Those Neon Stars You Stick to Your Ceiling Are Now Obsolete

• App review for Star Walk™ HD - 5 Stars Astronomy Guide
• Posted by sharakarasic April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Students or Outdoors Enthusiasts

To lie in bed, hold the iPad above your head, and follow the stars in the night sky while a cosmic soundtrack plays IS magical. The constellations are marked and major celestial bodies named. I have this on the iPhone, and it's useful and educational there as well, but not magic like on the iPad where it truly becomes your own personal planetarium. The only complaint I have is that the opening screen which displays info on when planets rise and set in your area would be better as something to pull up later, since the stars are what really draw you into this app.

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.

Movies That Move Me on the iPad

• App review for Netflix
• Posted by sharakarasic April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Film/TV Fans

Netflix is an iPad must. If you are an NetFlix member, downloading this app lets you stream movies right on your iPad. Films are crisp, with amazing blacks and colors. Watching my first iPad movie let me truly understand what the iPad is best at. I'll do my own video editing on my MacBook Pro, but this is the place to watch movies.

iPad Must-Have

• App review for NYTimes for iPad
• Posted by sharakarasic April 03, 2010
• Recommended for News Junkies

Read editor's picks from the NYTimes on your iPad. Nice UI. Clear, crisp images come to life vividly.

Get More Board

• App review for SCRABBLE HD for iPad
• Posted by sharakarasic April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

Wow. Nice to be able to see the whole board at once (for those of us used to iPhone's Scrabble). You can manage your private tile rack on your iPhone and play tiles onto the iPad Scrabble game board with a flick (need to download the Free Scrabble Tile Rack App).

First iPad App I Tried

• App review for Pianist Pro
• Posted by sharakarasic April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Music Fans

Fun fun fun. Choose regular piano, church organ, synthesizer, etc. You can set different background tracks. Can have single or double keyboards. Lots to explore.

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!

It's good, trust the App Store rating (v1.1.1)

• App review for Space Miner™
• Posted by ynzr April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

Space Miner is a great game with nice graphics and high quality audio (play it with headphones at least once like the dev recommends, you'll be impressed). It's entertaining, addictive, and has good replay value.

The screenshots don't do the game justice; it's definitely not just an asteroids-type game... think "Wing Commander: Privateer" if anyone is old-school enough to remember that PC game.

There are plenty of upgrades and different difficulty modes let you unlock more items. "Alien technology" that you've found are automatically in your inventory when you start a new game. With 50 attainable achievements and a world-wide leaderboard, there's plenty to do in this game. Also, the Dev has planned additional updates beyond v1.1.1.

Crappy Name - Good Game (v1.6.1)

• App review for Dungeon Hunter
• Posted by ynzr April 03, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

So okay, the game's title is terrible, but look beyond that and you'll find a pretty good dungeon crawl type game. It's a bit short (4-5 hours of gameplay) and a bit easy (you'll never die with potions), but fun nonetheless. In terms of gameplay, think "Torchlight" set on easy, with less buttons of course.

Every area is like a loot pinata, there are tons of items. One nice element is that once you've completed the story you can still go back to any area and PWN face.

Don't expect an immersive RPG experience; it's more of a hack n' slash with fairly linear gameplay and RPG elements. If you like grinding you should probably look elsewhere. But, if you're looking for some quick RPG-style action with impressive graphics give it a try.

Needed, but not perfect

• App review for National Folk Festival
• Posted by kaffles April 02, 2010
• Recommended for Music Fans or Shopaholics

Very helpful for navigating through the hundreds of acts and workshops.

Useless

• App review for ACTPrinter - Virtual Printer
• Posted by Deleted User April 02, 2010

A totally useless app. Evernote does this, and more, for free.

If You Love Movies...

• App review for IMDb Movies & TV
• Posted by fletchisimo April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Film/TV Fans

You'll love this app! It's awesome! Trust me!

This App Rocks!

• App review for Yelp
• Posted by fletchisimo April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, Foodies, Book Readers, Parents, Students, Animal Lovers, Outdoors Enthusiasts, Music Fans, Shopaholics, Career People, Budget Hawks or Film/TV Fans

Hello, I thought everybody already knew about this one, but apparently some folks missed the memo. This application is GREAT! You can use it for finding out if that new restaurant is any good, or where you can get your shoes repaired, or getting the lowdown on just about any business really. It has user reviews and a rating system, kind of like appolicious. It also has a link to a map, so you can find where you want to be in the real world. If you don't already have this app, then get it. You can thank me latter. :-)

Get Your Internet On

• App review for Free Wi-Fi Finder
• Posted by jessicadally April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Career People or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

When I opened this app and it told me that there was a chocolate shop right by me that I never knew about I was so excited. Trouble is that it's a big lie. There is no chocolate. None.

Needless to say the usefulness of this app is seriously in question if it lies to you about chocolate, um, I mean wifi. Not only is it not correct with the information it gives you but it seems to have left out quite a bit of other information. There are at least two coffee shops within 2 blocks of my work that aren't listed. Granted one opened within the last 6 months but the other has been there for years.

The trouble is that if you're in a strange area this really isn't going to help you. You're not going to know that this place shut down years ago or that a new place opened 6 months ago. If it's a super rural area or a smaller town that you don't know you might wind up driving or walking far only to find out the place doesn't exist. Not cool.

Don't lie to me apps. Especially not about chocolate.

Get it and sleep!

• App review for ToucHotel – Hotels, Hotel Reservation
• Posted by Kyuss66 April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Outdoors Enthusiasts

Perfect stuff to book hotel

Better than the website!

• App review for Run with Map My Run - GPS Running, Jog, Walk, Workout Tracking and Calorie Counter
• Posted by jenniferalaine April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Workout Junkies, Parents, Students, Outdoors Enthusiasts or Sports Fans

This app makes me WANT to go for a run.

Ok, maybe not that dramatic, but it definitely makes it so much easier to track and feel proud of my progress.

Now I must admit to an embarrassing fact -- I had a very hard time using the original MapMyRun website (WHAT?! CLICKING IS HARD!) but this app takes all the work out of tracking your distance.

If you're like me and have super-glued your iPhone to your body, you just tell this little app to start and it uses your phone's built-in GPS technology to follow your route as you run. At the end, it spits out statistics like distance, time, and average speed. And it even syncs up with the website so you can monitor your progress over time.

A hidden advantage to this app? If you have a habit of running in unknown areas like I do, you can use iMapMyRun to find your way home.

[Expert tip: Start your music BEFORE you start this app. It's embarrassing how long that took me to master.]

UNO needs to say SORRY

• App review for UNO™ - FREE
• Posted by jenniferalaine April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers, Parents or Students

Remember when UNO was awesome? And fun? And suspenseful and exhilarating and you just HATED when your little brother pulled out a "+4" card just as you were about to win?

Yeah. Those days are gone.

The paid UNO app was $4.99 so I did what any app-budget conscious gal would do -- I downloaded the free version to test it out. Disappointed doesn't begin to describe how I felt after playing a game or two.

Games lasted less than a minute before I would win, and while I love winning more than anyone I know, it got old. The one time the game even got remotely interesting and lasted longer than a minute, the game stopped and I was redirected to the start page.

The point of offering a free version of an app should entice the user to upgrade to the paid version. UNO Free definitely failed miserably in my book!

Easy and unique filter effects

• App review for CameraBag
• Posted by jenniferalaine April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Foodies, Students, Outdoors Enthusiasts or Social Butterflies

As you can probably guess from the name, CameraBag is an iPhone photography app that aims to achieve the results you could get from an entire "camera bag" of filters, lenses, and lighting supplies.

As someone who is by no means a photographer (HELLO FELLOW DISPOSABLE CAMERA USERS!) I was thrilled at the simplicity of this app. No saturation/brightness/contrast adjusting to do -- the app does all the work for you.

With fun and clever filters like Helga, Cinema, Infrared, 1962 and Fisheye (plus lots more), this app goes beyond other photo apps to easily make your amateur iPhone photos unique!

If real tech startup life were this boring there would be less entrepreneurs

• App review for iNetMania
• Posted by rachely April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Career People or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

Having worked in the startup space for the past year I thought I would like this app a lot more. Sure, it incorporates all the unpleasantries that pop up in the course of running a tech business, but in general it just seemed like more of a game of chance than of strategy. The graphics are cool, it's very 3-D and the ability to swoop around the room was sort of novel but that just 'aint enough. I quickly got bored about ten moves into the game, the gameplay is really slow and I just don't understand why you would marry yourself to a board game style when the iPhone offers almost infinite abilities for creativity. I guess I could see a bunch of tech startup geeks passing this around, but the small excitement here doesn't compare to the real startup world.

Need a New Outfit?

• App review for Gap
• Posted by jessicadally April 01, 2010
• Recommended for Shopaholics

OK, I'll admit it. I downloaded this app while sitting in an incredibly boring meeting. I needed to do some shopping for an upcoming event and figured I might as well get it done then since it was that or fall asleep. Needless to say I didn't necessarily expect much from this application.

There's nothing horrible about this app. If you're into fashion you can create full outfits with the app, trying clothes together to see what they look like adding accessories and shoes (like that old game Fashion Plates, yes, I did just totally date myself).

There's a community tab where you can share with your friends on Facebook about an outfit (am I just not the demographic for this or is this really dumb?).

You can of course use the location function to find your nearest store and finally you can also shop the online store, sorting items by type. Frankly that's really all I've ever done with the app short of playing with the other functions.

If you're looking for a way to kill some time or need to see if the Gap has something you're looking for then this app is worth having. If you're expecting something fantastic it might not be the best fashion app out there (but then I'm not probably the one to ask!)