Wibbly

I’ve filled my iPhone with apps: time to prune. Let’s evaluate, starting with the apps I use most often: Twitterrific ★★★★★ is an application for the Twitter messaging system. Twitter is useful for letting people know what you are doing or thinking more immediately than a weblog. As an example you can see my last three “tweets” on the sidebar of this weblog. I follow friends, newsfeeds and interesting people such as Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Jonathan Ross and Robert Llewellyn. Other such apps are available but this does all I need. Twitterrific caches messages so it’s useful to sync before going out of signal range, for your reading pleasure in the wilderness. Twitterfon ★★★★ attractive Twitter client with small clear font. Twitterfon does everything from trends to nearby tweets in a logical way. I was using Twitterfon as my primary Twitter app now although now it has started showing adverts so I’m switching to Twitterrific. The adverts keep displaying even after clicking on the link which is annoying. Nambu ★★★★★ is yet another Twitter client for the iPhone. This has a beautifully laid-out screen on which the last five tweets can be seen - more than most other Twitter apps. Favourite tweets can also be displayed and this screen includes direct messages. The search pane has advanced options, a history and trends. Optional panes are built-in for tr.im, pic.im, FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Laconica and identica. Tweets can be favourited or flagged privately. The only option I’d like to be added is to switch between real names and nicknames. AirMe ★★★★★ takes pictures on the iPhone camera and uploads them to a Flickr stream. Your photo can be available globally in less than a minute! The iPhone’s camera has been criticized for having only two megapixels but I seem to have got some good pictures from it. The only caveat is that you have to set the title and tags — words used to search for images in Flickr — before taking a photo because AirMe will start to upload immediately. MyRail lite ★★★★★ shows British Rail station departure and arrival boards, also station times for each train with a neat graphic. It can also search for the nearest stations based on map location. Absolutely superb. This is great when I’m travelling/commuting. Update National Rail have not renewed the licence for MyRail and it has stopped working. NR have brought out their own app which costs £4.99. This has upset a lot of people who have nonetheless bought the NR app because it is so useful for commuters, but then given it one star reviews on the Apple Store. Shameful situation. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary ★★★★★ is the world-famous English dictionary from the Oxford University Press, not as big as the Shorter two volume edition but still an awful lot of lexicographical goodness, and definitely not American English or some house style guide that would spell “authorize” wrongly. Probably worth £14.99 as the print version of the Concise edition costs £10.00 more. This 11th edition contains over 240,000 words, phrases and definitions. Many of the entries have a recording of the word being spoken. (NB Webster’s International Dictionary is also on iTunes, for £34.99. There is also the free WordWeb.) Things ★★★★ is for “Getting Things Done”, a most simple-to-use (yet sophisticated behind the scenes) to-do list, or organizer, or notes application. It syncs over wi-fi with the same application on a local Mac. I’ve just bought this to replace the hundreds of bits of paper I have lying around the place. Blue Defense! ★★★★★ is a superb shoot-em-up with waves of smoothly animated glowing things and bosses that split and flow towards the home planet. They must be destroyed using the constant firepower at the player’s command. The game is silent: no sounds to interrupt my music. Perfect. It may be worth buying an iPhone just to play this. GeoDefense Lite ★★★★★ is a superb tower defence game. This means setting-up towers that blast away at creeps along a path with the intention of stopping them reaching and and overrunning the target. There are many types of sci-fi-themed tower in this game, it’s fast and the graphics are great. I’ve now got the full version. Bloomberg. ★★★★ Maybe overlooked because it is for business, but this is a very well-designed application that can be configured to get the latest news reports about various regions albeit with an economic bias. ‘Muse’ news is often not about finance at all. And of course, Bloomberg does stocks, markets and commodities with beautiful graphs: it’s a very sexy way to watch the world go to hell in a hedge-manager’s handcart loaded with redundant bankers’ bonuses. London Bus, Tube and Rail Journey Planner ★★★★★ includes a superb journey planner (linked to TfL) and details of routes, stations (incl. zones), 20,000 bus stops (with postcodes) and timetables, including first and last times. The app is focussed on busses but the planner includes all modes of transport including the river bus and walking! A nice touch is the Track me feature so you can see which stop you are at throughout a bus journey. GeoDefense Swarm ★★★★★ Once you have conquered GeoDefense - or in my case, almost finished it - then Swarm is the next step. Swarm puts the same towers and creeps into an open arena without defined paths. The graphics and gameplay are superb. Space.DeadBeef ★★★★★ is a great shoot-em-up with exemplary graphics, another proof that the iPod has really arrived as a gaming platform. A fast 2D aerial battle with only one life, but the game can be resumed from the last level. The first big boss, a metal snake, is really well done. Alien Swarm ★★★★★ is a dream come true for me. A perfect clone of the arcade game Galaxian. It takes my mind back to a pub video game in Highgate. The money I wasted then… and the time I’m wasting now! One more go, hold on. NetNewsWire ★★★★★ is an RSS reader application that I bought years ago for my Mac. Now it’s free and also works on the iPhone, very nicely. On a good day this will summarize many websites and let you home in on the latest news that interests you without having to spend hours on the web. It’s also great for grabbing lots of news and blogs when online and reading them offline later, on a train for example. Items can be clipped for later follow-up, and all the feeds synced through Newsgator or .Mac with your home computer. It’s essential to get into the settings and choose a unique name for your iPhone/iPod feed, and I would also recommend having rather less feeds on the phone than a Mac: my iPhone choked on 9,000 items, but is quite happy with 5,000. Web pages and YouTube videos are displayed from within the app. I love NetNewsWire. Bix ★★★★★ is an excellent version of Qix, a classically simple arcade game in which the player has to draw lines to bound off over 75% of an area while avoiding bouncing balls - some of which give special powers when trapped. This works well on the iPod, with a simple flick to change direction. In this version there is no option to draw lines slowly for extra points nor are there fuses to chase the player: I expect these will come in a future version. tvGuide ★★★★ is a cheap TV guide with an excellent layout, presenting a lot of information in a small space. Only flaw is that the schedules are split at 12:00 (AM and PM) with no overlap, like an atlas where the road you want is on the edge of the page. So frustrating! Maybe the programmers are early-to-bed types who go out for lunch. TVGuide.co.uk TV Guide ★★★★★ shows a “now and next” listing for UK channels. Touching the channel links to a BBC iPlayer page in Safari. What’s great about this app is how easy it is to set-up the channels that you watch and exclude the ones you don’t, from a comprehensive list. Centipede ★★★★★ is a great conversion of the arcade game and, as with Missile Command, Atari have added a version or two with modern graphics. After playing for a while, I can see spiders and fleas when i close my eyes. OnBox.TV UK Lite ★★★ is a free configurable TV guide for the current day - pretty good but after midnight it will show tomorrow’s programmes. Update - not working and removed from iTunes. Lucky I got the free version. They may be back: OnBox.TV information. Calc ★★★★ is an improvement on the built-in calculator: it has three sheets of functions and a tally-roll (paper tape). The ANS key inserts the result of the last calculation, literally a nice touch. But only eight significant digits? One of the smallest apps available: 96 KB. Labyrinth LE ★★★★★ simulates a metal ball in a wooden maze. Perfect - so sensitive! Built in spirit levels. PCalc Lite ★★★★★ is the best calculator: accurate, with 15 significant digits. Features RPN, degrees/radians, constants, unit conversions and “42” on the icon. Grab it while it’s free. The full version has more features such as hex and a paper tape. Bloom ★★★★ is a superb generative music application from that nice Mr. Brian Eno, whose career I have been following since 1973. The app will make its own random music, or I can tap the screen to enter my own sequences, which then change gradually over time. Mesmerizing. Sentry Alpha ★★★★ is a good space shooter with tilt control. I can’t get enough of games like this. This one scrolls down and has level bosses. If you’ve been missing Inquisitor ★★★★★ since upgrading Safari to the new beta, then this is for you. Fast search with a built-in browser, great design, with news links supplied where available from Yahoo. Tube Status ★★★★ displays the service level of the railway lines on the London Underground (aka the Tube), DLR, Overground and Rail. Touching a tube line displays the latest bulletins. Other Tube apps exist but this is simple and free. A paid version with a map is due soon: TubeDeluxe. Weightbot ★★★★★ is for tracking bodyweight and it understands stones, the imperial measure in Britain! Everything about this app is polished and easy to use. Weightbot calculates BMI, draws lovely graphs and keeps a remote backup of weighings. Excellent. Dr. Awesome ★★★★ is Qix for the iPod - move by tilting which works very well, being quicker than swiping the screen. The medical theme of viruses and mutagens works well in the game but I could do without my contact’s names as patients. Very playable. Illuminations ★★★★★ is a great tilt-controlled arcade game with a fireworks theme - better than Asteroids! Quite fast and difficult with enemies often on an effective evasion course, so it is a relief to have smart bombs, like in Defender. Antimatter ★★★★ is a great arcade game in which blue cotton buds - sorry, cosmic strings, must be hit with a stream of antimatter to change their colour to red. Progressively more difficult. Superb graphics. iGo ★★★★ is the first Go game for the iPod to offer a computer opponent. iGo seems to play a strong game, maybe too strong for me as a beginner. A few games can be stored, but selecting them for play or deletion is very confusing due to bad interface design; however the board and game play is straightforward. (There are two other apps available that contain classic Go games for replay and analysis.) Topple ★★★★ is a wonderful free game with differently-shaped cartoon blocks that must be turned and placed into an increasingly unstable tower - tilt might fix it enough to get a few more blocks on top to get the required height before it all collapses - great fun. Azkend ★★★★ Lively, enjoyable match-3 game with some extra twists of its own. I like the theme of the game too: Tibetan Lovecraft. Droidz ★★★★ The last time I played this, I used a keyboard and joystick. It’s uncanny how they have copied the sound effects and the gameplay of 1985 classic Paradroid in this arcade game, in which floors of a spaceship have to be cleared of robots. Starting as a lowly 001 droid, more powerful droids can be shot at or taken over in a separate mini game where each brain tries to turn relays to their own colour, and it’s here that cursor keys (or a joystick!) would be better than fiddly touch control. Still, a great recreation. iFighter lite ★★★★ entertaining WWII 2D shooter with planes, ground targets, power-ups and plenty of flak - as yet, no full version, just this lite title. Bugdom 2 ★★★★★ is just like the full 3D action adventure PC game on a Mac. How Pangea managed to cram it on a shiny pocket-sized futuristic device beggars belief. The touch interface works well: I was able to work out how to fly, pick up and drop objects and jump over walls without needing to read the instructions. Remote ★★★ is a graphical way to control Apple TV — or iTunes on a Mac — from the sofa. Remote can access different media types and shows cover art well but I’m not sure if I need it. It doesn’t control Front Row on a Mac yet, so you still need the tiny white remote for that, if you can find it. Stanza ★★★★ is an electronic book reader with an online library of free books, which it renders in a serif font. I appear to have downloaded books by Carroll M. Capps, Carl Jacobi, Barack Obama and H. G. Wells. Reversi ★★★★★ is a strong Othello opponent that I regularly lose to, even when I set it to the intermediate strength. There are three higher settings! Missile Command ★★★★★ by Atari is a faithful port of the arcade classic, the touch screen being better for aiming missiles than the trackball used in the original. And there is an updated version included with new graphics. Addictive as ever. Snail Mail ★★★★ is a great arcade game with smooth graphics, guiding “Turbo the Snail delivering Intergalactic Mail”. Similar to Super Monkey Ball but much easier to play, so this is more fun for me. Rolando ★★★★★ is as good a game as everyone says it is. Beautifully designed, well-paced stages with increasing difficulty, all responding to a little thought. Enigmo ★★★★★ is an amazing port of the Mac puzzle game with astounding graphics. The puzzles get harder and harder, the object being to transfer water and other materials from the source to a pot around hazards using some unlikely props. Haruzou - Photo Uploader ★★★ uploads to Flickr (and Photozou and Picasa) and is sometimes more suitable for me than AirMe because it allows entry of tags and a title after pictures have been taken and before uploading, although it does not have a list of tags or position sensing like AirMe. Rasta Monkey ★★★★ is a great arcade game with a swinging jumping monkey collecting bananas. Love it. MotionX Poker ★★★★ is a classic poker dice game. I love the different sounds of various types of dice. Splat… ★★★ simple space shooter with good controls. Retro - Cave Flyer Lite ★★★★ Great! This is Thrust/Lunar Lander/Choplifter with manoeuvring of a pod through caverns, without touching the sides, to rescue scientists. A bit too difficult. Oblique Strategies ★★★★ is a deck of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975, now on its 5th edition, suggesting strategies useful for creative types. All the editions are included in this app. Darkslide ★★★★ shows your Flickr photos, contacts’ photos, Explore photos and the killer feature: photos near me; also sets, recents, tags and so on. Sign in to Flickr and you can read and leave comments. A premium version of Darkslide (formerly Exposure) with more features is available. SmallBall Pinball, Grand Canyon ★★★★ I love this pinball game. Multiple tables are linked top and bottom, so the way must be found though the top of the table to the next; falling through the flippers will return the Amiga ball to the previous table. Each table seems sparse at first until the secrets are unlocked. Also this game is much slower than other pinball titles which is a plus for me. Trailers International ★★★★★ shows film posters in vertical or coverflow modes, touching the poster shows more details and in the information screen the movie trailer can be seen. Yes, it’s as simple and elegant as that, although sometimes launching a trailer from the coverflow can be touch and go, or a trailer will continue running in the background after it was quit. BlogWriter Lite ★★★★★ lets me write blog entries on my iPhone and post them here - just like that! It would have been a nightmare to compose essays on my old mobile telephone which had three letters per key and four short lines of text onscreen, but I have always been able to upload using email; however there is nothing like a custom application to make things easier. BlogWriter is simple to set-up and elegant in use and even the Lite version will download the last 25 blog entries for viewing (in a nice serif with fava beans and graphics), editing and reuploading. An unexpected feature is a built-in RSS feed reader - the Lite version allows two feeds - to give inspiration for blogging. Terrible icon, though. Up There ★★★★★ is great fun, guiding a wilful balloon up through bookshelves, rafters, branches and so on. It reminds me of Aztec Challenge on the Commodore 64 in that I keep having another go, following the same old course, making the same mistakes. WSJ - The Wall Street Journal ★★★★★ gives free access to WSJ articles that are otherwise available on the web by paying a fee. The articles, in many categories such as Digital, Europe, Quirky, Health, Tech, Blogs etc., are quite long and well-written. Wikipanion ★★★★ is a good application to surf Wikipedia. It will re-open on the page that was open last time and works in portrait or landscape. 2079 ★★★★ is a great little space-themed shoot-em-up. Simple but effective. Google Mobile App ★★★ is a “search experience” with links into Google Apps and the novelty of voice input. Works for me, even though North American accents are supposed to work best. Texas drawl or Jersey stutter? There is an “easter egg” in this app accessible by swiping upwards on the settings pane which will reveal a “bells and whistles” menu, useful for opening links within Google Mobile itself. Touch Physics ★★★★ is an excellent puzzle game. A ball is moved around crayon-drawn puzzles, mostly by drawing rocks which then fall on the ball and also by putting elements in place to stop other things moving the wrong way. Bough Puzzle ★★★★ Rotate branches to link up the whole tree. Great graphics. Alphabetic ★★★★ is an arcade game where the player has to touch the letters of the alphabet in order but they are in random order and colour, moving about in patterns. Beautiful animation. I’ve just finished the first level with an average time of 3.32 seconds per letter. Quite addictive. Bed Bugs ★★★★ Excellent game with wave after wave of strange nasties that threaten to wake up a moustachioed gent in bedroom attire. They must be despatched to send Zzzs or else they will pop and wake him. The player must discover what type of gesture will wipe out each creature. Fieldrunners ★★★★ is yet another excellent tower defence game. This one requires some strategy, like GeoDefense. Super Monkey Ball ★★★★ is a hugely entertaining arcade game. (Make sure to calibrate the tilt in the training screen first.) Just collect bananas on the aerial runways without falling off. Neocell Fighters ★★★★ is a great 2D space shooter. Very colourful (which may cause problems for some) and smooth scrolling. Toki Tori ★★★★ is a well-designed platform game. Each level must be learnt so the bridges, weapons and so on are used in the right order to collect all the eggs and avoid the hazards. 2 Across Lite Edition ★★★★ is an excellent interface for crossword puzzles, which can be downloaded from four sources. Cube Runner ★★★★★ is a fiendishly tough arcade game with simple but effective graphics. New levels can be downloaded. Doodle Jump ★★★★ is a simple, cheap, maddeningly tricky game similar to Papi Jump, but I much prefer this richer game. The character jumps up and tilting the iPod guides him down to the next platform, and so on, boing, boing, but obstacles soon appear or the platform is missed and the player plummets. A great innovation is seeing the levels reached by the fifty other most recent players worldwide, as they are passed. iEphemeris Lite ★★★★ is my kinda app. I occasionally launch it in wonderment. iEphemeris shows the current distance to the Moon and Sun in miles (or in metres whatever they are) plus the lunar phase, Julian date, and the time. SourceForge Network News ★★★ gets news from Slashdot, Thinkgeek and other techy sites. Tiki Towers ★★★★ addictive game making bamboo towers and bridges for monkeys to collect bananas and get to the exit of each level. Once structures are assembled the monkeys are let loose and their weight and movement can be enough to collapse a badly-formed tower. Shakespeare ★★★★★ displays all of Shakey’s plays, sonnets and poems, mostly compiled from the first folio and quarto 1. Free. Easy to read, with search. Superb. Vector Tanks - Retro Tank Combat ★★★ is Battlezone on the iPhone - yes all the familiar graphics and strategy I learned in London pubs. The controls need to be more responsive. Space Buster ★★★ is a very flashy version of Break-Out. Good graphics. Currently needs a lot of memory so the iPod must be switched off and back on again first. Lite version also available. Spheroids ★★★★ is Asteroids on a spherical surface. With autofire selected, the game is completely tilt-controlled which works well. Hero of Sparta ★★★★ is a good atmospheric beat’em up game with excellent graphics. Also good is the control method which does not involve frenzied stabbing at the screen but merely instructing the hero to defend or attack or go for the focussed kill. AP Mobile News Network ★★★ is a US-centric news app, currently not understanding postcodes outside the USA. Still good for world news, also sections for wacky, tech, lifestyle (?) and so on. Wild West Pinball ★★★★ gorgeous graphics and a high-frame rate make this a great pinball game. The table is also simple without too many gimmicks. In fact it’s just like the real thing - just as tough! Bubbles ★★★★ is a great free app - create and burst bubbles. Pop! Distracts infants. Voice Record ★★★★ uses the internal microphone of the iPhone to record files of any length (until memory is exhausted) which can then be sent via ftp. Works well. Textropolis ★★★★ is a great game with a simple premise: make words using letters (like the popular newspaper puzzle) from the names of cities: the first is Kingstown. The style and animation is very good. However, the game does not know common English words like gits, skint, snog or nowt and there is no way to force it to accept these. Magnetic Joe ★★★ is an addictive but difficult game, moving Joe through areas by selecting magnets. WordWeb English Dictionary and Thesaurus ★★★★ is pretty good, cheaper than the OED. WordWeb is surfable by word or phrase. It includes alternate spellings in the antonyms. Galaxy on Fire 3D ★★★★ is another timewaster that’s hard to put down: a good space-shooter, similar to the old classic Elite with battles but without the docking.