Android – Iphone – Applications

If you’re not already using a twitter client that adds or uploads to TwitPic, or you’re using a client that doesn’t give you the option to choose your own photo uploading service, or if you seem to send a TwitPic along with every one of your tweets and are just looking to make life simpler for this purpose, I recommend you check out TwitPic Uploader for iPhone.

While most clients allow you to choose TwitPic as your photo host, and even upload and give you the TwitPic url of your picture, some people might prefer to have a client that offers just that functionality and pretty much nothing else. For them, this app is ideal, though admittedly it won’t be for most.

The TwitPic Uploader (dispite using the logo and name of the popular Twitter Photo site) is not directly affiliated with TwitPic, it’s simply created by someone who wanted a simple Twitter App for one purpose: Tweeting or Uploading Pics.

While all the other clients will likely make you tweet any attached photos you add to the app, by way of creating a new Tweet, you can use TwitPic Uploader if you’re just looking to send along some photos to your TwitPic account without tweeting them. You do still have the option to tweet as well.

I’m not going to harp on about what this app doesn’t do in as a Twitter Client, as I’m sure that was not the direct intention of the creator. What this app does offer is the ability to upload to TwitPic and then send along the pic/url twitter or copy the url. You can also go directly to your own TwitPic Album page.

There are a couple drawbacks to this app that I wish were better handled. The first and most obvious is that while this app does offer the ability to use multiple Twitter logins, you cannot send a single tweet or upload to multiple accounts. This option as well as the very limited settings that the app does offer are only available to change or edit in Landscape mode, leaving me to only learn about them until I read the lengthy description on the App Store itself.

While it might not be the most feature-rich app, for people who are keeping online albums or use TwitPic daily, this may very well be a useful app for them. Or if you want to upload several different pictures to include in one tweet, this would be the best tool as well. Luckily there is a free version to check out before dishing the $1.99 for the full.

[ TwitPic Uploader for iPhone Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by zulu \\ tags: ability, landscape, option, pics, picture, rating, review, social-networking, tweet-or-upload, twitpic

I’ve toyed around with several methods of saving recipes on my iPad. Epicurious is a nice, well-designed app, but it only allows searching of its own internal database of recipes. It’s useful as a way of discovering new meal ideas, but not helpful as a repository of every good recipe I’ve come across.

My most recent choice has been Springpad, a note-taking app somewhat like Evernote, but with custom categories, like recipes, built in. Plus, Springpad has the advantage of an installable web clipper for Safari (yes, it even works in the iPad’s version of Safari, but not without some wrangling) so you can clip recipes from just about any site. It’s not perfect – far from it, actually, but it has proven useful enough for me to keep around.

Now comes Paprika, a new recipe storage app for the iPad. I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly predisposed to find Paprika helpful (and its $9.99 price tag didn’t help this impression), but I quickly discovered that it may be the best dedicated recipe app I’ve encountered yet.

Paprika presents users with a blank slate. There are no included recipes or databases or even celebrity chef endorsements. It’s designed from the bottom up as a compendium of every recipe you encounter, either in print or online. As such at first glance it appears fairly spare, without even a flashy splash page to indicate it has been launched. But once you start adding recipes, you will discover its value immediately.

You can, of course, enter your own recipes entirely manually, but the most intriguing feature is the ability to auto import recipes from various food sites online. Paprika includes a web browser, so it’s a simple matter to pull up a favorite recipe site and tap “Save Recipe.” When it works like it’s supposed to, each aspect of the recipe – from the photo to the ingredients to the directions – imports into its own category, so you’re done with one simple tap.

Notice that I said “when it works.” My only major gripe with Paprika is that I’ve gotten more “Cannot Import Recipe” error messages than I have had successful imports. It seems to work fine on sites like foodnetwork.com, but, strangely, it does not work with cookingchanneltv.com, a sister network to the Food Network. Why this is I have no idea.

However, if you’re stuck in a situation where you can’t auto import, the developers of Paprika have included a method for copying each element of the recipe into their app. For instance, all you have to do is click on the photo of the recipe in the web browser and Paprika will ask if you want to make the image the main one for that recipe. You can then do the same for the title of the recipe, the ingredients and the instructions. It’s not as elegant as the auto import, but it is easier than other methods.

One last minor gripe is that the app will only work in landscape mode. I’m not sure of the reasoning behind this, as I like to use my iPad in portrait mode when cooking. My hope is that this will be cleared up in a future update.

The bottom line is, if you cook often and need to sort through recipes quickly and efficiently (not to mention generate shopping lists on the fly), Paprika is a terrific app and well worth the price.

[ Paprika Recipe Manager for iPad Review is a post from 148Apps ]

written by Duy Phong \\ tags: auto, breakfast, directions, food, import, ipad, paprika, photo, rating, recipe, recipes, review, snack

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

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