Apple iPhone Apps | Gear Diary

Nano Rally Review for iPhone/Touch

The idea of racing a tiny car around the kitchen table or other environments sounds like a really fun concept. I have been a huge fan of racing games my entire gaming life, but have not found the iPhone to be a great platform for these games. Nano Rally was released just over a week ago and adds a cheap and interesting twist on the driving genre. Nano Rally is a cute and attractive game. The idea is fun and the tracks have a ton of obstacles. This game has lots of potential, but there are issues (some of which…

Reviews

BandGeek for iPhone Review

Anyone who has spent five seconds around a band room at some point in their life knows that the frequency of a middle A note is 440Hz – but what is its’ MIDI note number? Don’t know? Well then it is time for you to hit the iTunes App store and pick a very useful musical utility – BandGeek. Note: if you are asking ‘what’s a MIDI’ at this point, you should probably move along.

Reviews

Simply Tweet for iPhone Review

For whatever reason none of the big names in Twitter clients have released their updated versions that support push notification for Twitter. However, several solutions have emerged over the past few weeks to solve this issue. I recently took at look at Boxcar which is an add on to your existing Twitter client to enable push and then I looked at TwitBit which was the first full fledged Twitter client for the iPhone to support push. Now comes Simply Tweet, from Motion Obj, which has thrown its hat into the ring of new full Twitter clients with push notification for…

Reviews

Mosiaca for iPhone Review

Mosaica is an iPhone application that lets you take panoramic-like images on your iPhone and then upload them to the web where they can be shared with your friends and family. The finished images, called Mosaics are created by taking several pictures in a sequence and then overlapping them to create an interactive panoramic style image. How does Mosaica stack up against the other photography apps of its type I’ve tried?

Reviews

TuneWiki for iPhone Review

After first glance TuneWiki is just an app that subtitles iPod music synced while the song plays. The app proves to be more than that. Some good and some kind of meh. There are actually four parts to the app so I will cover each part. Music: This tab is really the meat of TuneWiki. Basically, the app acts as your iPod with a twist. The music library is available by choosing artists, albums, songs, play lists or shuffle all songs. Once the song plays, the album art is displayed as well as the lyrics. Most mainstream music had lyrics…

Reviews

Card Ninja for iPhone/iPod Touch Review

Card Ninja has consistently been ranked as one of the most popular games in the iTunes App Store. The game recently received a significant update which most importantly includes the ability to save your game for maximum level-conquering and you can now compare scores with other players worldwide. Card Ninja is integrating with the OpenFeint platform, allowing players to monitor their rank in global leader boards and chat with fellow players. At only .99 cents this is fun twist on matching, memory type games that’ll keep you coming back for more Ninja! The game itself requires players to flick cards…

How to Do It Yourself!

“How-To”: Run the Slingbox iPhone application on 3G

Back in May I wrote this tutorial which detailed the process for using the iPhone application VOIPover3G on your Jailbroken iPhone to get around Apple’s limitation of only being able to use the Slingbox application for the iPhone over Wifi. Once iPhone OS 3.0 was released the VOIPover3G application stopped working. It was not compatible with the 3.0 update. Turns out that’s not such a bad thing. 3G Unrestrictor is a just released application for Jailbroken iPhones that does the same thing as VOIPover3G but in a much easier to use interface. And it’s all done on your iPhone (VOIPover3G…

Reviews

SplashTravel for iPhone Review

SplashData has been creating software for mobile devices since 2000, beginning with Palm software and the SplashWallet suite. As new platforms began to gain traction, SplashData expanded and began releasing software for them (BlackBerry, Series 60), and for a year now they’ve been releasing applications for the iPhone. One of their most recent releases is a version of their travel application, SplashTravel, for the iPhone. SplashData provided Gear Diary with a copy for evaluation.

Reviews

PocketMac Ringtone Studio 2 for iPhone – Video Review

I’m not a huge ringtone fan but my use of PocketMac’s RingtoneStudio 2 for iPhone may change all that. At $29.95 the application isn’t inexpensive, but after creating just 30 ringtones it will have paid for itself. Let’s take a look… A free trial is available. Get it from createiphoneringtones for $29.95

Reviews

ColorSplash – iPhone App Review

Yesterday Larry posted about his favorite new iPhone Photography app Pix Remix. It made him go “Wow” and, after following his advice and purchasing it, I had to second his “Wow!” It has now been added to the collection of image editing apps I keep on my iPhone.

Reviews

AppMiner Review

AppMiner lets you browse more of the top apps, gives you a better search, finds price drops, lets you customize your categories and much more. Best of all, we are offering this app for FREE, so get it before we come to our senses! With the App Store’s birthday here, the amount of apps available is overwhelming! We all need a way to sort through the apps. How do we find what is on sale? How do we find what is new? AppMiner is a place to start. Basically this app is a way to monitor the app store for…

Reviews

Mass Effect Galaxy for iPhone Review

There is a fine somewhere between cynicism and being an actively suspicious consumer … and when I heard about the release of a game called Mass Effect Galaxy on the iTunes App Store that would somehow tie into the upcoming Mass Effect 2 for the PC & XBOX360, I had a hard time deciding which of the two feelings was foremost in my mind. Because I felt that this was on the surface little different than Burger King having all of those cheap X360 games a few years ago as a big promo. Sure, they were games … but it…

Reviews

Word Tower for iPhone/Touch Review

From the Developer: Word Tower: A challenging, fast-paced word play game for the iPhone/iTouch What do you get when you mix up Scrabble, Boggle and Tetris and add the flipping, shaking and sliding that only the iPhone/iTouch can do? WORD TOWER! In this one-of-a-kind word game, create words out of stacks of letters before they pile up and form a tower. But don’t look down too long; more letters are falling your way! Catch them on the way down to place them strategically. As you advance through levels, an array of special tiles will challenge your strategic skills and quick…

How to Do It Yourself!

Taking Notes iPhone-Style – A GD How-To

So here was the dilemma… I was sitting outside in the sun rereading a book I purchased a number of years ago. (Yes, a dead tree book!) I remember some insights in it that might prove useful for some talks I need to be giving in a few weeks. So there I was on vacation reading it for the second or third time. And I was right, there was something worth noting on every other page. The problem was I didn’t have time and paper nearby and, quite honestly, I didn’t feel like sitting there and taking notes while reading in…

Gear Bits

Navigon (Lite) for iPhone with North America Maps

Other than AT&T Navigator, Navigon probably has more presence worldwide in GPS Navigation (especially through it’s stand alone products) than anything we’ve seen so far. First they released their product for the European market a few weeks ago, and now they have released a “Lite” version sporting North American maps (full version coming soon). Let’s take a quick look at this offering from Navigon. Of the current iPhone navigation choices for the iPhone I’ve seen so far, this one has the most pleasing user interface yet. The graphics are clean, sharp, and the color choices are pleasant. That said, this…

How to Do It Yourself!

Create Podcasts On The Go With AudioBoo- A GD How-To

This began as a review of Audioboo, a relatively new service that allows you to create voice podcasts either on your computer or on the go using an iPhone, or an iPod touch in quickly and easily upload them to the net and share them with the world. In the process of creating this review I decided to make a brief podcast of my very first recording and realized that it actually might be more useful and, I hope, more interesting, if I did this post more as a “how-to” than a review. Step One — Visit the AudioBoo website…

How to Do It Yourself!

How to Create Perfect Panoramas

There you are standing on the edge of a beautiful lake on a warm July day. With the naked eye the scenery is magnificent. Unfortunately while the upgraded camera on the iPhone 3GS works well, any given image only captures a small portion of the view. Fear not! For there is a simple way to capture and share a beautiful panorama of the entire image in just moments. Here’s a quick “iPhone How-To”.

Reviews

Instaviz Review

In a post comment last week Wayne referred to using a mindmapping application on his new iPhone. Fact is, mindmapping is a great way to brainstorm and organize your thoughts and the iPhone lends itself to this technique surprisingly well. On the iPhone my mindmapping app of choice is Instaviz. It is a powerful, yet easy to use app that can’t help but impress. Let’s take a look and, if you like what you see, you could win one of five copies we are giving away this week.

Reviews

PhatWare’s WritePad Notes, Affairs, and Events Review

Phatware has been making handwriting recognition and note taking software for [what were called at the time] pocket PCs and smartphones since 1997. I’ve used PhatPad on my Windows Mobile devices for quite a few years now, and it’s often one of the first things that I install when I get a new device. When they announced their first products for the iPhone at the end of May, Phatware offered Gear Diary an opportunity to review their first three programs: WritePad Notes, WritePad Affairs, and WritePad Events. All three programs feature PhatWare’s handwriting recognition software for the iPhone, WritePad.

Game Diary, Reviews

Wild West Pinball for iPhone Review

How many of you miss those days of pumping quarter after quarter into a pinball machine chasing the high score? Granted, I did come from the era of crazy new style pinball games, but many of my quarters skipped the video games and found a home in the pinball machines. Wild West Pinball just became free to celebrate a new pinball game from OOO Gameprom. Once the game is loaded a nice 3D video provides a tour of the scoring and special areas. Before playing you might check this out so you know where to aim or shots. The graphics…

Gear Bits

DOOM Resurrection – an iPhone Gaming First Look

I have to admit that when it comes to gaming I have a weakness for 1st Person Shooters and… Zombies. But can games that combine the two really work on a device as small and “buttonless” as the iPhone or iPod Touch? After spending the last 45 minutes or so playing id software’s new release DOOM Resurrection the answer is a definitive “YES!!!” DOOM Resurrection, currently $9.99 in the App Store, combines great graphics, a good story line, and truly usable touchscreen controls into a fantastic gaming experience. While other games have done a good job with using the touchscreen…