Posts Tagged ‘the week in iPhone apps’
The Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on February 20th, 2010
In this week's porn-free app roundup: Expensive instant messaging apps, humbled! Cars, leered at! Zombies, organically defeated! Enigmatic Japanese game developers, being enigmatic! The sun, closely monitored! Malls, fearlessly navigated! And more...
This Week's Apps
If you'd like to view the following gallery as a single page, click here
This Week's App News on Giz
• This Is Why I Want Photoshop 1.0 on My iPhone Right Now
• A Better Way to Passcode Lock Your iPhone (At Your Own Risk)
• You Can Now Download iPhone Apps Up to 20MB Over 3G
• Google Buys iPhone Email Search App reMail and Pulls It From the App Store
• SlingPlayer Mobile 1.2 With 3G Streaming Now Available
• Street Fighter IV on iPhone Brings New Definition to Sore Thumbs
• Apple Removes An Innocent Boob-Jiggling App From the App Store
• Opera Mini On iPhone Is "Fast," Though There's No Pinch To Zoom
• Here's What Final Fantasy For iPhone Will Look Like
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
This Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 18th, 2009
In this week's tragically undersupported app roundup: Unicorns, summoned! Bing, Bunged! Human beings, shot to death! Fancy cars, fancily raced! Food quanities, measured relatively! Everything, copied and pasted! Keyboards, questionably revolutionized! And more...
The Apps
Honorable Mentions
The Santa Game: Because it's Christmas, y'all! Almost! And also because navigating a disembodied Santa head out of these mazes is pretty fun.
Raytheon: This is a company that's actively developing iPhone apps for military field use; that they're making a Flight Control-esque iPhone game for us civvies is compelling, for sure. Alas, this app does not exist yet.
Lou Zoom: Lou Reed—yes, that Lou Reed—made an iPhone app for people with vision problems who have trouble seeing their contact list, or for people who really enjoy massive typography.
This Week's iPhone News On Giz
• Surprisingly, iPhone Takes Over the Weird Japanese Smartphone Market
• Inappropriate App Store Icons, Right Here
• Simpson Arcade iPhone Preview: Steeped in Authenticity
• FSJ's Anti-AT&T Manifesto Makes Me Raise My Fist in Solidarity
• AT&T Has Spent Less on Network Construction Every Quarter Since the iPhone's Launch
• Swedes Camping Outside Apple HQ Asking Steve Jobs to Approve Their App
• The iPhone as a Friend and Foe Tracking War Machine
• Control Your Mac With an iPhone, the Patent
• AT&T Dismisses Operation Chokehold as an "Irresponsible and Pointless Scheme"
• The StickyStrap Is the Weirdest iPhone Holder/Case/Stand I've Ever Seen
• Microsoft: Maybe We Should've Paid More Attention to That iPhone Thingamabob
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
The Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 12th, 2009
In this week's mildly paranoid iPhone app roundup: Prices, slashed for the holidays! iPhones, recklessly tilted! Amazing classic games, handily ported! A decent camera app, sold for nothing! Cheap tickets, booked! Dictations, taken! Movies trivia, two ways! And much, much more...
This Week's Apps
If you hate hate hate galleries, click here to view the apps as a single page.
Honorable Mentions
• Google Mobile: This update keeps the app from launching into Safari as much as it used to, and widens its voice capabilities. A minor but useful upgrade.
• My Name and Head Shoulders Knees & Toes: I suspect most of you don't reader these roundups to find ways to entertain your children. But if you do, My Name, which will teach your tot how to spell whatever is on his birth certificate, and Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes, which makes a simple touch game out of the children's song, will distract them long enough for you to gobble up enough Zoloft to keep the gears moving without anyone noticing.
• Wolfram Alpha: Once a comical $50, this mega calculator app is now a slightly less comical $20.
• Monkey Ball 2: Last week, I noted that this app seemed to have a widespread crashing problem, and therefore couldn't recommend it, despite the fact that it's a worthy—if not revolutionary—followup to one of the iPhone's best launch titles. The bug has been identified: If you have a jailbroken phone, avoid this one. If you don't, and you loved Monkey Ball numero uno, give it a shot.
• iClassic: Replaces your music interface with a faux-clickwheel. Jailbreak-only.
• Voltron: A name and a concept worth getting excited about, let down by mediocre execution.
• Aqua Forest 2: Same deal as above: A game with a pedigree and a soild concept, but on which the developers didn't quite follow through well enough.
This Week's iPhone News On Giz
• Mega-iPhone Dorks Who Idolise Rambo, Strap This On For Size
• Analyst Claims iPhone Users Are Suffering From "Stockholm Syndrome"
• In Which a Telco Executive Makes Taking Sound Like Giving
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
The Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 5th, 2009
In this week’s Steve-approved app roundup: Your music library, converted into baddies! Twitter, visualized in 3D! Byplanes, flown! Xbox Live accounts, accessed! Cars, salvaged! Overprotective parents, abetted! Live video calls, called! And more…
The Apps
To view the gallery as a single page, click here
This Week’s iPhone News On Giz
• An Exploded iPhone Is a Major Frat Party Buzzkill…Or Is It?
• Apple Sued For iPhone Patent Infringement, Again
• The New Mobile Twitter Site Is Actually, Um, Nice
• Droid Commercial Paints iPhone as “Digitally Clueless Beauty Pageant Queen”
• Wolfram Alpha Is Tired Of People Not Paying $50 Dollars For Their iPhone App
• New Mercedes iPhone App: Hands On
• iPhone Orchestra Hacks Touchscreen, GPS and Accelerometer to Create “Music”
• Just a Cheap iPhone/iPod Adapter USB Hub
• Mirror’s Edge Coming to the iPhone In January
• iPhone Fitted With SLR Lens (It Was Bound to Happen)
• Top 5 Assclowns Laughing at the iPhone Back in 2007
• RedEye Makes Your iPhone a Universal Remote Control
• Stolen Belgian iPhones Traced to Russian Black Market
• Where Is My iPhone Videochat, Apple?
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
This Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 27th, 2009
In this week's tentatively materialistic app roundup: Deals, scrutinized! Barcodes, scanned! Movies, thriftily rented! Magazines, digitized! Pac-Man, terrifyingly adapted to the road! The iPhone's camera, made less terrible! Turn-by-turn, discounted! Home screens, organized! And more...
To view the following gallery as a single page, click here
The Apps
This Weeks' iPhone News on Giz
• A Thanksgiving Message From the iPhone
• Opening Up a Sega Genesis Leads to a Genesis iPhone Dock, Naturally
• This Is How Multitasking Should Work On the iPhone
• iPhone and Android Are Taking Over the (Mobile) Internet
• New Apple Ads Get In on the AT&T vs. Verizon Slapfest
• The Dumb iPhone That Thinks It's a MacBook
• Three-iPhone Ocarina Much More Expensive Than No-iPhone Ocarina
• New Jailbroken iPhone Worm Wants Your Bank Details
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
This Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 21st, 2009
In this week's charmingly tawdry app roundup: Voices, creepily modulated! Annoying trips to Kinkos, averted! Cats, artfully superimposed! Photos, easily shared! iPhone speakers, blown! Call of Duty, iPhone'd! Google Maps, humiliated! Certifiably good games, discounted! And more...
To view as a single page, click here
Voices: There are a few voice modulation apps on the shelves of the App Store, but none has captured Jesus' heart like Voices:
Retro tape recorder and microphone, cute icons, simple touch interface, and sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and email, so you can spook everyone with that infernal Reverse Voice effect. For $1, it's impossible to resist.
Zosh: Signing things over email: a thing that is dumb. Zosh: a thing that makes that process much easier.
Zosh is a $3 app that allows you to sign attached documents on your iPhone. Basically, you forward the emailed document to Zosh from the iPhone's mail app, then you open the Zosh app to sign it (plus you can add a date and stuff).
I especially like this one because it's not just a good way to sign documents on the iPhone, it's a good way to sign documents in general. I mean seriously, who wants to scan their signature, or jitter one out in MS paint? One catch: it only supports PDFs for now, so convert or die.
CatPaint: Negative space, as defined in the eminent McFairlyshire Encyclopedia of Artistic Principles (1904): An area, perimeter or measurable expanse that lacks cats. And one of the first thing they teach to you any good art school is to fill it up, with cats. Facts! Enter CatPaint:
Cats can be added to preexisting photos or cat-scarce shots from the iPhone's camera, and either saved to your camera roll or sent via email. Using it takes a while to get used to: Once you've selected a cat from the app's animal palette and set the slider for size, each tap on the photo instantly splashes a new cat at the point of contact, which can't be edited, save for a temperamental shake-to-delete function.
It is the best thing, this app. A dollar.
Knocking: Live Pic Sharing: Uses server-side galleries to let you view photos in sync with other people, which you can send or flip through by "knocking." Ideal scenario: You're talking to your friend over the phone, you want to show him a gallery of pictures, you tell him to jump onto Knocking, and suddenly you're in control of his viewing experience. It pretty much works like that. Free.
Blower: Real Air: Can you guess what this one does? Really, no? Then you're probably a good candidate for spending money on it. For what it's worth—something?—Blower explores the iPhone's absurd novelty potential in a completely new way. From the reviews, a perfect description: "It feels like an ant blowing on you."
Call of Duty: The control scheme isn't perfect, and the price ($10) is high, but it's tough to argue with a Nazi Zombie shoot 'em up with the Call of Duty name. Protip: switch to the tilt controls, because the overlaid joystick is not good. (They never are!)
Magellan: It's a late entrant into a crowded field, and without extensive testing it's hard to recommend plunking down for Magellan RoadMate's $80 introductory price. That said, for Magellan devotees, which probably exist somewhere, RoadMate is great news.
FunMail: MMSes are a bit of a conundrum. Like, it's great that you can send pictures and sounds and all, but phones—even the iPhone—aren't exactly the best tools for creating media, so you usually end up sending some pretty basic stuff: pictures of puppies, brief voice recordings, hot nudez, etc. FunMail takes whatever you type and converts it into an MMS-able image, generally with some kind of punny adornment. Call someone an ass, and there's a picture of a donkey. Say you want to get coffee, and your recipient gets your message overlaid on a picture of a mug. It's earnestly cheesy and a lot of the images look like clipart, but this isn't always a bad thing. FunMail works over MMS, email or Facebook, and it's free.
Fit or Fugly: Rounding out our cr-appier selections for the week, an app that purports to measure your beauty according to some kind of mathematical equation. It's not a good way to actually tell if someone is attractive, nor is it a particularly well-executed app. It is, however, a good excuse to tell your friends that their faces are asymmetrical, which evokes surprisingly intense responses. Try it! (The face thing, not necessarily the app.)
Google Earth 2.0: You can create and store your own customized maps in the desktop version of Google Maps, and save them to your account—this is great for keeping running routes, sharing driving directions and the like. You can view them in the new version of Google Earth for the iPhone now, which is useful, and also sort of hilarious, since you can't even access them in the official Google Maps app. Sound silly? Welcome to the iPhone, y'all!
Konami Apps: Whooooole bunch good stuff discounted to $1 for a few weeks, including: Field Prowlers, Frogger, Metal Gear Solid Touch, Silent Hill: The Escape, Silent Scope, Krazy Kart Racing, DanceDanceRevolution S, DanceDanceRevolution S+ -Power Pros Touch. Decent stuff to take a look at, with a few gems—especially MGS:T.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
This Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 14th, 2009
In this week's slightly more transparent app roundup: Malls, navigated! Instant messages, never ignored! Browser, bettered! Messaging, replaced! Hotel rooms, snagged! Photos, translated! Ghosts, faked! Blu-ray movies, supplemented! And more...
If you want to view this gallery as a list, click here
Point Inside: Fact: stepping foot in a suburban mall can drain your vitality in a matter of seconds. And though I don't think a deep disdain for the concept of indoor shopping complexes and what they've done to the very fabric of the American town was the driving inspiration behind Point Inside, they're definitely onto something: With hundreds of mall maps that look a lot like those big directory signs, this app gets you in and out of your local mall as quickly as possible, all for free. Could use a few hundred more maps—some of my old tweenage haunts weren't there—but if yours is listed, PI is great.
Agile Messenger: I've always been a little leery of Agile Messenger, since it's usually priced at around $10, up there with the likes of Beejive, and it's a little ugly—though the multi-account and push features are more than adequate. For a few weeks, though, it's just two dollars. And they've just added a new feature called "Walk and Type," which overlays your text over a live camera view, so you never have to take your eyes off you AIM conversations as you walk down the street. In theory. In practice, you will still die. Ranked for feature-bloat audacity, and shitty late night joke/newspaper cartoon potential.
Full Browser: As with every alternative browser in the App Store, Full Browser isn't really its own browser, since it's still using Mobile Safari's WebKit renderer. That said, FB's added features are worthwhile: the tabbing system, which is more traditional and desktop-like than Safari's, makes up for its rough looks with efficiency, in-app email makes life ever-so-slightly faster if you spend most of your time browsing, the favorite sites speed dial is a mite faster than using Safari's favorites, and inline text search is just, well, useful. A dollar.
WhatsApp: First, let's try this: WhatsApp is like BlackBerry Messenger for the iPhone. Cool, right? If that doesn't mean anything to you, it's like an instant messaging app, tied to your number—not a screen name or PIN or anything—that integrates with your contacts. If you have the app, your friend has the app, and you're both in each others' phonebooks, you're ready to go. Push notifications make this even more like BBM, in that you don't have to keep the app open. Free for now, so GO GO GO.
PicTranslator: Translates text from photos, from whatever language you want. I love it because it fits nicely with my vision of what smartphones should be doing for us in the next few years, and it seems to work pretty well most of the time. I don't love it because results are much, much better on the 3GS—you're basically limited to signage with the 3G and 2G, because they can't focus on small text—and because your $2 only gets you one language. Still though, extremely neat stuff, as long as you're aware of the limitations. And now you are, so!
PocketBlu/FoxPop: From Universal and Fox, respectively, these are the new Blu-ray companion apps. PocketBlu, available now but not really compatible with much yet, is like an enhanced remote control for compatible titles, making navigating various BD Live features a bit more intuitive. It'll also stream bonus content to your handset over Wi-Fi, which is pretty cool. FoxPop, which isn't quite out yet, does things a little differently: It's like a Popup Video feed that plays back trivia, photos, video, and other content to supplement the film. Bonus cool feature: it figures out where you are in the DVD or Blu-ray by listening to the soundtrack, and matching it to a timeline. Both should be coming soon to select releases.
Navigon Traffic: $90 for a navigation app is feeling more and more expensive by the day, and $20 for the new traffic function doesn't feel like a steal either. That said, there are no monthly fees after that initial charge, the traffic data is crowdsourced and rich, and Navigon is one of the best nav options out there. Worth your consideration, if not your dollars.
Priceline Negotiator: Priceline's main gimmick/selling point has always been its instant bid feature, and it's well-suited to the iPhone. Give it a location, make your hotel room bid, and you know if you've got it or not pretty much that second.
ARGH: I somehow missed this one in yesterday's augmented reality app roundup, so here goes. ARGH cheesily superimposes ghosts over your 3GS's camera view, as if there were actually there. Upon seeing ARGH, most of your friends will groan and tell you you've wasted your money. But! Your senile grandmother will be legitimately spooked, your pet dog will be mildly confused, and your little cousin will probably chuckle a little. Two dollars.
iVIP: This thing is basically I Am Rich, except it offers (some?) services, in the form of memberships to various clubs and societies. It sounds a bit like a scam (A Cineworld membership? Really?) and the concept is inherently deplorable, but in separating a special, horrible kind of rich person from their dollars, iVIP is doing the world a service. $1000, or $450 for the "Blue" version, which is blue.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
This Week’s Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 6th, 2009
In this week's never-gonna-switch-so-stop-asking app roundup: Free games, reinvented! Airplane anxiety, averted! Photos, wirelessly printed! Cool apps, discovered by other cool apps! Navigation, cheapened! Black Friday rush, preempted! Google Wave, appified! Screens, pointlessly tapped! And more!
The Best
Chorus: Hey, Apple, when people start making apps just to help people find new apps, take it as a sign that your App Store interface could use a little help. Chorus crowdsources the effort to cut through the endless jungle of trash:
Chorus is a bit like Apple's native App Store app, except with drastically shifted emphasis: instead of giving category "Top" lists, which rank apps by overall download numbers, Chorus only pitches you apps that've been explicitly recommended by someone. These someones could include other friends who use Chorus, nearby Chorus users, or a stable of "App Mavens"-online reviewers and tech journalists, mostly.
Free.
ZenApps: An even better sign that the App Store could offer more in the way of search tools, filters and sorting options than a company making an app-finding app? Two companies making app-finding apps. ZenApps takes a more traditional approach than the social network-y Chorus, aggregating review buzz from a list of app sites into a tag cloud, or a simple list. Also free.
Million Tap Challenge: Speaking of maybe worthless crap apps, Million Tap Challenge is a simple app with a simple goal: to be tapped. A million times. This makes the cut because unlike 99.99% of the spammy crap in the App Store, Million Tap Challenge has a sense of the absurd. It knows how ridiculous it is, and for just the right kind of person, it's a brilliant timekiller.
Flying Without Fear: My pops was a pilot, and the thought of being suspended 32,000 feet in the air in a tiny aluminum tube still freaks me the hell out. Flying without fear takes a two-pronged approach to soothing panicked passengers, with relaxation exercises on one side, and more importantly, detailed explanations of each step in typical airline flight, and the terrifying sounds that accompany them. Minor complaint #1: $5 seems a little steep for a branded app—this one is slathered in Virgin Atlantic's colors and logo. Minor complaint #2: Sir Richard Branson, who provides a video intro, is scarier than the worst transatlantic turbulence I've ever sat through. IT'S THE BEARD, BEARDO.
Gokivo: It's getting hard to keep track of all the iPhone navigation apps' names, much less their price structures, so here's what you need to know: Gokivo, the decent-but-too-expensive navigation app, has become Gokivo, the decent and now-not-too-expensive navigation app. The price has dropped from $5/mo to $5 dollars 30 days or $40 for the year. It's not as dirt-cheap as products like MotionX Drive and CoPilot, but solid text-to-speech and live traffic make this a deal.
Black Friday(s): This one comes in two parts, actually! Both FatWallet and Dealnews have put together apps that'll aggregate the best last-minute Black Friday deals come (almost) Thanksgiving. Neither is getting very good reviews right now, mostly due to their lack of deals. Today November 6th, so this is mildly mind-boggling. Patience!
LexPrint: Hey, remember Lexmark? They made printers! And evidently, they still make printers! Also, they've put together one of the better iPhone photo printing apps I've seen. Instead of shipping with grossly limited compatibility like other printing apps (seriously, everyone's got one now, but they're all pretty picky about which printers they talk with) Lexmark bridged the wireless gap with a PC client called Listener, which accepts print requests in lieu of a wireless radio on the actual printer. Kind of brilliant, if you have a Lexmark.
Waveboard: Google Wave is still invite-only, so it's a little strange to see a dedicated app this early on. That said, a sizable group of people are already power-using the shit out of this service that I don't think I'll ever fully understand, so Waveboard, which is marginally better than the stock Wave web interface, might be worth the one dollar entry fee.
Eliminate: This one lands in the top ten for two reasons. One is obvious: This is a fun, smooth-running FPS with intuitive controls—rare!—and solid gameplay. The other is a little counterintuitive: To get the full Eliminate experience, you probably need to shell out for Energy Cells via in-app purchases. This is good precisely because it's terrible, and provides a perfect example to other devs of how not to use the new in-app purchase system. It's fun while the free lasts, though! A cautionary tale.
TowerMadness Zero: TowerMadness used to be a better-than-average tower defense game, rendered in 3D and priced at about $3. Then, there was a lightning strike. A developer was zapped in the skull, collapsed, and three hours later awoke, dazed. As he stood up and surveyed his charred surroundings, he froze as if he was having a stroke; his eyes, though, twinkled. He had an idea. When he finally spoke, everyone around him was stunned: "TOWERMADNESS SHALL BE FREE," he bellowed, "AND IT SHALL BE SUPPORTED BY ADS THAT ARE NOT VERY ANNOYING." Then he died, from the burns. Pointlessly dramatic fake scenario aside, this kind of thing should happen more often.
Honorable Mentions
Cry Translator: This one purports to tell you what your baby's various gurgles, yelps and screams mean. This sounds implausible! Also implausible: That it's somehow worth $30. Just jingle your keys, try to feed it, and smell for poop. Parenting, done.
Family Guy: Hey look, it's a game based on a popular-but-well-past-its-prime television series! It's a bit Nintendo-like, which is charming, and the free version is worth a few minutes of you time, provided you don't hate Family Guy.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
This Week’s 10 Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on October 30th, 2009
In this week's not at all scared app roundup: Nikon teaches a photography class, the NBA gouges its most devoted fans (and they like it), board games go digital, Disney gets app-y, and, well, Zombie Bikini Babes From Space!
The Best
Nikon Learn and Explore: Tons of photos, shooting tips, a photography glossary and access to Nikon World magazine, all for free. Useful whether you carry a Nikon or not.
NBA League Pass Mobile: At first, you're like, "Whoa, 40 games a week, streamed live or from a 48-hour archive over 3G or Wi-Fi, with stats and news? That sounds awesome!" Then you're like "Wait, it costs $40? Don't I already spend a ton of money to watch these games on my TV?" Then you're like, "Hey, I don't even like basketball! What am I doing with my life? " Pricey, but essential for total ball junkies.
WordPress 2.0: Though this is an update to an old app, the differences are such that you've actually got to download the new version on its own—you won't be prompted. Anyway, you should, because it's got an all-new interface, a fresh comment system and a persistent restore feature, which means you won't lose any work if you get a call in the middle of working on a post. Free.
The Snow Report: Added Twitter feed, push notification and longer-term forecast features make this ski report app awesome; the fact that it's an ad platform for the North Face makes it free. (It's more than a fair trade.)
Settlers of Catan: A few months ago, Wired wrote an amazing story about a board game called "Settlers of Catan." To summarize: Best. Board. Game. Ever. Or something! In any case, it's now here for the iPhone, and the adaptation is surprisingly faithful. The look and animations are a little cheesy, an absence of cheese would have been more surprising, and almost disappointing. Fivebux.
Layar Layers: Not strictly an app, but is may as well be: Layar, the do-it-all augmented reality app, allows for user-generated layers to be added. This one, which tracks bailout spending and overlays projects on a real-time camera view, is the first genuinely cool add-on I've seen.
Exit Strategy: Remember that buzzy app that tells you where to get on and off your subway car way in order to ensure the quickest, most efficient exit from the station? Now they've got a license to use new MTA data, and they've added the exact locations of every subway stop entrance, so you know where you'll surface.
Disney: A full-service iPhone take on the Disney empire, this video, radio, photo and game app represents classic, whimsical Disney and bizarrely sexualized, subtly evangelical new Disney in equal measures. Free.
HMSMobile Swine Flu Center: Educates you about the dangers of the H1N1 virus and lets you a.) figure out if you have swine flu and b.) work yourself into a nervous wreck even if you don't. Two dollars.
Attack of the Zombie Bikini Babes from Outer Space: I'll let Matt explain this one:
Imagine a Zombies Ate My Neighbors kind of schlock, except you're in the boots of a redneck armed with dual slingshots, firing rocks and raccoons at undead chicks in bikinis who will claw your eyes out if they touch you.
Honorable Mentions
LaLa: Stream any song once for free, or steam it as much as you want for $0.10. It's brilliant, so why isn't it ranked? Because it's not out yet, and I have a creeping suspicion Apple might find a reason to freeze it out.
Asian Boobs: This is most assuredly not a good app. It does, however, serve as a touchstone in the sweeping narrative of how ridiculous the app approval process is, for which I am thankful.
Not For Tourists: There are just so many iPhone travel guides, it's hard to pick one over another. I'm not sure the NFT guides are the best—they could be, but it's tough to test—but they're reliably good. Shame they're $5 apiece.
Vooks: I'm not as down on the concept as Adam is—I think there's something to be said for taking ebooks beyond raw, static text. And while the catalog is seriously anemic right now but hey, if you see a title you like, go for it.
Alice In Chains: Yeah, forget iTunes LP: Alice in Chains' companion app for the newest album does the digital liner notes thing just fine, and hey! It works on your iPhone. A dollar.
Easy Wi-Fi: Find free Wi-Fi hotspots, and simplify the login procedure for paid ones! What a great idea! Thing is, it doesn't work that well yet—account signup is buggy, and hotspots are sparse—so it might be worth waiting until it does. Free.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
This Week’s 10 Best iPhone Apps [IPhone Apps]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on October 23rd, 2009
In this week's incidentally infringing app roundup: NASA enters the iPhone's orbit, Earthworm Jim is ALIVE, your handset learns two tricks it should've known already, rhythm gaming goes pro, and Loopt users crudely proposition one another.
The Best
NASA: NASA's really stepped up their online presence in the last few years, giving armchair astronauts more media, stats and news than they could ever want. Nasa's iPhone app, matter-of-factly named "NASA app for iPhone," aggregates it all, including Twitter feeds, orbit trackers, images, video and mission updates. Free, unless you count income tax.
GameCenter: A free encyclopedia of games, GameCental taps into GameFly's massive database of titles to immediately spit out everything from release dates to platform availability to screenshots to reviews. It's a field guide for games, essentially—a type of tool which lends itself well to the iPhone.
Pet Semetary: A gored-up mobile take on Stephen King's eponymous book and film, Pet Sematary is proudly straightforward: You shoot zombies; the zombies are often cats. It's a slow-build game, with short stages that get progressively harder, and accordingly, it's great timekiller. A dollar.
Wolfram Alpha: For this week's obnoxiously contrarian pick, how about a calculator app that costs $50, and doesn't do a whole lot more than the web-based version, available for free through the iPhone's browser? Yes, perfect. I don't totally buy that whole "graphing calculators are $100, this app is just $50" reasoning, but the mathematical shortcut keyboard as well as a streamlined interface are pretty great. In other words, if (and only if) you can somehow expense something like this—ie, you work at CERN—totally do it.
ReelDirector: This is as close as you're going to get to iMovie on your iPhone (which is still not very close, at all). Video stitching alone, though, will be worth the ($8) price of entry for many people, at least until Apple builds it into their camera app.
Rock Band: Despite the obvious success of games like Tap Tap Revolution, the big rhythm game players have generally steered clear of the App Store. Until this week! Rock Band, late as it is, is pretty good, with caveats: the control scheme isn't ideal; the singing mode isn't actually a singing mode; and it could stand to include a few more than the base 20 songs. Which are licensed, popular songs, by the way—not lame mashups or no-name material like you see in some other rhythm apps. $10.
SongSift: It's easy to let your iPhone library get cluttered with odd singles, poorly-tagged strays, and one-off playlist refugees. The real solution is to sort your freakin' colllection, you slob, but until you do, SongSift lets you filter albums by length, so if you're setting out on a run, or want to set-and-leave your iPhone for a while, you'll be able to find large, contiguous chunks of music with a simple slider. A dollar.
NFP: Canada's National Film Board funds all kinds of interesting films, documentaries and miscellaneous video projects, which their new iPhone app offers up for free. It's hard to argue with that, so I won't.
Earthworm Jim: The iPhone-ified Earthworm Jim could be a little cheaper, and the controls could be a bit more refined. But really, it's hard to imagine a more authentic port for this game, especially to a platform without buttons.
Loopt Mix: Loopt doesn't just keep track of friends now, it finds new ones. With the "Mix" feature, you can send any nearby Loopt users a friend request. And from the looks of the promotional shots, you're supposed to parlay that request into an entirely different kind of request, which we'll talk about after the kids go to bed.
Honorable Mentions
The Colbert Report's The Word: To be fair, The Word is a highlight of every episode of the Colbert Report. It just seems like, you know, you've made this nice video app an all, so why not throw in rest of the otherwise free ColbertNation.com content as well? Oh well. A dollar.
SuicideGirls: A video choose-your-own-adventure story in which one of the possible ending is engaging in light petting with an angry, tattooed, seminude lady. Remember when Apple used to ban dictionary apps for swearing?
Gucci: A free promotional tool for a company I have a feeling our readers aren't all that in to, Gucci's iPhone app actually has some neat features, including a in-app DJ tool, local restaurant/bar/whatever recommendations, and, uh, some stuff about clothes, or bags, or something.
Other News
• Lala iPhone App And Its 10-Cent Songs Might Be Reality By Year End
• Nokia Suing Apple for 10-Patent iPhone Infringement
• Graphs and Charts Prove iPhone to Be the Most Successful Gadget Ever (Sort of)
• Ballmer: "The Internet Is Not Designed For The iPhone"
• Apple: "People Are Still Just Trying to Catch Up With the First iPhone"
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!
