1st Impressions

Akimbo is one of my most-used applications on my Android.  Let me explain why.

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!

As I mentioned in my last post, I have recently upgraded to the Android platform.  There are a lot of reasons for the switch, but one reason was that I wanted a larger screen allowing for a larger keyboard.  When I first got my Android, I tried several. I still have four on my phone right now, but have never needed to look further than SwiftKey. It not only has large keys suitable for large fingers, and corrects spelling like other keyboards, but has an incredible prediction capability that borders on magic. And, to make a wonderful product even better, I have been invited to try out and post a review of the SwiftKey 2 beta.

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.

This is likely to be my last iPhone review since I upgraded to an Android phone a month or so ago.  I’ll be posting some thoughts and comparisons about that later, but thought it fortuitous that my last iPhone app review is for, perhaps, one of the very few apps that would tempt me to return to the iPhone.  In effect, I’m saving the best for last.

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.

Pocket Weather Pro wowed me. Literally. When the $3.99 app launched, an involuntary “Wow!” escaped my lips and, after just a couple minutes examining it’s features, it assumed the position of the only weather app on my iPhone and set the bar to which all other weather apps will be measured. It now resides on the top row of my first page of apps.

There are three things that really set this SBSH title apart from those that now must try to compete with it. The first thing is the wealth of information available to you. It not only displays current temperatures, wind speed and direction, and cloud/precipitation icons as you would expect, but also expected highs and lows for both actual and perceived temperatures (wind chill), visibility in miles, barometric pressure, dew point, percent chance of precipitation, and a ten day forecast. And that is just on one screen. There are also screens for detailed 10-day forecasts, graphs of actual and perceived temps for both highs and lows forecast over the next week by day, perceived and actual over the coming 12 hours by hour, and highs and lows historically by month for the last 12 months with rainfall amount and number of days with rain. All of these graphs allow you to slide your finger across them and get more details for that month, day, or hour. Full sunrise, sunset, and moon phase information, as well as worldwide earthquake data, is also available. About the only thing the app doesn’t cover is tidal information…and does it all for any airport in the world.

The maps section touches on the second thing that sets this app apart. You see, this app is the only one to get all this detailed information directly from METAR feeds from every airport worldwide. As such, when you pull up the maps feature and look at radar images, you can select and view the radar images from any airport in your vicinity. When I pull my location up, I not only have 8 different radars that I can look at, but after the app has been installed long enough to get a few updates, I can “play” the images and watch as the weather systems move.

As if the wealth of information collected and the number of sources available are not enough to impress, this weather app also adds themes. This allows you to download additional views of all this information to find the ones that provide the format and information selection that best suits your taste. The app comes with thee different views standard and another couple already available for download. Options include the ability to not only see what additional views are available directly from SBSH, but also can do a Google search for additional views.

Not only are there info buttons on each page explaining what the icons and data mean, but SBSH also has a forum for comments and inquiries on the app as well as a guide for creating your own custom weather feed and themes available for download. There is also a nice YouTube overview of the app. There is also a free lite version available for download. The extensive settings available not only allow you to change a lot of ways the data is displayed and select locations, but also has the options to not only “bump” to share configurations with friends, but also backup and restore your configurations on DropBox. As you dig deeper, you can find out all kinds of information about the airports around you and even links to arrival and departure times if available on the web. In short, they have pretty much thought of everything. You can also share your current weather information via email, Facebook, Twitter, print it, or ever save it to your image album or DropBox.

My recommendations for this app are few. While I live nowhere near the ocean, I think tide info would be a nice addition to the app. And, while weather alerts do display on your main screen, tapping on them sometimes just tells you the basic type of alert and not the full information that I have seen in other apps. At other times, perhaps a different location, you get full detail of the alert. It also does not send push notifications. I get enough weather alerts already from local news apps, but this would be a nice addition to the app. Also, while there seems to be a pretty full user manual for the Windows devices, I could not find one for the iPhone version, which seems to have a few less options available in the settings.

This is a truly marvelous app and definitely makes my Must Have list. If the rich feature list isn’t enough to get you to purchase the title, then consider that the developers have been based in Thailand working with a large children’s home in the Northern village of Hoay Maw. Supporting that effort alone is worthy of the $3.99 price tag.

I love utility apps and camera apps on the iPhone.  ToonCamera is the latest that I’ve tried out.  It is an app for not only taking photos using the back-facing camera or front-facing camera and video, but also allows you to select items from your photo library.  It then takes these images and “cartoonifies” them.  I realize that isn’t a real word, but by decreasing the colors in the image, it ultimately turns the image into something that looks like a cartoon.

I really like the effects of this program.  By adjusting the brightness, contrast, and line thickness, you can produce up to nine different versions of the image.  Examples of there are in the second image in the review here.  The end results are really nice.  And, if you combine them with an app like Colorize, you could really make some nice results that would really help to make your images pop out of the background.  Combining it with AutoStitch could also provide some interesting results.  I also used PerfectPhoto, another $0.99 app that I to remove some of the noise artifacts from my “cartoon” image.

The front-facing camera is a nice option as it allows you to take some great images for use as an avatar on Facebook or something.  The live video recording with these effects is also cool to see.  It is these options and the ability to view all this live that sets this app apart from things like the “pencil paint” and “posterize” options of apps of other apps.  Once you get an image or video that you’d like to keep, you can save it to your camera roll, share it on FaceBook or Twitter, or email it to one of your contacts.

At only $0.99, I’d highly recommend this app for any photgrapher.  It makes my Must-Have list and will remain on my iPhone.  I would like make two suggestions to the developer though.  It would be nice if you could either zoom or crop images.  I’d also love to see where the effects were more in the way of sliders rather than presets so that finer control could be accomplished.

Fragger is a keeper in my book.  Unlike others games that try to carve out a bit of the success of games like Angry Birds, this one truly succeeds in a way that has all the charm and addictive nature of Angry Birds combined with the successful theme of military weapons.  In this case, you are launching/throwing grenades to try to take out enemies that are hiding on, behind, and beneath different obstacles.

At a very reasonable price of $0.99, this game comes with 160 levels over five different worlds.  The latest world is actually a holiday theme that has just been released.  There is also a very simple tutorial that will assist in case you have never played something like Angry Birds.  Nothing more complex is necessary as the game controls are very easy to learn.

The game also comes with Game Center leader boards and achievements with both local and global high scores.  Two features that I really like is that, similar to Gravity Guy, another recent title from the same developer, this game has downloadable retina graphics and game music that automatically silences if you are playing something else from your iPod library. 

If you would like a nice take on the projectile games for your iPhone, this one is a great one to add to your library.  Some of the levels get quite creative in how they are laid out and it promises (and delivers) a lot of entertianment at a very reasonable price.  Other than possibly more levels or a trial lite version, there isn’t a whole lot to recommend for this title.  It’s practically perfect in every way.

A while back, I did a review of AutoStitch, a program that could be used to combine a series of photos into a nice panorama.  I have a similar program for the PC.  360 Panorama takes that concept a step forward.  In effect, you use your phone like a video recorder to shoot your entire surroundings and the program creates a seemless panorama from it.  It is much like the capability of a recent digital camera I saw, but this is a better implementation of that.  The grid lines really help, in real time, to see your completed result and what still needs to be captured.

The advantages of this implementation are obvious in the end result.  First, you end up with better brightness/contrast level across all the of panorama.  When you take individual photos, you often get different exposure settings on the camera.  Second, and just as important, you end up with seeing where you need to “cover” more area in order to complete the image.  No more taking a couple of dozen images only to find, when stitching them together, that you missed an area.

The 360 panorama app is currently on sale for $0.99 and is a must-have for anyone that is a heavy user of their iPhone camera.  It is super easy to use.  Choose an area to start “filming” and press the “Start Capture” button.  As you pan around and up and down, your progress is mapped out on a grid.  You can create just a part of your surroundings, or even do a full 360-degrees.  Once you finish, tap the “Done” button.  If you are in a low-light situation, the process even lets you know so that you can go more slowly in the creation of the image.

After you take the image, you are given a choice of eithe white or black background or the choice of a 360 view or a Stereographic view.  I’d suggest experimenting with both of these as they produce different results that are both interesting in their own right. 

The results come out real well, and there are several things you can do with them.  You can save the completed image to your photo library, email the full image to someone as a flat image, or email the interactive 360-degree panorama to someone.  This file, with a .360 extension is roughly the same size of the flat JPG image, but your iPhone mail app will open it in your 360 Panorama app.  This allows you to use your iPhone gyroscope to pan around in the image or, if you would rather, you can pan around with intuitive finger swipes.  You are also given the option to upload the image to either TwitPic or yFrog for posting on Twitter and are given an option to enable or disable location tagging on the image.

My only real suggestion for the app would be to allow uploads to Facebook and Picasa as well.  Facebook uploads could always be done from the Camera Roll, but having it built in would be nice. 

I am attaching the finished product from the trial photo I took from the deck of my house.  There are some “glitches” in some places, but that is due to a lot of camera movement on my part.  In order to take  the best possible images, you shouldn’t turn around or walk around with the camera, but keep the camera lens in as stationary of a position as you can and rotate it around.  With a bit of practice, you can come up with some really sharp and clear images.  If you would like to see the full 4096×1011 size image, click here.

Artillery Brigade surprised me.  I’d heard it was coming.  I’d received announcements that it was finally here.  And I expected something that was going to not live up to the hype.  Boy, was I wrong!

The thing that impressed me so much about this game wasn’t just its feature set.  I was surprised at how immersive this game is.  I didn’t feel like I was playing a game on a phone.  I felt like I was in war.  This aspect alone, and at a $0.99 price point to boot, propels this title into the Must Have list for me.

In this game war, you man an artillery post against enemy troops, planes, and tanks.  You have three different types of guns at your disposal, full 360-degree view with panning up and down and zooming in and out, a radar showing you where your enemies are coming from, and a button that keeps all of this from becoming total overwhelming because it swings you around to be pointing in the general area of your closest threat.

While I generally avoid dual-stick shooters that require a lot of activity with my left hand (something that us old fogies that didn’t grow up in the Nintendo generation have an issue with), the requirements for your left thumb are not only simple, but rather intuitive,  You select you gun and fire with it.  Your right hand can handle your navigation/direction and zooming in and out.  This layout and balance made this title the most enjoyable dual-stick kind of game that I’ve ever played.

This title offers both OpenFeint and Game Center support, six different environments, a nice tutorial to get you started, both day and night missions, and different weapons that you can unlock in the categories of anti-aircraft guns, machine guns (great against troops), and rocket launchers.  And, after you complete each mission area, a survival mode opens up for endless play.  And, if you ever do get bored, switching from touch controls to accelerometer controls to gyroscope controls will give you all new types of game play to conquer

This game is very intense with its graphics and all that is going on.  While it plays great on the iPhone 4 (unless I was downloading a large app in the background), I’m not sure how it would perform on older devices.  At it’s current $0.99 sale price point though, it’s worth getting now before the price goes up.

I generally don’t spend a lot of ink on free titles, but decided to make an exception to that rule.  Chillingo has just announced a Christmas gift for us, Cut The Rope Holiday Gift.  Based on the same game dynamics of Cut The Rope , which was reviewed both here and here, this new free title with a bit of a holiday theme features a new stocking feature that shoots the candy around the screen.  There is also a special surprise if you shake you iPhone.  This twenty-five level thank-you from the game’s developers to fans like me is only going to increase fan loyalty to the Cut The Rope franchise and gets a big thumbs up from me.  If the two reviews posted here were not enough to get you to give this title a try, download Cut The Rope Holiday Gift.  It’s free.  What do you have to loose?

Sentinel 3 is the latest in the Sentinel series by Origin 8.  I posted an updated review of the first two titles in this series several months ago.  If you are unfamiliar with those titles, I suggest you check out that review as this sequel builds upon all that those offer and adds more.  To check out a teaser, see this YouTube clip.

In Sentinel 1, the goal was to protect Mars.  Sentinel 2 added ship-based weapon systems in an earth defense.  The graphics, game features, and overall game play made these two titles my favorites in one of my favorite genres of game.  The new version reminds me of the movie Starship Troopers.  Not only are the graphics movie-quality, but this time we are taking the battle to the enemy bug homeworld!

The latest installment of this award-winning series doesn’t just change venue though.  In this version, you add to the capabilities of the prior releases with not only new weapons, but a new weapon locker system where you choose which combination of weapons you are going to have available to you on a particular mission.  These new systems, combined with improvements and additions to the systems you are familiar with from the first two titles, are balanced with even more difficult enemies though.

There are a few distinct things that set this series apart from any other straight tower-defense game.  I refer to it that way because another favorite of mine, Defender Chronicles, is also head and shoulders above a crowded field of competition but does so by adding heroes and RTS type of game play into a unique side-view graphic theme.  The Sentinel series is more of a purist though in its approach to the TD genre and excels by simply providing a superior product.  Here are some of the features that set this series, and ultimately this title in particular, apart from its attempted competition:

• Use of landscape and obstacles to your advantage
• Use of drones for harvesting resources and repair
• Use of both land-based and space-based weapon systems
• Use of “boosters” that increase effectiveness of other systems
• Use of a new weapons locker system allowing you to try out different weapon combinations on a level
• Use of earned credits to not only purchase upgrades, but new abilities as well
• Use of full retina display
• Use of both OpenFeint and GameCenter to not only share scores, but level strategies

My one suggestion for this game is that it would allow you to set up multiple player profiles.  When you only have one iPhone in the house and more than one family member addicted to this title, it would be nice to keep the scores and achievements apart.

The Sentinel series of games, along with Space Station Frontier by the same developers, are a definite must-have in my book.  Because there is so much to Sentinel 3 though, I seriously recommend that you begin with the first two titles in the series in order to have a slower introduction into all that this title has to offer.  Once you are ready to graduate to Sentinel 3, its 20 campaign levels, 14 endless maps, and 20 different turrets, ship weapons, and drones will guarantee you hours of fun.  Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 are available for $0.99 (as is Space Station: Frontier) and are a real bargain at that price.  Sentinel 3 is priced at $2.99.  That is a sale price and the title will soon go up in price.  My advice is to grab all four of these Origen 8 titles now.  You won’t be disappointed.