Many of us like playing games on our smart phones. Angry Birds is probably our first thought when it comes to whiling away a few minutes using a mobile phone, but there are lots of other games that people love to play from racing games like Real Racing to gaming apps like Foxy Bingo. There are also some games that are said to work on your mind and improve your brain power. Here we give you an example of the top brain boosting apps.

Sudoku
Any brain-bender has to start with sudoku. The puzzle has been credited with warding off mental illness, memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease all the while strengthening reasoning and logical skills, according to studies by a variety of universities. One of the most popular is the Electronic Arts sudoku, but look around and find one that suits you.

General knowledge apps
Test your trivia and the breadth of your knowledge base with a general knowledge quiz. The quiz by Obaid inc is a recommended one. A broad general knowledge is a great base for creativity, the more you can see the links between things, the easier ideas will flow. It is also associated by greater openness to experience and fluid intelligence.

Physics games
Physics games help you learn the laws of physics and use your brain at the same time. One of the best ones is Newton which uses a powerful physics engine.

Catch all puzzles
Puzzles are still a fine way to give your head a little work out and the PuzzleManiak is a grab bag of some fiendishly inventive ones. It’s available at a reasonable price and should keep you occupied for all those long journeys and long mornings in the dentist’s waiting room.

In the original Stand O’Food, the goal is to take items that are coming down an assembly line to build the right burger or sandwich for a customer order.  The emphasis is on the type of burger or sandwich and assembling it in the right order.  There are over 100 levels with 80 different sandwiches to create.  While the game is free to download, additional features and levels are only available in an in-app upgrade that will cost you around $5.

Stand O’Food 3, which moves to “Tinseltown”, is the sequel to the original.  Here the focus moves up from the micro-level of assembling burgers and sandwiches to also include a more extensive menu and multiple restaurants.  Now you not only have burgers and lasagnas, but also fries, different beverages, and even deserts.   In other words, you are not only assembling a full burger, but other order items as well.  So, basically, this adds extra complexity to each order.  This title has 75 different levels with 31 ingredients and 18 sauces to make up 90 different recipes spread across 25 different restaurant locations.  You can either upgrade the free app with an in-app purchase or purchase the full version outright as a separate download in order to unlock all the different levels.  This too is around $5.

The final title in the burger trilogy is Success Story.  It too is free with an in-app upgrade available for around $5.  It includes 10 different restaurants with a dozen different burger components that make up 140 different recipes (as opposed to 90 in Stand o’Food 3 and 80 in Stand O’Food) spread over 46 different levels.  There are 14 “special dishes” and the addition of 7 different mini-games and and 10 different boss characters

These titles are more than a race to accurately fill orders.  Not only are you trying to make a profit on sales, but you are also scored on customer satisfaction.  If you don’t deliver the right order in a timely matter, both can suffer.  And if you don’t get enough money or have a high enough customer satisfaction, then your ability to upgrade your equipment and advance in the game suffers.

These titles have more of a fast-paced arcade quality to them than the G5 Virtual City titles (which I prefer).  If Virtual City is too slow-paced for you and you enjoy the fast-paced stress of time pressure, then you will really enjoy these titles.  All three are ranked heavily with five stars in the market and all three have an average rating of 4.4 stars.  And, if working fast food is too masculine for you, there is a more female-friendly set of games that has a very similar core game play.  The G5 trilogy of Supermarket Mania, Supermarket Mania 2, and Supermarket Management has a supermarket theme where you are stocking shelves instead of filling orders, but have a combined 180 levels of additional game play to either replace or add to the 200+ levels in the cooking-based trilogy.  And, if you don’t have an Android, don’t be alarmed.  Most, if not all, of these titles are available for the iPhone, the iPad, the PC, and the Mac.  You can even play a couple of these titles on the PSP.  And, since these games are free to download and try, there isn’t much excuse not to take them out for a spin.  If you like time-management games, it would be hard to find any of better quality than these G5 titles.

Virtual City Playground gives the Android platform the “sandbox” mode that Virtual City 2 does not provide (yet?) when it comes to the Android.  And it does so in a way that reminds me of the freemium model of FaceBook games like Zynga’s Farmville – through in app purchases.  Real currency can be used to purchase in-game currency.  If you don’t want to wait until you have the funds for new buildings or expanded territory, you can purchase those credits (money) or “invest points” from the market.  Since the market aspects of the game were not available as I gave the pre-release version a test spin, my progress was slow.  As such, a lot of the things I discuss in this review refer to the iPad HD version from which this is ported, and not actual experience in the game on the Android.

The game also adds something new that greatly changes the game strategy.  You not only have to have enough money to build something once you have gained enough investment points to unlock it, but you also require energy.  This new dynamic really adds a nice depth to the game though.  As your city grows, you obtain more energy necessary to build new things and/or expand.  And the energy is tied to time.  So this app adds the time element that I was also suggesting in the last review.  You can’t directly purchase energy, but you can purchase (if you wish) investment points and city credits which allows you to build new things like new  famous landmarks that are kind of like the “wonders” you see in other games.  These items then, in turn, increase energy over time.  And this isn’t just game play time, but over time even while the game is minimized.  In essence, it is like a live city.  It runs even while you sleep.

One piece of advice for those new to this title.  At least for the first few levels, concentrate on the goals given to you and getting the complete pie product chain (complete with some customers to the mall via bus) as soon as possible.  If you spend your money early on expanding or clearing your territory, for example, you may have some money issues later and, like I did, end up re-starting the game from scratch to do it right.

The game has no real “levels” like its predecessors, but does a wide selection of 95 new achievements and 90 new buildings to be used or achieved while playing 85 different optional quests.  And, like it’s FaceBook rivals, Virtual City Playground connects to FaceBook to let you share your exploits with your friends there – sometimes even rewarding you for doing so.  And this “feature” brings me to my first suggestion for the game.  I would love to have an option to turn these prompts off entirely and/or automatically post these achievements to my wall.  Particularly at the beginning when goals are reached quickly and before you run out of energy, these prompts are frequent and distract a bit from the game.

I understand the marketing goals of frequent posts to entice your friends to jump into a freemium model game, but it is this freemium model that, to me, is one of the drawbacks of the game.  You see, in the other titles, you got more money from your deliveries and buildings cost less to build.  With this model, they have hit you on both of those fronts.  Buildings not only cost more, but you also get paid less for every truck load of goods delivered.  This means that you are going to have to play this game a whole lot longer in order to get ahead, or end up purchasing a lot of city credits and investment points from the market.  Folks like Zynga have gotten rich off that model, but I’m afraid that I will tire of Virtual City about as quickly as I have with other freemium games when the time required to achieve something diminishes the return on investment of the enjoyment that you have to play the game in the time you have to do so.  While you can gain money and points by achieving goals, the goals often require building new things – which require money and points.  And unless you purchase them, you obtain them so slowly that I think many folks will grow tired of it and switch to some more fast-paced game that gives more instant gratification.

I really loved the “live” aspect of the game.  I loved the new monuments and buildings.  I love the open sandbox mode.  I love the accumulation of energy in the game.  And you can’t beat free for a price tag.  But I would prefer having a freemium trial version AND a paid version that offers all the features of this game along with the delivery earnings and building costs of the other Virtual City games.  Or, at the very least, if you could purchase “upgraded” revenue and construction discounts within the freemium model to achieve the same things, I think this game would be really sweet.  As it is though, I’m more likely to play the original Virtual City or Virtual City 2 than I am this one even though Virtual City Playground has come really nice new features that makes it, in some ways, superior to those other titles.

If you would like to see the game in action, check out the YouTube video.  Nothing will compare to taking it for a spin on your own though, and, since it is free, there is no reason not to do so.

DeskSMS is a quality product brought to you by the same developer that is infamous for his ROM Manager for rooted Android phones.  But, unlike ROM Manager, this app is not free.  Someone has to pay for all be bandwidth it generates.  There IS a free trial period of a couple of weeks, but after that, the service is a very reasonable $4.99 a year.

The key to DeskSMS is that it links the texts to/from your phone to your Google account.  This allows you to access your SMS (and contacts) via a number of ways.  You can send/receive them via Gmail, via Google Chat, via Google Talk, via Google Chrome extension (there is also one for Firefox), and via an independent web page.  I’ve tried other apps that allow you to do this via a web site, but nothing I’ve found is so easy to set up and has so many different delivery options.  Because you can access your SMS messages and contacts via a web page, you can also create an application shortcut to that page and even run it as a separate app on your computer.  And, because you can access it via Google Talk, any Jabber IM client on your phone, computer, or tablet can be used to access them.  That means that you can even cross-platforms and do things like respond to SMS messages to your Android phone via an Apple iPad, for example.   And the person you are conversing with has no idea that you are not typing at 70wpm on your Android phone.  To them, it all is from your phone.

Setup could not be easier.  Install the app, log in to your Google account, and tell the app whether to send your SMS to Gmail, Google Talk, or to the Browser/extension channels – or any combination of these.  You need to choose these wisely though based on how you have alerts set up though.  The last thing you want is to have Gmail, Google Chat, Google Talk, and browser extension alerts on your laptop going off simultaneously with the SMS alerts, mail alerts, and IM alerts on your phone.  You don’t want to get overloaded with alerts, so it is best to limit them.  Right now, for example, I have Google Talk on my laptop pop up when I get a SMS message, but that means it ALSO pops up on my phone – along with the SMS alert.  I don’t want to block the alerts on my phone in Google Talk because that will also block the contact on my laptop.  So I use GoSMS to set custom alerts for those SMS contacts to not give me the audible alert and that way the GTalk alert on my phone is the only audible one I receive.  So you need to think through how you do this if you have your SMS sent multiple places on multiple devices.

There *is* a little lag time as the SMS is forwarded to and from your phone, but I have found that to be minimum.  And, since I can type a whole lot faster on my laptop than I can on my phone, the person waiting for a response doesn’t really notice any lag in the end results.

The benefits of this system go beyond convenience though.  Say you leave your phone at a friend’s house and can’t call him because he not only has your phone, but his number is stored in your phone.  If you have ever had a SMS conversation with him, you can text him from any internet connection by accessing your email or GTalk or the browser site.  And, just in case you can’t remember the web site URL and need to access it from somewhere, I created a bit.ly/desksms  short URL to it.  :)  Also, since SMS conversations are sent to your GMail account and/or GTalk, there is an online archive of them should you ever need to search them for that phone number or address that someone shared with you some time back.  This archive can quickly fill your inbox though, so creative use of filters to label and archive them are probably best.

The way the system works via Gmail or GTalk is by creating a unique email address for the people you are sending and receiving text messages from.  This address is their number followed by @desksms.appspotchat.com.  So as long as you are using your gmail account to send something to 1235551212@desksms.appspotchat.com, the owner of the 1235551212 number is going to get the message as a text from your Android phone.  And this “desksms.appspotchat.com” domain makes it easy to set up filters for these messages in your gmail.

My suggestions for this app are very few.  It is absolutely perfect at what it does, but I would love to see it expanded.  I would love to see the ability to add an additional email account to your desksms.appspotchat.com settings so that you could send/receive texts via more than just your primary Gmail account.  That way, you could add something like a work email in case you work places that block things like access to Gmail or GTalk.    I’d also love to see the app, where possible, to be able to create contact names and pictures in my Google contacts called “SMS Firstname Lastname” or something similar for selected folks already in my SMS history or my address book.  Maybe it could put them in a separate Gmail contact group or something.  Right now, every time I get a call or SMS, I am prompted whether or not I’d like to add that number@desksms.appspotchat.com address to my GTalk contacts.  If I have already chosen a lot of them to add to my SMS group in my Google Contacts, a lot of these notices could be avoided.  And if I had the option to NOT forward these messages or calls to my GTalk, Gmail, and Web destination unless they were on this “white list” or could, conversely, set it to to automatically block contacts that are already in my contact list as being work numbers or home numbers, that would cut down on the requests to add/block every new contact.  Finally, and associated with this “black list” idea, I’d love to have some way to automatically block the forwarding of things on a formal black list (like text alerts from my bank or my current data usage from ATT) or to even filter on things like “Reply with your comment or “like”” so that you could filter out things from FaceBook.  I seriously don’t need a separate GTalk contact for every status update from every FaceBook or Twitter account I follow.  Maybe some option to not forward texts unless it is a full 10-digit phone number would block a lot of this as well.

Overall though, I’d give this app a full five stars (and did).  It is solid, dependable, and highly configurable.  So the 4.4 rating on the Android market is well deserved.  So I’d highly recommend everyone take this app for a spin.  If you don’t like it, you still have two seeks to play with it at no charge whatsoever.

A little over a year ago, I wrote a review of one of my favorite and most anticipated games, Virtual City.  If you are not familiar with the game, I’d suggest reading that review before coming back here for this one.  I can’t tell you how much I enjoy Virtual City.  I’ve played it on the iPhone, the iPad, the PC, and now my Android.  And I was very disappointed when the Virtual City Playground was released on the iPad and I didn’t have any way of playing it.  But then G5 made my day.  They came out with Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort on the PC.  I normally don’t review PC based apps and games, but since this is related to a mobile one, and HOPEFULLY headed to the mobile platforms itself, I jumped on the opportunity to take it for a test drive. If you want to see a bit before or during the download, check out the YouTube preview.

Virtual City 2 isn’t a disappointment.  While the original had 50 types of buildings and 50 levels with 7 “production chains” to master, the sequel expands on that in every way.  There are 73 building types, 42 different goods making up 12 production chains, and 29 missions across 52 levels to master.  And while there doesn’t appear to be a true free-form “sandbox” mode as was in the original, the missions themselves take about 20 minutes a piece to work though, which gives you 15-18 hours of game play for just the included missions.  And, since every mission has the ability to continue playing, the game-play is essentially endless.

Now before I get into the game dynamics any more, let me discuss cost.  The PC version of this game is $9.99.  But, if you purchase the original Virtual City (also $9.99), you can get the sequel for 50% off.  If you don’t HAVE both, I’d highly recommend getting both.  You can’t get a movie ticket, popcorn, and coke for that price, and this is sure to entertain you a LOT longer than a 90-minute movie would.  The sequel is more of an upgrade to the original than a whole new experience, but by getting both, you have access to the sand-box modes in the original.  Besides that, the differences between the maps/locations make it a different experience to play with the same or similar goals in different towns.

The download itself is about 70 MB, and is free to play for the first 30 minutes.  While the 30 minute limitation is great for learning the basics of the original game, you don’t really get into the expanded things in this sequel title as the demo times out fairly early in the tutorial.  You get a good basis of how the game is played, but are not really exposed to the full depth of the sequel in just that first 30 minutes.  I wish that, as a sequel, there would be a way to jump right to a tutorial of one of the missions with the expanded content.  If all you see before the demo times out is just what you had seen in the original, then you may wonder what the big deal is about.  Short of that, if you could fully explore the production chains in such in the built-in help prior to actually achieving the ability to add these things, it might give a better feel of what the game is capable of.  I’d rather it let me explore these new production chains in the help and just tell me they are locked until a certain level than to lock me out of the help on them as well.

Virtual City 2: Paradise Resort is, as the name suggests, oriented around resort or vacation destinations.  While the original focused on typical city industry, this adds to that with the kinds of goods and transportation that a resort or vacation destination requires.  You will be working on everything from casinos to ski resorts to ice hotels from the beaches of Florida and the deserts of Nevada to the slopes of Utah and the snowy tundra of Alaska.  Every location has different goals and different challenges.  The production chains required for the different buildings differ.  Some might just need trash pickup, and that is all.  Others require both multiple deliveries and multiple pickups.  And each production chain requires multiple buildings.  So the relationships become critical and getting your different production chains up and running become the fun challenge to the game.  By the time you add in the requirements of public safety, maintenance on your vehicles, environmental health, and personal/town happiness, I can guarantee you that you won’t get bored with this title.

As great as this game is, there are some things I wish it would incorporate in an update or future sequel.  First, I would love to be able to sync my progress on the Virtual City games across the multiple platforms that they are available on.  Multi-player mode where you could trade with a friend’s town and trade raw materials as well as finished goods would be very cool as well.  I’d also love to see some “micro-game” kind of incorporation where you can “zoom in” to the hotel or restaurant or store and it either launch a mini-version of one of G5′s time management games, or (if you have it), a full blown version of Supermarket Mania or Stand O’ Food.  Finally, adding some aspects of the real-time strategy games would add a whole new level to games like this.  You wouldn’t want building to burn while you were asleep, but if you could “zoom in” to your farms, for example, and actually incorporate harvesting activities and seasons for crops and such, or even incorporate some traffic management options, it would be really cool.  The free Virtual City Playground for the iPad starts down this “live” path with earning credits and energy while the game is closed, but I would love to see this idea expanded in scope and incorporated into their other games and platforms.  And, while you can always pause the game by pulling up the menu, I’d really love to see some pause/play/fast forward options in the game.

All in all, this game is a bargain for the price, especially if you can get it at the 50% discount.

I grew up without a television in our home from the time I entered elementary school until I was in college.  I read.  I read a LOT. The summer that I was 12, my brother and I would each check out the limit of 20 books at the library and, over the course of the next week or so, we’d real all 40 books.  All through my high-school years, I had a wallet in one back pocket and a paperback book in the other.  I’d read during classes, in between classes, after classes, and on the ride too and from school.  By the time I finished high school, there were several authors that I had completely read all of their works.

As I got older, my interests matured and changed.  I had less time to read, but still had a library at the house full of books on theology, religion, origins, apologetics, and so forth.  All that changed though on March 15, 2005.  I became disabled and could no longer concentrate enough to read much.  I haven’t read a complete book since.  Luckily though, than handicap doesn’t include listening to audio books.  I have over 200 titles in my Audible.com collection, and over 200 gigabytes (about 2,000 hours worth) of books in the popular M4B format.

The M4B format, for those of you that are not familiar with it, is kinda like an MP3, but is designed for longer works, often with chapters defined in it, that you might return to on occasion and want to pick back up at certain places.  In other words, you can bookmark it and don’t have to start the file at the beginning every time you want to listen to it.  And, like MP3s, you can include cover art, author, and other “tags” in the file.  This is perfect for audio books.  There is very reasonably priced software out there that will allow you to combine MP3 files into these m4B files yourself.  I myself use Chapter Master for creation of these files, but there are other products out there as well.

Once you have these created for your listening pleasure though, you need something to play them.  On a desktop, that is easy with iTunes.  On an iPhone or iPod, they natively recognize the M4B format and will play them.  But a dedicated player that allows for easy navigation between chapters and bookmarks is essential for the best listening experience.  And that, finally, is where Amimbo comes in.

Akimbo comes with a free trial version and a paid version for $2.50.  While there are a couple of other apps out there that will play M4B files, Akimbo is, by far, the best.  It has a comprehensive set of features, is regularly updated, and Reed, the developer, is lightning fast in answering user questions and incorporating user suggestions.  He can be reached directly via email, or via the app’s Facebook page.  Contacting him directly though is usually not even necessary due to the complete online manual available for the app.

And, while I focus on M4B audio book files, this player does a whole lot more.  It also plays M4A, MP4, MP3, and ogg vorbis files.  This makes it not only perfect for books, but also for podcasts and lecture series.  I even use it for sermon series from places like SermonAudio.com if I find a series on a topic of interest or a series on a particular book of the Bible.  And it does so with not only the player itself, but with an optional widget, as displayed in the image to the left.

Since audio capabilities differ a bit depending on the age of your Android and its OS, it is recommended that you try to free version before purchasing the full one.  It has the full feature set as the paid version, but pauses for 15-seconds after every 5-minutes of playback.

As I mentioned, the app has a great set of features.  Besides all the different formats of audio files that it plays, it boasts of the following:

Don’t let my feature request list deceive you though.  This app either already does pretty much everything you need, or is likely to in the future.  So go ahead and grab it.  If you are a fan of listening to anything other than music MP3s, it will be the best $2.50 that you ever spent.  And, to help you along, I’ll even include the QR code for it!

The creators of swiftkey have been very busy adding a lot of new features and functionality to an already great product. While the original product could read your SMS messages to help learn your vocabulary, the new version, stable but still in beta, can also learn from your sent Gmail, from RSS feeds if you are like me and have blogs, and also from your Facebook and Twitter posts. This gets it up to speed very quickly and, by the time I had written 400 characters, it had predicted 22% and saved me 90 keystrokes. By the time I was this far in my usage of the keyboard, I had saved 600 keystrokes for a 37% improvement in typing efficiency. In short, the longer you use the keyboard, the better and better it gets.

The improvements do not stop there though. There are new options to add useful arrow keys to the bottom of the keyboard and some cool configuration tools that allow you to balance the predictions with the spelling corrections to best match your typing style and speed.
SwiftKey, and its successor SwiftKey 2, concentrate on being the best and most efficient keyboard on the Android platform. And they succeed more than I would have ever expected.

I do have some suggestions for the application though. First, while it does come with both a light and dark theme, it would be great to offer a theme editor or additional themes. Skinning would allow for developers to match the keyboard to launcher replacements, SMS applications, and so forth. Secondly, I would love to see the option to long-press the recorder key used for speech recognition and have it pop up a selection of smileys. That currently launches the keyboard settings, which is convenient, but once set up, I would use a smiley shortcut more on a regular daily basis.

I am not sure what the upgrade path will be for the current SwiftKey 1 customer to SwiftKey 2, but considering the $1.99 price that is charged for SwiftKey 1 on the Android Market, I don’t expect anything huge. What I do know is this. The SwiftKey keyboard is something I am addicted to and will be one of the very first things that I will install on any Android that I get in the future.  And that may not even be a required action to much longer as some manufacturers are already licensing the technology and including it in their own default keyboard. If you want to know why things are headed in that direction, all you have to do is to check out this amazing keyboard and you will quickly see why there are so many satisfied customers.  Then you can be like me and never look back at those inferior options. The proof is in the stats. Just in finishing this review, SwiftKey has now saved me 1,597 keystrokes (1,710 by the time I finished the review) and my efficiency is now up to 39%.  In a way, the SwiftKey keyboard has been responsible for writing almost 40% of the review of the SwiftKey keyboard.  Kind of ironic and fitting when you think about it.

SwiftKey offers multiple languages and keyboard layouts and there is a free 30-day trial available. It definitely gets 5 stars from me and is the first Android application to make my Must-Have list. The only way I could recommend this application any more highly is if it actually read my mind and did ALL of my typing and not just the 40% it is already doing.

One of the first things I did when I got an iPod was to search the podcasts for Christian podcasts. As I am disabled and don’t make it to church regularly, I was looking for something to replace that.  While I subscribed to several of the podcasts, NOTHING had a bigger impact on my education and enlightenment as The Theology Program.  The Theology Program is, in short, a series of theology courses for lay people.  Think of it as accessible seminary by the same people that bring you the widely popular Theology Unplugged podcast and Parchment and Pen blog.  Michael Patton, the lead lecturer in the series, is also the creator of Theologica, a great forum with over 2,200 members for the discussion of theology, politics, news, etc.  (In full disclosure, I’m not only an active member there, but the head moderator.)

Each of the six courses in The Theology Program, taught by seminary grads themselves, involves ten sessions of audio/video teaching which includes slideshows of illustrations.  While intended for Christians, I think the courses would be beneficial for anyone trying to understand what Christians believe and why they do so.  The courses do not focus on what to believe as much as teaching why different groups of Christians hold to a particular belief.  In other words, a key to the courses is not that you end up believing what Michael Patton does, but that you have a firm, defensible basis for what you believe.  Another key thing about the courses is that it is done in a very fair, objective, and irenic matter.  If there is more than one interpretation of things, both the strengths and weaknesses of a position are explored.  That approach alone is something that makes this series unique.

While you can watch or listen to the classes online, and can even take part in online classes in a live format, having the workbooks and DVDs of the classes is the best alternative to being able to take them in a live setting (online or in person).  To purchase each course though is $110 dollars.  You can get a discount by purchasing the entire series of six courses, but that too comes to a $500 total price tag.  Don’t get me wrong here.  It’s the best $500 investment that you will ever make in theological training and I’d highly recommend the series to anyone.  But that $500 investment is still an obstacle to many.  In today’s economy, many would hesitate to make that investment.  But now, that obstacle has been removed.

Credo House Ministries (formerly Reclaiming the Mind Ministries), the people behind The Theology Program, have now released all the video and workbooks for the entire series, something that would normally cost you hundreds of dollars, for the bargain price of $6.99 as a convenient iPhone app.  That incredible price is cheaper than the cost of just one of the workbooks.  Just a PDF version of one of the six workbooks is $10.  But you can have the entire series of videos plus all the workbooks on your iPhone for the bargain price of $6.99.

Simply called Theology, the iPhone app consists of 60 hours of theological training, more than 1,800 slides and more than 1,200 workbook pages.  That’s about twelve cents per hour of class.  As someone trying to figure out how to get two kids, through college, that is so close to free as to make me wonder why they didn’t just give it away.  I think it is because they want folks to have at least a bit of an investment in the series in order to take it seriously.  While $6.99 is not much for a seminar series, much less a collection of six lecture series, it is a bit higher than most apps on the iStore.

The interface of the app is very simple and intuitive.  It is easy to select both the course you are interested in as well as the class within that course that you want to view.  If you wish to jump to a specific section, like my favorite class about the Stage of Truth (course 1, class 4), you can do so in just a few taps.  And, as you can see from the screen shot on the left, you have access to not only the videos, but also the slides being presented and the workbooks for that class.  The “more” option brings up some additional recommended reading options.

As with any app release though, particularly the initial release, I have some suggestions.  First, it would be great if the app kept track of which class you were watching and would automatically launch that class’s slides when you went to the slides area.  If it could automatically go to that particular course’s workbook, that too would be nice.  Second, the classes have some optional reading suggestions.  I’d love for there to be some links to something like the Amazon store, preferably using a referral code so that Credo House could get some revenue from it, so that you can easily purchase recommended books.  Third, Credo House has a ton of other resources, some of which I have linked to above.  It would be really handy if the app had screens that would take you to the different blogs, podcasts, forums, browser toolbars, and so forth that they offer.  Fourth, I’d love the option to keep the audio playing when you exit the app so that you could listen to it while doing other things.  In combination with the timer option of the iPhone alarm that would let you sleep the device after a period of time, you could even use it to listen to it with a sleep timer.  It is not quite like having a “sleep in an hour”  option (or a note taking option within the app), but it would be nice to be able to load up a notes app and take notes while continuing to listen to the lecture.  If the option is ever added to add notes within the app, being able to attach them to a specific place in a video or slide or place in the workbook would be awesome.  And, finally, I’d love to see an option for push notifications for when live classes start online.  There is nothing quite like going through these in a live environment where you can ask questions and discuss things with other students.  And ability to do this online via the iPhone or an iPad would be a lot to ask for right now, but at the very least I’d love to have an option to be notified so that I could join in via computer.

Overall, I’m totally sold on the content of the Theology app.  It is as comprehensive as it is unique.  While it may be possible to view some theology or seminary classes in iTunes University, having all the slides and workbooks for the courses make this an incredibly comprehensive and convenient way to get a good understanding of Christianity and what Christians believe.  This app definitely made my Must-Have list and I could not recommend it any more highly.

Just as Google Voice revolutionized calling by associating the number to the person and not a location, Go800 has takes that a step further and eliminated the number all together.  In short, all you have to do is text the person’s Twitter ID to GO800 (46800) and, within seconds, your phone will ring and the call is then put through to the other person.

This service is free to set up and use at Go800Corp.com.  With that free registration, you are given 100 minutes a month of talk time.  I’m sure additional minutes will be available for purchase later though.  The setup is simple.  You set up your Twitter name, your account password, your primary and an optional roll-over phone number, and link/validate your Go800 account to your Twitter account.    And that is it.  From them on, anyone that texts your Twitter ID to GO800 will be connected to you in a way that is not only easy, but retains your privacy and that of your caller.

I can see several benefits of this service.  First, because it remains private and no personal phone numbers are swapped, it would be convenient to give to people that you may not otherwise want to have your private phone number.  Second, it would work great for groups of people representing a single entity.  Say you are in sales for a company or work customer service for a charity, for example.  You could have your company Twitter account tied to a number on your switchboard and have a pool of operators standing by.  You could even combine this with Google Voice, as I did, and any messages that are left are automatically transcribed for me.

All in all, I think this is a real interesting service that has great potential.  I could easily see it becoming this century’s version of the old AOL Keyword.  If you have a business, I’d definitely recommend checking it out.  You can’t have too many different ways for potential customers to reach you.

The game consists of a couple of hundred different objects that are displayed in ten different themes.  As each item is displayed, there is a black “shadow” behind it.  Your task is to rotate the item on all three axis in order have it fit the shape of the shadow behind it.  In order to really comprehend the concept, you need to see it in action.  Luckily, there is a YouTube video that will help give you the feel for the game.

This task can be a bit of a challenge.  You only have a few seconds with each piece before the piece changes to the next one.  The game does offer a practice mode though, along with a Rush and Challenge mode.  Three different difficulty levels are also available.

All in all, while timed games like this generally cause me more stress than relaxation, I found myself coming back to this title.  It was refreshing to play something that was new and different and not yet another clone of other popular titles in the App Store.  While the game doesn’t make my Must-Have list, it is well done and tickles a different part of my brain from other games on my iPhone and is worthy of checking out.