I love the icy design, defrost-able with your fingers.
If a brand wants to make money advertising to me via their applications, I won’t pay to use it while providing them with an additional revenue stream. For simplification of this review, I’ll divvy the apps into two categories: Snow Resort Info and Miscellaneous. I’ve also included my ratings to further distinguish app quality. 1 (wanted to throw my phone at the app designer ) 2 (just don’t bother) 3 (on the fence because there’s potential) 4 (thoroughly enjoyed myself and is useful) 5 (will do anything to baby-make with the app designer).
- Miscellaneous -
Addicted to Snow – Calendar Shots 2009 2**
ATS utilized rupa’s eBOOK for their Calendar Shots 2009 photobook. It’s not a utility calendar, but simply an iPhone photobook. It doesn’t refresh with new photos every time you open it, so once you get to December you’re punked. There are some beautiful images.
Addicted to Snow – Snowboard Photography Around the Globe 2**
125 virtual pages of great shots and film clips where the introduction describes “this snowboard book… captures some of those moments that not every snowboarder will witness personally.” And then I arrive at page ten to find that I have to pay $1.99 to see anymore of this. Addicted to Snow, so far you have not impressed me.
Boarder Lounge 3***
This is an app for people to add and show off their favorite spots for skating and riding, with the capability to add media and descriptions of the spot’s details. The Lounge is a forum. Unfortunately, the community isn’t too large right now, so if you search for spots with relevance to your location there most likely won’t be anything. Maybe in a year.
Crossy 3***
Insert a photo from your phone behind the falling snow/crosses. Not really useful, but it made me giggle. I thought it was Swiss propaganda at first.
Malakye 4****
Malakye is all about jobs, business, and news for action sports and outdoor lifestyle industries. You can browse job openings posted daily in these industries, check out the Malakye news, and if you’re running a biz they have a B2B offering many resources.
Phresheez 1*
Sign up for an account. Select different items. Waste an hour for nothing. I believe this app is supposed to be a social networking platform for snowboarders, but who knows…
Ride Snowboards 4****
I love Ride Snowboards. Their app gives you access to great news, wild videos, rider information, and of course Ride product selling tools. Other than the sales pitch inherent in any company’s app services, this is a rad app for media.
- Snow Resort Info -
Fizz Snow 4****
Add your preferred mountains. It provides 24 hr forecast of temperature, wind, visibility, and precipitation, as well as surface conditions resort information. Trail maps and photos. There is a cool “view all mountains” button that displays all your favorites, and includes the new snow and base depth info for each. Pretty good artwork and user interface.
iTrailMap 5*****
If I ever end up using a map, I don’t think I could stand using paper ones that get ripped or lost or are poorly made. Once you have your mountain’s high quality map logged in your phone you’ll love it. Come to think of it, it’s pretty impractical to use gloves or mits on the surface of an iPhone. Take your hand covers off because I don’t care, I’m still repping this as five stars because of how it fulfills the simple purpose of providing resort trail maps.
Save our Snow 5*****
Brilliant design by none other than CLIF BAR. By clicking above the main header a box fades down, highlighting different energy alternative uses by snow resorts. In addition to the information, forecasting, and mountain conditions, each resort has been individually rated for different energy-oriented categories. I love the icy design, defrost-able with your fingers.
Ski & Snow Report 3***
The only nominal value added is the ability to view mountain cams.
Skullcandy 4****
Music, media, shred spots, and Skullcandy shopping capabilities are all rolled into one app. In addition to the other snow resort information provided as other apps do, this one lets you map the resort you are browsing in google maps. The music offerings are quality but not quantity. It is a little excessive and pertains to skate, surf, snowboard and their accompanying cultures, but I personally enjoy having all the options at hand.
Snow and Ski Report 3***
This is leans more towards a promotional and sales tool. Once you figure out how to get past the REI-centric opening, you can select your favorite resorts to be a part of this same opening. The app enables you to have a multi-faceted start page of sorts.
SnowBomb 3***
Although this doesn’t pertain to snowboarding, I wanted to give props to the developer of this app for thinking of cross country skiers, as they are hardly ever included in snowsports considerations.
The Snow Report 4****
The North Face is overrated. That means that even though this app deserves a five star rating due to brilliant user interface and graphic design, unlimited amounts of resort information, and mountain specific twitter feeds, I scorn this application because I am not a fan of the company that produced it. Check it out for yourself, because I’m clearly biased.
- Get On The Scene -
The applications that are now on my phone are iTrailMap, Save Our Snow, and The Snow Report. Seeing as the CLIF BAR and The North Face applications are practically the same, I’m debating which of the two to keep. I would rep CLIF’s company culture over The North Face’s ANY DAY.
What do you think of the trade-off between corporate sales and beautiful functionality in applications, my snowboarder amigo?
