iPhone App Reviews

Halloween iPhone Apps

Michael (Admin) | Oct 31, 2008 Website Stuff

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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For a roundup of all of the Halloween iPhone apps I’ve reviewed… 14 in all, most of them free… click on “halloween” under tags in the far-right column or just click here.

Nerds + Halloween = Wacky but impressive costumes

Separate Checks

Michael (Admin) | Oct 31, 2008 Utilities

User rating: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Have you ever seen that episode of Friends where it’s Monica’s birthday and they all go out for dinner, but Joey, Rachel, and Phoebe are broke as hell so they nibble on cheap appetizers, and then Ross declares that they each owe $40 because he’s splitting the bill evenly between everyone? (And then later on the poor losers stay home while the rich kids go cavorting with Hootie & The Blowfish)

Yeah, you’ve seen it. That’s what Aaron Berk’s Separate Checks is all about – not getting screwed when it comes time to settle the bill during a night out.

Separate Checks lets you put in up to 50 people and then itemize everything they shove into their mouths. When you get the check, put in the tax amount and decide what percent you’re tipping, and suddenly everyone knows exactly how much they owe.

Functionally, Separate Checks totally delivers. It’s a tip calculator and a check-splitter rolled into one. It even lets you split shared items like appetizers and bottles of wine between several people.

My only issue with Separate Checks is that I’ll never use it! I’m broker than Joey, Rachel, and Phoebe could ever have hoped to be but my laziness knows no bounds. However, if you’re more motivated and maybe getting sick of paying for other people’s food, go on and spend a dollar that will undoubtedly be paid back to you many times over in dinnertime savings.

Tags: $.99

Halloween C@rds

Michael (Admin) | Oct 30, 2008 Utilities

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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I’ve reviewed a couple of other iPhone apps that allow you to send “greeting cards” but so far Hot Chili Apps is the only one that’s gotten it right. Halloween Pumpkinizer is ok but you’re limited to sending a pumpkin picture. Stylem Media’s Greetings (formerly known as Stylem Greetings) was, at the time of the review, a large collection of the garbage that litters MySpace comment boxes. Not sure if anything’s changed there since I uninstalled that app a long time ago.

Halloween C@rds lets you create a truly customized greeting card. There are three different types of templates: pattern, picture, and photo. Currently there are 11 of each for a total of 33 templates, and the photo templates allow you to insert a photo into the card! Pretty cool. The templates all have high-quality images and they range from cute and cartoony to more serious and kind of morbid.

Text size, font, and color are customizable, and you can also set horizontal and vertical alignment. Some text effects would be nice here, like maybe dropshadow or outline because some of the templates make it hard to read your words, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anything to truly complain about in this app.

Some other future upgrades that I’d love to see would be more text color options, more templates, and more fonts. A lot of the fonts currently included look pretty similar, and a Halloween greeting card app could definitely benefit from some “scarier” typefaces.

Hot Chili Apps also makes Birthday C@rds and Love C@rds which obviously contain dramatically different template sets to serve their respective purposes. I’ll be reviewing those later as updates are released, but if you like sending greeting cards around for various reasons, any of these “C@rd” apps will do the job and do it well. $1.99 isn’t much to spend for this kind of thing and I’d even go as far as saying the photo templates alone are worth the price of admission.

Tags: $1.99, halloween

iDayZ

Michael (Admin) | Oct 30, 2008 Lifestyle

User rating: (7 votes, average: 3.14 out of 5)

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iDayZ is built to do one thing: use your Contacts list to give you sortable views of birthdays and anniversaries. I know, the built-in iPhone Calendar can do more or less the same thing, but to make that happen you would have to set reminders for each individual date and that takes effort.

With that said, it seems to me that iDayZ is meant to appeal to the lazy bastard in all of us. In a perfect world where people fill in contact information thoroughly, field by field, this app would work perfectly right out of the box for most users. It reads your contacts and imports anything with a date attached to it, which is what it’s supposed to do.

The big problem here (for me, anyway) is that I don’t live in a perfect world… I live in a world where a lot of my contacts have only first names and I have no idea when these people were born because I’m an inconsiderate prick who never bothers to ask about birthdays. Now I realize that dates have to be filled in and that’s not iDayZ’s problem, but a major point of contention for me is that iDayZ shows “(null)” instead of the first name when the last name is left blank. SO… if I want my mom’s birthday to say something other than (null) next to the date, I have to put in a first and last name. “Mom” just won’t cut it.

Another thing that’s glaringly absent is any kind of reminder system. Yeah yeah, I can do that with iPhone’s calendar. But I want iDayZ to remind me! I am a lazy bastard, after all. Even if the reminder is as basic as an icon badge to remind you that (x) important dates are looming, it would go a long way toward serving its purpose of preventing you from forgetting.

Despite these flaws iDayZ does provide some nice details on each date such as telling you what star sign and birthstone match the birthday or what traditional material matches the anniversary. It also lets you view upcoming dates by chronological order, by age, by type, and by name. Hitting the “celebrate” icon in the detail view of any date also provides links to “buy a gift” or “send a card” but those just open pages on Amazon.com so they’re nothing to get too excited about.

I think Tannic has put together the foundation for a potentially great app here. If iDayZ would fix the (null) bug on one-name contacts and provide some way for the app to remind me of important dates, I think it would be totally worth $.99 or maybe even $2-$3 if they go all out on the bells & whistles. Right now, my feeling is that it’s just kind of… ehhh. It’s not great, but it’s ok.

Tags: $.99

Idea Generator

Michael (Admin) | Oct 30, 2008 Productivity

User rating: (3 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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Idea Generator is pretty funny. If you were paying attention during the dotcom boom about 8-10 years ago, you might remember The Bullshit Generator which would spit out enterprisey-sounding boardroom nonsense with the click of a button. Idea Generator plays off the same concept but applies a much different vocabulary that’s geared towards coming up with “creative” business ideas.

The Directors Bureau Special Projects took the time to create a fancy three-dial interface that you can spin randomly dial-by-dial with finger swipes or all at once by pushing the button with the arrows on it. You also get to customize the word lists to suit whatever area you need inspiration for. If inventing a new product or service isn’t your thing, just edit the word list or put in a whole new set if you’re truly motivated.

Each individual dial can also be locked if you want certain words to stay put, but if there’s one thing I wish was easier it would be setting the dials to specific words. As it is right now, if you want a word… let’s say… umm… “SEX TOY”… to be on the right-side dial, you have to keep spinning it randomly until it appears. This isn’t too convenient so hopefully it will be addressed in a future update.

That’s really my only complaint about Idea Generator which, overall, is a fun toy to have around. It’s only $.99 and even though it may not be truly useful in a practical sense it definitely has the potential to get some laughs around the office.

Tags: $.99

Voice Changer

Michael (Admin) | Oct 29, 2008 Entertainment

User rating: (5 votes, average: 2.80 out of 5)

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As of today Voice Changer is on sale for $.99.
Normal price is $1.99.

Tomsoft’s Voice Changer does exactly what the name says… it changes your voice! Record something goofy, choose your desired sound effect, and then press the Play button to hear your voice warped with the effect of your choice.

There are currently eight different ways you can mess with your recordings:

• Helium
• Alien
• Sci-fi
• Mouse
• Slow Down
• Speed Up
• Echo
• Evil Demon

They’re all fun to play around with, but my personal favorite is Evil Demon because it can make you sound like the super-deep voice you hear in movies when a girl gets a phone call from the psychopath who’s fixing to chop her head off.

You can save your altered recordings for playback later which is good, and Voice Changer’s App Store page says that soon you’ll be able to email those recordings after a future update gets released.

One thing I don’t quite get is why there’s a (fake) volume control pictured on the app… volume control would be great but this little “aesthethic” touch in the graphics really should be taken out until it becomes an actual control (which is apparently in the works as well).

Something else to be aware of is that Voice Changer doesn’t like long recordings. I tried to make recordings of various lengths, and about two minutes was the longest one I was able to successfully create. Other recordings of three and five minutes (which I tried several times) couldn’t be saved because the app froze up, making the Stop button untappable.

Chances are you won’t want to make long recordings anyway because that means waiting a longer time for Voice Changer to crunch your audio with the desired effect. If you stick to recordings of one minute or less you should be ok.

I don’t know what I’d do with this app other than maybe use it to make some carefully orchestrated prank phone calls, but I could see kids really having a lot of fun with it (probably by making carefully orchestrated prank phone calls). Voice Changer can be a fun little toy in the right hands and it’ll be even better when the email function becomes available, so if you won’t miss a buck (or two, after the sale) go ahead and give it a try.

Tags: $1.99

KinWits

Michael (Admin) | Oct 29, 2008 Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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I’ve played a lot of iPhone puzzle games, and KinWits is the undisputed king of making me feel like a gigantic moron!

The goal is simple enough: move the little KinWits from the start of the puzzle to their respective places at the end of the puzzle. There are two rules, however, that make this game really tough.

a) KinWits will always move in the same direction as other KinWits of the same color

b) KinWits will always move in the opposite direction as different-colored KinWits

Ouch. Add in the fact that each level’s KinWits move as a unit (you can’t move them individually) and you’re in for some really challenging puzzles. Along the way there are squares that will change the color of your KinWits and if you can navigate those properly then you just might make it to the end of the level you’re on.

If you get stuck (and you will) there’s a handy reset button that you can use to start over, plus the funny little sound effects can be turned off if you’d rather listen to your own music while you’re playing.

Troutfly Software clearly put a lot of thought into this game and it’s pretty fun as long as you’re smart enough to figure out how to master the little KinWits. Casual puzzle players like me will find this game really frustrating really fast, but if you’re not a total dumbass and want something different, $1.99 is a reasonable price to pay.

Tags: $1.99, puzzle

Singing Pumpkins

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2008 Entertainment

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Singing Pumpkins is probably the best Halloween app I’ve reviewed yet! It shows a collection of very cute cartoon pumpkins that you can tap to make your own melodies or sound effects.

Each pumpkin has its own way of singing a note and occasionally yells something out of character just for fun, and if you actually possess some musical talent you might be able to cobble together a tune.

If you’d prefer Halloween sound effects over music, tap the music note in the bottom left corner and the pumpkins will drop the singing and switch to making spooky noises and saying things like “I vant to bite your neeeck” in a thick Transylvanian accent.

If you have or know any children, get this free app right now! I guarantee they will enjoy the hell out of it and some single non-parental adults (like me) probably will, too. I’m even thinking about incorporating this app into my Halloween costume if I can figure out how to waterproof my iPhone from the inevitable beer spills it’ll have to endure.

RAMDreams, the maker of Singing Pumpkins, doesn’t appear to have any other apps in the App Store right now but I’m already looking forward to whatever they come up with next.

Tags: free, good for kids, halloween, simple

Puzzoodle Halloween

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2008 Games

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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I was expecting Puzzoodle Halloween to be a total waste of time because the title screen is ass ugly, but it’s really a pretty impressive jigsaw puzzle app.

This free Halloween version of Fulltilt Interactive’s non-themed $2.99 Puzzoodle Jigsaw contains 20 jigsaw puzzles that, when completed, form the pieces of a bigger Halloween puzzle. As you work on each puzzle, just double-tap the individual puzzle pieces to rotate them and drag them to wherever you think they should go.

If you ever get stuck and can’t solve a puzzle, you can take a peek at what the finished product should look like or you can just throw in the towel and tell the app to solve the puzzle for you.

The thing that I found most surprising about Puzzoodle Halloween is the production quality. The graphics are top-notch, and even the options and help menus are super cool. I’m a major arachnophobic so all the little tarantulas decorating this app kind of freaked me out at first, but they weren’t so bad when covered with puzzle pieces.

These Puzzoodles aren’t exactly “easy”, so there’s a lot of playtime here that can definitely extend past Halloween. Older kids, like maybe ages 10 and up, could probably handle the workload but I’d bet that younger children would lose interest fast.

Fulltilt Interactive did a really nice job of using the Halloween season to show off what they’re capable of producing. Puzzoodle Halloween is free so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out, and if you love it to death you might actually decide to pay for the non-themed Puzzoodle Jigsaw which lets you make jigsaw puzzles out of your own pictures.

Tags: free, halloween, puzzle, traditional

HorrorScope

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2008 Entertainment

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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HorrorScope is an ad-supported and very quirky Halloween-style horoscope app. The predictions are goofy with just a slight hint of the death and misery that make Halloween such a popular “holiday”, but I wouldn’t recommend it for kids because they just won’t get it.

On HorrorScope’s App Store page, Delicious Morsel says they will be providing new HorrorScopes daily for this week leading up to Halloween. After that I’m guessing the frequency may drop back down to its pre-Halloween-week level of twice weekly.

HorrorScope is free so go ahead and have some fun with these oddball predictions of your Halloween demise.

Tags: free, halloween

Free Hangman

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2008 Games

User rating: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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I’ve only tried one other hangman app (Hangman by JamSoft) and MobilityWare’s Free Hangman is definitely superior in just about every way.

In single-player mode you get to choose from a bunch of themed word lists, one of which is Halloween of course, and in two-player mode one of the “players” can type in their own word for the other player to guess.

In keeping with the wildly popular Halloween theme of publicly executing people who look different from you, Free Hangman’s victim is a spooky little pumpkin-headed scarecrow guy who is accompanied by a buff Chippendale dancer wearing an executioner’s hood. 

If the hanging Mr. Pumpkinhead creeps you out, there’s an option to change him to an innocuous stick figure. The Chippendale executioner stays, though.

When you’ve solved your word, you even get to see the definition by tapping a big blue question mark icon which opens an in-app Dictionary.com query to display the word’s meaning. Cool! Kudos to MobilityWare for thinking of everything.

Free Hangman is ad-supported but that shouldn’t scare you away from installing it. If ads bug you, just pay $.99 for the ad-free version. MobilityWare also makes a ton of other apps, most of which are either free or cost just $.99.

Tags: free, good for kids, halloween, traditional

Ghost Pop

Michael (Admin) | Oct 28, 2008 Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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Ghost Pop is a Halloween-themed finger-tapper similar to games like Alien Invasion, Dactyl, and Plasma.

Ghosts that look suspiciously similar to the ones first seen 18 years ago in Super Mario World fly around in front of Halloween backdrops and your job is to tap them all away before the timer runs out. It’s actually harder than it sounds because the ghosts don’t fly off-screen… they bounce around like they’re in a rubber room and that makes the ghost movements hard to predict.

The game includes some good sound effects and difficulty can be adjusted by changing the ghost size which is a nice feature. As you advance in this game the ghosts move progressively faster and increase in numbers, so if your kids are going to play you might want to make the little spirits nice and big in the Settings screen.

As usual, Jirbo, Inc. is earning ad revenue from this free game (fine) and they also put plenty of effort into recruiting you into the Jirbo Army (not so fine). I’ve already ragged on them for this in my review of MonsterMatch, their other free Halloween app, so I’ll just reiterate that it’s annoying and leave it at that.

Despite my general disdain for some of Jirbo’s development decisions I can’t deny that they do a good job where it counts. Ghost Pop’s graphics and sound are nice, the gameplay is good, and the option to adjust the size of the ghosts is a great idea that makes the game playable for all ages. It’s also free so it’s definitely worth trying in this week leading up to Halloween.

Tags: arcade, free, good for kids, halloween