New wine app for BlackBerry, scanning app for Android

Wide wine selection

The application provides a catalogue of the best South African wines along with the results of weekly Top12Wines tastings and current rankings in 30 categories. Wines are displayed per category, such as varietals and blends and can be classified by their rank in the Top12Wines competition. Wine lovers who want to participate in the wine tastings and ranking series have access to purchase in-App tickets for the tasting events organised in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Paris. More cities will be available soon.

"We are proud to have been chosen as one of the apps featured at the launch of the new BlackBerry platform," said Frederic Dasse, founder of Top12Wines. "This application will broaden the Top12Wines community and will allow everyone to look at the rankings, tasting results and book tastings at any time through their new smartphone."

An update of the application, which is expected in March 2013, will integrate in-app purchases of any wine bottle participating in the competition. "We are excited about our application as it demonstrates the powerful capabilities of the new BlackBerry 10 platform," says Gidon Judes, MD of Cytrus Technology, the company that developed the application. "The integration of the application with the e-commerce website will offer a rich user experience by bringing more convenience and extending access for nomadic consumers."

For more, go to www.top12wines.com.

Seamlessly scan documents and photos straight to Android

Hamrick Software has released VueScan Mobile version 1.2 for Android - adding the ability to use the camera as a scanner. It allows users to scan documents and photos seamlessly to an Android device from any HP, Canon, Epson or Brother WiFi printer/scanner.

The new camera scanning function allows anyone with a phone with a camera to take photos easily and store them in a JPEG or PDF format. The app automatically detects and crops the document in the photo and allows users to save it, email it or save to the clipboard.

In addition to sending via email and saving to the photos app, it also allows users to save scanned images to favourite Android apps that can open PDF or JPEG files such as Dropbox, GoodReader and Evernote.

It uses the Wi-Fi connection on an Android device to find scanners connected to the same Wi-Fi network. If the scanner has a document feeder, it first checks to see if there is a document in the feeder, otherwise it scans from the flatbed.

"It has been essential to us to support Android and our focus has been to release a product that is easy to use for all audiences," said David Hamrick, partner at Hamrick Software. "We wanted to make sure that the camera scanning is of the highest quality and we are very satisfied with the functionality we have added. "

The app makes scanning extremely convenient. Simply press the green Scan button and, in a few seconds, the document will appear on the Android device. Ed Hamrick, developer of VueScan, said, "We recognised the demand for anyone to be out of the home or work place and need a reliable and easy way to scan anything. This totally opens up the world of scanning. Anyone who can take a photo with their camera can now email it directly, or store it for later."

It is available in two versions. The free version, which scans with all supported scanners at 300 dpi and can export JPEG images is available for Android, iPhone, iPad or Kindle Fire from Canon, HP, Brother and Epson WiFi MFPs.

The full version, at US$4.99, supports document feeders, duplex, document management and multi-page PDF. Both versions are available in Google Play Store and the Amazon Appstore.