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Gone are the days when this excellent music discovery app was a free experiment. Yet Midomi's philosophy and core functionality remains unchanged. Like Shazam, Midomi returns song titles and artist information when you sing, hum, speak, type, or play a request into a stylish, redesigned interface. The four input types give you the freedom to dictate your search style (you'll never catch us crooning). While the input quality may vary depending on ambient noise, our tests were fairly accurate, and typing usually prevailed in the rare case that singing or holding the iPhone up to a speaker failed.… Read more

Dark and lustrous, Twitterific for iPhone serves up a glossy tweeting experience with some attractive extras. The navigation does take some getting used to and could confuse first-time users, especially those seeking buttons to retweet a message, e-mail it, or send a direct reply. These are tucked away within a separate menu (represented by an asterisk) that lights up when you tap a tweet. Like many others in the impacted field of Twitter apps, Twitterific integrates location-awareness and photo uploads, URL shortening, and support for multiple accounts.

As a matter of course, Twiterrific makes public timelines and trends available, offers … Read more

It may not be the absolute glossiest Twitter app for iPhone and iPod Touch, but the newly-renamed Echofon for iPhone is among the fastest and easiest to use. Your friends' timeline, the logical default screen, show new tweets in blue, for instant recognition. It's joined by screens to filter out tweets in which your own handle name is mentioned, your direct messages, and your favorites. There's also a search screen that can search for people and topics, can turn up trends--some of the popular topics at any given moment--and can also tap your geolocation to display public tweets … Read more

MemInfo lets users keep an eye on their computer's memory at all times. It gives a real-time look into the workings of computer systems. With ease and subtlety, MemInfo is a great tool for memory hogs.

The program's interface is so basic it doesn't matter that there is no Help file. There is basically no interaction here: users just view the statistics of their memory. What few commands there are operate quite simply. MemInfo embeds itself into the user's system tray and stays there. To view its information, users simply scroll over the small icon. A … Read more

UberSmart Math Basics allows users to practice their math skills using a flash-card-style activity and to test themselves on what they've learned. The program's options and layout make it a great choice for kids who are working on their math skills.

The program's interface is simple and attractive, with all of its features easily accessed. Users can view flashcards for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, all organized in number sets from 0 through 12. Users click through the flashcards at their own speed, coming up with the answer in their minds and then checking against the flashcard. … Read more

Science Data Reference System provides scientific minds with a quick reference sheet and a helpful hand with equations. With a simple layout and topics appropriate for young scientists and those in collegiate-level courses alike, this is a great tool.

The program's interface is a breeze to master thanks to its simplicity. Its scientific focus is divided among four tabs and within each of the tabs, users navigate with a menu along the left side. Each menu is managed differently, depending on what help it gives, but thankfully, all are simple enough to utilize independently, since there is no Help … Read more

Shape Collage sets itself apart from the competition thanks to its lack of cute add-ons, and thanks to professional results. Users may never look back because this program is easy to use and looks so good.

At first glance, the program's interface is slightly confusing, with a lot of white space and few command buttons. The biggest hurdle is that there is no guidance on how to download photos and make a collage. However, with a glance at the Help file and some random toying around, we felt instantly at home here. Most photo collage programs we've tested … Read more

PhotoShine allows users to place their photos into 700 different templates (the trial limits you to 102). The quality of the templates varies greatly; some look pretty nice and could conceivably be printed and framed for display. Others...not so much.

Though the interface was somewhat ugly, it was uncluttered and easy enough to use. The templates that purport to make your photo look like it is featured on a magazine cover are particularly bad, with terrible text and the occasional spelling error. Many of the other templates seem to be made for teenage girls only, which is fine if … Read more

Its emphasis on getting screen captures and screencasts shot and shared makes the freemium application Jing extremely quick and easy to use for Mac and Windows users. I use its big brother, the professional capture app Snagit, at work (we take a lot of screenshots in these parts,) but I've often installed Jing on laptops and on other peoples' computers when I need something light and free.

The one irony for Windows users is that if you don't have the .NET framework installed, it adds a few more minutes of set-up time and a heftier footprint. The benefit … Read more