iPhone App Reviews

MyClockRadio, aka iReveil

Michael (Admin) | May 1, 2009 Lifestyle

User rating: (5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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I remember being kind of disappointed last summer when the iPhone 3G was first released because it didn’t have a radio tuner. Why? I dunno! I never listen to the radio, but for some reason I wanted it. Then came the flood of internet radio apps which seemed like a good enough substitute but there was still something missing… what if I wanted to wake up to the radio instead of one of the iPhone’s built-in ringtones?

Apparently Alexandre Pestre also prefers waking up to the radio, so he built MyClockRadio for exactly this purpose. MyClockRadio comes equipped with a bunch of preset internet radio stations from several different countries… USA, France, and Germany among them… and it also lets you add your own internet radio URL if the one you want isn’t already listed. The app isn’t what you’d call “pretty” but it works as advertised when running on WiFi, and like a lot of internet radio apps things get pretty spotty on Edge.

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Tags: $3.99, internet radio

iBattleships

Chris J. | Apr 29, 2009 Games

User rating: (131 votes, average: 3.22 out of 5)

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Who else played Battleship when they were a kid? If so, then iBattleships needs no explanation. For those who never crossed paths with the classic two-player board game, I’ll explain. Two players secretly place five ships of varying sizes on a grid. They then take turns guessing at where their opponent’s ships might be. First to sink all of their opponents ships wins.

You can choose to play against the iPhone or against another person over wifi. Unfortunately there is no option to pass-and-play, which would be nice in cases where wifi isn’t present or the other person doesn’t have an iPhone.

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Tags: $3.99, Chris J.

Jailbreak App: iTypeFastR

Mike Lightman | Apr 28, 2009 Jailbreak Apps

User rating: (5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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You might not know it, but there’s an entire ecosystem of iPhone apps & add-ons ouside of Apple’s App Store. Apple ships the iPhone as a closed system. Meaning, you don’t have access to the glorious innerds inside. Thanks to a group of seriously smart folk, you can crack open your precious and dig around that sucker just like another computer. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart. You can theoretically screw things up, but a simple restore from official firmware & you’re back, good as new.

The process is called “jailbreaking” and it allows you to run all sorts of killer unauthorized programs. Like Cydia, an alternate app store, where you can find iTypeFastr, the subject of today’s review.

iTypeFastr is a replacement keyboard which says it can get your digits to fly by dedicating more real estate to the letters we theoetically use most. On their site, the devs say

An ‘E’ is 12,7% of all your touches, a ‘Q’ less then 0,1%. That’s 127 times more E’s than Q’s. They do not deserve the same screen real estate.

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Tags: $3.99, jailbreak app, keyboard

Baseball Game

Swain Valasek | Apr 19, 2009 Games

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

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I was all set to really dislike Baseball Game from Global Net Value Co Ltd after some rousing discussion over on the TA forums.  I mean seriously, who creates a baseball game and calls it…BASEBALL GAME??  Maybe Blizzard should change the name of Diablo 3 to ‘Action RPG’…that should really stir up the imagination.  Anyway back on topic, after spending time actually playing BG I have to say my original opinion was hasty.  This game is not like Baseball Superstars or 9 Innings Pro so if you’re looking for depth stick with those titles; for a light round of simple and fun baseball action however, one could start here.

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Tags: $3.99, baseball, Swain Valasek

The ABC’s of Punctuation

Michelle | Apr 15, 2009 Education

User rating: (5 votes, average: 3.20 out of 5)

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Even though I have a degree in Journalism, it’s been more years than I care to reveal since I was in any basic English class. I have made a living writing and consider myself pretty knowledgeable about punctuation, so the ABC’s in Punctuation seemed right up my alley. I’ve even gotten into a verbal bar fight once over grammar. Yeah, that’s right, I’m that kind of girl.

I couldn’t wait to take the quiz over punctuation to see just how sharp my skills are. Well, I must say, they are not as sharp as I thought. Noah Lukeman has done a great job on this one! It covers periods, commas, semicolon, dashes and parentheses, the hyphen and the colon. There is a lot of information covered in this app.

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Tags: $3.99

App Sale: iEggs

Michael (Admin) | Apr 10, 2009 App Sale Alert, Games

User rating: (3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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iEggs feels like it’s somehow related to Easter because there are eggs in it, but it’s really not… it’s still mildly amusing, though! The object is to jump eggs upward to a nest by way of tray-toting birds who fly back and forth.

You get 10 eggs, and if you miss a tray as you tap your way up, your egg will probably drop into the water below and it’s on to the next one. Sometimes you get lucky and a passing bird will catch it, thereby giving you a second chance, but the birds don’t give a crap if you make it to the global scoreboard so you just gotta get lucky.

iEggs is well-produced and has nice sound and graphics. Permeative Technologies normally charges $3.99 for it and their “Easter Sale” will probably be ending soon, so grab it for free while you can!

Tags: $3.99

Silly Songz

Michael (Admin) | Apr 8, 2009 Music

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

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Email greeting cards have been a pretty huge industry since the day when environmental hero Al Gore invented the internet, but for some reason audio cards never really caught on. Spazzles is trying to change that, but instead of adding a personalized recording to a greeting card image, they’re adding that personalized recording to the end of a goofy song instead.

Silly Songz is a semi-schizophrenic collection of original music that’s half nice and half craaaazy, and you get to append a 15-second recording to the end of the song you choose. Some of the nice songs deliver messages like don’t be sad, get well, I love you, etc. The crazy songs are far less kind and deliver messages like you’re dumped, quit calling me, let’s golf and drink beer, and my personal favorite, “I got diarrhea”.

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Tags: $3.99, greeting cards

SET

Swain Valasek | Mar 11, 2009 Games

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

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Up next is the mind-expanding SET from Pockent LLC.  This game was invented in 1974 by Marsha Jean Falco and now exists in several formats; the iPhone is the latest platform to feel the love. 

The goal is quite simple and will remind some folks of those tests you used to take in elementary school to see how ‘gifted’ you were.  You have to find ‘SETs’ of 3 out of 9 total cards with specific characteristics.  At the basic setting this is how many symbols (1-3), type of symbol (oval, diamond, squiggle) and color (red, green, purple).  The advanced setting adds 12 total cards and a shading (solid, striped, outlined).  A set then consists of 3 cards in which each individiual feature is the same for all…or different for all.  When you make a set, typically all 3 cards are removed and new ones take their places such that there’s never 2 of the same card onscreen at once.  For example the cards ’1 green solid squiggle’, ’2 green solid squiggles’ and ’3 green solid squiggles’ are a SET as their features are uniformly alike (all green, all solid, all squiggle) while the cards ’1 green striped diamond’, ’1 red solid oval’ and ’1 purple outline squiggle’ are also a match as their features are uniformly different.

The developer did their best to spice up this simplistc format with a few game modes, each playable in basic or advanced:

• Classic – find 10 sets in the shortest time possible.  You aren’t penalized for taking all the time you want but the point of course is to challenge yourself to beat your best time.
• Puzzle – find all the sets (4-6) in a static (cards are not replaced) set of cards as fast as you can.
• Timed - find as many sets as you can in 1 min with each set adding a few seconds (literally) back to the clock. 
• Arcade – find as many sets as you can in 1 min but sets add 30 more seconds each time.  Very similar (way too similar actually) to Timed but as you might expect a bit easier.

So let’s see, what this game is: mentally engaging and great for short stints in waiting rooms etc.  What this game is not: terribly exciting.  In fact it’s on that fine line between good puzzler and boring puzzler.  Possibly more interesting than the game itself is the story behind it’s creation; have a read if you’re keen to know.

I could see the game being more fun with multiple people present to help find the sets so that’s something to keep in mind if you have kids around for example.  In fact, kids might be the best candidates for this game period as the whole concept of pattern-matching seems appropriate to the younger population.  What’s sorely missing in general is the ability to save games in progress.  Basically if you have a great game going but don’t have time to finish you can pause but if you exit the app it’s kaput.  It might also be fun to see a rank attached to scoring in certain time ranges (for example SET Rookie or SET behind the ears or SET us up the bomb or SET-sational) which would give you more incentive to try and beat your score.  Speaking of score, a global scoreboard would of course be welcome.

For the price being asked, I think it would be good to offer a lite version so people can see if this is the kind of casual puzzler that’s worth the dough.

Version reviewed – 1.0.1
Reviewed on – iPhone 3G 8GB 2.2.1
Global scoreboard – no
iTunes music support – yes if you completley disable ingame sound
Lite version available – no

Tags: $3.99, cards, casual, puzzle, set, Swain Valasek

Chess Pro and Chess Lite

Michael (Admin) | Feb 20, 2009 Games

User rating: (2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

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Chess is one of those games that, software development-wise, can only get so good… no matter what platform you’re playing on, chess is chess and the game doesn’t change much. This means that what separates great chess games from average chess games is in the Bells & Whistles department, and Chess Pro totally rules in that area. Chess Lite not so much, but that’s why it’s called Lite and costs 1/4 of the Pro pricetag.

99Games went all out on Chess Pro and it shows. It comes with two different 3D-ish boards, wood and metallic, and if the 3D view is just too hot for you to handle there’s the option of going with the same 2D view that’s found in Chess Lite.

Like any good chess game there are varying difficulty levels and the Easy mode is so easy that even *I* can beat it! It’s almost like the Easy computer player wants you to win. I can’t really speak to whether or not the Medium and Hard levels are sufficiently Medium and Hard… all I can say is they kicked my amateur ass… but you won’t see the computer making the same suicidal moves that you’re treated to in Easy mode.

Chess Pro is also equipped with options galore… choose to play as White or Black, play in Two Player mode vs. another human, watch the computer play with itself… I mean… against itself in Demo mode, and you can also get hints on possible moves during the game if you’re hopelessly screwed.

Unfortunately neither of these apps is equipped to teach a complete novice how to play the game, but by default both Pro and Lite will show the legal moves that each piece can make when you select them in the heat of battle. It’s not exactly a clinic, but it’s definitely a good start for those who want to learn how to play the game.

The thing I like most is that Chess Pro (but not Chess Lite) includes two chess variants: Suicide and Losers. In these games the object is to lose your pieces before the other player does! Sweet, definitely my kinda game.

In terms of value, Chess Lite is pretty frakkin’ lite and I’d probably be inclined to try out one of the many free chess apps that are out there before laying down my buck. The board is nothing to get excited about and it doesn’t offer multiple  difficulty levels. It does show legal moves and it allows two-player mode but that’s about all it has going for it.

However… if you’re a total chess nerd and have posters of Bobby Fischer on your bedroom wall, Chess Pro is easily worth $3.99! It has all the features you’d expect in a premium app, the chess boards and pieces will win just about any beauty contest, and the Suicide and Loser variants are awesome bonuses for when you get tired of chasing kings. In other words, if you’re going to pay for a chess app you can’t go wrong with this one.

Tags: $3.99, chess, puzzles, traditional

Make My 3d

Swain Valasek | Feb 17, 2009 Photo & Video

User rating: (2 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)

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One of the most unique apps I’ve seen to date is Make my 3d from iKKooN (Fred Courtielle).  The core function of the app is to map a person’s photograph onto a 3D model of a human head then grant you comic license to make it look as silly as possible.  The tertiary function is to then have fun with your creation and why not, it’s an amazing thing to render heads using nothing but your iPhone!

This app very impressively whittles a complicated process down to an interface easy enough for anyone to use.  Basically you’ll need 2 photos of your victim, er subject: front-facing and right side (a traditional mug shot) and as neutrally lighted as possible (the less shadows the better).  You can take the photos from within the app or pull from your camera roll.  Once you’ve selected your photos you tell the app about the relative dimensions of the head and locations of the eyes, ears, nose and mouth using stylized onscreen markers.  The app then forms (well deforms I guess) the head mesh and applies your photos as textures and voila, instant 3D head.  You can just stop there if you were trying for a realistic representation but you’re encouraged to go on and just be silly.  You can select from several bizarre head deformations, crazy coiffures, goofy hats, piercings and shades.  You can also set the color for skin, background and all accessories plus choose a light source.  When done (and the app renders surprisingly fast) you can have fun zooming and rotating, take screenshots and of course save the project to show it off later.  Quick note, the website linked above containts some excellent (and necessary) tutorial videos.  Worth noting is the app can’t render the original person’s hair in 3D so they end up bald out of the gate but you can get the color and a general texture map of it by playing with the head dimensions a bit.  At any rate, if you’re trying for an accurate render (and I found this more interesting than the comic stuff but that’s just me), it would be ideal to find a bald subject to begin with (or a baby perhaps).

No app is above gripes and here’s mine (some big ones this time).  The included hair choices are fine for simple effect but don’t cover many styles and there are no feminine options.  Second, a painstakingly long intro plays every time you load the app.  I’ve got no problem with self-promotion but after we’ve sat through it once, we really should have the option to disable it.  Third, it can be quite difficult and frustrating to select the tiny little markers for eyes, nose, face, etc so I’d love to see this improved somehow, perhaps with a menu to select them instead.  Finally and incredibly unfortunately is that the app simply crashed a lot, often causing much lost effort.  The crashes mostly occurred while using the fullscreen 3D preview, even after a fresh reboot (note to developer I’m on 2.2.1 firmware if that makes any difference).  The preview mode itself was a bit buggy, often extremely laggy to input and becoming ‘jittery’ where the model just flickered back and forth uncontrollably.  This is really bad as it’s the primary way you’d ever show this off to someone since to my knowledge there’s no way to export your creations to a common 3D format.  I also had some crashes when trying to save which is very frustrating.  Matter of fact it crashed so much I wasn’t able to explore much of the comic features so the pictures below were as good as I could do before the risk of throwing my phone against the wall set in.

So in summary, this is a wildly creative and an absolutely bizarre use of the iPhone and…I really dig it.  It has niche appeal, the creation process is genuinely fun and the price was reduced from $6.99 to $3.99 in the time I spent reviewing it, sweet!  However, I cannot possibly recommend it until a new version comes out with some stability fixes at the very least.  To the developer, I’d be glad to post an update if you let us know when a new major version is released as I would really like to see the app succeed.

I will say this and mark my words if this prediction comes true; if the author polishes this up and adds meshes for dogs and cats this app will go freakin’ gangbusters.

Version reviewed – 1.0

Tags: $3.99, 3D, make my 3d, Photo & Video, Swain Valasek

Girls Skip vol.01

Michael (Admin) | Feb 17, 2009 Games

User rating: (No Ratings Yet)

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I’m just gonna come right out and say it: Japanese anime girls are hot!! There’s just something about the helmet hair and the gigantic bug eyes that compels me to go to extraordinary lengths to look at them, and that’s what Girls Skip is all about.

Girls Skip is a deceptively difficult puzzle game where the object is to eliminate 40 out of 48 tiles, all the while revealing more and more of the hot cartoon girl hidden beneath the puzzle board. Don’t get the wrong idea now… the girls are wearing clothes. I know… darn! If you take a look at the app’s iTunes page you’ll see one of the anime babes lounging beneath the puzzle in a yellow bikini, but I’m sure that’s as racy as it gets.

The rules of the puzzle are simple enough, but it took me a full 45 minutes to get past the first level! I wasn’t THAT drunk when I started goofing with Girls Skip, but it took me a while to get used to this very basic kind of puzzle-solving.

It goes something like this: tap a tile and it goes away, and depending on what you tapped you can then tap certain other tiles in the surrounding area. Tap a 0 and you can tap tiles that are positioned diagonally from the 0. Tapping a 1 will let you tap any tile that’s touching the 1. Tap a 2 and you can only tap tiles that are 2 squares away, and so on and so on. If you can tap 40 tiles you advance to the next anime girl, but if you find yourself in a spot where you can’t tap anymore the game is over.

This really isn’t that hard of a puzzle game, so if you have more surviving brain cells than I do (and I know you do) it won’t take 45 minutes to knock out 40 tiles. It will, however, be harder than it looks.

If you take a look at the non-puzzle screenshots below you’ll see that Daidai Inc. didn’t put much into the game design, but it’s still pretty fun to play if puzzles are your thang. $3.99, though, does feel like a bit much on the pricetag, so if you’re on the fence I’d suggest trying the free version before coughing up the cash. The version I played is vol.01, and there’s now a vol.02 in the App Store as well which appears to be the same puzzle but with different anime pics.

Tags: $3.99, puzzle

Knot Guide

Swain Valasek | Jan 30, 2009 Utilities

User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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• My single beef is that the 1.6 version kept the buttons at the bottom ‘hot’ so you could always back out to the logical beginning no matter how far you were into a knot.  1.7 gave us favorites but also took away this ‘hot button’ behavior which IMO unstreamlined the app a bit.  I emailed the developer about it (who have been great and very responsive all around) and it looks like they agree!  So we might see this functionality returned in a nearby update.

Tags: $3.99, knot guide, knots, Sports, Swain Valasek