iPhone App Reviews

iPoop

Michael (Admin) | Jun 18, 2009 Healthcare & Fitness

Ask most people if they admire their bowel movements before flushing and they’ll cringe and go ‘ewww no!’ but my personal estimate is that 99% of those poopers are also liars! You see, even if your doo-doo isn’t big enough to get your picture in the Guinness Book of World Records, most people are vaguely aware that it’s an indicator of what’s going on inside your body, plus it’s only natural to want to have a look at what just came out of your ass.

Despite iPoop’s semi-funny name, it’s actually a somewhat serious app whose aim is to help you better understand the big pile of stink you just left on your bosses desk, I mean, in the toilet. While you definitely shouldn’t be using any iPhone app to self-diagnose health conditions, the poo-related facts this app contains are kind of interesting.

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Tags: $.99, funny, weird

eyeFro

Michael (Admin) | Jun 12, 2009 Entertainment

I confess… my only motivation in grabbing eyeFro was to put a gigantic afro on my dog! And my only motivation in writing this review is it’s Friday so I’m feeling a little stupid and a little lazy, so this review will be a quickie:

eyeFro is is super simple – just take a photo or load one from the camera roll and *hope* that eyeFro will put the Fro in the right place. If the app can’t “dig” your photo (read: can’t figure out where to place the Fro) then you’re outta luck! But when your photo has the right amount of funk where people are looking straight at the camera with their eyes OPEN the results can be somewhat satisfying. If you want to change fros, give the iPhone a shake.

Personally I’d rather select and place the Fro myself ‘cuz I’m nutty like that, but I think I can appreciate what PunBros is trying to do with their Fro automation. The app isn’t perfect and has a bit of a tendency to crash when shaking to change fros, but if you’re super-bored and have a dollar to burn, then maybe eyeFro is what you’re looking for.

Tags: $.99, funny, photo editing

Q&F: FantasyLens

Michael (Admin) | May 28, 2009 Photo & Video, Quick & Free

There must be a zillion apps that let you stick photos behind silly templates, so why did I pick FantasyLens? I dunno… I guess I liked the icon? Plus I wanted something simple to mess around with on Memorial Day at my dad’s house.

Widgetize provides 24 templates with face cutouts to fuel your need for photo wackiness. Most of them look like old paintings that I’m guessing were chosen for their ‘public domain’ status (ie: the dev didn’t need to pay for them) but that shouldn’t stop you from giving the app a try. You have to take a new photo with every new pic you want to make… no choosing from the camera roll here… but if you can get the camera angle and distance just right it’s possible to produce a pretty seamless photo fake.

The seamlessness is courtesy of several controls for adjusting image settings like brightness, contrast, and saturation, and it’s also possible to undo/redo/reset/save. These features are a big part of why FantasyLens is worth downloading; the app is by no means perfect…  app rotating/resizing is more or less absent… but if you just wanna goof off there’s no harm in trying this one out.

For the record, the kids at my dad’s house LOVED FantasyLens. Their parents didn’t give a crap but the 8-year-olds just went ga-ga for it, just in case you (a) don’t mind them passing around your iPhone, and (b) need to keep them occupied for a while.

Tags: free, funny, photo editing

Hot Dog Down a Hallway

Michael (Admin) | May 14, 2009 Games

Ok… I have no idea what the developers at Metaversal Studios are smoking… but I WANT SOME!! Hot Dog Down a Hallway is a hilarious game that would totally be #1 if Obscure Sexual Innuendo were an App Store category. If you’re unfamiliar with the hotdog expression… ummmm… I think I’ll let Urban Dictionary do the explaining!

Getting back to Hot Dog, it’s a surprisingly fun game where your goal is to launch a hotdog as far down a hallway as possible. First you have to “poke a pig” (literally), preferably when the adjacent meat grinder is at maximum power, and after the pig leaps into the grinder a very happy-looking sausage comes flying out. How far down the hallway your weiner goes is, in my estimation, 90% luck and 10% skill, but it’s still a funny and addicting way to pass some time.

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Tags: $.99, funny, mature, weird

Q&F: F-MyLife

Michael (Admin) | May 1, 2009 Entertainment, Quick & Free

If you’ve never been the website FMyLife, it’s kind of like Twitter for losers who just can’t get a break… people post very short anecdotes about how F’d their lives are, always ending with the abbreviated mantra “FML”, and then the rest of the world votes on whether the person’s life is truly F’d or if they got what they deserved. A typical FML goes like this:

Today, I got kicked in the face at a soccer game. Everybody clapped. FML

Most are two or three sentences, but you get the idea. F-MyLife by enormego is one of several iPhone versions of the FML website (not sure which is “official”, if any) and if you enjoy basking in other people’s misery this app is a must-have! I personally believe that at least half the FMLs posted on the site are fake, but eh whatever… it’s entertaining and the app lets you vote and read comments, so if you need yet another time waster then grab this freebie. Posting and commenting aren’t available yet, but will be soon.

Tags: free, funny

Q&F: I Can Has Cheezburger

Michael (Admin) | Apr 9, 2009 Lifestyle, Quick & Free

Just a couple of days after I started iPhone App Reviews last summer I reviewed an app called LOLCats which I thought was one of the dumbest things I’d ever seen… and I still think it’s dumb! …and ever since then I’ve stayed away from I Can Has Cheezburger because I figured it was more or less the same thing: a parade of stupid cat photos labeled with big block letters and intentionally horrendous spelling.

Recently, though, I was so bored out of my skull that I broke down and grabbed Cheezburger… and whaddya know… it’s hilarious! Yeah, it has those frakkin’ cats in it, but it also gives you the choice of browsing stupid pics from a bunch of other sites like I Has a Hotdog! (dog pics), FAIL blog (awesome), Pundit Kitchen, Graph Jam, and a few other more obscure photo collections.

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Tags: free, funny

iBurps – Classic

Michael (Admin) | Mar 5, 2009 Entertainment

Uhhh… is there a support group for people who are inexplicably drawn to iPhone apps that digitize bodily functions? If there is, they should make me their president! iBurps – Classic is another in a long line of disgusting noisemakers that most of the human race regards as crass and obnoxious, but at least this one has a small surprise built into it that makes it more fun than some of the other apps in the genre.

The first thing any belching fan should know about iBurps is that it has a pretty good selection of burps in it… 16 in all, including such gems as Room Shaker, The Alphabet, Excuse Me-eeeee, Wake Up the Kids, and World Record Holder. Even though a lot of them sound kind of similar (it’s belching, after all), some of these gaseous eruptions are actually pretty amazing for their sheer intensity! If Randy Jackson from American Idol were judging the belcher, he’d definitely be saying that was hot baby, yeeeeah dog.

The suprise that NextStream Media put into iBurps is the ability to record your own burp. Truth is you could record pretty much anything you want, but if you’re playing with this app chances are you’re eager to test your, uh, “skillz”, against the app’s resident burping pro. You only get one recording slot, though, so if you capture a big one you’d better be sure your next belch will beat it before hitting Record again.

It’s hard to demand much from apps that burp and fart and puke and all that, but the one thing this app needs to fix is the sound quality. Lack of volume isn’t the issue here… it’s that the belches are so powerful that it sounds like a little bit of distortion got recorded as well. I did turn my iPhone volume down in hopes that would smooth things out, but it didn’t so that’s a fairly clear sign that the recordings themselves need some adjustment.

If the sound quality issue can be addressed, this could possibly be the funniest – and most disgusting – collection of belches ever assembled (a distinction to be proud of if there ever was one!). Even as it is right now, though, there’s still some very inappropriate fun to be had if that’s what you’re into.

I normally put the video before the screenshots, but this one’s just a little bonus to show that anything boys can do, cute teenage tomboy girls can probably do better:

A classic clip from America’s Got (no) Talent

Tags: $.99, funny

BellyButton

Michael (Admin) | Mar 4, 2009 Entertainment

I once read an article about how some girl had a running competition with her co-workers to see who could show off the weirdest iPhone app at every meeting, so before heading over to the conference room she would go to the App Store and find the strangest app possible to out-weird the competition. I don’t know if this is a common practice, but if you have similar contests in your workplace try arming yourself with BellyButton! Chances are you’ll walk away a champ.

BellyButton is kind of like Wooo Button… it’s pointless, bizarre, and strangely amusing. You get to choose from seven different navels, one of which is an orange (!), and match them up with five different voices. Each bellybutton type defaults to a particular voice, like the hula belly is paired with the voice of Female 2, and when you tap or tickle the belly it jiggles and laughs! Yep. It jiggles. And it laughs.

You can change the laughter if you’re more entertained by the thought of a girl with a huge beer gut or some other odd combo, and there’s a Roulette Mode that will throw in a fart here and there which makes the giggling just that much funnier.

What I’d like to see in future updates are more bellies and more variety in the laugh tracks. How about a pregnant belly? One with tattoos, maybe? And the available laughter is kind of funny, but more is always better.

ch-apps did a decent job on BellyButton, but I think even they would have to admit that this is definitely a “niche” kind of app… some people will roll their eyes at it and go “omg wtf”, while others will think it’s the funniest app ever made. Does that mean it’s worth a buck? Well… if you’re in the running to win some kind of screwy office pool, definitely! And if not, then you’ll just have to decide for yourself what an occasional chuckle is worth to you.

Tags: $.99, funny, pointless

Zit Picker 2: Your Friends

Michael (Admin) | Feb 26, 2009 Entertainment

Some iPhone apps are essential to daily life, some are addicting, some are idiotic… and some, like Zit Picker 2: Your Friends… are just plain hysterical!

Apparently Zit Picker 1 wasn’t on my radar when it was released, but there’s no way it could have been cooler or funnier than Zit Picker 2. Candywriter has taken the iPhone’s two-finger “pinch” motion and repurposed it in a bizarre “game” where you relive your adolescence by popping big nasty zits. I know it sounds really gross, and it kind of is, but it’s also funny as hell.

Zit Picker 2 comes with a default face named Veronica to torment with acne, but as the title of the app suggests it’s waaaaaaay more fun to pop (or not pop) whiteheads as they grow on your friends’ faces. I tried to get my brother and his soon-to-be-wife to volunteer to be the main characters in my zit picking adventure but they weren’t having it. Bastards! In the end I settled for Brad and Angelina, two people who (I think most would agree) could use a little less perfection in their annoyingly perfect and zit-free lives.

After selecting the Perfect Couple from my camera roll, Zit Picker told me to tap areas where zits should start appearing. I put a bunch of acne target areas on their faces and on Angelina’s bare shoulders and arms, but I guess this app is even more merciless than I am because it demanded more zit zones! Cruel… but sure why not!

After laying enough zit targets on the photo, I started the game and big white pimples started to emerge in the areas I marked. The pace picked up pretty fast as I struggled to keep up with my zit popping duties, and while this game isn’t what I’d call “addicting” in the traditional sense it’s definitely high in entertainment value.

I can’t think of much to complain about with Zit Picker, but I suppose it would be cool if Candywriter could work in some more serious gameplay. As it is, the “game” of popping whiteheads is more funny than fun, so a little level-based gameplay with a global scoreboard might take this app to the next level of Awesomeness. Aside from that, my only other real gripe is that the high score board only allows arcade-style initials (which you have to zit-pop in order to enter!). If some kind of global scoring were introduced, I’d definitely want to put in a full name.

It takes a lot for me to literally “LOL” at iPhone apps, but Zit Picker 2 did the trick. It’s hilariously creative, nicely assembled, and as long as you can avoid offending people who really do struggle with skin problems it’ll earn a long-term spot on your iPhone just by virtue of how sick and funny it is. If laughing and grossing people out is your thing, this may be one of the greatest $1.99 purchases of your life.

edit: I’m now realizing that Zit Picker isn’t too good at handling photos unless they’re portrait-sized, meaning it will stretch landscape photos vertically to fill the screen. That’s gotta be fixed! Best-case scenario would be the ability to zoom or reposition odd-shaped pics.

Tags: $1.99, funny

iVomit Mobile

Michael (Admin) | Jan 29, 2009 Entertainment

Fart apps have been running rampant in the iTunes App Store for a little over a month now, and just when you thought iPhone software just couldn’t get any classier… iVomit Mobile comes along to crash the party!

It comes equipped with 20 sound effects that all sound pretty genuine but, surprisingly, that’s not really the highlight of this app. Nooooo, iVomit’s entertainment value isn’t in what you hear, it’s in what you see. Don’t get me wrong, it’s funny to listen to… not quite as funny as listening to a sputtering asscrack, mind you… but still funny nonetheless. It’s also every bit as disgusting and, thanks to the sick ingenuity of the folks at Magnificent Library, pressing the “Hurl Now!” button also results in various types of puke getting splattered across your iPhone screen!! Press it five or six times and your precious phone will be completely covered in virtual chunks! Pretty sweet.

That’s pretty much all this app does, but if bodily functions make you giggle like a schoolgirl then iVomit Mobile is a must-have. $.99 doesn’t seem too outrageous for an app of this quality and, like I said earlier, it’s more about what gets splattered on your screen than what’s coming out of the speaker. Just be glad InfoMedia’s iFart Mobile doesn’t do the same thing.

Tags: $.99, funny

Singing Cat

Michael (Admin) | Jan 8, 2009 Entertainment

I installed Singing Cat thinking it would be the dumbest iPhone app on the planet, and it definitely qualifies as dumb… but it’s also kind of funny! I guess it would fall into that class of apps that are basically a cheap laugh, then after about five minutes it gets old and you forget about it. Think Wooo Button and Peanut Butter Jelly Time.

Singing Cat is basically a picture of some dude’s cat that moves his mouth to sounds picked up by the iPhone’s mic. The thing about this app that surprises me is the quality of the mouth animation… it’s way better than I was expecting! Honestly, I thought it would be like a ventriloquist’s doll where the mouth moves up and down in a single piece, but I can tell that Gigabyte Solutions Ltd. put some effort into making the cat’s mouth move as smoothly as they could. The cat even blinks at you which is a nice touch.

For most people, Singing Cat will have a pretty short shelf life, but in the right hands I think it could be set up as a prop in some mildly amusing pranks and maybe even diffuse a hostile situation. Imagine you’re screaming your guts out at someone and they hold this app in front of your face while you’re yelling… the cat will be mimicking your every word and, unless you’re on a truly murderous rampage, you just might break down and laugh.

Worth a buck? Ehhh… to some, sure. Cat fanatics, especially those who have a cat like the one in this app, will probably love it to death. Dog people like myself, not so much, but even so it’s still pretty funny.

If cats annoy you, Gigabyte Solutions also sells this app in other varieties: dog, monkey, camel, orangutan, and snowman.

I normally post a full gallery of app screenshots below, but this is pretty much all there is!

Tags: $.99, funny, useless

Pull My Finger vs. iFart Mobile

Michael (Admin) | Dec 16, 2008 Entertainment

Finally! Apple has thrown open the floodgates. Say yes to one “fart” app and you say yes to all of them. Let’s take a look at two of the most promising players in the appalling and newly-minted Fart genre.

First of all, kudos to InfoMedia, Inc. on choosing toilet paper as their App Store icon. What else would they choose? A skid mark? An ass with lines coming out of the crack? They know not to push their luck with the uptight guardians of the App Store, so toilet paper is a safe and smart choice.

iFart Mobile – Fart Machine for All Ages delivers 20 farts that range from quick toots (“Butt Socket”) to longer marathon farts (“The Wipe Out”). Some of the farts, such as Poker Dealer and Splatter, sound very similar, but there are still enough different kinds of farts to keep you, your family, your coworkers, and every stranger you meet thoroughly entertained.

The real strength of iFart Mobile is in its Sneak Attack mode. Sneak Attack allows you to set a timer at the end of which your ass bomb will explode and, hopefully, everyone within earshot will either laugh ’til they cry or panic and evacuate the room. This feature works just fine when the iPhone is unlocked and the timer is visible, but the app claims you can lock your iPhone’s screen which isn’t entirely true. When locked, Sneak Attack tends to either go off after a longer delay than planned or it just fails entirely until you unlock. This bug isn’t crucial to having fun with iFart, but it could ruin a carefully orchestrated prank and leave you looking like the one who should be embarassed.

There’s also a Security Fart mode that will sound a fart alarm when someone moves your iPhone and a random fart when you tap “I’m feeling lucky”.

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Pull My Finger is the fart machine everyone’s been talking about ever since it got rejected by the App Store a couple months ago. I signed the online petition and even sent Steve Jobs an email begging him to order his App Store goons to allow Air-O-Matic’s masterpiece, and now that the Pro-Fart lobby has prevailed I can’t help but feel a swelling sense of pride every time I rip one into my jeans.

iFart Mobile has the edge in features, but there’s something to be said for Air-O-Matic’s artistic creativity. Pull My Finger doesn’t have a Sneak Attack or Security Fart, but it’s got some hilarious artwork that reminds us all that everyone needs to cut some serious cheese from time to time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a blushing bride, a treehugging weirdo, or a super-hip hiphop star… buttcracks just don’t care. And when you know the dam’s gonna burst, the best thing to do is put out a finger to be pulled before the real joke slips out.

Pull My Finger comes with a random fart function just like iFart, and it also includes a Chorus mode that will play every fart in succession until you make it stop. Don’t be surprised if you see Bart Simpson armed with this app while he commandeers Springfield Elementary’s PA system in a future episode! I firmly believe that’s exactly what Chorus mode was built for, and a medal should be awarded to the first real-life child (or adult?) to successfully pull off this feat.

My one beef with Pull My Finger is that it insists on accompanying a lot of farts with vibration. I totally get the metaphor, but Fart Purists like myself need to be able to turn this option off.

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So which one should you buy, iFart Mobile or Pull My Finger? That’s a tough one because both are great Fart Machines in their own right. I’d say the quality of the fart sounds between each app is pretty close with the edge going to Pull My Finger for a better and more disgusting variety. iFart’s Sneak Attack is great even despite the locked-iPhone flaw, and even though iFart’s “hazard” theme is funny I still say Pull My Finger dominates in the Style category.

If you could see yourself using Sneak Attack often and with success, get iFart. It’s a hilarious idea, kind of like a high-tech whoopee cushion, and could really embarass the crap out of your unsuspecting victims.

On the other hand, if running Sneak Attack farts doesn’t appeal to you, get Pull My Finger. The artwork is great, the fart variety is a little better, and if you let the Chorus mode run long enough you’ll have everyone in the room in tears, even the guy with an actual flatulence problem… although he might be crying for a different reason.

A lot of fart imitators are undoubtedly building their me-too apps at this very moment but, much like the Great Flashlight Flood of August 2008, it will be the pioneering development houses who reign supreme. Whether you choose iFart or Pull My Finger you really can’t go wrong and I have no doubt in my mind that it’ll be one of the best dollars you’ll ever spend in your life.

Tags: $.99, funny