similar to the spider-web-like matrix employed by ThinkMap's Visual Thesaurus — will find apps for you by category, based on its internal recommendations or based on apps you …

My twins, age 3, already know how to use my iPhone — which is part of the reason I put a lock on it. If they had full access, I’d never get it back. Mostly, they want to look at photos or videos of hamsters eating popcorn on a piano. Or, sometimes they want to play the piano. With that in mind, if you’re looking for a little interactivity with your kids — or just something to keep them quiet in the shopping cart, let me suggest these mobile apps for little ones. Color Piano (99 cents) – This app is genius. Depending on the setting, the piano will either play notes (including chords, if struck…

In this job, by the end of the week, I collect a ton of business cards. In fact, it's not unheard of for me to put on jackets I haven't worn in awhile to find business cards in the breast pocket and do one of those Homer Simpson forehead slaps—doh! When I first started this column, the folks at SHAPE Services suggested I try their app: Business Card Reader ($4.99), which will take a photo of said card and convert it to the fields in your iPhone address book. Perfect! I thought. Well, near perfect. I've been using this app for a few weeks now, trying to convert business cards to contact files…

Imagine this: Walking into your local library and finding an advertisement for an app that allows you to checkout ebooks and audiobooks on your mobile device! Inside, you yell, "Genius! Why hasn't this existed before?" That's exactly what happened to me with the OverDrive Media Console app. OverDrive has so much promise, so many tantalising possibilities that you can't help but like it. Earlier: A Review of Panoramic Photos by the Pano App.  In my case, I really, really wanted to like it. But the experience speaks for itself. I tried this app out a year ago but was frustrated by its limited …

Last week, I collected a roundup of photo apps – but did not nearly get to test all the cool photography-related apps I wanted. So, I devoted this week to Pano ($1.99), an app for the iPhone and Android that builds a string of photos into a detailed panorama. In short: There's a lot to love. Developed by Debacle Software, Pano is simple, intuitive and almost disaster-proof, in terms of its user experience. Related: App Hunter Archive Now, there are a few drawbacks. Unlike other programs, you cannot go back and stitch together photos taken outside the app to create a panorama. Instead, you …

This week, I did an interview with author Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash) for Patch. The problem? His press only provided us with one photo. So, between the preview piece (he’s speaking in Oak Park), the actual interview and reader questions, we only had one photo. The solution? Photo illustration. Camera+ ($0.99)I’ve long ago substituted this app for the regular camera program that comes with the iPhone. Camera+ essentially endows your point-and-shoot with SLR functionality. Example: Touch the screen for the specific area you’d like to focus on. Double bonus: Turn on the “burst” …

I’m on the road this week, giving a speech about Patch in Champaign-Urbana, so I thought this would be an excellent chance to try out Enjoy Illinois, the official app of the Illinois Department of Tourism. Right now, as I type this from the Illini Union, this free app tells me that nearby “Top Attractions” include the Tanger Outlet Center (22.44 miles away) and the Kickapoo State Park (26.10 miles away). So, if I want to hike in brand-new surplus sneakers, I’m set. It also lists more than 25 restaurants and hotels within a mile radius. The app allows me to filter and refresh these results by …

I used to have a huge key ring. Huge. Not only did it have keys—but also a ton of rewards cards, those little bar-coded plastic money savers, bulking up my key ring. Putting it in my pocket was impossible. So, when I got an iPhone, one of the first apps I downloaded was CardStar. The app allows a user to keep his/her loyalty numbers in one place with an interactive library of bar codes that can be scanned at checkout. Related: Redbox App Lets You Cut in Line Without Getting Punched Goodbye unwieldy key ring. Not only that, but I started using it for off-label uses, like storing my Society of …

The free Redbox mobile app for the iPhone essentially lets you cut in line for the movies. How? It allows you see what titles are available at the Redbox location(s) near you, and then lets you to reserve the ones you want.   Earlier: The Best Oak Park AppsNow, admittedly, I’m primarily a Netflix customer. I get DVDs in the mail, use the Netflix’s streaming app and play a ton of Disney’s Phineas and Ferb (for my 3-year-old twins) through our PlayStation 3. But when we’re on vacation, Redbox comes in handy. If we’d only had this app earlier this summer during our beach vacation, maybe I could …