iPhone. News and Tips

Imagine yourself sitting in the bunker as the tanks of various size are approaching. What are you going to do? Just like Suvorow would say, defend yourself, so fortify your point.

And so our task is to survive, defending ourselves from attacks, using devastating guns, earning money from opponents’ destroyed machines and upgrading our small bunker.

The game features 30 levels. An armour and accessories shop. A beloved accelerometer-based control method.

Price 3.99$.

[iTunes link]

A marvelous tennis was released today – it’s called Tennis Slam.

It’s a clone of Tennis from Wii Sports series.

The controls are annoying and inconvenient, to be honest. In order to move across the field you can use the touchscreen or the accelerometer.

Price: $ 4.99 / € 3.99
[iTunes Link]

P.S.: I was especially amused by the tiny naked people running across the field at random moments.

Here’s the the first fighting made especially for iPhone. Now it’s available for download at AppStore.

The main feature of the game is a true 3d-graphics gameplay. To strike or block punches, low and high kicks use the buttons on iPhone sensor screen. You’ll be able to choose a favorite fighter from 12 characters, fight your opponents in 5 game modes and on 5 different locations. And don’t forget about various background music, which will help you to take a 110% enjoy from the game.

Download it, play a while and have fun, but don’t scratch the touchscreen making a 6x-super-combo-in-a-second.

Price: $7.99

[iTunes link]

Another one racing game for our lovely iPhone – “Audi A4 Driving Challenge”. As you can see from the title, you will drive an A4 sedan through the racing circuts. The goal is to run the circut as fast as you can and try to improve your result lap by lap. Watch the border cones – if you knock some you’ll get a penalty seconds.

The main feature of the game is an innovative way to control your car. Just rotate your iPhone left or right (imagine that you drive a car, and iPhone is your steerin wheel), and your Audi will follow the moves of iPhone.

Don’t miss the turn, easy right!

P.S. Yes, it’s totally free on iTunes =)
iTunes link

When I saw this game for the first time I remembered my great old ZX spectrum. There was something similar on my iPhone screen. But when this wretchedness costs 3$ it’s just impudence.

A few days ago the game was updated. The graphics became better, it became more beautiful then I saw it at the first time, but they still have a lot of work to achieve the level of Chopper and Solar Quest. I spit on the money and bought it. Now I am so absorbed in the game as the game process is really exiting.

[iTunes link]

At this weekend a new phrasebook (Greek) appeared in the App store. First of all it will help people who haven’t been on the vacation yet (me, for instance)

In spring I was looking for a place for my vacation and I chose Greece as it becomes more and more popular in our country. But after reading about Greek customs and rules of behaviour I realized that I might encounter difficulties in communicating with the natives. Practically no one speaks Russian there and there are not that many people who speak English as well. So what should we do?

Of course, the Greek-English phrasebook may help us. You should only know some basic points in English to understand what you ask and your iPhone will pronounce it in Greek for you. It is very convenient and it eliminates possible mistakes in pronunciation. Of course, it is strange that a nice woman’s voice speaks from the iPhone for a big bearded man, for example, but at least she speaks clearly and correctly.

The application is absolutely free, it’s easy to use and everybody should have it if they go on holiday to Greece.

All phrases are divided into the topics: Main, Travelling, Local Navigation, Food/Drinks, Conversation, Shopping, Medicine, Time and Date, Numbers, Services. In each topic there are some specifying subparagraphs in which you can choose the phrase you need. The set of phrases and words in the phrasebook let you ask the question correctly and get some information.

The price: FREE

Australian creators Firemint who specialize in the games for the iPod presented their new creation – Races GCDC 2008.

In my opinion, after the failure of GTS World Racing a lot of creators will do their best before releasing a half-done project. But now let’s estimate the new product in the Gameplay video.

I hasn’t been announced about the release date and the price yet.

Recently this service had became even more popular.

Now LastFM has made it way into AppStore, too.

With the help of this app you can listen to your favourite tracks, playlists, other users’ stations, tracks that your friends are currently listening to, get info about the upcoming concerts of your favourite bands, etc.

Price: free

A model of Newton’s cradle, which our reader might know from the pages of elementary physics textbook was introduced to AppStore. This model was developed by Newton in the XVIIth century to illustrate the way energies of different types transform into each other: kinetic into potential and viсe versa. Provided there is no friction, this model could go on forever, but in realty this is impossible.

In the year of 1967 a toy was invented by Simon Prebble, an English actor. Nowadays this model often used as a decoration in offices and houses.

The world’s biggest Newton’s cradle is located in the city of Kalamazoo (Michigan state, USA). It consists of 16 bowling balls, 6.8 kg each, hanging on 6.1 m long ropes, 1 m from the ground.

Price: free as in beer.

The Koi Pond iPhone application opens a door into the world of relax and tranquility.
The developers of that software succeeded in creating some kind of a peaceful atmosphere, that makes you to forget about your problems, take a seat and have a rest for a moment. There are a lot of people who enjoy breeding Japanese decorative fishes named Koi, famous for it grace and unique appearance. So, you launch the application, and in the moment find yourself not seating in front of your keyboard, but looking into the phantasmal pond inside your iPhone, where beautiful Koi fishes are whirling in the underwater garden, flashing with all the rainbow colors. They say, some tints of fishes coloring can draw some luck to the owner of the aquarium.

You can find some more information about Koi Pond app in this video.

[iTunes link]

The price of the this real tranquility app is just $0,99.

It’s not enough to be a dedicated developer to pass through Apple’s censorship and sell your own software in a Apple Store. The Big Guys just have announced some rules all Apple developers should know and keep.

First of all, you should not override the 2 Gb limit of production-ready software. Probably, it’ll be harder to exceed it. For example, the map of Moscow and English-Russian dictionary will take approximitly 0,8 Gb.

Also, the cost of your software must not be more then $999. Nobody knows why Apple limits it – probably they don’t want anybody to get more money than Steve Jobs.

AppStore now offers new iPhone application for RSS-reading named Feeds. The main difference from other RSS-readers is it’s low cost – just $0.99. Inspite of it, the functionality of application can compare and somewhere overcome it’s analogues.

Feeds can monitor a number of RSS channels simultaneously. You can add a new channel by address or, that sounds more interesting, search the one you need by keywords – just click “Discover” button in the top right corner of the display. Mini-icons to the left from the channels-screen are also useful. The picture of the icon is downloaded from the channel’s web-site. This little add-on can help a lot to navigate through many RSS-channels – you don’t need to read all the titles, just find the right thumbnail. By the way, Feeds gets all the titles automatically.

Well, what we’ve got at the moment? A $0.99 RSS-reader with a user-friendly interface and a high functionality. The one unknown element is the “E-mail Link” button, that doesn’t react on clicks. Probably the developers reserved it for the next versions of software, where user will be able to send the newslink to his mailbox.

Statistics tell us that iPhone is mostly used by people in 18 to 25 age range. Basu=ically it means they are students. That’s why Grafunc that allows you to draw graphs will always come in handy.

Even if you are taken by surprise by a sudden exam you’ll remember that x-squared graph is a parabola if you have your iPhone and a couple bucks on your iTunes account. (read more…)

Before updating your device to a newer firmware, you are unlikely to check whether your software will run under it. And so I rushed to update from 1.1.4 to 2.0.1 after I’ve read a review of a wondrous reader-app in AppStore, which supported Russian and is reported to be convenient (later it turned out to be far less convenient thaт i2Reader).

But reader-apps are not the issue here. Instead, I’d like to talk about a free tool from AppStore, that makes it easy posting content to various social networks like LiveJournal and more. After updating I realised that I have nothing that can be used to post to my LiveJournal blog. It was even worse, since I had a hard debate in my blog with some malicious “opponents”. You would certainly agree with me that using a PC for blogging is inconvenient after using mobile tools for that. Too bad. So, what can I do?

I have searched all over the Internet for an update to my LiveJournal 0.3.2 (which I had running under my 1.1.4 firmware pretty smoothly) with no luck at all. I tried AppStore. I’ve tried numerous pages until I found the search function. So, here it is, the CellSpin. I’ve downloaded and installed it. It requires registration on their “service” and the activation of an account. That’s OK. I run through a common registration procedure and wait for a confirmation code to be sent to my phone. Nothing. That was supposed to be a SMS with a corresponding info. I try several times with no luck. Then I read: “If you can’t get the confirmation SMS, send us a letter. I did that. Then I wait for three or four days with no result. I have already gave up all my hopes by that time, I have removed CellSpin from my iPhone to save some space. And here comes the confirmation sms. The same day I get a message on my mailbox: “Sorry, our system is under maintenance, we’re addressing all requests manually. Hopefully, you’re not being disturbed too much by the fact that our automatic service is down.” My account was activated, everything was working. Just fine. Now let’s briefly talk about the app itself.

First, I’d like to remind you that this is an only app for posting to our favourite LiveJournal at the moment. That’s probably its main benefit.

Now, the features. You can post plain text, pictures, audio files (or whatever you bandwidth permits). You can take a picture or record an audio note without leaving the app, which is nice. You can type the text from the keyboard as well as feed a text file to a program containing the post’s text. While posting, however, you would experience some problems – because the app can’t submit post titled in Russian, so you have to submit untitled posts.

The app can not only post pictures from your folder (where the pictures taken by your camera are located), but also from your “Photoarchive” (where I store wallpapers and some other oddities, whether they’re funny or not). That’s nice – LiveJournal 0.3.2 couldn’t do that, so even while using EDGE you had to wait for a long time until your pic was uploaded.

Incredibly beautiful and interesting game by Capybara Games finally made it way to my iPhone. Before writing a review I had to think of things I would like to start with. I mean, I simply couldn’t find any flaws in this game, so I couldn’t really define the criteria.

However, I’d begin with gameplay – the main part of any game. You gain control over a cute little monster called Biggs, a dweller of the forest, where one can find lots of various living beings. The problem is, that Biggs is hungry and it’s you task on all levels of the game to feed him.

The concept of the game reminds of the puzzles from those “999 in 1″ Tetris devices. The main character’s hungry tongue clears the game screen from funny creatures, thus preventing them from being too close to the ground.

The game features four exciting modes. Adventure mode is available from the very beginning and presents us the standard game with some options. Survival mode provides the unlimited flow of beasts to fight with as long as you can. Puzzle mode offers a brainstorming task to clear the field making as few moves as possible.
Timed mode tests your reflexes in playing the game with time-limits.

Speaking of forest inhabitants, one should remark the hierarchy of the creatures. You should feed the tiniest blue beasts to the green ones, and you should feed the green ones to the red – the biggest and strongest. And the blue creatures cannot be fed to the red ones. Upon eating a certain amount of forest dwellers, the red creatures disappear, leaving some crystals, which, consequently, should satisfy Biggs’ hunger. Try to form a line of (from top to bottom) red, green and a blue beast to get a coin.

If you place many reds or greens together, you’ll get the following: the one who blasts after eating too much would harm the others, clearing the screen and feeding Biggs better.

There are also many bonuses, which I won’t reveal here, since I would like to speak about graphics, sounds and controls.

Graphics. Beautiful appearance in pixel-art style (where every pixel is drawn manually) plays an important role in the game. Thanks to 2D graphics, the game process will be smooth, since the hardware won’t be over-encumbered, and the great animation will make you forget about all those 3d effects.
Especially cool is the chewing animation.

Sound. The background music and sound effects are nicely done. Although you can switch it off (even while playing, which is pretty convenient), you are not likely to get annoyed. And again, chewing is nicely shown.

Controls in Critter Crunch is incredibly accurate and easy. The character can be dragged from one column to another with a common finger gesture. To grad a victim with a tongue, simply click on Biggs. To place it, click Biggs again. That’s all you need to know in order to play this game!

Menu navigation is pretty convenient, since there are no slide-scrolling. Simply click the arrows to choose the next menu element. To select it, double-click upon it. Additionally, Critter Crunch has several lessons to teach you the basics of the game, and a hall of fame.

Throughout the game I didn’t encounter any bugs or hung-up. Honestly, that’s the first AppStore game that made me write a review right in my iPhone. This exciting game surely scores the highest rank available!

Price: $7.99
[iTunes link]

Simplify Media utility allows you to connect your iPhone with the media library on your PC or Mac and listen to it anywhere using Wi-Fi. It is very useful when you need to discuss the latest Madonna album with friends at the cafe, and you have it on your home computer only. You need to be prepared for such situations once and for all.

1. Download the computer utility from www.simplifymedia.com (there versions for Mac OS, Win XP/Vista, Linux). Set up an account and a name for the computer with media library on it.

2. Install Simplify Media from AppStore on you iPhone. Attention! It’s free for the first 100,000 users, after that it will cost $3.99. Don’t blame me for not warning you

3. Launch iPhone Simplify Media and find your computer.

4. Connect and listen to your music.

Now you are not limited by your iPhone’s capacity, the question “How many albums do you have with you?” no longer makes sense as you now have access to gigabytes of music at your home or work computers.

The price: free for the first 100,000 users. Then it will be $3.99.
[iTunes link]

TAG Games, English developers, are preparing to launch a new Astro Ranch strategy game next year.

The game takes place in “other” 1950. The human race has conquered space and your mission is to set up on the new planets. You need to dig for gold, build settlements, grow cattle.

The game will also have multiplayer, which will allow you to trade with your friends, exchange gifts and SMs.

The release is planned for 2009 and the game will come out for many game platforms simultaneously.

Developer’s website.

Game’s website.

Continuing AppStore software reviews.

This time it’s a game that will occupy you for more than one day. You are the robot. Your goal is to help the money-making machine not to break. You can draw things like a magnet and pick to the walls and metal parts.

clickable

The controls are carried out by the accelerometer. An unusual soundtrack included. THe thing that bugs me the most is that robot screams “Yappeee!” when falling down. First level features some picture tips.

The author promises to develop the project further, this is just the part of robot adventures.

The price is $3.99.

[iTunes link]

Let’s discuss it at the forum.

Soneco team, known for their games for 1.x.x, published their new developments in AppStore. My attention was drawn by Domino. I used to play it a lot the old firmware.

clickable

The game indeed became better. There are 4 new game themes. Each of them is accompanied by separate music. The game process is more enjoyable now. I recommend.

Author’s website.

The price is $0.99.

[iTunes link]

Today our old friend Tris appeared at the AppStore.

clickable

The game has had some quality changes. It now has global “High Scores” in addition to local ones. The rest is just like before.

It still is exciting and free.

[iTunes Link]