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Celebrate September With 148Apps

How do you know what apps are worth your time and money? Just look to the review team at 148Apps. We sort through the chaos and find the apps you're looking for. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Take a look at what we've been up to this week, and find even more in our Reviews Archive.

Order & Chaos 2: Redemption

Order & Chaos 2: Redemption is a rather gorgeous looking MMORPG. Building upon what worked well for the original, it’s a substantial MMO that doesn’t push you into in-app purchases (although the option is always there). There’s a plethora of content to sink your teeth into. One thing to note very early on is that if, like me, you’re still lumbered with an iPhone 5, Order & Chaos 2: Redemption is going to seem a little creaky. A bit of stuttering and a little lag is a sharp reminder that the iPhone 5 isn’t as powerful as it once was. Given how fancy Order & Chaos 2: Redemption looks, that makes sense but it might infuriate after a time. It also made my iPhone impressively hot to the touch which was unusual. --Jennifer Allen

Devastator

There’s never been a laid back twin-stick shooter, has there? They’re consistently frantic affairs, requiring you to have fantastic reflexes and to be able to keep an eye on many things at once. Devastator continues that trend by being impressively difficult but really rather well made, too. Those of us who are prone to throwing things when we screw up might feel a little despondent after a time, however. Learning Devastator is very simple. Your left side is used for changing direction while your right side affects the trajectory of the constantly firing weaponry. There’s a virtual button for activating a special attack too, something that you should only ever do when you’re in dire need. The button isn’t far from the right stick so it’s relatively easily activated. --Jennifer Allen

Puzzle Craft 2

Bigger and better is precisely what you want from any sequel and that’s exactly what you’re getting from Puzzle Craft 2. It’s a little trickier than before but its potent mix of settlement developing and line drawing based match-3 ensures it’s compelling stuff for fans of well made freemium experiences. As before, your time is evenly split between your settlement and collecting resources. There’s a steady supply of missions to complete, in order to give you some structure in your development. It’s a reasonably cheery affair with cartoon style characters wandering around once you’ve hired them. --Jennifer Allen

Alien Robot Monsters

Deeply entrenched in the traditional tower-defense genre, Alien Robot Monsters might not offer anything exceptionally original but it’s a solidly dependable entry to the popular genre. In a predictable twist, aliens are out to get us. To be fair to them, it’s our fault this time round. Humans have landed on an earth-like planet and it’s inhabited by a bunch of hostile robotic life forms keen to wipe out humanity. Fortunately, they pursue our bases by following deliberate lanes that happen to go alongside various tower placements. --Jennifer Allen

Explore Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood

On the surface, Explore Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood is immediately appealing and cute. It’s hard not to be cute when you’re dealing with cuddly looking tigers. While the app promises to be an open-ended and imaginative game, it’s actually a little restrictive. That won’t bother some children but the more adventurous user is going to wish that they could do more. It’s all based around the layout of a regular town street. You can visit the grocery store, music shop, bakery, and doctor’s office. Each place is quite cute. You can interact with certain objects too, such as ringing the cash register in the store or playing different musical instruments in the music shop. It’s a little basic because you can’t do too much here, but it’s a fun way to explore. --Jennifer Allen

Other 148Apps Network Sites

If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:

AndroidRundown

UNKILLED

No matter where we go in mobile gaming, there will always be a place for the undead.UNKILLED highlights this, and helps underscore the civic responsibility of ridding the world of zombies.Yes, it’s another zombie apocalypse trip, but this one puts the player in the professor’s seat as part of an elite team that takes the undead out. Completely, that is. If feels a bit like Dead Trigger, which isn’t too unexpected, given its pedigree. --Tre Lawrence

All this, plus news, game guides, and even more reviews than we can share here.

Into July With 148Apps

How do you know what apps are worth your time and money? Just look to the review team at 148Apps. We sort through the chaos and find the apps you're looking for. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Take a look at what we've been up to this week, and find even more in our Reviews Archive.

Divide By Sheep

Mathematics shouldn’t be as fun as Divide By Sheep makes it. Your job is to rescue sheep from the Grim Reaper by flinging them from island to island, eventually depositing them on a transport to safety.The catch is that only a set number of sheep can go on any one transport. Put too few on and the boat goes nowhere, put too many on and you miss out on a star. The sheep only divide up if you fling them onto a platform with too few spaces for them, and that’s what you’re going to be doing a lot. Sacrificing a few sheep for the greater good is everything here, and it only gets nastier.--Jennifer Allen

RESCUE: Heroes In Action

Every once in a while I like to dive into a weird European game. If you do too, look no further than RESCUE: Heroes in Action from rondomedia. This German developer has created a real-time strategy game where players control firefighters as they put out fires, axe down doors, and save citizens. Although it has a fair amount of jank, it's still a fun and challenging experience.Players select scenarios within one of three environment types (Suburbs, Urban central, or Industrial district) and have to use their skills to make sure they manage their water tanks and move quickly enough to remove threats, put out fires, and save lives. To do this they need to tap and drag paths for firefighters and firetrucks to follow along with tapping the appropriate command when a unit is near an interactive object.--Campbell Bird

FireWhip

FireWhip is the latest game from Dan FitzGerald, the mind behind last year's Dawn of the Plow. They might seem like completely disparate or even opposite titles - especially considering one is about fire and one is about snow - but they both share weird control schemes that feel intentionally strange. Because of this, FireWhip didn't click for me at first. However it eventually revealed itself to be a deeply challenging and rewarding arcade experience. Players use their finger to rotate a whip (made of fire, of course) around the screen to fend of waves of abstract enemies. A sudden stop with a fully extended whip can cause it to crack and send flames across the screen, while spinning the whip too fast for too long can cause parts of it to burn out. Keeping these rules in mind, players face off against a variety of enemies including cowards that run away from the flames, fearless tanks that charge ahead, and fast-moving warp units that beam across the screen directly at players. The challenge of FireWhip is in knowing how to deal with each enemy quickly in order to rack up a high score.--Campbell Bird

Sonic Runners

Upon every Sonic the pro- and anti-Sonic crowds get increasingly more disagreeable. Although I don't have particularly strong feelings one way or the other for the blue hedgehog, I think it's safe to say his earliest work was among his strongest. Sonic Runners is an endless runner that captures the speed and platforming of 2D Sonic games, but there are a lot of things wrong with the non-running parts that make it hard to enjoy. The actual meat of Sonic Runners is a pretty fun and challenging runner. Players attain a specific score on a level by accumulating rings and emeralds before facing off against Dr. Eggman, much like the original games. They can unlock Tails and Knuckles as playable characters, both of which lend their strengths in specific situations.--Campbell Bird

Tales From Deep Space

Amazon Game Studios is gradually beginning to make a mark on the App Store. With the recent release of Lost Within and Til Morning’s Light, we now have one time Amazon Kindle Fire exclusive, Tales From Deep Space - a fairly charming puzzle adventure game. It doesn’t revolutionize the genre but that doesn’t stop it from being quite appealing.You control a traveling salesman and his drone as you attempt to escape a Space Station. The two have to work in conjunction when traveling around with the main controls involving you switching between the two at regular points. It’s a familiar concept whereby you leave one character on a switch while the other completes a given task, but it works well here. --Jennifer Allen

Other 148Apps Network Sites

If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:

AndroidRundown

Drift Spirits

DRIFT SPIRITS seems to be the type of game that could allow one to live life on the edge. Digitally.At its core, it’s a 1v1 drag racing game with an emphasis on drifting. Competitors go toe-to-toe on curved race track that are all but built to encourage oversteering, and the idea is to level up and get rewards to improve one’s car and progress as far as possible.--Tre Lawrence

SmartNews

In a perpetually fast-paced world, there is always a place for easy-to-use news apps. Enter SmartNews, an app from Japanese developers that already has quite the positive reputation on Google Play.Upon first inspection, the app looks clean. It opens up into the main page, and one gets to see the white background and splashes of color upon that in the tabs at the top. It is set in blog form, with text summaries bordered by a relevant pictures. It a serious look, but easy on the eyes, and easy to appreciate from a visual perspective.--Tre Lawrence

Prison Break: Lockdown

Prison Break: Lockdown is an interesting game that manages to be a mystery, a hidden object game and probably more… simultaneously. It takes a fairly popular theme — escape — and build upon it to create a leveled game.The game incorporates a lot of research elements; the player gets a scene, and has to investigate for objects to interact with. Interacting comes in different forms…some objects provide clues to solve other puzzles; several can be collected and even combined to solve riddles. To see if an area has a clickable item, one must click specific areas on the screen to see if one if those areas can be enlarged.--Tre Lawrence

All this, plus news, game guides and even more reviews than we can share here!

We all shop, right? Heck, even those of us who adamantly declare all we need is online shopping tend to end up in a store at some point in our lives. It’s kind of fun to browse around, and sometimes it’s more straightforward to seek something out by looking around. The Apple Watch has a ton of potential for changing how we shop. Some developers and retailers have already leapt upon this idea, such as Woolworths in Australia launching an app soon and Retale announcing a similar app. What else do you want, though? We take a look at some neat potential ideas.

Something like RedLaser

RedLaser is a great app for the avid shopper, allowing you to search for plenty of products, coupons, and deals near you. Expand that to the Apple Watch and things could get even simpler. Glances and Notifications could mean you could easily see what deals are available at a store while you’re nearby. You could quickly use Siri to look up a review, saving you from getting your phone out and generally looking way cooler. It’s going to need some backup from your iPhone, but it’ll save you plenty of time and effort.

Amazon

Nothing’s been confirmed yet, but there’s got to be an Amazon Apple Watch app coming, right? Being able to search quickly would be great, plus there's the potential from its 1-Click ordering system. I remember one stressful Christmas shopping trip last year where I stood in a mall and used my iPhone to buy the stuff I couldn’t find in a store. An Apple Watch method of doing this would be so much smoother and it just makes sense.

Groupon

So many deals! Groupon is bordering on overwhelming these days with the offers it provides - from cheap gadgets to massages. Having these all accessible and scannable from your wrist would be a real time saver. Tied into your iPhone, it could have great location-aware capabilities for when you’re near somewhere with a great deal on.

A grocery list app like Grocery iQ

I wander around grocery stores with my iPhone out, looking through what I need to get. It’s cumbersome, and once I dropped my iPhone on the ground and got a nasty dent in it. That sucks. Having my shopping list on my wrist would be far better in this instance. As anyone who’s used a stock app can tell you, there are far better grocery list specific apps out there. Something like Grocery iQ on your wrist would be convenient, and you could easily tap on an item to say you’ve gotten it and so forth. Being able to keep regular lists would be great for when you’re buying the same thing often, too.

New Year - New Apps!

How do you know what apps are worth your time and money? Just look to the review team at 148Apps. We sort through the chaos and find the apps you're looking for. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Take a look at what we've been up to this week, and find even more in our Reviews Archive.

Marvel Contest of Champions

One of the first comics I can remember buying with my own money as child, purchased from a newsstand near my great-grandmother’s apartment, was an issue of Marvel’s Contest of Champions. Contest of Champions was groundbreaking in a couple of different areas: it was Marvel’s first publication released in a “limited series” format, and it was also one of the first attempts to blatantly strip out any attempt at more nuanced story arc by instead offering three issues of heroes clashing against one another in page after page of epic battles as cosmic puppet masters tugged at their strings. Despite revisiting the concept a couple of times in intervening years, nothing ever quite captured that same spectacle that my five year old self felt while leafing through those pages. However, Marvel and Kabam are dragging the old chestnut out of mothballs again in the form of a head-to-head fighting game. And despite a couple of issues, it’s actually not the worst licensed game I’ve seen. --Rob Thomas

Area 777

How lucky do you feel? Area 777 is heavily dependent on luck, so you’d better hope that you’re a naturally fortuitous person. Thanks to that dependency, it’s not overly gripping. Even when it eventually introduces new chip types it feels like too little, too late. The concept behind it is that it’s part slot machine, part tower defense game. In reality, it’s almost all slot machine with a hint of tower defense. Each level consists of a slot machine, with enemies slowly making their way across it in order to cause you damage. You have to hit the spin button and, mostly, hope that the reels line up and you take them out along the way. There is some element of strategy in there, mostly through the acquisition of chips, but it’s fairly basic. These chips frequently correspond to an element, such as fire or ice, thereby allowing you to set the enemies on fire or freeze a reel in a particular position. It’s helpful but hardly enough to make you feel fully in control of the game. --Jennifer Allen

SimplePlanes

SimplePlanes gives players all the tools they need to build airplanes from scratch. But successfully making use of those tools means wrapping your head around all the different parts and physics that, presumably, actual engineers need to consider. The game tries to help ease players in with its extensive manuals explaining the difference between an airfoil and a fuselage, but absorbing that data takes time and practice. There are a few convenient shortcuts, like the ability to mirror the plane so players won’t have to waste time sculpting the perfect wing twice. But like Minecraft, the best rewards – whether it’s a speedy biplane or functioning VTOL aircraft – will come to those with the patience to literally construct them piece by piece. --Jordan Minor

Luna League Soccer

Luna League Soccer is the kind of soccer game that you’ll dive into for a few minutes here and there, but not exactly think too deeply about. It’s an arcade sports game through and through, meaning it takes seconds to master. On the left of the screen you have a floating joystick, while the right offers a contextual button that enables you to shoot, pass, tackle, or switch players depending on what’s going on during the match. It’s very simple to pick up, with each team bringing their own special moves to the fold. --Jennifer Allen

Maximum Overdrive

The graphics are pleasantly glitzy; the several environments showcase the developer’s penchant for being able to highlight artistic perspective and use of lighting and corresponding virtual colors. The animations are cool, and one can almost taste the kicked-up dirt. When the optional sound effects are tossed in, it’s hard not to appreciate the complete package of sights and sounds. When it comes to gameplay, off the bat I liked that I could get into the nitty-gritty with a minimum of interactions. As noted, this is mostly about destroying other combatants without being destroyed, and the tool at hand is a heavily weaponized truck on big wheels. The controls are virtual in nature, with buttons for shooting, accelerating, braking/reversing, and steering – the last of which can be switched to tilt or arrow control. With this, and after one picks the format (multiplayer vs single player), it’s off to the races. --Tre Lawrence

Hi.Q Health IQ

Online quizzes are a big deal these days. They’ve always been fairly popular but the rise of Buzzfeed, Playbuzz, Zimbio, and so many other places has really strengthened our love of answering a bunch of questions to figure out what animal/TV show character we are. It turns out such structures can be used for good as well, such as in the case of Hi.Q – Health IQ. It’s an app that offers you thousands of health-related questions, devised by experts, and can therefore teach you some valuable facts. Dive in and you’ll immediately notice that Hi.Q – Health IQ is stylishly laid out. Looking like it’d easily fit into a lifestyle magazine, each quiz is clearly described along with an attractive photo to further sell its purpose. Some quizzes may offer a lot of different questions but they rarely take too long to complete. Each time you answer a question the answer or an explanation is shown, meaning you’re constantly learning. --Jennifer Allen

Other 148Apps Network Sites

If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:

AndroidRundown

Amazing Ninja

Ninja. Running. Swords. Enter Amazing Ninja. Side-scrolling action is the name of the game. Our protagonist martial artist runs aggressively from left to right, looking to avoid or confront different obstacles on the left. The ninja is stick-figurish in appearance, is armed with a sword and has enviable ups at speed; jumping and slashing are his only means of recourse. Tapping on the left side of the screen invokes jumping; on the right causes a slashing motion. The first type of obstacle are the blue-colored “deserters” that are seemingly fleeing the very conflagration that our hero is eager to get to. These terrified soldiers can be dangerous in their haste, and can end a run by making contact. Slashing the deserters has dire consequences, and as such, our boy has to jump over the blues. --Tre Lawrence

Olixar Light Bulb Speaker

We get pitched a fair amount of accessories to take a look at, and, frankly, some are very, uh, unique. Not all work, either; some are ambitious, but might have a fatal flaw. Or two. Or seven. In any case, mobile accessories can be interestingly varied. I’d like to say I am open-minded, and I do feel like a decent assessor of product, but every now and then, I am surprised. But hold a sec; let’s talk about the Olixar Light Bulb Speaker. The name says it all: it’s a light bulb that doubles as a bluetooth-enabled speaker. The review package MobileFun sent us highlights the unit; in hand, it is mostly white, with a gold mid-section. It is more streamlined than “regular” bulbs, but also weighs a bit more. It sports LED light too, and emits 3W light (which the distributor says is equivalent to 50W from a standard bulb. It screws into regular receptacles (the package comes with an adapter piece for European light sources) and works the same way. Turn on the switch, and it bathes the room in bright, warm light. It functions well upright and upside down. --Tre Lawrence

Amazon Fire TV

The past couple of years have definitely been the years of the streaming media unit. All the big players have a hat in the Big C, and with good reason: we like content. Lots of it. Enter Fire TV, the still-relatively-new offering from Amazon. Amazon provided us a gaming bundle package to check out, containing the black unit, black remote, power cables, batteries, and the optional bluetooth gamepad (one should ensure one has HDMI cable). It’s fairly svelte, a bit smaller than one would guess, coming in at 4.5 x 4.5 x 0.7 inches and just under 10 oz. It has a quad core processor and 8 GB of storage, and supports output of 720 x 1080p up to 60fps. Specs aside, there is little to dislike about Amazon Fire TV. It looks good, and is a veritable source of content. It has a lot of the go-to programs that can be downloaded to it: Netflix, WatchESPN, Pandora, Crackle, Showtime Anytime (based on provider) and, of course, Amazon Instant and Amazon Music, among other offerings. Setup is easy, and the included control is definitely a huge positive. On its own, as a streaming accessory, it holds its own against the competition. --Tre Lawrence

Also this week, Pocket Gamer reviewed Gunbrick and Sol Invictus, played Metamorphabet and Need for Speed: No Limits, and figured out how to play PS4 games on any Android device. All that and loads more, right here.

And finally, AppSpy kicks 2015 off by giving you the definitive rundown of the best Nintendo-esque games on mobile, showing you the first gameplay video of Need For Speed: No Limits, a world exclusive look at Team17's Flockers, and much more. Join us, won't you?

With the release of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Apple Watch just around the corner, Amazon has announced a special offer for their Trade-In Program. If you submit an item before October 10, that price will be locked-in for the following 45 days after that submission, with these gadgets currently worth the following amounts:

• iPhone 5S - $400 for 64 GB


• iPhone 5 - $350 for 64 GB


• iPad Mini - currently at $150.75 - $261.8 based on model and memory size


• Samsung Galaxy Gear - $71.40


• Pebble Steel Smartwatch for iPhone - $100

This offer for the Amazon Trade-In Program is set to last for the next month, through until October 10.

Sev Zero is the first game made by Amazon Game Studios to have made its way to the Fire TV, and now there's a companion app for iPad to go alongside it.

With the iPad app, players can bring friends and family into the battle against the Ne'athu, with the player on the iPad acting as air support, sending down air strikes to take out the enemy. Meanwhile, the other player can continue the tower defense and first-person shooter side of the combat.

Sev Zero: Air Support is available on iPad now and is free to download, whilst Sev Zero is available on the Amazon App Store and costs $6.99.

Are you angry about the new Comixology app, which removes the ability to buy comics from inside the app itself? If so, you should be just as angry at Apple for their policies making such an absurd situation, where an app can offer the ability to consume the content it sells without actually selling it, as much as you are at Comixology/Amazon for inconveniencing you.

The economics for the change are clear: they were giving 30% of every sale to Apple, as per App Store policies. That's the way it's been since the App Store opened - every time money changes hands, Apple takes its 30% cut. When in-app purchases were introduced, Apple kept the rate per transaction the same: 30% on everything. Thus, when Comixology sold a comic for $3.99, they only got ~$2.80 from it, for a book they had to sell for the same price on their site, by Apple policies.

It's likely that this 30% cut hurt Comixology's bottom line - they are beholden to a number of outside forces and right holders for the comics they sell - and the move to Amazon apparently provided them the opportunity to change their selling model.

So, that 30% fee on transactions that Apple takes is problematically high. Certainly, it can be justified for paid apps: Apple provides approval, storage, bandwidth, tax collection, and a variety of services beyond just taking the money, in order to justify taking such a cut of a developer's revenue.

But for in-app purchases, Apple is serving as little more than a payment processor, though they do track whether non-consumable IAP is owned by the user. And 30% is exorbitantly high for payment processing. PayPal merchant fees are 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. Amazon charges the same for transactions $10 or above, with a 5% + $0.05 per order for smaller transactions. These aren't counting the bulk volume discounts that these processors provide.

You could go to your local comics shop or to a vendor at a convention, and using a Square credit card reader, they can sell you that comic at a 2.75% per swipe fee. So what right does Apple have to be taking 30% on a similar transaction? I think they should be allowed to take a reasonable premium on top of payment processing for the App Store services they provide, but it's clear that 30% is unreasonable, especially for low-margin fields like the sale of music, movies, and comic books.

And because Apple specifically restricts outside payment systems, there's no recourse for anyone who wants to offer media or subscription services through an app but to not sell said services in the app itself. It's why you can't buy a Netflix, Spotify, or Dropbox subscription from inside their apps at all - because Apple can't take their steep tax.

Why would Apple, a seemingly pro-consumer company in the way that they design their products to be easy to use, do this? Well, they're not actually a pro-consumer company. They're a pro-Apple-consumer company. Everything they do is designed explicitly to get you to stay with Apple products. Ever thought about getting an Android or Windows Phone but decided not to because you didn't want to lose iMessage? Exactly.

Remember that Apple sells music, video, and books of their own (though not comics to the scale that Comixology does); they have a weighted incentive to make it hard for outside sources to provide them on the App Store unless they pay the exorbitant 30% fee. And when people are inconvenienced by app makers because of Apple's policies they get mad at the app maker, not Apple, which has to cause a chill to run up the spine of anyone struggling with a similar decision as Comixology.

The thing is, it doesn't have to be this way. Google has a similar setup with in-app purchases where they take 30% of every transaction, but they provide alternatives. Specifically, they have a policy that enables Comixology to still sell comics through their app through their own payment system: "Developers offering additional content, services or functionality within another category of app downloaded from Google Play must use Google Play's in-app billing service as the method of payment, except: where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g., buying songs that can be played on other music players)."

Thus, Android Comixology users can still buy comics through the app. Those who relied on Google Play credit to buy books will find themselves out of luck. Of course, Google doesn't have a monopoly over content distribution or an interest on keeping people as tied to Google Play and their own services, but it's still a better way to operate than the monopolistic way that Apple does. The 30% payment processor fee for in-app purchases is still on the exorbitant side, but the nature of it is a lot more fair.

So, what Apple ultimately has is a situation that's meant to give off the illusion of consumer-friendliness by making it only possible to spend money through iTunes accounts, when it really restricts the freedom that people have to get the content they want, where they want it from.

If a solution that's actually friendly to users (and not just to those who buy in to the Apple system) is to happen, it's going to require public pressure. They could enact the exact same policy that Google Play has, for one. This same policy is the one that allows Starbucks to allow for store credit refills through direct credit card or PayPal payments. It just needs to be expanded to cross-platform media so that users don't get left out in the cold, or compelled to buy from Apple's stores. Give them actual choice.

Or Apple needs to make their tax on in-app purchases - these purely digital transactions - a smaller fee, in order for it to be viable for sellers in high-margin transactions involving media. Somewhere from 5 to 10% may be more reasonable than the current 30%. Whatever the solution I believe change needs to happen, because right now, the ultimate loser from Apple policies are ordinary people who have had convenience taken away from them because of corporate politics.

A little over a year ago, everything changed. My daughter, Peregrine (Pip, for short), was born, and along with the myriad recalibrations, adjustments, and joyous changes that birth brought with it, I also finally came to terms with the true value of the iPhone camera: baby pictures! Hundreds and hundreds of them (no exaggeration) were taken by me, by friends, and by family, and then scattered over hard drives, social networks, and of course iPhones. The problem then became figuring out how to organize and store them privately and securely. As a devoted Mac user it’s easy enough to keep photos stored on iPhoto, but that’s a local option only, with limited cloud storage and sharing (those 1,000 photos on iCloud? Please!), and god forbid my hard drive crashes without proper backup.

I thought all of my problems with cloud storage for photos were solved when Everpix came along. Here was a fantastic, well-designed app that also had great web-based software and a Mac-based uploader. Best of all, it could load in all of my photos from various social streams, eliminate or hide duplicates, and handle a potentially unlimited number of photos for a reasonable monthly or yearly price.

There was just one big problem though; Everpix went out of business.

Before I get to the heart of this article, there are a few lessons to learn from my Everpix experience.

One: Always keep all of your photos on a local hard drive.

Two: Backup said hard drive as often as humanly possible (something I still don’t do, so do as I say, not as I do).

Three: Never, ever assume that a site, app, or service will exist forever. It won’t; it just won’t. They will all go away at some point. Some will last five years. Some will last a year or two. Some of the very best won’t even make it that long.

So I found myself back at square one, trying to find another good (read, as close to the effortless Everpix as I could get) cloud-based storage solution for my photos. Read on for my look at nine different cloud storage services that work with iOS.

Amazon App, Amazon's official iOS app, has recently been updated with an interesting new feature called "Flow." Flow allows users to search for and order multiple items at once simply by passing their camera over them. No snapping pictures, typing in keyword searches, or scanning barcodes required. The app then saves all of the scanned items to shopping carts or wish lists where users can decide what to do with them later. I mean, do you really need that gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk?

The new Amazon App is available for free, and the update is live.

Those of us of a certain age and demographic will remember the holidays of yore, spent poring over the fragile, tear-prone pages of the Sears catalog, dreaming of all the things Santa might bring. Looks like Amazon is looking to recreate the magic with its latest app, Amazon Santa.

With the tap of a finger, kids and their parents can explore by product category or type a search to find the perfect gift and instantly create a Wish List. Parents can review and edit the Wish List as needed, and easily share each child’s list with grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and family friends. Wish Lists shared via the Amazon Santa app can only be viewed by family and friends who receive the Wish List link. The list shows recipients wished-for items, including those that have already been purchased, helping to eliminate duplicate gifts.

One of our favorite second screen apps, NextGuide has been updated to add Amazon Prime videos to its catalog. This comes in addition to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and iTunes. A solid update. Here's the full update info:

Introducing the latest version of NextGuide, with new content, improved user experience, and tons of tweaks based on user feedback! Thanks everyone!
>> Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant support! Now browse from Amazon's huge streaming TV and Movie library in addition to live TV, Netflix, Hulu Plus, and iTunes!
>> New Gestures - two-finger swipe within showcards, pinch to hide, fullscreen media gallery, and more!
>> Enhanced Cast & Crew with 1-click saved searches and Wikipedia biography lookups.
>> New Category Editor with easy drag & drop category setup
>> Channel Setup now part of Initial Setup Wizard
>> Improved "Your Picks" algorithms
>> Lots of other little new features for you to explore throughout the app
>> Performance improvements, bug fixes, and bears, oh my!

This week at 148Apps, we left our white shoes behind and got ready for some football with Carter Dotson's round-up of apps for the NFL 2012 season: "Are you ready for some football, in particular the 2012–2013 season of the premier American football league, the National Football League? Well, with the season kicking off tonight with the Super Bowl champion New York Giants playing the Dallas Cowboys, I’ve collected four apps to help make the game-watching and fantasy-football-playing experience better. No matter what, they’re better than the replacement refs are going to be!"

Read all of Carter's picks for the season at 148Apps.com.

Over at GiggleApps, Amy Solomon reviewed This Is My Body-Anatomy for Kids, saying, "I have really enjoyed perusing this application, consisting of many sections that cover such topics as how fast one grows, the skin, one’s senses, as well as the different systems of the body, such as digestive, respiratory, muscular, nervous and skeletal, going into a very nice amount of depth for children to appreciate.

As this app opens up, children are given a choice of characters to follow, nicely including boy and girl choices some of which are children of color and an Asian character – lovely inclusions still not seen often enough in the US iTunes store."

Read more about this fun and educational app for kids at GiggleApps.com.

And stalwart reporter Carter Dotson returned yet again, this time on AndroidRundown, to look at the latest developments from Apple iPad rival Amazon: "While rumors of a new iPad mini spread, and the Nexus 7 enjoys its sales numbers, Amazon has laid dormant until now with the announcement of new Kindle Fire devices.

The flagship is the Kindle Fire HD. This will come in both an 8.9" variety and a 7" variety; the specs on the 7" are supposed to be the same as the 8.9", but Amazon was more keen to show off this version. It's got a 1920×1200 screen (true HD!) which is 254 ppi (compared to the iPad retina display's 264 ppi), to go along with a Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 processor, which Amazon claims can do 50% more floating point operations as compared to the Tegra 3 processor in the Nexus 7."

Want more? Get more by reading the full article at AndroidRundown.com.

And that's a wrap of this weekly wrap-up! Join us throughout the week for the latest contests, reviews and news on our Facebook site as well as on Twitter. Until next week, remember - no white after Labor Day!