iPhone Article Zone

MyTown

Location based social apps are all very 21st century. Trying to explain the point of an app like this to someone like my dad is a pointless endeavor. Even trying to explain the app to myself gives me a nervous tic. The genre was recently made popular by the app Foursquare, which lets you “check in” at different locations with your iPhone. This repetitive endeavor ultimately leads to you being declared the “mayor” of locations that you visit the most, while also letting you earn various badges telling you how awesome you are for going places. Does this perpetuate our generations feeling of needing constant approval for our actions? Sure does… but at least it makes a game out of it. It’s like learning typing with Typing of the Dead instead of at school.

Booyah takes Foursquare’s mayoral ownership out of the picture and just lets you go ahead and buy the places you go to. Like Monopoly, once you buy a property you collect rent on them. The more popular the place that you go to is, the more rent you can earn on it. For example, I was in Vegas this weekend and bought up some of the nicer hotels on the strip. Currently, my MGM Grand can earn $81,900 at a time while my CVS Pharmacy in Scottsdale only earns me $64,260 at a time. Along with popularity, rent total is based on the level of the structure you have standing there. My MGM is only level 3 right now, but with some upgrades it will not only look better, but will also earn me more. Rent accumulates on each property automatically until it gets to the max total ($81,900 for MGM). Once you reach the max, you have to manually go into the game to collect your rent.

In the meantime, just like in Foursquare, you have to check into places around you in order to buy them and to get points to gain levels. Each level you gain gives you the ability to perform a new action, such as buying another piece of property or giving you a new building to upgrade to. This point total also represents how worthy you are as a person. Each property has its own top 10 list, showing the most worthy of the individuals that own the property. My MGM Grand, although owned by me, is also owned by over 100 other people, most of which have more total points than me.

In the Las Vegas Airport, I explained this all to my dad, and he looked at me with a blank stare. “But dad, you buy up property and make a bunch of money to buy up other property and upgrade your buildings.” “Yes Chris, but why?”

I don’t even have the slightest clue.

In the 70’s, a theory began that stated that if you did something for 21 days in a row, it would become a habit. Given the manic nature of iPhone users, I’d say that this number should be around 4 days. In this case, Booyah has created an app that is just entertaining enough, right off the bat, to make me come back. Now, after a long weekend of exposure, I have to keep going. Do I get any joy out of it? Not really… but it would sure be a shame to waste all the progress I’ve made.

As for recommending this app, I have a few reservations. You will certainly be entertained for a period of time. The graphics are all bright and cheery, and it becomes really fun trying to build up your city. In the end though, there is absolutely no point to MyTown. There is no conclusion to a storyline and no moment where you would say, man, that was a challenge. In fact, the point system itself is somewhat bunk because the game lets you check into as many things as you want, as fast as you want. If you really really wanted to level up quickly, just say pick two places near you and check into them in quick succession. Hell, pick 10 places and alternate… there is no limit to checkins. I’m absolutely certain that some of the higher scores that I’ve seen were just from people doing fake check-ins.

Here’s my warning. Unless you are a genre fanatic, you will play this game and like it for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, but eventually you’ll start to feel like a bum and wonder why you spend so much time collecting rent in your fake town.

“Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski? The bums will always lose!”

iSamJackson

Let me set the record straight, soundboard apps are the devil. They started many moons ago with fart sounds and have since morphed into all sorts of succubus like horrors such as Snoop Dogg’s iFizzle (ok, this one’s slightly awesome), iDaft (also a bit awesome), and 50 Cent “Baby By Me” Sound Lab (not even the slightest bit awesome). Every tiny ounce of me wishes that these apps would just vanish without a trace, but then I run into apps like iSamJackson. In one brilliant swoop, my iPhone went from being a sad phone call machine to an entire speech replacement device. I’ll explain.

I sat down this morning to a cup of coffee, only to spill it on myself. A normal person might do something silly like opening their mouths, but being the app guru I am, I whipped out iSamJackson and hit, “F%&$ no, that s&$% did not just happen!”. Poignant… the perfect amount of emotion for a spilled morning cup of joe. The person I was with (we’ll just call her ‘Z’) says, “Why did you just use Samuel Jackson’s voice instead of your own?”. Without hesitation, I hit, “This is my normal voice!”. I was looking for something epic like, “Cause that’s how I talk! You ain’t never seen my movies!”, but alas, I was stuck with only normal Samuel Jackson quotes, not amazing Chappelle impersonations. With a look of disgust, Z says, “you shouldn’t do that anymore, it’s embarrassing.” How could someone accuse me of being embarrassing. Me?!?! I thought to myself, what would Sam Jackson do? Get mad! With a slight tap of my finger I hit, “I don’t recall asking for your f&$@ing opinion!”. Everything is gold when it’s said by Samuel Jackson. Everything.

Needless to say, there are a ton of different sound clips… one for almost any situation out there. Scratch that, there is a sound clip for every situation, bar none. On top of the fantastic soundboard, there is an awesome magic 8-ball tab where Samuel Jackson answers your most personal questions with brilliant responses like, “That is, without a doubt, the dumbest question ever.” and “F$%& yeah!”. Truly mind blowing. There is also a thumb scan tab that acts more like a “Please Sam, insult me” tab. He hurt my feelings one too many times today, so this section is dead to me. Dead I tell you.

As far as soundboard apps go, this one is probably in the top 3. It’s not quite as good as the brilliant iDaft, but it makes some of the rest look like Samuel Jackson’s mutilated carcass in Deep Blue Sea. At $2.99, the price is a bit steep, but for those of you who just can’t quite get riled up like Sam Jackson and need a spurt of rage, this one’s a gem.

iSaidWhat?! Hands-On

We recently got our hands on iSaidWhat?!, a smart new audio tool by Tapparatus. The app lets you record what your friends are saying, and then rearrange it for your amusement. Billed as a way to embarrass your buddies, iSaidWhat?! works surprisingly well when put to the test.

The first thing you’ll notice about iSaidWhat?! is the overall polish and cleanliness of design. It is an expertly crafted front-end. You can easily record anything and save it within the app. iSaidWhat?! shows you the waveform of your recorded sayings, and you can then zoom and cut select pieces all via a very simple interface.

Once you’ve extracted and compiled a variety of snippets, iSaidWhat has an arrange mode where you can choose from words or phrases within any of your recordings in order to construct a new saying. The goal is to string together funny new sentences at your friend’s expense, although you can use it to combine any sounds you’d like. Once you’ve created your masterpiece, you can then share it via a variety of ways, including Twitter and Facebook. There is also a script mode that lets you type up a message beforehand that you’d like someone to read while you record.

iSaidWhat?! operates rather seamlessly from recording to sharing. It is a bit too easy to accidentally lose a recorded message at first, but you soon get the hang of saving your sound bites immediately upon taking. For my testing purposes, I recorded some bits of an interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and pretty effortlessly rearranged it to have him proclaiming his love for Apple. Childish for sure, but fun nonetheless!

While iSaidWhat?! may be somewhat of a novelty tool, it delivers on everything it promises with a high level of quality. You can see it action via the screenshots and demo video below…

iSaidWhat?!

Category: Entertainment
Released: 2009-12-19
Price: $1.99

Voices

Voice morphing is becoming increasingly popular on the iPhone and iPod touch. With the built in microphone of the iPhone, IPhone 3G and 3GS, and now the iPod touch supporting mic input, developers are realizing there’s actually a market for mic-based applications. Yesterday, iPhone development studio Taptivate showed their hand with Voices. It wasn’t the normal app launch though, no, no. Far from it. The studio had partnered with both TapTapTap as their publisher, and MacHeist. Through something coined as a ‘tweet blast,’ Taptivate managed to create a huge buzz around Voices, and it’s currently sitting at number 14 in the iTunes Top Paid Apps chart after just 24 hours.

Following on from their award-winning conversion app, Convert .. TapTapTap add another string to their bow. This time though, it has nothing to do with mathematics. Ever wanted to morph your voice into different characters of varying hilarity? Voices takes your ordinary every-day voice and “tranforms” it into weird and wonderful one. Out of the box, the app comes bundled with 17 different voices for you to choose from. These include: Cyborg, Chipmunk, Exorcism, Dark Side, Vocoder, Cave, Guitar, Fun House, Vinyl, Helium, Reverse, Vintage, Megaphone, Canyon, Fan, Witness and Turtle. The app works just like a recorder, so you won’t find ‘Auto-Tuning’ technology here (I Am T-Pain for example), although one part of me kinda wished it did auto-tune.

Opening the app and you’ll be presented with that trademark sleek user interface we’ve all come accustomed to, from the likes of TapTapTap. Set out to a backdrop of a stage and red curtain, each of the voices included are displayed, with 9 on the first screen, and a further 9 on the next. To reach the other 9 voices you just swipe left to right – and visa-versa. To activate a voice just tap it. You’ll then see the stage is overcome by this old-type looking mic, ready for voice input. The only thing I didn’t like here was that recording starts immediately. As soon as the mic is extended to it’s fullest, the recording starts. I’d rather them of given an optional ’start on tap’ setting. Moving on ..

Once you’ve recorded your voice clip, and after conversion, Voices will play your clip back to you using this ‘tape-esque’ UI (it’s so nice!) so you can hear it in all its glory .. or in my case, not. From here you’ll have the option to play, rewind and fast forward the recording, as well save or delete your creation. Saving your recording will place it in .. your recordings panel. To open this panel, from the main voices screen, tap the little ‘tape’ icon labeled ‘Recordings’. Here’s were it gets interesting though. You can also share your clips with the world, either via Twitter, Facebook or Mail. To do this just tap ‘Share’ beside the recording you wish to share, and enter the required info. In the case of a tweet, the app will allow you to customize the tweet to your liking, before publishing – which I found crazy-great! Sometimes with these type of apps which allow tweets, they have these pre-defined non-editable tweets, and having the ability to edit these, really was welcomed.

Here’s a few recordings I made, and tweeted earlier:
http://voicesapp.com/1mxhyo / http://voicesapp.com/9qjfee

Summing up, as Voices is both gorgeously designed and offers a wide variety of voices, not to mention it’s very low introduction price of $0.99, it does seem to have struck a chord with the App Store crowd. Recording quality isn’t the best it could be, but considering the iPhone isn’t that good at recording anyway, it’s satisfactory. But it’s probably not the audio quality which will keep you coming back for more, if anything, it’s going to be Voices’ very beautiful and thought-out-to-the-last-detail UI.

MovieDNA

I’m a pretty big fan of movies, but I am plagued with a horrendous memory. Some would say that my bad memory comes from a lack of mental stimulation, but I sort of doubt that. I’m so convinced that my poor memory comes from my inordinate computer use. I mean seriously, why should I remember anything in the world when Wikipedia can remember it for me? I realize now that this is a bad thing… you know, I might need to remember something someday, but I have an iPhone, and as an iPhone user, I’m allowed to have a crutch. In the name of coolness of course.

So back to my love of movies… I mean, that’s what this is all about really. I often find myself in situations where I start talking about movies, only realizing that I don’t remember a single actor, actress, plot point, or any idea really of what is going on. It usually takes people prodding me a bit… “remember that one with Stallone? The one with John Lithgow? Directed by the guy that did Die Hard 2? The one where he was hanging off mountains?” “Oh, Cliffhanger, yeah, that was a good one.” Now thankfully in this great modern age of smart phones, I can just whip out my iDevice and look up anything. There are plenty of apps that do this very thing, but this one seems to encompass everything… and I mean everything.

MovieDNA is basically just a web app that compiles data from Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Yahoo!, and YouTube into one ultimate Frankenstein app. Type in the name of a movie, actor, or director and you’ll get a bevy of information that will just about blow your mind. To test the app out, I went ahead and typed in Office Space, because it just happens to be a movie I’ve seen a couple of (way too many) times. The information provided is very nicely laid out on the screen, giving me every little tidbit that I could every possibly need. It even gave me some great YouTube videos that I would never have seen otherwise.

I did run into the problem where the Rotten Tomatoes reviews didn’t pop in, but the problem is almost fixed/being fixed, so I’ll let them off the hook for that. My other complaint with the app has to be the color scheme, which is truly dreadful. The app, including the apps icon, encompass just about every shade of pink and purple possible. Truly awful.

Other than that though, the information provided by the app is really great. There are two versions of the app that you can get, a free and a paid version, but both offer the same great information, but the free one has advertisements built in to subsidize the cost. I’d definitely recommend the app, particularly the free version, to any and all movie fans. Just make sure that your macho movie appreciating friends don’t see your pink screen… that would be a disaster.

Run Pee Mobile

I got a phone call from my dad the other night telling me about his new favorite website, RunPee.com. When someone tells you that their new favorite site is called Run Pee, you start to wonder what the world is coning to. Being the savvy businessman that he is, he told me all about how I should find something like this on the internet so I can make millions of dollars. Somehow this devolved into an IPO offering and making sure that I pay my employees their 410k’s, but at its core, he was right, this is a brilliant idea. The prostate enlarging, bladder shrinking generation of baby boomers just can’t sit through a whole movie anymore, and it’s not because they don’t like movies… it’s because they have to pee! Let’s just say that it’s really not a shock to me the home rental services such as Netflix are becoming popular with the baby boomer generation getting older.

Well, fortunately for the generation, Hollywood, and Mr. AMC (what kind of last name is that?), the guys and gals at RunPee solved the middle age moviegoing problem. What they did was to create a website with all the new releases that will be in the movie theaters, complete with points during the movie that you can go to the restroom. Every movie has some kind of slow, inconsequential part, and RunPee knows it. For a while there, moviegoers would have to go to the website to find out when the golden moments were, but now, as with everything else in life, there is an app for that.

The Run Pee Mobile app does exactly what the website does, but there is a bit of brilliance to it that I will get to in a bit. The basic layout of the app is simple; there is a list of all the new/newish releases in the theaters to choose from, either categorized by title or release date. By clicking on the film, you get a new screen that shows the approximate times that each break in action will occur, complete with a piece of dialogue that is your cue to leave. What’s neat is that while you are on the way back from the “oh so necessary” bathroom break, you can click on the dialogue queue and the app will give you a plot summary of what happens in the 3-4 minutes to leave. The app even includes a stop watch so you can time your bathroom breaks accordingly.

The brilliance of the app, which I was talking about before, is its color scheme. The background is completely black, with unobtrusive yellow and white lettering. None of the colors in the scheme would bother other moviegoers, making this app the perfect companion for the movies. Go ahead and open it up, nobody will mind.

If I were to improve upon anything in the app, I would increase the sheer amount of movies offered. Looking at the list, there are pee times listed for almost every movie, but quite not all of them. I was thinking about seeing District 9 today, and to my dismay, no pee times! Maybe the movie is so good that there are no breaks, but I sort of doubt it. Don’t fret though, I’d say that 9 of 10 movies listed are completed.

For $0.99, do your bladder, and the guy/gal next to you, a favor and get Run Pee Mobile. Nobody likes to see you squirm around holding it… nobody.