South by Southwest 2011 is this week in Austin, Texas, and if you’re attending, you might want to check out today’s top Fresh App. It’ll dish you everything SXSW, from maps to schedules to the exhibitors on the trade floor. For those of us staying home, keep up on the happenings on Twitter and Facebook and in the news using Spout, a fun and passive way to read your feeds. There’s even something for all you new iPad 2 owners out there: QuickShot with DropBox, which will give your new iPad 2 camera (but not its hard drive) a workout. Get all three below.
SXSW Go (iPhone, iPad) Free
Grab the official app of this week’s South by Southwest 2011 in Austin, Texas, to stay fully up to date on the convention, the events taking place there, the exhibitors on the tradeshow floor and the parties that are happening afterward. If you’re attending SXSW or you’re on your way, this app will help you make the most of your time there.
SXSW Go packs a handy map of the festivities as well as social networking integration for Facebook and Twitter, both so you can share what you’re up to with others, and so you can monitor the event’s official Twitter feed and Facebook updates. You can also use the app’s search function to quickly find out any information you might need.
QuickShot with DropBox (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
One of the first apps to really make use of the iPad 2’s rear-facing camera is QuickShot with Dropbox, a photography app designed to send your shots straight to your cloud-based Dropbox account, allowing you to keep your iDevice’s internal memory clear. You can queue up photos from your Camera Roll to get uploaded even when the app is closed, or you can set the app to send your photos directly to your cloud storage without a second thought.
In addition to upload help, QuickShot is also a fairly handy photography app. It works with both front and rear cameras and allows you to adjust things like flash, focus and exposure to help get the kind of photo you’re looking for.
Spout (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Once Spout starts running, it’s hard to stop watching it. The app lets you connect to your Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds; then, it passively displays the headlines, tweets and statuses using kinetic text. That’s the video feature in which text quickly appears in small and large sizes, emphasizing different portions of the information you’re reading, in a dynamic way. The result — one of the most entertaining ways to view your Twitter and Facebook feeds, and an inadvertantly hilarious joke-delivery system.
Spout doesn’t do much, but it does build out your tweets and headlines quickly and efficiently in a color scheme you can specify. Once you’ve entered some streams, it’ll just start displaying headlines like a news ticker, so it’s best enjoyed when you can stand a device up and look at it like a screen, or when you’re wanting to get up-to-date on your Twitter feed but don’t mind spending a few minutes. Meanwhile, the dynamic text is a lot of fun to watch, and the app is pretty smart about what it emphasizes and when. It slow-rolls things like jokes from Twitter and Facebook, which really sells it. Spout isn’t extremely useful, but it is a great way to spend a dollar.
Download the free Appolicious iPhone app
