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First Look: iZen Garden
The iPhone App Store offers several zen garden applications and today, I was able to play with one of them, iZen Garden [iTunes link], on my simulator. The program allows you to place stones onto a bed of sand and rake the sand around the stones. As the marketing materials suggest, it's basically a fidget toy. "iZen Garden is perfect for long meetings, train rides, or meditation practice. It helps you to center your mind, relax your psyche, and relieve your stress." The interface is easy enough to use, with several rocks available and reset options for when your perfect garden gets too messy. At $4.99, it's a love it or leave it program. If rock placement and sand stroking isn't your thing, then iZen Garden probably isn't either. If it is, this is a simple visually appealing solution. I found the program easy-to-use and modestly fun. I have limited artistic skills and my raked gardens always looked messy. Your mileage will almost certainly vary. iZen Garden works on both iPhone and iPod touch.
izenMobile's KSMT and KRMA: E-TEN rebrands
These suckers look familiar to anyone? They should -- they're E-TEN's M700 and X500, respectively, with the "E-TEN" logos rubbed off and replaced with izenMobile's. The M700 becomes the "KSMT," sporting 128MB ROM / 64MB RAM, GPS, a 2 megapixel cam, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, presumably with the same trick backlighting as its E-TEN cousin. The "KRMA" looks positively nothing like the one izenMobile had originally been tossing around, trading a numeric keypad for the X500's ultra thinness. Still no word on a release date, but with E-TEN doing all the heavy lifting on these ones, it can't be that hard to get 'em out the door.[Via Mobility Site]
