The Free App Store Review IX: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Crappiness
Posted by Eric March on August 4, 2008 at 6:08 pm
It’s that time again. The tide of new freebies just doesn’t let up. It is relentless, determined, and occasionally it smells bad. But I’m here to give them all single-paragraph reviews anyway so you know what’s cool, what’s crap, and what certain developers are smoking. Today, we have a smörgåsbord of apps in all sorts of different flavours, some you’ll like, and some you’ll request to be transferred to the other end of the table so as not to contaminate the good stuff. Yeah, I review ‘em all, so why don’t we take a look at them?
You might want to keep your shoes on. Some of them aren’t paper trained.
Oh, one last thing. A new feature I’ve added here are direct links to the applications in the iTunes store, just so you don’t have to go searching for them yourself. Click on them and iTunes should load and take you right to the app’s page.
Developer: SearchQuest, Inc.
Category: Travel
By itself, SearchQuest doesn’t actually do much. What it does is collect a number of disparate web services into one native front-end and marries it to the iPhone 3G’s AGPS to give it a splash of location-awareness. WhitePages.com, Yahoo! GeoPlanet, Yahoo! FireEagle, Wikipedia and your own address book are all culled for search criteria on whatever it is you’re looking for, be it people, places, services or travel guides. You can also E-Mail your current location to anyone.
Developer: Jason Linhart
Category: Games
Yeah. Another Sudoku game to throw on the pile. This one presents with a pretty bland interface, but its hook is that each day it will download a new puzzle over the network, one for each skill level. If you’re the sort who likes to work on Sudoku puzzles during your lunch breaks that only give you time for one puzzle, if that, and don’t mind some no-frills presentation, then this should do you just dandy.
Developer: 3rd Dimension Inc.
Category: Travel
Live in the Houston, TX area? Or maybe you just like looking at traffic cams from abroad? Here’s an app that’ll present hundreds of live traffic cams from around the region. I’m not entirely sure how “live” these things are, because when I checked out a few of the cams, the time stamps were all different, ranging as much an hour from one another, at least a half hour old in the first place. They don’t seem to stream, but rather toggle back and forth between two frames taken one second apart. Not sure what’s up with that. It’s also ad-supported, so be prepared to see an ad before the selected camera is displayed.
Developer: Ezone.com
Category: Utilities
It’s wild! It’s wacky! It’s [activate reverb] CrazyLighter! Yeah, one of those hard-sell, reverb-laden, manic TV spots normally reserved for selling cheap electronics or energy drinks is about the only way this thing could be marketed, because the hype is inversely proportional to the reality. CrazyLighter displays an animated lighter flame clearly dialed up to the “eyebrow elimination” setting. Shake, the lighter comes on. Shake, the lighter goes off. Now hit the home button and ask yourself how your life has sunk so low that you’re amused by this. Also, utilities? This has about as much utility as a condom at a convent. Also also, there is a companion to this called CrazyCandle that is pretty much the same thing, except the author wants a dollar for it. Someone please buy it so Ezone can afford better ideas.
Developer: Studio-蔵 (Studio-Kura)
Category: Health & Fitness
The name and description are all in Japanese, but I managed to suss it out. (ph34r my Google-fu) MosquitoPod is intended to be used outdoors. It emits a high frequency tone that allegedly keeps mosquitoes away. I think this is designed to be played through an iPod Touch connected to a speaker dock or stereo system, rather than an iPhone — I doubt the iPhone’s speaker is loud enough or even capable of reproducing the tones required. Not that I plan on testing that out. I’m stuck in here writing blog posts.
Developer: 40cozy.com
Category: Entertainment
This is — or rather was — an extremely poorly executed iBeer wannabe. I say was because it has been yanked from the App Store. Don’t worry. You didn’t miss anything, other than possibly the opportunity to cast aspersions about how terrible it is, much like I’m doing now. There’s no screenshot because it’s gone from the App Store and I have since deleted it off my iPod. In its place is a nice blancmange. Please help yourself.
Developer: Pautex
Category: Games
Another French-language app. Being Canadian, you’d think I’d be able to grok at least some of it. Unfortunately, I was involved in an unfortunate accident involving Celine Dion and a large wheel of Roquefort (the king of cheeses) when I was younger and forgot most of the French I was taught in school. In any event, translating doesn’t really help any. I don’t think it’s the translation so much as the author sucks at explaining the rules. But if you’re French, maybe you’ll have better luck figuring it out.
Developer: sodascope.com
Category: Games
Breakout doesn’t get any simpler in its presentation than this. Matter of fact, it uses the same colour scheme as Space Invaders: White paddle and ball, green bricks. Anyway, it can use the accelerometer to control, or you can use your fingers for more traditional play. I’ve never seen the point of accelerometer control for games like this. It’s never even remotely as precise or easy to handle as real tactile controls. But that’s just me. The author says they’re working on more and more colourful levels. What that means I don’t know; the current incarnation isn’t much to gauge future designs by.
Developer: Ivory Rook Games
Category: Games
This is a strange and tough one. It is to me, anyway. In this game you are presented with a 3×4 grid of cards from a 66-card deck. Each card has one, two or three symbols on it. Each card’s face is given four attributes: Number (quantity, from 1-3 symbols), colour, shade, and shape of the symbols. The object of the game is to match sets of 3 cards by a set of rules: Either one (and only one) attribute must agree, or one (and only one) one attribute must disagree across the three cards. For example, a set of three cards consisting of one, two and three diamonds are considered a match as long as they are the same colour, shade and shape. (This matches the rule that states that only one attribute can disagree — in this case, the number of symbols on the cards.) Alternatively, a set of three cards each bearing green symbols is a match only if they are each different shapes, different shades, and have a different number of symbols on the cards. (This matches the rule that states that only one attribute can agree — in this case, colour.) If more than one attribute agrees with another card, it is not a valid set. Likewise if nothing agrees or disagrees. Once you make a match, the three cards in the set are retired and three more are drawn from the pile to replace them. The game is won when you run out of cards. Scoring is time-based. There are two modes of play: Solitaire (described here), or Puzzle mode, where you must make a certain number of predetermined matches. Confused? Yeah, this one takes a while to wrap your head around. It’s certainly innovative in its gameplay, even if the presentation is a wee bit lacklustre. This one is for hardcore logic fans only.
Developer: Mobile Geographics
Category: Navigation
Looking to shred some foam? Wanna go clam digging? A spot of fishing maybe? Or perhaps you need to know when the tides will be high enough to take the boat out. Tides will give you everything you need to know. Given a location, Tides will tell you how far away it is from your current location, the times for high and low tide, tide height, ebb and flood, and current flow. Anyone who has business with large bodies of water should find Tides a handy companion to take along. Just don’t wander into the surf with your iPhone unless you have a nice waterproof Otterbox.
Developer: Flying Monkey Enterprises
Category: Utilities
Solder jockeys, this one’s for you. iResist is a resistance calculator with style. You can spin each of the four colour wheels to pick a colour band combination to match the resistance you’re looking for, or simply enter a resistance value to have the proper colour sequence displayed. A nice image of a resistor with matching bands appears up top, and the resistance value will be represented below in nice big numbers. iResist supports resistance values of 0 ohms to nearly 100 megaohms and supports a wide range of tolerances. For fun and profit, you can also shake your device to spin up a random resistance value. As the author says, it’s “Dozens of minutes of FREE fun!*” (* actual mileage may vary). it’s functional, too, and quite pretty. Also, I dig the author’s self-deprecating humour.
Developer: Haploid
Category: Utilities
Another 2D barcode reader makes it appearance in the App Store. This one is pretty basic, and only reads QR and Data Matrix codes. (No Aztec) It will automatically open URLs encoded as 2D barcodes, though, which is kind of a nice feature if you happen to live where web addresses expressed as 2D barcodes are plastered all over the place. Otherwise, you’re probably better off sticking with NeoReader.
Developer: Neil Daniels
Category: Entertainment
If fantasies of being Luke Skywalker waving your
Developer: Synthesis AG
Category: Productivity
Well if that ain’t just a mouthful. Synthesis SyncML (for that is what I will abbreviate it to because I’ll be damned if I’m typing that whole thing out repeatedly) brings the SyncML data synchronization standard to the iPhone, allowing you to sync your contacts and address book over-the-air with any SyncML-compiliant server, including Oracle Collaboration Suite, goosync.com, consolidate.at, Open-Xchange, MDaemon, ZYB, mobical, DeskNow, Synkia, ScheduleWorld, neopin.com, and more. I feel the need at this point to conceal my profound ignorance on this subject, so I’m just going to sit here and stroke my chin while I nod sagely.
Developer: AAApplications
Category: Utilities
And the winner of the Perfidity Award for best name in the category of Companies That Deliberately Place Redundant A’s In Front of Their Names In Order to Get Top Billing in an Alphabetical List is: [drum roll] AAApplications! [APPLAUSE] As for the application, Roulette Helper is intended to help you … do … something. With Roulette. The author does not provide any details on precisely how it is supposed to help you, but he does provide the helpful caveat that this method, whatever it is, “is not proven to work, and it “is not guaranteed to make you win big, but it is a very helpful app nonetheless.” Thanks for that, Luis. I have another helpful method: Stick to poker.
Developer: MochaSoft
Category: Business
Hot on the hells of their VNC client comes Mocha Telnet Lite. Like their VNC client, this is a “lite” version which has fewer keyboards, no control key support, no text macros, and only one host configuration. Aside from that this is a decent telnet client for those of you who have need of such a thing, and works pretty much as you would expect it to — which is to say much like their VNC client. It supports the full VT220 emulation mode, 24×80 or 24×132 line length modes, zooming and scrolling, landscape support, auto-login configuration, user-define keys, customizable colours, and more. Frankly, I could use something like this myself, but first I have to convince IT that we need to install a wireless connection.
Developer: Sleepydog
Category: Social Networking
LifeCast is yet another mobile blogger app. Write text, take pictures (or choose one from your photo library), post them to your blog. You can also geotag your entries and later view where they were written via Google Maps. You can also create multiple LifeCasts and connect each to mulitple blogs, or create “LifeCast Timelines,” whatever that is. (You can probably tell I’m not much of a social networker.) Currently it only supports Blogger (text-only) and Tumblr (text and images), but the author assures us that support for more blog APIs are forthcoming.
Developer: Giglish
Category: Entertainment
Look, there’s a time and place for the whole cutesy “iProduct” naming convention, and it generally involves following the “i” with something that makes some sort of grammatical sense. iBook (a book for “i”), iLife (the life of “i”), iPod (a pod for “i”), et cetera. This is not one of those times. iPhunny makes no grammatical sense. Replacing the “F” with “Ph” doesn’t make it any cuter. Officer Grammarcy has spoken. As for the app, it displays jokes from “top comedians.” New jokes are added daily. Swipe left to right to see the next joke. Swipe up or down to display a random joke. Smack your forehead when you remember that Jay Leno isn’t funny.
Developer: Jamsoft
Category: Games
The age-old game of Hangman. The only thing that sets this one apart from others is that it makes the game several wrong guesses easier by building the gallows before drawing the hangman. Oh, and it uses that annoying non-standard alphabetical keyboard instead of a normal QWERTY, which puts me in a mood not unlike the word depicted in the screenshot.
Developer: Broadway Billing Systems
Category: Business
For you outside sales dudes, here’s one for you. Bill4Time Mobile is a mobile billing application that lets you bill your clients on the go. Bill for time worked and expenses incurred, create schedules that can be converted to billable time entries with one touch, add project notes, get a project overview, check your oustanding accounts in the Accounts Receivable display, and more. Note that while the iPhone app is free, you must have a Bill4Time subscription. You can sign up for a 30-day trial, but if you want to continue using it you’ll need to cough up some dough on a regular basis.
Developer: Nicoteam
Category: Entertainment
Another jailbreak app makes the jump to the App Store, and fortunately it’s still free. For those that don’t remember or never grabbed it off Installer, Earth3D is on the order of a (manually activated) screen saver, and displays a 3D representation of the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. It can be viewed n portrait or landscape, and left to its own devices it’ll slowly rotate the camera around the Earth, with the Moon and Sun occasionally floating into view. You can also use a finger to drag the camera around, and use two fingers stop and start camera movement. It’s a fun little toy to play with for a while.
Developer: Xtreme Labs Inc.
Category: Utilities
In the absence of the ability to use web-based network speed testers, SpeedTest is here to fill that gap. SpeedTest will evaluate your network connection, whether WiFi, EDGE, or HSDPA, and report back with your average upstream and downstream speeds. It has a pretty simple interface, but you don’t really need fancy spedometers or anything if all you want are the facts.
Developer: Julian Asamer
Category: Utilities
Yep. Another unit converter. This one features a simple, clean interface with 70 different units across 11 categories, and updates supported currencies daily. That is all.
Developer: Western ITS Limied
Category: Games
A simple reaction game. Touch the screen as soon as its colour changes and gauge your reaction times. There’s a high score table to keep track of your fastest times, and even a help menu, in case you forgot what you need to do when the screen colour changes.
That wraps up another fun-filled edition of The Free App Store Review. I’ve been your host, Wink Willydale, tune in next time when all new apps will compete for fun and prizes by pelting each other with durian fruits in order to see who can stand the smell longer. This has been a Mark Goodson-Bill Toddman production. And remember, please have your pets spayed or neutered.
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Posted in Application Related, Entertaining, Free App Store Review, Gaming Related, Round Ups, app store, iPhone 3G
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August 5th, 2008 at 10:58 am
you guys should try and be a little less snarky and condescending in these reviews. You do realize the only people that read this are app developers with a google alert set for their app name right?
August 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. Good apps get good reviews. Bad ones … not so much. I could probably be more staid and plaintive in my commentary, but where’s the fun in that? Also, we get plenty of people reading these reviews, devs and users alike. I’m sure users appreciate simple, easy to understand mini-reviews that are more descriptive than a thumbs up or down, and I’ve had plenty of thanks from developers for featuring their product. If a dev comes across a piece I did panning his or her work … well, (s)he can either ignore it, take it personally and get all apoplectic, or write better apps. But I’m pretty sure they’re all big boys and girls who can take a dig or two or a bit of constructive criticism, even if it’s wrapped in a bit of snark.
Plus, my opinions are just that: My opinions, and therefore purely subjective. Take them for whatever you think they’re worth. My objective here is to review, based on my personal observations and opinions, for better or for worse, and to try and do it with a bit of jocular humour that may veer into wise-ass or non-sequitur territory. Not everyone is going to like it or get it. I’m perfectly cool with that. It’s all intended in the nature of good fun and/or a sound ribbing; I hold no malice to any of the developers and respect the work they do whatever it is. I just think some need to try harder, because I know they can do much better, and nobody ever improves by being constantly praised and pandered to. If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ve no doubt also noticed that I’m perfectly willing to level digs at myself as well.
If you want to do something creative, useful or fun and let the general public have at it, you have to be willing to take the good in the same stride as the bad. If you don’t, you’re not going to enjoy yourself very much. In other words: If you can’t take the heat, get out of the compiler.
But if it helps, stick a picture of Simon Cowell over my face. I’ll be therapeutic. Plus, I hear the ladies love it.