Planning Your Holiday? This Might Come in Handy!!!

Are you planning a vacation to the tropical paradises of the exotic Caribbean? Do you get enthralled by the amazing landscapes and the breathtaking ocean view? Are you a nature lover who would leave no stone unturned in taking a sip of the delicious indigenous cocktails while relaxing on the beach, enjoying the exquisite barbecue and absorbing all the delicacies the astounding islands have to offer? Do you want to catch a glimpse of the wonderful underwater world full of marine life and shoals of different colored fish?

Caribbean is a land of pristine beauty offering the tourists activities that would get their adrenaline pumping and make their hearts beat faster. The tired souls can get their minds and spirits rejuvenated by spending some quality time in the islands. But in order to ensure that you do not lose all the fun, make sure that you plan your holiday thoroughly to enjoy the beautiful destinations with as much excitement and adventure as possible.

You need to be in a clear frame of mind before you start planning your vacation. Are you aware of the destination which you are interested in exploring or will you resort to some internet research? Do you intend to take your family with you? What time of the year have you opted for your holiday? What destination do you have in mind for the holiday? How long will your holiday be? What route and means of transportation should you be going for to make your holiday memorable?

Feeling confused? Don’t be! The best free weather app for iPhone and iPad has the answer to all these perplexing questions. WeatherMate is an iOS weather app that in addition to providing a number of other features, furnishes decades old weather data relative to a certain geographical local. The historical weather records are brought into use by another built-in feature of the app called the Travel Planner. This feature makes use of this data about any worldwide location to display comprehensive weather summaries between the specified dates. Moreover, the app uses simple yet elegant textures, designs and dynamically changing animations to portray the weather information. The friendly user interface lets you take a quick overview of the functionalities and you get accustomed to it in no time!

Definitely a handy tool to possess in your iPhone’s armoury when the current era’s weather forecasts are so unreliable. The weather predictions made by the app are so realistic and pragmatic that it will never allow your vacation to go down the drains. Rather, you will be able to plan your holiday impeccably.

Pixelmator: Powerful Image Editor for iPad

Well guys amidst such pleasant temperatures (thankfully no scare of an impending blizzard notwithstanding I have the tips and apps for winter survival during the blizzard ready!), I thought why not sit down on my couch and share with you what I feel about another of the newer apps for the iOS platform. You know how much adoration I have for travelling and adventures while my beloved Apple gadgets are always there to accompany me during my pursuits. “Pixelmator” is a new picture and graphics editing tool for iPad that has been hallowed since its launch last year and I have found it to be extremely handy while playing with all the memorable pictures that I had taken with my iPad Air during my excursion to the Midwest.

Pixelmator allows you to open your pictures into its built-in templates which fall into categories such as collage, frame effect, card design, poster, photography and vintage. Editing of photos is made a hell lot easier by the layer-based functionality that the app has to offer; thereby allowing the user to add as many effects as desired to each layer! The interface is absolutely clutter-free as the tools and commands are stacked together in the upper right hand corner in the form of four menus. Repositioning and resizing of images or parts thereof can be easily carried out using the guides that appear along with circluar handles of different colors.

Tons of options have been provided while working with the layers. The users can alter their opacity, modify their positions in the layer stack and can choose lots of other customizable options such as blending modes, fill, stroke, shadow, color and reflection offsets. Simultaneously, you can do millions of things with the text as the app offers a pretty nice array of formatting options. I have been very impressed by the repair tool which lets you get rid of the surrounding offending region in your photographs! This calls for a sigh of relief! Ain’t it? Color and hue balances can also be manipulated using the color curves. To find out more about the app, you will have to have a look at it yourself! I hope that you will like it!

Microsoft Word for iOS-The Omnipresent Word Processor for All Platforms

It’s been a while guys since I posted an article. Well, I had been exceptionally busy over the past couple of weeks. Had a few engagements at my university, then the weekend parties were a real grind!!! But here I am now thinking what should I post on? And yes the answer is pretty simple. During the course of attempting my university assignments, I came across another of great apps recently added to Apple’s repertoire: Microsoft Word for both iPhone and iPad! The app’s really cool to be honest. The word processor helped me immensely during the document creation and editing. Actually the simple user interface proved to be pretty handy.

The most significant incentive introduced is that the users can edit documents without having to buy the paid version as was the case some time back. In fact, the differences between the free and paid versions are quite subtle. For those, whose usage is limited to merely utilizing the basic features including formatting, editing, user of charts and tables etc.; the free version would come in very handy. However, if you are an advanced user and intend to perform some complex functions using the almighty word processor, then you are in dire need of purchasing Office 365. Some of the professional features included in Office 365 are page layout, working with columns, sections and tracking changes.

A key addition to the Microsoft Word for iOS is the integration with Dropbox. This will help you store and share files and documents using your Dropbox account. However, I found out that I was not able to work flawlessly with the files saved on Dropbox and every now and then the app would display small malfunctions whenever a file was being edited by multiparties.

Overall, the app is really nice one as the developers will be looking forward to add more and more functionalities. The fact that you can edit documents using your iPhone is a truly attractive proposition!

WeatherMate: Must-have for the Lazy Bums!

Partied all night long? Suffering from a hangover so ferocious that all you wish to do is to keep lying on your cozy bed without having to do anything? Yes, this happens almost every weekend with me. The relentless grind of the entire week is so exhausting! Ahhh, the ringing of the telephone! The high pitched shrieking of the boss! The never-ending stress of getting rid of the assigned official tasks! And then to further rub salt on the wounds, go to the health care specialist for my regular examination just to make sure all my limbs and organs are working fine, or are they really? Life becomes but a miserable routine to be followed all through the wretched week!

And then comes what everyone keeps yearning for! A glorious, magnificent and luxurious WEEKEND! “Let’s go party tonight!” becomes the rage. The friends get together. Which place to hang out? Everyone throws up his/her ideas and then as is mostly the case, we choose our favorite “Puzzles”. Lovely place to spend your leisure time at; full of energy; glittering with shimmering lights; cool ambience; and glossy outlook! Just the fragrance of the place drives us mad. And the incredible thumping of the dance floor with the high-bass, super fast dance beats are just awesome! The drama continues all night. Laughing and giggling and dancing to the amazing songs as the Disk Jockey (DJ) casts his stupendous spell on all the folks.

I wake up next morning, not knowing where I am? What I had been doing the whole night? I do not want to open my eyes. Yet my hand almost involuntarily searches for my smart phone without mustering enough strength to open my eyes. Somehow I do open them and have to unlock my phone, search through my apps to end up with my weather app. The app takes quite a lot of time to get loaded and then the interface lets me know what the weather is like. Then I say to myself would that I were to know of the day’s temperature without having to wait for such an excruciatingly long time.

Hang on! My wish has come true! WeatherMate-The best free weather app for iPhone and iPad is a new weather application that makes use of cutting edge technology to show the current temperature of any location right on my iPhone’s home screen! The app automatically updates accurate temperature and displays it in the WeatherMate’s icon on my Home Screen. No longer do I have to undergo all that turmoil of scrolling through my phone and searching for the weather app to determine the day’s temperature. Really a useful app for all the lazy bums out there!

Molecules

Science, not unlike many of you, has been my fascination ever since I was a little kid. And if you’ve just started starting my blog, you can guess that I’m almost becoming an Apple geek! The whole thought of it drives me with an unassailable urge to explore, to discover, to unearth the hidden! The latest interactive app Molecules for iPhone and iPad is one of a kind which augments a whole new dimension to learning. One may regard it as an ebook in the guise of an app. The stunningly beautiful 3-dimensional illustrations are enough to magnetically attract the science enthusiasts towards it.

You may traverse Molecules chronologically or jump to the topic of your liking! Totally up to you! The table of contents is brilliantly oriented with rotating high resolution images. The real beauty of the app lies in the simplicity that resides underneath the fantastically designed user interface. The way it relates the most perplexing of scientific processes with the users’ everyday experiences is marvelous to say the least. The app also encompasses various household items, their chemical compositions and interesting facts about them.

On the iPhone’s smaller screen, the user can reduce the text’s font size and alternate between the black and white background colors. The different simulations let you play with the diverse molecular structures, tweaking and turning them in varying environments. The brief descriptions complement the images and add vigor to them. Moreover, the app also allows the user to test the molecules of different substances using the basic principles of thermodynamics.

“Molecules” is an excellent choice for your kids to learn from. It has the ability to engage them vibrantly in learning about the material word as it makes learning a lot of fun and encourages the kids to discover for themselves. But even if you are a parent or an adult, you will definitely be pulled towards the wonderful “MOLECULES”.

Tips & Apps for Winter Survival During the Blizzard of 2015

Trivia time! What’s common between Barrow in Alaska, Hell in Norway (no pun intended) & Yakutsk in Russia? Temperatures below freezing point that will kill all your bed bugs!

Weather conditions at these places can get harsh enough to confine residents to their houses for days at a stretch. New Yorkers have been witnessing something similar the past few days amid the ‘Blizzard of 2015’. Who else agrees that the images pouring in on Twitter right now look more like stills from Dennis Quaid’s ‘The Day After Tomorrow’?

The havoc that Juno wreaked the past week in the Northeast has made one thing certain, whether you’re a permanent resident or a wanderer touring one of these places, you must prepare yourself for unforeseen severe weather conditions because there’s no guarantee when a severe weather ‘watch’ will turn to a ‘warning’.

Say, if you do get stranded somewhere in a snowstorm on a fateful day without any preparations, here are a few survival tips.

1. Remove any jewellery items you are wearing. Married people start with their wedding rings!
2. Light a fire! Burn anything you can find.
3. You lose the most heat through your head, and then your feet. Cover them up first and cover them up well.
4. Put on anything, anything you can find that will insulate your body and stall heat loss.
5. To prevent a frostnip, keep kicking your boots in the snow every now and then. This will increase blood circulation and warm you up a little.
6. If incase you do get frostbitten, whatever you do, DO NOT rub the affected area and DO NOT thaw it in hot water. The trick is to start with cold water, very slowly increasing the water temperature. Do it wrong and you might lose that digit.
7. Shed any damp clothing item you are wearing. Dampness along with freezing cold will increase the odds of getting a frostbite.
8. Save your phone's battery! You'll need it! It's good to have a good weather app installed on your phone at all times. Of all the apps that I’ve tried, I’ve found WeatherMate to be the best weather app for iPhone & iPad. One of its best features is the real-time push notification function for severe weather watches & warnings. This app picks up real-time alerts from the National Weather Service for the US & Canada, and MeteoAlarm for Europe. So, the updates don’t get more official and accurate than this.

Bear in mind, no number of tips can beat the time-tested axiom of survival, that is, ‘hope for the best, but prepare for the worst’. It’s better to always carry extra food, water & gasoline, flashlights and charged batteries when you’re travelling. Also, having a handy mobile app that readily alerts you of the looming severe weather conditions at your location will help you brace yourself up ahead of any harsh conditions that you might otherwise have to endure.