Android – Iphone – Applications

If you’re looking for a security or privacy app to hide certain pictures on your iPhone then you should definitely check out Picture Safe. It’s one of the most popular in the Utilities Category, and having only used it for a few days, I’m already impressed with it’s functionality. It’s a surprisingly feature-rich app.

First, to set up, you’ll want to create yourself a 4 digit PIN. Don’t worry if at some point you forget this pin because you will also set up your password reset questions, which can be any three you choose personally along with the answers you supply.

Once you have this set up, you’ll want to start adding photos to your Hidden Album. You can do this in one of many ways. The first is to copy them from your iPhone Photo Albums. Keep in mind that when you import the photos, it really is just copying, and if you no longer want the pictures to be in your regular album you’ll need to delete them from there. There are however, a few other methods for adding and removing photos from your Hidden Album, and this is where the App really shows its muscle.

From within the settings you’ll find an option to connect to your iPhone to add & remove photos either via Web interface or by FTP. This is especially perfect for quickly adding or removing many photos at once. FTP works with any FTP client, while the web interface works in any browser. From what I can tell from the Web interface, it works very much like the actual App – however while you can add photos from here, I could not find an option to remove photos. You’ll have to keep in mind that the web and FTP interfaces will only work while the app is launched and on that specific settings page.

There are additional features like Bluetooth Sharing, and various Security and Privacy options within the settings as well. The app also includes a sort of “Boss Button” in the form of a Quick Hide option. There are several other features included in the App which are simple but great to have built in, such as the Slideshow, which comes with its own settings similar to the regular Gallery slideshow. You can choose to import your pictures in HD or not, and finally, you can set how many invalid password attempts it takes before requiring a reset – they call this ‘Snoop Stopper,” which is pretty clever.

Overall, it’s a useful privacy app for Hidden Photos, and with all these options included (instead of a simple password protected album), I think this is a decent buy for the price.

[ Picture Safe (HiDef) Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by husain \\ tags: collect 3, ftp, Iphone, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, password, photo, picture, price, regular, review, security, slideshow, snoop-stopper

Note: please delete all images from 0012 to 0017. The application has just been updated and required fresh screenshots.

Will hand and paper ever equate to fingertip and iPad? A question to which there is no corresponding definitive answer. Developers Cocoa Box aim to bridge the gap with Penultimate for iPad, the touch-based notes application.

On first glance, Penultimate features the official aura assumed by the iWork suite, with its library presented cleanly at the front, along with options to e-mail notebooks, trash them and create new ones. It takes one tap to get started.

The notebooks themselves come in three different flavours – lined, graph or plain paper, each of which feature three tools to get you started noting. The pen feature, which needs no explanation, is both size and colour customizable: thin, medium or thick mixed with red/green/blue and three shades of grey. The other two tools available are a pen eraser and the ability to clear an entire page. Each notebook can have as many pages as you like – think of each one as a paper pad rather than a single sheet.

The application also features undo/redo buttons, as well as a handy wrist protection feature – to ensure that your wrists aren’t mistaken for fingertips. It is as simple as it sounds to use, focusing on drawing and design rather than customization and options. For those who want a quick way to get started, Penultimate satisfies entirely. The application has just been updated to version 2.0, providing VGA display connectivity, proper landscape support and library grid view, sortable by title or date.

There are some minor flaws that I discovered through my testing, however. Although there is an option to have the tools at the top or bottom of the page, the entire page doesn’t fit on the iPad’s screen – meaning you have to scroll every time you want to change tools or the options within the pen tool. In addition, notebooks can be exported via e-mail in PDF format, but cannot be imported.

In conclusion, Penultimate is great for those who are interested in getting things down quickly and plainly. For those who place precedence on more tools (like drawing straight lines or shapes), an alternative application like Sketchbook Pro might be more satisfactory. Nonetheless, Penultimate is easy to use and looks great. It’s fast and simple, and that’s most certainly a good thing.

[Ed Note: Penultimate has become my new go to app, made much more useable with the addition of a good stylus)

[ Penultimate Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by gunturbabu \\ tags: $3.99, Application, customizable, ipad apps and games, lines-or-shapes, medium-or-thick, notes, overall-rating, penultimate, price, review

You might be familiar with Invisible Runner as a Flash Game on Newgrounds, and you may have even enjoyed it as such. Sadly, while it has potential, I don’t think that it’s a perfect fit yet for the iPhone. However, since it offers really fun game play, interesting graphics and wonderful music, I’m going to give it a review anyway.

To start off, the concept of the game is simple. It’s a platform-based run & jump game, only the main obstacle or challenge is that most of the time you’re invisible. The character still reacts and behaves the same as in a typical platformer, you’ll just have to use your best guess to decide how, when or where to move him. There are 25 levels you need to traverse, and the simple goal is to get from one side to the other; there’s no story or other information otherwise to motivate you.

Of course, it’s all much easier said than done. Amusingly enough, being invisible is actually not the most difficult part of this game, especially considering there are many ‘checkpoints’ of sorts through each level where you become visible for a short while, making it easy to get your bearings. The mechanics of this game are what make it difficult, which is a shame. There’s nothing worse than unintuitive interfaces.

To move left and right, you use the left and right arrows on the bottom right and left of the screen, (which are difficult but not impossible to see). However, the problem comes from the jumping mechanism. You use the ‘Up’ arrows located directly above the left/right arrows. Oddly, there are two arrows, one on each side of the screen. If you’re moving right and want to jump you’ll need to hit the ‘up’ arrow on the left with your left thumb, but if you want to turn around you’ll have to switch to the left arrow, and then to jump, move your right thumb to the up arrow. I wish I could say that it’s not as tricky as it sounds, but it is. These controls are completely the opposite of how most video games work, with one stick or directional pad for horizontal movement, and one jump button. It turns an otherwise fun, interesting and delightful game into a exercise in frustration.

I will give credit to the designers, the design of the game is solid. I really enjoyed the ’sketchpad’ style animation, and the music is really nice (reminds me very much of ‘Braid’). If they fixed the character movement mechanic and maybe added in something like a storyline, this could be a wonderful app, perhaps even worth more than the current price point. As it stands, it’s still worth a try for only a dollar. Perhaps if there is enough interest the developers will keep working on it.

[ Invisible Runner Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by pietro842 \\ tags: design, devilish-games, Games, Iphone, iphone apps and games, levels, overall-rating, platform, screen, video-games

I was admittedly apprehensive going in to review Gangstar: Miami Vindication. I thought that it would be more of Gameloft trying to outdo someone else at their own game (in this case, with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), and that, in the end, it would be a fairly drab affair. I still don’t know why Gangstar couldn’t have been set in New York or Houston or London, or any city besides Miami. Maybe I’m wrong in thinking that innovation is the key to success, but it seems that Gameloft is really missing their opportunity to break off from their GTA clone status and really try to take the lead in the genre. Regardless of my thought on the matter, Gangstar: Miami Vindication is a well-crafted GTA clone that will please even the most deep rooted doubters.

What I like most about Gameloft’s interpretation of the GTA system is that they seem to give the game more focus. All to often in GTA I feel like I am running around doing nothing. As much as I like walking aimlessly around beautifully crafted cities, I’d rather play a game in the process. Miami Vindication lets you voluntarilly cut out most of the side business (killing random pedestrians, running from cops, jumping cars) and lets you focus more on the game at hand. Sure, you’ll still waste some time, but I’d say that 90% of my play time was dedicated to the actual game.

The game itself follows the same formula that GTA mastered so well many years ago: go to base, watch a little cut-scene, get task, complete task, head to base for another task. The missions span from the typical “steal this car, kill this guy missions” to races, tailing cars, and taking pictures for surveillance. Nothing that Gangstar: Miami Vindication has to offer will blow you away in the originality department, but it is all done well. Missions are easy to follow, don’t require too much jumping (jumping never works well with these games), and don’t veer too far from the overall story.

As far as the story goes, it’s a bit hokey, but no more hokey than its Vice City counterpart. As you’d expect, there are a fair number of gang leaders, mob bosses, shady police, and women with skintight clothing, all with a story to tell. What I didn’t expect was that the stories they told would be voice acted as well as they were. Characters, for the most part, had accents that correctly represented their ethnicity and overall shadiness (although in one scene their was a dirty Latino cop that sounded like he could’ve been from Ohio). Also, unlike the original iteration of the Gangstar series, Miami Vindication took very little time at all to start swearing. I think I heard my first F-bomb less than five minutes in – something that I wasn’t expecting. The swearing isn’t overdone so you won’t have to go clean your ears out like you did after playing Corporate Fury.

The most impressive thing of all in Miami Vindication is the sheer size of the game. The game’s build of Miami is enormous, with Gameloft calling it “the most immersive full-3D crime simulation ever on iPhone/iPod Touch.” The game has over 75 missions that span downtown, Miami Beach, the harbor, Miami Bay, and the swamps. Included in the city is a slew of new vehicles to drive, including boats, motorcycles, and cars. Everything in the city is beautifully rendered, but there are some little graphical quirks that are bothersome.

Unlike the nicely rendered cities and vehicles, the people are pretty sloppy looking. Their movements are all extremely robotic, and their actions are equally as strange. The strange movement issues aren’t just with the people, though, as the vehicle driving mechanics have some bizarre moments. Occasionally, your boat will just wobble uncontrollably or your car will sometimes jump from roads onto bridges from underneath. Also disconcerting is the driving AI. People run into each other and into stop lights at rates that no city should become accustomed to. In a city like the one in Miami Vindication, the cops should be much more worried about people dying in traffic than a bit of drug smuggling. They need to get their priorities straight.

All in all, even with the graphical snafus, I think that Miami Vindication will please just about anyone who wants to play a good GTA-like game. With its huge city, impressive voice acting, and competent controls, I’d say that Miami Vindication is a big win for Gameloft. As happy as I am though with the Gangstar series, I’ll be extremely annoyed if the next game is called Gangstar: Chinatown Rumble.

[ Gangstar: Miami Vindication Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by gunturbabu \\ tags: Application, corporate-fury, Game, gangstar, gta, iphone apps and games, miami vindication, nicely-rendered, overall-rating, rating, review

It’s been a long while since I’ve played the Flash version of Swords and Sandals. Back in the day, when I was sitting around at work playing Flash games for hours on end, I would play some Swords and Sandals here and there. It was a brutally hard game that very few could get far in, but it was just so darn approachable.

The basic concept of Swords and Sandals is that you are a gladiator and must kill everyone in the arena. The fights are one v. one, and the combat is all turn based. As you progress through the game, you can level up a number of stats and buy new weapons/armor/magic/potions -really anything that a typical RPG would sell.

The problem with the original game was that no matter how strong your character seemed to get, he would get butchered in the arena. It may have taken a few rounds, but defeat seemed inevitable. I seem to remember, and I may be wrong on this, a trick to the game that would make you win just about every time though. If you just leveled up your charisma, you could start doing taunts that would actually do damage to the opponent.

With this in mind, I went ahead and started up a game. It turns out that my taunt trick still works pretty well, but I couldn’t seem to move away from the enemy like I could on the Flash version. Once you get close to the enemy, you are just stuck there until he decides to move away. This wasn’t the only technical issue I had, though.

The main issue with the game is that it is sllooooowww. I’m not talking a bit laggy, I’m saying that it’s extremely laggy. Even after multiple restarts the fights are almost unbearable to sit through. There are also a few minor issues, like the inability to name your gladiator at the character creation screen, that irked me.

For those of you who slaved over the Flash version of Swords and Sandals, this one will definitely be a fun blast from the past. If it weren’t for its technical flaws, I’d say that the game is a worthy purchase, but as is it’s tough to recommend.

[ Swords and Sandals Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by nhiepphong \\ tags: Application, arena, character, enemy, Game, Games, gladiator, iphone apps and games, overall-rating, rating, sandals, swords, swords and sandals, turn based rpg