PixPo Dogs App Forum Review by llofte. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

Do you like matching games and adorable dogs? If so, then PixPop Dogs [$0.99 - iTunes link] may be the game for you. This is jigsaw puzzle type game that is fun, addicting, competitive, and just plain cute!

Game Play

The objective of PixPop is simple – pop the tokens on the right by matching them with the big picture. Tapping on the big picture will place a green square around your contact point. If it matches a token, just tap the token and it pops away. Once all the tokens are popped, you are given a new picture. Pop as many tokens as possible before time runs out. What makes PixPop challenging is when there are patterned objects or backgrounds such as blankets, fences, and grass. When playing in competition mode, you can submit your name and score to the Worldwide Scoreboard, otherwise, your score is only submitted locally.

During game play, the tokens may temporarily change colors, representing different point values. A blue token is worth 25 points, orange is 100 points, and a glowing token adds an extra 300 points.

Tapping hints on the lower left corner will move the green token to the spot that matches the bottom token. Use hints wisely, as you are only given 5 per game.

On the upper right of the screen next to your score, there is a brightness button. Tapping this will brighten the photo which helps with the darker areas of the picture where it’s hard to see details.

Menu/Options

Setup – There are two modes of play, Competition and Zen. In Competition Mode, everything is fixed and you can submit your score to the Worldwide Scoreboard. In Zen Mode, you can adjust the time (10s-eternity), matches per picture (3-20), hints per game (1-20), and square size (50-80).

Tips – This is where you learn how to play and are provided with contact information.

Credits – Here is where Spinapse gives credit to those who provided the images for PixPop Dogs.

Scores – There are 3 scoreboards, Latest Wordwide (today’s scores), All Time Wordwide (I’m #21 =D), and Local.

More – This is where you can find more apps from Spinapse with links to the App Store.

Conclusion

PixPop Dogs is a great game for kids and adults alike. If cute and adorable doggies isn’t your cup of tea, Spinapse also offers PixPop Extreme Sports, PixPop Around the World, PixPop Art, and PixPop Cats. So pick your favorite category, get to poppin’, and let us know what you think!

Pros

• Fun and addicting
• Great photos
• Good for both kids and adults
• Developers periodically update the app with more photos

Cons

• Can’t think of any!

TiPb Review Ranking

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App Review: PixPop Dogs

IM+ Forum Review by llofte. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

IM+ is an IM client with push notification support for 10 networks, including Twitter. I use AIM, Facebook, and Twitter, so these are the only networks that influence this review.

Design and Use

The design of IM+ is nice and intuitive. The bottom toolbar has tabs for contacts, inbox, favorites, status, and more. Under the contacts tab you will find find a list of your contacts organized by account, group name, or no group (selected in settings). If no group organization is chosen, then your contact list will by organized alphabetically based on availability. So, the top of your list will show available contacts, then idle or away contacts. At the bottom, offline contacts are treated as a separate group. There is an option to have offline contacts hidden.

Tapping a contact will open a chat window with that contact. If there is a previous conversation stored on IM+, then the window will include that conversation.

To the right of of every contact, there is an “i” to find more information. Tapping this will display the status of the contact, their user ID, as well as the ability to add to favorites, rename, and delete (provided that the IM service associated with the contact allows).

The inbox contains all current and past conversations. If a twitter account is enabled, then @replies and direct messages are treated as their own separate conversations. It is not possible to have twitter conversations treated as a conversation in IM+; only incoming messages are shown in the @reply and DM threads. Conversations can be easily deleted from the inbox with a tap of the edit button.

When writing a message, there is a smiley face on the left and a keyboard on the right of the text field. Tapping the smiley gives a list of symbols (mostly smileys) that you can insert into the message. Be careful with these though, if the receiving client doesn’t recognize a symbol, it will be displayed in text form, or worse, a smiley face with some symbols attached.

Tapping the keyboard symbol collapses the keyboard and the smiley face converts to an upload symbol. From here you can send your location, a picture, or voice message. You have to be careful with this too because once you make a choice, it sends without confirmation. This is a major problem, in my opinion. I attempted to send a DM tweet with my location and IM+ ignored the text and sent my location as a public tweet! I’m just glad I was at Starbucks and not my house! This also means that text cannot be included with any media type. All media gets sent as a link. Pictures and voice memos are hosted by IM+ and GPS locations send a link to GPSed.com. It would be nice if the link launched Google maps on an iPhone so the recipient could quickly get directions, but it doesn’t.

All links are opened in the built-in browser of IM+. This browser is very cool as it not only allows for reading and navigating through websites provided by links, but you can use it to visit any site by typing the web address into the text field at the top. This is very convenient for those times someone starts an IM conversation when browsing Safari. Just copy the URL before exiting Safari, launch IM+, paste the URL into the browser and quickly tab between conversation and browser. When your conversation is over, just tap the globe at the upper right of the browser to open the current page in Safari. Awesome.

Next is the favorites tab. This is simply a list of contacts that have been marked as favorites. You can add or delete contacts from this list and see more information about them, just as in the contact list.

The status tab is where you can choose your status message (for supporting networks). There are 6 options, Online, On iPhone with IM+, I am here (with link to GPS location), Away, Invisible, and Offline. To add a custom status message or edit the pre-existing ones, just tap edit.

The more tab gives access to your accounts, settings, and in-app web browser.

Twitter

IM+ is not intended to be used as a primary Twitter client, but makes for a great secondary client. It’s convenient to be able to access twitter while holding an IM conversation without having to go back and forth between two apps. Reading tweets on IM+ goes against the conventional style of most recent on top, but this doesn’t bother me because I find uniformity within an app to be important and it doesn’t make sense for normal IM to read like Twitter.

What makes Twitter so great on IM+ is of course push notification. All DMs and @mentions get pushed within 4 minutes of being sent. Ideally, they would arrive faster, but 4 minutes isn’t too bad. The problem with Twitter push on IM+ is that there is no way to choose what you want pushed. It is also a little glitchy and randomly pushes tweets from your timeline that aren’t directed at you. It’s not horribly intrusive as I’ve probably only had at most 5 in a day get through, but it needs to be fixed.

Conclusion

IM+ is very well designed. Although the implemenation of Twitter push is not perfect, it’s a decent first attempt and I trust it will only get better with updates. The advantage of using IM+ is that you can use twitter, hold multiple IM conversations, and browse the web all within one application. At $9.99, IM+ is not cheap, but competive with Beejive. Version 3.2 has been submitted and is in review with Apple, so SHAPE Services has decided to lower the price to $4.99 until release; so if IM+ is something you’re interested in, snatch it up quick and let us know what you think!

Pros

• Push notification for Twitter
• Support for 10 networks
• Basic IM push is flawless
• In-app web browser
• Favorites

Cons

• Twitter push
• Cannot name accounts
• Not all avatars show
• Only one twitter account is supported
• GPS links don’t launch google maps

TiPb Review Rating

IM+ is available for $4.99 from the iTunes App Store.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: IM+ with Push for iPhone

(Peggle Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

With all the talk recently about Peggle, I was surprised that it hasn’t been reviewed (although it did get a “quick app” and a pick of the week) so I thought I would download and give it a try. And, well, Peggle has managed to crack my “regular game rotation” that currently consists of only a few other games.

Let me start by saying that as Peggle loads, they took a page from The Sims and actually make you want to read the loading messages.

Peggle is a game based on skill and luck, similar to Pachinko. Your goal is to shoot balls into a pachinko-style board with “pegs”, trying to remove all the orange pegs and blocks within a certain number of shots. You can have various power up abilities, lucky shots or skill shots increase your score, and you can earn extra balls by “saving” your ball as it falls or by scoring a certain number of points within a shot. The enjoyment on Peggle comes from two main factors in my mind – the various power up abilities and the variety of boards.

If you start playing in adventure mode, you are led through the game by ten “masters”, each of whom has a different power up ability. As they guide you through the game, they teach you the details and the best ways to use their abilities. Once you finish with them, you go back through the same levels with the option of choosing the power up ability you want for each board.

The second biggest positive from the game is the variety of boards. You start off with a simple pachinko style board, but they gradually become more and more complex – with bumpers, with moving parts, with time warps, etc. Each level has specific characteristics that make it challenging, so no two levels will be played the same way. As your progress through the adventure mode, you get various trophies to add to your collection (I am currently running through them the second time in “Master” mode).

There are other game modes as well. Quick play lets you choose a level to play by itself. Challenge mode lets you play a specific levle with a specific challenge (beat a certain number of points, more orange pegs than normal, etc). And dual mode is a two play battle where you play on the same board against either the computer or a friend. Unfortunately, the dual mode is a “pass the iPhone” multiplayer so you can’t play via wifi. I was also hoping to see a direct battle where you are both shooting balls at the same time (and can interfere with each other) but that doesn’t happen.

Let me just add, when you finish a level, they play Ode to Joy. There nothing quite like having that blast from your iPhone to actually make you feel like you have accomplished something! The game can be replayed multiple time because the placement of the orange pegs (as well as the various power-up and other pegs) are randomized so your strategy can vary even when replaying the same level!

Conclusion

All in all, this is really a great game. Aside from the few minor wishes I had for multiplayer, I could find nothing wrong with this game, and it has “earned” a spot on my permanent rotation of games. At $4.99, the price isn’t cheap, but it is well worth it for a game that can be played over and over.

Pros:

• Good puzzle/arcade game
• Involves strategy and luck
• Lots of replay-ability
• Has a two player mode
• Multiple play modes

Cons

• Two player mode is only “pass the iPhone”, no wifi

TiPb Review Rating

[Peggle is available for $4.99 via the iTunes App Store]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: Peggle for iPhone

Zen Jar looks like an interesting experiment in social networking. You write something, send it off into the iPhone inter-ether, and see what karma — good or bad — other users ascribe to it. Personally, I prefer the direct bludgeoning I take for ill-conceived comments on Twitter, but for those tiring of the same-old micro-blogging, status-updating experience, Zen Jar is certainly an alternative. It comes in Lite (Free – iTunes link) and Paid ($0.99 – iTunes link), and you can check out Bela’s review in our iPhone Apps & Games forum for more.

If you give it a whirl, let us know how your karma turns out — mellow harshened, or child-like sense of wonder restored?

Namaste!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: Zen Jar Karmic Social Networking for iPhone

Twittelator Pro Forum Review by llofte. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

Twittelator Pro is a twitter client with support for multiple accounts. It is beautifully designed and feature packed to make your mobile twitter experience quick and enjoyable. It would take a book to review each and every feature of Twittelator Pro, so I will pick what I consider the highlights and direct you to Twittelator’s full feature list for more.

General Interface

Twittelator Pro has 3 different themes to chose from: Gradient, Dove, and Raven. Here are some screenshots demonstrating all three.

Big Stone Phone claims that each theme is ideal for different lighting conditions: Gradient for indoors, Dove for outdoors, and Raven for night.

The Tab Bar at the bottom has what you’d expect from any Twitter application: Friends, Mentions, Messages, Settings, and More. However, Twittelator distinguishes itself by making it customizable. When in the More tab, hit edit and you can now drag any item to any of the four locations next to “More”.

Reading Tweets

I absolutely adore the experience of reading tweets with Twittelator Pro. The above photo (stolen from Twittelator’s website) shows how much info is included with each tweet. Not shown in the picture, however, is that you can have both the username and real name of the tweeter displayed (as seen in my screenshots). This is great for people like me who want to see real names but are terrible at remembering usernames.

Tapping a user’s avatar brings you to their profile. If there were any other users mentioned in the tweet, then you will be asked who’s profile you want to view. The profile interface includes the typical info, including the option to follow or stop following. There is also a magnifying glass to quickly search for other screen names and what looks like a price tag to bookmark the user.

Tapping a username brings up a list of options for that tweet: reply, private, re-tweet, email tweet, copy tweet, favorite tweet, or copy link to tweet (more on copying later). You can save a tweet by tapping and holding for 2 seconds.

If there is a #hashtag or hyperlink included in a tweet, tapping the paperclip will take you to the the hash feed or website. When viewing a website, you can copy the link (again, more on this later). If there is a photo attached (with yFrog, Pikchur, TwitPic, MobyPicture, or twitgoo) there will be a thumbnail of it to the right. Tapping it will allow you to view it. When viewing an image, there is a little two-way arrow icon at the upper right which toggles between filling your screen vertically or horizontally. It’s nice to be able to view photos in full screen even if the photo wasn’t taken with an iPhone. Tapping on the photo will give an option to save it to your camera roll.

If there is a bubble around the time since the tweet was tweeted, then this indicates a conversation. Tapping the bubble will allow you to read the chain of replies. If there is not a bubble, then tapping the time opens a new @ reply to the tweeter.

Writing Tweets

Writing a tweet is an experience of its own with Twittelator Pro. There are many options, characters, and features that make writing tweets fast, easy, and fun. Twittelator does support landscape keyboard (and can be disabled from settings).

If you had previously copied a link or tweet, you can paste it into your tweet by tapping the bottle of glue. Even if you’ve exited the application, Twittelator Pro will remember what you have copied. To add a photo, tap the camera. Tapping the drop pin will add link to Google maps of your current location. Unfortunately, opening such a link will not launch the native Google maps application on the iPhone.

Underneath the current character count, you can tap on the icons to bring up 8 pages of characters. The characters are viewable with other twitter clients as well as on the web. Very cool.

At the upper right of the New Tweet screen, there is a button called “@friends”. Here you find a scrolling list of who you are following. Scroll to who you want to @mention, tap +, and Twittelator adds them to your tweet. I think this is a great feature, but feel as though it can be better. I only follow 93 people, and it can take awhile to scroll through the list. I can’t imagine if I was following 300+ users. I think something like Contacts with the alphabet on the side would be better. Ideally, I’d like to see an autofill feature.

Inside the tweet bubble, there is a # on the bottom right and two arrows facing each other on the bottom left. Tapping # will provide a scrolling list of all the #hashtags you have used before. Tapping the arrows will shrink your tweet (including URLS) with common abbreviations. This is nice for those situations when your tweet is 10 characters or so over the limit.

One of the coolest things I found about Twittelator Pro is the ability to tweet from Safari. First you must go into Twittelator’s settings and tap “Add Safari Bookmarklet”. This leads you to a website with the instructions for setting up this feature. It’s very simple – just save the page as a bookmark, then edit it by deleting the beginning of the URL. Once set up, just open the bookmark with Safari and it will launch Twittelator Pro with the URL of the website you were viewing added to a new tweet. Awesome!

Pressing Send does not immediately send your tweet. You are given the option to send, or save as draft. I do not like this, but luckily there is an option to disable it! If disabled, you must hit cancel to get the option to save the tweet. Twittelator Pro allows you to save as many drafts as you want. This is awesome for those times you don’t have reception, want to log a quick thought, or for iPod Touch users. If you have any saved drafts, you will see “tap for drafts” under “New Tweet”, so tapping here gives access to your drafts.

More

There is much more you can do with Twittelator Pro. Some of the highlights are:

• create subgroups
• view tweets of users you have bookmarked
• access saved tweets
• see just your tweets
• delete your tweets/messages
• play mp3 and video within Twittelator Pro
• search nearby tweets
• switch between accounts while creating a new tweet

Conclusion

Twittelator Pro is the best iPhone twitter client I have used. It is clear that the the developers put a lot of thought and effort into this app with its nice interface and many features. At $4.99, Twittelator Pro isn’t the cheapest client available, but it is worth every penny.

Pros

• Multiple accounts
• Auto-refresh
• Full-featured
• View conversations
• Link a page from Safari directly as a tweet (via bookmarklet)
• Copy/paste tweets and links

Cons

• GPS links do not launch Google maps

TiPb Review Rating

Twittelator Pro is available for $4.99 from the iTunes App Store.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: Twittelator Pro Twitter Client for iPhone

Math Ref Forum Review by llofte. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

Math Ref is what its name implies – a math reference app. It includes formulas, tips, and examples from many areas of mathematics. Math Ref has the potential to be a very helpful tool once some errors are fixed and the organization becomes more intuitive.

General

Upon launching Math Ref, you are given a list of topics (described in more detail later). Tapping on a topic will give a list of sub-topics. Choosing one of these sub-topics will provide a page of definitions, formulas, figures, and equations relevant to the chosen topic. Tapping a definition, formula, figure, or equation will usually give more information about it. Many times this information is some historical background about the topic, which I think is great. The following screenshots show the sequence of Topics > Algebra > Exponential & Logs > Special Element 1.

This brings me to my first “complaint”. The description should technically say: “It is also important to note that any nonzero number raised to the power 0 is equal to 1.” However, I’m willing to agree that I’m just being picky.

Under each topic, there is also an option to view examples. These examples are generally written very well and do a good job of describing the steps that are taken. Just as with formulas, you can tap an example to find out more about it. Here’s the screenshots of a derivative example and it’s description.

Topics and Organization

Math Ref covers the following areas of mathematics:

• Algebra - addition & multiplication, exponential & logs, formulas, quadratic equation
• Geometry - lines, shapes (2D/3D), surfaces
• Trigonometry - functions, Pythagorean & ratio identity, laws of sines & cosines, double angle identities, half angle identities, sum & difference identities, composite identities, unit circle
• Linear Algebra - definition, addition & multiplication, properties, determinant, 2D transforms, eigenvectors
• Series & Sequences - definitions, properties, sums of powers, geometric, harmonic, alternating, telescoping, power, binomial, binomial coefficients, functions, taylor, Laurent
• Differentiation - definitions, methods, table of derivatives
• Integration - definition, properties, methods, numerical
• Table of Integrals - polynomial, trigonometric, inverse trigonometric, hyperbolic trigonometric, exponential & logarithmic
• Vector Calculus - definitions, dot product, cross product, coordinate conversions, differentials, gradient, divergence, curl
• Differential Equations - linear, separable, homogeneous, inhomogeneous, exact, Bernoulli, real repeated & complex, undermined coefficients, reduction of order
• Discrete - propositions, quantifiers, gates, sets, relations, permutations & combinations, induction

The next organization style that I don’t like is that lines are grouped under Geometry. I have not heard of a single geometry course that teaches how to find equations of lines. This is taught in algebra classes, and so lines should be in the Algebra topic.

The last thing about the layout I find disappointing is the fact that landscape mode generally doesn’t make a difference. It would be nice if landscape mode took advantage of the wider screen and increased the text size. Here’s a screenshot to show what I mean.

Errors/Confusion

I found a couple errors in MathRef and consider this terribly inexcusable. Users need to be able to trust that apps like this are actually providing them with accurate information. I’m concerned that there may be other errors that I did not notice.

• Under Discrete > Relations, you can find the definitions to surjective and injective. They are reversed! The definition they provide for surjective is actually the definition for injective. However, when you tap on surjective for more information, you are given the correct definition. The situation is similar for injective. Very confusing!
• Under Linear Algebra > Addition & Multiplication, the definition of matrix multiplication is technically correct, but incredibly vague and incomplete. When tapping for more information, it tells you that the size of the matrices are crucial, but never teaches what size matrices need to be when multiplying them. Matrix multiplication is defined by Math Ref as multiplying the columns of the first matrix with the rows of the second – but how does one multiply rows and columns and where does the answer go in the resulting matrix? All of this needs to be explained.
• Under Differentiation > Table of Derivates, the notation is confusing and simply incorrect. (d/dx) should be used instead of (dy/dx).
• Under Geometry > Shapes (2D/3D) the definitions and figures for the areas of regular polygons do not label what a is. Likely a student will remember that a represents the distance to the center, but there are two different distances with regular polygons – which one do we use?

Conclusion

Although my review has been primarily negative, I DO think this is a wonderful app. The things that are correct are done very well and the examples are helpful. I think after a few updates, Math Ref will be awesome. However, because of the errors and unintuitive & inefficient organization, I give Math Ref 3 out of 5 stars. (Fixing the errors alone will bring the score up to 4).

Pros

• Many examples with well written explanations
• Covers many areas of mathematics
• Lots of information

Cons

• Several errors or confusing definitions
• Landscape is generally the same format as portrait
• Some unintuitive and inefficient organization

TiPb Review Rating

Math Ref is available for $0.99 from the iTunes App Store.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: Math Ref for iPhone

(Photogene Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

Photogene is an iPhone “touch up” utlity that can be used to touch up or enhance photos you take with your iPhone.

First, what Photogene isn’t. It isn’t simply a series of filters that you can apply to photos. There are lots of apps out there that can apply a huge range of filters (oil painting, cartoon, black and white, sepia, posterize, etc). I have reviewed a couple of them. This app does have a few filters, but it is more about touching up photos (fine-tuning them, if you will) rather than simply applying a filter to make it “art”.

When you start the app, you can choose to take a new photo, edit an existing phot, or continue a previous session. This last option is particularly nice, it means the app “remembers” where you were and what you were doing. If you get interrupted, you don’t need to start over. One cool little thing is when you start the app, a “tip of the week” appears about taking photos with the iPhone. Normally I don’t like tips that appear like this, but I like it here because the tip is specific to using the iPhone camera (not just a general photography tip).

I was using a general photo of some mosquito cages when testing this app. The touch up features include a crop option, rotate option, three filters, color adjust, symbols, and frames. When you finish with your editing, you can save the photo or start over (take a new photo or edit a new photo). There is an undo button to undo the last edit, but there isn’t a complete “reset” button to undo all adjustments. I would like to see that in a future release. So let’s talk about the touch up features.

With the crop feature, you can choose to crop it with a specific ratio (3:4, 9:16, etc). The area that will be cropped appears highlighted on the picture, and you can resize it or move it around. One nice thing is that as your resizing the crop, you can see the pixel size that the new image will be – very useful. You can’t do a free-form crop however.

The rotate allows you to rotate the picture by 90% or flip the picture on an axis. If your image is at an angle, you can also do some slight angle adjustments to make it level.

The app comes with three filters – sharpen, pencil, and effect (which includes sepia, night vision, or infrared (heat vision). With sharpen and pencil, you can adjust the level of effect as well. Pencil is sort of cool, making your picture look like a pencil drawing. But as I said, this app isn’t about having 30 filters – it is mostly about touching up photos to make them as nice as possible.

Next we move onto color adjustment. Here, you can see the color histogram and either adjust it manually or automatically for the best color image. You can also adjust the exposure, contrast, saturation, color temperature, as the actual RGB levels. These are, in my opinion, the best features of this app because this is the area that really helps you touch up a picture to optimal quality.

You can add symbols like stars, word ballons (with text), arrows – about 13 symbols in all. These aren’t anything really that help the picture, but they can make a picture a little more entertaining.

Lastly, you can add a frame – ranging from a “blurred” frame that doesn’t have a distinct edge to more tradition picture frames to a stamp border or photo album “taped on the corners” frame. There are about 15 frames in all to choose from.

Working on a couple sample pictures, I was able to make some nice adjustments and really make some of the pictures shine. You are still working within the limitation of the iPhone camera, so pictures that are outdoors or in bright light are going to be the best, but you can really enhance some pictures that you might have throught were lost. The features like frames and symbols aren’t really that necessary, and I would have preferred more filters instead of having those, but they can be fun to add to some pictures.

Pros:

• Touch up iPhone pictures to make them shine

Cons:

• Some features don’t really add anything,
• no ability to completely reset a picture

All in all, this is a good, all around photo touch up tool for the iPhone. Rather than just rely on applying filters, you can make some manual adjustments to thingsl ike saturation and exposure to try to bring out the best in your pictures. Some of the effects don’t really add anything to the picture quality, but they might be fun to include in some pictures. There is no way to remove all the touchups at one, however – you have to reset each feature individually. But the color adjust can really make a picture shine. The app is $2.99, so the price is great if you use the iPhone camera a lot. Four and a half out of five stars.

TiPb Forum Review Rating

[http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=309327900&mt=8">Photogene is available for $2.99 via the iTunes App Store]

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App Review: Photogene Photo Enhancer for iPhone

(MLB At Bat 2009 Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

Okay, I admit it, I am a die hard baseball fan. One of the first apps I bought last year was MLB At Bat, and when I heard it was coming out again, after a brief period of annoyance, I decided to purchase it again.

On a side note, I expect to see many more subscription based or “partial” purchase based apps with the new pricing methods in the app store. I don’t think it bodes well.

But anyway, I decided to get the app when I saw that this year it included the MLB Audio – radio broadcasts of the games. As a bonus, you get to choose the stream to listen to!

So how does it stack up?

I must say, very well.

When you start the app, you are presented with a screen showing the days games. The current score and inning are listed, and if you click on a game, you get a short highlight summary at the bottom of the screen (how many outs, who is pitching and batting, on base, etc). You can scroll through the various games. When a game is highlighted, you can click on “audio” and choose from either of the teams radio stream to listen to the game. Unfortunately, you can’t have it in the background (curse you iPhone) so you need to stay in the application in order to listen to the stream. If you click the blue arrow, you are taken to what I call the “game” menu.

The game menu is broken down into a variety of screens. The first one, gameday, shows you the current batter, pitch by pitch (with location) action of what is going on. You can also see the fielding situation (including dimensions for each stadium), the box score, the game summary, and of course video highlights (just like last year) by selecting the various tabs at the bottom. The video highlights are supposed to be better quality this year, but I always look at them when I am connected via wifi, so I have no problem with the quality. I wish they had more highlights to choose from (it seems that they are moslty focused on big hits). The video is not HD quality or like watching a movie, but it certainly is okay to watch for a ten-second highlight.

Back on the main screen, there is an additional button for “extras”. With Extras, you can look at additional MLB videos (like “A look at the ballparks of the last decade” and fantasy updates”). You can also look at the up to date standings, legal information, or be taken to the MLB.com website in safari. I wish they have other information like leaderboards, player stats, matchup information. It is all available at MLB.com, but I would think it would be easy to have it in the app itself (especially since if you leave the app, the audio stream is lost).

Out of curiosity, I tried watching the game-day play by play, watching a game on TV, and listening on the radio, just to see how it synced up. The radio had the longest lab, the TV was the fastest, but evne then it was only about one pitch behind.

Pros:

• Audio!
• Gameday effects are nice,
• lots of options for “in game” status

Cons:

• Lacking some basic statistical information,
• some video highlights seem to be sparse (for some teams)

Conclusion

All in all, for baseball fans on the road, this is almost a must-have app. The price ($9.99) is not cheap, but it is very reasonable compared to what they charge for Gameday audio online. I wish they have video highlights for every half inning or so, rather than just having (at times) one or two per game. I also wish they have more reference and statistical information. But this is a great app for following a team when you are on the road – just make sure you have your car charger! Most of the stuff I found lacking were things that don’t really detract from the app, but rather things that would put the app over the top.

TiPb Forum Review Rating

[MLB At Bat 2009 is available via the iTunes App Store]

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App Review: MLB At Bat 2009 for iPhone

ReaddleDocs Forum Review by msbaylor. (Visit the thread for video and more pics. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!)

ReaddleDocs is a document viewer that basically covers all the ways of getting the document onto you iPhone – so there is no way that you cannot have your documents on hand.

When you purchase ReaddleDocs, you also receive 512MB of storage space on their server. This allows you to upload any documents to the server via any browser and then sync them with you iPhone via any data connection (EDGE/3G/WIFI).

When you tap on the “Online” tab, you select the server you want to connect to and then you have the ability to sync with the server so that any new documents that you have retrieved via the iPhone will backup to your server and vice versa.

Besides using your Readdle Storage space, you can also connect to your MobileMe iDisk or connect to a WebDAV enabled server.

A second way of getting documents onto your iPhone is by forwarding your attached document in an e-mail to you ReaddleDocs e-mail address (given to you when you create your online account). Then, again, you sync you iPhone with your account.

A third way, is to use the built-in browser and navigate to a document then tap on a button to download the document to your iPhone.

A fourth and final way is to transfer the documents from your computer to your iPhone via WiFi.

When viewing your documents, you can edit them – delete, move, create folders, rename folders, rename documents, mail documents, and add a document to a zip achieve.

All documents that can normally be viewed on the iPhone can be viewed via this application as well.

I really like the icons that it uses to represent the type of file (red icon for pdf files, blue icon to doc files, etc.)

Interface

Within the app you can view all your documents, view your online documents (through whichever server,) use the browser, view recently opened files and adjust settings for the app.

I think for the most part those screen are self-explanatory.

I also like the document “reader” interface. When viewing files such as *.doc, *.rtf, the viewer is simple – you can scroll through your document like you would in the iPhone document viewer, however, you have and “add” button at the top, which allows you to insert bookmarks for that document. I find this incredibly convenient when reading a large document or e-book. The toolbar at the bottom of the screen allows you to view and edit bookmarks, e-mail the document, scroll through a document quickly using the slider and a full screen button.

If you turn the iPhone to the landscape position, it automatically goes to full-screen and rotates the document accordingly.

When viewing an *.xls document, you have all the same features as above. At the top of the document, you can change between the sheets. You might also notice that when switching between sheets, arrows will appear at the bottom of the screen. These arrows are much like the arrows you would use in the browser.

When viewing images, you can view them much like you would in your photo reel, just tap the arrows to move through the pictures within that folder. You can also mail the documents via this image viewer.

Besides viewing and retrieving documents, you can also view the device photos (which might prove a faster way of delete picture on your iPhone if you have to do it that way.)

Settings

In the setting screen, you have the ability to view or hide the “device photos” folder, setup mail settings – mail from and mail signature; allow WiFi network drive and apply username and password; several different viewing options including “view HTML as book”; you can also enable a passcode lock; and setup the document encoding.

Issues Encountered

There is no way to move the images to your iPhone photo reel or set as wallpaper functions, while the picture is on my iPhone in a sense, I cannot actually do anything with it unless I email it to myself and do it that way. I don’t always have a data connection when I am traveling so it would be nice to move the images over to do what I wish with them. When viewing the a PowerPoint document, the slides seems to form one large “page” (see screen shot).

Conclusion

In my opinion the Pros out weigh the Cons and the price tag of $9.99 is completely worth it. To have the ability of getting my document on my hand held and having them at my finger tips is worth it. I was on a film set when I was asked to operate a Sony F900 camera. Luckily, I was able to go to a website using the browser interface and download the manual on my iPhone and had the ability to quickly skim through it and figure out how to use the camera.

Pros

• Multiple ways of retrieving documents onto your iPhone
• 512MB of server storage
• nice document viewer
• document logos make finding documents easier
• Ability to sync iPhone with server & vice versa
• Book marking in documents

Cons

• In doc viewer, tapping bottom of screen makes doc auto scroll, can be annoying at times
• Can’t handle large documents (over about 8MB)
• Viewing *.xls (or of the like) documents doesn’t always format correctly
• Viewing *.ppt (or of the like) format into one long page

TiPb Review Rating

[ReaddleDocs is available for $9.99 from the iTunes App Store.]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: ReaddleDocs for iPhone

Nintaii Forum Review by llofte. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

The Japanese term ‘nintai’ means “patience,” “perseverance,” or “endurance” – all three of these attributes will be needed to play the puzzle game Nintaii. The objective of Nintaii is simple: roll a rectangular block through the board activating switches and going around obstacles in order to deposit the block through the square hole at the end.

Game Play

The Nintaii game board is a maze-like structure built from squares tiles. Your block can be rolled along it’s rectangular sides or to a standing position on its square sides. The challenge is to strategically manipulate the block through the board. There are obstacles, switches, and arrows to hinder and/or help you along the way. In order to activate a switch or arrow, the block must be standing on a square side, as if to be putting down all of it’s weight.

Obstacles/Switches – Throughout each level, you will encounter red blocks in the middle of the course. Activating a switch will move these obstacles up or down. Any given switch may control one or more obstacles, causing some obstacles to go up and others down. As the levels become more difficult, the switches become more complicated.

Arrows – Some squares on the board have an arrow. Standing the block on one will immediately push it to the tile that the arrow is pointing to. Sometimes this helps you position the block to your advantage, other times it makes positioning more difficult.

To complete a level, you must drop the block into the hole. The iPhone vibrates when you do. (There is an option to turn off vibration).

Controls

The controls of Nintaii are simple. Just swipe your finger up, down, left, or right to move the block accordingly. There is also an option to use tilt controls, which are intuitive. If you use tilt controls, you can set them to be continuous or to reset after each move. When set on continuous, if you tilt (for example) left, the block will keep rolling left until you stop tilting. Otherwise, you must tilt left each time you want to roll left. The tilt angle can be changed from settings.

To survey the level, swipe with two fingers or select “Scroll Mode” from the menu. In scroll mode, you only need to use one finger to move around. “Scroll Mode” scrolls through the level much faster than with two fingers. I find two fingers to be too slow; It reminds me of using a mouse set on a very slow speed (i.e., annoying). Another thing I find slightly frustrating is that your block must always be in the center of the screen. You cannot scroll to a different view and move your block while in that view. Many times I have changed my view so I could watch the obstacles move when I landed on a switch, only to have the view change when I moved the block.

Menu/Settings

The choices from the main menu are: Play, Settings, Select Level, Instructions, and About. Play, Instructions, and About are self explanatory. Within Settings you can disable/enable vibration, tilt controls, background music, and tutorials as well as set your background theme to Retro or Modern and set the tilt angle. The attached files compare the two themes.

I played with tutorials enabled but never saw anything other than the following message at the beginning of each level:

The Select Level option allows you to jump to any of the 100 levels regardless if you have beaten it or not. Levels you have completed will have a green check mark, and levels you haven’t will have a red minus sign. HOWEVER, it isn’t initially correct. This screenshot shows what it looked like for me before I engaged in any game play.

As I progressed through levels, check marks appropriately appeared, but it still shows that I’ve completed many more levels than I have.

Conclusion

If you love puzzle games, Nintaii is a must have! Other than the minor issues I mentioned, this game is well polished and will provide hours of fun. Even the background music is calm and relaxing. The concept is simple, the controls are easy, and there are 100 levels of block rolling fun. Nintaii is currently at an introductory price of $0.99, so go snatch it up!

PROS

• Simple Concept
• Easy controls
• 100 levels

CONS

• Two-finger scrolling is slow
• Level completion info is incorrect
• Cannot move block from any view

TiPb Review Rating

Nintaii is available for $0.99 from the iTunes App Store.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: Nintaii for iPhone