Android – Iphone – Applications

My Artists attempts to replace iPod.app with its gorgeous, artists-centric music playing app. While it integrates wonderfully with the iPod/iPhone experience (largely courtesy of iOS 4.0) and I love many of its features, My Artists isn’t perfect…yet.

My Artists pulls in your iPod’s entire library (just like the iPod.app would) and lists all of your artists. The UI is beautiful and very visual-oriented…dare I say it looks better than the iPod?

It’s also artist-centric, rather than song-centric. My Artists takes each artist and creates a page that integrates photos, text (think Wikipedia bios), and a full listing of the artist’s other music. So, for example, when I choose Tegan and Sara, I can play one of the albums that I have, read their bio, or check out their other albums and songs via integrated YouTube videos (an internet connection is required, of course). The app can also recommend music to you based on last.fm listings.

This all looks great, so much so that I almost wonder why Apple hasn’t copied this. Better yet, it’s fully integrated with iOS 4: usual volume controls work, multitasking is supported, and the app will even pick up the song you were playing before launch.

Now for the bad news. There’s absolutely no Playlist support — it’s like being stuck in the Artists tab forever. Genius is absent, and listening to single songs or mixes is difficult…this is really meant for Artists and their complete albums. At first, I also experienced some crashes and general lag. A few reboots cured that issue.

That being said, My Artists is a gorgeous app and in many ways it outshines the default iPod app. If you can live without playlists and long for artist-centric eye candy, My Artists can easily replace iPod.app. Now that’s an impressive feat.

[ My Artists Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by j4352 \\ tags: $1.99, based-on-last, ipod, like-the-ipod, overall-rating, rating, songs-or-mixes, wikipedia

Going on vacation to a foreign country can be a daunting task for some. On one hand, there will be tons of things to see and cultures to experience, but on the other, there is this big language gap. Learning a language can be a mighty challenge, but there are some apps, like Travel Interpreter, that can help you out.

Travel Interpreter is a talking, illustrated language guide with 24 different languages. Each language has a ton of phrases packed into different categories. In the app, you can learn words and phrases from simple things such as “thank you” to complex phrases like “Your new haircut is great.” Each phrase is written out in English and the desired language, and then spoken to you by a native speaker.

The app is intended, by the developer, to be a guide for you on your travels. While it excels in some things, such as simple phrases, its organization makes anything else rather difficult. The way the app is set up, the words are all buried behind categories that go two deep. For example, to say thank you, you have to hit “Basics”, then “First need phrases,” and then the thank you button. Some of the category titles are tricky, such as the aforementioned “First need phrases,” but there is a search function that works rather well. Simply type in a word or phrase in English or the desired language and most of the time your word will pop up, as long as you are using the wording that the developers would use.

As is, Travel Interpreter would work great as a replacement for a foreign language phrase book. I would like to see an easier navigation for some of the items, but the search feature picks up some of the slack. With 2,100 illustrated words and phrases, this app will surely get you to where you need to go.

[ Travel Interpreter Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by janyton \\ tags: aforementioned, Application, Iphone, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, price, travel, travel-interpreter

For those of you who can’t tell by the screenshots, Flight Doodle is an avoidance/high score game that incorporates bits and pieces from some other well known games to try to create what I would call an “all star” package.

You start as a balloon, any kind of balloon that you would like (you can even design your own balloon), on a mission to go up. Unfortunately, there are thumbtacks (or darts, or missiles, etc… you get to choose) raining down that you must avoid. Along the way there are power boosts (like the power boosts you get in Ninjump) that will help you get up a ways and some goodies that you can arm yourself with, including a missile launcher, a shield, and more.

Moving around the screen is controlled by tilt, a la Doodle Jump, but the tilt mechanism is a bit tricky. Unlike Doodle Jump, the response is not instantaneous… there is some drag that I guess could be attributed to the wind and the fact that you are a slow moving hot air balloon. Making snap avoidance moves doesn’t work so well, and large swooping avoidance moves are hard to control, so to succeed, you have to start avoiding the objects early, and you absolutely must keep control.

Just a word of advice. You should definitely change the tilt sensitivity right away. The default is way too slow.

With a bit of practice, you’ll get the movement down, but the lack of precise controls does make the game feel like it is a bit less in your hands. While in Doodle Jump I feel that my losses are due to my over-twitchy hands; in Flight Doodle I feel as if they are partially due to dumb luck.

Flight Doodle definitely has all the elements that any real avoidance/high score gamer would want, but the movement issues will cause some to go nuts. It’s a good game with great doodle style though, so if the genre is your thing, pick this one up.

[ Flight Doodle Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by zulu \\ tags: change-the-tilt, doodle, doodle-jump, flight doodle, Game, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, replay-value, screenshots, unlike-doodle

I have a good friend who insists that the scroll is the superior way to read and present printed material, in spite of history’s continued insistence on the bound book. We’ve argued back and forth about this for years, but it may be that the advent of the iPad, and apps like River of News, prove him right after all.

River of News is the latest in what seems like a never-ending torrent of RSS readers for the iPad. Yes, there are many, many, many iPad RSS readers out there, and most of them carry with them the same core functions apparent in River of News, including Google Reader syncing. Still, there is a finesse present in River of News that belies its 1.0 status, and hints that this might be an app worth watching in the future.

Viewed from the landscape perspective on the iPad, River of News doesn’t seem particularly different from any other reader out there. Same list of feeds on the left side; same blurbs/full stories on the right. In portrait mode, however, the app shines. Choose a feed to start with from the drop-down menu, and you are presented with a seemingly endless scroll of news from that feed. Ready to move on to another feed? No problem. Just swipe left or right and you’ll be taken to the feed before or after your current one in your subscriptions. It’s simple, really, but it works smoothly and effortlessly.

Stories are also easy to read in River of News thanks to clear default fonts and the ability to adjust their sizes on the fly. Social elements are also built in, as stories can be sent via the usual suspects (email, Twitter and Facebook) but also some more unusual options such as Tumblr. Instapaper and Read it Later integration, for those of us with more feeds than time, is also built-in.

There are a few problems, but they seem relatively minor. Feeds can sometimes load slowly, and there’s no real caching to speak of, but these can be remedied in future updates. For a 1.0 release, there’s a lot of polish above and beyond the surface of this app

River of News does what it sets out to do with few hiccups along the way. Will it make you give up the brute force of Reeder or the elegance of Times? I don’t know. But I do know it deserves a definite look-see from the public, even in a crowded RSS reader market. It might just win you over to the power of the scroll.

[ River of News for iPad Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by rockingevil \\ tags: device-reviewed, feed reader, from-the-public, ipad, ipad apps and games, ipad news, overall-rating, power, rating, reader, review, river

When? is a simple App with one purpose – it helps you quickly search and add holidays to your iPhone Calendar. Say you have difficultly remembering when Easter isl you needn’t worry because every major holiday by region or country is listed, and, within just a couple taps, automatically added to your Calendar.

For someone who is a self-described Calendar Junkie, I don’t know why I’ve never come across an App like this before. Maybe it’s because I already have a subscription to a Canadian Holidays Google Calendar which automatically gets imported alongside my other Google Calendars into the iPhone App use for this purpose (which is actually not the built-in one at all). So, I’m thinking that the target audience for this app is someone who uses their calendar often, but maybe don’t use an online equivalent and need something like this to simply not have to manually enter important dates.

So that actually leaves quite a lot of users who would benefit from having this App. Actually I quite admire the thought process behind it – having a handy off-line list of events is great, especially if you’re using an iPod Touch, or if you’re one of the rare iPhone users (like myself until the 4’s release) that was not on a Data Plan, this might actually serve a purpose every once in a while – but the ratio is slim.

The App itself is well designed, very organized and easy to use, it imports to the Built-in Calendar App beautifully. If you have your iPhone Cal synced to your Google Cal, and synced back to a different iPhone App for Calendars, it does all seamlessly integrate, so long as you have an wifi or 3G connection. No, the flaw in this App is not its design. It’s it’s usability.

There are a finite number of holidays in a year, and there are an even smaller number of times I need to add those holidays to my Calendar. Paying $0.99 for the privilege of looking this information up offline isn’t really worth it for me. However, if you’re constantly befuddled by holiday schedules, if you are in school, a teacher or otherwise really dependent on knowing and keeping up to date on this sort of information, you may very well find a use for this App.

[ When? App Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by rockingevil \\ tags: built, calendar, calendar-junkie, calendar-paying, calendars, dates, easter, holidays, Iphone, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, price, productivity, review