Bord Turns Your Droid into a Chalkboard… Great for the Kiddies
by Paul Wilks
Sep 1, 2011 10:45 AM –
Install
Bord is a cute little app that turns your Android touchscreen into a chalkboard. Choose between a black or green background and a range of 6 colors to pick from. You can save your pictures and share them if you want. There is also a feature where you can playback your drawing process! Pretty smart and polished, might be a great app for letting children go creativity-mad!
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Lots of colors to draw on chalk board with, and a board wiper to clear your work.
- Ability to save and share.
- Can play-back your drawing.
- Easy to use.
Cons
- Difficult to be accurate, even on a big screen phone- far better suited to Tablets.
- Crashes a lot in playback mode.
Features:
Bord is a simple app which puts a chalk board right on your Android device. You can choose betwen 6 chalk colors and three thickness settings. The effects are quite good and you can create chalky little doodles in no time at all. The variety of colors are pretty good and I was pretty pleased with my impromptu ‘rainbow’ picture (see below). The app lets you share your expelled creations in the typical variety of ways, should you wish. I emailed myself a pic I had drawn and the image had really good resolution- far better than I’d expected.
The app also comes with a board wiper so you can wipe away what you have drawn/written. Alternatively, you can shake your phone and the image vanishes. Quite a cool feature with the app is the ability to playback what you have drawn, so you go through your process in a kind of live video. I’m sure there could be other applications for this feature and it looks quite cool.
The app however, suffers on a small screen. Even on the 4.3″ screen of my HTC Desire HD, I found it tricky to be accurate in my chalk strokes. I found myself running out of screen room very quickly. Now, I don’t have the daintiest of fingers so it could be that, but I also found where I felt I was drawing was a bit off where the lines were actually drawn, this made it difficult to be accurate and draw in any detail.
While the playback mode is such a cool idea, I found it crashed the app most of the time. It seems to get half way through, pause, then crash totally. Not cool! 
Another problem with the app is the pop-up ads which use up about 1/10th of your drawing space. Why this has been implemented is unfathomoable. While free apps have to generate revenue through such ads, it makes no sense to reduce the functionality of the app by sticking ads in inappropriate places. While Bord is in no way alone in being guilty about this (I recall versions of Angry Birds which did the same), it’s a geuine bug-bear of mine when ads become far more important that user experience.
Watch on Mobile
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Bord – White chalk on green background
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Bord – Red chalk on green background
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Bord – Red chalk on black background
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Bord – It’s difficult to write much on a phone, better for a tablet
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Bord – Preview
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Bord – Cool board wiper
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Bord – My amazing rainbow
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Bord – Clicking a saved item lets you playback the picture as you drew it
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Bord – Save and Share options
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Bord – Instructions
Usefulness:
As an adult, I don’t think you’ll use Bord much unless you are one of those people who constantly doodle. In which case this app might save any number of trees and save you paper- just doodle on the app! For creative children however this might be something they really like.
Ease of Use:
The app has quite a simple layout and the functions are quite easy. This is however marred somewhat by the intrusive advertising and force-closures when watching playbacks.
Frequently Used:
This is unlikely to replace any other app you might be using, and might only be an occasionally used app- unless you are one of the doodlers suggested above!
Interface:
The interface is clear, simple and pretty slick for a virtual chalkboard setup; just let down by the advertising. The chalks pop up when selected so you know which ones you are using, as does the board wiper.