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Daily App: Astro Golf is a game of miniature golf disguised as a sci-fi adventure
Astro Golf from Bolder Games takes a challenging miniature golf game and adds in a sci-fi storyline to create a delightfully challenging puzzle-style game. In the game, you are tasked with the job of helping your robot "Orbit" and his robot friends escape from an abandoned cargo ship. The game has a sci-fi look and feel with 3D art that is impressive for a casual golf game. Astro Golf is a miniature golf game first and foremost. Each level kicks off with a virtual tour of the hole and the path you must follow in order to sink your ball. Instead of a traditional golf ball, the ball in Astro Golf is a robot. You must tap, hold and pull back on the robot to aim him and adjust the speed of your shot. A red arrow and dots along the side of the round robot help you gauge the direction and speed of each shot. The dots are convenient, but they sometimes are obscured by your finger. You start off with a basic robot, but can purchase "power ups" that add abilities like a hole magnet and a door opener. You earn in-game currency by completing levels quickly and keeping your strokes under par. There also are "coins" in your path to the hole that you can hit. The more you hit, the more points you earn, which are converted into money that is added to your in-game treasure chest. The app starts out with the basic bank shots and quickly progresses to ramps and other obstacles like black holes and flames. Replay-ability is very high as the game has 50 levels. Each level has a recommended path to the hole, but you can deviate from the recommended path and make up your own. The more creative you are, the more points you will earn. You also can obtain three different robots with support for plugins that provide extra abilities like the ability to move through walls and to move at warp speed. Astro Golf provides an almost unlimited amount of gameplay with challenging mini-golf puzzles that'll keep you on your toes. Astro Golf is available for US$1.99 from the iOS App Store and is compatible with the iPad and iPhone. There are no ads, but there are in-app purchases that you can use to supplement the money you earn within the game. You earn plenty of money from playing and only need to purchase extra if you want to move faster through the game.
Orderly: To do lists with lots of gestures
Orderly (US$0.99) is exactly the kind of app that I normally don't write about in posts. It's a good example of a somewhat okay app that was released too early without proper testing and development, and lacking in any number of killer features. Despite my reservations, I was encouraged to write this post to give a sense about apps that really don't fall into the "must buy" or "exquisitely awful" categories that you normally read about. The developer's pitch letter says, This has great 5 star ratings so far. This app is unique in the sense, it purely uses iPhone gestures in the most comfortable and natural way to create and manage TODOs on your iPhone. Sadly it does not deliver on this promise. Orderly is a to do list. It's pretty enough (despite an unoriginal icon) and was built to leverage gesture-based interaction. It starts with 11 pages of tutorial overviews before you jump into the app itself. Once in, the app is pretty easy to figure out despite those 11 pages. For example, you tap + to create a new to do list. There's even a pretty animated transition from the overviews to the detail screen. Here's an example of where the app disappoints. In the following video, I attempt to navigate between the detail and overview screen. Keep in mind the principal of least astonishment as you watch this. First, I end up tapping somewhere by accident and the screen flips on me. Then I use the un-pinch-to-zoom feature to go from overview to detail. That gesture is non-reciprocal. I cannot use similar gestures to move back to the previous state. Instead, I must tap the "<" button which, for iOS users, has a very specific meaning in navigation terms. That meaning is slightly distorted here. Finally, the actual animation back shows artifacts. None of this is damning -- the accidental touch at the start is entirely my fault -- but as reviewers we do notice the rest. We're looking for a slick interactive experience and this isn't it. When I pulled out a hardware keyboard to test text entry, I received another surprise. The app doesn't take that hardware into account. The text remains "indented" into the portion of the screen normally usable when the on-screen keyboard is shown. If you ask why this video is "on its side," that's because the app was apparently never tested on an iPad, let alone with hardware text entry -- a natural accessory for entering large quantities of text in an app that revolves around text. It's about at this point, where I normally make the review/don't review decision. There were enough quirks to prompt me to move onto the next item in my inbox. Only Dave's request that I showcase the exploration process brought this post to life. Had everything else worked properly, I would have tested the app over a few days in real life scenarios and then written up my overview. An app as pretty as this deserves better. Despite really good intentions, the developer failed to deliver the kind of product that earns a TUAW recommendation.
Daily App: Shady allows you to dim your Mac's overly bright display
Shady is a handy OS X utility that sits in your menu bar and allows you to dim your Mac's screen beyond what is available is OS X. It's useful for Mac owners whose eyes are sensitive to light or for nighttime use when you don't want to light up the entire room with your Mac's overly bright screen. Shady doesn't modify the dim settings in OS X, it works by overlaying a virtual shade over your entire screen. This overlay can be darkened to the point where the entire screen is almost black (90% opacity) or lightened so it has no effect (0% opacity). The default setting is 40% opacity and you can adjust the darkening in 5 percent increments. You can change the darkness level of Shady by clicking on the menu bar icon and adjusting the slider. You also can drop the application icon into the Dock and then click on Shady to bring it to the forefront. When it is the frontmost application, you can use the Up/Down keys to adjust the shade or click "Q" to quit. Shady is available for free from Instinctive Code. It is compatible with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), and Snow Leopard (10.6) or later.
If you have lots of rubbing alcohol, Lick app may just improve your love life
Sometimes people lack certain skills in life, skills that may affect their love life. The question is: how far would you go to gain those skills? Would you lick your iPhone to improve them? Even knowing where your phone has been? Lick is an important app that forces you to answer that frankly disgusting question. Love is a battlefield after all, and everyone knows war is hell. Lick is a web app that wants you to get busy with your phone. You can view the site here, but the true meat of its content is only available via touch screen devices. After you pull it up on your iOS device, navigation is controlled via licking your screen. Once inside, Lick offers up three separate levels of "tongue training." Level 1 is flicking a light switch up and down as many times as you can, level 2 requires you to turn the crank of a pencil sharpener in a circle, while level 3 is sort of a freestyle session where you aim to keep a ball in the air. Again, all using your tongue. On your iPhone. Which -- let's be honest -- you probably also use in relatively unsanitary places. We're trying to be classy about this, so think about where you clear most of your Instapaper queue. Yeah, that place. So in the interest of promoting public health, here's how to practice safe licking: Method 1: Place saran wrap over your screen. Get to business. Method 2: Rubbing alcohol. Lots and lots and lots of rubbing alcohol. Get the 90% isopropyl alcohol from your local pharmacy. Put some on a paper towel. Clean your screen. Repeat until the voice in your head stops screaming "what are you doing?" Get to business. Then clean your screen again with alcohol. Then probably consider contacting a priest or a therapist. If all this sounds absolutely insane to you, perhaps you should watch this trailer. Maybe we're slowly licking our way to the future. Either way, please for the love of God clean your phone first if you try this. Or at least use protection.
Waterlogue: Creating beautiful "watercolors" of your photographs
Since the App Store launched, one of the more busy categories has been Photo & Video apps. Many apps have provided filters to enhance or destroy our photographs, and some of those filters have tried to turn photos into what look like paintings or drawings. I say "tried" because most of those have failed to do a good job. Waterlogue (US$2.99) is a universal iOS app from Tinrocket, LLC's John Balestrieri and Robert Clair that does one thing -- transforming your photos into watercolor-like images -- very well. Waterlogue is very simple to use: just launch the app, take a photo or select one from your photo library by tapping a camera button, and then let Waterlogue work its magic. If you like what Waterlogue has done with your photo -- which will happen most of the time -- a tap on a heart icon lets you share your painting with Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr or have it printed on a 4 x 6 inch postcard by Sincerely and shipped "anywhere in the world." Your artworks can also be saved to your Photo Library, opened in another app, or emailed. As a user, you could just stop there as your results are usually fantastic, but Waterlogue lets you tweak your images. All of the tools are available in a single sliding row at the bottom of the app. First, you have your choice of a dozen slightly different painting types: Natural, Bold, Luminous, "It's Technical", Travelogue, Rainy, Illustration, Soaked, Shallow, Color Bloom, Fashionable, and Blotted. But wait, there's more! You can also select the size of brush you're using, change the image brightness, and add a border -- which for the sake of realism even has some "paint" that has run off of the side of your image and onto the border. All of the images you see in this post were taken with my iPhone camera at some point in the last two months and then run through Waterlogue to give them that soft, hand-painted look. One thing I always wanted to do but never had the talent for is to create trip journals that are illustrated with paintings. With Waterlogue able to magically create beautiful watercolors of my photos in seconds, I can see using it and a travel journal app (perhaps Trip Journal or AOL's MapQuest Travel Blogs) to capture my memories. At this point, there's nothing more that I can say about Waterlogue other than "buy it". The app is universal, requires iOS 7.0 or better, and is optimized for iPhone 5.
Daily App: Disco Zoo lets you rescue animals and throw them a 70s party
Disco Zoo from NimbleBit is a casual puzzle game that challenges you to rescue 8-bit animals while you build out your virtual zoo. It's an interesting puzzler as it has several different objectives that keep you busy and engaged in the game. The first objective is to collect animals that you add to you zoo. To collect animals, you must find their unique pattern in a 5 by 5 grid. Each animal has a three or four-square pattern and you have eight tries to draw the correct pattern. Once you collect an animal, it is placed in a pen with other animals of the same type. In the zoo part of the game, you are challenged to earn money by keeping your animals awake. When animals are awake, they earn you coins with the more common animals earning you less and the rare animals earning your more. As the animals fall asleep, you are alerted to wake them up in order to keep the money flowing. Coins and DiscoBuxs are the currency within the app and are used to pay for animal rescues, unlock new areas for rescue trips and throw disco parties for your animals. The disco parties require DiscoBuxs and are a lot of fun with cheesy disco music, a disco ball and lots of dancing animals that earn you double the amount of coins during the dance. Disco Zoo is a unique casual game that is part puzzle game and part zoo simulation. The music is fun, and the 8-bit animals are adorable. The game is easy enough that it takes little effort to start playing and is engaging enough that you keep playing when you have a few spare minutes. Disco Zoo is available from the iOS App Store for free. There are in-app purchases for DiscoBuxs and coins, but you can earn all the currency that you need to play the game as long as you are patient. You really only need to buy the in-app currency if you want to advance faster.
Ukulele Toolkit is a handy app for uke players
Ukulele Toolkit from EUM lab (US$2.99, universal) is an essential iPhone app for those who play. This handy, great-looking app offers a metronome, a tuner, chord charts and more. I've been using it for months and just love it. This app truly is a "toolkit." The tuner function is very accurate and easy to use. To get started, pluck the string you're trying to tune. As the note plays, a meter on Ukulele Toolkit illustrates if it's flat, sharp or just right. By tuning the string up or down, you move the meter until it's perfect. You can also tap C, G, A and E string buttons to hear the pitch you're looking for. The metronome function is fantastic and eliminates the need to have a stand-alone metronome app. A large dial lets you adjust the tempo and a play button gets it started. You can opt to have the one beat play at a higher pitch than the the others. You can also enter your own time signature, change the tone of each beat, adjusting the note value and beats per measure individually. What's really cool is that you can have the metronome play one of 13 strumming patterns, which makes it very easy to play in time. There's also a huge library of chords available that I use all the time. It's laid out cleanly and lets you see each chord's finger positions and hear what it should sound like. Finally, you can set the app to follow tenor, soprano or baritone tuning, to mach the type of uke you have. As I said, I've been using this app for a long time and I love it. It's definitely worth buying.
Daily App: MyScript Calculator solves your hand-written math equations
Typing math problems in calculator can be tedious, especially when you have complex equations to solve. If you want to write out your problems instead, then you need to check out MyScript Calculator from Vision Objects. MyScript Calculator provides a large canvas on which you can write out your equation. When you are done writing, the app automatically will convert your writing into type-written numbers and calculate the answer for you. If you don't like the automatic answer, a new feature recently added to the app allows you to turn off auto-answer and use a "Calculate" button instead. The app supports the standard operations such as multiplication and division as well as a wide array of complex functions used in trigonometry and calculus. One of the useful features of MyScript Calculator is its ability to solve for unknowns. Just insert an "?" into an equation with its answer and the app will fill in the correct value for the unknown. It also supports gestures which allow you to strike-through or scratch out numbers you want to remove from your calculation. MyScript Calculator was recently updated for iOS 7 and includes a new new operators (n-root, hyperbolic functions) and new rounding options that let you choose between rounded and truncated results. It is available for free from the iOS App Store and works on both the iPad and iPhone.
Demolition Crush gives you bombs and plenty of buildings to explode
Building on their earlier demolition games, AppMania is back with its newest title, Demolition Crush. This latest offering has you playing the role of a demolition man who is living out his childhood dream. Each level brings new explosives and new challenges as you help blow up buildings and reduce them to rubble. Demolition Crush has the look and feel of Angry Birds, with complex, cartoon structures made of a variety of materials that are piled on top of each other. As the demolition man, your job is to place explosives to blow up the structure to below the required level. Be careful in your placement as you don't want the debris to fall onto innocent bystanders. You will crush them and lose points in the process. Demolition Crush requires more than just brute force, you have to study each structure and try to find its weak spots before you start slapping on bombs. It's an arcade-y game so expect to be entertained more than mentally challenged. Than being said, the app has a nice balance between logic and explosive fun, allowing you to think just a little bit before you blow things up. At launch, the game ships with 180 levels that cover three locations (US, England, China) and includes five different explosives which are given to you as you unlock levels. Each level is increasingly more complex and challenging to solve. The app has a rewards system, rubies, that you can use to buy premium items within the game. You earn rubies by destroying a structure, not injuring a bystander and collecting coins by hitting them with your debris. If you need more rubies than you've earned, you also can buy them via an in-app purchase. The game also has an energy level that decreases with every level you complete and forces you to take a break when you've expended all your energy while building. Demolition Crush is enjoyable game for those spare moments when you are looking for something quick to play. The levels are quick to play, allowing you to try several different explosive strategies in just a few minutes. The graphics are good and the animation is smooth, which makes for a pleasing experience. There are plenty of sound effects, but no background music. The only critique of the game is that one of the animated characters in the in-apps purchase section may not be suitable for younger kids. She is appropriately dressed but, like a Betty Boop, she may be a bit "buxom" for the younger set. That's only an issue if you plan on handing over the game to your nine-year-old son, who, of course, would love blowing up buildings. Demolition Crush is available for free from the iOS App Store. It includes the occasional advertisement and has in-app purchases. You also can tie it into Facebook and share your scores on the social network.
Daily App: StackMotion lets you create dynamic photos by combining images, video, text and music
StackMotion is a new photo editing tool from Flambe Studios, the makes of PicPlayPost and PopAGraph that allows you to combine photos, videos, text and music. The app uses layers to let you create really unique projects. StackMotion has two main screens -- the playback screen that allows you to view your project as you build it and the editing screen, which is where you swap out your media and tweak it to your satisfaction. The editing screen is where you will spend most of your time, and it is chock full of options for editing your project. The first step in creating a project is choosing the correct media for your background image and your foreground image. The foreground is a static image, but the background can be dynamic with the option to add a panoramic photo, a slide show or a video clip. Once you have the media selected, you can add them to your project by importing them from the camera roll or taking them live using the camera. As you would expect, the background image becomes your canvas, while the foreground image can be masked to overlay neatly on the background. You also can add text to the project and music if you prefer. The building of the project has the feel of the a non-linear editor like iMovie, but it is much more simple with a short timeline and only one media element per type, i.e., one block of text, one track of music, etc. When you are adding each type of media, the StackMotion app has a few editing options that allow you to change the text, flip your photo, apply filters, and so on. You also can set the text timing so it appears in the beginning, end or is always on the screen. An undo button allows you to correct mistakes, while a clear button lets you start over. When you are done editing, you can share your project via social media, upload it to a vide service like YouTube, publish it to Tumblr or export it to your photo roll. Overall, StackMotion was enjoyable to play with as it allows you to do more than just prettify a photo. The ability to use a slideshow, a video clip or a scrolling panorama as your background adds a new dimension to the creation process. My only complaint with the app is a minor one -- when you edit an element like text and hit the "Done" button, the app brings you to the playback screen to review your project and autoplays the clip, which can be annoying when you are trying to edit quietly. I'd rather stay in editing mode and have the option to review by manually pressing play when I am ready. StackMotion is available for US$1.99 from the iOS App Store.
Halftone 2 is the easy way to turn your photos into professional looking comics
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow, obviously, but with Halftone 2 the power to make a comic that answers that question for yourself is found on your iOS device. By pairing an impressive array of page layout and speech bubble templates with your own personal photos, Halftone 2 will have you producing sharp-looking comic pages in no time. For Halftone 2's US$1.99 asking price you get a lot to work with. You start out by loading your photos into one of the app's 33 prepared page layouts. Once you have your images in place, it's time to add dialog by placing speech bubbles and thought boxes on your images. There are 33 different kinds of bubbles to choose from: thought boxes to arrows to puffy clouds. Users can pick from any font that's currently on their phone for text, along with various sliders for changing the color and size of your dialog. If you've seen it in a comic book, it's probably at your disposal. Once you've placed your dialog, you can adjust the size and alignment of each bubble with simple finger swipes. Beyond the simple, yet powerful, templates you get 83 sound effect stamps from Comicraft -- think the 60's Batman show -- allowing you to add Bang!, Wahoo!, and Pow!'s to your stories. Halftone 2 currently features only one in-app purchase, and it's all thanks to the popularity of these stamps. For an extra $1.99, the app serves up an additional 51 graphic sound effects for your stamping pleasure. The provided tools take about ten minutes of playing around with to really get a solid grasp on, especially if you're stuck using an iPhone rather than iPad. Once you're in the groove, playtime is only limited by your imagination or the limits of your photo collection. And you're not just limited to single page issues... Thankfully Halftone also allows for the building of multiple page comics, which can be exported out of the app as documents, pdfs and even .CBZ files for reading in Simple Comics. The app also includes a "anaglyph color modification" option that allows you to transfer your comics to 3d, provided you've got the red/blue glass needed to see the effect. With Halftone 2 you can write a short comic book about your cat's disapproval of your home decorating. Or you can write a love letter to someone special. What you choose to do with Halftone 2 is up to you. Halftone 2 is the sort of app I'd love to leave a six year old alone with for a few hours, just to see what came out of their brain. The only thing holding the app back from being perfect for kids is the inability to take pictures directly in the app. Switching back and forth between camera and app eventually takes away some of the thrill of building comics on the fly. However, if you've already got a lot of photos on your device, you're ready to roll. As I've been writing this review, Halftone has been updated multiple times. That is frustrating for me as a reviewer, but great for you as a user. Developer Juicy Bits has gone out of its way to make Halftone 2 as user-friendly as possible, down to including video tutorials to answer fan questions. This dedication to building the best user experience possible shows through in every aspect of the app. If you've ever wanted to write a comic but don't have the artistic skills, Halftone 2 is going to open a wonderful door to your creativity. It's certainly worth $1.99, and every hour of your life you pour into it writing your stories.
Daily App: Footpath is a routing tool that'll tell you how far and how high you'll travel
Footpath is for outdoor enthusiasts who want an easy-to-use route planning tool that measures how far and how high a route will take you. The iPhone and iPad app allows you to zoom in on a map and draw a route on a road, trail or river so you can plan your next outside adventure. Footpath then analyzes your route and calculates both the distance and the elevation that you will travel. It's handy for the outdoor runner, hiker cyclist or river kayaker. Footpath allows you to toggle between a street view or satellite view when you are drawing your route. The street view is part street and part topographic map, which is hit or miss for the area in which I live. I appreciate the topo maps as they allow you to see elevation and other aspects of the terrain, but the maps in the app are misaligned (see below), which makes it difficult to plan a mountain hiking route based on map details only. Though you lose the elevation details, the satellite maps are much easier to use for planning an off-road hike. If you are keeping to the road, then the street view is just fine for road runs and bike rides as the roads are very easy to follow on the map. The route planning tool has a few useful features that simplifies the route drawing process, including the ability to snap the route to known roads or trails. This feature allows you to draw your route loosely and let the app automatically select the appropriate roads/trails. You also can freehand your route, but this is difficult, especially in those forested areas where a trail or road is not already visible on the map. Besides snapping to a trail, Footpath also allows you to automatically fill in your route by selecting the "Loop" or "Out & Back" options when planning your run or hike. This feature will analyze the existing waypoints on your route and use a trail or road map to choose the best route back home. You should know that Footpath is a planning tool only that is best used before you start your run or ride. It does not include any navigation options that tell you which way to go when you finally make your way outside. Footpath is 99-cents in the iOS App Store, with limits on the number of routes (up to five) that you can save. You can open up both unlimited saves and the ability to export your routes for US$2.99 via an in-app purchase.
The Learnist app brings its crowd-sourced collection of information to your iPhone
Learnist debuted in 2012 as crowd-sourced learning platform with a heavy emphasis on images and videos as a way of conveying information. Learnist pulled its old iOS app and recently debuted a new iPhone app that does a wonderful job of presenting this multimedia content. Often called the Pinterest of online learning, Learnist has a large library of user-generated multimedia lessons called "learnboards." The new Learnist app is a front for this library, allowing you to browse these boards on your mobile device. You can find boards on almost any topic, including technology, arts, crafts, history, cooking and more. Once you start thumbing through boards, you easily can lose an hour of your time. Learnist allows you browse through boards by categories, or search for either a topic or another Learnist user. Each board pulls in content from various sources on the web and compiles them into a neat and very readable package. The app provides a synopsis of the online content and then opens the full article in an in-app browser if you want to read more. When you are done reading, you can save a board to your reading list for future reference. You also can share the content via Facebook, Twitter, email and messaging. Though most of the content is user-generated and free, the app now features premium boards created by experts and celebrities, such as Mythbuster Kari Byron and film director Gus Van Sant. These premium offerings can be purchased for 99-cents via an in-app purchase. I purchased the Kari Byron set on science experiments for kids, and it was well worth the dollar that I spent on it. The Learnist app is available for free from the iOS App Store.
My cat Cinnamon reviews Friskies Cat Fishing 2
Cinnamon isn't the smartest cat on the block. He's adorable, a little bit chubby, and remarkably cuddly, but he's also a bit of an idiot. He eats his brother's food even though we yell at him every single day, he chews on power cords despite being shocked and nearly killed by one, and if you leave a dryer sheet in the laundry room he'll consume it whole. That being said, he's also an extremely skilled hunter that can snatch a house fly out of the air and jump 5+ feet up a wall to go after a laser pointer. So when I noticed that Friskies had launched a new version of its Cat Fishing app -- which Cinnamon had taken a great liking to years ago -- I decided I'd let him review it. I launched the app, called Cinnamon into the room, and waited for the fireworks to start. But they didn't. My little buddy just sat there and stared at the screen as the colorful fish swam about, with nothing in the way of an instinctual drive to attack. In fact, I think Cinnamon wanted to befriend the fish more than anything. I'm not sure what has changed in either the app or my cat since the original Cat Fishing game sent him swatting at the screen in a furry of hunger and angst, but it's not there anymore. When the app sensed that Cinnamon wasn't paying attention (after 30 seconds without interaction) it meowed loudly in a feeble attempt to elicit a reaction. It got one. Once Cinnamon heard the app's desperate meowing, he decided it was time for a snuggle, and as you can see in the photo at the top, he and my iPad are now best friends. Or they were best friends for roughly 45 seconds, at which point Cinnamon stood up, sneezed onto the screen, locked eyes with me as if to say "I guess you'll be cleaning that up now..." and walked back into the bedroom to fall asleep until dinner. Cinnamon clearly enjoyed his brief time with the app, and although he's too dumb (or too smart?) to go after the digital bait, it's definitely worth your time to download the free app and see if you can fool your own furball.
AnyFont helps you configure custom fonts for all your iOS applications
AnyFont (US$1.99) enables you to add custom True Type and Open Type fonts to your iOS device for use in any application. When I first heard about this app, I was curious. How could an app like this "break sandboxing," the security feature that keeps each app separate and safe? I contact the developer, Florian Schimanke, who explained the steps the application takes. "[In iOS 7], it is possible to include fonts in configuration profiles. You can do this for example using the Apple Configurator from the Mac App Store," he wrote. "[AnyFont] takes the fonts that are added to the app's storage by the user via iTunes file sharing or the 'Open in...' dialog and creates a configuration profile from it so it can be installed on the device. AnyFont hands over the newly created profile to Safari which then takes the user to the installation process. When finished, the user is then taken back to AnyFont." I added a copy of the app to my iPod and dropped in a copy of a True Type (ttf) font I found on my Mac. I then launched the app and selected the font, which moved me through a few screens to the "Install Profile" pane you see in the image at the top of this post. From there, I clicked Install and then consented to having the profile install the font. A further tap to "Done" and I was ready to start using my new font. What's more, once installed, the font appears in the General > Profiles settings, making it simple to remove the item should you change your mind in the future or wish to tidy up your device. A visit to Pages showed the new font was installed and ready for use. If you regularly perform content creation on iOS, this clever two-dollar utility will expand your font horizon. I found it easy to use and that it delivered exactly the functionality promised.
Weekend App: Ski Tracks logs your performance when you hit the slopes
Winter is still going strong in most parts of the country, which means there is plenty of time to hit the slopes before the big spring thaw. If you have plans to go skiing in the near future, then you should definitely check out Ski Tracks from Core Coders. Ski Tracks is a tracking app that uses GPS to help you analyze your skiing. Just turn it on while you are skiing, and the app will track your runs in the background using location, speed and elevation information. It supports alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and a handful of other outdoor winter sports. You can view statistics about each run as well as a summary of each day you spend skiing. Stats including altitude, vertical, slope, duration, and speed. Data is presented in a combination of tables and charts that make it easy to analyze a run right from the trails. You also can wait until you are home and take a deep dive into each run, looking at them individually or comparing them throughout the season. Besides stats, Ski Tracks also lets you take photos that you can add to a track/run. This is a great way to remember an extra steep descent with knee-busting moguls or a memorable moment with friends. There's also a music feature that taps into your iTunes library, allowing you to listen to tunes while you ski. The run-by-run statistics that Ski Tracks compiles while you ski are useful for the casual skier who wants to remember the day and indispensable to the competitive skier who wants to improve their times. The app is easy on your battery allowing you put in a full day on the slopes and still have some battery left for the drive home. About the only feature missing from Ski Tracks is a ski resort database that auto-recognizes the location and trail that you are skiing. Ski Tracks is available for the iPhone from the iOS App Store for 99-cents.
Monkey Boots is stealing my minutes and turning them into hours
Even before Flappy Bird turned the App Store on its head, there was a bit of a casual gaming renaissance taking place on iOS. When I say "casual," I mean games that are easy to learn, but not necessarily so easy to master. Monkey Boots fits perfectly into that category, and its single game mechanic can feel both subtly brilliant and frustrating at the same time, which is all the more reason give it a try. In Monkey Boots you play as a cute, cube-shaped monkey on the run from an endless herd of elephants. You auto-run by default, and the simple touch controls let you jump, pounce downward quickly, and slow your speed. As elephants come barreling across the screen it's up to you to dodge them. Getting struck by a scampering pachyderm means instant failure. The longer you last, the more points you gain, and bonus points are rewarded for bouncing on top of the fleeing elephants. Speaking of the elephants, the ponderous beasts come in all shapes and sizes, from ones just barely larger than your primate to massive wooly mammoths that require a huge jump in order to clear. Failing isn't the end of the world, though, and as soon as you find yourself trampled and dead, you can instantly start another round. This softens the blow a bit when you ruin an especially solid run and besting your previous run is always the "carrot on a stick" that keeps you pushing for one more try. If you're looking for a more personal incentive to repeatedly sacrifice your little friend, there's also a leaderboard to check how much better (or worse) you are than your friends. Monkey Boots is free and includes ads that occasionally pop up after a round has ended. They're not invasive and never appear on the screen during gameplay, so it's a totally reasonable trade-off. If you've become addicted to ultra-simple games as of late, Monkey Boots definitely deserves your attention.
Let It Go wants you to get some things off your chest
Life can be frustrating, but given the sheer number of hours most people work these days finding time to vent those frustrations can be difficult. Let it Go wants to help you let it out. Think of it as Snapchat for the soul if you will. Let It Go's interface is simple; tap the arrow in the top right hand corner of the screen you'll be given a text menu. Here you write down the things that are bothering you. Your message can be literally anything from "Sometimes I feel like my friends only hang out with me because we've known each other for years" to "I hate Iron Man 3 and hope Captain America 2 lives up to the expectations I have for it." If you haven't finished describing your problem you can also "save as draft." When you've finished your idea hit "done." You'll see this screen. Once you agree to "let it go" your idea is released. The app will delete what you typed randomly between 1 and 72 hours after you release it. You can see which ideas you've "released recently" on the app's home screen, at least until they're obliterated from the world. Ideas that are waiting to be deleted are tagged "Releasing" on the home menu. If you click the "Releasing" icon you'll be brought up to a glowing animated screen. After a few weeks of playing with this app I still have no idea what this screen is for. Perhaps meditation. Let It Go is obviously not for everyone, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be very helpful for some people. At first I laughed at the idea. Then I actually spent some time with it, honestly inputing actual problems and frustrations that were bogging me down. It took 42 hours for my first "released" thought to actually disappear from the app. In the time I was waiting for it to vanish I checked the app six times to see if it was still there. When It was gone I felt a sense of release I wasn't expecting. In a way Let It Go is a simulation of the process of recovery and emotional healing. To truly heal you have to first acknowledge your problems. But acknowledging your problems doesn't immediately send the anxiety away. It has to leave on its own, until one moment you look and the problem isn't sitting right in front of you anymore. Let It Go is a free app that only requires as much time as you need to give it. Think of it as a time management app for the soul, a quiet place on your phone where you can go to vent about life without having to worry about someone seeing what you wrote. As we get busier and busier it becomes harder to find time to process the issues that are bothering us. For people who are shy and introverted Let It Go could very easily become an app that helps bring them a little peace. It's worth trying out to discover if it would bring you some.
Daily App: Bridge Constructor challenges you to build radical bridges
Bridge Constructor is bridge construction game developed by ClockStone Studio and published by Headup Games that challenges you to build a bridge that is strong enough to support the weight of cars and trucks. Each level in Bridge Constructor presents you with a different building challenge. You have different materials you can use to construct your bridge and budget that allows for a few mistakes. If you are stumped, you can use your coins to purchase a hint that'll show you either a partial plan or the full plan for a bridge. There is no tutorial, but the UI is intuitive enough that you will know what to do after a few taps. On the right hand side of the screen are the materials that you can select. Early levels only provide wood, while higher levels give you steel, cables and concrete pillars. Once you have your materials in hand, you can tap and drag to start laying down the framework of the bridge. You can zoom in on the bridge structure and turn on the grid to help you precisely place your parts. There's also an undo button if you make a mistake. When you are done constructing, you can test your bridge by pressing the "play" button on the bottom right. This will test your bridge to see if it can stand on its own and withstand weight. The game uses color to show you weak areas in your construction, moving from green to red-brown on a scale of strong to weak. If you think your bridge is ready to traffic, you can tap on a car in this test mode and see if it can drive safely over the bridge. If the test drive is successful, you move onto the next level. If it fails, the car is destroyed in a fiery crash. The app is forgiving and allows you to rebuild and test a few times before you run out of cash in your budget. The physics behind Bridge Constructor is realistic enough to be fun, but it is not a true physics sim like TrussMe!. A few times in the early levels I built a bridge with no support and cars drove it successfully. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the challenge of thinking logically while building, and was entertained by the animation of the cars as they crossed my bridge. Bridge Constructor is available in the iOS App Store for US$0.99. It is compatible with the iPhone and iPad. It has in-app purchases, the occasional ad for the developer's other games and links to Facebook to post your high scores. Really enjoying this logical construction game. The tutorial could use a little more detail, but the game has an intuitive user interface which makes up for the tutorial. Each successful construction adds to your knowledge of techniques to utilize for solving future bridge constructions. The graphics are good, as is the "zoom-in" feature, but the physics of the automobiles and trucks crashing are far from realistic, if that matters to you. Plenty of chances to correct a poorly constructed bridge & rebuild. I love the feature that you can back out pieces from the construction & regain your budget that was previously "spent". So a bridge can be repeatedly rebuilt and tested. The "test mode" shows weak areas of construction by a color shift from green to red-brown before a car/truck "tests" the bridge. Separate from the "construction budget" are "coins," which can be spent for hints on how to solve the bridge construction. More of these "coins" can be purchased as an in app purchase.
Bills Forecast is a new forecasting tool for your personal and business finances
Similar to a weather forecast that gives you a snapshot of the future weather, Bills Forecast from Minus 4 Degrees provides you with an overview of your financials for the next 12 months. Bills Forecast is a budgeting app that lets you log your bills and see how your expenses fluctuate each month. To get the best financial profile, you will need to enter in all your bills, not just the recurring monthly bills that are always the same. By entering in once off expenses like repairs, taxes and car registrations, you can view an overview of your future finances. It'll help you budget by allowing you to save in the months that your bills are low and dip into savings during those months when your expenses are high. Entering your bills is very easy. Just tap the big "+" button in the bottom tool bar and fill in all the details on the bill entry screen. The app allows you to assign a category to a bill and make it recurring. You also can add the bill to your default iOS calendar so you have a reminder of when it is due. If you decide not to use the calendar feature, the Bills Forecast app will send you a push notification when an expense is due. You'll also receive notifications with a weekly and monthly summary of your expenses. The app has four main views -- the main screen that shows the summary of your bills each month, a monthly detail screen that lists your bills for that specific month, a graph overview that shows your bills for the next 12 months and a "Next 14 days" view that lists your bills in the next 14 days. Bills Forecast look at your monthly bills for the next year and uses color to show you the relative amount of expenses you have each month. A month that is has very few expenses is shown in blue, while a month that is high is shown in red. A medium expense month is green. Months are also labeled as "Low", "Med" or "High", allowing you to see where each month falls on this scale with just a quick glance. Keep in mind when you are using Bills Forecast that it is not a bill tracker that shows you which bills you've paid and which ones are still due. It is a forecast and bill reminder tool only and is best used for estimating your budget. That being said, the ability to track your bills as you pay them would be a feature that I would love to see in a future version of the app. Bills Forecast is available for $1.99 in the iOS App Store. It's compatible with the iPhone and iPad and requires iOS 6.0 or later. There are no ads and no in-app purchases.
