Best Windows Phone 7 Apps » Photo

APOD Viewer: one astronomy picture a day on WP7

bestwp7apps — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:04:42 +0000

APOD Viewer (Free) [Growing.Apps]

APOD Viewer brings the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day to your Windows Phone 7: daily selected pictures (or videos) coming from NASA (http://apod.nasa.gov) are directly available with this app. If you are into space and universe, this is a great opportunity to see awesome pictures and videos: similar to the NASA be a Martian app, but this time with the entire Universe as playing field.

Last seven days of APOD stunning pictures can be viewed and saved on the phone, added to your favorites or shared with your friends. The description of the picture is also readily available, and this is very helpful to fully appreciate the great images proposed. You can also enable the live tile to preview the picture of the day on your WP7 home screen.

A Pro Version is available for $1.29, providing more room for favorites and couple more options for the live tile.

The developer Brian Kassay has done a great job in bringing the amazing images from NASA to this handy Windows Phone 7 app.

Genre	Photo	Rank	939
Rating Avg.	4.0 Stars	# Reviews	28
Price	Free	Version	1.4

TaxCaster: preview your tax return with Windows Phone

bestwp7apps — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 05:40:34 +0000

TaxCaster (Free) [Growing.Apps]

TaxCaster is a free app that allows you to quickly estimate how much money you are going to get back from the IRS this year. Intuit, the company that brings you TurboTax gives us this app for a quick estimate as well for a suggestion on which Turbo Tax edition better suit your needs.
You don’t need to be precise, this is just an estimate: use the slider to input your total annual income, the federal and state tax withheld if any, big other income coming from interests or dividends. Then input your expenses: mortgage, college tuition, dependents, just at high level, and there is your estimate for this year return: easy-peasy! Sometimes the slider to enter the amount can be tapped by mistake, the app could have make these controls a little less sensitive, but you can use the keyboard to make sure you do not fat finger your return estimate.Note that the app does not transfer the data in Turbo Tax, this is beyond the purpose of TaxCaster. When you are done, the app will also present what is the best Turbo Tax edition that fulfills your needs, this is a way to make sure you do not get an edition you actually don’t need. Tax Day is close: why don’t have a preview with TaxCaster on your Windows Phone 7, for free!

Genre	Finance	Rank	259
Rating Avg.	4.5 Stars	# Reviews	37
Price	Free	Version	1.1

Flickr for Windows Phone 7 Review

bestwp7apps — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:40:22 +0000

Flickr (Free)

This week the official Flickr app for WP7 has been released. It has immediately gained attention of the media and blogging community as another big-name-app joins the Windows Phone 7 App Marketplace. Reception from users seem to be positive, the average rating is 3.5 stars over a good number of reviews in a few days; which is good.

We have to confess that we are not big Flickr users, since our pictures are stored on our PC, shared on Facebook or synched to Windows Live. Nonetheless we tried the app to see if this is worth your picturesque WP7 taps.

There are three main things that you can use Flickr for: store and share your own picture, access friends and family ones, browse and discover beautiful pictures shared by other Flickr users.

For storing your Windows Phone Pictures online and synching those with your Flickr account, the app does a good job, allowing you to select the pictures you want to synch and easily tag them. It’s all free; all you need is a Yahoo account (you can create it on the phone) and you can upload up to 300MB of photos per month (and 2 videos). If you want unlimited space, then you can go pro with a $24/year fee.

Sharing is easy – for every picture you upload, you can select the visibility: public, friends and/or family, private. To access friends’ pictures, the app does also a good job: as soon as you sign in you can see the latest uploads that they made available to you – easy-peasy.

The best part of the app is browsing the incredible library of stunning pictures that the Flicker photographers made available to everyone on the service. The Explore section is the one that we spent the most time with: a collection of beautiful pictures among the most watched and best rated is displayed in tiles in this section. It’s really easy to lose yourself in looking at the beauty of the pictures that the thousands of photography artists share on Flickr.

Flickr is somewhat inclined to please photo geeks: as you select a picture, you can see all the details about the shot, including aperture, exposure, ISO speed and camera configuration. The social aspect is also important here, pictures are tagged, commented and rated.

We found the app a little slow in changing screens at time, but nothing that can really ruin the experience. Pinning the app to the home screen will enable the Active Tile that will display beautiful pictures in rotation (sweet!).

Flickr has released a video introduction:

Verdict (version reviewed: 1.0.0.0)

If you are into photography, you probably already know and love Flickr; this app is the perfect companion for the service on your Windows Phone 7, tap it without hesitation, it’s free.