The Free App Store Review XVIII: Frapstr Becomes a Man

by Eric March on September 19, 2008 at 11:38 pm

Welcome to another edition of the Free App Store Review, the free app roundup that features the latest, the greatest, the worst, and the indifferent of the freebies that can be yours from Apple’s fine online marketplace, served with a side of accolades and lashings of spicy snark sauce. Today, the Free App Store Review reaches its 18th edition, which means that by North American standards, it is now a man and can freely go about seeing restricted movies, voting in elections, having sex with women, and getting prosecuted as an adult for having sex with a conservative incumbent during a public screening of Hostel III.

I should point out that we’re not through with our cheating ways just yet, as the App Store appears to be becoming an unstoppable juggernaut that not even my considerable powers of typing can keep up with. Still, we’ve got a fresh new batch of the latest, and even if it isn’t a comprehensive, complete list of all the latest, it will be the ones I most feel like writing about, and as usual it covers all of the usual the quality bases, so we’re going to celebrate Frapstr’s coming of age with a time-honoured rite of passage: Making it earn its keep like an adult.

Later, there will be cake and boobies.

Name: eBay Mobile
Developer: eBay, Inc.
Catgegory: Lifestyle
At this juncture, please allow me to say IT’S ABOUT F&#$IN’ TIME. Finally us Canadians have an official eBay app we can use instead of having to rely on iRibbit or GarageBuy. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those.) And it only took two and a half months! But at long last, it’s finally here. I really don’t think this one needs a description since everyone knows what eBay is and everyone is already familiar with (and until now was envious of) the existence of the app for the .com audience. Now I can finally conduct business on eBay and even pay for stuff on the go with PayPal and do it with official apps instead of having to deal with obtaining tokens to get third party apps to work.

Name: Pianoforce Remote
Developer: Pianoforce
Catgegory: Utilities
What, did you think that the days of the player piano went out with saloons and duels at high noon? Well I did, dammit, but apparently they’ve just been laying low until they could enter the digital age good and proper. That’s the Pianoforce Performer, a component CD player-lookin’ thing that can play CDs, MP3s, network content, or whatever, and allow you to either play accompaniment on piano live, or via prerecorded session, kinda like piano karaoke. Pianoforce Remote then is, as you might expect, a remote controller for the Pianoforce Performer. now, given that the Performer itself comes with a dedicated remote control, I’m not exactly sure what the utility of this app is, but — well, here it is, and welcome to it. This is pretty niche stuff anyway, so most if not all of you have probably skipped to the next app already, which means I could sing the Oscar Mayer song and not feel embarrassed because at this point, nobody’s listening. Also, I’m not wearing any pants.

Name: DogYears
Developer: Charles Treece
Catgegory: Utilities
Of all of the unit converters out there, this one is the most baffling. Not because it’s complicated — in fact, just the opposite: Because it’s utterly and completely pointless. If you haven’t guessed the purpose of this app by its name alone, I’m not going to use smaller words so you might as well just get out the dictionary right now and take your time. Yes, it converts dog years to human and vice-versa — or, put in simpler terms, it multiplies or divides the number you enter by 7. That’s all. it. does. Kudos to Charles for the cutesy graphics, but unless that dog chases sticks, begs for Snausages and humps my guests’ legs, it’s just lipstick on a pitbull. (Hey, look, a gratuitous Sara Palin reference! It’s funny because John McCain is old!)

Name: Fire Fone
Developer: Joshua Halickman
Catgegory: Utilities
It seems these days that there’s not a whole lot left that people don’t to want to share about themselves on any of the million or so social networking sites out there. Your current location is just the latest in the list of such things people can now share, and Yahoo! Fire Eagle is one service to do that with. Fire Fone is a small app that will use the iPhone’s GPS to update your Fire Eagle account with your current whereabouts so everyone you care about or want to know such details about you will know that you just spent the last three hours at a tranny bar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But don’t worry, you have to update it manually, so you can stay in the closet as long as you want. Not that there’s anything wrong with that either.

Name: Meet Bubble
Developer: Alexandre Despallieres Becker
Catgegory: Utilities
A digital bubble level with two important differences: 1) It has fun, cutesy graphics, and 2) IT IS THE MOST ANNOYING THING ON THE PLANET AND MAKES ME WANT TO JAM PENCILS THROUGH MY EAR DRUMS. Designed apparently with the idea that ordinary digital levels are far too quiet and standoffish, Alexandre “Apple Banger” Despallieres Becker Ticolensic Grander Knotty Spelltinkle Horowitz von Hautkopft of Ulm designed Meet Bubble to be as cute and friendly as humanly possible. He looks kinda like Nemo, if Nemo was a lump of orange putty. And stoned. With a baseball cap. But don’t let Bubble’s cuteness deceive you. His entire purpose in life is to make you bleed copiously from your ears. To achieve this sanguinous goal, Bubble will make an incredibly annoying, rapid-fire “clunking” noise that sounds like a large chain-and-ratchet system at work whenever he is on an angle. He gets all happy when you level things out and he’s allowed to bask in the glory of the middle — you can tell because he’ll begin to chant Tag Team’s Whoop! There It Is! repeatedly. If he had arms, I’m certain he’d also do the Mashed Potato. Let’s be honest, I know the levels available for the iPhone and Touch aren’t exactly accurate enough for professional carpenters to use in the first place, but even for casual use, are you really going to want this irritating little blob assaulting you with a seismic cacophony when you’re trying to straighten things up? Allow me to humbly suggest instead that if you’re going to meet Bubble, do it in a dark alley. Bring weapons.

Name: Ruler
Developer: DAVA Consulting
Catgegory: Utilities
Yes, I know. Yet another ruler app. And you know my *ahem* rule regarding stuff like this: If you’re not going to release a derivative work that’s better than that from which it is derived, don’t even bother, because you’re just being pointless. Fortunately, Ruler is better, so it escapes the terrible wrath of my scorn. What makes Ruler different is both the fact that it has a ruler on both the side and the bottom, and also has a set of crosshairs you can position for more accurate measurements. A numeric readout of the crosshair positions is also available in the top left, giving you the measurements in inches or centimetres, complete with fractions. Granted, you’re still limited by the device’s form factor — not much you can do about that — but for measuring small objects, it’s perfect. As digital rulers go, this one is about as good as it gets.

Name: Speedtest
Developer: Xtreme Labs Inc.
Catgegory: Utilities
While there have been a couple of web-based network speed tests aimed particularly at the iPhone, and there has already been a native app designed to do the same thing. This one, like iNetworkTest, is pretty simplistic in its approach — it doesn’t care what kind of network you’re on (WiFi/GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA), it’ll just go ahead and test your downstream and upstream speeds and spit out the results. Unfortunately, the author has been made aware that the result don’t seem to be very accurate for some, which makes Speedtest, in its current incarnation, generally useless until the update he’s working on that fixes this issue is released, so for now, stick with iNetworkTest or the web-based ones.

Name: Telegram Lite
Developer: Polar Bear Farm, Ltd.
Catgegory: Utilities
An odd but interesting app that kind of sits somewhere between MMS messaging and voicemail, Telegram lets you send any other Telegram user a voice message. It’s packed with a few interesting features, such as the ability to tag your messages with keywords to provide a searchable archive, message queueing in case you’re not in an area with coverage and can’t send your message immediately (It will send when next you load the app and you’ve got coverage), personal profiles, and a rather cool line-in VU meter to display your voice level as you record. This last feature is rather handy because way too many people have a habit of almost deep throating the mouthpiece to make sure they’re heard, which results in horrible audio clipping, so the VU meter will tell you if the volume of your voice is peaking. I’ll say one thing for Polar Bear Farm: They do write some nice stuff. The problem with apps like this which require others to own the same app to make it useful is the classic Catch-22: People may not buy it because they don’t know anyone else who has it, which in turn prevents it from becoming popular enough to make people want to buy it. Just the same, this lite version limits your outgoing voice notes to a maximum of 5 seconds, and you can’t tag your recordings before you send them. If you want complete functionality, you’ll have to wrestle $6 out of your couch cushions — which seems a wee bit steep all things considered.

Name: Blue Skies Lite
Developer: Egerter Software
Catgegory: Games
Uh, wow. This … this is … really freakin’ good. And y’all know how hard I am to please. Blue Skies is an overhead-view omnidirectional shooter that takes a cue or two from the likes of the classic Xevious and the numerous NeoGeo shooters that spawned from it. Graphically, Blue Skies is superb. Wonderful graphics through and through. Sound? Also most excellent. But what really impressed me here is that the controls actually work, and they work well. Shocking, isn’t it? The accelerometer controls — to control rotation and pitch — hit a real sweet spot, being very responsive, but dampened just enough that you aren’t in much danger of oversteering, yet with enough degree of granularity that gentle banks and movements are made easy, just as sharp movements can be accomplished without having to tilt your device too far away from your line of sight. It all feels incredibly natural and intuitive; they’ve really managed to get this one in the pocket. Invisible buttons for firing primary and secondary wepons as well as switching weapons are located at the corners and, being invisible, don’t get in the way of the visuals. Gameplay is also surprisingly well-balanced, with nice features such as heading and distance indicators to the nearest enemy and/or helipad, plus the ability to land and refuel/rearm. If I had to lodge a complaint — and I am duty-bound to try and find at least something to kvetch about — it is that Egerter Software seemed to feel it necessary to cram in a storyline with terribly hackneyed dialogue and Anime characters, which has the net effect of geekifying this otherwise hardcore and well executed shooter. Frankly, this game could have done just as well with a simple backstory to set the scene and no in-game JRPG-type story mode to get in the way and make you feel like this is at least partly a guilty pleasure that you’re afraid to admit you like because you don’t want to be pegged as a rabid Anime fan. (In case it wasn’t obvious, I hate Anime.) Still, lame story and characters aside, Blue Skies is a fantastic shooter with well-balanced controls and gameplay and superb graphics and sound that is well worth your time to check out. This lite version limits the number of levels you can play; for the full experience, the complete version can be had for a very reasonable $6. I really should start breaking these mini-reviews into paragraphs.

Name: Chess Puzzles
Developer: iggyGames
Catgegory: Games
Here’s something a little different: Chess Puzzles is to chess what I suppose set-up trick shots are to pool. The entire idea here is that you are presented with a chess board on which are placed different configurations of chess pieces. Your objective is to reach checkmate in the fewest possible moves. It offers a hint system in case you’re stumped, different board themes and 50 puzzles to solve. Yeah, the gameplay is every bit as dry as real chess, but if you’re into the sort of purely cerebral puzzles that entails, and know a little bit about playing chess, then you ought to like this. Graphically it’s fairly basic, resembling early versions of the Chessmaster games with its overhead view and chess pieces displayed in profile for clarity, but I suppose for a game like this it doesn’t really need to be tarted up. It’s all about strategy and thinking ahead.

Name: Dactyl
Developer: Mauvila Software
Catgegory: Games
Another one from the jailbreak scene hits the App Store. I covered this one back in the beginning of May, and aside from some graphical and audio enhancements, it’s still the same old Whack-a-Mole variant that may be fun for about fifteen seconds but inevitably gets to be the first item consigned to the digital dustbin when you find you need to make room on your springboard for something more interesting.

Name: Net Work Toe
Developer: Jay-Tee-A Software
Catgegory: Games
Jay-Tee-A? That’s either an Italian accent or some kind of play on Chick-Fil-A that I can’t figure out and probably isn’t funny to anyone but him anyway. Nevertheless, Net Work Toe is not, as the name might suggest, an implantable bio-pedometer far down the Nike+ roadmap. Instead, it is a networked game of Tic Tac Toe. No, I’m not kidding. More code almost certainly went into the networking aspect of this app than the game itself. Plus, it’s tic-tac-freakin’-toe. I’ve already covered its spiritual, hussied-up predecessor Tic Tac Knoe, so those of you who read that edition know what I think of the idea of taking a serious swipe at writing Tic Tac Toe on the iPhone, and adding network play doesn’t do anything to help you forget that you’re still playing Tic Tac Toe.

On the other hand, it’s free, and you can play solo or online, and it does feature an optional, larger 4×4 board, so if you’re looking to kill a few minutes and feel like doing it against another real human (or even the computer if you swing that way) and haven’t become thoroughly bored with Tic Tac Toe yet, then I suppose this isn’t the worst you could do. Just don’t expect anything more than a backhanded compliment out of me.

Name: Sextuple Word Lite
Developer: nBit Inc.
Catgegory: Games
If you’ve played the popular Flash-based word game Text Twist or any of its various ports to other platforms (including Digicide’s wonderful Lexitron on the jailbroken iPhone/Touch) then you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect here. You are given 6 letters and are required to spell as many words as possible from those six letters in the time allotted. The main difference here is that you only need to spell half of the words to progress to the next level, rather than having to find the six letter word or bust. Sextuple doesn’t do it with very much style, though, even if it’s aware of its name’s double entendre; the graphics are pretty plain and there’s no animation to speak of. Furthermore, the behaviour of the letters differs enough here that it’s a bit confusing to play: When you return letters to the scramble they return to their original order rather than the order in which you removed them. Not a big deal but different enough that veteran TextTwist players will have to make the adjustment. What is a big deal is that the dictionary doesn’t seem to be very extensive. My first game found two fairly common words that weren’t recognized: Sate (to satisfy), and tare (a calculation of the weight of a package less the weight of its packaging — used by shippiers/receivers and the postal system all the time.) I kinda gave up on the game at that point. Word games like this need a good dictionary or erudite blowhards like me are going to end up wasting precious game time trying to enter words it doesn’t know. It has potential, but it doesn’t feel like it’s there yet. The full version runs you $2 in case you do think it’s worth it though.

Name: BiiBall 3D Lite
Developer: bootant.com
Catgegory: Games
I can’t decide if “Bii” is just a stylization of “bee” for the sake of jauntiness or some kind of play on the Wii because of its handheld accelerometer controls. Not that it matters, I guess, because either way BiiBall 3D is acutally a pretty damn cool game. The object here is to control your, uh … BiiBall I guess … through a series of walls and obstacles collecting stars. Along the way you’ll encounter other obstacles directly in the path of the stars that can either be avoided (usually at the expense of some stars) or shot. You get points for collecting stars, but they are constantly dwindling away as you progress, so your real object is to get the stars as quickly as possible so as to build more points than you lose as you go. Odd, but … sure. Okay. Graphically, BiiBall 3D is quite nice. Although some of the textures are a bit dull (the brick walls, checkered floor), the objects and destructible objects are nicely done with translucency and a nice glow effect. Your own ball is well rendered and has a nice streak effect as you move. Sound effects are similarly nice. Unfortunately it suffers in two areas: First, accelerometer control is touchy — a bit too touchy, really. It’s too easy to over or understeer and it’s hard to find the sweet spot; a little tempering of the sensitivity and bit of accelerometer value smoothing would work wonders here. There is also no calibration, so you’re stuck with the author’s preferred angle of play. The other problem is that firing on destructible objects require tapping on the screen. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that the shot goes where you tap rather than in the direction you’re moving like you’d expect. Yes, having the shot travel independent of your direction does have its advantages, but when moving your thumb awkwardly over to the middle of the screen causes the machne to tilt and therefore you to smack into a wall, it may be time to rethink that particular control scheme and the levels you designed with it in mind. It’s probably easier to play if one hand tilts and the other floats freely to aim shots, but that’s really not much better. It’s a very good game, don’t get me wrong, even if the scoring method is quirky, but the controls almost make this a deal breaker for me. However since the full version costs a scanty buck, I guess I really can’t complain too loudly, because even with a slightly broken control scheme, $1 for a game like this that is still pretty polished-looking is still a bargain.

Name: Galcon Lite
Developer: galcon.com
Catgegory: Games
The full version of this has been floating around for a while now, but this is the first appearance of a demo, so now I get to rag on it. Problem is, I really can’t think of a whole lot to rag about, because quite frankly, Galcon is pretty damn cool. For you old-timers like me who remember the BBS days of yore, you may recall a popular online game called Space Empire Elite in which the goal of the game was to play against other players taking over planets and ultimately building the largest empire in the galaxy. Galcon is a lot like a graphical version of that stripped down to its barest essentials. Whereas in SEE you had different types of planets you could purchase or conquer that would produce different things, and where you had to concern yourself with feeding your armies, Galcon’s only concern is the production of war fleets to conquer your opponent’s planets. I guess it’s a bit more like Risk in that regard. You play the green dude and your opponent plays orange, and you each start off with one planet while the rest are neutral. Larger planets can produce fleets more quickly, so those are obviously of primary interest. Your objective is to tap and drag (or tap start and destination) from your planet to a neutral or enemy planet and take control, thereby producing more fleets, ultimately attempting to take over the whole board. It sounds simple, but there are elements of strategy here — you can tap and drag between your own planets to transfer troops to planets that need protecting, and you have to pick which planets will do the invading and which ones should be left to build more troops. The gameplay tends to be relatively fast-paced since you have to make decisions in real-time, so things can get pretty hairy. As an added bonus, the full version also includes online play, so you can play against other human opponents. Overall, Galcon is a highly enjoyable game with decent graphics and sometimes frenetic gameplay, especially against seasoned human players. The price for the full version is a bit dear at $10 though, but at the time of this writing it’s on sale for half price, so those of you thinking about it might want to take advantage and grab it on the cheap while the sale lasts.

Name: Snip
Developer: stoeger it GmbH
Catgegory: Utilities
An app for searching products on Amazon. Its main advantage over using your browser is that it produces results in a condensed form and stores your results for each category. This app is freeware, but its development was sponsored by an Amazon affiliate, so how much would you care to wager that all products you click on from your search results access the product page using a URL that contains the sponsor’s Amazon referrer ID? Yeah, that’s the real reason it’s free.

Name: Earthscape
Developer: Earthscape
Catgegory: Photography
This is pretty cool. Not especially useful as yet, but cool. Earthscape is an app that aspires to be the mobile answer to Google Earth, though it has one hell of a long way to go before it gets there. As it stands right now it serves as a 3D virtual globe that you can explore as you see fit. It can be viewed in top-down format just like satellite mode in Google Maps, or you can switch to 3D mode and tool around through the air. It looks pretty much as expected, but one nice feature is that the 3D maps contain topographical data, presumably gleaned from the USGS, so areas such as the Grand Canyon and some coastline can be viewed in true 3D. It’s a bit slow both at retrieving data and scrolling and zooming around the map. There’s also no navigation information — no street names or even districts, just major cities and points of interest gleaned from Wikipedia, plus Wiki links to those points of interest. Furthermore, there’s no way to search an address or enter a location to zoom to; scrolling and zooming around the globe is completely manual using the standard multitouch functions. It does as geotagged photo support to the mix though, so you can take photos, upload them to Flickr (yes, only Flickr is supported) and they will show up on the map at the geotagged location. Unfortunately, the most detailed satellite image data is only available for the US, where you can zoom to street level just as in Google Maps. Outside the US however and your mileage may vary wildly; Being in southern Ontario, Canada, I can’t zoom in more than about five or six miles before it runs out of map data. They’re apparently working on getting licenses for more global sat imagery though. Earthscape has loads of potential, but for now, it’s a fun toy with limited utility.

Name: Pocket Pirate
Developer: Random Sequence
Catgegory: Entertainment
Yarr, did ye scurvy dogs know that September 19th is National Talk Like a Pirate Day? No? Yarr, I oughta make ye walk the plank, then! Go ye to yon App Store and fetch Pocket Pirate. It’s free, yarr, and plays sampled pirate phrases so ye don’t even need t’know how t’speak like a pirate! Okay, it’s dumb, but it’s well-presented, and since it’s designed for an internationally recognized day of whimsy, I’ll let it slide. This time. Yarr.

Name: Analog Clock
Developer: DS Effects
Catgegory: Utilities
A simple analog clock drawn using simple lines and curves. It’s pretty basic stuff, but it’s a nice clean design, and except for the fact that the second hand looks like a bartender’s stir stick with the big ball on the end there, it’s nice and kind of artsy.

Name: Anthem USA
Developer: Cobra Mobile
Catgegory: Entertainment
For the staunchly patriotic yank who mists up at the opening of major league sporting events and feels that Betsy Ross and Francis Scott Key are two of the greatest Americans who ever lived, Anthem USA is right up your alley. It allows you to listen and follow along with the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner any time you please. Alternatively, if you’re a star who has a habit of butchering the national anthem, here’s a blatantly disingenuous way to cheat.

Name: The Classic- Human Bridge
Developer: MG Interactive Entertainment Ltd.
Catgegory: Games
No, my punctuation hasn’t slipped, that’s exactly how the title of this one is entered in the App Store. Anyway, this is an iPhone variant of the classic 1981 Nintendo Game & Watch “Manhole,” with suitably altered graphics so the Big N’s legal department don’t get itchy fingers for that stack of C&D orders. I’d like to be able to say that this one has that same level of detail and style that brings back all of the misty nostalgia for the original, and while this is done very well, it’s not quite there. The theme has changed — obviously and necessarily to avoid legal issues — but now it’s … weird. Despite the fact that it’s called “Human Bridge,” the game does not in fact contain any humans. Instead, you have to move a plank-toting ghost — who may or may not have been human at some point — around to allow these … uh … aliens, I think … to cross. Also, placing “THE CLASSIC” along the bottom of the bezel doesn’t exactly help engender feelings of nostalgia. And then there’s the fact that the iTunes entry lists “English” as the only supported language — even the App Store description is in both English and Chinese — despite the fact that the game features Chinese logographics everywhere and not a word of English where you need it. Even the icon text is in Chinese. Oh, and there’s no sound. I want to like it, I do, but evidently MG Interactive Entertainment really don’t want me to. So I won’t. Problem solved.

I'm poppin', I'M POPPIN' ... false alarm

Name: Poppin’
Developer: Live Axle LLC
Catgegory: Entertainment
It’s bubble wrap on your iPhone, only not quite as fun. Yes, you can pop unlimited sheets of bubble wrap, but it seems like Live Axle just kinda threw some basic code together, slapped some graphics in, added one pop sound effect, and called it a day. I mean, it’s fun for about fifteen seconds because, hey, it’s virtual bubble wrap, but since there’s no variation in the pop sounds (and less noticeably only 3 variations in whole and popped bubble graphic) there’s not much to keep you entertained.

Name: Atoms Free
Developer: Sprikit
Catgegory: Games
A novel little game. Atoms is an accelerometer-based game where you control an atom bouncing around the screen gathering energy particles. There are powerups to be gathered, but not all of them are beneficial. Gameplay is quite simple: You can tilt your device around to send your atom whizzing about the playfield. Alternatively, you can touch an area you want your atom to head over to. Touching moves your atom around much faster but it is harder to control. Be careful though, for such a tiny particle you carry a hell of a lot of inertia — in fact, the more energy you gather, the larger you grow and the more inertia you will have, thus the slower you will respond to changes in direction. The game features decent graphics, though the gameplay takes a bit of getting used to. The full version runs for $2.99, but I have no idea what the differences between the two games are, so I’ll assume game length as the most logical restriction in this free version.

Name: Knots
Developer: Josh Snyder
Catgegory: Games
This one’s a bit odd, but amusing little game. Knots is a kind of Twister for your fingers — perhaps taking its cue from the TwistedFingers game released to the jailbreak scene last April. (Apropos of nothing, that Touching Up issue seems to be getting referred to a lot lately… twice in this review alone.) In brief, you start by placing a finger on a dot, whereupon another dot will appear. Touch that dot with another finger without lifting the first and a series of radiating concentric circles will appear indicating which dot you need to lift your finger from. After that another dot will appear. As you progress, more dots will appear at once, requiring more fingers to be put into play and more awkward digital acrobatics you’ll have to perform to keep them all pressed. There’s also a two player mode for some serious arthritis-inducing gameplay. The graphics are decent, and the suction cup sound effects are effective I suppose. Not a bad little game, and it’s free.

Name: Cactus Voice Dialer
Developer: Antoine Raux
Catgegory: Productivity
Cactus is a voice dialer with an open-source speech recognition system that resides entirely on your device, so it doesn’t need to connect to an external database to parse your speech. Simply hold down the “Speak” button and cay “Call so-and-so.” It seems to work more or less okay, but it can’t seem to handle partials if a full name is only in one field (like the “full name” field) despite having an option to show multiple possible results. For example, I have the three Apple Stores in the GTA listed in my address book. Saying, “Call Apple Store” produces no results. Saying, “Call Apple Store Sherway Gardens” works, because that’s how that particular branch is listed in my address book. Unfortunately, both “Call Apple Store Yorkdale” and “Call Apple Store Eaton’s Center” also bring up the Sherway Gardens branch — when it brings up any results at all. Saying simple “Call Apple” comes up with no results. I can say, “Call Adam” or “Call Steven” and it will bring up the first Adam or Steven in my address book because their first and last names are listed in their respective first name/last name fields, but if Adam’s last name was entered in the First Name field along with his first name, Cactus wouldn’t pick up on it unless I said his full name. Also, when it displays found results, it doesn’t display all of the relevant details. It also can’t deal with initials. Overall, it’s moderately effective, but it does have its issues. If you need mostly hands-free operation (one-touch in this case) then Cactus may work okay for you. If you don’t, it’s quicker using the search feature of firmware 2.x’s contacts list.

Now that we have come to the end of this manly milestone of a column, I’m sure that at this point you are expecting me to reveal in a tired and clichéd fashion that the cake is a lie — as, indeed, are the boobies. Clearly you don’t know me at all, and I am very disappointed in you for that. I would never deceive you on the eve of such a momentous event as Frapstr’s 18th. There is cake, my friends, oh yes, and there are boobies. Nice ones, too, so let it never be said that I don’t deliver when it counts. Click and enjoy.