Being an app reviewer, I often wonder what kind of impact our reviews, and the advertisements on the site, actually have on app sales. While I won’t claim to be the spark that makes an app sell, I do hope that our positive reviews and articles do indeed help out some of the smaller developers apps. Nothing against Gameloft or EA, but I almost feel a bit of civic duty to showcase an app like geoDefense Swarm every once in awhile.

Almost sensing my wonder of such matters, ustwo™, the development team most famous for trademarking every word they write, along with AdMob, created PositionApp™. PositionApp™ has one purpose and one purpose only… to track the position of apps on global App Store charts. “PositionApp™ offers instant remote access to all chart positions of the top 300 apps, and their movements in all categories and countries. For the very first time, users can access the last six months of historic app store performance through the ustwo™ data set.”

mills, co-founder of ustwo™, comments, “Successful app development is as much about marketing and PR as it is about the concept and creation. As app developers we wanted to understand our sales volume, gauge the penetration of our marketing strategies and easily follow the success of the app once it leaves the nest. We created PositionApp™ because as developers we wanted and more importantly needed this app. As well as giving you access to the top 300 positions of all charts in all countries, PositonApp’s USP is its 6 months of retrospective app positioning data.

“PositionApp™ was created for developers, marketers, journalists and reviewers, but by adding a revolutionary set of app discovery dashboards highlighting the biggest app risers in the top 100 and top 300, the app will be appreciated by just about any app user.”

Pick up PositionApp™ soon, because in two months it’ll cost you. That’s right… PositionApp™ is totally free!

$1.99

PositionApp™

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Our Rating: :: MUST HAVE
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2010-02-11 :: Category: Utilities

Remember .™? If you don’t, the title was the debut of London-based iPhone development studio ustwo™. The game was 2D and involved the user guiding a white dot around a playing field, trying to avoid red matter (triangular), and collecting blue matter (circular). It hit the mainstream for a number of reasons, firstly for its design ethics, but secondly and most importantly being that it was the first ever application to have hit the App Store, whilst having been designed from concept to final within a 48 hour period.

This had never been done before. The thought of developing a polished title such as .™ within such a short period of time, to most other developers I imagine may have started their worst nightmare. There are going to be 6 titles within this ‘exclusive’ set of apps – sorta a “collect em’ all” diddy. The first was .™ which we profiled a few weeks back, and the next is supposedly Inkstrumental™ CRAZO™ (although as we mentioned in our previous first look, the studio themselves isn’t sure if that’ll ever see the light of day, yet.)

In the meantime the studio isn’t standing still, today announcing the sequel to their debut hit title. Calling it ..™. Having not seen the game yet myself, or had chance to play with it, I can only go off this visually stunning teaser trailer which the company has just released above, which to me seems to convey we might just be in store for some 3D goodness – (well .. I hope so)! While it’s not clear if this sequel will follow the 48 hour development method ustwo™ are now famous for, you have to admit that ..™ trailer is pretty damn trippy.

Having played .™, it’s addictive nature tends to bring with it high replay value, and as with any title, high replay usually means value for money. With no word on price yet, it’s hard to judge if ..™ will live up to it’s original – but according to ustwo™ we won’t have to wait long to find out. The title is expected to hit very, very soon.

Update: In a stark move, the studio has created a fully interactive online version of the upcoming game. Part of their new ’48App’ section, you can now play both .™ and ..™ flash versions – here. Looks like ..™ will be 3D after all! Although, it’s still unclear whether the game will use touch and drag gesture controls, or take advantage of the accelerometer. We’ll see!

$0.99

DOT™

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-09-17 :: Category: Games

You know Ustwo™ right? You can’t miss them. They’re the guys who seem™ to™ love putting ‘™’ after everything™. But, more than that, they’re also the iPhone development studio behind thinking up and creating the 48-hour apps concept. The concept being, they create a set of 6 exclusive applications, and each application is developed within 48 hours, from concept to final product. The first of which you’ve probably had the pleasure of being introduced to, .™. You may have seen this viral?

Well today, the studio are announcing that they’re about to release a spooky update to their popular real-time mouth simulator MouthOff™, just in time for Halloween.

They’re calling it, MouthOff™ Hell-oween™.

If you’re not familiar with MouthOff™ yet, it’s a real-time mouth simulator. The app basically allows you to control various well-designed cartoon mouths, by using just your voice. The app picks up on background noise via the iPhone’s microphone .. and the results are – undoubtedly – laugh out loud hilarious.

This update will include four new mouths for you to get chatty with, including: a vampire, a zombie, a pumpkin and that frankenstein-looking dude (as seen above). You won’t have to wait long either. Ustwo™ tells us that this update has already been submitted to the App Store as of Today (October 6th), and should hit shortly. So, stay tuned!