fortunetelling
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Got a question? Try the Onion Magic Answer Ball
Are you the kind of person who is constantly asking for advice? Do you need a little reinforcement before that big decision? The wonderful satirists at The Onion have just the app for you. It's called the Magic Answer Ball. I'd call it a parody of the old round balls you'd find at the gag store that you shake and an answer to your question pops up floating in the liquid goo that is inside. This US$0.99 app dispenses with the gooey liquid and uses your iPhone instead. Ask your question (no voice recognition here), shake your iPhone and a highly irrelevant answer will come up. Just like Siri. Sometimes. You can share it all on Facebook. If you're so indecisive that you can't think of a question, the app generates some new ones every day, like "Should I buy a riverboat?" and "Do my victims ever think about me?" The app is fun, and might be good to break out at a company holiday party when things are going slow, as is often the case at those things. I did ask the app if I should spend money on it. The answer: "Not if we have anything to say about it." So there you are. %Gallery-142233%
Who you gonna call? Irene's Spirit haunts your iPhone or iPod touch
Irene's Spirit [US$1.99, iTunes Link] puts a fortune telling spirit into your iPhone or iPod touch (with the exception of the first generation iPod touch) as long as you're running OS 3.0. Forget the Magic 8 Ball or Ouija Board. That's kid stuff. Irene doesn't use a 20-sided die or easily pushable planchette to give you an answer. Her answers come from the other side. The other side of what I'm not so sure, but who cares when she is dead accurate. She will make you wonder if ectoplasm will void your warranty. I had my son ask Irene a question and he totally lost it when she told him the name of his dead grandfather. After two more passes, he got skeptical and figured out what was happening. I should have stopped while I was ahead. Yes, it's an illusion. I was very impressed with the best tutorial system I've seen in any app. Being an instructional designer, I know that chunking instruction and requiring feedback periodically is the best way of transferring information. Irene's Spirit is a textbook case of how to get it right. With a bit of practice, operating the illusion is easy and distracting your audience is helped by lot of vibration noise and weird looking scrolling screens that look like something out of The Matrix. I thought that it was a well designed, easy to learn trick that will be a hit at birthday parties, but only good for one or maybe two questions before we more skeptical grownups get wind that something's up. I had a good time with it as a casual app, and really think it's worth a look. Take a look at this video and see Irene in action.
Magic 8-Ball says: 'Signs point to disturbing'
Even StarFox's furry-friendly backdrop couldn't hold a candle to Fortune Channel, Capcom and TakaraTomy's latest installment to the puppy-fashion Wantame series. Predicting the future with minigames certainly sounds interesting, but we would rather not have to dress up virtual dogs in provocative outfits during the process. The miniature daschund posing on the right is probably the second most unsettling image of a dolled-up animal that we've ever come across. If you want to see the most unsettling image -- and we're not kidding around here, your eyes may very well hop out of their sockets, scampering away at the mere sight of this one -- step past the post break.
