The Free App Store Review XII: Deus Ex Machina

by Eric March on August 12, 2008 at 12:14 am

Well now, that’s more like it. I was beginning to worry that the tide of freebies had slowed to a trickle, but it seems it was merely a temporary lull, because we’re back in full force with another chunky vat of fresh freebie slurry cascading down the sluice for y’all. (And the award for for WORST. METAPHOR. EVER. goes to… hey, I should enter that in next year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest.) Be mindful when reading this edition of the Free App Store Review though, and for Pete’s sake stop playing with that, because God is watching. Oh yes, he is — hey, even supreme beings love freebies, you know, and I think it’s pretty obvious that he has an iPhone.

And now, let us pray … for more freebies.

App Name: Pyramid Solitaire Lite
Developer: Seahorse Software
Category: Games
If you just can’t get enough solitaire in your life, Seahorse is here to give you more, this time with an ancient Egyptian flavour. This variant of the single-player card game requires that you remove cards from the pile by matching up any number of cards that add up to 13. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. The visuals here are quite nice, even if the card symbology, adhering to the ancient Egyptian theme as they do, seem a little gratuitous. The black score box over the sarcophagus seems out of place, too. Minor nitpicks to be sure for what is otherwise a decent solitaire variant.

App Name: The Scriptures
Developer: Lee Falin
Category: Reference
A bible reference for the Mormons. Contains the entire standard LDS works, including the KJV bible, the Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price. It features the ability to search words or phrases across all scriptures, and future versions will feature footnotes, study aids, bookmarking, and language localization.

App Name: MotionX Dice
Developer: MotionX
Category: Entertainment
You asked for it, and now MotionX is giving it to you — for free, even! MotionX Dice is a dice rolling app based on their wildly successful pay app MotionX Poker — but there’s no game here other than perhaps what you make of it. It just rolls dice, but if you just need (or want) to roll the bones, this is as good as it gets. It features full MotionX technology for realistic 3D dice rolling action, 9 sets of dice styles to choose from, each with their own sounds, 3 different table colours, sound effects — even force feedback. For you tabletop RPGers however, I have some bad news: It only contains D6’s.

App Name: StreetEasy Real Estate Search
Developer: StreetEasy
Category: Business
You you dwellers of the Big Apple who need a place to hang your fedora (or those from elsewhere who want to find such a place), StreetEasy provides you with a simple and effective means to search real estate listings in New York City. The app provides comprehensive, detailed information on available locations, details on buildings, pictures of the residences, find other listings in the same building, and more. For New Yawkers, it will even utilize the 3G’s AGPS to find listings close to you. If you’re interested in laying down some roots in the city that never sleeps, here’s your guide.

App Name: MPoD
Developer: Katoemba
Category: Music
Here’s one for those of you rocking a Mac or Linux box. MPoD is a client designed to connect to a Music Player Daemon server running on a remote Mac or Linux machine. Using MPoD, you can stream your music library wirelessly over your iPhone or iPod Touch’s WiFi connection. (You could also conceivably use your iPhone’s EDGE or 3G connection, too.) Get access to all of your music, and not just the stuff you managed to fit into your device.

App Name: MiGhtyDocs
Developer: V1ru8
Category: Ut1l!tiEs
MiGhtyDocs is a simple Google Docs viewer for the iPhone and Touch. It doesn’t store anything — it’s strictly a remote viewer — and there are no editing capabilities, so this is useful only when you want access to some important document while you’re on the go and don’t have access to a PC and your Google Docs account. It seems to work well enough for what it does though, so … there’s that.

App Name: Diceshaker
Developer: Infinite Labs
Category: Utilities
Now, since you got the weapon of the year, come and get the award/Here’s a hint, it’s like a long chop sword/Flip town, so let me see you shake it up like dice/The way you shake your iPhone makes me fear for the device/But A+ got a surprise that’s a back breaker/Now let me see you shake your dice with your Diceshaker. Yeah, that was fairly terrible. But this app isn’t too bad if you’re looking for a dice roller. You can pick an arbitrary number of dice and the type of die you want to roll, then shake or touch to throw the virtual bones. It’s fairly no-frills, so don’t expect pretty graphics or anything. It’s just a simple, small, effective app.

App Name: CubeWorld
Developer: Marco Giorgini
Category: Photography
Here we go. The first, the original panorama app for the iPhone and Touch, first introduced to the jailbreak scene last March. All of the same features of the original are here, with the addition of the ability to add new panorama sources and download new panoramas. It doesn’t seem to have access to the same plethora of panoramas as PangeaVR does, but one feature CubeWorld has that Pangea’s app doesn’t is the ability to tool around the various panoramas using the accelerometer, which is rather nice. Another unique feature is that it is capable of downloading and storing panoramas for offline viewing, so you don’t need a network connection to view panoramas you have previously downloaded. Very nice, and it’s good to see that Marco manage to get this up on the App Store.

App Name: Cocktails
Developer: Swiss-Development
Category: Reference
A bartender’s guide to whipping up a heap o’ cocktails, complete with pictures and recipes. Unfortunately, it’s entirely in German (despite its apparent Swedish origins) so hopeful bartenders who aren’t fluent in Deutsch are out of luck.

App Name: BibleReader
Developer: Olive Tree Bible Software, Inc.
Category: Reference
One bible not enough for you? How about 9? BibleReader features a grand total of 9 different translations of the Good Book, including the New English Translation, Modern King James Version, American Standard, Darby’s Translation, Young’s Literal Translation, Weymouth New Testament, Spanish, French and German. It features a colourful Verse Chooser grid, search ability, and a simple but colourful translation selection menu.

App Name: Alcohol Aware
Developer: iPips Limited
Category: Lifestyle
If you have any concerns about your drinking habits, or are just curious about just how much you’re really imbibing, Alcohol Aware can help. It gives you a quick and handy reference to the number of units of alcohol (I presume this is a UK measurement) in a given drink and can keep track of how much you’re drinking over a given period of time. You can even calculate custom drinks by entering the percentage of alcohol by volume and the quantity of the drink. If you want to manage your drinking with an eye towards improving your healthy lifestyle, Alcohol Aware is a handy companion. They also offer a Plus version that can keep track of your expenditures on alcohol, so you can also see the financial impact on your lifestyle.

App Name: Vexed
Developer: Gandreas Software
Category: Games
I’m sure most of you are familiar with this type of game. It’s a version of the old Gem’X game originally from the Atari ST and Amiga world at the beginning of the 90s, where the object is to match up twosomes or threesomes of like blocks by sliding them into place. The problem is that there are often other blocks in your way, or immovable obstacles you must overcome, and of course, you have gravity to deal with, so you have to solve each level logically. Vexed is a pretty nice version of that style of game, with decent graphics, adequate sound, and standard touch and slide gameplay. It also features 5 different themes to choose from and contains over 1,100(!) levels across 19 puzzle packs, so this one is guaranteed to keep you busy for quite some time.

App Name: Stylem Greetings
Developer: Stylem Media
Category: Entertainment
Remember when greeting card websites were all the rage, like, a decade ago? And how most of them now are just excuses to collect E-Mail addresses with which to spam you and everyone you send cards to, or require some proprietary plugin designed ostensibly to play back your greetings but in fact really just flash adware at you? Well, Stylem Greetings wants to bring those heady days back in a big way with an online catalog of over 15,000 greetings cards across more than a dozen categories to choose from. The app doesn’t include any ads or require you to register, but I’ve no idea what they do with the E-Mails addresses, so caveat emptor.

App Name: StitchMinder
Developer: Quilt2Go
Category: Lifestyle
Come on, I know there’s at least one knitter out there. You! Yes, you with the alpaca hat! You look like someone who would appreciate a stictch counting app. Fess up, I know you’ve got a half-completed floral quilt sitting in your wool chest, and you know exactly what “knit one, pearl two” means. How ’bout StitchMinder for your next project? It features customizable counters that track rows completed, pattern rows, pattern repeats, and increases/decreases. They can count up or down, and it even remembers your counts between sessions.

App Name: Spend Lite
Developer: Adamcode.com
Category: Finance
Here’s a simple, scaled down version of the more full-featured (and more expensive) Spend app. It’s a basic finance tracker that lets you keep tabs on your spending. You can crate up to 5 weekly budgets with this app, allowing you to distribute your funds to where they need to go quickly and easily, and it can all be done on the go. The full version of spend features an unlimited number of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly budgets, so you can plan much more ambitious budgets, which is good, because you’re going to need to save up for that fiber optic hat and robot dog you’ve got penciled into this year’s budget.

App Name: Shinydoku Lite Edition
Developer: Shinysoft
Category: Games
Can’t get enough of the half dozen other Sudoku apps out there? Need yet another one as you strive to fill an entire page with nothing but Sudoku games? Shinysoft’s got your number! Actually, they have a whole lot of numbers. This demo version of the full game has 25 hand-crafted puzzles (5 in each of 5 difficulty levels), pencil notes, swipe cell movement, unlimited undo history, and … oh hell, it’s bloody Sudoku.

App Name: Sudoku Loaded Free
Developer: Timothy Braun
Category: Games
Sudoku, anyone? More sudoku? Would you like another helping of sudoku? Surely you have room for another sudoku. It’s wafer thin. It’s also haunting my deepest Machiavellian nightmares. However, pressing on, this one, being a demo is limited to 50 puzzles, and doesn’t include the techniques guide that the full verison does. Otherwise it features state saving, 5 difficulty methods, 3 methods of input, bookmarking, statistics and performance tracking, complete play history, illustrated sudoku guide, in-game help, and more. In other words, it’s sudoku for people who take their sudoku very seriously.

App Name: Scoreboard
Developer: BP Software
Category: Productivity(?)
You know, I like the idea that playing darts is a productive use of one’s time. My boss could walk in and ask, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” and I could say, “I’m playing darts,” and he’d be all like, “Oh, well. As long as you’re keeping productive, carry on,” and then I could throw a dart at his head, and we’d laugh and laugh. But this is not a darts game. It is, however, a scoring app for the real gentleman’s game of draughts. It’s simple, but clean and effective and just the thing for when you’ve had six too many at the local pub and don’t know how to score it when you skewer the waitress’s left buttock.

App Name: QuickPoints
Developer: Acacia Software
Category: Health & Fitness
A quick ‘n simple app to calculate Weight Watchers point values based on calorie, fat and fiber content. The app is free, but it’s ad-supported, so you’ll get a plug taking up the top quarter of the screen.

App Name: MtG Score Keeper
Developer: JG Creations
Category: Entertainment
I’m kind of surprised Magic: The Gathering is still around, but around it is, and this here is an iPhone/Touch app to keep track of your current life total and games played. Yeah, that’s about it, really. Sooooo … you wanna see my famous potato chip collection? I’ve got one that looks exactly like former New York mayor Ed Koch.

App Name: Lenovo Summer Olympics 2008
Developer: Zumobi
Category: Sports
Another sponsored app, this time it’s Thinkpad maker Lenovo. This one will connect you to the 2008 summer olympics by providing you with photos from the olympics, news, athelete profiles, and links to olympic blogs. Images of amusing Chinglish restaurant menu items are sadly absent. Also, I like how the screenshot of the news section featuers news about western Chinese attackers killing 16 border officers. Such cheerful events happening outside that bird’s nest.

App Name: iView
Developer: Dunno.
Category: Utilities
Dunno. It’s not available in Canada. Seriously, what’s up with that? Region locking in the App Store? I can understand eBay doing it because they probably don’t have the Canada-centric version ready for prime time yet, but this is silly. It’s not iView specifically, but there have been others. It just irritates me and makes me want to strangle budgies. (I’m what you’d call an animal lover. I like North Korean sherry. ‘Ere, didn’t you kill my brother?)

App Name: GeoPedia
Developer: Trivialware
Category: Education
GeoPedia makes use of the iPhone 3G’s AGPS to identify landmarks around you and let you read up on Wikipedia articles pertaining them. There seems to be a extra section to browse geotagged Flickr photos from around your general vicinity, too. Very basic layout, but for what amounts to a geo-aware reference app, it doesn’t really need to be particularly flashy.

App Name: eircom WiFi
Developer: Bluedog
Category: Utilities
A wee app that will store your login and password to allow you to login to eircom WiFi hotspots around Ireland quickly and easily. Um … I guess I could talk about how orange it is. It’s very orange. And white, too, lots of white. Kind of a creamcicle motif, really. Bit of grey, too. Yes. It’s quite lovely, actually, if you like orange. And white. Bit of grey. More tea?

App Name: Crusher Lite
Developer: Bournesoft
Category: Games
A Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move clone with relatively amateurish graphics and sound — but it’s free, so who am I to complain? Besides, there hasn’t been a Bust-a-Move-style game turn up in the freebies section yet, so, this is as good as we’ve got — so far, anyway.

App Name: Counter
Developer: Iswhereiam
Category: Utilities
A little app that lets you increase or decrease a counter while you’ve got a timer going. Is it me, or is it becoming more and more necessary for me to pad these descriptions with fluff, non-sequiturs, feeble attempts at humour, and complaints about having to pad descriptions with fluff, non-sequiturs and feeble attempts at humour? I’m just trying to make these descriptions long enough so that I don’t have a foot of whitespace because I had to insert half a dozen non-breaking spaces wrapped in paragraph tags so the screenshots don’t bump into each other, okay? Don’t make me get all Chris Crocker on your ass. I don’t have nearly enough mascara. Or angst.

Actually, on second thought, maybe it didn’t matter, because it seems we’ve come to the end of this edition of The Free App Store Review. Isn’t that something? You just get going and then BAM! You’re still going. And then you’re going a little bit more, and then you have a beer, watch a little TV, play a few new free games, laquer your neighbour’s cat — OH, hey, now we’re done.

Oh, and by the way. The cake was a lie. Amen.