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Daily iPad App: Peterest is Pinterest for your pets
What do people most use the internet for? Corresponding with loved ones? Reading news? Buying useless things on eBay? None of the above. The correct answer, of course, is to look at pictures of adorable animals. The creators of the website Peterest -- and its new iOS companion app - have clearly stumbled upon this fact long ago, using the knowledge to create an app with the sole purpose of letting people share photos of their pets. As the name suggests, Peterest is very much a Pinterest clone with added furry flavor, letting users favorite photos from other users and create a collection of cute pets pics. You can save and store the names of your pets within the app and use that info to tag each photo you submit. All of your submitted pictures are linked to either your Peterest account (which you can sign up for within the app) or your Facebook account. When browsing the photos other users have submitted, you can sort via date or popularity, but sadly there is no option to sort via pet type. Personally, I'd stay in the "Cat" section permanently. Unfortunately, that's not the only area where the app falls short of its potential. At the moment, Peterest is very, very basic. Aside from submitting and browsing photos, there is little else you can do. There is no comment feature, which is a real letdown. There is no ability to follow other users, and there's not even the option to see who favorited your own submitted pictures. On top of that, there's not even an option to add an avatar to your account unless you link with Facebook, leaving you with the default blank face icon. Peterest could really be a fantastic time killer -- and in some ways it's already a fine way to kill a lunch break -- but it definitely needs to be fleshed out before it approaches greatness. The app is free, so there's no harm in downloading it now and waiting for the much-needed features to eventually appear, if they ever do. For now, I'll just keep submitting photos of my cats and pretending everyone loves them.
Daily iPad App: Deus Ex: The Fall offers both flash and function
You won't find many iOS games worthy of being compared to their console counterparts, but Deus Ex: The Fall isn't like most iOS games. When it comes to story-driven games on the iPad, there might not be a game with higher production values. However, this isn't necessarily a sign that a game is great or even fun, so does The Fall fulfill its own potential? Kinda. The Fall is an action RPG at heart, and in its transition to the mobile platform, the Deus Ex flavor remained largely intact. Like the rest of the franchise, The Fall takes place in the future. In this case, the year is 2027, and you are a ruthless mercenary named Ben Saxon. You won't be relying on any James Bond-esque gadgets to complete your deadly deeds. Instead you are fitted with various robotic enhancements that provide you with superhuman abilities. You are also provided with the option to purchase an array of weapons, letting you choose whether the dozens of enemies you'll encounter on each mission will meet their end at your hands or simply suffer a bad headache. Each weapon is also upgradeable with various attachments and other perks, and the same goes for your character. There is an extensive tree of customization, and you're going to be busy for a very long time if you're determined to try everything. The world of Deus Ex looks quite fantastic on the iPad's retina display, and the majority of the environments look appropriately gritty and lived-in. But this eye candy comes at a cost, as I noticed several instances where the game would fall from its normally smooth frame rate and begin to chug for a few seconds at a time. This is to be expected with a game of this size on a mobile device, but it was still disappointing. Controlling a character in a 3D environment using a touchscreen is rarely a fun experience, but The Fall manages to replicate the feel of a proper controller (or keyboard, if that's your thing) rather admirably. You are given the option to either tap on locations in order to navigate to them or use one thumb to move forward and backward and the other thumb to turn. The latter feels the most natural, and while your character may make a few unfortunate wall bumps here and there, it's comfortable enough to avoid frustration. Unfortunately, not everything about The Fall is so well done. The artificial intelligence of your enemy combatants is one of the most glaring reminders that you are playing a mobile game, as they are often as dumb as rocks. Nobody in this virtual game world moves or acts with anything resembling rational thought, and when you see an enemy running into a wall or hiding in plain sight, you're going to be shaking your head. Deus Ex: The Fall isn't perfect, but it gets more things right than wrong, and for a game as big as this, that's quite an accomplishment. If you have an iPad and you're looking for a futuristic adventure that sometimes forgets it's a mobile game, you can't go wrong.
Daily iPad: Play-Doh Create ABCs lets kids squish dough while they learn their letters
Are there times when your kids ask about Play-Doh and you say no because it's just too messy? Or maybe you have a little one darting around who is more likely to sample some dough instead of squeeze it through his or her fingers? If you find yourself with a young child who wants Play-Doh, but can't have it right now, you may want to check out the Play-Doh Create ABCs app. The Play-Doh app has three different learning activities -- letter writing, letter matching and a create and share center that lets children create their own scenes. The Play-Doh models used in the app are brightly colored and have a cute, puffy Play-Doh look. The app has excellent narration that walks your child through each activity. The voice is clear and loud, making it perfect for the preschool set. The writing section is the centerpiece of the app and has the most features. It opens with all 26 letters of the alphabet (upper- and lower-case) and prompts children to pick the letter they want to learn. Once they have made a selection, the wireframe letter is then shown on the screen. Your child gets to pick the color of the dough they wish to use from virtual containers that look just like the real Play-Doh tubs. The colored dough then is dropped on the letter in chunks. Your child must drag their finger to squish the dough together and form the letter according to the proper stroke order. It's a learning experience that teaches children letter recognition as well as letter formation. When they successfully form a letter, children are rewarded with a Play-Doh treat that moves when they touch it. This figure is added to a gallery of models that is used in the create and share activity, which I discuss below. Children also can make their own model by dragging pre-formed Play-Doh pieces together like a puzzle. Kids can change the colors of these pieces as they go along and really make it their own. Once the model is built, they can either squish it or save it. The app includes more than just letter writing. There's also a letter-matching section that displays a Play-Doh letter and prompts your child to drag the letter to the Play-Doh model that begins with that letter. The letters are sounded out and the narrator clearly speaks the name of each picture. The Create and Share section is the free-form part of the app. It uses the models that your child has earned by forming letters and allows your kids to play with these models in a scene. Your child can pick from different landscapes, including a beach, mountain, a castle and more. They can place models, letters and a variety of different shapes in the scene. Your child can take a photo of the scene when they are done. This photo is saved to the camera roll, which means your Photos app will soon be filled with Play-Doh creations. The Play-Doh iPad app is no replacement for the hands-on dynamics of working with real Play-Doh, but there are times when playing with the dough is just not possible. In those instances, the Play-Doh app provides a clean alternative that'll entertain the early elementary and pre-school group. Play-Doh Create ABCs is available for US$2.99 in the iOS App Store.
Daily iPad App: 1941 Frozen Front wages war on your wallet
World War II has been a favorite subject of game developers for many years, and that trend continues with 1941 Frozen Front for the iPad. Frozen Front is a turn-based strategy game which allows you to command an army of troops and vehicles in a number of different skirmishes in snowy eastern Europe. But while the action is intense and the game's production values are top notch, Frozen Front's "free" price tag ends up being very misleading. Before we get into Frozen Front's wallet-draining tricks, let's talk about the game itself. When you play the game for the first time you are treated to a brief but informative tutorial mission that lays the groundwork for your future battles. Each battlefield is split into blocks that you use to navigate and position yourself. Moving your tanks, foot soldiers, and planes is a simple as tapping the block you want them to move to. Attacking the enemy is similarly easy, and you don't need to be a military strategist to win in Frozen Front. The game's two-dimensional art style serves the iPad's screen well, and the snowy landscapes and high-resolution units look great on a Retina display. Frozen Front's music and sound effects are also very well done, giving you the feeling that you're truly in the midst of an epic battle for world supremacy, even if you're only wiping out a few tanks and troops at a time. In your average battle you are given a set number of units to start, a supply depot to create more units, and a foggy landscape that you must explore in order to find and defeat the enemy. As you attack each enemy unit you encounter you oftentimes take damage in return. If too much damage is taken the unit is destroyed, but you can repair by using resources from your supply depot - this, however, is finite. When you exhaust your in-game repair supplies you have the option of using your gold, which you collect from fallen enemies or pay for via in-app purchases, and this is where the old pay-to-win structure becomes apparent. You'll quickly realize that the game is designed in such a way that you will almost always need to pony up some real life cash in order to have enough gold to complete your missions. Gold is relatively inexpensive, and you can get a whole heap of it for $10 or so, but if you plan on playing the multiplayer mode you're probably going to burn through that amount rather rapidly. What it comes down to is 1941 Frozen Front is a truly top-notch strategy game for the iPad, but it would probably have been better served as a $4.99 upfront purchase that allows a sustainable in-game economy rather than offering itself up for free but then demanding cash to proceed later on. Either way, it's worth a look if you're a strategy gamer, if only to shoot some cannons for a few minutes.
Daily iPad App: Colin McRae Rally fails to live up to its heritage
When it comes to racing games, Codemasters is one of the most respected developers around, so when one of the company's earliest racing properties -- the iconic Colin McRae Rally, circa 1998 -- hit the App Store, it could have meant great things for iPad gamers. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. What we are left with is a stripped-down rally racer that not only fails to impress in terms of modern gaming, but also fall short of evoking the pleasant nostalgia of the original Colin McRae Rally. As the title would suggest, Rally is a rally racing title, sticking you in the cockpit of high-powered off-road racing vehicles and asking you to best preset times on tracks ranging from Australia to Greece. Unfortunately, the progression is slow and, if you're hoping to simply hop in and play, you'll be left with just one destination and one vehicle to choose from. You can play the championship mode to unlock additional locales and racing machines, but -- and I can't emphasize this issue enough -- there is a devastating bug that crashes the game as you are in the process of unlocking some of the very first vehicles. After about a half dozen attempts, and shutting off every single other app on my device, along with applying "airplane mode," I was finally able to progress past this section. A cursory glance at the title's App Store reviews reveals that I'm not the only one with this issue, though others don't appear to have been as lucky as I was in eventually moving past it. As this bug will most likely be addressed in short order, let's move on to the parts of the game that won't be fixed so easily. Top of the list is the visuals. Compared to titles like Real Racing 3 or even some of the recent Need for Speed titles on iOS, Rally looks downright ugly. Just about everything in the game aside from the ground and the vehicles themselves are rendered entirely in two dimensions. This includes every tree, bush and tuft of grass on the track. It ultimately just makes the entire experience feel fake and cheap. The knee-jerk argument for this outdated visual style is that the game is based on the original Colin McRae Rally from 1998. That's a fine point, except for the fact that this iteration of the game falls short of even the original title from 15 years ago. For example, the first-person driving mode which was featured in the original title is completely absent from the "new" iOS version. The controls are another sticking point, as the game offers just barebones tap- or tilt-steering options. Not only that, but the tap steering feels a tad too sensitive, while the tilt steering is actually less responsive than you'd probably like it to be. It's nearly impossible to get a good feel for the actual driving. Combine all this with bland and boring menus, zero bonus content after you've bested the championship mode and no option to customize the vehicles themselves -- even with new paint jobs, and you've got a hard sell at US$4.99. Overall, Colin McRae Rally is a disappointing entry into the iOS gaming scene, and comes off feeling like a game that should have debuted for the iPhone 3G rather than the iPhone 5 and top-of-the-line iPads. There are simply too many better racing games on the iPad to bother with this one.
Daily iPad App: TouchCast creates an interactive presentation that mixes video with web content
There are a lot of video editors in the iOS App Store, but few are like TouchCast. The app lets you record a video and overlay widget-like elements that can hold web pages, maps, Twitter streams and more. Users watching the video can click on these multimedia elements and interact with them while the video continues to play. TouchCast is an interesting concept that mixes video with the best that the web has to offer. TouchCast is an iPad app and it lets you preview TouchCast videos created by both the company and other TouchCast users. These galleries give you a feel of what type of videos the platform can be used to create. There's also a composition side that lets you record, edit and share your TouchCast videos. The video recorder and editor is the meat of the app, and, not surprisingly, is a bit difficult to use. You start by recording a video using your iPad's front- or rear-facing camera. You can pick from several themes like newscast or review that'll insert titles and other elements to get you started. There's even a teleprompter feature to help you speak succinctly during this recording phase. On the editing side of things, TouchCast uses a timeline to lay out the elements of your video and allows you to drag / drop extra content like titles, a whiteboard and vApps. vApps are the widget-like components and include maps, Facebook content, Twitter streams, Flickr photos and more. The UI is arranged nicely with buttons at the bottom for all these different features. There are a lot of options, though, and it does take some trial and error to get elements to appear where you want them to be. Part of the difficulty with TouchCast is that it challenges you to think differently about video production. Video is not just frames and transitions in TouchCast. It includes interactive elements that provide you with options for engagement that don't exist in other video editors. For example, when you mention an app in a video, you can now load up the developer's website. The person watching your video can click on the website and explore the app while you continue to talk. TouchCast calls its product the video web, which is a simple, yet accurate description. When you are done creating your TouchCast video, it is hosted online on your TouchCast channel and viewable by folks using Chrome or Safari. From within the app, you can share these TouchCast videos via Facebook, Twitter and email. You can also upload it to YouTube as a regular, non-interactive video. TouchCast is an iPad app and available for free from the iOS App Store. Desktop versions are currently under development.
Daily iPhone App: Home is a creepy but well-constructed tale
Home probably isn't for everyone, but a certain type of audience will really love it. The game is an indie title originally put together for the PC by a developer named Benjamin Rivers, and it's in the horror-adventure genre. The controls are very simple: You walk left and right by tapping on either side of the screen. You can look up by tapping up, and you can interact with objects in the environment by double-tapping on them when you're close. That's it. But Home works its magic in other, weirder ways. Early in the game, your character finds a flashlight, and most of the game just involved wandering around a creepy house, slowly finding photos and items that reveal just what the experience is all about. Text appears when you interact with items, but it's all in the past tense, so you're playing out a story that has already happened, and the choices you make are part of the story being told. It's a fascinating experiment in storytelling, and while it can get a bit macabre at times, this is an indie experience that does a whole lot with relatively little. Home is available for US$2.99 on the App Store now, and though the award-winning indie title already has its fans on the PC, it's a solid addition to Apple's iOS lineup.
NACD Home Speech Therapist brings apraxia therapy to the iPad
Speech Therapy for Apraxia - NACD Home Speech Therapist is an iPad tool designed to improve speech sound productions and motor speech planning skills in people with apraxia, a speech disorder in which a person knows what they want to say, but has difficulty speaking the correct sounds, syllables, and words. The target users are children, but the app can be used with adults as well. I have a few children in speech therapy, which gave me and our speech-language therapist an opportunity to try out the iPad app. What the app does The apraxia program has 8 levels with speech sounds that are arranged appropriately in developmental sequence. The app doesn't teach the individual sounds, but focuses on learned sounds in various sound combinations. Each combined sound consists of consonant vowel (CV) syllables and are grouped according to their place of articulation, with the exception of the liquids (/l, r/). Within the practice sets, the target sounds vary in manner (how the sounds are produced) and voicing (whether or not the voice is used). Users can choose to start at the beginning and work their way through the 8 levels or jump ahead and work on those sounds that need practice. The consonant groups practiced in the app include B P M; D N T; G K H; W; F V; S Z; SH CH J; and L R. Level 1 starts off with 20 CV targets and is simple in its presentation with one CV syllable and image per screen. The images are simple and easy to recognize, which makes it especially suitable for children. The child (or adult) touches the screen and the auditory stimulus (sound) is presented. The child then repeats the sound and moves on to the next screen. The adult provides the necessary feedback to help the child improve their sound-making skills. The next 7 levels all have 10 CV targets and are increasingly more difficult. If the child has the verbal recall ability, the complexity can be increased even more by asking the child to touch some (or all) of the stimulus items and then repeat them as a whole or partial sequence. This can facilitate rapid motor planning and sequencing. The good and the bad Just like any app, the NACD Home Speech Therapist has its strong points and its weaknesses. As we have seen with other tablet applications, this type of visual and tactile activity can hold a child's attention longer than traditional practice sessions, which is a good thing for parents looking to pack as much learning as they can into a therapy session. This type of app also gives the child a sense of control and lets them progress through the program at their own pace. You have to monitor the pace, though, as a child left alone with the app could whip right through an exercise. The adult can try to control the pace by holding the iPad, but some children may resist (and by resist I mean cry uncontrollably) if the tablet is held out of their reach. You have to find the right balance between self-directed and parent-directed learning. Not surprisingly, elementary school-aged children and even many preschoolers can learn to recognize the picture or letter combinations, and can try to say them without touching the screen or hearing the auditory input. Yes, this allows the child to progress to the point of producing sounds without the auditory input, but it could also lead to the child saying the response simultaneously with the stimuli. This makes it challenging for the adult to accurately assess the child's response when he or she speaks at the same time as the iPad. Thankfully, there is a simple solution -- just turn down the sound of the iPad until you can hear your child clearly. The biggest drawback to the NACD Home Speech Therapist is the lack of visual movement or reinforcement when a stimulus item is touched. This not only takes away from the overall experience of the app, it also can hinder a child who focuses on visual instead of auditory stimulus. Conclusion Overall, NACD Home Speech Therapist is a useful tool for teaching CV phonemes to independent learners. It can be used by a speech-language pathologist in a school or clinical setting. It can also be used by parents to practice with their children at home. Note that the app does not replace the teaching of the individual phonemes, and would not be useful if the child needed visual cues from a speaker or an alteration of the auditory stimulus. Speech Therapy for Apraxia - NACD Home Speech Therapist is available for $4.99 and is compatible with the iPad. Speech-language pathology analysis provided by Clare Clifford, CCC-SLP at OT To Play.
Daily iPad App: Foresee plans your activities based on the weather
I'm an outdoorsy-type person and I set time aside each week to go hiking and kayaking with my children. My plans sometimes go awry because the weather turns sour at the time I selected. To improve my odds of getting outside as planned, I decided to check out Foresee, a new weather-scheduling app from BorderLeap. Foresee lets you select an activity and set three primary weather parameters like temperature, cloud cover, humidity and more. The app will then scan the forecast and determine the best time for your activity. The app doesn't reveal just the optimal time, it shows you the full day on an hourly basis and uses a smiley face to reveal the best times for your activity. Likewise, all the bad times are marked with a frown. I tried changing the parameters, and the app updated the smile/frown accordingly and accurately. You can set up multiple activities and swipe easily between them. The app works on a daily basis so you can see the best activity times each and every day. I didn't mind seeing my activity everyday as I like to get outside as much as possible, but it might be nice to have the option to schedule out activities for a range of days. This would be beneficial for folks who want to plan for the weekend or a vacation. Overall, I found Foresee to be useful for predicting the best time to go outside. It's not real-time and doesn't take into account quick changes in the weather, but for general planning it works great. Foresee is available from the iOS App Store for US$0.99.
Daily iPad App: FlightRadar24 lets you spot planes using your iPhone
Every once in a while, I travel to the big city of Portland, Maine, and swing by the airport to watch a plane or two. I have a radio to listen to the control tower, so I know when planes are landing or preparing to take off. It's fun listening to the radio chatter, but these FAA-sanctioned conversations tell me little about the plane itself and its flight. To fill in these blanks, I recently started using FlightRadar24 Pro. FlightRadar24 Pro is a universal app so it runs on the iPhone and the iPad. It's convenient on the iPhone, but I prefer the slightly larger screen of the iPad mini, which is perfect for a visual, mapping app like FlightRadar24. When it launches, FlightRadar grabs your location and shows you the planes that are near you. The app is regional so you can see planes even when there are none directly overhead. It's also a real-time view so the planes move along their flight path while you have the app open. When you tap on a plane, a pop-up window shows information about the plane model, the flight and the plane's current speed and altitude. Besides the map view, FlightRadar24 Pro includes a 3D view that lets you peer through the cockpit of the plane. It's rendered for a mobile device so the land and water textures are decent, but not great. It's no Microsoft Flight Simulator. There's also a handy flight path view that shows the entire flight of the plane. Since I live on the Eastern seaboard, there are a lot of international flights overhead and it's fun to see how the planes fly over from Canada, the Middle East and Europe. FlightRadar24 Pro is available for the iPad for US$2.99. There are a few in-app purchases that'll let you add on flight model graphics for 16 planes, arrival tables and unlimited alerts. If you want to try out FlightRadar, you can download a feature-limited free version that lets you track overhead flights, but lacks the details on the plane and its flight. If you prefer not to buy an app, you can also just Ask Siri about those planes overhead.
Daily iPad App: XCOM: Enemy Unknown is great, if you've got the hardware
Firaxis recently announced that it was bringing a complete version of last year's console title XCOM: Enemy Unknown to iOS. The game is now available, at a premium price of US$20.00. That's costly for a mobile game, but the truth is that this is no "mobile" game as you might think of one. It's a full-featured experience that brings the old classic XCOM tactical, turn-based gameplay into the latest generation of graphics and gameplay design. The premise of the game is that you (yes, you) are the "commander" of XCOM, an internationally funded military research organization dedicated to fighting an alien threat. The game spans the entire organization: During fights, you direct soldiers in battle, and outside of combat, you direct funding and try to place satellites in the sky to protect the countries of the world as best you can. The game's balance is just brilliant. Research you do in the metagame opens up new combat options in the various skirmishes you'll fight, and winning fights (or capturing aliens) can kick your research into gear, which helps secure more tools and more funding. The game's graphics are excellent, and the grid-based combat experience used in the PC version has been translated to the touchscreen with care by 2K China. The one big issue with XCOM, however, is that because of its scope, it's a monster to run on Apple's touchscreen hardware. The iTunes listing says the game is best experienced on the iPad 4 and up, and they aren't kidding. I had some issues with slowdowns and crashes while running it on my iPad 2. Hopefully, future patches will fix optimization issues and the game will run better, but you shouldn't even think about playing this on anything older than an iPad 2 or an iPhone 4S. All of that said, however, XCOM is as premium an experience as they come on the App Store. This is a game designed for PCs and consoles, and we got it on iOS in a feature-full version, for half the price (the title is still $39.99 on Steam, though I expect that price to drop very soon). If you've got the hardware, this game is a must-play, both because it's so excellent, and just to support this kind of quality iOS release.
Daily iPad App: Tayasui Sketches is a basic, but beautiful sketching app
Casual artists looking to expand their sketching skills to the iPad should take a close look at Tayasui Sketches. The app landed in the iOS App Store earlier this month and rivals Paper as one of the best easy-to-use sketchbook apps. Sketches reminds me of an artist's workbench with a canvas in the middle and a handful of tools neatly arranged on the side. Sketches includes six drawing tools, one fill tool and one eraser to get you started. You can use a US$1.99 in-app purchase to buy the complete set of 12 tools and their interchangeable tips. Besides the new tools, the pro version also gives you the ability to change the size and opacity of your tool tip. Sketches may look simple on the surface, but there are a few key features that make the app a useful tool for serious sketchers and not just child's play. First and foremost is the ability to zoom in on the canvas and add small details to a drawing. It's great for adding a wrinkle to a forehead or the veins on a leaf. You can also draw a shape and fill it in with a pattern in one or two taps. You can even tweak the colors using a level tool that'll let you get the right hue, saturation and brightness. About the only thing missing from the app is support for notebooks. It would be wonderful to be able to group your individual sketches into a notebook to organize them. Tayasui Sketches is available for free from the iOS App Store.
Daily iPad App: Nova Elements walks you through the periodic table
Nova Elements is one of those showcase apps for the iPad. It has a great UI and is filled with fantastic photos The showcase section of the app is an interactive periodic table that provides details on each of the elements. You can read about each element find out where it is found and how it is being used. There's also a build mode that lets you add electrons, neutrons and protons to build the atom that makes up the element. You can choose an auto-build that'll assemble the atom automatically. If enjoy a challenge, you can build it yourself. If you make a mistake, though, the atom will explode. Besides the periodic table, Nova Elements also includes a link to buy the Hunting The Elements television program from NOVA. Another section includes the David Pogue's Essential Element's game that challenges you to drag atoms into place in order to build the element. These side sections are fun, but it is the periodic table that's the centerpiece of the app. Nova Elements is a fantastic tool for students and science geeks alike. It is available for free from the iOS App Store and is compatible with the iPad.
Daily iPhone App: Kingdom Rush Frontiers makes great TD better
We've mentioned Kingdom Rush Frontiers here a few times before, so odds are you might know a little something about it already. But the long-awaited sequel / expansion to one of the best tower-defense games on the App Store has now gone live, for US$2.99 on iPhone and $4.99 on iPad, and you can now download it and defend towers to your heart's content. Kingdom Rush has been on the App Store for a while (it originally began life as a Flash game), and Frontiers takes the winning formula of unit-based tower defense, and adds a whole lot of new content and extras. In addition to a whole new map and story to play through, there's a new upgrade tree to unlock as you go, which will buff up your towers in various ways. And there's now a "hero room," as you can hire and upgrade heroes to fight for you. There are new enemies to face in combat, all themed to fit the new environments. And finally, there are new powers to play with as well, which add even more strategy and excitement to the fights. In other words, Kingdom Rush Frontiers takes a great game, and makes it a real classic. If you like tower defense at all, this one shouldn't be missed, and even if you just want to see one of the best games in the genre, you should give this one a look. Kingdom Rush Frontiers is available on the App Store now.
Daily iPad App: HeartPhys lets you peer into the complex workings of the heart
Unless you are a cardiologist, learning about how the heart works can be an daunting task. Words alone can't describe it and static images can't capture the complexity of how the heart functions. Medical students, heart patients or anyone with an interest in cardiology should look beyond paper textbooks and take a look at HeartPhys from Dr. Michael Parker. Dr. Parker is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and has a background in computer science. He brought those two skills together to create interactive medical books and web-based animations describing the heart, lungs and kidneys. The next logical step in making this material accessible to the public was to bring these multimedia elements to the iPad in the form of an educational app. HeartPhys was born out of desire to educate medical students, physicians and heart patients about the heart and how it works. The material is complex, but approachable due to the interactive animations that describe each concept. For example, heart catheterization patients can learn about their procedure by threading a catheter from the thigh into the heart to see the path it will travel, while medical students can study the depolarization and subsequent contraction of the heart muscles. Each interactive element includes a detailed explanation as well as lecture-style Show Me videos to help you understand some of these difficult cardiovascular topics. HeartPhys ships with 19 animations and more will be added over time. The UI looks great, even on the iPad mini and the explanations are overflowing with the science behind the heart. It's definitely geared towards medical students, nurses, and anyone with a strong background in medical science. HeartPhys is available for the iPad and costs US$4.99.
Daily iPad App: Musyc lets you build beautiful music using lines and shapes
Musyc from FingerLab isn't your standard music-making app. There's no fretboard, no keyboard or synthesizer interface. There is just a bunch of lines and shapes. I was doubtful when I first downloaded the app, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Musyc is a blast. Musyc allows you to draw lines on a canvas, select shapes that make sounds and start making music. You drop the shapes on the line and they bounce to create a rhythmic sound. Each shape has a different sound and a different beat. Add a few circles, throw in a triangle and you've got a basic rhythm. You can create multiple lines and bounce the shapes from line to line to change their pattern of bouncing. Shapes can even bounce into each other to make more sounds. Once a shape bounces off the end of a line, it falls down the screen and disappears. As you can imagine, you can build an amazing array of lines and add multiple shapes to create a wide variety of music. There are different sound banks like jazz and mallets, so you can select the sound that best meets your line structure or your mood. If you like what you have created, Musyc even has a recording feature that'll record a beat and let you share it via Dropbox, SoundCloud, email and more. Musyc has a nice mix of creativity and engineering that'll appeal to music lovers and techies alike. The app is free from the iOS App Store and includes three shapes and several soundkits including arcades, modern jazz and sheffield sounds. Additional shapes or soundkits can be purchased for US$1.99 each or you can pay $3.99 to unlock everything in the app.
Daily iPad App: Bam Fu is frenzied fun for multiple players on one device
A while ago, I wrote about an ingenious little app named Bloop, which was a multiplayer game for one iPad, where up to four different players had to tap on little colored squares on the screen to see who could clear them off fastest. The creator of that app, Rusty Moyher, was later approached by another team of developers named Game Oven, who were then working on this app, called Bam Fu. Bam Fu is similar to Bloop, in that it too is a multiplayer game for one iOS device, and you need to hit certain colored shapes on the screen. But Bam Fu's one big innovation is that it adds a little more complexity to the game. Instead of just clearing your own color from the board, the various "stones" on the iPad's screen instead switch to the next color in the sequence when you touch them. So you might flip them one way, your opponent may flip them back, and then so on. Or you might play a little mind game, and try flipping them to your opponent's color, so that one false hit could send them back to yours. The addition of that extra mechanic makes things even more chaotic, as you have to not only hit your own color, but try to send other colors back to yours. Of course, the one drawback here is that Bam Fu isn't really a solo game -- it's meant to be played with others. But if you have some willing participants (in your family or at your next party), it's a great time, available right now for just 99 cents. Moyher originally put together Bloop as a little experiment on iOS, but the creators of Bam Fu have taken his idea and run right ahead with it.
Daily iPad App: Learn Spanish with JamTok! adds a dash of music to your foreign language lessons
Learning a new language can be tedious, but you can liven up your lessons with Learn Spanish with JamTok! from TicTokLabs. The app focuses on vocabulary and uses music as the cornerstone of each lesson. Learn Spanish with JamTok! features popular music from artists like Carlos Santana, Bruno Mars, Nickelback, Madonna and more. The JamTok! Spanish app allows you to pick a song and learn its lyrics in Spanish. A handy slider lets you swing the lyrics in favor of Spanish or English, so you can adjust the difficulty based on your skill level. Vocabulary words are highlighted in yellow along with an image of the word. After working your way through a song, the app prompts you to practice the words that you learned while singing the song. These mini-games follow along with the song and require you to tap on vocabulary words to identify their meaning. It's a fast-paced lesson that keeps you on your toes, especially on your first time through a song. As you play the mini-games, you are rewarded with coins for your accuracy in identifying words and phrases in the song. These coins are then used to buy new songs that'll teach you even more Spanish vocabulary. You can earn free coins just by opening the app each day, liking JamTok on Facebook and by signing up for third-party offers from Tapjoy. If you want to spend less time earning coins and more time learning Spanish, then you can buy coins using an in-app purchase. You can buy 220 coins for US$1.99, which will buy you a single song. You can also buy coins in bulk and pick up a song pack of five songs for 892 coins. The app includes one full free song and free samples that allow you to listen to 25 seconds of a song. Learn Spanish with JamTok! is a fun way to brush up on your Spanish vocabulary, but be prepared to drop some cash on coins if you want the full experience. Learn Spanish with JamTok! is available for free from the iOS App Store.
Daily iPad App: Frozen Synapse simulates some very impressive turn-based strategy
Frozen Synapse has been a successful title on Steam for a while now -- it's a turn-based strategy game, with the twist being that you're a sort of tactical AI, running these battles on simulations and hardware rather than in real life. As a result, the big draw of Frozen Synapse is that while, like many other tactical strategy games, you are guiding a series of soldiers around turn by turn, these turns are actually simulated, and you can test them out and repeat them as many times as you like before playing out the "prime" sequence, and running the real thing. The pacing of the game is pretty perfect, then. Frozen Synapse has now been ported to the iPad, and the touchscreen gives you a whole lot of flexibility over what commands you can give your little soldiers: Just double tap on the screen to set up waypoints for them, and then you can drag those points around as needed. You can then run the simulation to see what happens, but of course your enemies don't always behave in the real world as they do in the sim, so it's up to you as commander to make sure you've planned for any contingencies in the various scripting you've passed out to your troops. Frozen Synapse is simple once you figure it out, but the UI allows you to do a lot with the little guys you control, and as a result can be fairly complicated. Still, there's lots of helpful tutorial videos included, and the good news is that there's no shortage of content for the game. In addition to a full campaign, you can also play instantly created skirmishes, or five different multiplayer modes. Frozen Synapse is available for a premium price of US$6.99, but that's much cheaper than the Steam version still goes for. If you're a tactical strategy fan, this one is a don't miss for sure.
Daily iPad App: Sun by Discover Kids is a star-studded look at our Sun
The sun is one of the most important stars in our galaxy. It gives us light, enables the growth of plants, is a source of energy and is the cornerstone of our calendar. To learn more about this spectacular star, you should check out the Sun By Kids Discover app. The iPad app features interactive 3D models as well as audio and HD video to teach you about the sun. You'll learn the difference between the solstice and the equinox and follow the steps as a star is born. The app is packed full of stunning photos, clever animations and easy-to-read trivia about the sun. Think you are an expert ? Then test your knowledge using the puzzles, quizzes and games included in the app. There is even an activities section that teaches you how to study the sun in real life. The Sun By Kids Discover app is available for US$3.99 from the iOS App Store. It is compatible with the iPad and requires iOS 5.0 or later.
