Shout It

Ever find yourself in a noisy and crowded place where you couldn't yell loud enough to be heard? Or do you work in a quiet environment but want to communicate with co-workers on the sly without talking? While not an essential app that you'll rely on daily, Shout It can be helpful in these situations or just good for some laughs.

Shout It essentially turns your iPhone into a small message board that you can customize to display whatever text you want. Your text scrolls across the screen in a white font (it looks like Arial to me) on a black background. The first version of this app was a bit problematic since it truncated longer messages, but an updated version has been released that eliminates this issue.

I got this app purely for fun, and am not expecting it to be extremely useful on a regular basis. I've shown messages to my co-workers when it wasn't prudent to say what I was thinking out loud, and expect to use it with friends in crowded bars to communicate a drink request or to ask someone to save me a seat. I imagine it could have more interesting uses for single iPhone owners out there who want to ask for the number of the cutie in the car next to them, or say something witty to someone across a crowded room.

You can prepare and save messages you plan to use easily ; creating and editing them can be done in portrait or landscape mode. When a message is activated, it scrolls in landscape orientation only. I've saved messages like "Save me a seat, please!" and "Text me later" for future use.

The app costs $3.99, so I think it?s a little steep for what you get (there is a similar app available in the App Store that does essentially the same thing and is free). It does look nice, but even adding more customization in the future (changing fonts, colors, scrolling speed, etc.) might not make it worth the $3.99 to many.