SchroederDev

Posted 04/29/2010 at 1:56pm | by Ray Aguilera With 185,000 apps and counting, the App Store is a vast warehouse of digital goodies for your iPhone (and now iPad too). But like most mega-marts, the sheer size of it all makes the good stuff harder to find. We’ve scoured the Store, and found the best apps to help you use your iPhone to it’s fullest potential. Whether it’s games you seek, or productivity tools, we’ve got you covered. As it turns out, there really is an app for that, no matter what that is. The iPhone and iPod touch brought back fun to videogaming, with developers focussing on innovation, affordability, and novelty. Touchscreen and accelerometer controls also force designers to think different, resulting in games that are a glorious collision of classic and cutting-edge gameplay and technology. --Craig Grannell Steph Thirion · $2.99 Eliss is the perfect game for the iPhone’s touch screen. The concept is simple--tear apart and combine planets and drop them into like-colored/sized “squeesars.” A successful drop sees a planet vanish in a cloud of stardust, which can be mopped up to replenish energy lost during collisions of differently colored planets. Requiring unique tactics for each level, Eliss is tough but rewarding, and has beautiful retro visuals and audio. It might look old-school, but Eliss is a modern multitouch creation. Arthur Ham · $0.99 We’ve no idea what the little guy in Run! is sprinting toward, but we hope it’s a great prize, because along the way he has to dodge or destroy numerous foes (zombies, walls, lethal giant saws) with the help of only his cunning and a giant bazooka. The superficially similar Canabalt may have more style, but Run! beats it on price, quirkiness, fun, variety, and the ability to flying-kick deadly leaping sharks in the head. Yeah, you read that right. You know you've always wanted to kick a shark. Drömsynt · $0.99 Imagine the mutant love child of Breakout, Pong, and a simplified Super Mario Bros. (or Pac-Land, if you’re old enough!) and you’ve got Squareball. Your ball constantly bounces and you swipe levels left and right, trying to collect green blocks and avoid hazards like holes and red blocks. It sounds simple, but the level design is devious, ensuring the game is both insanely frustrating and murderously addictive. Mini time-attack challenges add extra value. Be prepared to die... a lot. Rake in Grass Read More

Michael E. | Feb 8, 2010 User rating: ( votes, average: out of 5)  Loading ... Athletes, rappers, actors, and teenagers can frequently sound like they’re speaking a whole different language.  Some of them are and that’s because they’re from a different planet.  Most of them, however, are just throwing a slang term or two.   Here’s something else: over the past few days, I’ve noticed that nearly everyone is urbaning their name and posting what pops up as a status update on Facebook.  Some of them are really quite embarassing and others are kind of cool.  Wondering what ‘urbaning’ means?  Or maybe you’re wondering what would appear if you were to look up your name as well?  At times like those, it’s good to have Schroederdev LLC’s Slango- Urban Dictionary at your fingertips.  It is one of the most extensive slang dictionaries out there.  In fact, at over 4,000,000 words, there isn’t much that isn’t included in this app.  It‘s bigger than some of the actual dictionaries I’ve bought in the AppStore.  Slango uses the online database from “Urban Dictionary” and has some great features.  The Word of the Day will give you the skinny on all the latest terms. Random word search will help you pass the time for minutes that stretch into hours, and Slango’s offline bookmark support will ensure that you can easily find your favorite words from yesterday or a month ago.And you can share words through Facebook, Twitter, or email. Slango is very easy to use.  The only drawback to the app is that it doesn’t support browsing, so you can’t read through terms alphabetically.   Fortunately, a futureupdate is in the works that will include this feature.  I’m sureit will be a welcome addition, one that will enable me to waste even more time. So if you’re looking for a slang dictionary that is fun, informative, and- at times- a little (no, make that a lot) raunchy, Slango- Urban Dictionary is exactly what you want.  It is guaranteed to keep you and your friends entertained and laughing for days.  Or at least in the know. Version 1.1 Tested on iPod Touch 3.1.3 Read More

There have been countless times when I've heard a song on the radio and couldn't understand a certain part of the lyrics. It's incredibly frustrating not being able to understand what the singer is actually singing about, especially when you're on the go and don't have access to a computer. Lyrics+ solves this problem with a simple and straightforward application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app's main page only has three options to choose from. You can pick a song from your iPod's library, check the lyrics of the currently playing song and search for a song by artist and title. When you tap on "pick from library", your default iPod interface appears to choose a song. As soon as you tap on a song, it starts playing and the lyrics are displayed with album art in the background. From this screen you can fast forward or rewind the song, pause the music, change the volume and scroll through the lyrics. The app is not an actual player, so if you're already playing a playlist, the app will display lyrics for the first song only. When that song is finished playing, the next song will start, but the app won't display the lyrics for it. You have to go back to the main screen and tap on "now playing song" to get the next song's lyrics. This process revealed a little bug where the third song in my playlist was playing but the lyrics were displayed for my second song. Then, the fastforward/rewind slider got stuck and stayed at zero. So, the app really only works one song at a time right now. As I reviewed the 1.0 version, it is likely this will be corrected in an update. The search feature works well to find lyrics for songs that you don't have on your iPod, but the search must have an artist name. You can't just search for a song title. If you just put in an artist name, the app will display a list of songs by that artist to choose from. Lyrics+ is definitely a useful application for the iPhone & iPod Touch. It accurately displays the lyrics of any song in its library using LyricWiki.org. The app is a little buggy and barebones in its 1.0 release. It lacks social networking integration and a feature to save lyrics to your device, however the developer does Read More

Oh, I can keep going: financial news aggregation, slideshow presentation, carrier lamentation, lyrical collect-ation, and... and... tethering? Seven out of eight ain't bad. Anyway, enough of that—here's your weekly app dump: Navigon Lite: Hark! Dedicated navigation units are dead, for the iPhone hath slain them! Except no, not at all, because navigation apps are still fresh, imperfect, and too expensive to "just try." Navigon's Lite version, then, is a great idea: It lets users test the app's routing power, nice UI, and Navteq mapset—all 1.29GB of it, taking up space on your phone. The catch—and it's a big one—is that GPS doesn't work. But even as is, it's marginally useful, and definitely worth your time if you're considering taking the plunge on the full version—whenever it comes out, that is. So you're not shocked when it does, the Euro app is $140. Absolut Drinkspiration : Drinking apps are almost invariably junkware, and advertisement apps are usually a waste of time. Absolut Drinkspiration is both of these things, and nonetheless manages to be pretty good. At its core it's a drink recipe and recommendation app; at this, it does fine, helped by the fact that Absolut is happy to accommodate non-vodka listings. (A true gentleman, this app!) If your drinking needs a little guidance, it can help with that too: it'll recommend drinks based on parameters like taste, time and mood. It's also got GPS built in so you can upload your mixes and see what others all over the world are drinking, and exactly where they're drinking it. Free. TroubleSpots: TroubleSpots is part of an ambitious project, providing a tool to report when, where and how your cellular network has failed you. The reports, with embedded geodata, are passed on to AT&T, who will presumably see them and feel guilty, or something. Two things: I think AT&T probably already knows where its network is thin; and I have a sneaking suspicion that using TroubleSpots inadvertently draws you into a secret guerilla annoyance campaign run by, say, T-Mobile, waged with iPhone apps and complaint forms. We'll never know! Anyhow, if having the ability to instantly file a complaint with your carrier will keep you from hurling your iPhone out the car window, this app is worth its (nonexistent) price of entry. Pix Remix, Slideshow Builder : A pair of slideshow apps, both paid, which do very similar things. Both make Ken Burns-style Read More