Well, the keynote is over and no significant iPhone news. No significant news at all, really. Quick roundup: new 17″ MacBook Pro, new iWork, new iLife, DRM free iTunes music.

The only iPhone related news had to do with other products mainly. First, there are some new slideshow formats you can sync to the iPhone from the updated iPhoto. Whoop-tee-do! Second, all songs in the iTunes Music Store will be DRM free by the end of this quarter (that’s March 31st to you and me). And there will be variable pricing (you know — all the songs you want will cost more while the ones you don’t want will cost less). And finally there will be a Keynote Remote app available for the iPhone. While these are great and wonderful things to some, to me it’s just meh…

Where’s the iPhone Nano? Were the case manufacturers just playing with us?

Where’s the notification service? You know, the one that we were told would launch in September 2008? The one that was in the iPhone SDK, then pulled? Where’s iChat for the iPhone?

But most importantly, where is MMS? Every $9 phone has that now. Why doesn’t the most advanced phone in the world have it? I bet that new Palm to be announced tomorrow will have it.

I guess we’ll have to just keep waiting for these things. Apple always does things on their own time schedule. But, come on! Please, Steve? Or Phil? Or anyone? Pretty please? Or maybe, I will look at that new palm? I wonder how many apps you can load on that device?

I love Poker. I love Bejeweled. Mash the two together and you’ve got an idea of the kind of match-making nirvana of possibilities that entered my head when I saw the title of this game in our review list. “But Perrin,” you ask, “do we really need yet another matching game in the App Store”? After playing Poker Stacks for a few days, I can answer with a rather emphatic yes (as long as you bump this game up to the top of the Worthy Matching Casual Games list and eliminate all the fluff - let’s not get carried away here).

Poker Stacks manages to unite Poker and Bejeweled into a compelling casual game. Via a series of ever-increasing difficulty levels, you are asked to match gems that are marked with playing card values and pips into Poker hands, which then eliminate the gems from the board, causing the stack to drop toward the bottom of the screen. Instead of more gems dropping in from the top as seen in other matching games, in Poker Stacks you’re on a time trial to remove enough gems to get your stack to fall under a designated line on the board. The first level requires only that you remove, at the minimum, a single pair of cards at a time at the least. As you pass each level, the stakes get higher (Ha! See what I did there?), as you’re forced to remove two pair at the least, and then three of a kind on the next level, and so on as the game progresses. Sound confusing? It is at first, so reading the instructions on game launch is a definite recommendation.

What this game has going for it is its addictiveness. The clock counting down the seconds at the bottom of the screen until the level is over makes for a fever-pitched hunting and pecking session. Being able to switch the place of two cards and then having those positions locked until a match is made creates another level of strategy to matching that you don’t see in some other games of this type. Another differentiating factor is that the game doesn’t point out the matches for you. If two Aces are sitting side-by-side on the board, it’s your job to identify them by running your finger over the pair, thus removing them from the stack. I can’t tell you how many times the clock ran out before my puny brain would identify two pair sitting next to one another, almost as if in mockery.

And this is actually the biggest detriment to the game as far as I’m concerned - it is totally ruthless only a few levels in. In fact, I haven’t even passed level 4 as of yet where the system is now asking for Two Pair hands. Call it my tiny dinosaur brain if you will, but I still have yet to find enough matches in time. The graphics and sound effects could be nitpicked as well, offering passable media but not the level of eye-candy we’ve come to expect on the iPhone platform (if it looked something along the lines of Poker Smash for Xbox Live Arcade then I might take this game’s draconian lashing with a bit more temperament).

In the end, gameplay does indeed save the day for this title. If you’re looking for a fresh take on gem-matching puzzlers that will satisfy a casual pick-up-and-play desire, then Poker Stacks is for you.

There is a Lite version available in the store if you’d like to try before you buy.

Poker Stacks Lite

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-12-21
Price: FREE

Knowing public transportation schedules is something every urbanite should have as a second nature. I’ve been impressed by a few people that can fire off connecting bus lines without even thinking, even telling you what time increments they arrive in. I need an iPhone for these kinds of things! Luckily there are a handful apps that serve exactly this purpose, and Routesy happens to be the most polished of them.

The user interface is quite nice when compared to their web brothers and sisters like nextmuni or munitime. Upon launch you’re presented with all of the MUNI lines (whether they are in service or not) and you can simply scroll through them to find the line you want to take. Once a line is selected, Location Services will kick in and estimate the intersection nearest to you to board that bus. Underneath that nearest stop, you find all of the subsequent stops on that line with their approximation in distance. One confusing element: the listing of other stops aren’t necessarily in the order the bus travels in, so watch out! Selecting a bus line yields a page with how long you’ll have to wait for the next three buses along with a map that can also be viewed in iPhone’s Google Maps app.

Routesy is very handy for those who live and die by public transportation in San Francisco. It’s very convenient – knowing whether or not I have to rush to catch a bus is a handy tool indeed. A few features I think would be useful if added are the ability to bookmark certain lines or stops, and the capability of entering in a start and end point to have Routesy spit back a public transit itinerary. Sometimes the app crashes on launch, seemingly tied to how good of a data connection the iPhone has: the app is snappy on wifi, but if EDGE is weak it’ll take a couple of launches to get it going. However, this still beats waiting for a web based app to load all of the content.

At 2.99 I think Routesy is only attractive to the niche that is on San Francisco MUNI every day. For a guy like me that doesn’t have a car and rarely leaves the city limits, I find it worth the price, but if you’re coming to SF for a visit it might be better to use a web based app and save the bus fare!

If you are coming to Macworld, you will be in the heart of San Francisco. Whether you have been here before or not, there are some essential apps you should load on your iPhone for worry-free navigation of the Expo and the city.

iMacworld

Category: Reference
Released: 2008-12-07
Price: FREE

Without question, the #1 app you should have is iMacworld. The latest update adds Session info and detailed maps of the Halls, plus an easy to search directory of vendors and products. My only wish is that this app had been around for previous Expos.

Handshake

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Social Networking
Released: 2008-11-19
Price: FREE

For you elbow-rubbing and social networking types, download a copy of Handshake. Handshake will allow you to easily exchange your contact info with other iPhone users without worrying about loosing those pesky business cards that fall to the bottom of your goodie bags.

Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T

Category: Utilities
Released: 2008-12-16
Price: $0.99

There are a TON of Starbucks in San Francisco. To log on to get your free iPhone wifi connection from AT&T, download Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T. It costs $0.99, but it is totally worth it for speeding up your connection to hotspots to check your voluminous email, or to download one of the apps you just read about in this article.

Routesy San Francisco

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Navigation
Released: 2008-07-07
Price: $2.99

If you are combining your Expo trip with your vacation plans, or hope to explore the city a bit, Routesy can provide you with all the local MUNI transit information and schedules. If you don’t want to spend the $2.99 for Routesy, there are also two Web 2.0 apps available that you can use with Safari for free.

NextBus (www.nextmuni.com)

MUNI Time (sf.munitime.com)

iBART

Category: Navigation
Released: 2008-10-10
Price: FREE

If you are flying into the San Francisco or Oakland airports, and don’t plan on renting a car, you will need to take BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). To get BART schedules and maps of stops, download iBART. There is a BART train that goes directly from SFO to downtown, just blocks from Moscone. Trips from the Oakland airport require a short $3 shuttlebus trip to the BART station before continuing to San Francisco.

Yelp

Category: Travel
Released: 2008-09-15
Price: FREE

The mobile version of Yelp is great at helping to find eateries and night spots in the city during your Macworld stay. The only problem might be that there are too many great spots to visit making it hard to choose. Yelp is especially handy since there aren’t a lot of places right around Moscone, and the ones that are will probably be packed with Expo-goers. Wear some comfortable shoes and hike to some of the more out of the way spots.

twiddlerSF

Category: Travel
Released: 2008-12-19
Price: $2.99

Finally, if you are looking for something to do outside of the Expo venue, try twiddlerSF which is a great app that can randomly choose a place to go in the city or an event, based on your “mood” and how far you want to travel. It also had a cool spinner interface.

Secret Exit, developers of Spin have sent us some new screenshots for their upcoming release Zen Bound. Zen Bound is scheduled to be released this winter but may be delayed as they are trying to make sure it is absolutely perfect. So far, the game looks fantastic. Zen Bound is a calm and meditative game of wrapping rope around wooden sculptures. Sounds different, but promises to be at the very least interesting.

Hit the jump for the screen shots and a video of the gameplay.

Here are the updated screenshots — showing really nice progress.

And here’s the first teaser video released by Secret Exit that shows the gameplay.

Secret Exit’s other release for the iPhone, Spin is very well reviewed (we gave it 4.5 stars) puzzle game.

SPiN - Super Shape Puzzle

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-10-20
Price: $4.99

and is also available in a lite version for free.

SPiN Lite

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2009-01-01
Price: FREE

The 2009 Macworld Expo is just a week away and Tom and I will both be canvasing the place for interesting iPhone news. If any app developers or hardware folks would like to meet up with us while we are there and give us a preview of what you’re working on, give us a shout.

This will be my first Macworld Expo — I’ve been stuck at CES for the past 5 years. Tom is a veteran and will be showing me around.

We’ll also be very proud to announce the winners of the 2009 Best App Ever Awards on Wednesday at the MacWorld Expo. We’ll be announcing the nominees tomorrow with voting open until 1/6/2009 for the winners.

Will we see the iPhone Nano, a new Apple consumer product of some sort, or, as usual, walk away all disappointed with nothing but meager product updates? We’ll find out next week as the keynote kicks off the Expo on Tuesday morning.

A group of independent iPhone app developers have gotten together to try another method for increasing their app sales. They are, as a group, putting their apps on sale and promoting them together. It’s the latest in a series of inventive ways that small application developers have tried in the increasingly packed iTunes App Store to get some attention for their apps.

Starting 12/31, some apps and games from some great indie developers will all go on sale for 48 hours. The promotion, titled New Year’s App Blowout will see apps discounted from 50% - 80%.

Some of the apps that will be on sale include:
* Pinch n’ Pop ($0.99 price drop from $3.99 - iTunes Link)
* BurnBall ($0.99 price drop from $1.99 - iTunes Link)
* ScribBall ($0.99 price drop from $3.99 - iTunes Link)
* Mouse House ($0.99 price drop from $4.99 - iTunes Link)
* DuckDuckDuck (FREE price drop from $0.99 - iTunes Link)
* Blackbeard’s Assault ($0.99 price drop from $1.99 - iTunes Link)

Currently there are 16 apps listed on the page, but more are expected to be added before the new year. I suggest you bookmark the site and return on 12/31 to see the updated list.

It’s great to see independent developers teaming up to try to solve one of the greatest downsides to the app store — getting some attention in a sea of 13,000 apps.

[Source: New Year's App Blowout]

BurnBall is an arcade similar to Qix, but kicked up (qixxed up?) a notch. Take the gameplay from Qix of connecting lines from the sides of the screen to block off part of the screen, throw in accelerometer control, fun graphics, a cute storyline, and varied enemies and you have a pretty fun game.

This is a pretty good casual arcade game — can be played quick and continued later if needed. Certainly not an easy game, there’s plenty to challenge you in this game.

The accelerometer makes for a pretty good control. You have good direction and speed control. The one downside is that there is no calibration. So to stop you have to have the device completely flat.

The developer is currently running a highest score contest with a prize of $500. Hurry, the contest ends January 2nd, 2009.

Here’s a video from the developer that shows the game off pretty well.

Burnball is a fun game, but I think it might be a little high priced compared to other casual games in the app store if it goes back up to it’s regular price of $2.99. There is a light version that contains a few levels that you can try out before you buy the full version and the full version is on sale right now for $0.99.

BurnBall

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2008-12-30
Price: $3.99 ON SALE: $2.99

BurnBallLite

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2009-01-04
Price: $0.99 ON SALE: FREE

Correction: the app Chopper was on sale during the holidays, and continues to be on sale. The app is regularly priced at $4.99 but is on sale for $0.99. Sales figures updated below.

Many developers are seeing their iTunes sales reports for the first time after iTunes Connect opened back up after Apple closed it for the Christmas rush, and those sales numbers are amazing. With many apps showing 2-4x normal sales of their paid apps on Christmas day and increased sales continuing in the days following. Free app download number showing up to 5x normal rate as well. Could this be all the new iPhone and iPod Touch owners looking for apps to fill up their devices or most likely people with newly gifted iTunes gift cards to burn.

David Frampton of Majic Software, the developer of Chopper (iTunes Link), the number 2 paid game and number 3 paid app overall, reported sales 3x normal on 12/25 with sales in the days following still much higher than normal, but dropping off by about 30% on the 26th and another 10%/day on the 27th. The Chopper developer pulled in sales of over 50,000 copies of his $4.99 app (on sale for $0.99 during the holidays) for the 4 day period of 12/24 - 12/27 with around half of those sales coming on Christmas day. That’s nearly $25,000 in sales in one day, 12/25, alone.

Another developer we talked with, Mark Johnson, reported sales of over four times normal on Christmas day. Hit Tennis (iTunes Link) the $1.99 tennis game, currently number 55 in the top 100 paid iPhone Sports games, had sales of nearly 200 on 12/25 with normal daily sales in the 40s.

Gabriel Pasqualini from Portengo, developers of Cartoonize Me (iTunes Link), the top 15 app on the Entertainment paid app list showed sales 3x normal on the 25th with sales on the 26th being about 90% of what they were on the 25th.

Other stories are similar in nature with most developers of apps on iTunes top 100 lists showing sales 2-4 times normal. Other developers of apps not in any of the top 100 lists also reported much higher than normal sales, though not 4x.

Tim Haines, developer of Burn Ball (iTunes Link) which is not currently in the top 100 paid games reported a similar 3x normal sales on 12/25. He also reported that the free version of his game, Burn Ball Lite (iTunes Link), had download numbers 5x normal on 12/25.

No one knows how long the increased sales will continue, but this is a much deserved present for these independent developers.

Learn a lesson from me - don’t start playing Orions: Legend of Wizards when you’re supposed to be enjoying holiday vacation with the fam. Like a crack addict forced to dry up in rehab, my family was dragging me away from my iPod Touch on a regular basis. Just-One-More-Turn addiction had taken a stranglehold, and there was only one possible solution that could save my social life - lock the iPod up and throw away the key. Even while away from the game I was conjuring in my mind how I would arrange my cards in order to take down the insidious Hordamned, where I would next build my Crysols Gardens to yield the most production, and which cards I would buy on the next Power up. Oh yes, it’s serious folks.

Originally a Pocket PC title, Orions is two different styles of game rolled into an attractive package. On the one hand, it wears the turn-based strategy clothing of games like the Civilization series where, in an attempt to conquer the map (and thus your foe) you need to build up resources, place structures that affect resources, and move from island to island (called Orions) defeating the Governers of said islands. On the other hand, Orions handles combat similar to collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering. These two flavors of gameplay combine into a social-life-ruining Wunderdrug.

How this game has flown under the radar is beyond me. The app store is full of so many casual games, or play-them-once-games, or even crappy fluff games, that sometimes it’s hard to rise above the noise, I guess. I’ve been waiting for a title like this for a long time. The style of play is perfectly suited for the iPhone in my opinion, and Orions hits it out of the park. In the resource building portions of the game, there are basic structures to build on your islands which generate the resources, and then advanced structures that change based on the island style (Fire, Ice, Earth, etc) that help to unlock cards for you to use in battle. As expected, the building tree contains requirements that must be met in order to build higher level structures. You have one war balloon that you fly from island to island, battling Governers of each island as you land on them. The battle plays out with your cards, some of which you have by default, others of which you’ve bought with your resources. Knowing your cards strengths and weaknesses, and how to play them, is key to winning any battle. The point of the game is to wipe out the enemy wizard’s home Orion (this keeps the enemy from resurrecting when he dies), and then the wizard himself.

The replayability of this game is staggering. When creating a new game, you can choose to be one of 6 different wizard types (matching the Elements), choose 3 levels of difficulty, three map sizes (small, medium, big), and then whether to play the full campaign or just a duel. The variations of these options, and the way the actual game plays out, leads to and endless amount of scenarios that can play out in a multitude of ways depending on the cards you have and the path you select to victory. I haven’t even tried the duel-only mode, which allows you to play card battles with either a local player or against the AI. Needless to say, it’s one you’ll want to keep on your device for a long time, and possibly even leave on the home screen to quickly access when you need your fix.

The only downside to this game is the initial learning curve. You can’t just pick it up and immediately know how to play. I also found starting by reading the instructions a bad idea - they don’t make a lot of sense when you haven’t played the game yet. I suggest starting a new game and turning on the tutorial mode which will walk you through some of the basics. Once you have that down, start a new game with no tutorial and muddle your way through your first game, reading the instructions as needed. Some of the fun of the game, actually, is to discover the mechanics as you go. I’d also like to see some sort of wireless multiplayer (can you imagine an internet-wide Duel lobby with leaderboard?).

Here’s a video outlining some of the gameplay, thanks to Youtube user izzynobre:

At only $4.99, Orions is a steal from the app store. If you like RPGs, Civilization-style games, or collectible card games, then I would not hesitate to buy this game immediately. Given that the Pocket PC version already has several expansion packs, I have to imagine that these will be released for the iPhone / iPod Touch as well, further feeding your addiction.

Sneezies is a great, fun, and amazingly cute puzzle game. The goal on each level is to pop at least the specified number of Sneezies by setting off a chain-reaction of sneeze-induced bubble popping. I told you it was cute.

This is an interesting puzzle game. You set off a chain reaction of bubble popping by tapping the screen and releasing sneezing powder. Any bubbles within a certain radius will pop and set off another bloom of sneezing powder and continue the chain reaction. This only stops once you run out of bubbles or there aren’t any bubbles close enough to pop. It’s a great implementation for a puzzle game. The big upside is that’s it’s a game you play at your own pace. Miss the goal for the level, don’t worry — just try again. Your score is based of the total number of bubbles you pop.

Included in the main play mode, Classic, are 45 puzzle levels. There’s also a Challenge mode that requires that you get a certain number of bubble pops with a set number of touches. Challenge mode includes 15 levels. Both modes are fun but Classic is by far the best. Also included are local and online high scores.

Take a look at the video below for and exmaple of the game play.

Sneezies is a great little puzzle game. It won’t keep you busy for hours on end, but for $0.99, it’s a fantastic game to pass the time with and will be great for the kids.

Lots of app developers have gotten into the holiday spirit and lowered the prices of their apps — many all the way down to free. So if you’re looking for something to fill up that new iPhone you found under the tree — or maybe something new for the one you already have, here’s our guide for you.

Read on for our Christmas list.

Free and Price Dropped Games

We are constantly scanning the iTunes App Store for games and apps that drop in price. You can see the results of those scans over at our Price Drops page or follow our Price Drops Twitter account to be notified of those price drops. Here are some of the most notable of those price drops recently. Let’s start out with some free games.

DuckDuckDuck

Category: Games / Simulation
Released: 2008-11-22
Price: $0.99

Topple

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-11-26
Price: FREE

Crossbones

Category: Games / Board
Released: 2008-12-17
Price: $4.99 ON SALE: $1.99

React

Category: Entertainment
Released: 2008-11-23
Price: $0.99

Fingeric

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2008-10-21
Price: FREE

And some other great games at great prices.

Dropship

Category: Games / Simulation
Released: 2008-12-09
Price: $1.99

Rotorumpus

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-12-15
Price: $1.99

Chopper

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2008-12-08
Price: $0.99

Armageddon Squadron

Category: Games / Simulation
Released: 2008-11-25
Price: $2.99

Frenzic

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-12-11
Price: $4.99

Dr. Awesome

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2008-12-01
Price: $1.99 ON SALE: $0.99

Fastlane Street Racing

Category: Games / Racing
Released: 2008-11-10
Price: $5.99 ON SALE: $3.99

Free and Price Dropped Apps

Ocarina

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Music
Released: 2008-11-06
Price: $1.99 ON SALE: $0.99

Darkslide Premium (formerly Exposure)

Category: Photography
Released: 2008-12-22
Price: $9.99 ON SALE: $3.99

Geocaching

Category: Navigation
Released: 2008-11-10
Price: $9.99

BeejiveIM

Category: Social Networking
Released: 2008-09-26
Price: $15.99

Kineo (was Flickbook)

Category: Entertainment
Released: 2008-08-21
Price: $4.99 ON SALE: $2.99

comiXology

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Entertainment
Released: 2008-12-05
Price: $4.99 ON SALE: $3.99

Also keep an eye on our main Twitter @148apps — we’ll be posting a few promo codes for free games and apps today — more great gifts from the developers.

Happy Holidays everyone!

It’s a mouthful, but iTree-The Original Christmas Tree is a good holiday app for creating custom postcards. The images are done in a flat, cartoon-like style, but it looks nice. You are presented with an empty tree to decorate and toolbars allowing you to choose a surprising large variety of ornaments to hang on it. While you are decorating your tree, snow falls in the background, and you have the option of listening to a Christmassy tune. The music is nice, but gets repetitive if you spend any time in the app. I eventually turned it off.

The toolbar also gives you selections for choosing a day or night background, or for automatically choosing a random assortment of ornaments for the tree if you want to send a quick card. Shaking the iPhone/iPod Touch drops all the ornaments off the tree if you want to start over. Once you are finished with your iTree, turning your device into landscape position turns your tree into a scenic postcard, offering you a place to type your holiday message and a send button. Rather than creating a snapshot of the tree to send with the Mail app, the app connects to a server and creates a web link which you then email to the recipient. Before doing this, you are presented with a dialog asking permission to connect to the company’s servers.

I’m not sure why it requires a server connection, but it seems harmless. I’d prefer if it just saved the image to my photo library. On the other hand, it is nice that the app hands you off to the Mail app right away. I also wish there was an option to play my own music in the background, or some additional music besides the one built-in tune. It is nice that you can select a large variety of ornaments and can populate the tree with a lot of ornaments, but some people with larger fingers may have trouble controlling the relatively small ornaments. Generally, once I “picked-up” an ornament, my finger covered it sufficiently that I couldn’t quite tell where I was putting it. There are certain ‘hooks’ on the tree where ornaments can attach, and sometimes I would miss and the ornament would just fall off the bottom of the screen. The auto-poulate button can help work around that. If you get really wrapped up in it, you can spend a lot of time decorating one tree.

Overall I like the app. It is a nice experience to create a custom card to send. The extra little effects like the animated snow and the music helped get into the Christmas mood.

—

While not the sole ebook reader on the iPhone / iPod Touch, Stanza is one of the most popular, and in my opinion, head and shoulders above the others in terms of flexibility. Using its currently free desktop application for Mac or Windows, you can open a wide variety of file types (DRM-free Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, and PalmDoc, as well as Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, HTML, and PDF), and Stanza Desktop converts the document on-the-fly to ePub format, which you can then export to your device.

The application on the iPhone itself, while not sporting the eye-candy of something like the Classics app, does a highly efficient job in rendering the ebook for easy reading, which is kind of the point with an ebook application to begin with. When you first open Stanza on your device, you’re greeted with the Library screen, where you can click through to your list of ebooks either by Title, Author, Subject, or Latest Reads. The start page also has an Online Catalog menu item, where you have instant access to a huge collection of books that are no longer in copyright or have been provided gratis by their authors, not to mention a link to the Fictionwise bookstore where you can buy today’s bestsellers straight from your device. If you delve into Stanza’s developers’ website, you can even set up your own catalog with access from your device.

Reading the ebooks themselves is as straightforward as you would expect, and Stanza handles it flawlessly. You can turn pages with a swipe of your finger, or by tapping the left and right sides of the screen, convenient for when you’re reading one-handed. All of this can be edited in Stanza’s options (tap the middle of the ebook to bring up Options), which allow for changing how the pages are turned; configuring the font size, style and color; editing the line space and margin width; locking the book rotation (Stanza rotates the ebook if you tilt the device, so if you lock the book rotation then Stanza will not turn, which is convenient for reading on your side). Search is also available from the options, allowing you to search for text within any chapter.

The negatives about the application are minor, and are sure to be handled in future iterations of the app. The first is page formatting. While you’re not likely to run into this if you download your books via the Online Catalog or Fictionwise store, if you ever load your own ebooks or documents from the desktop then you typically lose formatting elements such as italics or bold, and even images. The books are still readable, but we’d like to see support for these items that add to the reading experience. It would also be nice to have some annotation features, like highlighting and comments, but this is not a show-stopper if you’re only reading novels. Finally, if Lexcycle were to turn their desktop app into an iTunes copycat specifically for ebooks, I think you’d see an even larger acceptance of the ebook format as a whole. Given their history, we’re sure the Stanza team will continue to improve the app based on customer feedback, which they’ve done a great job with so far.

Overall, if you’re looking for an ebook reader that is stable and flexible, you can’t go wrong with Lexcycle’s Stanza.

Your goal in Up There is to direct the rising balloon past obstacles through 5 different levels to allow it to escape. It’s a simple but frantic game to play, but obviously not a simple game to make.

The controls are simple, tilt right or left to direct the balloon through the stacked obstacles. You have to keep up with the scrolling obstacles — if the balloon falls off the bottom of the screen, the game is over.

There are some great little game design touches here. The way the balloon string flows. The way the scroll slows down when you get near the bottom of the screen or speeds up when you are near the top. The nice transitions between the levels. Great little touches that make this a great game.

This is, without a doubt a well designed game. Everything that is in the game is fantastic. But it is a little short on replay value. There’s only one real game play method — and it does get a little repetitive after a while. I’m not saying that there should be power-ups (balloons with lasers?) or anything like that. Just an observation.

Here’s a video from the developer that is shortened to show all five of the levels in the game.

I really like games like this. It’s well designed, fun, not too involved, and you can tell that a lot of love went into the creation. Very highly recommended.

eReader is a electronic book reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is compatible with eBooks from eReader.com, fictionwise.com, stanza.fictionwise.com, as well as any other online book stores that release eBooks in PDB format.

Getting books into eReader is simple. You can either go to ereader.com or other supported web site and buy the book, and then using wifi connect you iPhone or iPod Touch to that site to add it to your virtual bookshelf, or you can connect and buy the book directly from the device. The downloads are quick and reliable, and book prices range from about $6 to close to $20, on average. Most of the supported online book stores offer a rewards program that applies 15% - 30% of the purchase price of each book towards future purchases, which greatly reduces the cost involved. Most older books can be had for less than $5 once you factor in rewards.

Note that eReader has a small collection of free books, although to access them you have to create an account and then “buy” them. Once purchased they can be downloaded to your shelf and are always available. You can also access donation supported eBook site ManyBooks.net directly from within eReader Pro. All of its content is available free of charge and much of it comes from Project Guttenburg.

Reading books on the iPhone or iPod Touch is effortless. You simply start the app, select a book from the bookshelf, and read. Turning the page requires a finger swipe in the desired direction (right or left), and adding a bookmark just takes a tap in the upper right hand corner of the page. This dog ears the page, and each book can have multiple bookmarks as well as user added notes and text highlights. If a dictionary is installed on the device, you can highlight a word with your finger and and when you lift it, select “Look up in Dictionary” from the menu to lookup its definition. Once you finished reading the definition, you can quickly return to the spot you left off from. eReader is fully customizable, with adjustable fonts, orientation, color inversion, and more.

While there aren’t as many books in this format as what Amazon, for instance, offers for its Kindle electronic reader, there are thousands of books and magazines, including fiction, non-fiction, young adult, reference, romance, and more.

While there are other alternatives, some free and some not, eReader works well, is reliable, and makes reading a joy on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

With nominations being open for just under a week, we have now received over 5,000 nominations in the 2008 Best App Ever Awards. Haven’t nominated your favorite apps yet? Head on over to http://bestappever.com and get moving, nominations are open until 12/30.

This inaugural competition is the first iPhone OS Application achievement awards to recognize the best iPhone apps and games released in the iTunes App Store in 2008. The goal is to help publicize the very best apps available, not just the best-selling apps.

Nominations are still tight with it being a pretty open race in all of the categories as it stands right now. Especially so with the Best App Ever race — less than 75 nominations separate the #1 from the #10 nominee.

Here’s how some of the nominations break down as of 12/22 12:00pm Pacific:

Total nominations: 5,079
Total apps nominated: 725

Category with most nominations: Most Useful App
Category with least nominations: Free Or Ad Supported Game

Category with most apps nominated: Most Innovative App
Category with the least apps nominated: Best Racing Game

Tightest category (least # of nominations separate #1-#10): Best 99 Cent Game
Widest category (most # of nominations separate #1-#10): Best Casual Game

We’ll post here again to let you know the final nominees and when voting is open on 12/31.

Payday Roulette is a highly polished game. Veiled Games first release for the iPhone shows this company knows what it is doing.

All of the standard roulette bets are here, nicely laid out and easy to use. The repeat bet is a nice option. After you place your bets you touch the wheel and give it a spin by dragging your finger around the edge of the wheel. Then you spin the ball around the wheel — in either the same direction or the opposite.

The only thing that bothers me about this game is that the simulation of the ball isn’t 100% realistic. The ball just sticks when it hits a number. It doesn’t bounce around at all like the real thing. Stupid little point I know, but I have to find something wrong.

Payday Roulette is a great simulation of the casino game roulette. While it doesn’t have the excitement of the game in Las Vegas, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than the real thing!

I had decided a while ago that I wasn’t going to post any reviews of Christmas (or any other) holiday apps. They are all just to trite, simple, and down right annoying. Especially so to a grinch like me. But then, I saw Earthscape Santa Tracker and my heart grew three sizes that day.

Earthscape Santa Tracker

Category: Entertainment
Released: 2008-12-10
Price: FREE

Ok, maybe it only expanded 1.5 sizes. But this is still a great app. Earthscape Santa Tracker is a holiday photo viewer and 3D Santa tracker based on Earthscape’s great 3D earth platform. If you have kids, it will be extra special on Christmas eve. Here’s the description from the developer:

Ho Ho Ho! Follow Santa as he makes his way around the world this Christmas Season! See where Santa is, or will be, on Christmas Eve and explore thousands of beautiful photos of the holidays being celebrated around the world. Learn how to share your own holiday pictures with the rest of the planet for a very special Christmas!

Yes, I bought the new headphones. I was ready to buy them when Steve Jobs announced them in…what…November? I had bought some 3rd party in-ear, iPhone headphones that served me well and were very affordable. After only a few months, however, the control button stopped working and I found out the company’s headphone division had been sold off, but nobody was offering support. Weak. Other in-ear headphones that promised better quality and service were out of my price range, so I have been using the standard “bud” headphones that came with my 2G iPhone and hurt my ears. When Apple said they would offer a pair for $79, I was eager to get my hands on a set. While I wish Apple made a set in black, their button controls seem superior to the others I have looked at, so I’m willing to live with the “he’s got an iPod/iPhone!” recognition factor.

What I can say so far is that they fit really nicely. For me anyway, they provide a great seal in my ear using the medium (default) inserts. I listened to some soundtracks and the range was really nice even without the equalizer turned on. Bass sections came across really well in Classical selections. The range was really good too, in my opinion. None of the sounds seemed muffled or tinny. The dual drivers appear to make the sound very clear and crisp. One of the downsides that I forgot about in-ears is that while it blocks outside noise, it accentuates weird things like my breathing and and disturbance of the cords. I can even hear my heartbeat if the volume is low enough. A little distracting but better than the usual din from public transportation and other noisy environments. It also means I don’t have to turn the volume up as much, which is probably good for my ears.

Oddly, the cords seem more “rubbery” than other Apple buds. This makes for weird “bendy” behavior and the cords will sometimes stick out away from my body. It also makes them harder to put in and take out of pockets. I haven’t been able to tell if this makes them more durable or not. Apple brought back the little slider on the dual cords that go to the individual earbuds so that when you wrap the phones, the left and right cords don’t get tangled. The control button is a bit larger thanks to the useless (so far) volume controls, but still less obtrusive than most 3rd party buds. I think they improved the clicking action a bit, or else it’s just because they’re new. Even if the volume controls are not enabled by a future firmware update (oh man, I hope they are!), I would still recommend these to an iPhone user. I attribute the extra cost to the sound quality and all the other control functions operate properly. The triangle-shaped case is really nice too, but I doubt I’ll end up using it much. It would be good protection for packing the headphones, but it quickly gets tiring wrapping and un wrapping them from the case in everyday use. Clever capsule-shaped packaging contains the extra large and small ear inserts, but those will probably get lost in a drawer somewhere.

The hard part of a review is that my my music quality rarely goes over 190 bps, so I may be missing something in the response just because of that. Bottom line is that I’m very happy with them so far, but I still wish they made them in black.

We’re just starting out for the mad rush of travel back home for the holidays. Whether you are stuck in the airport for what seems like days-on-end — or just need a little break from the loved-ones, we’ve got you covered. We’re going to look for some great apps to help you survive the trip home and back.

This isn’t going to be a wrap-up of holiday titles. No, we’re looking for those apps that can provide both hours and hours a entertainment while stuck in the airport — and just a few minutes of fun while you avoid try to avoid the visiting uncle quacks when he walks.

Let’s start with the games! Seems like a hundred killer games came out in the past two weeks. Many of them really good. It’s a shame but some of them are going to get lost in the rush. We’ll try to point out some of them in the coming months. But here are a few of our favorite ones that haven’t really seen much publicity.

Sneezies — it’s a great, fun little bubble popping game.

Sneezies - Bubble Popping Fun

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-12-20
Price: $0.99

I’m a big fan of racing games — here’s a great one that hasn’t gotten too much publicity but is really good.

Fastlane Street Racing

Category: Games / Racing
Released: 2008-11-10
Price: $5.99 ON SALE: $3.99

How about a well-done puzzle game:

Ivory Tiles

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-11-28
Price: $1.99

One of our favorite games got a sequel recently - Dizzy Bee 2:

Dizzy Bee 2

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-12-09
Price: $4.99

Myself — I’m partial to puzzle and word games. With their infinite replay value they are great for a long trip.

Frenzic

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-12-11
Price: $4.99

wurdle

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-08-07
Price: $1.99

If you are looking for games that will give you the maximum play time, here are a few that you may have heard of — all guaranteed to give you at least a few hours, sometimes days, of fun.

SimCity™

Category: Games / Simulation
Released: 2008-12-15
Price: $9.99

1112 episode 01

Category: Games / Adventure
Released: 2008-11-24
Price: $7.99

Warfare Incorporated

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2008-12-03
Price: $4.99

Rolando

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Adventure
Released: 2008-12-08
Price: $9.99

We’ve mentioned Fieldrunners in the past — if you don’t have this game yet, do yourself a favor, grab it. Good for making time disappear.

Fieldrunners

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2008-11-23
Price: $4.99

Seems like $0.99 is the new hot price point for games — and there are some great ones for $0.99 right now. Check out these:

Flick Fishing

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Adventure
Released: 2008-11-06
Price: $1.99

Collapse! Chaos

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-10-06
Price: $0.99

Dropship

Category: Games / Simulation
Released: 2008-12-09
Price: $1.99

Chopper

Category: Games / Action
Released: 2008-12-08
Price: $0.99

Mouse House

Category: Games / Adventure
Released: 2008-12-16
Price: $1.99 ON SALE: $0.99

Touch Physics

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-11-13
Price: $0.99

Might as well grab a couple great free games too. Just in case…

Topple

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Games / Puzzle
Released: 2008-11-26
Price: FREE

TapDefense

Category: Games / Simulation
Released: 2008-11-19
Price: FREE

Looking for a good read?

Stanza provides access to loads of ebooks, some free, some not. Includes access to some great current best sellers.

Stanza

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Books
Released: 2008-11-19
Price: FREE

Classics is a fantastic, beautiful, wonderfully done app for reading some great classic novels.

Classics – A Collection of Literary Masterpieces

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Books
Released: 2008-12-31
Price: $4.99

Some other diversions…

Here’s an app to make that dinner conversation much more interesting. RJDJ takes the sounds it hears from the iPhone mic and re-mixes them into some pretty interesting electronic music. See if you can get away with listening while the family discusses all those things you just don’t care about.

RjDj album

Our Rating:   Read Review >>

Category: Music / Music
Released: 2008-12-04
Price: $2.99

Or you could always try to work these in, from other the table:

Star Wars Sound Board

Category: Entertainment
Released: 2008-11-28
Price: $0.99

Feeling artistic?

Here are a couple apps that can help you work on becoming the digital equivalent of Van Gogh. Though you’ll still never hear the end of it about all that money dad spent on art school.

Colors!

Category: Entertainment
Released: 2008-09-09
Price: $4.99

Artist's Touch

Category: Photography
Released: 2008-12-10
Price: $7.99

Handshake does one thing, but does it well. Ok TWO things, but the main function is to send information from your Address Book on the iPhone or iPod Touch to someone else. You can also use it to send photos stored on your device.

Palm devices have been “beaming” this kind of info for many years using infra-red transceivers, and was a very popular way to transfer contact information between devices…assuming the people you met also had a Palm device. Most Desktop-based address book applications give you the ability to send a “vCard” which is a widely accepted standard for exchanging contact info. It seems like an essential function to have on the iPhone, but I suppose Apple expects that you won’t mind using the virtual keyboard. That is all well and good, but a real conversation stopper to spend a few minutes entering data.

Along comes Handshake, which adds this functionality with just a few button presses. Launching the app presents you with 3 options, after you confirm that you are who the app thinks you are so it knows which contact is you. Then it briefly connects to Skorpiotech’s servers which is necessary to convert the data to vCard format. This also facilitates trading info with other people using Handshake more quickly. You are given the options to “Send my card”, “Send other card”, and “Send a picture

Choosing “Send my card” automatically picks your own contact data to send and looks to see if there is anyone else who has connected to the server with their copy of Handshake. If they are nearby, their name will automatically show up in the list. You can then pick them and Handshake will connect to their device to ask them if they want to accept the information. On the receiving end, the user is presented with the option to look at the info, and send their own card back automatically, simply preview the info, or deny the transfer. When the data is previewed, there is a button to add the data to the Address Book. The process is pretty quick, even on the Edge network, but maybe not during MacWorld Expo.

The “Send other card” is the same except you are first presented with your Address Book list to pick another contact to send. In both cases, if the other person doesn’t have Handshake or if you want to send contact data to someone far away, there is an envelope icon in the lower left which allows you to email a vCard for them to import later. The email goes through the Skorpiotech servers, but once you have set your email info in Handshake’s preferences, it will appear to the recipient that the message came from your account. Unfortunately, since the iPhone/iPod Touch’s Address Book does not yet support vCards, this info cannot be imported from the Mail app on the device. You will have to import and sync from your desktop computer. This is an Apple issue, not a Handshake problem.

Finally, the “Send a picture” option is ideal if you are connected to another Handshake user and makes exchanging photos quicker and easier. As with the contact function, you can use the email option which also uses the Skorpiostech servers, but the advantage is that it sends a higher resolution image than the built-in, mobile Mail app. For anyone who doesn’t know, sending any photos from an iPhone or iPod Touch using the Mail app automatically reduces the size of the image to…

The app also has a “Share” button, which sends a user a link to download Handshake. The Handshake preferences offer a few handy options like a toggle to omit the transfer of content from the Notes field for the chosen contact, in case you have personal info in it that you don’t want people to have. Another option allows you to add your name and date to the Notes field of the contact you send so the recipient knows where the info came from. Useful for conventions and such.

The Pro and Free versions have identical functionality, but the Free version displays ads at the top of the main menu screen. I did not find the ads intrusive, nor did it seem to affect the performance of the app, so I’d recommend that version although paying the $2.99 would help support the developers.

There isn’t much I can find that this app needs to add. Shortly before I began this review they added the ability to email an vCard option which was my only complaint of the original, which was dependent on all users having Handshake on their device. Nothing fancy here, but the app is well done and a must have on your device if you need an easy way to exchange contact info.

Handshake Premium

Category: Social Networking
Released: 2008-11-19
Price: $2.99