We spent a couple of days a week back putting together a new video for our latest product offering the Quad Lock Bike Mount Kit for iPhone5. I have been using the pre production product for over a month and I think this kit is one of the best and most complete products we have  made to date.  I love that it’s the complete package and absolutely everything you need to mount your iPhone 5 to you bike is covered in this kit.

Quad lock iPhone5 Bike Mount Kit -

• Poncho weather resistant cover. Simply slip the clear cover over your mounted iPhone and you phone will be protected from rain, sweat, mud and dust while still offering access to all the buttons and touch screen while riding.
• Bike Mount Pro which can be attached to you bike using the supplied UV stable rubber O-rings (large and small provided) or more secure zip ties.
• iPhone5 case with composite construction of tough TPU and strong Polycarbonate. This case provides great protection both on and off the bike.  I think users will love this case as a slim protective everyday case

Another good site with plenty of iPhone bike mount information is www.iphonebikemount.net

While riding from the Just Ride It store in Fitzroy to St kilda we all started shooting footage on our iPhones and Dylan Perry was good enough to do a quick cut for us all to enjoy. Some of the footage was shot by hand and some was shot GoPro style using our iPhone Bike mount the Quad Lock. I have started a new website For more info on iPhone Bike mounts.

The fact of the matter is that this isn’t the case at all as most Apps are good at doing just a couple of things; either cropping for Instagram, adjusting colours or stitching together a series of pics to make a panorama just to name a few.  So once you understand what each App does and how to use, it it’s actually quiet quick and easy to obtain the desired photo effect for your next Instagram master piece.

 My Top 10 iPhone Photo Apps

Listed below are my top 10 Photo apps that I use to edit my pictures before posting to Instagram, in no particular order.  As mentioned I often use a number of Apps in conjunction.

Camera+

Camera+ is a great all round  iPhone photo App and is one of the best selling of all time. Camera+ is a great place to start as a beginner in mobile photography as it does a good job of everything. It’s a good Camera replacement app (although I never use it myself ) and its really fast and easy to edit your pictures with some awesome effects. To get started a few nice combination effects that will impress all your friends are  set Scenes to Clarity and FX Effect to Vibrant, then adjust the vibrancy using the slider to get your desired effect.

The picture below was edited with Camera+ using Clarity and So Emo combination.

ProCamera

ProCamera is a great Camera replacement App that gives you full control over the iPhones camera settings.  The biggest advantage I find with ProCamera over the standard iOS Camera App is the ability to easily pick a separate focus and exposure point by just dragging the square focus point over the subject and the circular exposure ring over the required exposure point. Pro Camera also has an awesome fast shutter mode that I will use in the Diptic description below.

The picture below was taken using ProCamer to focus on the beer bottle while setting exposure from the background. The blurred out background make the beer bottle subject look sharper and the whole photo more professional.

 Snapseed

Snapseed would have to be the absolute best photo editing iPhone App available, this is probably why Google bought them.  Snapseed give you a massive amount of control but it’s still super easy to use. There are a number of features that set Snapseed apart from other photo editing apps, like the selective adjustment tool. Using the selective adjustment tool it’s possible to adjust the levels of certain parts of you photo rather than just applying a filter to the whole shot.  For some people this can seem like you have too many choices but for slightly more advanced users that have a good idea of the look and feel of which they are going for Snapseed is the best tool to create it.

This night street shot below was fully edited with Snapseed.

AutoStitch

AutoStitch is a great photo App that does pretty much exactly what it says, it seamlessly stitches a series of photo’s together to make awesome looking panoramas. I love this app and use it a lot, it’s worth noting that I rather use this than the new Panorama function now built into iOS 6.

Below is a sunset photo that I used AutoStitch to blend three separate shots together then cropped it to make an awesome panorama effect. I also used Camera+ to edit the panoramas colours.

NightCap

NightCap is a amazing App that allows you too take beautiful noise free images at night. This app works best when used a with a tripod stand such as my product the Quad Lock Tripod Adaptor, please excuse the shameless self promotion.  I have only just started using this app but I’m already amazed at how well it works.

The photo below is a shot I took with NightCap App on my iPhone5. This shot has also been edited in AutoStich and Snapseed.

Diptic

Diptic Apps makes it easy for you to make an interesting layout of pictures that can tell a story in an attractive frames style layout.  The App work great for instagram posts as the standard layouts are 1 x 1 (Square) ratio. The app is fast and easy to use and there are many different layout options to choose from.

The first shot below was comprised of a series of fast shutter shots I took using ProCamera and the layout was done using Diptic frames App for iPhone.

SlowShutter

SlowShutter App is a great slow shutter style app that uses video mode to give a slow shutter effect which allows the user to take some great shots with blurred effects. Once again, this App works best with a tripod (Quad Lock Tripod Adaptor) but the results are simply stunning for a low light iPhone shot. Shots like this are normally reserved for SLR type cameras that have longer shutter speeds.

The shot below was taken from an overpass near my house in Melbourne using an iPhone5, Quad Lock Tripod Adaptor and SloPro App.

SquareadyPRO

Squaready is a simple app that lets the user simply insert a cropped photo of any size in to a square (1×1 ratio) ready to post to Instagram.  Without Squaready any photo you post to Instagram that’s not already a square (1×1 ratio) will feature a black band at the top and bottom of the image.  After using Squaready to position a picture within a square and post it to Instagram the photo seams to float on you instagram feed, without any distraction black bands.

The screen capture below shows my instagram feed with a Squaready crop image.

 ColorSplash

ColorSplash is a super fun App that allows the user to take a full colour image turn it to black and white and then colour back in selective sections of the photo. The ColorSplash App works best with shots that have a strong in focus subject so give it a try as it’s sure to impress your Instagram friends.

The image below is a shot I took of a Ferrari with a pretty boring background so i used ColorSplash and Camera+ to bring it to life. 

 Instatag – Hashtags for Instagram

Once again this is shameless self promotion as we made Instatag, but I do use this App with every shot I post to Instagram.

Instatag is the quickest and easiest way to tag your Instagram photos with the most popular and relevant hashtags, so you get more likes and more follows instantly. It’s not uncommon to receive 20-30 likes within seconds of posting your Instatag tags to your instagram  feed.

On the App Store:  https://itunes.apple.com/app/instatag-hashtags-for-instagram/id553422417?mt=8

As soon as we pushed the app live I felt like I was in the dark. I had no idea what was happening, the only data I had was 2 day old download information from iTunes Connect and watching my local (Australian) App Store position.

Since then I have found a few resources that have been a great great help for me to track my Apps current App Store position.  I have listed a few below.

APPlyzer

Applyzer is a great website that allows you to easily track your App Store position within your Category and Overall across all markets.

It doesn’t look the best, but it’s fast and I like the way the informations shown.

The small arrow icons indicate if your App has increased in rank, held the same rank or decreased in rank.

You can also add you competition and keep an eye on what they are doing.

App Annie

App Annie is a full featured App Tracking service that hooks in with you iTunes Connect account and returns real revenue data.

I’m starting to use App Annie more and more but one of the main features that I like so far is that they send you a daily email with the latest download and revenue data as well as any new revues your App may have received on the App Store that day.

The only problem is that when you set up your account it make you chose a region and only shows you reviews from this region.

Still the site provides awesome tracking over time in and it look awesome!

App Store Categories

As mentioned before I have even been reduce to just checking the Photo Video category to see how the app is ranking a the present time.

As my personal App Store account is an Australian account I have also been using a  App Top100Apps  to track Instatag’s rank on other App Stores such as the US and UK.

The App is Free and gives you real time data on the top 100 Apps in all categories in all App Store.

This is also a great tool to see what Apps are currently popular around the world.

Get Instatag NOW on the App Store

Our new App Instatag has now been selling on the App Store for a couple of days and we already have over 1000 very happy users. The response to the app has been awesome with heaps of great ratings on the App Store, and lots of amazing entries in our first Photo Comp #InstatagLocationSep.

Instatag – Hashtag for Instagram App Store Reviews

What is Instatag and how does in work with Instagram hashtags

As I mentioned in a half asleep video post earlier this month we (Annex Products) are working of our first app called Instatag and I’m personally starting to get pretty excited as this is all new to us.

The app will allow Instagram users to quickly and efficiently tag their pictures with the most relevant and most popular #tags. This means that the users pictures will be seen by other instagramers and in turn receive more likes and more follows.

We have been testing the the selected tags and many who have tried it out get more likes than ever before!  Most of the functionality and the UI for Instatag has now been sorted out and it’s now down to the coding.

Annex Products is now an approved company on the Apple iOS Development platform and we are starting to think about the marketing and launch strategies for the app.

The Instatag App website is up as a place holder  with the main function of collecting email address of interested instagramers before the launch.

We’re hoping to launch Instatag in early August!

This is the shaky video that i filmed on my iPhone4S, sorry about the excitement levels but it was 3am in the morning.