Find yourself snapping a lot of photos with friends over the weekend? Use today’s lead-off app worth downloading, Albumatic, to quickly create shared photo albums with your friends to which you can all upload your shots. We’ve also got a redesigned Socialcam, a social network for videos, and Penumbear, a platformer that uses light and shadow in interesting ways across its 100 levels.
Albumatic (Free)
What’s it about? Albumatic allows friends to quickly create shared photo albums, to which they can all add images and share them.
What’s cool? Lots of social events today involve multiple people using their smartphones to snap photos, but it used to be that the best or only ways to get those images to everyone present was to send them through email or upload them to social networks such as Facebook. Albumatic democratizes that process, allowing users to create albums and share them among friends so that photos can be uploaded from multiple sources and made available to everyone, right from your Camera Roll. You can also allow others to watch your albums as they’re created in real time and view your photos, so it’s a solid way to share and stay organized on multiple social fronts.
Who’s it for? Friends who often snap a lot of photos should try Albumatic for sharing them.
What’s it like? Other photography apps that allow album sharing include Shared Roll and Flock.
Socialcam 5.0 (Free)
What’s it about? The newly redesigned Socialcam is an app for shooting and sharing videos with others right from your iOS devices.
What’s cool? Sometimes described as “Instagram for video,” Socialcam is both a social network of videos created by other users, and a video camera app that makes shooting and altering your videos easy. You can watch, like, and comment on videos shot by others in Socialcam’s interface, and then shoot your own and apply filters before uploading them and sharing them with your friends and followers. You can add titles and soundtracks to your videos and share them on Facebook and Twitter as well, and Socialcam doesn’t limit you on video length or storage space, either.
Who’s it for? Users who like shooting videos with their iOS devices, as well as social networking, will feel right at home with Socialcam.
What’s it like? You can get more video editing capabilities out of Vizzywig Video Camera, and more social sharing from Viddy and Vine.
Penumbear ($1.99)
What’s it about? Side-scrolling platformer Penumbear requires players to manipulate light and shadow in order to create paths through the game’s levels.
What’s cool? The gimmick of Penumbear is that turning on and off lights creates new paths for the main character. You’ll do a lot of the standard platformer things in this side-scroller, but sometimes you’ll come to a gap you can traverse or a height you can’t climb. Flipping on a nearby light with one of your special abilities can open new paths, because Penumbear can actually walk on the edges where light and shadow meet. So columns of light thrown by objects blocking the light’s path create new ways of progressing forward. The game includes 100 levels to puzzle your way through, as well as a lot of hidden collectibles.
Who’s it for? Platforming fans, Penumbear’s fresh take on genre mechanics will interest you.
What’s it like? Try Another World and Contre Jour for two platformers with great mechanics and styles.
