Apple iPhone app round-up: Aroma, DirectGov Travel, Flickit Pro, Cake Cutter, Finger Physics, ProChords review

This month's round up of iPhone apps

Review date: 02 February, 2010. Review by: IT Reviews Staff

Price: from free to £3.49

This month's round-up is full of nice smells, natural science and no small measure of strangeness as we take the temperatures of an aromatherapy app, get travel news direct from the heart of government, learn how to cut cakes to perfection, tag and upload photos to Flickr, make music with intelligent chord progressions and play the game that uses 'proper' physics.

First up is Aroma, the aromatherapy app (£2.39) which works by asking you to describe how you feel (for example anxious, discouraged, lazy or nauseous) or what you have (a cold, bad breath, hay fever, jet lag, high blood pressure) and then suggests which of the 91 essential oils (or combination thereof) will sort you out. It's a primitive app, little more than e-book, really, which could do with better navigation (those 'back' and 'add to favourites' buttons look greyed out to us) and more complete descriptions (rubbing basil, grapefruit and peppermint into our solar plexus is difficult when we're not sure where it is) but it's also fascinating, covers a wide range of moods and conditions and taps neatly into the ongoing search for alternative solutions to physical and emotional problems. And in case you were wondering, peppermint oil seems to cure everything except earwax build-up.

Despite its generally pathetic record on major IT projects, some of the stuff coming out under the DirectGov label in the UK is both useful and usable. Take DirectGov Travel News (Free) which uses up-to-the-minute public transport and road traffic information from the Department of Transport to bring you a snapshot of how well-behaved the transport network is at any given time. Are the lane restrictions in Peterborough causing problems, or the Blackpool tramway system running to time, have the Hunstanton road works been cleared and is the ferry from Stranraer still sailing today? Choose your region (3G or GS users can specify their current location) select the mode of transport - roads, public or all - and the type of delay - all, major or recent - and then tap 'Search now' to open the map. Colour-coded pushpins then drop out of the sky like little darts thrown by the angry god of transport: click on one to see what's going on in more detail. An essential app.

In our house, when there's a treat to be divided between two kids we say that one can cut it in half and the other one can choose which half to have. But what if you need to cut a cake, pizza or even a jam roly-poly into equal, multiple slices? Thank heaven for Cake Cutter (0.59p). The app uses the iPhone's camera to overlay a cutting pattern of up to 15 slices or segments: just hold it over the goodies and start cutting. Alternatively, if the item has extra treats evenly distributed on top you can rotate the pattern to take these into account before you start divvying up; and if you can't stand directly over the cake there's even a 3D view! How did we manage without it?

Don't forget to take a photo of your cake before you eat it, as that way you can share it using Flickit Pro (£2.39) the most complete Flickr app we've seen thus far. As well as doing all the things you'd expect, such as uploading photos and videos, keeping an eye on your Flickr friends, delivering photo stream updates, adding descriptions, comments and tags, searching for photos by name and tag or just exploring interesting photos, Flickit Pro also lets you batch upload as many photos and videos as your connection can stand at the same time, find interesting photos nearby based on your current location, and - our favourite - has a 3D vertical carousel mode to slideshow photos which you can navigate by tipping the handset backwards and forwards. And Flickr's a great fit for the iPhone because unlike most camera phones, it's better at displaying pictures than it is at taking them.

Got the music in you but can't quite get it out? Check out ProChords (£3.49) an easy to use, highly visual way of developing chord sequences using a piano that looks at a musical progression and then suggests the chord that could come next. You pick the key and chord to start off and then after that, select chords from the library and add them before or after the current chord. ProChords lets you change the bass note of a chord, its inversion (all chords can be played using different fingerings) and whether it's played an octave up or down. When you've put together a progression, play it back by tapping the chords in the sequence or using the control keys at the bottom. You can change the key at any time and even export it as a MIDI file (though this is still a bit clunky) so you can work on it some more in a proper sequencer. Inspirational.

And finally, who would have thought that the way matter and energy interact would make for such an absorbing game? Meet Finger Physics (0.59p), 126 levels of stacking, balancing and building against the clock and the laws of physics. The various circles, triangles, blocks and basins interact with each other with unpleasantly realistic results, rolling, sliding, nudging - and even magnetising each other - just when you don't want them to (it's especially complicated in the underwater levels where objects also naturally float or sink). The whole thing is set against a background of in-game ethereal electro-ambient music punctuated by cheeky 70s newscast musical stings which celebrate a correctly completed level. Check out the free version if you're uncertain: you won't be for long.

Verdict
As above. All the apps are available from the App Store on iTunes.

Company: iPhone