Portent

What can you say about the works of Shakespeare? I wasn’t that keen at school, having Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice forced down my throat but over time have come to appreciate the cultural contribution and story telling that his plays brought.

For instance these words were first seen in his plays, though that doesn’t mean he invented them, just used them.

1. Eyeball
2. puking
3. skim milk
4. Obscene
5. Hot-Blooded
6. The Game is Afoot
7. Epileptic
8. Wormhole

None of which is relevant to this review! That said, it’s elegant, fast and lets you view all of the plays act by act. And it’s free. If you like Shakespeare and you have an iPhone then it is a no brainer. It was released in early September.

Link (to Shakespeare in the App Store)

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is a bigger review than usual, complete with animated gif which I’ve put together from screen dumps. I’ve been playing LootWars for a week or two now on my iPhone so feel qualified to give an in-depth review.

Its a Multi-player Mobile Game (MMG or MMO?) which is significant itself and not that expensive at just over £1. the object is to get to the top of the leader-boards by picking up scrap and bashing othr people to steal theirs. But you are limited to holding just 6 pieces of scrap.

Gameplay: After you run the App you get the first screen with rusty logo. Top right is your three important stats: A for attack total, D for defence and E for energy. the latter is important as it maxes out at 20, is used when you scavenge or fight and only recharges at the rate of 1 per 20 minutes of realtime. The game is server based but plays over 3G, Edge or Wifi.

At the start you loot (2nd icon) and when players trash your items after they beat you in a fight. The 2nd screen shows my player (portent by the way!) not looking too healthy because I’d just scavenged two low power items. the attack is the sum of the 6 items attack, defence is the total of the items defence. Scavenging gives you the odd good item but mostly crap so you have to beat people and swap your inferior items stuff for their better ones.

Fighting takes place in the arena. You can search for players matching a name (or part name so a matches a number) but you only so 24 or 25 maximum. It would be better if you could see more or there was a next button. If you put in a and search you get the first 24 that match a every time. Press refresh and you get a random selection. Once you pick someone- I picked ordieth who was a lot stronger than me (the colour codes show green weaker, yellow about the same and red stronger) a fight takes place which I won. Items always seem sorted by total value with weakest at the top. Ordieth had what I call a 80-93 spread. His weakest item was 80, strongest 93.

After I defeated him, I swapped my weak Sheriff badge (26) for his strong DVR box (93!) that must have pissed him! (There are over a 1,000 items with levels and other factors that are hinted at in the help. You can trash someones items rather than swap yours with theirs.

So it’s a simple albeit repetitive game that is quickly played. I tend to leave it for a few hours, do a few fights to recover what I’ve lost and hopefully get stronger. I get the feeling that the creators are tinkering with the game. Some people were dropping crappy items so they couldn’t be attacked. If you have 5 or 6 items you are vulnerable. 4 or less and you can’t be attacked. But they have stopped players dropping items temporarily.

I think that with a few minor tweaks they will have a better game; its not bad now but could be improved. I could think of a few different ways to improve it but they can’t make big changes suddenly. for instance you can visit the town to mingle and swap items but I’ve never seen that work. Some more info on the item colours would be good.

So my experience has been scavenge to get initial and replacement (for trashed ) items then fight to improve items. I’ll keep you updated on how this progresses. Currently I’m starting to find it a bit stale. But I think it will improve so I’m hanging in there. They do encourage feedback but haven’t responded or acknowledged mine. You can also visit the their website.

Graphics are very nice though are just window dressing. It works well even over edge and they’ve just changed servers which suggests they’ve got overwhelmed with players. It’s significant as one of the first wave of multi-player games for the iPhone. So if you like games and have an iPhone, give it a try! Rating 7 out of 10.

Link

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you want to show an iPhone application to impress your friends then this is it. Back in the early 1990s Solitaire tile games (aka Mahjong) were very popular and you could even get all sorts of tile sets for them. Now it’s here for the iPhone as both a commercial version and a free taster which I’m reviewing here.

This is in 3D and the iPhone touch controls let you rotate, slant and zoom in or out. It makes very nice use of the touch pad and works at all angles. Just touch both matching tiles and they fly upwards. That’s a clever bit of work to have the touch display work for tile selection at all viewing angles through as you’d suspect it can be easy to hit the wrong tile when you’re zoomed out.

The free game comes with 4 boards and 2 backgrounds. The commercial gives you 25 plus a layout editor and 5 backgrounds with more promised. Everyone I’ve shown has been impressed with this; you will. The only misgiving is that many people will probably be happy with just the free version- it’s that good! Released September 6th 2008.

Link (to the game in the App Store)

Popularity: 2% [?]

This application costs money (£3.99) but for me it’s worth it. If you are connected to your iPhone on a wifi network you can access files on the iPhone via a WedDav interface. This means for example that you can map a network drive in Windows or your Mac/Linux box to it and copy files by drag/drop. The screenshot shows it mapped on my PC with a gif file I copied there.

Other features include security via login+password (or disabled) and a quota set on the storage so you don’t take up too much room. Best of all is that files lets you view many file types including Office 2007 and graphics files like the gif file shown above. Copy Mp3 files and ‘view them’ plays them.

I like the clever use of transparency when you are viewing files. You get the full height of the display but touch the screen at the bottom/top and you can set a bookmark, move to the top/bottom of the file and of course delete it. You can also delete files from the list by the usual swipe to get the delete button up.

it’s a handy way to move files and doubly secure by only having access when the files app is running and if that’s not enough then having to login. It also (dare I say it) means I guess that a number of users might be able to swap files if they were all logged into the same wifi. You’d need a PC for that of course. It would be a nice touch to have iPhone <=> iPhone file moving as well (hint!) but that’s not currently supported. Recommended!

Link (to iPhone App Store)

Popularity: 2% [?]

This is a clever application that uses anamorphic perspective with a constant viewing angle (35-45 degrees) and appears to make the object appear to jump off the screen.

This technique draws the image at an angle which when viewed at the 35-45 degrees viewing angle gives it the 3d look. It’s clever stuff and the video looks brilliant. How easy it is to make it into an application is another matter!

Link

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tube Status Screenshot

I bought an iPhone six days ago and this was one of the first applications to go on it. It’s what you’d call a “Does what it says on the tin” application.

If you travel on the London Underground (The Tube as we call it) and have an iPhone this is a must. It shows you the current status of all the London Underground lines and by clicking on the icons you can see what the problem is. You could use the Safari browser on the iPhone and get this info from London Underground but this packages it up nicely. Highly recommended.

There’s a similar paid app but I haven’t tried that yet.

Link

(Note: Links go to UK Apple App Store)

Popularity: 2% [?]