Apple iPhone Apps | Gear Diary

Catapult Madness for iPhone/Touch Review

A strange thing often happens with IOS games. Sometimes a simple, seemingly boring game can become completely addicting bringing joy, frustration and waste lots of time. I recently found Catapult Madness at the top of the games list and it was on sale for free so I thought I would give it a try. I was mildly amused at first, but kept wanting to extend the distance I threw the peasants so I kept playing. That mild amusement turned into straight addiction as I kept upgrading and getting further and further. The addition of GameCenter compatibility has created more of…

Game Diary, Reviews

Gear Games Reviews: A Foursome of ‘Bite Sized’ Casual iPhone Games

BUT WHAT ABOUT VIDEO GAMES? So … where do iPhone games fall in regards to what you should do at a ‘dollar store’? That is always a tough call – $1 seems like so little, but pretty soon you find you’ve spent as much as a full-size game! And hopefully you have actually gotten many hours of gameplay from those dollar games, but just as likely you have played most for about five minutes and never touched them again. Anyway, for my next set of micro-reviews I am looking at four recently released $1 games – some are good, some…

News & Features

Halloween Chats Get Spookier with a Surprise IM+ Theme

Starting on October 30, you can enjoy a spooky pumpkin theme behind all of your IM+ Lite or IM+ Pro chats. Beyond the cute new wallpaper, IM+ is a solid instant messaging client which not only handles your MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber and ICQ chats, it also takes care of Twitter, Facebook Chat and MySpace. You’re push-notified anytime someone tries to contact you, and getting set up couldn’t be more simple. It’s so funny, because up until just a year or two ago, I thought of SMS as something you did on your phone only, while instant messaging was…

Game Diary, Reviews

iPad / iPhone Game Review: Review: Knights of the Phantom Castle

If you look back to the first year following the release of the Nintendo DS, most of the games released were little more than GameBoy Advance games re-purposed to use the second screen with perhaps some touch controls thrown on for good measure. Similarly, in my first six months with the Apple iPad I have witnessed many iPad games that are little more than up-scaled iPhone games. I would definitely put Knights of the Phantom Castle in that category. That doesn’t make it a bad game, as you will see – it just tells you something about what to expect….

Reviews

Halloween Edition, GhostCamPro for iPhone Review

We are all feeling the financial pinch! Blue Plate Special is a weekly review of bargain apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nothing over $.99. With Halloween quickly approaching, I decided it would be appropriate to find a spooky app for this week’s Blue Plate. There are many applications with a Halloween theme, but some of my favorites utilize the camera. We have had loads of fun with Haunted Face which Dan showed here last week so I was looking to add to my camera arsenal. GhostCamPro will make any picture into a creepy experience by adding a ghostly…

Reviews

HeyTell Review

Remember years ago when Nextel’s Direct Connect phones were all the rage? They aren’t used widely today, but back then the familiar beep of the walky-talky feature was something heard often. Thanks to a tip from a YouTube friend I’ve been using a new iOS application called “HeyTell” which mirrors the Nextel Direct Connect function. HeyTell turns your iOS device into a walky-talky. You record short (limited to 30-seconds) voice notes and they are transmitted to another user and played on his/her iOS device. The application utilizes push notifications to alert users when new messages have arrived so once you send the…

Reviews

ListMonger for iPhone Review

I recently received an email from Paul at Inspiretis, an iPhone app developer. Having seen one of my reviews in which I confessed my obsession with list making, Paul offered to send me a review copy of his new iPhone app, ListMonger. I downloaded the app and I’ve been playing with it for about a month. To be frank, I really like ListMonger. It packs a bunch of features into a few basic, easy to use screens. Among the features are: Nested lists – and not just at one level. I only tried it for three levels (a list with…

Reviews

Trainyard for iPhone/Touch Review

We are all feeling the financial pinch! Blue Plate Special is a weekly review of bargain apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nothing over $.99. Yes, I am a sucker for puzzle games on my IOS devices and love to find new games that fit the Blue Plate Special price. Trainyard is currently on sale for $.99 so jump on this one quickly. It is always interesting to see the many ways developers can create a puzzler. I have a soft spot in my heart as a train lover for this one. My dad loves to watch trains and…

News & Features

iPhone App Quick Look: Haunted Face

Whenever I see my friend Meni, he always has a neat app or two to show me. This time the app was just in time for Halloween. There isn’t much to say about Haunted Face. For $.99 is lets you either take a new picture or choose one from your photo library, crop it, process it and… well you’ll see in a second. The processing happens on external servers so you need an Internet connection. In addition, while you can email an image from the video it creates you cannot email the actual moving image. Still, for $.99 is is…

News & Features

Teach Me Sushi for iPhone Sounds Tasty

I’ve flirted with making my own sushi, but I can never seem to get my rice just right or my rolls just so. If you are in the same (sushi) boat, then here’s an app that might be able to help. The new app offers helpful tools and over 45 minutes of instructional videos demonstrating how users can make advanced sushi rolls in their own homes. The Expert offering takes the lessons a step further, teaching users to create advanced rolls including Shrimp Tempura, Volcano Rolls and Spicy Crunchy Tuna Rolls. And just like that … I am now craving…

News & Features

SpookyTones Helps Your iPhone Get Its Ghoul On

If you are a fan of both Halloween and customized ringtones for your mobile devices, then what we have here is a bit of convergence for you. If you want to “spookify” your iPhone a bit, point your broom toward Electric Pocket’s space in the iTunes App Store and check out SpookyTones, a Halloween version of its MailTones app. SpookyTones allows you to assign distinct, frightening tones to your contacts, and then, rather than the traditional, boring email alert, your iPhone cackles, thumps, or rattles its chains. Prefer giving the ghouls the silent treatment? SpookyTones will also let you set certain…

Reviews

Flick Fishing for iPhone/Touch Review

I recently took my oldest son fishing with a buddy and his daughter. This was not his first time fishing, but it was definitely our most fruitful adventure. The kids were catching perch and bass as fast as we could get the bait wet and they were having a blast. Luckily, we hooked onto a couple of larger bass and Peyton had to learn to fight and real a fish that could really fight. Being the geek that I have made him, he asked if there was a fishing game on the iPhone on our way home. We decided to…

News & Features

App Update Alert: TabToolkit For iPhone/Touch/iPad

One of my favorite and most used guitar apps is TabToolkit from Agile Partners. I love the ability to search, download and read guitar tabs on my iPhone and iPad. The application actually knows when a tab is available on the page and will download and store it with a simple tap. As great as this app is, a huge update just went live in the app store. This is a considerable update to an already amazing app. Click here to read a full review of TabToolkit. Some of the new features: Guitar Pro 6 file format: Many TabToolkit customers…

Game Diary, Reviews

iPhone Game Review: Virtual City

The game SimCity came out in 1989, but its presence is still felt in every corner of the gaming industry. From new incarnations on consoles and PDAs and phones to new versions for PC and other platforms to influenced games for a variety of platforms, it is clear that Will Wright had SOMETHING right! The iPhone and iPad have been home to a number of games in this style, and I have just found my new favorite – Virtual City from G5 Entertainment! The Hype: Build a city of your dream – a residential paradise or an industrial center. Build…

Reviews

Ace Flashcards for iPhone/Touch Review

As an educator and parent of a kindergarten student, flashcards are always a part of my life. Many of my students make them for each test for a variety of subjects. Coincidentally, the students who put the time in to make the cards seem to always make above average grades. My son is learning to read and has a couple of sight words added each week. We have two sets of flashcards at home and constantly quiz him on his words. In Texas, students must pass a standardized test called the TAKS test which includes social studies in the 10th…

News & Features

Because Being a Nag Isn’t Always a Bad Thing…

Poor “Nag.” The word almost always has a negative connotation. Think about it: can you recall a recent conversation in which you’ve heard “nag” used as a verb and not had it mean something unpleasant? Well, Electric Pocket’s new iOS app might just cast “nag” in an entirely new light. Just the other day, our friends over at Electric Pocket, makers of BugMe! and BookLover, sent us a note announcing their latest iPhone app, appropriately titled “Nag.” It’s a simple app that nags you at a time of your choosing. Seems simple enough, and it is. I downloaded the app,…

News & Features

iLife ’11 Includes iOS Compatible Apps? But How Would That Work? I Have One Idea…

A post over on 9to5 Mac points to a new book over on Amazon UK that suggests iLife ’11 is due in November and, surprise surprise… includes iOS compatible apps. That’s all very interesting and would be a nice turn of events, especially since there are a number of tasks I much PREFER to for using an iOS app than on an iMac, but there is one problem… iOS apps are designed for multi-touch. I have to imagine that trying to make them mouse-enabled would be, at best, inelegant. Then I got to thinking… I ALREADY HAVE a multi-touch device…

Reviews

Rocketeer for iPhone/Touch Review

The last two weeks, I reviewed apps that were kind of off beat and different from the usual Blue Plate Special choices. As I searched and scraped apps this week, I ended up returning to a familiar genre. I have the biggest game of our season to date so things are a little stressed. Getting a minute to escape is important to keep my insanity, so I was continually drawn to finding more games. I stumbled across an interesting game that is currently on sale for free! I recommend picking it up quickly if you plan on trying it out. …

News & Features

iPad and iPhone App Update- Dropbox-Powered Elements 1.1

I’m using DropBox more and more these days, thanks to a recommendation from Thomas a number of months ago. One of the key apps on my iPad that makes Dropbox even more powerful is Elements. The universal app lets you use Dropbox as a note-taking application on any iOS device; it is a great way to take notes on the go and ALWAYS know exactly where to find them. When Larry first recommended the app to me, it was good… but extremely limited. You could make notes and do some minimal formatting, but that was it. Now Elements has been…

Reviews

iPhone App Review- Doodle Cam

Back in the day when MTV was actually all about Music Videos (go figure) there were a few stand-out videos that had effects that, at the time, truly “wowed”! Fast forward a few years and you can now use your iPhone or current gen iPod touch to do exactly the same thing… and more! The app is Doodle Cam and it costs just $1.99. It comes from the same developer who recently released Vintage Video Maker, an app that makes your iPhone and iPod touch videos looks as if they are old movies. That app is fun. Doodle Cam is…

Reviews

Blue Plate Special Silly Edition: Flip/Bubble Text for iPhone and iPad.

We all use our iPhones and iPads for many daily tasks. Besides gaming, most of these tasks have become quite practical and serious. Sometimes it is fun to just be silly for no good reason with your i device so this week I am bringing you the Silly Edition of the Blue Plate. This app really has no great value other than it is just kind of fun. If you ever get bored with the default text the iPhone allows then it is time to try Flip/Bubble Text for iPhone and iPad. Basically, the app allows users to type anything…