The App Set

Live Poker: This is an awesome social poker app.  It will connect you to other people playing on facebook, MySpace and the iPhone as well. The interface is simple and easy to get around.  The timing is good.  The only complaint is typing in the chat before its your turn to play the hand.  This is a great pickup if your a poker fan.

Developer: Zynga

Price: Free

Link

 Podcast Video [04:51m]: Download

I Say is a SIMON clone and it does it as well as anything has.  There is nothing special to this app but if your feeling nostalgic then fire up this free app.

Developer: Webworks and Applications

Price: Free

Crazy Pumpkin is Yet Another Useless App but at least its fun.  It’s a virtual pumpkin that has several different faces you can choose from, perfect to show friends at the bar during the Halloween season.  The three components (eyes, nose, mouth) can be changed independently and shaking changes the color as well as induces a Halloween sound effect.

Developer: EZone

Price: Free

Space Monkey is a simple alignment game.  You’re an intergalactic space garbage monkey, who’s job it is to…well…pick up the trash floating in space.  The monkey is centered on the screen while things float into range and your job is to orient your self so you can catch the space garbage with your hands or feet while avoiding batteries that will shock you.  If that isn’t absurd enough there are also an obscene amount of yo-yo’s in space and you get extra points for yo-yo-ing while picking up trash.  This game is fun for all of about 3 minutes, then it becomes utterly boring.  I truely do not mind casual games but this game doesn’t have the addictive nature of a “good” casual game.  Try playing peggle for just five minutes, you’ll find you’ve missed 2 meals before you let up.  This game has yo-yo’ed in price, coming out as Free then changing to 9.99, which I would sooner wipe my ass with a ten spot than spend it on this game, but now the price has settled to .99 cents.  If your a casual game addict and that is all you play, I say it’s probably right up your alley and totally worth your dollar.  If you are the occasional casual game player, this one is not worth your buck.  Hit the dollar menu at the nearest fast food joint, much more satisfying.

Developer: Glu Mobile, Inc.

Price: .99

Lux Touch is an adaptation of Risk.  It is a quick and fast way to play Risk on your iPhone.  The caveat is that you will not be able to place your own pieces at the beginning of the game but the card system is in place and is managed easily for you.  Distributing armies is rather painless after figuring out that if you tap and hold the armies drop in larger increments.  This however makes for less precise army placement.  The mechanics are just like risk, fortify after your turn and watch the other guys blow each other up.  They have taken out the fun/hassle of rolling for each battle.  So on each attack the numbers will simply go down on one side or the other with small animations of explosions and related sound effects.  It’s not as dynamic as some online versions of Risk but this is a great way to rock a single player game in about 15 minutes.  It is currently free but that may change in the future.

Developer: Sillysoft Games

Price: Free

Dial Zero is a great little app for getting through those annoying prompts when calling customer service.  We’ve seen websites with all this info before but combining it into a comprehensive app for the iPhone is a great idea.  It allows you to search through the directory of companies using its larger keypad as apposed to the iPhone standard keyboard.  However this can be turned off if you do not like it.  Once you’ve found the company your looking for, all the details are their for speeding through the prompts as well as the number to call.  If on an iPhone you can tap the number and the call will begin.  The app does work on the iPod touch but obviously you’ll get an error when clicking on the phone number.

Developer: Next Mobile Web

Price: Free

This episode is devoted to RPG lovers. Covering apps that let us get our geek on.

Dice Bag: This is a simple dice app. It lets you roll a series of different die. d20 3d6 d12 etc. For those spur of the moment D&D games and you forgot your dice bag at home. You can still rock a few trolls as long as you have your phone with you.

Developer: Jeff LaMarche

Price: Free

Link

HDL Charector Gen: This is a simple app for creating a charector using the HDL system by Tremorworks.  This is similar to the D&D system but has itsown quarks.  This app lets you calculate your new charector or keep track of your charector.  There is nothing much tothis app that this.

Developer: Silver Streak Software

Price: Free

Link

Frotz: Frotz is an interative fiction appliction.  It essentially lets you play text adverture games.  The app comes with several but allows you to browse the IFDB in the app.  However browsing the IFDB results in a memory error and the app compensates by dropping thumbnail images.  Restarting the app clears the problem.  There are a few bugs with some of the books, when typing in too many strange commands.  The biggest draw back to this app is all the typing that needs to be done on the iphone/ipod keyboard.  Those of you who are not comfortable with the keyboard will find this part extrememly frustrating when trying to type “look” several times and getting “Lppk”.  This is not for eveyone but if you were a fan of text adventure games this is a decent way to take them on the go.

Developer: Craig Smith

Price: Free

Link

Vay: This is a classic 2D RPG port from the Sega CD.  It is in the style of the early Final Fantasy Games and has been retooled for the iPhone/iPod.  The touch controls are really easy to get the hang of.  Turning the old D control to a simple point and click type of interface.  The menu system is very intuitive and for RPG fans this is a great starter on the iPhone.  The story line is decent enough with the classic Prince (Heibelger) saves the Princess (Elin) model but not so drab as to not be interesting.  Mech play the bad guys and classic RPG rules apply.  Kill things, gain experience, learn some magic, repeat.

Developer: SoMoGa Inc.

Price: $4.99

Link

Poster image by Kirk Lau

 Podcast Video [10:31m]: Download

Yes|No is yet another useless app. All it does is give you a Yes or No answer. What can I say, sometimes you just want to download stuff. At least the App is free.

Developer: Masayuki Akamatsu

Price: Free

We take a look at three apps in our very first episode.

Light Saber: This is a follow up to the popular Phone Saber app that was pulled by the developers after Lucas film approached them.  It has been rebranded and ties in to the new force unleashed video game. There are characters that control the color of the saber including some images and bio info on each of them.  All the basic phone saber functionality is still there and you can still accidentally fling your phone/ipod across the room if your not careful during those late night code builds.

Developer: Alex Price / Lucas Film

Price: Free

Link

Air Sharing: This is a file management/sharing utility.  It sets up a shared folder via the WEBDAV protocal.  Once connected you can drag and drop files onto your Phone/iPod.  Once on your iPod you can view most any standard document.  There are some quirks to getting connected to it as with all networking there is something that can go wrong. Security can be enabled to protect the share you create or you can create a specific public folder.  This is a great way to review documents on the go or prep for that presentation while on the flight.

Note: For Windows XP users you will need a Web Folders Software Update.  More details on the developers site.

Developer: Avatron Software

Price: $6.99

Link

Stanza: This is one of my favorite apps so far.  This is a simple ebook reader.  It has plenty of control over the display text.  The best thing about this app is being able to download free books from within the app.  The catalog consists of a lot of classics and you can easily catch up on all that summer reading you never did.  The only drawback comes from the devices themselves, the screen is a bit small for reading but this is something you can get used to.  The controls are easy to use and don’t seem to advance accidentally.  Stanza supports several different formats but does not have support for purchased DRM ebooks, which is fine.  The sharing function allows you to add books to your library via the desktop app which is available at the developers website.  I was hoping you could share books from mobile to mobile but that doesn’t seem to be the case. None the less it is another way of getting books to your device.

Developer: LexCycle

Price: Free

Link

 Podcast Video [13:44m]: Download

The first episode will be up very soon.