Android – Iphone – Applications

Pocketbooth is a new Photo booth picture App that is one of the most stylish and fun on the App Store. Offering a retro style and easy to use user interface (UI), this Photo booth App is quickly gaining attention as one of the best.

Apparently modeled after a 1950’s Model 11 Photo booth, the App itself creates a frame with a sort of light behind it, as you’d be used to from the photo booths. When the light is Red, get ready to pose for your pictures! It quickly snaps a few pics, and then shuffles you off to the next screen to wait for your pictures strip to show up.

There are some great options built in so you don’t have to settle for the defaults on some of the aspects of this App. You can select if you want 4 or 3 pictures taken (although, have you ever seen a photo booth that only takes 3 pics?! I sure haven’t), you can select if you want the pics in B&W or color, you can also choose ‘Matte’ or ‘Glossy’ paper stock (which just alters the picture strip slightly). You can change the time between pictures from 2, 3 or 4 seconds, and from within the settings, or in the photo taking screen, you can swap between the front-facing camera or the rear facing camera!

The photo strips are automatically saved within the app; you also have the option to export them to your iPhone photo library. You can also send via Email, to Facebook or share on Twitter. This is where the app fails me only slightly. There’s no MMS option, which I think is a real shame. In addition, the app doesn’t allow you to choose which Twitter Photo service you want to use — it defaults to Plexi, which is OK, I guess, but I so much prefer TwitPic and wish that I had the option to use it instead. Obviously there is a way around this though, as I can save the strip to my phone and use my regular twitter client to update (bothersome though, to be sure).

Other than those minor objections, I really enjoy PocketBooth and know that it will be one of the apps I keep on my iPhone, pull out at parties and take and share pics with friends. For this price, you really, really can’t go wrong, so do check it out!

[ Pocketbooth Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by iieevvn1 \\ tags: facebook, Iphone, light, overall-rating, photography, pics, picture, project box, rating, retro, review, store-offering, time

Do you like wine? Do you want an app that will help you become a better wine shopper? Then you’ll want to take a look at Snooth Wine Pro, the app that promises to help you “find better wines.”

The app offers all the tools a wine shopper might need. There’s a search, of course, with the ability to search for wines from different regions, of different characters, of different varieties, and even at different price ranges. In addition, the app has a “My Snooth” section to save wines and make shopping lists; wine ratings and reviews; links to store websites and available stock lists; the ability to contribute your own ratings and reviews; a wine store finder; and even a Photo Search, which allows you to take a photo of a label of wine and then do an image search for ratings and other information. It’s a great amount of tools, though I also would have welcomed some sort of “wine recommendation” feature — tell the app what you’re serving and have it recommend a variety of wine. But even without it, the app is plenty useful.

On a technical level, the interface is nicely designed, with soft greens and plenty of images. Navigation is quick and responsive, with plenty of layers of information and easy back-and-forth. It’s all very pleasing and easy to use. And their database of wine appears to be (to my admittedly untrained eye) very robust. On the other hand, their database of wine stores appears to be limited by which vendors have chosen to register with them; while the app pointed me to one wine store in my area I didn’t know about, there is another store I do know about that didn’t appear in the app.

Note to iPod Touch owners: like most shopping apps, some of the app’s functionality requires an Internet connection. So unless your local wine store offers free wifi, you’ll want to make your list ahead of time. Also, older iPod Touch owners will be unable to make use of the photo search feature.

As a casual wine shopper, I found a lot to like in Snooth. While it won’t appeal to everyone, and most won’t be using it everyday, it appears to be a solid tool for those who want to get more serious about their vino da tavola. You’ll need a Snooth.com account to start the app, but it’s free, and signing up at Snooth.com will let you browse what they have to offer before investing in the app.

[ Snooth Wine Pro Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by iieevvn \\ tags: interface, internet, iphone apps and games, list, overall-rating, price, review, winery

In my time reviewing apps I haven’t seen many successful (or many at all) fixed path dual stick shooters. The control setup clearly works best when you are given a top down view of some sort, but after the fantastic Zombie Shock, I was pretty willing to give the sub-genre a shot.

Comando: Warmachine is a fixed path dual stick shooter set in WWII. You play as a super soldier of sorts on a mission to defeat the Nazis, seemingly by yourself. Each mission is pretty much like the one before it, with you walking around the screen killing as many Nazis as possible. The levels vary on the goals, (some have you killing X number of enemies, some have you collecting intel that dead people drop, etc.) but most are just a spin-off of killing people in droves.

As far as intangibles go, the graphics are fairly solid but the UI could really use some tweaking. The biggest problem with the setup is that for one thing, it is too hard to change guns on the fly, and for another, the balance is all messed up, making the levels a cinch once you get an automatic weapon. A single bullet kills each enemy, and enemies drop enough ammo to make spray fire a viable option in winning just about every level. Your accuracy percentage will always be low, but who cares? Winning is winning.

To make a game like this work, the challenge needs to not only be about skill, but also about weapon resource management. I shouldn’t be able to walk through a level recklessly shooting my machine gun and get away with it. I should have to cautiously aim my weapons to hit enemy weak spots, I should have to manage ammo and be forced to use splash damage weapons in hairy moments, and I shouldn’t be able to rely on health packs dropping to finish a level.

Fans of the genre, as well as people who just like shooting games, should have a bit of fun with Commando. It’s not a bad game, but it definitely doesn’t stack up to the current sub-genre king, Zombie Shock.

[ Commando: Warmachine Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by simonivan \\ tags: Application, commando: warmachine, dual-stick shooter, Games, goals, iphone apps and games, nazis, overall-rating, pocket-monkey, price, weapons, well-as-people, work, zombie, zombie-shock

After using Touch Retouch for about five minutes, I was puzzled as to why this hadn’t been made into an app before. To sum the app up into one sentence, Touch Retouch is an app that does the exact same thing that the “Retouch” tool in iPhoto does.

The “Retouch” tool in iPhoto is a handy little tool that removes unwanted bits from pictures. For example, if you have a great picture of a nice blue sky with a clear rainbow and a beautiful hot air balloon, but is ruined by a flying piece of garbage, all you have to do is highlight the garbage with the retouch brush and it will go away. The system works by covering the unwanted feature with a blend of the background, so the more solid the background the better.

Touch Retouch does this exact same thing, but has a few issues. If you are removing a part of an image with no shadows and no color change in the background you’ll be fine, but if you have a not so perfect background you’ll get a not so perfect result. The resulting images, for the most part, are stop-gap solutions that would probably need to be re-retouched in Photoshop to look real.

The key to using Touch Retouch is to be disciplined and only get rid of small items. The larger the object is, the more noticeable the outcome of the image. This may sound obvious, but it is definitely something you need to think about before using the app. The app doesn’t perform magic tricks, it’s just a simple tool.

As long as you are using the app as a simple tool, it works like a champ. The dev could do a bit of work on the image blur, but as is, the app is probably worth the purchase for those of you who want “Retouch” on the go.

[ Touch Retouch Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by gunturbabu \\ tags: adva-soft, Application, image, Iphone, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, price, replay-value, the-background, touch-retouch, using-the-app

The official title of the app, if you were wondering, is The Ball Is Too Fast, The Game Is Too Slow, The Name Is Too Long. I’m all for using official titles in app reviews, but as the title says, the name was, in fact, a bit too long for titling the app review.

At its core, The Ball Is Too Fast is a cross between Breakout and Pong. The board is set up with you and your opponent on opposite sides of the screen, and a whole mess of blocks in the middle, and a ball on either side. To win, you have to knock as many balls past the enemy as possible, first breaking their shield and then killing them outright.

As you play, the ball speed will gradually increase, and you can further increase the speed by using your paddle’s built-in spring. If you want to get really tricky, you can put some spin on the ball by sliding your paddle while the ball is striking. I found that I could beat the computer pretty soundly without it, however. Further chaos ensues when various types of blocks start appearing in later levels. Some blocks shoot bombs at your opponent, some give you power boosts, and some reappear after being gone for a period of time.

The Ball Is Too Fast offers a one player story mode, complete with a human vs. robot struggle for your soul, and a two player mode, story not included. The one player mode will last you a fairly long time with its 35 levels, but the two player mode is where the fun really is. On my iPhone, a friend and I could sit and play on either side of the screen with relative ease. An iPad screen would provide a much more comfortable gaming environment, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

If you are a fan of Pong and Breakout, or are just looking for a way to pass a few minutes here and there, The Ball Is Too Fast is a great buy. It’s not exactly the deepest game out there, but it’s quite fun for what it is.

[ The Ball Is Too Fast… Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by tanloc2t \\ tags: Games, Iphone, iphone apps and games, level'd, opponent, overall-rating, price, review, titling-the-app