Wait, Where Am I?

• App review for AroundMe
• Posted by jessicadally April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors or Career People

Want to know where the nearest grocery store is? Pharmacy? Bar? This app will help you with that. Not all that useful for the neighborhoods you know this app is beyond handy for traveling as finding these places in a space you’re not familiar with can be very difficult.

While I suppose not everyone wants to go clothes shopping while at a conference or traveling I did find this apps lack of a shopping category for clothes rather bizarre. Personally I’d suspect this is more interesting to most than say “theatre” but perhaps there are more theatre fans out there than I imagine. I guess if you’re traveling for pleasure in New York you might well want to know where you can take in a show, but it seems just as likely you might need a nice outfit for it right?

The extra bonus of having a weather forecast on the app is especially nice for traveling even though it’s likely not the most accurate forecast. Basic information is better than nothing.

Great portable tutorial!

• App review for 23 Ways to Destroy Your Defender: Basketball Instruction
• Posted by Revenant April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Workout Junkies or Sports Fans

High quality vids on a number of techniques to get around the defense. The bullet points are concise, and the instructions easy to follow (even if they're not easy to do). This app has done more to improve my dribbling skills than any YouTube vid I've watched.

Among the best TDs...

• App review for geoDefense Swarm
• Posted by Revenant April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

Like it's predeccesor, quite challenging!

Everything about this is a strategic game, and sometimes you intuitively know what strategy will work, sometimes after a few maulings, you stumble on the correct strategy, and everything clicks smoothly after that.

The difference between this and the original GeoDefense, is this is an open TD, and the little meanies will choose a different route around your defenses if they're given that choice.

My only complaint is with all the flashing explosions on the upper levels, it gets hard to see what's happening.

If you're a TD fan, and like retro graphics, this is defintely a game to pick up.

Unexpectedly addictive!

• App review for Angry Birds
• Posted by Revenant April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

Downloaded this app just cause it had been in the top fifty apps for some time, and continued to have a 4.5 star rating.

Cute, annoying, physics based game. Trying to figure out how to do in every despicable green pig was challenging, and loads of fun.

The graphics are cute, the angry birds warcry pretty awesome, and the music and greenpigs annoy the hell out of you enough that you don't want to lose to either the game or the pigs.

Almost completed the fifth stage (something like twenty levels in every stage).

My wife stayed up till 4:30 on a few nights trying to get three stars on every level, fortunately she dropped that after dragging herself through a couple sleepy days... she's also fortunately hooked, but not quite to the extent she was with Angry Birds, on a tangram-like puzzle game.

No doubts this is a five star app at just 115 yen.

If I Were a Pro Blogger

• App review for Instapaper Free
• Posted by durgadas April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, News Junkies, Book Readers, Parents, Students, Social Butterflies, Sports Fans or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

...now hum that to the tune of "If I were a Rich Man" in Zero Mostel's voice, and you'd hear how I feel about this app. It would seem to provide a functionality that I don't need. I already use Evernote to keep a memory of pages for me, and more and more apps want to offer me this same functionality and I can't say I've ever had a need for this "offline reading" app.

I have a laptop I am on every day, I don't travel that much, I don't live in the city where I am walking around all the time so that my iPhone functions like a mobile-er machine for me. I can see if I was a pro blogger needing to keep up all the time even in situations that my laptop wouldn't allow for, but that's not me.

Cool Old Interactive Text Games

• App review for Frotz
• Posted by durgadas April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, Gamers, Career People, Budget Hawks or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

Well, this dates my computer experience a bit, as I was programming machine language on Apple IIe BEFORE Zork 1 came out. You can play Zork text games (among MANY other interactive text games) in their original green on black text goodness. Ah, the memories!

Back before Myst and variants, you has this puzzle to figure out. Zork (which is why I bought this multi-adventure app) was fun for me and my childhood friend Mike to spend hours on.

We created maps of the GUE (Great Underground Empire) so we could know where to go. Now those are commonplace on the internet. Zork sold over a million copies and was Computer Game of the Year in 1982, so give it some love folks!

Disappointing

• App review for iDisplay
• Posted by mmangino April 08, 2010

This screen updated so slowly that the app was unusable. A total waste of money

Tungle Bungle

• App review for Tungle - Calendar sharing & scheduling
• Posted by jessicadally April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Career People, Social Butterflies, Budget Hawks or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

Not unlike the Tungle web interface, this app leaves a bit to be desired. Worse than the web however the main usefulness of Tungle is lost on the small screen of the phone. So let’s talk a bit more about that.

Tungle is supposedly a way to share calendars with other people and schedule meetings easily. Unfortunately I’ve found it does a pretty poor job of keeping people’s schedules up to date and worse yet seems to be completely incompetent at adding anything scheduled through Tungle to a person’s outlook calendar. This means that if someone schedules something and you accept you better remember to put it on your calendar yourself or you will definitely miss your meeting. Sort of problematic no?

That said, the app can work relatively well for looking at people’s schedules and scheduling meetings OUTSIDE of Tungle. At least having access to a person’s schedule can help pick out a time that might work. And on the web interface this works great. On the phone however looking at everyone’s schedules all at once is odd, making you check each person’s schedule individually to really get an idea of what they have going on. Not very useful if you need to schedule a meeting with a number of people.

Sadly I’ve yet to find a better tool and so until I do, this will just have to do. Please feel free to leave suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

...

• App review for Marvel Comics
• Posted by BrainSmashR April 08, 2010

Haven't actually used this one yet. Was lured in with the prospect of free content, but nothing so far.

Good App...

• App review for The Weather Channel®
• Posted by BrainSmashR April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Outdoors Enthusiasts or Budget Hawks

The Weather Channel on your iphone. Videos, forecasts, radar, everything.

Only disadvantage is that some features require wifi (may work at 3G speeds)

One of my favs.

• App review for iStooges
• Posted by BrainSmashR April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Film/TV Fans

Practically every sound effect and many quotes from everyone's favorite trio (Mo, Larry, Curly).

I like that it has 2 pics of every actor. One in character, and one how I'm assuming they looked and dressed in real life.

Classic

• App review for MONOPOLY
• Posted by BrainSmashR April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers or Outdoors Enthusiasts

More or less the board game classic we all grew up with. I've only played against the computer, but I REALLY enjoyed it (being a fan of Monopoly helps)

Voice to text

• App review for Dragon Dictation
• Posted by BrainSmashR April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Parents, Social Butterflies or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

Record a message, the software automatically converts it to text, then you simply paste the text into a message or e-mail. Works really well even with my southern drawl!!

Smilies

• App review for Emoji
• Posted by BrainSmashR April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Social Butterflies, Budget Hawks or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

Add emoticons to your texts and e-mails. It sets up like a foreign language keyboard then you'll have an extra button appear on your keyboard which will allow you to insert various smilies. I haven't counted, but the free version comes with at least 100.

Protection

• App review for Battle.net Mobile Authenticator
• Posted by BrainSmashR April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

Sends a randomly generated 8-digit security code to your phone that you will utilize to log into your Battle.net games such as World of Warcraft.

The video associated with this app is out of date. You can now enter your authenticator code on the same screen as your game password rather than waiting for the seperate pop-up screen.

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.

I'm like a little scientist!

• App review for Project Noah
• Posted by rachely April 08, 2010
• Recommended for Students, Animal Lovers or Outdoors Enthusiasts

I learned about this app at the New York Tech Meetup and quickly fell in love. With a preexisting affection for lolcats and zooborns I was a natural fit for this beast-spotting app. Log in and begin spotting animals by submitting photos, notes, descriptions and locations of animals and plants you have seen. The interface is fast and easy but almost too convenient to where it auto maps the sighting to your present location, making post-sighting uploads inconvenient to manually change. Use the maps to find out where there have been animal sighting near you, or contribute to special studies. This app isn't perfect, I don't like that the online component is still limited, but the developers told me they're working on it. Great app for adults and kids alike, I'm seriously hooked.

http://ladyappapp.tumblr.com/post/525994499/i-hope-to-get-photos-of-some-subway-rats-and-pigeons

Anti-Freemium

• App review for We Rule
• Posted by durgadas April 07, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

When I play this game, it's OK, pretty fun, but I have to say that games that are blatantly begging for my cash on a constant basis are just annoying. This falls into that category. Yes, when I played Diablo II I bought stuff in game to improve, but some of these in-app purchases can go up to $39.99 for some games! What???? Wrong direction for games, even though I am sure some people will do that, and ngmoco will make money from it. If they had a REALLY in depth game that was RPG based and then had some purchasable items, well that's different!

Excellent IM

• App review for Meebo
• Posted by CoderedTr April 07, 2010

Still got some issues but excellent IM so far

Fun simple game

• App review for Chop Chop Runner
• Posted by durgadas April 07, 2010
• Recommended for Road Warriors, Gamers, Students, Career People, Social Butterflies or Tech/Social Networking Junkies

I love this game. It's simple as anything, cutely drawn, and challenging. While in some ways similar to the other Chop Chop series, it's controls and point are different enough to warrant a separate game. Lots of fun and challenge, sometimes frustrating, but that's gaming!