I’m a fan of Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie review site, which is where Boctor’sHot Popcorn derives its movie reviews. That’s one of the first places I check before heading out to see a movie. Now, all I have to do is reach into my pocket and pull out my iPhone (or iPod touch).
Hot Popcorn puts movie reviews (new and old), lists of movies playing at theaters near you (current and upcoming), DVD rentals (current and upcoming) and trailers (current) into the palm of your hand. Hot Popcorn also has a search bar that enables you to search for titles and reviews.
Tap a title from the list of theaters or DVD, and you’ll get a screen that provides information such as run time, cast, Rotten Tomato rating, synopsis and a rating of 1-to-5 stars given by people who have seen the film. The list of theaters is based on the location you enter into Hot Popcorn, but you can widen your search if you don’t find the movie you’d like to see playing at a nearby theater.
I Love Katamari is the newest iteration of a game that went through a major overhaul from the original version. The new app has good responsiveness and some solid features, but a few hiccups and some odd gameplay still keep it from being a must-have for iPhone/iPod touch gamers.
The premise is that you are on a mission to please the King of All Cosmos (who looks like a hybrid of Peter Pan’s Captain Hook and Maleficant from Sleeping Beauty) by accumulating large amounts of junk. This is done by rolling a giant, super-sticky ball for collecting pencils, pieces of caramel, thumbtacks and pretty much anything else that will stick to it.
Speed Fiend, from Scatter Circuit, is a mashup of Soltaire, War and Fish, salted with a dash of mishigas.
The object of Speed Fiend is to discard your cards as fast as you can. Between you and your rival — in this instance, the iPhone’s electronic brain — are two discard piles.
The idea is for you to throw down cards that are either one higher or one lower than either of the two cards that are face up. Whether cards are red or black doesn’t matter. When you need cards tap your reserve deck. Follow me? It’s simple, really.
Like many Apple, Mac and iPhone enthusiasts, AppCraver is visiting Macworld this week. In addition to packing clothes, business cards and a whole bag of technology I had the unique experience of “packing” my iPhone as well. Sound odd? Let me explain.
A few weeks ago, I hit the magic number 148 apps. The brick wall at the end of Appy Road. For those that don’t know, 148 is the total number of apps an iPhone or iPod touch can have at any one time. You can own more apps, but only 148 can be physically present on your device — 9 pages with 16 apps each, plus four on the main bar.
So I set about deleting apps, making the kind of hard decisions that had to be made to find the delicate balance of productivity and recreation, weighing usefulness and utility. OK, I deleted a bunch of apps that I rarely used and called it a day.
I made some room and still had plenty of apps for my daily routine. However, in preparation for Macworld, I realized I might need a few extra apps — a few specialized apps for managing all my new contacts, something to handle to twitter feeds, something to play on the airplane. So, I cleared some more space and reloaded a handful of apps of previously removed apps and downloaded a few new ones for the trip.
At last count, the App Store featured something like 60 apps with voice recording capabilities. DAVA Consulting’s iDictohappens to be among one of the better ones I’ve tried for simple voice-note-taking.
As with virtually every voice recording app I’ve tried, iDicto is straight forward and easy to use. Press a button, record, replay, pause — you know the drill. What you want is a voice recorder that works as easily as (or better than) the real deal and this app does that.
iDicto tags each recording with a name, time, date, length of recording and format. You can also add one of several icons and sort the list of recordings by priority. You can name your recording, or let the app do it with Record0001, Record0002 etc. and you can rename your recordings, sort and group them and append audio to previously recorded notes. I like not having to name my recordings first, like some apps I’ve tried.
The idea of being able to access all your email, financial, social networking, travel and many other accounts from one place is compelling. That’s what A Personal Assistant-Premium — it’s the version of the app without ad support — aims to do and it does it fairly well.
I was able to set up a bank, credit card, email and other accounts — but not PayPal — from the iPhone without a hassle. In my credit card screen, there was a “null” in the balance and APR fields and when I tapped “credit cards,” from that screen I received an “internal error” message. I don’t know what the problem was.
With A Personal Assistant you can only view account data from your iPhone or the Pageonce account Web site. You cannot transfer money. That’s typical with these apps.
Zoom Zoom is one of the stranger offerings to come from the App Store. You will probably either love it or hate it. Those who left comments on the DAVA Consulting app’s iTunes page either lauded it for its ingenuity or wondered why time was wasted on its development. The reason? You do not control Zoom Zoom with the touch screen or accelerometer — but with your mouth. (As you can see from the video, just about anybody can play). Read the rest of this entry »
Melodis Voice Dialer, from Melodis, works well enough, but unfortunately, it’s not enough. The app store features quite a few voice dialers, and this one does not stand out in any way. The free vlingo, for example, dials by contact name and will also search Google and Yahoo, among other functions.
Melodis’ voice recognition is accurate, although for best accuracy you should say the first and last name of the person you wish to call. If you want the phone to auto dial, you must say “Call” first.
You can vocally bring up people in your contact lists by name, by the kind of phone you wish to dial (mobile, home or office), by email, company name and other identifiers. Melodis says the reason its searches are so fast and accurate is that your contact information is indexed by its servers. That could be troubling to some people.
Hot Popcorn
I’m a fan of Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie review site, which is where Boctor’s Hot Popcorn derives its movie reviews. That’s one of the first places I check before heading out to see a movie. Now, all I have to do is reach into my pocket and pull out my iPhone (or iPod touch).
Stumble it!
I Love Katamari
Speed Fiend
iDicto Recorder
A Personal Assistant-Premium
Zoom Zoom
Melodis Voice Dialer
