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6th
AUG

Top 10 iPhone Apps

Posted by admin under iphone

I woke up sunday morning from a text message from the NewsTimes online editor Keith Whamond, indicating that he downloaded the new 2.0.1 iPhone software update (recently released from apple).  Myself, now a iPhone 3G owner jumped on and got the new update.  After all of the dust settled, the hype simmered down, I really started to think :  “What are my most favorite iPhone apps to date?”.  Well, I couldn’t just shell out “Top 10 iPhone Apps” I had to devide them into categories.  Here are the results:

Games:

10. DizzyBeeFree -

Yes, it’s geared towards children.  However people are still ranting and raving about Mario Cart, Zelda, etc etc.  It’s an entertaining game, which isn’t the only reason why I like it.  The game’s usage of the accelerometer is superb, graphics are great, sound is crystal clear and even if your adult there are some levels where you’ll be wondering “How the heck was this level made for kids?”.

“Guide a friendly bee by tilting and turning the iPhone or iPod touch. Lead him through windmills, bumpy bumpers, avoid the baddies, rescue the fruits and bring them to safety.

Dizzy Bee was created from the ground-up for the iPhone and iPod touch. Unique gameplay with clever challenges await within. Easy to pick up, hard to put down.”

9. Moonlight Mahjong Lite

Even if you don’t like the Mahjong game, for whom have downloaded this and gave it a test run has to admit it’s impressive.  You can pinch to zoom in, expanding pinch to zoom out, rotate two fingers to rotate the board and drag two fingers to rotate the pieces in Open GL 3D!  It’s relaxing, nice time-passer, and I haven’t had this game crash my iPhone to date thus far.  Quite pleasant.

8. Cookie Solitare

Traditional Klondike solitaire is given a new twist with this addictive card game.

- Built-in cheats that we would never admit to using!
- Special bonuses to increase your score and speed up the game
- Chat with others while you play
- Compare your best games and highest scores with other players

7. 4InARow Touch

About 4InARow touch
iPhone/iPod touch version of the popular board game Connect Four (also known as Four-in-a-Row and Four-in-a-Line). This has been designed specifically for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Play against a friend or against your iPhone/iPod touch with beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Is it possible to beat the computer in advanced mode? Find out.

6. Slot Machine

About Slot Machine
A classic Slot Machine game now available for iPhone and iPod Touch. Win points by successfully aligning two or three of the same symbols in a row. Easy to use and very addictive. Play and see how many points you can win.

Fun, Simple, easy way to pass some time waiting for a cab, or your food to be served…

5. JawBreaker

  • Tap to select blocks of two or more balls of the same color
  • Tap again to remove the select block of balls
  • Remove bigger blocks of balls to get more points
  • Game ends when there are no more blocks of two or more balls
  • Tap the Undo button to reverse your last remove
  • Tap the New Game button to start over (abandon current game)
  • Tap the Info button to see you High Score and Average Score, etc.

Simple, however extremely addictive.  There’s a free version so try it before you buy it.

4. Labyrinth Lite Edition

We’ve all had this game…a wooden box with a metal ball in it, and trying to finish the maze without sinking it into any of the holes towards the end.  The game’s ability to function perfectly with what it would be like non-virtual is stunning, and makes this game exciting.  Definitely try it, if you haven’t already!

3. Tap Tap Revenge

If you’ve liked the DDR series, Guitar Hero or Rock Band, then getting this game for your phone is an easy decision.  Lush graphics, great music, and difficulty up to levels that would give you arthritis faster than you could say “iPhone”, it’s a great game to play with your friends or just by yourself.  The best part, it’s free!

2. iDoodle2 (Non-Lite version)

The “Lite” version, or “Free” version of this does not have nearly all of the excellent features of the full version of iDoodle2, thus the full version of this App gets the top ten.

This app is great for artists, kids, or people who just want to play around with making images.  iDoodle2 gives you the functionality to :

- Draw on photos from your library or from the iPhone camera
- Draw with the Pen or Blob tool to get great fluid shapes
- Use the Line, Rectangle, or Oval shape to create simple geometric shapes
- Annotate your drawings or photos with the text tool
- Replay your doodles to show off your skills
- Tilt to undo/redo
- Save your doodles to work on later
- Save photos to your library to share with your friends or use on your phone

I’ve personally been using this app since it’s release, and I cannot tell you how much fun I have had with this app, and will continue to have with this app.  You can easily change the opacity of your ‘pen’ tool, change the size of it, and immediately its like drawing with a pencil.  You can shade, color, draw shapes, and draw on images which you can grab from your camera on the spot, or from your image library. This app is AWESOME.  Worth the $2.99.

1. Enigmo

Enigmo is the most unique game that Pangea Software has ever created. Enigmo is a 3D puzzle game where you move various streams of flowing liquid so that the droplets get to their destination. Liquids (water, oil, and lava) fall from “droppers” and will bounce around the walls of a mechanism. You move and rotate into position various types of bumpers, sliders, accelerators, and sponges in order to divert the flow of the falling droplets. The faster you complete each level, the more bonus you will receive.

In addition to the 50 levels that come with Enigmo, there is also a built-in level editor which allows you to create your own entire games. You can then email these games to your friends to try playing, or even post them to your web site. We expect that as users create their own games and we link to them, there will eventually be thousands of levels for you to download and play with Enigmo!

In my humble opinion, this is quite simply put the best game available for the iPhone.  It’s simple to use, has Open GL 3D graphics, awesome sound effects, and it’s jammed packed with 50 levels!  Recently, they’ve opened the doors from their fans and allowed them to develop their very own levels, most however, are quite tricky, so going through the first 50 would be a good idea so you understand the functionality of all of the props available.  (The extra levels by Fans of Enigmo are free, and readily available for download!).  This app isn’t free however, It’s $9.99, but it’s $10 that will consistantly entertain you unlike most games out which you’ll enjoy for the first 5 minutes then you’ll get bored of it.  Worth the money!

Productivity & Utilities:

10. Speedtest

Great, simple little app with some bugs.  It will allow you to test your cellular and wifi download speed, however I couldn’t get the “upload speed test” working properly, as it’s probably the iphone’s ability to NOT upload anything to begin with.

9. WeatherBug

WeatherBug is a free iPhone Web Application that allows you to receive live weather conditions, forecasts, view radar and weather cameras.

What I’d really love to see in this app is more extensive “Forecast” details, (e.g. 1PM Raining, 2PM Cloudy 50F, etc) rather than just “Monday - Sunny, 50F” etc.

Great app however, and probably the only app on the AppStore right now that offers this kind of info for free.

8. Bank Of America iPhone Mobile

Available to all Online Banking customers. With Mobile Banking you can use your iPhone or iPod touch to easily and securely check your balance, pay your bills, transfer funds, or find a nearby ATM or banking center. It’s easy, fast, and convenient - just use the Safari browser on your iPhone or iPod touch to go to www.bofa.mobi and you can get started.

What set me off about this app is that the appearance of the information after you’ve logged in, looks like a webpage from 1992.  Dull, ill exciting, and just plain tacky.

On the upside, it does function well, will work OK on edge networked First Gen iPhones, and just tells you your information plain and simple, no frills.

7. InstaPaper

“A fast, easy, free tool to save web pages for reading later.”

Simple Idea, Simple Application, Huge time saver.  Save websites to read when you go out of service, or go into airplane mode on a flight.

I really can’t say anything more on this app, other than it’s absolutely remarkable.  (And Free!)

6. PC2Me

Not a “downloadable app” however this is a webapp that was made popular way before the 2.0 firmware update, and is still extremely useful and appealing to me.

It’s simple, login for free, install the small client on your home PC, go to yourusername.pc2me.com and connect with your login credentials.  Hello remote desktop for PC!  You can double click, access the keyboard, open applications, edit documents, etc.  Almost anything with this app you can do when your sitting in front of your desktop! (I have a webcam plugged into my desktop at home as a security camera, open the webcam app, and I can watch the webcam LIVE right from my phone! How cool is that?).

5. Shazam

Already an industry standard, Shazam fully integrates with and complements the iPhone’s native environment, allowing you to seamlessly discover, buy and share tunes simply by holding your iPhone to music for just a few seconds.

Key user features:

  • Tag music: identify music anywhere - whether it’s on the radio, TV, in a movie or in a store.
  • Build your own soundtrack: see the list grow every time music is tagged.
  • Get the music: go straight to iTunes to preview and buy.
  • Music Videos: see related videos of the track on YouTube.
  • Capture the moment: personalise the tag by taking a photo and adding it to ‘My Tags’.
  • Share the moment: send track details to friends via email.

The Shazam application enables you to tap into a vast database of nearly 5 million tracks giving instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the tune that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately - or simply add it to your playlist.

Availability

This version of the Shazam application is available for free and can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store on iPhone or at iTunes in the following countries:

Austria, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand.

This app is mingbloggling, however I found out what it couldn’t identify.  The guitar solo of Yngwie Malmsteen’s “Black Star” and most classical music.  Other than that, if you hold your phone to the radio it will 95% of the time get the song that’s playing (with a picture of the album, artist information, links to buy the song, etc).  Simply Amazing!

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4. Yelp!

Yelp.com is a data-intensive site bulging with user opinions and social-networking addenda. The iPhone app was clearly never intended as a replacement, but as a companion for the lost or weary to seek out a bike shop or bite to eat. That much is evident by the read-only quality, mobile-specific mapping and call functions, and the de-emphasis on social networking. Still, while the closed, self-centeredness of Yelp for iPhone is somewhat refreshing, certain scheduling capabilities would be welcome–like the ability to invite a friend to lunch.

3. Pandora

Pandora Radio is your own FREE personalized radio now available to stream music on your iPhone. Just start with the name of one of your favorite artists, songs or classical composers and Pandora will create a “station” that plays their music and more music like it.”

What’s more to say?  The 3G iPhone benefits from this app more however, as the music can stream faster, so there’s little to no “Down Time” between tunes.  It’s quite simple to use, and in no time you’ll be streaming music wherever you are!

2. Wordpress for iPhone

I remember the day when I was looking for a iPhone wordpress app and discovered it hadn’t even been developed yet.  I thought to myself “Wow, they should really do this, it’d be fantastic!”  Finally, they released it and it really is!  Wordpress has completely redefined mobile blogging.  The fact that you can snap pictures where ever you are and enter them into your posts right from your phone is impressive.  Start with only a few sentences or write a full novel, there’s no post-limitations from the iphone version to what you would get on your normal PC web-based version.

Connecting to my blogs was quite simple.   Some standard regulations : Wordpress 2.5.1 or better installed on your server if your doing your own blog, and be sure to enable the remote posting option in the ‘writing’ setting options to make the connection.  After that, just enter your login / password & blog URL and your done!

Check out my other blog post when I enabled the functionality for the News-Times blogs here.  Photo Gallery is in that link.

1. Facebook

This was a hard decision.  However I sided with Facebook rather than Wordpress because of the overall functionality that currently exists between the two applications.  Remember, this can change at any time, however on 8/6/08 this is my standing.

The Facebook application simply put, gets you connected.  Fully integrates with your current Facebook account, you can see your wall, post on others walls, take pictures and immediately upload them to your facebook’s “Mobile Uploads” gallery and best yet, can even use the facebook’s “Chat Room” right from your phone and talk to your friends in real-time.

They’ve already had a version update that added a bunch of features to the already feature rich application and undoubtedly is the best looking / coded  / functioning and practical application available.

The image is the facebook’s web version, however the iPhone downloadable app version even looks better.  The team at facebooks is kicking butt to really deliver the best application for iPhone users.

31st
JUL

iphone testing

Posted by admin under iphone

Well, apple has amazed me yet again. There is now an application in the iPhone’s “app store” that was created by wordpress for mobile blogging. It allows you to create a blog entry, snap a picture, and upload it on the go….which I’m doing right now!

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4th
JUN

iPhone NT Blogs

Posted by admin under iphone

Just added the blogs to the Newstimes iPhone website.  If you have an iphone, now you can get our most recent blogs!