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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.
Daily App: Numerity is a twist on the paint by numbers game
Numerity from Zedarus Entertainment takes a paint by numbers game and turns it into an entertaining puzzle game that challenges you to find the object hidden in a cluster of numbers. The gameplay is easy, which may be a turn off for folks looking for more than a hidden numbers game. In each round, you are presented with numerals in a series. You must find each numeral and tap on it to highlight it on your screen. It's not easy as it sounds as the numbers are clustered together in a jumbled mess. You must scan and zoom to find the correct numeral hidden on the screen. When you have located all the numerals in the series, the app zooms out on your canvas and reveals the character you have outlined on the screen. You are scored based upon the amount of time it takes you to solve each puzzle. If you do well, you are rewarded with stars and coins, which can be used to purchase hints if needed. Playing Numerity is an interesting experience as you have relaxing music in the background and a timer on the screen that tracks how long you take to solve a puzzle. You want to relax while scanning for numbers, but that timer ticking in the corner reminds you must do it quickly. Numerity is available from the iOS App Store for US$0.99. It is compatible with the iPhone and iPad and requires iOS 6.0 or later. There are no ads, but the game does include in-app purchases for coins.
Buffalo Wings is a Flappy Bird clone and 'a fun little family experiment'
After Dong Nguyen pulled Flappy Bird from the App Store, Tapity developer Jeremy Olson decided the time was right for him to learn how to produce a game and explore what makes Flappy Bird so popular. Instead of a solo project, Olson decided to make it a group effort and involve his family members in the development process. It was as Olson writes "an opportunity to take a break from our daily routine and do a fun experiment." After a few weeks of work, this experiment today launched in the iOS App Store as Buffalo Wings. Rather than duplicate Flappy Bird, Olson and Tapity UI Designer Christain Billings decided to replace the bird with an 8-bit buffalo character, which was whipped up by his ten-year-old brother in just ten minutes. The Buffalo Wings app shares the same gameplay as Flappy Bird, requiring you to tap on the screen to keep your buffalo from plummeting to the ground as you fly in between pipes. The mechanics are similar to Flappy Bird, with the jagged shape of the buffalo adding some challenge to the game. As work on the app progressed, Olson recruited his younger brother to help and taught him the basics of Objective C coding. His father provided the audio, while his sister researched the silly buffalo facts. Other family members were involved in the testing of the app, helping Olson tweak the physics so the game was hard, but not too hard. The challenge of the gameplay is where Olson nailed it. There's a nice balance in Buffalo Wings -- it's hard enough to be challenging, but not so hard that you throw your hands up in frustration (at least not all the time). As you make your way through the game, you are rewarded with silly buffalo facts that occasionally will make you laugh out loud. The graphics are polished for an 8-bit game, and the gameplay is every bit as addicting as Flappy Bird. Buffalo Wings is available for free in the iOS App Store. It is compatible with the iPhone and requires iOS 7.0 or later. There are in-game ads, but they are barely noticeable and don't interfere with gameplay.
Daily App: SpeedTracker records your daily drive so you don't have to
SpeedTracker from AppAnnex falls into the navigation category of apps, but the app doesn't help you find your destination. It allows you to see on a map where you've been driving, how long you've been in the car and how fast you drove on your way. The tracker also has a real-time heads-up-display that shows you your current speed and driving direction. When you launch SpeedTracker, you are brought to the speedometer page, which shows the current speed of travel, the direction of driving and the mileage of the current trip. For the app to track your trip, you must tap on the red tracking button in the top left corner. It'll be solid red and say "Tracking Off" until you start the tracking feature. You will know when it is on as the button will flash red and the caption will say "Tracking is ON." When enabled, the tracking uses GPS to record the speed and distance of your trip. It also maps your route and save it for later review. While driving, you can switch between four different screens that show your trip progress. Switching is easily accomplished either by tapping on the bottom of the screen or swiping across the screen. The four screens include a speedometer as described above, a map showing your route, a trip summary and a HUD, which allows you to display the speed and driving direction on your windshield by placing your phone on the dashboard. This HUD feature didn't work so well for me as I don't have a way to secure my phone on my dashboard and it slid every time I took a corner. When you stop, you can turn the tracking off and are given the option of ending your trip or pausing it for a short time. This resume feature allows you to halt the tracking when you have to make a stop that you don't want recorded. When you are done tracking, the log of your trip is saved to your iPhone. The log includes your distance and elapsed time, which is broken down into travel time and stopped time. The app also calculates your average speed and displays your maximum speed. Data fans will appreciate a graph that shows your speed for the trip and a map that displays your route. You can share your trip data via email, Twitter or Facebook. You also can export the data as a CSV, KML or GPX file. SpeedTracker is an easy to use trip tracker for the driver who wants to log their car trips for business purposes or just for fun. Once you turn on the tracking in SpeedTracker, you can forget about it until you arrive and the app will do all the monitoring on your behalf. Besides using it in your car, you also can use SpeedTracker to log trips while snowmobiling, or ATVing. You even can drop your phone into an RC car and use SpeedTracker to measure driving performance. SpeedTracker is available from the iOS App Store for US$3.99. It is compatible with the iPhone and iPad and requires iOS 6.0 or later. There are no ads or in-app purchases.
Infinite Flight offers a bumpy, but excellent, ride
Flight simulators often straddle a strange line between being games and instructional tools. There's rarely an objective beyond ones that you yourself set -- getting off the ground is a fine starting point -- and if you're like me, the "game" ends when you make a poor navigational choice and end up smacking into the terrain below. Still, I find myself drawn to them, and Infinite Flight is one of the best flight simulators I've found on the App Store. When you open the app, you're greeted with four changeable flight options: Your type of plane, location, weather, and time of day. There's a number of variations of each, with a total of 31 aircraft (14 of which are obtained via in-app purchases), a dozen or so regions, a huge range of weather conditions, and four times of day. Once you have all your options set, the app throws you straight into the cockpit of your virtual plane. There's really no tutorial to speak of, aside from a "Help" option that explains what each of the many on-screen control buttons does, but through a process of trial and error (mostly error), you'll should find yourself taking to the skies before long. As soon as you're airborne -- and once you've learned the demeanor of your aircraft -- you can explore each massive real-world location for as long as you want. I live roughly fifty miles from one of the starting airports offered on the starting menu, and was able to fly by my relatively small hometown while piloting a massive jet. There are a couple of things that keep Infinite Flight from being jaw-droppingly amazing: First, while many of the planes are extremely detailed and well modeled, the actual scenery and airports are extremely basic. There's nothing in the way of 3D buildings or varied terrain, which is find when you're high in the sky, but can be cringe-worthy when landing. The second issue is that half of the planes on offer require in-app purchases, which can amount to a pretty hefty iTunes bill if you want them all. The app itself is US$4.99, which is a bargain for an extremely deep game like this, but it feels strange that many of the best aircraft require you to use your credit card again. Despite these shortcomings, Infinite Flight is still one of -- if not the -- premiere flight experiences on the App Store. It's (mostly) eye-catching, and crams a huge amount of content into a small package, even if some of it costs a few bucks extra.
Flipp lets you skip the Sunday newspaper by delivering local circulars to your iOS device
If you enjoy browsing through sales flyers, but don't like buying a Sunday newspaper, then you should download Flipp from Wishabi. Flipp aggregates sales flyers from over 300 retailers and uses your location information to deliver local circulars right to your iPhone or iPad. Flipp displays sales flyers for nearby stores, in a scrollable, magazine-style list. This list view displays a thumbnail of the flyer as well as the start and end dates of the sale. When you tap on a flyer, you can scroll through it page-by-page. You also can favorite a flyer and add it to a running list of your favorite stores. When viewing items in a flyer, you can tap on an item to view details like price, description, reviews and more. A clipping feature lets you save the item to the "Clippings" section of the app. You also can share items via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, email and messaging. Flipp has a search function that allows you to search by store, brand or item. The app searches all the flyers in your list of nearby stores and displays items based on your search terms. Search does a good job at finding items with your keywords, but there is no way of limiting the item on the search results page. I would love to have a price filter or store filter that would allow me to pare down my search results to the price and stores I want to shop. Flipp is available for free from the iOS App Store as a universal app. It requires iOS 7.
