Android – Iphone – Applications

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe is an award winning photo-blog (Webby Award, People’s Voice for Best Use of Photography), that presents the latest news in pictorial form. New entries are posted three days a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – and there’s now a new way to see these entries. The Big Picture has finally arrived, officially, to iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad in an all-in-one universal application. For this review, I’ve used the most appropriate device: the iPad.

When opening The Big Picture, the most recent photo set is featured, along with its name, number of photos and date of publication. Below that, you’ll find the thirteen most recent photograph sets in much smaller format, spanning three pages. All contain the same information as the featured photo set.

To get started, tap on a photo set. Before you’re taken to the photos themselves, a little information is provided, in order to get you acquainted with the background behind the photos. In this case, our featured photo set is of the wildfires in Israel that began earlier this month. After some optional reading of (disheartening) facts, tapping “View Entry” will take you to what this application is all about: photos.

The Big Picture works in both portrait and landscape mode, though all photos are designed to be viewed in the latter format. Perhaps most importantly, the photos are of high quality: there’s no scaled down, bandwidth-saving feature, meaning you’ll be viewing high quality photos all the time. A small summary is attached to each photo, providing specific information about what you’re viewing, as well as a counter to let you know how many photos are left in the set. Tapping on the screen once will remove all of this additional information, providing full focus on the photo at hand.

Of course, this being the social world, The Big Picture has integrated a number of Sharing options for each photo: mail, facebook and twitter, the latter two of which are integrated into the application itself. Oddly, the application doesn’t feature in-built mail, it switches to Mail.app – odd given the fact that, of the three sharing options, this is the only one that Apple provide a system for. Options to save the photo to your library, as well as view the photo in Safari, are also present.

However, there are a few problems and drawbacks, the most significant of which is the lack of photo pre-loading. Every photo, even whenever you’re in a set, loads individually whenever you move to that specific page. On 3G, I found that it took in and around two seconds per photo to load, which might not sound like much, but after 35 photos worth that’s a lot of dead seconds. In addition, with the exception of sharing, there’s very little integration to the iPhone or iPad, making it feel somewhat unofficial and ported rather than developed straight for the iPad. In comparison to Wide Angle Review, which I reviewed earlier this year, the navigation for photos seems dry and boring. An option to show all photos on a page (in smaller format with the ability to tap to full screen) certainly wouldn’t go a-miss. Lastly, not all photo sets are actually available, only the most recent ones. This very much limits what the overall application has to offer.

Overall, I’m mixed towards The Big Picture. On the one hand, the service that it offers is invaluable, but on the other I can’t help but feel that the application isn’t near its full potential. The former is a personal comment, the latter a reviewing comment. Ultimately, it’s the reviewing comments that determine the rating.

[ The Big Picture Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by tanloc2t \\ tags: Application, big picture, Iphone, iphone apps and games, library, people, photo, photography, photos, price

Sometimes I really wish I could have been alive during the Dark Ages. Sure, there was sort of a plague thing going around and the average life expectancy was something like 12, but if the world was anything like what’s depicted in Braveheart then you got to spend all day twirling in a circle swinging a mace at anyone who got within 10 feet of you. I don’t know about you, but that’s a life I can get behind. Though the game is the farthest thing in the world from mentally taxing, Braveheart can still be an entertaining lesson in rampant skull bashing.

Gameplay in Braveheart is simplicity personified, with players making circular motions to send their hero spinning like a top as he wipes out baddies. Moving around the field is as simple as tapping where you want to go, and there are even a few multitouch commands for things like firing off a volley of arrows. This is definitely one of those games just about anyone can pick up and play instantly.

The trouble with such a simple scheme is that it also erodes any lasting appeal the game may have. Braveheart tries to keep players interested with a weapon and skill upgrade system as well as mid-level perks that grant temporary status boosts, but these are little more than distractions which try and make you forget that what you’re actually doing isn’t all that fun. The only objective in each stage is to kill all the enemies who come running toward you, so there’s very little call for skill or strategy. Simplicity can be refreshing, but overly-simplistic games just aren’t that much fun.

Though the gameplay’s nothing to write home about, Braveheart’s presentation manages to be top-notch, with crisp visuals and nicely detailed environments. Though the frame rate may chug every once in a while, overall the app does a nice job of keeping up with all the onscreen action, as mass murder is always a bit more palatable when it looks this nice.

Braveheart manages to entertain for a short while but then it quickly starts to wear thin. Though there are a number of nice bells and whistles, the core mechanics just don’t quite hold up over the long haul. Feel free to check out the lite version and get a taste, but there’s a good chance that a taste is all you will need.

[ Braveheart Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by jkpra999 \\ tags: appeal-the-game, device-reviewed, Game, gameplay, Games, iphone apps and games, nicely-detailed, overall-rating, overall-the-app, price, review, simple

I’m sitting in a house surrounded by snow, ice and freezing cold temperatures. So it makes perfect sense to be reviewing Ray Marching, a game that’s all about controlling the rays of the sun.

Your job is to save flowers by directing the sun photons at the targets and, presumably, saving plantkind. To do this is simple, at least at first it is. Using your finger, you position the trajectory of the rays towards the targets. The problem is you can only do this in a straight line. The addition of arrows and other items makes for an easier task but the strategy lies in figuring out how to get to the target. While the game starts out very simply, you’ll quickly be stumped.

Points are scored for succeeding but also accuracy. The best scores come from hitting the bullseye of each target but sometimes this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Slightly oversensitive controls also contribute to this making it a little fiddly to be pinpoint accurate. Although at least this doesn’t affect the general enjoyment that Ray Marching brings.

It’s a formula that’s been used to similar effect many times before but Ray Marching is good fun. There’s 60 stages in all as well as achievements to gain, although sadly they’re not achievements linked to GameCenter or OpenFeint.

Ray Marching won’t set the world alight with its originality. It’s all business as usual really but it is an enjoyable experience and it’s very cute and charming. The opening levels provide an ideal introductory sequence so that you’re gradually guided through what can be done. Many later puzzles are challenging though and are bound to stump you for a while, providing plenty of longevity at a low price.

[ Ray Marching Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by j4352 \\ tags: iphone apps and games, marching, marching-review, overall-rating, price, puzzle, rating, ray marching, replay-value, scienpix, starts-out-very, targets, trajectory

If you’ve ever gotten stuck somewhere, unable to locate your car in a crowded, nondescript parking lot, then you know $0.99 is a small price to pay for peace of mind. .Parking (yes, the “.” before the title is intentional) is a simple, but elegant and effective way of tracking your parking place so you won’t wind up in a bind again.

The basic interface of .Parking is incredibly easy to navigate. Once you’ve parked, just tap on the app’s icon and you are immediately located via the GPS in the iPhone. From there, you simply have to save your location. You can even take a photo (if you need some visual cue as to your location) or make a note (say, “Goofy 75″) so you can remember exactly where you left your vehicle. When you are ready to find your car again, just open the app and choose from two options. The first option pulls up a map with directions highlighted (a la the built-in Google Maps function) that adjusts based on your body’s position. The second option is more interesting, however, as it turns on your iPhone’s camera and uses enhanced reality to superimpose an arrow on your screen that will direct you straight to your car. It was a little difficult to figure out how to turn on the enhanced reality mode (tapping the compass icon twice did the trick, but I only figured that out through trial and error) but once it was on it worked quite well.

There are certain situations .Parking cannot help you with, such as parking in a parking deck (where, I will admit, I am far more likely to get lost like in that famous Seinfeld episode). .Parking does not know what to do with a multi-level parking lot, so you might want to use the app’s notes function to help you remember where you parked.

That said, .Parking is a comprehensive parking solution for most situations. It even includes a timer so you can know if your parking meter is about to run out. If you are given to losing your way in today’s parking monstrosities, .Parking can help you.

[ .Parking Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by pietro842 \\ tags: device-reviewed, figure-out-how, incredibly-easy, Iphone, nuage, parking, price

Pictureka! is one loud app. I mean loud. Loud in every sense of the word (hence the exclamation point in the title). It’s easily the noisiest game I’ve ever played on the iPhone. There’s a sound effect for every action that takes place on the screen, so buyer beware if you intend to play this game in public. You’re sure to get some odd looks from those wondering where all of the springy, sprockety blips and twangs are coming from.

If you’re at all familiar with the board game of the same name, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Pictureka! You’re given a time limit to locate a pre-established number of particular objects from a scrollable screen of many, many items. Find them, and you move on to the next round or level. If you don’t….you crash and burn. It’s fun, simple and very basic, which may explain why the designers felt the need to pep up the proceedings with so many audio fireworks and quirky visuals. In the end, it seems unnecessary, as Pictureka! is a good, solid, though unoriginal find-an-object game.

Kids are sure to enjoy the game with all of its oddball sounds and strange characters, but adults may find the game more than a bit grating. Given that another find-an-object game such as Little Things has such a zen-like, calming effect during gameplay, it seems unlikely that many adults would gravitate to the more jarring sensory overload of Pictureka!

The game is identical on both the iPhone and the iPad, but there’s a $3.00 difference in price between the two versions. This is a continuing insult to iPhone and iPad users, since the game could have easily been designed as a universal app. If there were significant differences in content I might understand a price difference, but this is just money grubbing, plain and simple. If this is a game you’re interested in, I recommend just purchasing the $1.99 iPhone version since you get the same content. A bigger screen and HD visuals just aren’t going to make a huge difference in a game like this.