Easy, Fun, Addicting (v1.5)

• App review for Chain Link Pro
• Posted by ynzr April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

I just grabbed this game yesterday and I'm already hooked. The objective is to move various shapes to the vortex at the center of the screen to score points. By linking the same color shapes together, the points awarded increases. If differing shapes collide, the game is over. It sounds simplistic but that's the brilliance of it.

Chain Link Pro has three different game modes and various difficulty levels. The game also features mini-quests during the gameplay for bonus points, for example, score with a chain of 6 circles. There are also various power-ups such as invincibility, multi-colored chains, slow-speed effect, etc.

Compare your score with others on Open Feint and challenge other players online. The game also gives you real-time updates as you break a high-score on the global leader board, or unlock an achievement.

With nice graphics, good sound effects, fluid movement and captivating gameplay, Chain Link Pro is bound to be a winner.

Hard to Get iPad Back from Kids After They Race Around the Track

• App review for Need for Speed Shift for iPad
• Posted by sharakarasic April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

This is a very well done racing game, with an energetic soundtrack and all the details right. You can buy different cars, upgrade your car, race on various tracks. Right now my red Mazda is racing on the gritty streets of Chicago. Sometimes my eyes veer from the road as I notice all the architectural details of the buildings. There's a multiplayer option. The rocking soundtrack ups the adrenaline rush. Definitely one of those "show off the iPad" games.

The best place to find iPad apps on the iPad!

• App review for Appolicious for iPad
• Posted by spirrison April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, News Junkies, Foodies, Book Readers, Gamers, Workout Junkies, Parents, Students, Animal Lovers, Outdoors Enthusiasts, Music Fans, Shopaholics, Career People, Social Butterflies, Budget Hawks, Sports Fans, Film/TV Fans or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

Once you download the Appolicious for iPad app, you will have everything you need - right from the device - to discover, share and refer great iPad apps.

Of course the Managing Editor of Appolicious is going to say that. Download it now and learn for yourself!

Great News App

• App review for The Huffington Post
• Posted by d34chicago March 30, 2010
• Recommended for News Junkies

This app is great for news junkies. It is easy to use and includes not only access to well-written articles, but photo slideshows and other content as well. The app also provides easy access for sharing interesting articles via email, Facebook, and Twitter. If nothing else, it is a great way to pass the time on the bus or train.

A bit like mechanical turk but volunteering

• App review for The Extraordinaries
• Posted by rachely March 29, 2010
• Recommended for News Junkies, Animal Lovers, Outdoors Enthusiasts, Career People or Social Butterflies

I almost skipped over this app, I wasn't sure I understood it from the description. What I found was actually a downright fun was to get some good karma in my free time. This app allows you to search through a series of mini-tasks from non-profits around the world that they are crowdsourcing from the general public. So basically, if you have some free time to kill rather than playing Peggle you can help tag abused tiger photos or take pictures of local playgrounds. This app runs very smoothly and I found most of the tasks to be fairly amusing. If you're one of those people who constantly has excuses for why you can't find time to build a house for habitat for humanity or donate blood, this app will help you get a quick shot of good karma.

I wish I actually saw the world through an HDR lense

• App review for HDR for Free
• Posted by rachely March 29, 2010
• Recommended for Outdoors Enthusiasts

This is not a particularly complicated app, it doesn't do anything stunningly amazing, but if you're only going to run your photos through one filter, this is the one I would use. Particularly for photos of natural scenes, carnivals with bright colors, sunsets, beaches and flames, this app gives the image a beautiful warmth that makes them still look realistic but saturated and bold. iPhone can often wash out colors and make photos look rather flat so I find this app breathes some life back into the images..

An Awesome Introduction

• App review for Spanish Language Guide & Audio - World Nomads
• Posted by fletchisimo March 28, 2010
• Recommended for Students

If you are an absolute beginner and you'd like to learn a little Spanish, then this little app is a great place to start. It covers the basics and gives you the pronuciations as well as the spellings. Take the included lesson and learn how to negotiate a tapas bar. If you are an intermediate Spanish speaker, then this app is probably not for you.

A great app for business meetings

• App review for MeetMe.
• Posted by rachely March 26, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, Parents, Shopaholics, Career People or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

For the past year I've been living in a foreign city where I had to do to a lot of coffee shop and lunch meetings and my lack of knowledge of the city always left me at a disadvantage when they asked me to decide on a meeting spot. What I love about this app is the number of choices if gives you and how it still presents them in an incredibly simple, intuitive way. For destination points, you can choose from either your current location, a contact address or a typed in address. What I liked was that the type feature in smart enough to also recognize most typed in landmarks. Once you have both of your locations determined, the app finds a halfway point (or even a quarter point or a third point, you decide) between the two and any store, restaurant, hotel, club or church located there. When you have finally decided a location, you can see exactly how many miles from each of you it is, read reviews and then email each party directions from their particular location. You don't need instructions here, you simply follow the steps from left to right and I was able to quickly plan a trip without trouble. This app has infinite practical uses, but business is the one where it could have really saved me a lot of strife over the past year and made unprofessional hemming and hawing conversations go far quicker.

Wanna buy my stuff?

• App review for Craigly - craigslist power search
• Posted by jessicadally March 25, 2010
• Recommended for Shopaholics or Budget Hawks

One of the most annoying things about Craigslist is how limited it is to location. While you might not be willing to go 200 miles for a $10 item, if you’re buying something more expensive or rare then you may be more willing to travel. And that’s where this app shines.

Craigly allows you to search multiple locations at once though unlike other apps you can’t search all of craigslist. That problem is mostly dealt with by changing the settings for nearby locations. You can expand what is “nearby” up to 1000 miles from you, thus effectively allowing you to expand your search to what seems reasonable for the item in question. It also allows you to view your search results with pictures so you can cut out the junk that isn’t what you’re looking for visually without having to get into each listed item.

For those of you wanting to sell on Craigslist it has an easy feature to make posting from your phone simple, allowing you to take pictures and upload them instantly.

All in all a very robust Craigslist application for just a tiny bit of money. Now off to sell some stuff!

Here's the directions Mom

• App review for MeetMe.
• Posted by jessicadally March 25, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors or Outdoors Enthusiasts

When I originally downloaded this app I thought it was something different. I was hoping it would allow my boyfriend and I to meet up by entering our own current location and finding someplace in between. As we both regularly go on vlbr (very long bike rides) it would be great if this app were able to take two users into account and find a place to meet in the middle, or, well, closer to me since he’s a lot faster.

That said, this app won’t really do this on its own. It will however let you enter in addresses and find a place in-between the two. This is helpful if you’re not familiar with your surroundings.

Do be careful however as it isn’t smart enough to know if something is way out of the way between the two points. For example I entered my home and my work addresses (it’s smart enough to find where you are currently), asked for places to rent a bicycle and the app listed several places, some of which are very far out of the way by car. In fact it lists one place that is across a waterway from either location, but is close as the crow flies, or as the passenger ferry floats. In a city with waterways and difficult traffic just make sure your suggestion isn’t for the birds.

The app does allow you to email the directions to a place to someone else which is infinitely helpful for those people who just can’t seem to get the hang of looking something up on their own. Finally, this application takes its information from Yelp so it’s only as good as Yelp at finding what you’re looking for.

A great app to find that new place between your friend’s place and yours but not so good if you’re not knowledgeable enough about the place to question and consider the advice it’s giving.

Cute and fun app to play

• App review for Fling!
• Posted by durgadas March 25, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, Parents, Students, Social Butterflies, Budget Hawks or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

Quite challenging puzzle app with cute furry Muppet-like goodness. The puzzles are quite progressively challenging and appear to never be the same to my eye. Replay value is high until the puzzles get more difficult and then your thinking cap really has to be on.

Could be Dirtier

• App review for Dirty Dozen
• Posted by jessicadally March 25, 2010
• Recommended for Foodies, Parents or Budget Hawks

I’ve seen a ton of complaints on this app and certainly there are more interesting free apps out there, but lets face it, part of the great part of the iPhone is the ability to have all tho0se lists of information on your phone so you don’t have to remember everything you’ve ever learned.

This app could certainly be better at telling you what you need to buy or not regarding organic produce. There are certainly more than 47 fruits and veggies out there that you might like to know about and this app isn’t going to help you with that. It will tell you the dirtiest dozen produce items that you should try to either buy organic or avoid if possible.

All this said, if you care about this stuff and you don’t want to have to remember the information this free app is worth having on your phone, lacking though it may be.

though it tries, this game is at the back of the pack

• App review for Air Hockey
• Posted by adin March 25, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

Several things bring this game down to the back of the pack.

First a few things this game does right:

-adjustments to *everything* from puck size to paddle size and offset

Things that are missing or detract from the game (in light of the competition:

-puck table physics is off, with one or two notches of slider, the puck is either stopping completely or driving into hyperspace.

-the paddles absorb too much force from the puck, making the puck sortof "stick" to the paddles.

-the edges of the goals are tough to defend properly...and I haven't been able to create any goal "edge" shots that send the puck careening off.

-there doesn't appear to be any modeling of spin on the puck. (so no shots on the side /angle of the puck)

-no ability to pick up the paddle and/or trap the puck.

-goals are too wide, no area to safely sweep the puck to. (why didn't they at least make *this* adjustable??!)

-lack of overall graphical appeal, only one table skin, only one computer opponent (with three difficulties)

-overall the single player seems half finished with no online service, no story or sense of accomplishment.

-In this version, Bluetooth PAN multiplayer is *not* supported .

Oui Oui!

• App review for Musée du Louvre
• Posted by jessicadally March 24, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, Parents or Budget Hawks

I'd rather go to France and see all of this but even if I did I probably would miss something. The Louvre is a huge place and I suspect that without a week or more devoted to it you still wouldn’t be able to see everything. But even if you can’t get to Paris this app fixes the issue by bringing great works of art to your phone.

This app lets you take tours of the museum in several different languages (want to practice your French?) in video format focusing not only on the Lovre itself but allowing you to choose several of the most well known pieces at the Museum. It also allows you to explore the art itself, showing you first pictures of a piece and then telling you about the work, the technical information about the piece and even where to find it in the museum. This alone would make this app necessary for anyone intending to go to the Louvre in person. Why not plan out your trip to the Louvre while on the plane to France?

The app also allows you to tour the Palace itself, showing you the location of different places in the Palace as well as describing it in a few words for the short version of it’s history. Finally you’re given a ton of visitor information, how to get to the Palace, the plans, the open hours, fees and services and amenities.

You will want this if you’re heading to the Louvre and if you aren’t but wish you were. Do be careful though as I suspect this app will infect you with a very strong travel bug. Best to avoid this app if you already have the tendency to be struck by travel fever.

The best way to make a good picture great

• App review for Best Camera
• Posted by jessicadally March 23, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, Parents, Outdoors Enthusiasts or Sports Fans

When this app says it's the best camera app it's no lie. Sure, nothing will turn your little iPhone into the perfect, expensive digital camera, but this app is a very simple way to make almost perfect pictures look much, much better.

It allows you to change the "filters" on your camera to lighten, darken or just color adjust the pictures you've taken already which can help show the beauty of a landscape photo when for whatever reason it’s lost in translation with just the simple picture. This app is excellent for color adjusting those photos taken in the shade or partial sun as can happen when you’re taking photos during the day where the perfect shot is taken only by standing on the other side of the sunshine. This app beats out the Photoshop app due to it’s easy of use even for the technically challenged.

Possibly most importantly it lets you share your photos right from the app to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or send them by email, and of course you can also save them to your phone. Once your done making that overly bright photo a bit more dramatic, or playing with that landscape or still life photo you can show off your work effortlessly. As the photo app states, “The best camera is the one that’s with you” and this will make the one you have all the time, your phone, much, much better than it would ever be on it’s own.

I want to ride my bicycle...

• App review for Seattle Bike Maps
• Posted by jessicadally March 23, 2010
• Recommended for Workout Junkies, Parents, Students or Outdoors Enthusiasts

There is nothing on this app that isn’t available through the free bike maps you can get virtually anywhere. But the key to the iPhone is the ability to take this sort of information with you without hauling around pieces of paper and this is where this app excels.

If you’re new to bike riding and want to find a bike route or explore a new trail and you don’t have the paper map with you never worry as this app will hook you up with all the routes around you. The routes are clearly shown on the map with an obvious legend that helps you identify what to expect: red for routes where you’re riding directly in traffic, yellow for routes where there’s a bike lane on the road and green for those lovely routes where you don’t have to worry about cars except at crossings.

The only serious drawback of this app is that it stops quite literally at Seattle. So if you’re wanting to ride your bike to Marymoor park just know that you’re not going to use this app for that purpose. I’d love to see this expand to all of King County or eventually all of Washington. Heck, for that matter let’s get to work on making an app cover the entire US! There’s still a ton of great routes shown on this app as is, so get riding!

Shazam is Incredibly Cool!

• App review for Shazam
• Posted by tjb91505 March 21, 2010
• Recommended for Music Fans

Shazam has nothing to do with TVLand's Gomer Pyle saying, "Well, Shazam! Shazam! Shazam!" Instead, it's a very simple way of identifying that song your listening to and even gives you the option of buying from iTunes. Very nice!

Tumblr is made to be simple but this is just too simple

• App review for Tumblr
• Posted by rachely March 19, 2010
• Recommended for Music Fans, Social Butterflies or Film/TV Fans

Where Wordpress offered infinite customization, Tumblr offers simplicity. Perhaps I'm just used to too many years of Wordpress flexibility, but I find the inflexibility of this app frustrating and almost a dealbreaker for me. You can do MOST things with this app and for on-the-fly blogging it's great, allowing you to add audio, photos, everything. But the other day when I couldn't hyperlink text I became pretty frustrated, and it meant posting on my phone and then late refining it online. My opinions may change with more use but I'll be avoiding this app for a while.

Groupon review

• App review for Groupon
• Posted by rchastain March 04, 2010
• Recommended for Foodies, Shopaholics or Budget Hawks

I have been a fan of the website Groupon.com for a while now so I was excited when they created their own app. This app is realy easy to navigate and has a really clean design. It remembers your location so right when you open the app, you are automatically viewing the daily Groupon for your area. The only thing it doesn't show is the daily side deal- it only shows the main deal of the day. I would like if I could view both because sometimes the main Groupon will not be something I am interested in but I will like the side offer deal.
Other than that, this app is really useful and convienant for anyone looking for a good deal. It is essentially the website, just in an app. No new features other than the basic Groupon each day.

Awesome app if it's cost effective..

• App review for Line2 - A new phone line with calling, texting and business features.
• Posted by paulie420 February 27, 2010
• Recommended for Tech/Social Networking Junkies

1st let me say what will be obvious. This is a 5 star app.

The app. Not the cost of service. After trial, it is $19.99 per month. Which for me is almost there... If it were $5 (Or even $10 I guess..) it would be a godsend.

I am not totally computer literate, but this app works easily. Just load up Line2 and dial anyone from a second telephone number. It has visual voicemail, contacts, everything that the iPhone dialer has.

When someone calls your second line your iPhone rings without a beat.

I put the Line2 icon right next to my dialer icon. It works great! Now I have a local business line that doesn't even have to use cell minutes!

Now I just have to decide if the cost of entry is worth it to me. Thank God they have a 30-day trial.

I hope the devs continue to look at the best price per month. If it was different Id be IN!!