Developer: lolo fit
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPod Touch
iPhone Integration Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-use Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.67 out of 5 stars
Folks who exercise a lot or teach aerobics classes know the importance of setting the right tone and maintaining intensity throughout their routine. For those who like to set their workouts to music, this can mean hours of finding just the right songs with perfect intensity and similar tempos. Tempo Magic attempts to circumvent this issue by allowing users to speed or slow the tempo of songs in a uniform manner, and at a base level it works. The downside is that a lack of options and a lot of technical shortcomings make the app mostly useless for all but the most devoted users.
The interface of Tempo Magic is extremely elegant, allowing you to add songs to your playlist with a couple of taps and control the BPM (beats per minute – a measure of tempo) of any song with a simple swipe of the slider in the middle of the screen. There are also options to lock all songs on the playlist at either the same BPM or the same percent speed increased or decreased. So If you want all your music played at 180 BPM that’s fine, or if you just want all your songs to be 8 percent faster the app can do that as well.
The big drawback comes in the fact that if the songs you choose to go in Tempo Magic don’t already share a similar speed then the resulting playback often turns into a mess. Setting a song that’s naturally 100 BPM to 160 or above often turns into a mash of undecipherable sound, while setting everything to be 5 percent faster than before means that slower songs will still be slow compared to more upbeat fare. This issue can be partially offset if you already have a workout mix or some other playlist of similarly paced songs, but if you don’t, then trying to find the right mix can be an exercise in trial-and-error. Another issue is the fact that the app doesn’t play well with some forms of DRM, so there’s no way of knowing which songs will work and which won’t until you try and add them and Tempo Magic tells you it can’t.
For exercise nuts, fitness instructors and even DJs, Tempo Magic is a neat app that might put a new spin on how they play their music. For more casual folks the app holds very little appeal and will likely be met with quizzical looks and a lot of misunderstanding. For these folks it’s a fun novelty, but not worth the $5 investment.
Developer: Cute Logic Ltd.
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1
iPhone Integration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.67 out of 5 stars
Ghostwriter is a simple photo editing app that lets you add certain ’spooky’ effects to the photos you’ve taken of your friends and family, and lets you share them. It’s not meant to be the world’s most powerful photo editing app, but it offers a variety of spooky Halloween-flavored effects which will definitely amuse kids. It is a good option for a limited budget to share in the fun of making your costumed photos just a bit creepier.
What you’ll first want to do is actually go into the settings. You’ll have to select how you want to edit your photo before you even import it. This is one of the few problems I had with the functionality of this app. Most, if not all, photo editing apps let you import your source, and then allow users to edit the effects from there. Nevertheless, you’ll want to choose your Spooky Editing options from within the settings before you import or take your photo.
There are a small selection of options to choose from. First and probably most popular will be adding text – there are six preset messages, such as “Trick or Treat,” “I Want Candy,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and more. However, do you have the option to add your own message as well. From here you can select one of the two fonts available. After you’ve chosen the text, go ahead and choose if you want some ‘Goulish Miasma,’ or other effects like ‘Diabolical Light.’
Finally, a few other options let you decide if the picture will display with a sound effect, if you want to save the originals (for when you take a photo from within the app), or reset all your options. Once you’ve make your selections, go back out to the main page, import your photo, and see your creation! You can play the sound effects over and over, if you like. You can edit the text at this point if you’re not happy with what it says (but not the font or effects). Finally, go ahead and either save your spooky creation or email it to a friend.
That’s Ghostwriter in a nutshell, a simple holiday app for Halloween – pick it up if you’re interested in a simple, easy way to make spooky theme pictures for your Halloween memories!
I’ll be honest: I think Pocket Legends is pretty darn cool. I reviewed the game back in its infancy, and since then it’s continued to expand. If you haven’t played it before, Pocket Legends is a true MMORPG, complete with PvP, boss fights, dungeons, and plenty of loot.
The newest update charges you with “preventing a disaster of galactic proportions” as aliens once again threaten the land of Pocket Legends. Of course, this is mostly pretense for giving players some welcome features: a higher level cap, boss-filled dungeons, two PvP maps, and more loot. Who doesn’t love loot?
Here’s the list of other recent updates:
Lost Expedition Base Camp: a new towne full of quests and loot
Leaderboards: compete for most kills, most deaths, K/D ratio, most gold
Loadouts that allow you to save and reload different configurations
Item sets (collections of items that give additional bonuses when equipped)
An additional inventory slot for wearing fancy helmets
UI updates including the ability to map all 12 of your skills at once
Exploding barrels to add to the carnage in PvP
Plus a whole lot more!
If you haven’t tried Pocket Legends yet, now’s as good a time as any; the game keeps growing, with updates pushed out almost every two days, and if you don’t mind its simplicity and occasional UI annoyances, Pocket Legends can be a real blast. It’s free to try (you don’t even need to register anymore!), so what are you waiting for?
If you’ve yet to play Angry Birds, I’m willing to bet you’ve at least glimpsed its icon floating on the App Store’s charts. For good reason, too; it’s an addictive game. The basic formula is a bunch of angry birds, a slingshot, and the egg-stealing pigs and their castles. The goal of this little physics game is to demolish each and every one of the aforementioned castles—but does Angry Birds actually follow the rules of physics?
Apparently one of Wired’s writers, Rhet Allain, just couldn’t stop thinking about the posibilities:
But what about the physics? Do the birds have a constant vertical acceleration? Do they have constant horizontal velocity? Let’s find out, shall we? Oh, why would I do this? Why can’t I just play the dumb game and move on. That is not how I roll. I will analyze this, and you can’t stop me.
Long story short: he took one of the developer’s walkthrough videos and decided to analyze it using a program called Tracker Video Analysis. He used the program to determine path of the bird’s flight, and then used that data to graph the bird’s horizontal and vertical movement separately. (In projectile motion, you typically separate horizontal and vertical components.)
His discovery? Angry Birds considers only the force of gravity on the bird—once you fire the bird from the slingshot; the app doesn’t calculate air resistance or anything like that. And assuming that gravity in Angry Birds is equal to Earth’s gravity, the slingshot is five feet tall and the red bird is a little over two feet. Jeez…talk about a large bird!
The physics that Mr. Allain used actually felt quite familiar—since I essentially had to do the same thing in a physics lab last week. Bounce a golf ball, take a video, then measure its path with a computer and use projectile motion equations — he only difference was that we were trying to determine gravity, whereas he assumed gravity was -9.8 meters per second and instead tried to determine the size of different Angry Birds elements. Of course, the other difference between Angry Birds and my physics lab was that, you know, Angry Birds is artificial, and thus the equations that Wired derived worked a lot better than our sad attempts.
So, if you were desperately wondering—the Angry Birds slingshot is more than twice your height and the birds themselves are giant and vicious. Now I’d like to see him calculate the height of those pig castles.
Developer: Different Pixel
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
iPhone Integration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.17 out of 5 stars
Every now and again a puzzle game comes around that really blows your expectations away. Or, at least, far exceeds whatever you were thinking you were getting. Vizati is one of those Apps. It takes a simple puzzle idea and makes it something so much more by adding a beautiful backdrop and using wonderful sounds and music.
In ‘Story Mode,’ you’ll go through levels as the characters Julie and Ben wonder about the mysterious Box that is floating in the sky. You’ll progress through day and night and increase the game difficultly as you complete each level. You only have a certain number of moves to complete each puzzle, and if you don’t clear the blocks in the moves allowed, you lose. Luckily, though, you have unlimited tries, so while it can be frustrating, it’s not impossible if you get stuck on one level.
I want to mention the art here, because it’s really stunning. The hand drawn, watercolor style creates a visual style that is rarely seen at this low price in the App Store. Luckily, the developers have taken the time to create something that is actually a treat to look at. The music is wonderful as well, and absolutely fits the mood set by the art. I know I’ve used this comparison before, but the art/music style really reminds me of ‘Braid‘.
The other options within the game are playing in Arcade Mode, which is unlocked after completing 15 of the 100 Story Mode levels. In Arcade, you have to clear a certain number of blocks before additional blocks materialize, making it more difficult. This was quite fun for a quick game or two, but I personally prefer the non-time specific Puzzles that Story Mode offers.
If you’re a fan of puzzle games, you should not only check out this app for it’s fun and unique game play, but also to be impressed by it’s quality of art – a rarity at this price point! Check out the demo video below to get a taste.
The interface of Tempo Magic is extremely elegant, allowing you to add songs to your playlist with a couple of taps and control the BPM (beats per minute – a measure of tempo) of any song with a simple swipe of the slider in the middle of the screen. There are also options to lock all songs on the playlist at either the same BPM or the same percent speed increased or decreased. So If you want all your music played at 180 BPM that’s fine, or if you just want all your songs to be 8 percent faster the app can do that as well. 
Ghostwriter is a simple photo editing app that lets you add certain ’spooky’ effects to the photos you’ve taken of your friends and family, and lets you share them. It’s not meant to be the world’s most powerful photo editing app, but it offers a variety of spooky Halloween-flavored effects which will definitely amuse kids. It is a good option for a limited budget to share in the fun of making your costumed photos just a bit creepier.
First and probably most popular will be adding text – there are six preset messages, such as “Trick or Treat,” “I Want Candy,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and more. However, do you have the option to add your own message as well. From here you can select one of the two fonts available. After you’ve chosen the text, go ahead and choose if you want some ‘Goulish Miasma,’ or other effects like ‘Diabolical Light.’
I’ll be honest: I think Pocket Legends is pretty darn cool. I 
:: AWESOME
If you’ve yet to play Angry Birds, I’m willing to bet you’ve at least glimpsed its icon floating on the App Store’s charts. For good reason, too; it’s an addictive game. The basic formula is a bunch of angry birds, a slingshot, and the egg-stealing pigs and their castles. The goal of this little physics game is to demolish each and every one of the aforementioned castles—but does Angry Birds actually follow the rules of physics?
His discovery? Angry Birds considers only the force of gravity on the bird—once you fire the bird from the slingshot; the app doesn’t calculate air resistance or anything like that. And assuming that gravity in Angry Birds is equal to Earth’s gravity, the slingshot is five feet tall and the red bird is a little over two feet. Jeez…talk about a large bird!
:: GREAT
Every now and again a puzzle game comes around that really blows your expectations away. Or, at least, far exceeds whatever you were thinking you were getting. Vizati is one of those Apps. It takes a simple puzzle idea and makes it something so much more by adding a beautiful backdrop and using wonderful sounds and music.
I want to mention the art here, because it’s really stunning. The hand drawn, watercolor style creates a visual style that is rarely seen at this low price in the App Store. Luckily, the developers have taken the time to create something that is actually a treat to look at. The music is wonderful as well, and absolutely fits the mood set by the art. I know I’ve used this comparison before, but the art/music style really reminds me of ‘Braid‘.
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