Tomorrow, Apple has a BIG announcement scheduled. If Apple delivers on even half the hype, it will be a huge day.
Join us and a group of very esteemed iPhone bloggers tomorrow over on a special Friendfeed group to discuss the announcements in real time.
The event starts at 10am Pacific (GMT -8). Be there for a piece of Apple history!
Join us on Friendfeed.
The voting for the 2009 Best App Ever Awards is wrapping up. You have until the end of January 31st to get in your votes, if you haven’t already. Head over to http://bestappever.com and get your votes in!
The voting has been rather brisk this year. We’ve more than doubled the number of votes we got last year and there are still a few more days of votes to come in.
The winners will be announced on February 10th at Macworld in San Francisco. And to celebrate the nominees and the winners we will be having a party at Jillian’s in the Sony Metreon, right next to the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. If you are in town for Macworld, please stop by. The party will be from 6pm – 9pm and is graciously hosted by Medialets.
Get your free tickets to the Best App Ever Awards party at Eventbrite.
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Apple has a special event scheduled on Wednesday this week. As usual they are very cryptic on what they are announcing. Speculation seems to focus on the much rumored tablet computer and a major update to the iPhone OS.
We know one thing about the tablet, and that is that we don’t know anything for sure about the tablet. Apple will only enter the market if they can do things that no one else has thought of. So come Wednesday I’m pretty sure we will see some interesting things from them.
But I want to focus on the update to the iPhone OS. I first started talking about OS 4 on my Twitter stream in November. One of the key indications of an impending major OS update is Apple not releasing new versions of the iPhone OS for a while. We haven’t seen an update to 3.1 in many months, and now seems like a good time — along with the tablet that is rumored to also run the iPhone OS.
Let me say that I use my iPhone a lot. My battery runs down to 10% just about every day, and that’s even with it sitting connected to my computer for a couple hours every day in addition to a full charge at night. Here are the things that I’m most looking for in the OS update.
New App Launcher
First and foremost is a new application launcher. The current launcher, called Springboard, is too dated and too hard to use once you have more than a few apps installed. Have 180 apps installed on your phone — trying to find a single one can be impossible. Apple made a stop-gap change by adding spotlight search in 3.0, but who wants to search for each app they launch?
We’re expecting a new way to navigate apps — something very original. Something that will work on both the tablet and the iPhone. Perhaps voice control will be expanded to launch apps, but then again, I can’t see people walking down the street saying “Launch Fart Machine” – or maybe I can.
Continue reading What I Want to See in iPhone OS 4.0 »
Namco last week released Gravity, a physics puzzler that channels Sir Isaac Newton, to create one of the more difficult iPhone puzzlers of late. The game focuses around placing various objects on the screen to use various physics properties to trigger a switch and complete the level.
As you can see from the trailer above, there is a huge variety of levels. They do ramp up rather quickly once the tutorial levels are complete. You can also create your own levels and a future revision will allow you to share these online.
When creating these physics based Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions, it became quickly apparent what makes this game special. While we’ve seen many other physics puzzlers, this one has a steampunk look about it, great 2.5D graphics, and a good variety. Here’s a short tutorial on the game.
I think Namco have a good start to a game right now, but there are some issues. I found myself constantly struggling with the controls of the game. Both in selecting and positioning them as they just didn’t seem to respond as I wanted. This eased with use, but I still want to see some refinements in the controls in an update.
Isaac Newton’s Gravity is available now in the App Store.
Ubisoft invited us to a preview of Assassin’s Creed 2: Discovery last week. In addition, we got a chance to talk with the producer, Ben Mattes about the game and Ubisoft’s plans for the iPhone.
Assassin’s Creed 2 is a 2.5D adventure game that takes place in the same story as the console version, but in 2 chapters of the story that are missing from that console version. There’s about 6 hours of gameplay along the main story line in this game that is definitely more arcade like than the console versions.
Assassin’s Creed 2 was accidently released a couple weeks ago. While no one will say exactly what happened, our best guess is that they were testing the infamous App Store approval process and forgot to set the release date out in the future.
Now the official release date is February 1st and the price is expected to be $9.99, but that’s not final. Ubisoft aren’t stupid, they just like other developers, know how to put their apps on sale to get exposure.
Read on for more screen shots and a video demo of Assassin’s Creed 2.
Continue reading Assassin’s Creed 2: Discovery Preview »
This last week, Chris, Tony and I made the trip to CES to take a look at some of the best new gadgets and accessories for the iPhone. After walking 743.9 miles, shaking 16,984 hands, and trading business cards with 3.5 gajillion people, here’s are some of the highlights of what we saw.
FloTV Mophie Battery Case – Mophie announced an interesting new version of their great juice pack. This new version will include a FloTV receiver allowing you to watch broadcast TV right on your iPhone. They include the FloTV receiver yet the unit is only 2mm thicker than the usual Juice Pack. So far the only downside we’ve heard is the price of the FloTV service which is expected to be about the same as it is for other devices. Full details are still short, but we’ll let you know more as soon as we find it out.
Tunebug – Tunebug is a tiny little interesting speaker for your iPhone. Not much larger than a couple matchbooks stacked on top of each other, this isn’t a normal speaker. Tunebug uses a patented technology called SurfaceSound that turns anything you set it on into a speaker. The coolest implementation is a Tunebug that straps to you bike helmet and connects to your iPhone using Bluetooth allowing you to listen to music while riding your bike without plugging up your ears and tuning out all of the sounds around you. Obviously a huge breakthrough for biker safety. The other implementation connects to your iPhone (or any device) with a normal speaker wire and sets on your desk, turning your desk into the speaker. The Tunebug will be available soon at $119 for the Bluetooth version, $69 for the wired version.
Zoll PocketCPR – As amazing as the iDevices are, they really don’t do much in the ways of saving lives. Sure, there are some apps that are probably helpful in the medical community, but life saving isn’t quite the iDevice’s forte. The Zoll PocketCPR changes this with an app that shows how to perform CPR with accuracy by using the accelerometer to judge compression depth. At the booth, we heard a story or a doctor who used the app and was complimented by a nurse who hadn’t seen proper CPR done by a doctor in a long time. The app hasn’t been officially approved by the FDA yet, but Zoll expects the approval to come shortly. [More Info]
Blio Reader – we got a chance to get a demo of the iPhone version of the much talked about Blio Reader. A multi-platform ebook reader announced at CES. Blio does a few things that other ebook readers don’t do. For one, there’s text to speech technology. Also included are some pretty good options for different ways to read text on the device including both as printed and text versions. Obviously this will be a much more interesting app if the rumored tablet/slate is released. Blio is still a few weeks off, but it looks to be a great platform. We’ll bring you more as soon as we can.
L5 Universal Remote – The L5 Universal Remote, while not quite as universal as the Logitech Harmony due to its lack of bluetooth connectivity (PS3), but is quite an amazing remote replacement unit. With the included IR attachment, the L5 Universal Remote instantly learns your remotes features without needing to plug in those pesky product codes. To me, there’s really nothing that excites me quite as much as the prospect of controlling my entire house with my iDevice. The L5 will be available soon.
Continue reading The Best and Worst of CES for iPhone Lovers »
Gets reported on 148Apps!
One of the largest trade shows in the world takes place in Las Vegas this week. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a massive show with endless aisles of gadgets, gizmos, and hopefully iPhone Apps. While I don’t know the exact number, I believe it will be attended by roughly 1.9 billion people. The size is so imense that it pretty much shuts down all forms of public transportation and makes it impossible to get a data connection on your iPhone.
But the reason for this post is that if you, an industry person, iPhone developer, accessory manufacturer, or booth babe are around and would like to talk to us or invite us to your party, please drop us a line at review {dot} monkey {at} 148apps.com and we’ll try to set something up.
We’ll do our best to report the coolest things we see. But without a data connection, that might be hard. Keep an eye on our Twitter stream for the updates.
CNBC have announced that they will be airing Planet of the Apps: A Hand-Held Revolution this coming Thursday, January 7th at 10pm and 1am EST (GMT-5). This special, hosted by Scott Wapner, will focus on how apps have changed our lives, the people developing apps, and try to figure out how big of business it really is.
I was interviewed for this special. I hope that if I make it into the final cut I don’t look like a total idiot. We’ll see, making a fool of myself is my one true talent. Here’s a little preview commercial from CNBC.
The nominations phase of the 2009 Best App Ever Awards has wrapped up and we are very happy to announce the final nominees.
The nomination process lasted just under a month and saw 26,899 nominations for 3,839 different apps submitted to the site for the 56 different award categories. In addition to the public nominations, a committee of industry people and iPhone developers was gathered to help nominate apps. Five nominees from the public and five nominees from the committee were combined to come up with the nominees for each category.
In addition, the 10 apps that had the most nominations are competing for the award of Best App Ever.
Here are the 2009 Nominees!
Voting page for Best App Ever: http://bestappever.com/v/bapp
- 2Do: A Stunning To Do List with Pus… from Guided Ways Technologies Ltd
- Eliminate Pro from ngmoco, Inc.
- Flight Control from Firemint
- HOMERUN BATTLE 3D from Com2uS Corp.
- Labyrinth 2 from Illusion Labs
- MiniSquadron from MrFungFung
- Pocket God from Bolt Creative
- Real Racing from Firemint
- Tweetie 2 from atebits
- iBlast Moki from Godzilab
Voting page for Most Innovative App: http://bestappever.com/v/iapp
- 2Do: A Stunning To Do List with Pus… from Guided Ways Technologies Ltd
- Dragon Dictation from Nuance Communications
- Email ‘n Walk **As seen on the BBC*… from Phase2 Media
- I Am T-Pain from
- Moodagent – Automatic Playlist DJ… from Syntonetic
- Pocket God from Bolt Creative
- Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite from Quickoffice, Inc.
- RedLaser from Occipital
- Storyboard Composer from Cinemek Inc.
- Tweetie 2 from atebits
Voting page for Most Useful App: http://bestappever.com/v/uapp
- Analytics App from AnalyticsApp.com
- Document Scanner from Zirak s.r.l.
- Ego from Garrett Murray
- Instapaper Pro from Marco Arment
- MoneyBook – finance with flair from noidentity
- PDF Reader Pro Edition from iTech Development Systems
- RSS Player Podcast Client from Alex Sokirynsky
- Todo from Appigo
- iStat – Sys Monitoring, Battery from Bjango
- iXpenseIt from FYI Mobileware, Inc.
Read on for the full list of nominees in all 56 categories.
Continue reading Announcing the Nominees for the 2009 Best App Ever Awards »
Space Invaders Infinity Gene is easily one of my favorite games of the year. It’s an amazingly wonderful re-imagining of the Space Invaders world, one of the oldest video games around.
Space Invaders was originally released in 1978 and I can’t count the number of quarters I dumped into the machine down at the neighborhood pizza shop. So while my love for SIIG might be a little tainted with nostalgia, it still stands as a fantastic game. The method of play in this game is basically the same as the original. You are shooting at advancing aliens — the twist here is that the game evolves from the original Space Invaders to a progressively different and more interesting game as you score more points and progress through the levels by filling the evolution gauge. With each filling of the gauge, the game evolves into a new one bringing increasing weapons and level changes.
This update brings, much like the Fieldrunners update, integration with OpenFeint. This allows you to compare your score with your OpenFeint friends and also includes new achievements to work toward. While the first version of this game was amazing, it left me wanting more. This new update adds new levels to work towards as the evolution gauge fills.
Here’s a video demo of the game from Taito.
One of the interesting feature of this game which I all but ignored in the first release is the Music Stage. In this stage you select a song from your device music library and play a level that’s specifically tailored to that song. Each song generates a different level. With this update you can rate and share your favorite Music Stage levels with friends.
:: PLAY ME NOW :: Read Our Full Review >>Another hotly anticipated update for the tower defense game Fieldrunners has been released. This update to the favorite tower defense game brings integration with the OpenFeint social gaming network and long with it achievements, challenges, and competition against friends on OpenFeint. In addition there are two new maps, each with new towers and fieldrunners available for in app purchase.
Each of the new maps, Skyway and Frostbite are available for $0.99 via in-app purchase. Here’s a quick video of the Skyway map in action:
And another video preview of the Frostbite level.
Unfortunately reviewers are not being kind to Subatomic for this update. While the update itself provides some great features for free including the OpenFeint integration, the maps requiring purchase has upset the I want it free mentality of the average App Store gamer. At the time of the writing, There were as many 1 star reviews as 5 star reviews for Fieldrunners version 1.3. Compare that to the total ratings for all versions for the app which had 12x as many 5 star reviews as 1 star reviews.
Fieldrunners is still $2.99 and a great bargain for a fantastic tower defense game. And both new maps are highly recommended if you are a Fieldrunners lover.
:: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED :: Read Our Full Review >>
AutoStitch allows you to take a group of overlapping images and the program will stitch them together to form a large panorama image. One of the coolest features is that it does this automatically. You just tell it which photos to use and it will automatically figure out where to place them in the panorama.
This latest update increases the rendering speed and can create amazing 20 megapixel panoramas on the 3GS. Unfortunately due to the limited memory on older iPhones, they are limited to 5 megapixel panoramas.
I gave the new version a quick test and it worked fantastically. While other apps like Pano also make great panoramas, AutoStitch now takes the lead with the largest possible output. Fantastic little app — and it’s only $1.99. Only on the iPhone would it be this cheap.
For some great example of images created with AutoStitch, check out their Flickr group,
Glyder 2 was one of my most anticipated games of the season. Now that I’ve finished this soaring, gliding, collection game, I might just play through again.
Read More »
With less than two weeks to go to nominate apps, we’re proud to announce some of the current top nominees for the 2009 Best App Ever Awards. The list below includes the top 5 nominees in each category organized alphabetically as chosen by the public. Remember that in the end there will be 10 nominees in each category with 5 coming from the public and 5 from a list of industry experts.
We’ve already received over 13,000 nominations for over 2,300 different applications. The turnout has been fantastic. Don’t see your favorite app on the list? There’s still time, head on over to http://bestappever.com and nominate your favorite apps.
Click on an app title below to go to that category nomination page. Or, click here to start nominating other apps. Nominations are open through 12/31/2009 and voting for the winners will start on 1/1/2010.
Current Top Nominees — nominations open through 12/31/2009
2Do: A Stunning To Do List with Push and Sync by Guided Ways Technologies Ltd
Finger Physics by PressOK Entertainment
Parallel Kingdom AOE by PerBlue Inc
Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite by Quickoffice, Inc.
Shazam by Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
Convertbot by Tapbots
MoneyBook – finance with flair by noidentity
Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite by Quickoffice, Inc.
Todo by Appigo
iStat – Sys Monitoring, Battery by Bjango
Read on for the full list of top nominees.
Continue reading Current Top Nominees Announced for 2009 Best App Ever Awards »
Namco has joined the great Holiday sale craze and put many of their games on sale. Some of them at the lowest prices we’ve ever seen for them. Included in the sale are Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man for $2.99 each. The lowest prices we’ve seen for those games. Also, the recent release, excellent game Pac-Man Championship Edition is on sale for only $0.99! Another recent release, Garters and Ghouls is also only $0.99.
:: SERVICEABLE PORT :: Read Our Full Review >>
:: GOOD ROMP :: Read Our Full Review >>
Other great deals include Star Trigon, Pole Position, Burgertime Deluxe, Brain Exercise, Mr. Driller, and Worst Case Scenario for $0.99 each. The games are on sale for these prices until 12/27. Check out all the Namco sale apps at the App Store.
EA have released updates for three of their largest games that give them local multiplayer capabilities.
Madden 10, Tiger Woods, and Command and Conquer have gotten updates in the recent days that give them local multiplayer capabilities and EA have done it right.
For example, when playing Tiger Woods, you will actually be watching your opponent live as they play. You see them swing and the travel of their ball live you your screen just as they do on their screen. Tiger Woods supports both Bluetooth and Wifi local multiplayer and all courses are available to play.
For Madden, you each choose your teams and battle it out over a game, each picking their plays and playing in real time. Madden only supports Bluetooth multiplayer.
And for Command and Conquer, each command factions on the game map at the same time. Clashing as each team seeks to expand their territory. C&C works with both Wifi and Bluetooth for local multiplayer.
While we’d love to see large scale global multiplayer in these games, this is a first step and a great step for big fans of these games.
:: IT'S MADDEN :: Read Our Full Review >>
:: GOLF GOODNESS :: Read Our Full Review >>
:: COMES UP SHORT :: Read Our Full Review >>I had the chance today to take a quick look at three upcoming games from EA. Some of them are hotly anticipated, another we hadn’t even heard about before today.
Need for Speed: Shift
This has to be one of the most anticipated games of the season. Well at least for Chris, our editor. He shut himself in a small room with nothing but red bull and Cheetoes and played Need for Speed: Undercover until his thumbs stopped working. I think he’s going to be out of touch for weeks when he get ahold of Need for Speed: Shift.
This game looks fantastic. While the original specs and screens we saw were less than inspiring. But now that the game is done and real, it’s fantastic. Especially so if you have a 3GS as it has some special graphic taking advantage of the better graphics processor on that device.
Shift has everything you expect in a Need for Speed game. There’s multiple events/tracks, multiple game methods, multiple upgradable cars, etc. The different events and cars are, of course, unlockable as you progress through the career mode.
One big feature that Shift has that the previous Need for Speed didn’t have is multiplayer. While it’s only local and 2 player with Bluetooth and 4 player with Wifi, there are 6 different game methods.
Here are a few more images to hold you over. Need for Speed: Shift will be out soon.
Spore: Creatures
EA announced Spore: Creatures for the iPhone a few months ago. But, they were quiet about it after that. Well, until now. While I don’t really think that Spore: Creatures is much different than Spore: Origins, it does take everything up a few notches. There’s just more of everything as this game is meant to pick up where Origins ended.
More creature customization options. Lots more. I’ve been told there are well over a billion different possibilities from the dozens of creature parts, colors, and abilities that you can add.
Included in the game itself are 4 different and distinct game play zones. Each zone has 5 different levels to travel through while evolving your little Spore.
The one thing that is really different with the game play over the previous Spore game is that ability to either fight or socialize. This can change the way the game progresses and how your creature evolves.
Here are a couple more pictures, Spore: Creatures should be out in January.
The Simpsons Arcade
This one came out of left field. The Simpsons Arcade is an old school arcade fighter set in the Simpsons world of Springfield. Developed under the supervision of one of the writers and featuring the voices of all 6 Simpsons voice actors from the series, this promises to be a fun and very funny fighting game.
You control Homer in this game. There’s an on screen joystick and two buttons that let you perform different attack and defense moves.
You progress through 25 levels set in 6 different environments in Springfield. There are of course a bunch of different weapons to use that you can pick up along the way. There are 6 major bosses and 12 mini-bosses. The final boss battle is said to be epic!
As a Simpsons fan, I’m looking forward to this. I was a little worried when I first heard of this. Lets be honest, there have been some less than stellar Simpsons games over the years. But in my short time with the game I found it to be interesting, well made, and really fun. The Simpsons Arcade will be out soon.
I’ve been looking at connected photo frames for a while now. Until recently they have been been too closed and lacking in features. I think that the eStarling TouchConnect comes the closest I’ve seen to what I envision as the perfect digital photo frame. And the best thing is, it works, and works well with the iPhone.
This main way you will get photos and videos to this frame is via email. That’s right, email. The ingenious way that eStarling have come up with to get photos on to the frame over the network involves you connecting the frame to a GMail account and sending photos and video to display to that account. An interesting solution to how to get images to the frame. I’ve set up an account photoframetest@gmail.com — feel free to send me your (clean) photos.
Photos and Videos
Not only can you email photos, you can also mail videos right to the device from anywhere from your iPhone. Traveling and want to send the family back home some pictures or a short video (less than 20 MB)? Just email it. Give one of these frames to the grandparents and be able to send photos to them anytime from anywhere with your iPhone. A fantastic feature.
The frame will automatically download the photos and videos in the background and they will be added to the rotation on your frame. You also have the option of pulling up thumbnail screens and navigate between the photos stored in the 2 GB on board memory.
Connected Services
Connected is right in the title of this frame. And it is connected. It allows access to your photos via email as stated above, Flickr, Picasa, RSS Feeds, and even Facebook. Setting up these services is made very easy and done by either entering in your login information or utilizing the same email address you set up to send photos to the frame to activate links.
RSS Feeds
You can grab an RSS feed from one of many places to feed photos into the photo frame. A great and very flexible feature. Just search for “photo RSS” for a huge list of feeds you can use from news sources, photography sites, etc. Here’s a great one from the Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature.
Flickr
The Flickr connection allows you to authenticate with your Flickr account. Even though you need to authenticate there is no way to choose what pictures to show. Only your public pictures will show on the frame. I chose not to authenticate with Flickr as the authentication was requesting delete access. There’s no need for that and I consider it a risk, so I chose to not authenticate. You’d be better off just choosing one of the RSS feeds from Flickr and using those as it will get you the same result without needing to authenticate and giving the frame delete access.
You can get creative with the Flickr RSS feeds as well and use tags to designate which photos should show up on the frame. What I did is create a unique tag for the frame and pull the RSS feed for the photos with that tag. To do this, navigate to the Flickr page for the tag you want to use and grab the RSS feed link from the bottom of the page.
Flickr videos are not supported at this time.
Authenticating with Facebook was pretty easy. Clicking on a link and giving the app access. The frame then quickly pulled down all of the photos I had uploaded to Facebook. Would really like the ability to grab photos friends have uploaded too.
Picasa
You have the option of signing into any Google account to authenticate with Picasa. Good if you already have an account set up and don’t want to move things to the Google account you are using for the photo frames email address. From there the photo frame pulls your latest photos. Again, with this service, I’d like some ability to designate which photos to download.
Google Calender?
That’s right, there’s also Google Calendar integration. You can authenticate to any Google Calendar and have your daily calendar shown on the screen. Did we mention this frame was connected?
Twitter Is Everywhere
Yep, now you can read and sent tweets from a photo frame. I’m not sure, can you even use Twitter from a computer anymore?
How About The Screen
The screen on this photo frame is a pretty decent 10.1 inches. The resolution isn’t that fantastic at 800×480, but good enough for most pictures viewed from more than a few inches away. The real issue is that it collects fingerprints like crazy. Keep something close by to clean those off.
On screen navigation allows you to move between photos and turn on / off the different connected features. In addition, there’s an optional sidebar that allows you show the time, date, and local weather. As the screen is 16×9, for 4×6 images, this sidebar fills in the extra space.
SD Card Support
When you insert an SD card into the frame it will switch from showing your connected photos to the photos on the card. Great for quickly showing family recent photos. Unfortunately videos on the SD card are not supported.
Overall, I think the TouchConnect frame is the most connected frame I’ve seen yet. I really appreciate all of the connection options they have provides. And while you can turn them on and off at will, all of the images blend when they are all turned on. Would be nice to be able to navigate the images from each service individually and find a way to limit what is downloaded. If you turn everything on it’s easy to have hundreds of images all at once with no way to segment them.
But, with conservative and proper set up, it can really work well.
Want to know more about this digital frame? Here’s the eStarling product page and the PDF Product Manual.
It’s available right now, on special price, for $199 from the manufacturer’s web site.
Disclosure notice: eStarling provided us a review model of this photo frame for the purposes of completing this review.
Colorix, a kicked-up Tetris/Columns game has taken the leap from Android and is now available on the iPhone.
Colorix from Portuguese developer Awesome Software has done something few games have. They’ve taken the jump from the Android marketplace to the iPhone App Store. The game has been a top selling game on the Android, we’ll have to see how it does on the App Store.
Colorix isn’t your normal match 3 game, more in the style of Columns than Tetris with a few extra twists thrown in. It’s taken to the next level. Wonderfully rendered and amazingly smooth graphics.
The game does require some extra strategy if you want to make it onto the global high scores list though. You need to know the game extras, the patterns and sequences that you get extra points for. Then you have to do the hard part and actually set up the board for those patterns. Oh yeah, and you have to keep from losing too.
Well worth a try if you are a fan of a good, casual, match-3 game. There’s a good tutorial included along with local and global high scores. There’s also a lite version available, give it a try.
You know, PR people are odd. They push and push and push to get you to cover their apps. Then the apps just magically appear on the App Store and the PR people are quiet. Ok, now I can actually see the game, play the game, but you don’t want me to know that it’s out? I just don’t get it.
Anyway — F1 2009 Game from Codemasters popped into view at $6.99. We’re downloading it now and we will see how it goes. The screen shots look ok, but they aren’t up to the quality of Real Racing. But how’s the game play? Well, I have 87 MB to go.
Stats look pretty good:
RACE ALL 17 OFFICIALLY LICENSED CIRCUITS
Feel the exhilaration of speeding around iconic circuits like Monaco, Spa Francorchamps and Silverstone, or enjoy dramatic night racing at Singapore.TWO GREAT GAME MODES!
Put in a flying lap in Time Trial, perfectly tuned for on the go gaming, or take on Endurance for the ultimate test of skill and consistency and set your fastest average time over a number of laps.
PR people are weird.
Big thanks to Vito Technologies, developers of Star Walk for sponsoring our RSS feed this week.
Star Walk is one of those applications that once you have it, you show it off to everyone you know. On my iPhone 3GS, I just launch the app and raise my phone up to the sky, positioning it like [...]
As we round the bend and head to lucky day 13 of our countdown to Christmas, we have updates on the deals today. The Appvent Calendar free game is a huge one, iBlast Moki. Will looked at it back in September and gave it 5/5!
iBlast Moki for FREE
iBlast Moki is a fantastic puzzle game where you use physics based devices to blast, lift, and squeeze the on screen characters to their goal. It’s a load of fun made even better with Plus+ integration.
At little quote from our review of iBlast Moki:
iBlast Moki contains a nice clean 2D aesthetic that can best be described as more vibrant Rolando 1. The backgrounds are psychedelic, the Mokis cute, and the graphical style overall lends charm to the game. The music is ridiculously catchy albeit a tad repetitive, and the sound effects are good.
iBlast Moki is the best physics game for the iPhone, and at $1.99, it would be criminal to pass up one the best games of the year.
And it was a great deal at $1.99 — now it’s free. But just for one day, grab it quickly!
:: VIRTUALLY IMPECCABLE :: Read Our Full Review >>Snood for $0.99
Will also reviewed Snood from Electronic Arts. And unfortunately the review wasn’t nearly as good:
Rather than “addictive, stylish, and fun,” the normal words that pop into my head when thinking of Snood, the words I think of when considering EA’s abysmal port of the classic game are “baffling, inexplicable, and aggravating.” EA has simply made so many bad decisions in the making of this port that make you wonder if they ever even played their own game.
But for $0.99, if you like the original desktop game, it’s an easy buy to make up your own mind on this one.
:: BAFFLING PORT :: Read Our Full Review >>
Wink is a new photo printing application released by Shutterfly that lets you assemble photostrips, much like you would get a amusement parks, arcades, etc. right on your iPhone. You even have the ability to mail printed versions of your assembled photostrips to anyone on your contact list.
You can assemble the photo strips with 3, 4, or 5 photos either from photos stored on your phone or by taking them in the app. There are also some basic photo editing capabilities to crop, rotate, and change the colors with some pseudo-filters. And like every app these days, there is the required Facebook and Twitter integration.
Shutterfly have also announced that the first 50,000 people to download the app 3 free photo strips. Hurry!
Wink | from ShutterflyCategory: Photography
Released: 2009-12-09
Price: FREE
Ustream has wanted to stream from the iPhone for a long while now. They started out with a jailbroken iPhone version. But that didn’t reach that many people. They also released a viewing application for the iPhone. A good start. Next came the iPhone 3GS app that allowed you to record videos with your iPhone 3GS then upload them to Ustream. Getting closer.
Then, last week, Apple decided to let streaming video application loose on the App Store. And now we have the Ustream Live Broadcaster.
The app allows you to stream video to the Ustream site and to the Ustream viewing application at a 320×240 resolution. Here’s the cool part — it works on Wifi or 3G on both the iPhone 3G and 3GS. You can also record the videos locally and upload them later if you choose.
And as you would expect these days there are options to share the videos on Facebook and Twitter. And you can also include your location information with the videos.
I imagine we will see the sending and the viewing applications combined at some point in the future. But for now, you need both.
Overall a pretty good experience for sharing video to multiple people. Have you tried the Ustream broadcaster? How was it?
Dragon Dictation, a surprise for the iPhone, was released recently. It lets you translate speech into text to be used in an email or text message.
Dragon Dictation was a surprise when it showed up in the App Store this week. While I guess it’s no surprise that more and more developers are launching applications for the iPhone so we should see more surprise launches like this.
Dragon Dictation does a pretty good job of translating speech into text. In a few tests I read some standard political quotes into the phone and it seemed to translate with around a 95% accuracy. Very good results really. I particularly liked the way it capitalized words when they were in a particular context. For example, United States was properly capitalized in one text example.
Once you have your speech dictated, you can send that text in an email without even leaving the app, a nice touch. Or you can send it to the clip board and use it in a text message or paste it into another app. Would really like to see more options here. Would be great to have it automatically launch Tweetie 2, or Facebook, or other apps to allow status updates via voice.
There has been some confusion on one part of the end user license agreement (EULA) for this app. That passage states that your contacts will be uploaded to their servers. This, of course, got people up in arms, and generally confused. We asked Nuance, developers of Dragon Dictation for some clarification on this.
Dragon Dictation transcribes voice to text with fully automated speech recognition software and only uploads users’ contact names – no email, phone or any other personally identifying information – to optimize name recognition when a user dictates. From there, speech recognition requests and contact names are processed in data centers based here in the US that meet Nuance’s stringent security and privacy standards – the same standards that we use for processing private information in other areas of our business. We keep the contact names for the life of the service in order to keep synchronized with the user’s address book.
For additional details, feel free to review our corporate privacy policy at http://www.nuance.com/company/privacy/.
– Rebecca Paquette, Nuance
While some users still won’t be happy about this, it’s good to know before you download the app. If it bothers you, don’t download the app.
Dragon Dictation is currently available for free from the App Store. There is some indication that the app is free for only a certain, unknown, amount of time. So if it is interesting to you, grab it now!
:: TEMPERAMENTAL :: Read Our Full Review >>
Favit is the newest Twitter application to hit the iPhone. It’s the companion application to the web site Favstar.fm, a Twitter favorites tracker. When the app is launched and you enter your Twitter login and password, you see a simple screen with a tweet that has already been favorited many times.
You can navigate the tweets by swiping forward or backward. And nicely the app remembers the last tweet you looked at when you return. And you won’t see the same tweet twice unless you go through every one of the millions of favorited tweets.
When you are looking at a tweet, you can favorite it yourself, email it, retweet it, or add the author to your Favstar favorite authors list.
The app is a great, simple way to discover both interesting tweets and interesting people to follow. The app is simple, but it’s designed to be that way. Just a small little app to flip between a few new to you tweets to pass the time while in line at the DMV. Well, that’s what I used it for last.
Dragon’s Lair, originally released in 1983, is a classic video game what was of a genre that never really took off. It was the first video game to use a branched laserdisc technology, where all of the on screen game came from a laserdisc player. It was especially amazing technology because it helped surpass the very limited graphics resolutions of the time, but it did introduce some great limitations in the game play. The user would move the joystick at certain times, times that were prompted on screen, and this would branch the user to a new video track. The game works in a similar fashion to the way that games that come with some DVD releases work these days.
With all of its shortcomings of this style of game, the game was beautiful. Animated by a former Disney artist, Don Bluth, the game is really spectacular looking, but very difficult to complete. Take a look at the screens below for an idea of what the game will look like. It’s expected soon and will be published by EA Mobile.
Gelex is not your average match-3 game. Not in many ways. For one, it’s a bouncy, physics based Tetris like game, but the main reason is that it was developed by an 78 year old grandmother of 5, Maria Bila.
The game itself is a match-3 game that uses bouncy tetriminos that you can control for a certain amount of time as they fall. The goal is to match 3 of the same color in any formation. Obviously the more you match, the more points. After playing a few times, I’ve found the game rather satisfying. it’s fun to be able to bounce the pieces into each other and have them force new matches. Satisfying indeed.
There do seem to be some odd game design issues, ones that I’m sure will get fixed. For one the pieces need to touch sides, touching a corner of a square to another pieces is not good enough. Another oddity is if the falling piece is above the cut off line, the game is over even if it hasn’t landed yet. There are some other oddities — I’ve had the game end for no apparent reason.
Now here’s the best news, the game is free for launch right now, so grab it while you can. I’m sure it will improve, and even with the issues above, it is a rather fun take on a match-3 game.
Hit the jump for a few more screen shots of Gelex.
Big thanks to Vito Technologies, developers of Star Walk for sponsoring our RSS feed this week.
Star Walk is one of those applications that once you have it, you show it off to everyone you know. On my iPhone 3GS, I just launch the app and raise my phone up to the sky, positioning it like [...]
We’ve had a chance to take a look at the new multiplayer game from Gogogic, Soft Freak Fiesta. Gogogic are based in Iceland and that strange Icelandic humor shows through in this game. After all, they think Bjork is normal there.
Soft Freak Fiesta is a sort of last man standing game take on marbles played out in turn on various game boards. While there are various game modes, they all have you aiming, bouncing, and rebounding your characters in the quest to destroy the players on the other team.
Multiplayer is key to this game. You can play either local/Bluetooth or over the data connection against anyone in the world. Since it’s turn based, a slow connection is of no concern. For each turn, you have the option of either moving a player, dropping a weapon, or skipping. To move, you select the player and give them a direction and speed by pulling an arrow from their current location to the direction you want to go. The longer the arrow, the faster the player moves. To drop a weapon, you select the player and touch the popup for the weapon to drop. Once you are ready and hit the ready button, or the turn timer runs out, your players and the opponent players will move, bouncing off of each other removing energy from each player. A player dies when it falls off the board (or gets bounced by another player) or loses all of it’s energy from weapons, hazards on the board, or from rebounding off other players.
This game has real potential to become a compelling quick play multiplayer game. The developers have told us of some new features they plan on adding and this could really turn into a good community game as well. Of course since this is a multiplayer game, the success depends on getting enough players. Because of this we expect to see some pretty aggressive pricing when it’s released.
Soft Freak Fiesta has been submitted to Apple for approval and we should see it at any time now. I’ll see you there.
Gogogic are based in Iceland and have previously released Symbol6 for the iPhone.
:: Recommended :: Read Our Full Review >>
PopCap Games Announces Plants Vs Zombies for iPhone. Hits February 15th.
]
]]]]]]
- SOARS HIGH
