iPad Apps
August 20th, 2011 at 3:56 PM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
It seems like more and more iPad apps are trying to get as detailed and complicated as humanly possible. Perhaps the iPad is trying to compete even more directly with console games, but whatever the reason there are more apps than ever before with deep storylines that demand total attention at all times. While those types of games are fun for the hard core gamer, sometimes the average iPad user just wants to kill a little time. The new iPad app known as Zombie Gunship fills the bill as fun time killer quite nicely.
Zombie Gunship is a rather basic game in which you serve as a member of a gunship high in the sky firing down on legions of zombies that are all trying to get into the bunker you are defending. During the adventure you will also attempt to save the civilians (white outlines) from the zombies (black outlines). The graphics are made to look as though you are looking through an ultraviolet lens in order to see your targets at night and you are far away so there’s no blood, meaning older children can play this game without exposure to totally realistic violence (though the zombies still get blown up so…)
The game “ends” when the zombie hordes eventually elude your fire and get into the bunker. It is then a matter of how many zombies you killed in order to accumulate “dollars” that you can use to upgrade your guns for another go-round. While repetitive, the $0.99 price tag makes this well worth the money as far as time wasters go.
App Store: $0.99
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August 19th, 2011 at 2:19 PM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
With the National Football League back in action, fantasy football players around the globe are cranking it up as well. With the uncertainty as to whether there was going to be a season at all, as well as the short training camps, fantasy footballers need more help than ever before in crafting their teams. Luckily for players like me there is the Rotowire Fantasy Football Draft Kit for the iPad.
Rotowire has long been a big time name in fantasy sports and their newest iPad app might make them quite the name in mobile fantasy sports as well. The app serves several different purposes that will all help the newbie and the vet both get ready for their live drafts. The first application is the cheat sheet, which is exactly what you would expect it to be. One feature that makes this particular Fantasy Football app stand apart is that the data on the sheet can be updated as often as you like, or be set to update every 24 hours or more automatically. This means that should Rotowire find out something that has changed their rankings, your cheat sheet will reflect this almost instantly.
Another nice feature is that in the settings you can input all of your league’s stats and how many points each stat will be awarded and the cheat sheet’s rankings will then reflect these changes. If you’re in a league where touchdown passes are six points instead of four, quarterbacks might be higher on the cheat sheet. Going back to the main page, when you select a player you will be presented with four different options. The first is merely to view the Rotowire’s summary and latest news on every player in the league. The next is to either select that you drafted the player or put him on your team. You can also successfully track the draft by selecting that he is on the “other team” taking him off your draft board and avoiding confusion.
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August 17th, 2011 at 4:14 PM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
If you’ve ever taken the time to see just how many different alarm clock apps there are actually available for the iPad, you might be surprised at the sheer volume. However I recently ran across one that makes a real effort to stand out from the crowd. The Smart Alarm Pro app works as a basic alarm clock in some ways but goes above and beyond what some of the other alarm clock apps can do in others. The app will first take a gauge of where you are located and in addition to the time will also give you the current weather as well as predicted high and low temps for the day (in both Celsius and Fahrenheit depending on your preference.)
The app also gives you the ability to set the color scheme, how you want the hour displayed and how you want to set the alarm but that’s not the cool thing about this app. The Alarm Pro app will allow you to set it so that it also displays 50 different positive quotations as well as any pictures you decide you want to pull from your iPad’s photo album. The alarm can also be set to play any song you have in your iTunes library should you decide you don’t want to use one of the many different noises the app provides. As a cherry on top, Smart Alarm Pro also offers the ability to have an RSS from Yahoo News brought directly to your app so that you can wake up in the morning and get a good start to the day’s news with very little effort. At just $0.99 the app is definitely worth the money.
App Store: $0.99
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August 17th, 2011 at 1:01 PM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
While sadly, there are those that believe that video games and computers all started at or near where they are today, it was actually quite a long strange trip to get to the iPad or the Wii or the Chrome Book. Now there is a new app, called simply Retro Computers that takes you on a visual walk down memory lane of what computers, computer components and even what a video game system here or there looked like back in the day.
The app is very simple to use and yet I have to say I was blown away just looking at the different photos of computers and game systems I actually used and had completely forgotten about. The app is filled with over 160 different computers, game systems and main frames that were all produced during the “computer golden age” of the 1970’s through the 1990’s. There are even some pictures of gaming systems and computers that weren’t even seen in my neck of the world because they were only released in whatever country produced them.
The interface is extremely simple. Open the app and at the main menu you will be asked to select from Acorn, Amstrad, Apple, Atari, Commodore, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nintendo, Philips, Sega, Sharp, Sinclair, Tandy, Radio Shack and more. Once you select a category an album of photos of different computers that were produced by those companies will be presented and you can play with the pics a little bit to get a better look.
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August 16th, 2011 at 1:36 PM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
Perhaps just in time for the ramp up to the shopping season, Google has released an app that could end up making life much easier for your mailman. The Google Catalogs app does exactly what you think it should do by providing iPad users the ability to browser through several different store catalogs in order to find the perfect gift for that special someone. The app is basically a digital version of the paper catalogs, featuring everything the hard copy would show you meaning you will no longer have to get these kinds of catalogs sent to you through snail mail.
Among the stores that included in this app are, Anthropologie, Bergdorf’s, Neiman Marcus, Williams-Sonoma, Urban Outfitters and many, many more. Of course the app wouldn’t be that cool if they only thing you could do is look through it and order products like a regular old paper catalog. Google Catalogs also allows you to pinch the screen in order to zoom in on a certain offering and while you can order the product through the app, Google Catalogs will also tell you where the closest store is located and whether that store carries the item you are looking for.
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August 14th, 2011 at 8:50 AM EST | by Oliver VanDervoort
Ever since Apple decided to go a little old school on app developers and the ability for 3rd party apps to give access to their various stores we’ve been waiting for someone to find a great work around. It appears that one of the first players in this game is a surprising entity. Walmart appears to be the among the first companies that has found a way around Apple’s rather stringent rules.
Walmart has put out their new Vudu app and while they are making it available to iPad users, they are actually releasing the app as a “web app” instead of an app that is actually going through the Apple store. For those who don’t know what Vudu is, it’s basically the chain’s version of a streaming video service somewhat like Blockbuster’s streaming video service that allows you to rent a movie or television show and send it to any number of different devices. Because the app is a web app and not an iOS app they will not have to share whatever new revenue is generated by the newest iPad feature with Apple so we can expect Apple to start cracking down on this particular approach any day now.
While Walmart is one of the first to try this tact, it is not the first as Amazon recently released a Kindle web app as retaliation for having to drop links to their online store in their original iPad app. If Apple can’t find a way to crack down on this practice quickly, look for even more companies like this to start putting out web apps.
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