DailyIphoneApp
Latest
Daily iPhone App: Plume is a simple and charming social network-powered reader
Plume was recommended to me a while back by fellow TUAWer Brett Terpstra, and while it does look lovely on first site, it's one of those apps that really only shows its usefulness after a while. Plume is a reading app (currently for iPhone only) that pulls links and content automatically from your social networking timelines, so when your friends and follows link to blog posts and other content, Plume will pull out those links and re-organize them for you in an easy-to-read form. The functionality is similar to Flipbook on the iPad, but again -- this is an iPhone app, and it rolls up this content in a way that's so unique you kind of have to get used to it at first. Once you do figure it out, though, it's very impressive. The views are well-designed and very simple, and Plume makes it very easy to turn just a few free minutes out with your phone into a very productive catch-up session on what your friends are sharing around. I do still prefer to consume most of my content through an RSS reader on my couch with the iPad, but Plume is a great way to just pull up an app and have some popular content shown to you right away. Plume has been updated for the iPhone 5 already, and it's available now for $2.99.
Daily iPhone App: GPS4CAM adds geolocation to your DSLR photos
While many photography applications like iPhoto and Aperture can make use of GPS information in terms of grouping pictures by location, there aren't a lot of cameras that have built-in GPS receivers. Of course, that's not a problem if you do all or most of your photography with an iPhone, since all photos taken with the Camera app are automatically stamped with the latitude and longitude of the spot where the image was captured. But what do photographers do when taking photos with their favorite DSLR or compact camera that doesn't have a GPS receiver? That's where GPS4CAM (US$2.99) comes into play. The app, which doesn't require attachment to a cellular network or Wi-Fi during operation, is designed to capture your exact location at specific points in time. The workflow for using GPS4CAM is simple. At the beginning of a trip, whether it's a one-hour hike in the foothills or a 90-day expedition, you press a large green button to indicate to the app that you want to start capturing your location. There are four different settings for location capture: standard (every five minutes), energy saving (captured via GSM, requires a cellular signal), precise (every 30 seconds), or manual (you need to shake the phone to capture the location). %Gallery-164058% As you go about your trip, the app is capturing time and location information. At the end of your trip, you press an "Export" button to generate a 2D QR bar code, and then take a photo of the bar code with the same camera you've been using to take the photos. If you've captured a lot of images during your trip, the app may generate multiple QR codes, all of which you need to take photos of. Next, you move your thousands of photos from the camera to a folder on your Mac or PC. Developer Michael Diguet has written a desktop app for Mac and Windows that is downloadable for free. What does the desktop app do? It goes through the images from your camera, grabs the QR bar codes, and then matches the time stamp in the EXIF photo information data to time and location information stored in the QR codes. Each image is then updated with the GPS information. At the end of the process, you can import the images with the GPS data into your favorite photography app. In order to test-drive the app, I used while running some errands earlier in the week. My camera? A Canon PowerShot SX30IS "Super Zoom", with no built-in GPS capability. At each stop on my little trip, I took a picture, then shook the iPhone to capture the GPS information in GPS4CAM. The app vibrates the phone to let you know that it has done a GPS capture, so I was concerned when it vibrated twice (indicating a double capture) at a few stops. At the end of my errand run I "exported" the QR code and dutifully snapped a photo. The GPS4CAM desktop app is quite minimalistic, just asking for the location of the input and output folders for your photos. After creating a couple of folders, moving the images off of my camera and into the input folder, and then letting the app do its work, it took less than a minute to geotag all of the images. By the way, you can also look at maps of each trip -- that's shown in the main post image at the top of this review. A red dot indicates a location where that can be zoomed into to reveal other more precise locations, while a green dot is a single tag point. After importing those photos into iPhoto, I was happy to see that they did properly reflect the locations of where the photos were taken. That's going to save my wife -- the person in our household who does most of the organization and publishing of our vacation photos -- a lot of time, since she will no longer have to manually enter locations. GPS4CAM puts the photos of the QR codes into a special folder so you don't import them into iPhoto or Aperture, and also generates a .GPX (GPS eXchange Format) file if you want to throw that into Google Earth. GPS4CAM works flawlessly and quickly, and is an excellent addition to the app library of any photographer with an iPhone.
Daily iPhone App: Wizorb turns Breakout into an RPG
Wizorb is a title that originally came out on Steam, but it just recently arrived on iOS, and it's a nice one to have in our gigantic library. The game is a mix of breakout and the old 8/16-bit RPGs, and the combat is essentially the old Breakout game. You use a paddle at the bottom of the screen to knock a ball up into bricks and enemies above. Wizorb wisely never backs down from its 16-bit RPG style, so the graphics, the spells, and even the music are delightfully retro, and should be familiar to anyone who played similar RPGs during that era. The Breakout side of the game is solid as well. It can be a little unclear just what you're earning as you collect potions, coins or gems after breaking blocks, and the addition of spells like fireballs and an "alter" spell (which will push your ball in a different direction) can make things even more confusing. But as long as you keep the ball from falling offscreen, you'll be good. The controls on PC were probably a little better for this kind of gameplay. Swiping your finger across the screen constantly isn't the most fun thing to do. It's strange that the game doesn't have tilt controls, but that's probably a consequence of its PC heritage. All in all, Wizorb is a well-made retro game, and it combines these two seemingly disparate game genres in very interesting and fun ways. If you missed it on Steam, it's worth picking up on iOS, and there's plenty of content to bounce your way through. It's US$2.99 in a universal version, available right now. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Daily iPhone App: Cthulu Saves the World arrives from Xbox Live Indie Games
Zeboyd Games is a very impressive up-and-coming indie games company. They just released the third game in the Penny Arcade series on Xbox Live Indie Games to rave reviews. Cthulhu Saves the World is one of their earlier titles, and it did quite well on that same platform. It's a retro RPG in the style of 8-bit games such as Dragon Warrior or the original Final Fantasy games. But it's also a parody of these, in a way: your hero isn't a warrior of the light or a young lad finding his way in the world. It's Cthulhu, the legendary god of chaos from the series of horror stories by author HP Lovecraft. Cthulhu wakes up, and he isn't able to bring destruction to the world as usual. It's your job as a player, through a series of RPG cliches and a well-tuned combat battle system, to get him back those powers so he can be, well, Cthulhu. Cthulhu Saves the World is pretty great. It's a quality game, and a very nice addition to the iOS library. The one caveat I have is that the controls are slightly awkward. You swipe around the screen to move, and that can be kind of annoying if your finger slides in the way (not to mention that it's not very ergonomic). Swiping during menus can be unclear as well, although battles are all turn-based, so there's plenty of time to change a choice if you make the wrong one. At $1.99, however, Cthulhu Saves the World is priced super low, and there's a fair amount of content to enjoy and play through. The script is funny, the combat is solid RPG, and you'll enjoy following along with Cthulhu's story. Just be careful -- hanging around Cthulhu for too long might end up causing a little insanity.
Daily iPhone App: Avocado aims to connect couples on the go
In any marriage or romantic partnership, there are moments of agreement, negotiation, compromise and conflict -- but, above all, there has to be communication, digital or otherwise. The team behind the couple-centric new app and web service Avocado, which includes three couples, aims to facilitate that communication with easy one-to-one tools for messaging, photo sharing and collaborative task lists. The "less is more" ethos pervades the $1.99 Avocado app, so named because the avocado tree bears fruit in pairs. You simply sign up with two email addresses and a single password, and within minutes you can begin exchanging brief messages, photos, emoticons -- but only with that singular someone that the app repeatedly, annoyingly refers to as "your boo." The app comes in both iOS and Android versions, supporting notification alerts to make sure that you don't miss a moment; the web version provides a helpful archive. In some relationships, the shared (low-fi) checklist tool might be a lifesaver, although there are other options out there with more flexibility. When I suggested to my wife that we field-test Avocado, her response was "Really?... Do I need 'a fun new way to stay connected with the most important person in [my] life'? And is this fun new way kind of mushy and more about texture than taste, though it's really good mixed with lime juice and salt?" Yes, I allowed, we already have a full folio of digital points of contact, ranging from the simple SMS to the Twitter DM to the Facebook message -- even a phone call, if you're into that kind of thing. Sending an iMessage pings multiple devices and the Mac; you can build a private sharing spot with Glassboard if you want to. But there is one area where Avocado sells itself as a superior solution. Ever sent a text message to your significant other, then realized you accidentally sent it to your boss instead - or to your mom? Had a direct message that somehow lost its leading D and went live to the Internet instead of to your sweetheart? Yeah, we know. So there's something to be said for an app that makes the entire addressing process moot. By design, Avocado is point to point and person to person -- if you're in the right app, you're reaching your one and only. (Or, if we must, "your boo.") The core functions of Avocado may be pretty basic now, but the company has plans to add more features based on user feedback. If you haven't found that perfect way to connect digitally with that perfect person, maybe the Avocado app is for you. [hat tip Techcrunch]
Daily iPhone App: Catapult King is beautifully destructive
Catapult King lacks innovation on the surface, unfortunately. It looks like an Angry Birds clone in 3D, and that's basically what it is. I say "unfortunately" because I hope that won't keep you from giving it a look anyway. I saw this title for the first time at E3 last week, and while I am not a big fan of Angry Birds, I've really enjoyed Catapult King. It's a Chillingo-published title (as Angry Birds was originally, you'll recall), so it's got all of the polish that Chillingo os known for. The game just looks amazing. The graphics are clear and colorful, and there are a lot of nice touches, like art in the background of each stage that really adds a lot of depth and vision to the proceedings. You obviously control a catapult firing at soldiers on wooden towers, and your job is to bring the soldiers down with as few hits as possible. The game's fun and simple, but those graphics, along with the variety in the various levels, really make this one shine. There are freemium spells you can buy (a little lame, considering that the game also costs 99 cents), but I haven't needed them yet, and I'm having a lot of fun just hurling stones at the soldiers (who will happily gloat at you when you miss). The whole thing could use a bit more guidance, especially when aiming at various elevations, but Catapult King is a fun and cheap title that looks really, really good. It's universal, so you can grab it for iPhone or iPad today.
Daily iPhone App: Duckers is colorful fun for free
Duckers is a game we've been waiting for quite a while. I first saw it last year at 360iDev, where Retro Dreamer (the same guys behind iOS' Velocispider) showed it to me as a work in progress. But now it's all finished and available on the App Store as a free download. It's certainly a colorful title, with plenty of cute graphics and fun objects to find and collect as your duck drills into the ground. If anything, I'd say the game is almost a little too easy. While there are a growing number of obstacles to dodge the deeper you go, the gameplay is so casual that it's not too hard to line up your duck just right and grab tons of coins and gems on the way down. Given that it's a freemium title, however, it certainly seems like Retro Dreamer wanted to aim for a broad audience on this one, and I can't begrudge them that. Despite the very casual gameplay, Duckers is still a lot of fun for free, and there's no shortage of various things to find and earn as you play through the game, including lots of characters, special abilities and power-ups.
Daily iPhone App: Amoebattle does RTS right
Most takes on real-time strategy for the App Store have to corrupt the form in some way, yet some still turn out well (see Total War Battles for a a great RTS game that takes a different turn). But Amoebattle impressively does RTS as you expect it. You choose units, send them around exploring, and tap to attack or move through the fog of war in real-time. There are nine different unit types to be discovered during the campaign, and each has its own attributes and abilities. The graphics are cute and colorful, but the tactics are hard to master -- especially near the end, when the game has no shortage of challenges to overcome. Amoebattle is an excellent RTS title for Apple's touchscreen devices, something that a lot of RTS fans have dreamed about ever since the iPad was first announced. It's not perfect, but it doesn't skimp from RTS traditions, even on a mobile device, and it holds up to them well. The game is US$4.99, in a universal version, on the App Store now.
Daily iPhone App: MyTunes Pro makes your music sound better
MyTunes has been on the App Store for a little while. It's developed by SRS that uses that company's patented sound enhancement algorithms to make music sound "better." It's not completely clear what the algorithm does (as SRS wants to keep it secret), but basically, the tech boosts and lowers certain qualities in audio to make it clearer and more listenable. MyTunes Pro is the new version of MyTunes. I saw it in action at CES earlier this year, and it's now available for the iPhone and the iPad (here's the HD version). The biggest update is that you can use AirPlay directly with the app. This lets you push your iTunes library through MyTunes Pro's enhancer, and then kick it out to an AirPlay system. You'll also find new controls for a system called "TruSpeed," which will speed up or slow down your audio without changing the pitch (so you can listen to more podcasts in less time). A new "workout mode" lets you gather songs by tempo (BPS). The interface of the app has been updated as well. Unfortunately, it's still pretty laggy (and doesn't really feel like a native interface), but it is a little easier to navigate and use than earlier versions. MyTunes Pro is free to try, so if you just want to hear what it does to your music, you can download it and give it a try (you get 10 minutes a day, unless you pay an in-app purchase of US$6.99). It's an app that's of somewhat limited use, because you can only listen to music in your iTunes library. iOS doesn't let audio from services like Pandora or Slacker get processed. Still, if you listen to music coming off of your iOS device all day, and would like it to sound even better (or just want to have a really capable EQ to use on it), MyTunes Pro should do exactly that.
Daily iPhone App: Battleloot Adventure tweaks turn-based RPG combat
When I first heard about Battleloot Adventure, it was being compared to the great Battleheart game on iOS. That's a fair comparison given the way the game looks, but I think I have a much better one: old-school Final Fantasy, with a focus on combat. As you might have expected, Battleloot Adventure pares down the old turn-based RPG genre to its core -- there's not a lot of story here, and your adventurers just sort of stumble across each other within the first few missions, as you're taught the mechanics of fighting with a party. But once everything has filled out, Battleloot Adventure does well using the iPhone and iPad's touchscreen to bring the old Final Fantasy-style combat system to life. You have four party members, and each one is assigned a color, each of which is strong or weak against certain enemy colors. You can simply attack with one group member per round, or you can expend energy by pulling in other members in the same around. And there are also special attacks that each character can use (that will go off automatically). Just like in Battleheart, the game takes place across a series of combat challenges, and it's your goal to beat the bad guys, earning XP and loot. The biggest drawback here is that because the combat system takes center stage, it's also very complicated. This wouldn't be an issue if the UI was a little clearer, but unfortunately, it's not -- sometimes it's very hard to determine exactly what color an enemy actually is, or why a certain character just sits there breathing annoyingly loudly rather than fighting when you tap on them. All the game does in the way of explanation is in the tutorial, so if you don't pay attention and learn strategy fast, the game's depth won't really make itself apparent. That's too bad, however, because there is a really fun and interesting combat system here. If you can work past the game's sometimes unworkable UI, you'll find a lot of fun. Battleloot Adventure is available now, for 99 cents on either the iPhone or the iPad HD version (they are not Universal).
Daily iPhone App: WorldView+
It's no secret I'm fond of webcams from around the world, and I'd forgotten about a little gem I downloaded long ago: WorldView+. As far as these apps go, WorldView+ has possibly the best design of all of them. Also, like many other webcam apps, it has some missing cameras (although it touts 10,000). But I have yet to find one app with the most comprehensive camera lists -- all are a compromise. That said, WorldView+ is one of the more functional and attractive "compromises" out there. Plus, it looks great on the iPad or iPhone. The buttons at the bottom allow easy access to your bookmarks, perform a search, look near your current location for cameras, and discover random or featured cams. These are the basics, really. What distinguishes WorldView+ are little touches like providing a wealth of info around each camera -- Wikipedia articles, weather at that location and even an image taken during daytime (local to that camera), which is nice when you happen upon a camera that shows nothing but darkness. There are a number of streaming cameras set up, and a few that will provide a time-lapse view. For some reason WorldView+ missed a few cameras I found otherwise, and it seems to focus primarily on landscape cameras. World Live Cams had a few cameras I didn't find in WorldView+, but overall WorldView+ is a better app as it is more complete and packed with useful features. As with any properly-designed app, bookmarking cameras, finding info and basic searches are all done with a minimum of fuss. Map view is a joy to use, and it looks great. Zooming around the map, then into an image, then zooming into that image makes you feel a bit like transporting around -- or at least like you have access to a vast array of surveillance cameras. While there's always more that could be done with any interface (Tapbots apps do this well), the core functionality of most cam viewers is encapsulated within WorldView+ and all for a reasonable $2.99. If you like webcams, you'll really enjoy WorldView's features and design.
Daily iPhone App: WorldCard Mobile scans your business card collection
The paper business card may go away someday if innovative apps like Bump and Evernote Hello take over, but for now we're still dealing with these little chunks of cardboard. Of course, in almost all cases it's not the physical object we care about, but rather the data printed on the card. (Some exceptions are inevitable.) Getting those inky bits converted to actual bits is easy enough with your iPhone and the right app. My default tool for business card scanning has been CardMunch, which has a number of advantages: fast, ties in easily to parent company LinkedIn, accurate (using actual humans to do the card transcription) and free. Unfortunately, CardMunch's cloud dependency means that sometimes it can get backed up, and when you're sitting on an airplane with a stack of post-conference business cards to go through, it's quite likely useless. That's where the Penpower family of contact management apps comes into play. The flagship iPhone app is the US$6.99 WorldCard Mobile, and it picks up nicely where CardMunch leaves off. You can scan your cards neatly without any network connection, and all the OCR processing is handled locally on the phone. Additional features include the ability to copy an email signature and parse it into a contact record, which is a lot more useful than I thought it would be. How good is the OCR function? Well, you can test it yourself with the app's lite version (allowing three scans the first week, and one scan per week after that). In my evaluation, I'd give it a B+ compared to the intelligent transcription of CardMunch -- keeping in mind that CardMunch also makes mistakes on some cards. Given that it's working in disconnected mode, the slight loss in accuracy seems to be a reasonable tradeoff. What's a little harder to take is WorldCard Mobile's UI, which has the same weird aesthetic and hinky buttons as a lot of other utilitarian apps on the App Store. It compares unfavorably to CardMunch's clean look, and it's most reminiscent of the early versions of Readdle's apps (which have come a long way since v1, in fairness). The lite version will let you know pretty quickly whether the look will make you nuts or not. Penpower also has a WorldCard Contacts app, which lets you keep the card images alongside your contact records but omits the OCR tool; it's $2.99. There is an iPad version, too, which costs $14.99 and doesn't quite work as advertised with the iPad 2's onboard camera, per reviewers -- it's apparently not quite high-res enough for accurate recognition. If you're a frequent business card recipient and you'd like to be mobile-enabled, check out WorldCard Mobile; start with the lite version, and if it's useful you can fork over the $7 for the full build.
Daily iPhone App: World Live Cams
An app for webcams for our Daily iPhone App? I have to admit, I'm a webcam junkie. There's something about being able to peek in on places around the world that seems like the future to me. Slothcam has always had a spot on my Dashboard (and I bought the app), but World Live Cams caught my attention recently. Perhaps because every time I boot it up I see Kernersville, NC -- the place where I spent summers on my granparents' farm. But aside from nostalgia and my own personal interests, World Live Cams is a pretty good app if you're into webcams at all. When you start it up, the app will give you a pre-populated list of about a dozen cams from around the world. If you keep scrolling, this list just goes until forever. Search is capable and fast, so typing "England" instantly brought up a massive list of cams from the UK. You can also search for things (like "dogs"). There's a map view, which enables you to pinch, zoom and scroll your way around an iOS map, spotting live cams at locations and zooming into those. The map is cool, but not quite perfect yet. Social tools for "liking" a camera are there, but I warned the developer they need some work as well. Now to be fair, World Live Cams lacks features of some other cam apps. I spoke to the developers, who are keen on adding more features over time. However, their first task was to build their own server infrastructure. What this means is that they can do things like monitor cams for uptime, and if a camera ceases working, they can remove it (and add it later if it starts up). Plus, many features are tied to their servers, which means they can push some updates to the app without waiting for the usual approval process. Most importantly, the team behind World Live Cams is dedicated to improving the app. Some features coming soon include a universal version (with higher resolution for the iPad) and allowing private IP's for security cameras. These guys are thinking about what features people want and implementing them. So yes, World Live Cams is a bare bones product right now. Even so, I think it's worth a buck. Considering the plans for future updates, it's worth the initial investment if you like cams or plan to use them yourself.
Daily iPhone App: Spice Invaders
If you're tired of tower defense games, I don't blame you. Feel free to skip this post, but let me say this before you go: I wouldn't spotlight yet another tower defense game if it wasn't special. That's why Spice Invaders has made the cut. The standard tower defense tropes are in place. Build and upgrade towers with spells and abilities to repel invaders while carrying on a map-wide campaign. But Spice Invaders by On5 Games (published by Chillingo) goes a step further. First of all, the game is super polished. It runs great and looks terrific, and everything from the characters to the UI shines with color and fun. There's a huge upgrade system with lots of ways to develop your towers and abilities, and there's even (gasp) multiplayer support. You can play co-operatively or even competitively in a tower defense game! Each stage has multiple modes and can be played through multiple times, so there's lots and lots of content here, all of it quite fun. Spice Invaders is also a freemium title, which has both a pro and a con. The pro, of course, is that the game is free. Tower defense fans should waste no time in downloading it. Those of you who've soured on tower defense should also consider it. Bewarned, however, that Chillingo isn't gentle with the prodding. You'll get reminders in the middle of your game (and elsewhere) that you can buy spice and upgrades via in-app purchases. They can be removed with an in-app purchase, of course, but they're still annoying to see. That issue hits right at the core of the freemium argument, however. Yes it's annoying to be "pitched" in the middle of chaotic game play, but the game's a free download, so that's your tradeoff. At any rate, Spice Invaders is an amazing title, and even though I feel like I've said a few times now that tower defense has been worn out on iOS, Spice Invaders goes ahead and resets the bar all over again.
Daily iPhone App: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective scares up some fun
I've been waiting for this one for a while. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a title that won accolades on the Nintendo DS last year, and it's now arrived on iOS in a universal version (that's free to download to boot). The idea is that you're a ghostly "phantom detective" who must solve his own murder. You can't directly interact with the living, but you can mess with inanimate objects in their world. So move objects around and try to change the fate of other dead people. It sounds morbid, but there's a fun sense of humor and style that keep it entertaining. The first two chapters are free to play through, and you can buy the rest for US$9.99 total, or $4.99 in three different chapter packs. Even for the full price, that's cheaper than you'll find it for sale on the DS. There's full Game Center integration and the build is universal, which makes this one of the best ports that Capcom has ever released. It's great to see such a popular game get a decent port to the App Store. Definitely pick it up and try it out. You might find yourself compelled enough to buy the whole and finish the story.
Daily iPhone App: 7 Little Words will cast a spell on you
Puzzlejuice adds all kinds of bells, whistles and fun to the "word game" genre. The equally excellent 7 Little Words (free) goes in the opposite direction, boiling wordplay down to its core. It offers just seven words and a series of letters (in groups of two or three at a time) to spell them with. 7 Little Words is one of those games that's super easy to play but fiendishly difficult to master. There are 50 puzzles in each of the game's pack (each with their own set of seven words and grid of letters to choose from), and you have to make guesses for each word from clues like "bunny food" (CA-RR-OTS), or "make dirty" (SO-IL). It's a "pure" experience, in that there's no timer, no extra points...no points at all, in fact. It's just you, some letters, and the words you need to make with them. 7 Little Words a very "Zen" experience, yet there's a lot of pleasure to be had in sitting down, thinking hard, and hopefully coming up with the words you need. The game comes with 50 puzzles, and extra packs can be bought for 99 cents each (more have been added since we last looked at 7 Little Words, as well as a new shuffle option). If you like crossword puzzles or just word puzzles at all, 7 Little Words is worth the download for sure. It might frustrate you a little bit (seriously, some of the puzzles will have you forehead slapping when you finally figure them out), but most word game fans like a good challenge anyway.
Daily iPhone App: Star Marine Infinite Ammo
Glitchsoft's oddly-titled Star Marine: Infinite Ammo (more on why that's weird in a moment) is both good at bad. First, it's good at heart. Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is a Contra-style run-and-gun title that has you controlling a soldier on a spaceship among other environments. Your job is to fight through hordes of aliens and escape. The action is great and fans of the old Contra game will find a lot to enjoy. However, Star Marine has a few unfortunate issues. First of all, the controls are a little more wonky than they should be. For example, the action often gets fast and furious. When things heated up in Contra, you could duck and jump out of the way reliably. Star Marine's touch controls, by contrast, don't always get you where you need to go. I got hit by several stray bullets and alien flyers because the controls weren't quite as tight as they should be. Repetition is also an issue. While the environment options eventually expand, the first few levels are basically the same hallways and enemies over and over. An enjoyable boss battle becomes drudgery after you've done it several times. The freemium-style in-app purchase system doesn't help, either. When you discover a gun you haven't unlocked with gems you've collected, you just plain don't get it. Plus, the gems come way too slowly. If this was a freemium game, the rate might be acceptable (and I fully expect it to drop to free at some point), but for the current price of US$1.99, it's too slow. I've got one more complaint. For a game called "Infinite Ammo," there's only one gun I found that was truly infinite. Everything else, including weapons you can buy, health packs and special attacks, are limited. Despite those issues, Star Marine: Infinite Ammo can be fun. There's even a Boss Rush and Survival Mode to enjoy after you've finished the main campaign. I don't know that I'd recommend it at the $1.99 price, but this game seems made to be discounted, so keep an eye out for it. At a slightly cheaper price (or maybe if the freemium system is tweaked to be a little more forgiving), Star Machine: Infinite Ammo has a lot more going for it.
Daily iPhone App: Blot
There's a lot of buzz around cloning apps lately. Zynga recently received some flak for making a clone of Tiny Tower, and there's a big lawsuit around Triple Town and its clone Yeti Town. I would argue that there's a right way and a wrong way to clone an idea. Blatant rip-offs are obviously wrong. The right way is to lovingly borrow some of the core mechanics of a certain game, but add in your own aesthetic, insight, and style. Blot is an example of the latter. Ostensibly, it's a clone of the very popular Jetpack Joyride. You play as a little ink blot that's flying along, tapping the screen to make it rise, fall and collect power-ups and coins. One could argue that Blot is a ripoff of Jetpack Joyride, but aesthetic is unique, combining some beautiful hand-drawn environments with a bouncy, joyful soundtrack. The game employes new ideas, too. For example, the inky spot can combine with colors for extra abilities, and the upgrade system is even more complex than Jetpack Joyride's, allowing you to pick up mechanics that can completely change the way the game is played. I would also argue that Blot's rewards are too spaced out. Even after several runs, I haven't collected enough coins to "buy" anything interesting. But everything else in the game is very well done, and the little add-ons (like Blot's hilarious costumes) are worth chasing down over time, even though that curve is steep. Blot is available now for US$0.99 as a universal app. It does borrow from Jetpack Joyride and what you might call the "hover Canabalt" sub genre, but its infectious style and unique features make it worth a download.
Daily iPhone App: Boogieman Radar
Boogieman Radar is a cute iPhone app for parents whose young children are afraid of a boogieman in their closet or under their bed. For parents, it's a virtual reality app with an overlay radar that you use to scan a room for boogiemen. For small children, it's a lifesaver that'll help them fall asleep. The app lets you choose a girl guide or a boy guide to help your child scan the room. After you make your selection, the girl or boy then talks your child through the scanning process. The boogieman detector uses the camera to display the room on the screen and overlays a green radar screen with a line scanner. The app also makes the common blip and beep noises you'd expect with a radar. After about 10 seconds of scanning, the guide will announce that the room is safe, and the child can rest easy. Boogieman Radar is definitely for younger child. My older kids (five to ten-years-old) enjoyed running around with the radar, but they were hoping to find a Boogieman lurking around the corner, not discover the room was safe. My younger kids (two to four-years-old), however, enjoyed scanning and seem reassured when the app announced the room was safe. If you have a young child who's afraid of this childhood monster, then Boogieman Radar may be a solution that'll help reassure him or her that nothing is lurking in the dark. It's available for 99-cents from the iOS App Store.
Daily iPhone App: Commit
Sometimes staying committed to a daily task is difficult. You get busy with other activities, and then you totally forget that you promised to exercise (or write a letter, or practice piano) every day. If you have difficulty integrating new activities into your daily life, then you should check out Commit for the iPhone. Commit is one of those apps that does one thing and does it well. The app is a basic reminder system for daily activities. It sounds a lot like Reminders in iOS 5, but Commit is designed to track how often you do your tasks, not just send you an alert. You start by adding a task that you want to do every day. The app presents you with a statement like "I will 'xyz' every day" and asks you to fill in the "xyz" with your activity. You can setup a reminder at a specific time and then hit the "Commit" button to add it to your list of tasks. Once you have a full list, you can open the app each day and check off the activities you've completed. Commit keeps track of how many days in a row you've completed your task, which is a powerful motivator. Once you reach double digits, you don't want to miss a day and fall back to zero. It's also satisfying to see more orange bars for the days you completed your task, and less brown ones that scream "I failed to reach my goal." Though Commit excels many ways, it does have a few deficiencies. First, the app only supports daily tasks, so you can't use it to track something you do once a week. The app also won't let you go back and check off a day. I guess it's designed to keep you honest about doing something daily, but there are times you just forget to mark off your progress. It would be nice to be able to go back and fill in those days you missed. These missing features don't detract from the overall utility of the app, though. It's still useful for reminding you of activities and tracking how committed you are to them. The app also has a pleasing UI and is incredibly easy to use, which is perfect for an app that's supposed to be a motivator. When you're trying to get things done, the last thing you want is a clunky app getting in the way. Commit only costs 99-cents, which is money well-spent if the app can help you establish healthy and helpful habits. You can also get more information on the app at the developer's website.
