1st Impressions

Tower Defense games in the iTunes are a dime a dozen. As one of the more popular genre of games available for the iPhone, I myself have several on my iPhone.

Another favorite game, and one that, to my knowledge, has consistently been among the top sellers in the iTunes store, is Pocket God. It is a unique game that allows you to play God and and get some sadistic pleasure out of tormenting the residents of some small island.

I don’t know the name of the developer who came up with the idea for Babel Rising, but, by marrying the best parts of both games, they have what is sure to be a reall winner on their hands.

The concept is simple. you play God and, following the story from the Bible’s Old Testament, use your might to stop the humans from building a tower to teach into heaven.

Now, before going any further, I have to admit that my conservative Christian upbringing made me initially uncomfortable playing at being God. But, after thinking about it for a while, I decided that God did the same thing (although confusing languages isn’t as much fun on the iPhone as balls of fire or flash floods…LOL) so I am just trying to follow the philosophy of WWJD…

When you play the game for the first time you are automatically given six different weapons to choose from. Another one is available for free from the in-app store. At the moment there are an additional two weapons for purchase, both for $0.99 each. As you use the weapons, each of them require a “recharge period” with the time period being determined by the power of the weapon.

Like so many games out there, the game allows you to track your scores and compare them to others using Open Feint.

Babel Rising, marketed by BulkyPix, is available for the low low price if $0.99 and is well worth it. It is for sure a game that will remain in my phone for ages to come.

I have a couple of promo codes for the game and will give them to the first two people that email me (use “Babel Rising Promo Code” as your subject ) with the scripture reference from the Bible where the real tower of Babel was destroyed. I can be reached at dreaton(at)gmail.com

Every once in a while an app comes around that causes you to sit back in awe at the incredible depth of the application – especially when it comes at the low price of $0.99.  Diabetes Companion is just such an application.

This might seem like a rabbit trail, but stay with me for a moment. You can go into any pharmacy in the country and pick up a pair of fingernail clippers for less than a buck – but if you ever find yourself in a desperite need for one, how many of you wouldn’t gladly pay 5 times that amount in order to be able to take care of a hang nail or an ingrown toenail?

That is exactly the feeling I had when I began to explore the depth if this application. Even though it costs less than a buck, the value of the application and the benefit you will get from it is worth far more than that. I even started feeling guilty at experiencing such a great app for such a low price.

The application could have easily been divided into several different apps and each sold seperatly but the developer instead made this into one robust and yet very easy to manouver application.

The first of major components of the app is nutritional information on the foods you are eating, as well as  hundreds (if not thousands) of diabetic friendly recipes. For example I did a search on “pork chops” and the result was the nutritional info on 633 differently prepared pork chops and 711 recipes for fixing them.

The next major component contains links to a wealth of information on diabetes, including everything from tips on how to help children with diabetes, glucose monitoring, and even pets with diabetes.

The final and yet probably the most useful portion of the app is the ability to not only track your carbohydrate intake, but also how it affects your blood glucose level, and the amounts of both fast snd slow acting insulin that you use to control it.  Just as important is the ability to track the levels over different periods of time (daily, weekly, and monthly) and generate reports that might reveal important trends not only to you but to your endocrinologist as well.

And to think that you can get all this for less than a dollar. If I were diabetic, then this would rapidly become the most used app on my iPhone…

NDrive USA is an app I’ve had on my review list for a couple of weeks now.  I’ve used in in an extensive and exhaustive house hunt, and it was the very use of the app (and reason for it) that was causing the delay in getting the review done.  I was feeling guilty for not getting the review out sooner, but then saw something today that made me think the timing could not be better.

NDrive is a HUGE app.  Weighing in at 1.78 GB and a normal price of $32.99, the app does everything a GPS app would be expected to do.  But the app just made my Must-Have list.  Why?  Because the first 1 million downloads will get it at $2.99.  You can read more about the special promotion here.  If you don’t have  a GPS in your vehicle and don’t already have a turn-by-turn GPS app for your iPhone, you’d be crazy to let this steal of a deal pass you by.

Now for the review.  NDrive did a great job in locating places I was going to check out in my house hunt.  It is a very complete and complex app.  Being unfamiliar with these types of apps, there was a bit of a learning curve in using it.  The thing that threw me off initially was that I could not get it to take/find addresses.  I was trying to stick in an address in the same format as I would write it out.  But the iPhone app wants your address in the same way that the Post Office looks at it…from the largest geographical area down to the smallest.  You start out giving it the city, then the street, then the number.  Once this concept clicked,  was quickly using the app to get from place to place.

The only true issue I had with NDrive was hardware related rather than software.  Obviously, the iPhone is going to pick up better GPS accuracy in the open.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a convertible and medical issues require me to recline as much as possible.  This led to inaccurate locations and directions unless I put the iPhone near the windows.  When I say “inaccurate”, I don’t mean that it was telling me to turn left when it should have been a right.  It would tell me to “turn left ahead” and I’d already be at the intersection.  So, for best results, I’d suggest using this app with one of those windshield mounts like what a typical GPS would have.  If you put them both in the same location with the same access to the sky, NDrive provided every bit as good of a navigation experience as the built-in system in a much more expensive Lincoln Navigator that I was in on one of my “testing” days.

In case you need any further incentive to get such a comprehensive app for such an incredibly low price, check out the app features:

- Fully functional SIGNPOSTS AND INFOLANES
- Embedded store-inside-store to allow an easy download of extra features to your Application
- Highly effective search engine and fast calculations derives benefits such as fast and easy calculation of alternative routes and re-routing
- Car, Pedestrian and Adventure Mode
-ADVENTURE MODE will guide the way while trekking, bike riding, off-road in cars, on boats and even on light aircrafts
- Simple and intuitive user interface
- MULTI-TOUCH TECHNOLOGY with gesture recognition for menu, zooming, tilting and panning will enable you to control and display maps easily
- POIs (Points of Interest) and favorites with phone/fax number, description, email and website address
- UNLIMITED NUMBER of customizable favorite’s entries and user defined categories
- Search and navigate to city centers, street names and numbers, crossings, postal codes, favorite places, recent locations, coordinates and nearby POIs
- Advanced itinerary with multiple waypoints which enhanced planning
- Keyboard available in either ABC or QWERTY mode
- Integration with iPod, offers listening to music while driving
- Automatic Day/Night mode
- Sound and visual alerts for desired and fixed maximum speed limits
- Automatic Portrait/Landscape display mode
- Free access to the NDRIVE COMMUNITY where sharing POIs with other users anywhere in the world is possible
- Search Online from your NDrive application using search engines like GoogleTM to find additional POIs in any location
- Actual and complete map of the USA (March 2010)
- OVER 1,500,000 POIs representing restaurants, gas stations, tourism attractions, hotels, landmarks, etc.
- Precise voice instruction and full interface language support for: English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch and Portuguese.

Before reviewing this application (and telling you how to get a free code for this app) let me vent for a moment about how Apple chose to once again stick it to the little guy (the untold number of independent iPhone developers out there) and pull their app based on nothing more than the self-serving request from a larger company whose app is free – and worth what you paid for it.

In this case, the app in question is one that was released several months ago as Facebook Ultimate. It was the brain child of a Facebook lover that, like so many previous users, was totally dissatisfied with the watered down official Facebook app that was on the market. The application, despite the $2.00 price tag associated with it, was initially very successful (even at the initial $2.99 price) because it filled a void left by missing features in Facebook’s own app. It quickly drew a large fan base and sold very well. That popularity spiked when the iPad was released – that that is where the problems began.

You see, despite the fact that the icon for the app used a different font, was in italics, used a different shade of blue, and was well documented that it was totally independent from Facebook, many new iPad users, in their frenzy to set up Facebook on their new toys, paid for and downloaded this application before realizing that it was not identical to their online Facebook experience. After plopping down hundreds of dollars on their fancy new iPad they felt somehow “cheated” by spending less than what it costs for an espresso for an application that, if they had spend any time with, they would have realized that it was far superior to the free one. Instead of blaming their own illiteracy, they complained that they had been misled.

The end result was that Apple not only pulled the app off their store shelves (both iPhone and iPad versions), but Facebook went the additional step and stopped the app from accessing the same APIs that they willingly allowed other apps to access. The reason they gave was, “trademark infringement and affiliation.” What is confusing and obviously hypocritical is that there are numerous other apps using the exact same Facebook iconic “f” on the blue background and at least a dozen apps still in the store with the word Facebook in their name. The developer was forced to change the name and icon for the application to “Ultimate Social Networking w/ Chat & Video.”

While that might be a small price to pay to get your application approved (or re-approved) by Apple, the app fell from #7 to totally off the charts because iTunes shoppers can no longer easily find the application when searching for something to replace the piece of crap released by Facebook. Unsuccessful apps are allowed to have “Facebook” in their name, but if someone produces a superior product, even when Facebook has no iPad app of their own, they get punished for it.

If Apple had integrity in this matter, they would have recognized that the some folks that buy a $500 toy within hours of its release with no actual experience with it are going to make the same kind of rush decisions with apps for it. If Facebook had done the right thing, they would retire their own bare-bones app, purchase this one from the developer, and release it as the official version.

So… what is it that Facebook really had an issue with? It certainly wasn’t a lack of revenue since their app is free. No – the problem was simple: this application “out-“Facebooked” Facebook. Here are just a few of the features that makes this app so great:

- Dual facebook accounts
- Powerful rules engine
- Define your own spam rules
- Chat
- Video uploading AND playback
- Picture decoration (watch the video)*
- Slideshow (watch the video)*
- Google-like search
- Notification page with content preview
- Mark posts/notifications as read/unread
- Global/Multi-album picture view
- Copy and paste
- Multi-color and b/w emoticons
- Landscape keyboard
- Text flipping
- Fast photo upload
- Save pictures to your iPhone

Links to multiple Instructional videos as well as details regarding the apps story are found at http://ultiapp.com/

The one feature that really makes this app pay for itself in a hurry is the time it saves the user. The sorting provided by the incredible and powerful rules engine and the ability to mark posts as having been read (thus keeping you from having to see them again) save me a great deal of time. I, for one, do not care if you have lost a sheep or are growing carrots in your garden. I also don’t always have the time to weed through hundreds of posts to find out what my family has to say or what is going on at work. With the rules engine in place, your posts get sorted and categorized each time you open the app (something that can take a few seconds depending on how many posts are unread.

So… if you would like to give this application a try for either the iPhone or iPad, give me a shout. Find me on Facebook and simply request one. I have three promo codes for each device (the iPhone as well as the iPad) and they will be given to the first ones that respond. I am the only David Eaton from Atlanta Georgia with the following caricature as my icon:

Area Calculator is the definitive app for any kind of area measurements.  It does one thing, and does it extremely well.  It has 25 different shapes in 5 different categories.  Choose your shape of choice, provide at least two of the measurements, and the area is calculated for you.  It’s just that simple.

I would put this app in a specialty category.  It isn’t something that everyone needs.  It isn’t the latest addictive game.  There is no flash or sizzle.  It’s a tool, and if you need one in your toolbox, this is a $2.99 well spent.

Besides offering the measurements, the app has an information screen that allows you to send ideas and questions to the very responsive developers.  For example, I suggested the ability to enter measurements in feet and inches.  The developers immediately responded that they were already working on that and it may very well make it into a new release that is coming shortly.

Overall, I’d probably give this utility a 9 out of 10.  The only reason it doesn’t get a perfect score is that it is one of those apps that you don’t use on a regular basis and, as such, is probably going to be a bit pricey for some budgets.  For the carpenter or student that needs to quickly measure areas though, there isn’t a better solution out there.

Every once in a while something comes along that makes you smack your forehead with the palm of your hand and exclaim, “OMG!! Why didn’t I think of that?!”. the Photo Transger App for the iPhone is just such an app.

Let me set the scene for you. you and your wife go to her sister’s to visit with them and their very young daughter. After dinner you are sittingbin their den watching TV when, to everyone’s suprise, their daughter turns loose of the coffee table and, for the first time ever, walks across the room to grab a cookie off the table. Thinking quick on your feet you pull oug your iPhone and snap a series of photos of such a monumentous occasion.

There is just one problem in this scenerio: how do you get a copy of the images to the loving parents? After all, you don’t have your sync cable with you, your Internet connection is down due to an unteliable ISP, and they are leaving to drive back to Fargo the next morning.

That is where this app comes into play. simply open up your photos and, while viewing the entire album, select the photos you wish to send and choose to copy them into your clipboard. once you have done this simply open up the app and you bell be provided with an IP address. Opening up that address in the Internet browser of your networked PC or laptop will give you access to the images you have selected.

The same scenerio also works in reverse. By accessing your laptop’s IP address from within Safari you can then copy to your iPhone any images you have placed onto your laptop’s clipboard.

The Photo Transfer App costs $2.99 in the iTunes store. while at first glance that might seem price, it is less money then you would spend in gas to drive home after your iPhone sync cable.

MoShinRo is a logic game that reminds me of a hybrid between Picture Logic and Soduko. You start each game with a grid with numbers along the top as well as down the left side. Many of the squares also contain arrows pointing towards adjacent squares.

The object of the game is to utilize the numbers, in conjunction with the arrows, to fill the appropriate squares as fast as you can (each game is timed) with as few mistakes as possible.

With three different degrees of difficulty (the screen shot is of an easy game) there is sure to be a level challenging enough for every level player. Since they are randomly generated you will never run out of challenges.

When you purchase the game for $0.99 you have the option of choosing between one of two themes. Three other themes become unlocked as you become more successful in completing the games at the various difficulty settings.

I found MoShinRo to be a very relaxing game to play with the easier games being solved in 30 seconds and the more difficult ones taking a few minutes.

I would be less than honest if didn’t admit that I soon lost my interest in the game. I wish that success in the game would do more than simply unlock another theme. While I don’t have any ideas or suggestions as to what that might be, the game as a whole, while challenging enough, just seemed to be lacking something. For that reason I think I would give it 3 stars out of 5.

In the past few months i have had the oportunity to use and then review a multitude of apps for the iPhone. Some of them have been great, some have been just “all right”, and a few have left me wishing that I hadn’t even wasted my time.

It has been quite a while however since I have been as impressed by an app that it has left me speachless – something that is detrimental when you are responsible for sharing that app with others. When it comes to govTracker there is just one word that comes to my mind: WOW!!

Designed by the same folks that released politicoTracker (an app for tracking the status of elected officials), govTracker is THE must have app if you care about anything at all about what is happening within our government.

Using an advanced meta data search engine, govTracker scours the Internet for any published information on the Senate, House, or Joint Congressional Committes as well as Government Contracts, Government Agencies, and Political Parties. It then associates them with key words so that you can use it like a chain reference tool to follow a story from one catagory to another. Unlike almost all of the mainstream media outlets, govTracker is completly unbiased and simply provides you with the facts.

Although this app runs for $9.99, I would not hesitate in recomending it to anyone that cares about what is going on inside “the beltway.” If you want to stay current on Obama’s health care reform or the back room deals used to bribe congressmen for their votes then this app is for you. If you care about where the government is spending your kid’s and grandkid’s money then this app is for you. If you are interested enough in any one of dozens of political parties to do more than vote for their candidate than this app is for you.

I could go on and on but you get the idea. My only regret with regards to this app is that there is not a PC version that would run on my laptop. Don’t let the price cause you to hesitate in purchasing this for your iPhone or iPad. It should be required for anyone registered to vote….

I was fortunate enough a few days ago to get an advance copy of the upcoming game Saving Private Sheep. Due for release on April 16th, it will be an excellent way to recover from the frustrations of Tax Day here in the Socialist Democracy formarly known as the Democratic Republic known as America.

Here is the premise behind the game; The war between wolves and sheep is raging. The sheep fight bloody baaarbarians who encroach upon their pastures. They want to graze in PEACE! They won’t be led to slaughter in silence. It is time to launch operation “Iron Wool”!

At first glance I thought this might be an arcade game but it only took me a level or two to realize that it far more resembles a physics based game.

But simply calling this a physics game doesn’t come close to giving you the full picture. The 80 or so increasingly more difficult levels of the game are not only challenging from a puzzle stand point but are enormously funny as well. The puns and wise cracks delivered during your mission briefings can’t help but make you smile.

The physics portion of the game don’t take long, even on the easy setting, to start presenting a real challange. The challenge behind each level is to help your sheep to reach the small patch of ground under it by removing the obsticles between them. These obsticles take on many shapes and sizes and each react differently when you tap on them. Some of them simply dissapear out from under your sheep. others explode, roll, or do nothing at all.

You need to listen to your mission briefings carefully, however, because sometimes you are actually dealing with a wolf in sheep’s clothing in which case your object is to dump him off the side and not let him land on safe ground.

I can’t say enough about how impressed I was with the graphics of the game. Not only are the graphics colorful but the animations are smooth even down to the clouds moving by in the background.

When the game is released in a few days it will run $2.99 with an upcoming puzzle pack available via an in-app purchase in the near future.

Saving Private Sheep has it all: challenging puzzles, great graphics and animations, and more humor that a Hee Haw rerun.

I have never been a huge fan of math based puzzles but I have to admit that I really liked PathSums. The concept is simple: starting at a location that is provided for you (without which you might never solve it) you create a path using numbers and math functions to reach a target number.

There are a few basic rules to follow: You can’t execute a solution that will result in a number less than 1 or over 100. You can’t devide by a number which would result in a fraction. Finally, since this is basic math and not algebra, the equation is totaled as you go.

The game prompts you for options before each puzzle. These include a choice between 4×4 and 6×6 game boards, 2 different game modes, and 8 difficulty levels (based on the minimum length of the solution). The difference between the normal and expert game modes is whether or not a running subtotal is provided for you as you attempt to solve the puzzle.

While I usually don’t play these type games, I found that this game impressed me quite a bit. Whether you are an adult looking for a math challenge or a student looking for a fun way to practice basic math, this is a game that is suitable for all ages.

PathSums is available from iTunes for a very reasonable $0.99. That is 3×2+5×9…LOL