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Send random GIFs, photos and quotes to friends blindly with Rando, a new iPhone app

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An interesting new app by David Barnard (from Contrast, maker of Launch Center Pro) and friends is hitting the App Store today: Rando. It’s a straightforward — albeit strange — concept.

You choose to send a GIF, a quote or a picture (from your Photo library). You then choose a recipient contact and send them a random piece of media. You can even risk doing this completely blindly: the app will blur out the content so you can’t see it until its been sent to a friend.

There’s a bit of customization as to what gets sent, such as category of GIF, but it’s mostly luck of the draw. In its description on the App Store, Rando describes itself as a ‘conversation starter’. Honestly, I’m still undecided as to whether this app is genius or not. The underlying concept, randomness, means that mileage and enjoyment varies greatly from roll to roll.

Sometimes, the app will pick a coincidentally funny and relevant GIF to send to a friend. Other times, the end result is either inappropriate or just boring. The thought of sharing photos with friends blindly is also a bit disconcerting.

Even if your photo library doesn’t contain anything sensitive, it is weird and uncomfortable to send a photo from your personal library to someone else without vetting it first. I can see why blindly sending GIFs and quotes could be entertaining, however, as it’s far less personal and basically harmless if something awkward is generated.

To compensate for the random Photos case, the app offers a tweaked picker mode. You get to choose three images from your recent pics as candidates. The app then picks one of these at random to send to your friend blindly. While this does ease the anxiety, it almost seems somewhat pointless to bother: is there that much novelty in picking 1 out of 3 versus just sending your friend a funny photo through the normal means?

The concept is wrapped up in a charming three-page UI, featuring an animated ASCII face to carry you through the steps. The buttons and titles smoothly fade between views. It’s well designed with a lot of attention to detail paid to the overall experience. Final photos and quotes can be shared directly through Twitter, Messages, Facebook or any other service via iOS’s system Share Sheet.

Still, the app is free (ad-supported) and it’s worth checking out. It’s fun to give it a spin and send some funny GIFs to friends; the element of randomness is novel enough to make it worth downloading. Get Rando on the App Store for iPhone for free. Check out more information on the Rando website.

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