iPhone App Reviews

Top 25: Tom’s Love Letters

Michael (Admin) | Feb 14, 2012 Entertainment

Tom’s Love Letters (Free) by Out Fit 7 Ltd.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Tom’s Love Letters is currently #18 in the Top 25 Free section in the App Store

Well, it’s Valentine’s Day which means that IAR is obligated by federal law to review something that’s at least a little mushy. Tom’s Love Letters is part greeting card sender, part cat-lover cuteness, and part Valentine song jukebox all rolled into one, brought to you by the makers of one of those “talking cat” apps you’ve probably seen in various corners of the pop culture universe.

Tom’s Love Letters is really just an animation of two hairy kitties who, with the tap of a finger, will share a nice feline smooch. Forget that the ostensibly male cat has no visible genitalia (I guess cats just aren’t that hung), it’s a sweet moment to be cherished by crazy cat ladies everywhere. There’s a music button that will toggle you between three different pop-ish songs (one can be heard in the video below) and blessed silence, and another button will let you tap out a message of kitty love on one of several different cat scenes that can be emailed, facebooked, or sent via MMS.

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Tags: greeting cards, valentine's day

Happy Valentine’s Day

Michael (Admin) | Feb 14, 2009 Website Stuff

…I guess! :/

[made with Love C@rds]

Tags: valentine's day

Kiss My Lips

Michael (Admin) | Feb 13, 2009 Entertainment

I love my iPhone! I take it to the movies, I take it out to dinner, I take it on long walks along the beach… I sleep with it… uhhh, this is starting to get creepy. But I have one last confession: I just kissed it four times. The first kiss was a simple peck, but by the fourth kiss I was practically licking the docking port! Ok, I made that last part up… mostly.

Kiss My Lips is an app that will get you to kiss your iPhone like an idiot. The iTunes description promises “sizzling kissing sensations” (read: vibrates when you kiss the screen) and that it’ll “make the world jealous” because you get to “kiss” Mr. Casanova, Sexy Lady, Serial Kisser, Dusky Beauty, and a whole bunch more imaginary personas that come with the app.

The whole thing is obviously ridiculous, but even so… it would be nice if the artwork for the different kissees weren’t limited to thumbails on the menu screen. You get all these nicely illustrated thumbnails of these people you’d totally nail if you were also living in a cartoon world, but when you tap on any of them you get the same lip-print screen for your big smooch! Bummer.

That’s pretty much all there is to Kiss My Lips. Unless your emotional issues are epic in scale and you feel that cold glass on your lips is better than nothing at all, this app isn’t gonna give you any sizzling sensations. Dammit!! BUT… it does have potential value in goofing on your iPhone-hating (or iPhone-jealous?) friends.

When you crack open your first beers of the night, make a bet that you’ll have your pal kissing your iPhone by the time they crawl home. Nine beers later, pull out Kiss My Lips and you’ll be gloating over your victory for weeks to come! If you think you can pull off this stunt with success, blow the $.99 for this app. Otherwise, your dollar is probably better spent elsewhere.

Tags: $.99, valentine's day

Valentine & Love C@rds

Michael (Admin) | Jan 20, 2009 Utilities

This app is called Love C@rds today, but its name will soon be expanding to “Valentine & Love C@rds” since Valentine-specific templates are going to be added before February 14th.

If you would like the chance to win this app (and others in the future), join my Facebook group which I’ve cleverly named “Win free iPhone apps“. Hot Chili Apps has generously donated 15 promo codes which I’ll be distributing to random winners every day for a week starting on February 1st.

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I said it when I reviewed Halloween C@rds, I said it when I reviewed Christmas C@rds, and I’m gonna say it again for Valentine & Love C@rds: Hot Chili Apps knows their stuff. I’ll confess that I haven’t tried every single iPhone greeting card app out there, but I’ve tried a few and I think it’s very safe to dub this C@rds series the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion. It’s that good.

As with the other themed versions of this app, you get to choose three different types of card templates: Pattern, Picture, and Photo. Pattern is mostly stuff that fills the screen with… well… a pattern or graphics of some sort, Picture is a collection of templates with photographic elements, and the thing that kicks the most ass is the collection of Photo templates that allow you to incorporate your own photos into your greeting card.

No matter which template you choose, text is about as customizable as it can get. You can add as many different lines of text as you need which means you can get creative with fonts, text sizes, colors, and positioning. Drop shadow is optional, and text is moved and resized with that two-finger maneuver that most of us iPhone geeks have grown accustomed to by now. The only obvious thing that’s missing is text wrap, so if you’re writing your boyfriend a long, weepy note you’ll have to hit “return” in the text editor where you want line breaks to occur. A way to automatically align my text horizontally would also be welcome, but unless you’re constantly creating greeting cards it’s probably not an issue.

Photos are also super easy to handle. When you place a photo into a Photo template, you can scale and resize any which way you damn well please with that same two-finger move that you use for text. It’s all incredibly well done and easy to use.

As of today this app includes 15 Pattern templates, 14 Picture, and 16 Photo templates for a grand total of 45… and since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, Hot Chili Apps will be adding even more templates before February 14th. Some of those new templates will be Valentine-specific, so if you buy the app today don’t be disappointed at the lack of “Happy Valentine’s Day” stuff! I haven’t seen them, but I know they’re coming.

As greeting cards go, Valentine & Love C@rds absolutely rules and I think it’s worth every penny of the $1.99 asking price. If you’re just too broke to spring the two bucks, join my newly-minted Facebook group and hopefully you’ll win a copy!

Tags: $1.99, greeting cards, valentine's day