Using an iPhone & iPad in Thailand Tips, App Reviews and News for the iPhone and iPad by Richard Barrow

How to Find Free Apps for the iPhone

This app for the iPhone is probably the easiest one I have found so far for discovering free apps. It is called Freed Apps. The full price when it was first released late last year was $3.99 but it has just dropped to free. I don't know for how long so you should be quick if you want it. And that is exactly what this does for other apps. Sometimes developers drop the price of their apps for only a few days just to move it up the charts or for it to get some new reviews. I have even seen some great apps go free for just 12 hours. You really do have to be quick. This app will let you find them in a number of different ways including by categories and top 25 charts. I have only been playing with it for a few days but according to the statistics, I have already saved $54 on the apps I have downloaded so far!

Download Freed Apps for free at iTunes >>>

UPDATE: This app is no longer free. The latest price is $1.99

Learn Timestable with Tables Splat

Learning your Times Tables has never been so much fun. No child should ever miss out on knowing something as important as their Times Tables. Tables Splat allows children to develop their speed and accuracy in this fun and enjoyable game.

It is always great to see new apps for the iPhone and iPad that are aimed at educating youngsters. The touchscreen tablets are an ideal tool and this new app called Tables Splat works very well. The concept is simple. It aims to help you memorize your timestable in a fun and engaging way. You start by entering your name and then choosing whether to play the game where you have to choose the answer or choose the missing number in the question. On the next screen you then choose which timestable you want to play. Then the fun starts. You are given 60 seconds to answer as many of the questions as you can. The music that accompanies it is very catchy and encourages you to go faster and faster. There is also a distinctive sound for every correct answer and then another for a wrong answer. There is a score sheet showing your top score for each timestable. I tested this out with some of my students and they really enjoyed it.

You can download Tables Splat from iTunes for 99 Cents >>>

COMPETITION: I like this app so much that I asked the developer if I could have a couple of promo codes to give away to readers of my iPhone blog. To win is very simple. All you have to do is post any comment below within the next 48 hours. Then on the evening of Saturday 26th February I will enter all of the names into a randomizer and the top two will win this app.

Learn to Speak Shan

Speak Shan is the first app ever made for learning the Shan language. Shan is spoken by over three million people in Shan State of Burma, northern Thailand, and southern China.

A new app, called Speak Shan, has been released for the iPhone for people to learn a minority language called Shan. There are about 400 words and phrases in the following categories: Greetings & Basics, Family & People,Numbers, Time, Weather, Feelings, Animals, Colors, Common Objects, Body Parts, Fruits & Vegetables, Food, Eating, Shopping, Going Places, Health and Fun Phrases. You will be able to hear each phrase spoken by a native speaker. There is also transliteration of the words with tone markers. This phrasebook is useful for some areas of Northern Thailand for example Mae Hong Son or Pai.

Download Speak Shan on iTunes for $1.99 >>>

Thanks to @extensions_th for pointing out this new app to us. Please let us know if you have spotted any new good iPhone/iPad apps.

Watch BBC iPlayer on your iPad

BBC TV and Radio programmes now on your iPad. Watch and listen live, or choose your favourites from over 400 hours programming from the last 7 days.

One of the most eagerly awaited apps for the iPad is the BBC iPlayer. Up to this point, we could only watch BBC programmes on the browser version of iPlayer. Now comes a dedicated app that makes full use of the touchscreen features of the iPad. Within the first 24 hours the BBC iPlayer app was download more than 55,000 times which isn't bad when you consider it is only available on one device, the iPad, and only for people in one country, the United Kingdom. At this moment in time, the iPlayer will only work if your IP address shows that you are residing within the UK. However, the BBC are planning a subscription based service later in the year for expats living abroad who miss their favourite BBC programmes.

I have been testing out the BBC iPlayer this afternoon and I have been pretty impressed with what I have seen so far. However, there are some limitations. Firstly, you cannot watch TV or listen to radio programmes by using 3G. You can browse the app with 3G but to stream the program you need to be connected to WiFi. The second problem is that the iPad app doesn't allow you to download the programmes. This feature might have been useful for people who want to download programmes before leaving the house or if their Internet isn't always that good. Sometimes I wasn't able to stream anything. The quality of the programmes that I was able to watch were good even at full screen. The sound quality was also very acceptable.