The concept behind the Hello Music website is a simple but brilliant one: provide members with information regarding all manner of deals and sales, on all kinds of musical goodies. The Hello Music app does pretty much the same thing, only on iOS. In other words, with an account on the website and the app on a phone, anyone looking for great deals is covered.
The site, and by extension the application, will per-negotiate discounts on a set (and limited) quantity of various items. These range from tangible objects such as amps, pedals and such, to less tangible things like studio time. Since quantities are limited the deals don't last long (usually around 48 hours), but with a handy-dandy iOS app to monitor these deals on the go it becomes much less of an issue.
Setting up an account on the website is free. The app is free. Suffice it to say, any musicians with even a little interest in savings (and an iPhone, of course) need to take a look at this.
Okay, so you have an iPhone .. and although nice, you're getting pretty tied of playing the same old style RPGs and puzzle games. How about something a little more left field, like Glu Mobile's new project called 1000 Find Em All. Explained in detail by Chris White, head of the studio, the game's concept is simple. Your goal is to find and build a collection up consisting of 1000 highly weird and wonderful 'things'. You start off in a grey, dark and lifeless world but as you guide your character around this world it will gradually bring colour and life to the objects and places around you.
Now for the fun part. Glu Mobile dropped 1000 virtual objects both in the real world and in-game, so it probably won't be surprising to hear that you can actually play '1000 Find Em All' without the need for GPS. There are three ways you can join in on the fun - the first being over GPS! Activating GPS in-game will instantly show you a map of your current surroundings and gifts available for pickup. To pick-up a gift you simply walk over it. Gifts you pick up are then stored in your virtual library within the game.
Some iPod touch users though may not have GPS, and therefore Glu have built the game to work in two other modes too. The first is in-game. Even when you're not connected to GPS, 1000 Find Em All provides a huge virtual world for you to explore and navigate, in an attempt to find these 1000 objects.
The last mode in the game is one which surprised me. Not by it being there, but how it will work. In Wi-Fi mode the game will pick up all the Wi-Fi hotspots around you and turn them into game characters. These are called 'Gifters' and become sources to collect gifts. With no release date or price mentioned by Glu, 1000 Find Em All looks to be a cool take on usual bog-standard gaming experience targeting the iPhone and iPod touch .. one I personally can't wait to play!
