Nearly all of the mobile apps that boast to be “interior designers” only offer inspirational images, catalogue-style galleries or colour choosers for finding the right colour scheme for your space.
If you’re looking for a way to bring your design ideas to life and paint rooms prior to touching a paintbrush, then you’ll want to check out Home 3D before dragging the Chesterfield across the room.
Home 3D utilizes the iPhone & iPad's power to create virtual 3D models of homes intended for safely testing materials and designs in a virtual space.
As you begin the architectural set-up of your virtual home, you’re first required to lay the floor plans, adding the dimensions of each room. When the floor layout is complete, Home 3D generates a digital blueprint of the home. Now you’re ready to step into the coolest feature of all -- the interior.
The feature titled “3D” will transport you into the space you’ve just created and will enable you to walk around the house. If you’ve ever played the game The Sims, the experience of travelling from room to room is very similar.
Once a designer has entered the interior of their home, the decorating fun begins. Every wall and floor can be modified by adding materials; wallpaper, paint, tiles, carpets and hardwood floors. Materials contain lots of goodies and patterns but are not limited to the confines of the Home 3D galleries -- you can even upload your own pics. The serious interior designer can purchase additional packages of materials within the app.
What’s the point of having a beautifully designed home if you have no furniture?
Home 3D offers virtual objects to place in rooms so you may visualize how furniture will look.---saving you a lot of possible back pain. The dimensions of the appliances, fixtures and furniture can be modified.
This extremely powerful mobile app enables you to place objects on top of each other, clever, after all no ones wants to place the microwave on the kitchen floor. Unlike materials, designers aren’t able to upload photos of objects. Creating an object, although possible, displays them as white boxes which are not very pretty.
Home 3D is a useful tool for interior design and it is sheer fun, worth the $3.99 price point. If you have an iPad, the experience is far richer and will cost you an extra dollar.
Head to Head: Check-in apps
The newest mobile trend is location-based services that mix social networking with gaming. In the mobile community they’re called “Check- in” apps. Visit a place, check-in with the app and see what other people who’ve crossed the same paths have said. Users to earn points, virtual bragging rights for being out on the town.
Mobile app Foursquare (available on the iPhone, Android and Blackberry) was one of the first on the scene with the social check-in concept and is currently handling 600 thousand check-ins a day on average. Causeworld for the iPhone uses check-ins to leverage funds for charity. Users earn karma from sponsors by visiting stores, the karma is then used to donate-- too bad guilt free shopping isn’t available in Canada.
The following two apps are a combination of social networking and real-world experiences, available on the Android, iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
Tweetsii combines Twitter with location-based data pulled from Foursquare, Gowalla and Tweetsii’s own network Gypsii. By tapping the “check-in” button at a venue or place, you can instantly broadcast where you are. You can add photos, reviews, tips or an alert -- any handy information useful for the next visitor.
One of its most impressive features is called “HereNow,” where you’re able to view a variety of location-based data in your area such as nearby tweets, recommendations and trending places. Anyone travelling or searching an area for a good restaurant -- or just wants to know what’s going on around them -- would find this useful. There’s also an explore function, which is helpful due to several defined categories, such as entertainment, food & drink and travel. Tweetsii still sports the usual controls you’ll see in a twitter app; home stream, mentions, direct messages and the ability to view profiles and follow back. However, it’s not ideal for a standalone twitter client due it’s cramped layout and inability to display more than just a few mentions and direct messages at a time.
SCVNGR turns location-based check-ins into a game by rewarding users with points for discovering and visiting places, providing completely wacky challenges and scavenger hunts. Aside from its fun challenges, SCVNGR works best by adding and inviting friends. The interface neatly lists all nearby places to check-in, nearby challenges and your friends rankings and activity.
Once you’re checked-in, you can view past check-ins, pictures, posts and challenges completed. Every place you visit has standard point-earning challenges such as snapping a pic of a specific target. SCVNGR’s most intriguing feature is called a trek, which co-ordinates places and challenges and blends them into a themed experience. As an example, a trek could be created for a pub crawl, tying a series of venues together as one challenge. One would hypothetically complete this challenge by checking-in to all the places included in the trek. Currently, to create treks you need to be one of SCVNGR’S 600 partner businesses, but recently the app developers announced as of this week, all users will too be able to create trek scavenger hunts across North America.
The Bottom Line:
Based on SCVNGR’s unique user experience, this app is definitely something to have on your device. For its powerful gaming implementation unified with the element of fun, the check-in crown goes to SCVNGR.
