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Jiv3D – The iPad App Your Photos Are Waiting For

Jiv3D is one of those rare iPad apps that I love within less than a minute of use – and the feeling persists as I get to know it better.
It’s a unique app that’s a little like a digital photo frame on steroids, or more like on happy pills. A brilliant way to enjoy all the photos you’ve got on your iPad, have them shown off in a funky 3D slideshow, and with a great soundtrack pulled from your own library. Here’s its short but sweet App Store intro:

Jiv3D uses photos from your iPhoto library to display and move to the music in your iTunes music collection or favorite radio streams.
No configuration necessary, Jiv3D will automatically select photos from your iPhoto library and display them in 3D moving with all of the nuances of your iTunes music collection.

If I had to pick just one word to describe this app it would be: Fun, definitely with a capital F. It’s just completely simple and chock full of simple pleasures. And you literally don’t have to do anything at all to enjoy it except launch the app.
As soon as you do, it will begin showing some amazing looking 3D renderings of your photos, moving round the iPad’s full screen in all sorts of fun and crazy ways. There are cubes and origami style shapes, and lots of spinning and bouncing and jiggling of photos. Photos even seem to dance a bit during certain tracks.
And the accompanying music is always great, because it’s pulled directly from your music library. The app hit me with Macy Gray and Tracy Chapman as its first two selections – so we were best of friends right away.
There’s almost zero configuration or settings to the app – so this is definitely not one for the Steve Jobs control freak type in your life. You can tap with two fingers to select a track if you don’t like the automatic choices, and look at and choose which albums to include in the photo slideshow. I haven’t fully got to grips with controlling the photos displayed just yet, but I’m not really fussed about it as the app is doing just fine on its own.
The one missing thing that Jiv3D is screaming out for is AirPlay support. It’s a superb app that makes viewing your photos big fun – it would look and sound even better on a big HDTV screen.
Here’s an App Store link for Jiv3D; it’s a free app. Go get it.