We’ve all downloaded our share of to-do/productivity apps. We’ve all made New Year resolutions. But most of us use them for sometime and slowly they get phased out of our busy (read lazy) life.

Why?

So why another productivity app, you might say? Well, this one is slightly different. It’s actually based on Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. You can read about it in detail at Lifehacker but I’ll brief the process for you. Pick out a task – walk every day, leave for work on time, learn a new language. Buy a big yearly calendar with boxes for days. Now everyday you walk, mark a red cross on the date. Think of it as a game you’re playing. You have to maintain the streak. Every single day without the red cross is where you failed. Once you do it for a few days, it gets exciting. You just want to continue the longest without failing. The best part – at the end of a long enough chain you’d have accomplished something amazing, an achievement of sorts. So if you spent 30 min a day learning a new language, after a month you’d probably would be already speaking a few sentences!

What does it do?

So, coming back to the app, what Wonderful Day does is allow you to track the chain on your phone. You don’t need to buy a calendar and you can track multiple small tasks without messing up different colored crosses on a calendar. The app is really simplistic in approach. It allows you to add activities and specify the days you’ll do them (for instance no need to worry about leaving for work on weekends). The activities are show as a list that shows how are you doing on each of them. A simple toggle lets you see the last 7 days chain in the same view. Going into the activity shows you the stats as well as a grid view that marks the days you didn’t do the activity as red. The marking screen allows you to mark the activities as done or not done. Ahead are a few screenshots from the app that show the various screen described above.

Suggestions to the Developer

Here are somethings I would like to see in the upcoming versions:

• If an activity isn’t updated on a day, mark that day as a failure (with an option to change later). Optionally remind the user the next day that he didn’t complete given activities.
• Allow manually sorting the Activity list.
• Revamp the marking interface. The user shouldn’t need to go 2 levels deep just to mark an activity as done. Put a checkbox or something next to the list. Or maybe have a Tweetie-like swipe gesture.
• Calculate and show the user the present streak and the longest streak for each activity (like current score and high score in games). It’d make the process more fun.

Conclusion

The app is a breath of fresh air when it comes to productivity/goal tracking/to-do apps. The interface is neat and simple but the best part is the inherent don’t-break-the-chain idea. I’d certainly recommend everyone to download and give it a try. In a week of usage the app has found place on my homescreen and I can vouch for the fact that it works for me, better than most to-do apps.

Wonderful Day for iPhone will cost you $1 at the iOS App Store. The app was developed in India by Tenmiles.

If you have an iPad and are usually on the move with it, you might have faced a situation where you wanted to access a file on your PC back home. The folks at LiniQue have developed an iPad app which can help you in such situations. UniQXcess is a $2.99 iPad app which, coupled with a free PC based server software running on your computer back home can let you access any file you have shared on your iPad anywhere in the world as long as you are connected to the internet.

The app works as follows:

• Install the free software on your PCs (yes, multiple computers are supported)
• Sign up for an account
• Specify what folders you want to share
• Sign in to your account on your iPad
• Start accessing the files you your remote computer

Once you have signed in, you can select the computer you want to view your files from. The app has a very intuitive interface and even lets you preview most of the files. In addition, you can also open the files in any of the installed viewers on your iPad.

The app has built in preview functionality for MS Office (doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx), PDF, Text files, Web files (html), Image files (jpg, bmp, png, gif) & Zip files. Here is a video demo of the app:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBCl2DkVyWg

Review:

I set up the server on my windows PC at home and shared a folder with multiple types of files in it. The app seamlessly opened the supported file types and also identified the installed viewers on my iPad. The search functionality is pretty useful if you have a folder with lots of files. There are buttons you can tap to sort the file list based on name, type and modified date.

You can also download any file to save it locally on your iPad. This is extremely useful in situations when you might be roaming in an area where you might have intermittent internet access.

I have also been told that the upcoming versions will support more file types including mp3, mp4 files and dropbox accounts (wow). There is also an android version available for INR 45.20.

Although the app is pretty good at what it claims to do, there is one thing which I believe can be improved. The login screen has a keys icon, tapping on which sends your password to your email address without confirming with you. There is no “Forgot Password?” text next to the icon. I just tapped it out of curiosity and the app told me that my password has been sent to my email! In addition to this, the password is sent in plain text to my email, which I believe might not be the safest way considering its the password to access my personal files stored on my PC over the internet. Although, I believe that this can be fixed with an update and should in no way stop you from buying the app.

Conclusion:

UniQXcess is an awesome app for people who carry their iPad with them and use it for viewing/editing critical files. Nothing beats the peace of mind of having access to all your important files from anywhere in the world and UniQXcess gives you that. We give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Giveaway:

We have two promo codes of the app to give away to our readers. If you want to win one, just take the following steps:

• Like woikr on Facebook
• Leave a comment below mentioning how you will use the app if you won it

Two lucky winners will receive a promo code each for the app on the iOS App Store. We will announce the winners on 10-Sep-2011.

[Thanks to LiniQue for the review copy and promo codes for give away.]

I’ve always been a big fan of one-touch mobile apps done right. They fix one problem, fix it well and fix it without making you fiddle through complex UIs. This is the only reason I like widgets on Android. They provide a great one-click interface for doing basic things. Not many apps on iPhone are like that and the ones that exist, are  not famous enough to be used widely. Today I’ll tell you about one of them – Capture.

Capture handles one task, recording videos. It doesn’t improve the quality over the inbuilt Camera.app, it doesn’t provide many fancy filters and neither does it provide a fancy interface. But what it does is much more important for a mobile video recorder. It starts recording instantly. The philosophy behind this is that it’s easy to edit out unimportant parts of the video or delete unnecessary videos but it’s impossible to recover those precious seconds you missed trying to start the Camera app and switching to Video mode.

Capture.app’s load times are kept minimal and so is the interface. You just have an option to turn on/off the LED flash and to pause/record the video. For stopping recording, you can just press the home button. The video gets auto-saved. There are a couple of options in the Settings that allow you to choose front/rear camera, auto-focus settings,  grid lines, auto save to Camera Roll and auto-orientation detection. The app also allows you to turn off the auto start recording on launch feature but in my opinion turning that off totally defeats the purpose of the app.

I’m a big fan of this app and it stays right on my first screen. Till now, it has never failed me. You may argue that the app is paid and adds nothing to the existing functionality. But, then again, it was never made for you.

Capture is available for $0.99 on iTunes Store for iPhone/iPod.

Tuk Tuk meter has a simple aim. It wants to prevent people from being conned by auto-rickshaws around the country. How? They provide mobile apps for Blackberry, Android, Symbian and Java based phones that allow you to calculate the correct fare. In their words:

Transport within a city is cumbersome and slow, especially after a full days work when the cities erupts into a hub of endless traffic. Resorting to autorickshaw’s is not just a convenience anymore, to the crowds, it is a necessity. While in a rickshaw, the customer is at the mercy of the driver. Well, not anymore. Fair Fare ensures that :
- You can identify a faulty/ tampered meter
- Determine the correct fare that is to be paid to the driver
- Can be at a better bargaining position

I decided to take the Android version of the app along with me on a ride.

As you open the app you see a dark auto-rickshaw themed page displaying the present fare and distance traveled. There are just 3 buttons for viewing the Settings, Starting/Stopping the meter and viewing the About page. The app requires the phone to have GPS capabilities. They basically track your phone over the route and map it to the distance traveled. That’s why the app needs you to lock on the the present GPS position before it starts recording any distance/fare. To map distance into fare you also need to fill your city’s “Per KM fare”, “Minimum fare” and the “Minimum distance” on the Settings page.

Since the app is pretty straightforward (which isn’t bad) I’ll go straight to the Pros and Cons.

Pros

1. The distance calculation works perfectly. In my trial route the auto and the app varied just by 0.2 kms and since I take that route often I know that the distance calculated was pretty accurate.
2. The app is simple and looks good rather than being utilitarian.

Cons

1. Each city’s meter rates should be auto-filled using GPS. There is absolutely no excuse not to do that. Especially because this app will actually be useful when you goto a new city.
2. While I understand that it’s impossible to provide this feature without a GPS lock, it limits the utility. Especially on phones where GPS locking takes time.

While the app works as required and advertised, I have a major issue with the usage. Take an example of you going to a new location in an auto. You fire this app to calculate the accurate distance but in between the driver takes a short cut or goes through an underpass where the GPS goes down while the phone was in your pocket. In the end, as expected, the fare calculated is lesser than the fare reported in the auto’s meter. You’ll end up having an unnecessarily fight with the auto-rickshaw driver. I guess if you are so worried about the fare being high, it makes more sense to call up someone you know and ask the approx fare.

Tuk Tuk Meter can be downloaded from the Android Market. The app is also available in Blackberry, Symbian and Java versions.

Gameplay

Every level in the game contains some orbs and neon rays connecting them to each other (few interconnected nodes basically). What you need to do is to untangle all the overlapping neon rays. The overlapping rays are marked in red and as you move the orbs across the screen and position them in the appropriate place they go back to blue. The initial puzzles may seem easy but they get really complex and interesting as the game progresses. In between the games there are special orbs that burst and freeze. Tapping these orbs in time gives you bonus points.

The interface is a bit more complex than required but it never is a hurdle between you and the puzzles. The soundtrack is pretty good with lots of options. You can also use your own music if you want.

Like most Puzzle games there is a standard (Challenge) mode and an Arcade mode. You can also post your scores to global and regional Leader boards and be proud of your simple achievements. Also, since the moves are counted every time you solve a puzzle, you can keep coming back to improve your score.

Issues/Suggestions

• While it’s not a major nuisance, the touch actions are not as smooth as I’ve come to expect from the iPhone. It feels like I’m using a budget Android device.
• The whole Space theme doesn’t make sense to me. I wish there was a simple back story to get players more involved in the beginning.

Conclusion

If you love simple puzzle games that can actually challenge your brain and keep you involved in those short breaks, you’d love this game. You must download the Free version, it will get you hooked.

Untangle Space Out Pro includes 10 levels with 50 games in the Challenge mode Once you are done with them the Arcade mode has practically countless puzzles. The game can be downloaded from the App Store for $1.99. Also available is a free version with 5 games.

Thanks to Apostek for the review copy.

PS: It may not affect your decision to buy, but I must say that this arguably the best Indian iPhone game I’ve seen.