Daily App Digest – May 23, 2012

Innovative app developers Small Planet Digital have partnered with John Solimine, of Spike Press, and Andy Hullinger to create Dragon Brush, an irresistible, interactive storybook for iPhone and iPad, based on a Chinese folktale.

With narration by Matt Berninger and music by Aaron & Bryce Dessner – from the acclaimed band, The National – Dragon Brush follows the adventures of Bing-Wen, a young boy who loves to paint. When given a magical brush that makes drawings come to life, Bing-Wen must use his art and his wits to outsmart the greedy Emperor.

Follow the adventures of Bing-Wen as he tries to stay one step ahead of the Emperor and his henchmen, and use the Magic Brush for good (and for mischief).

Readers can:
* Help Bing-Wen’s drawings come magically to life
* Create their own drawings with Dragon Paint
* Find special inkpots in the story and add them to Dragon Paint
* Discover interactive elements and tap, swipe, or tilt on every page

Brought to life with gorgeous, Retina-quality artwork, Dragon Brush will engage children of all ages, inspire their inner artists, and tickle their funny bones.

$2.99/£1.99/download

SensiLogic, LLC, a mobile solutions company, today announced version 1.2 of My Iceland Travel Guide for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. My Iceland Travel Guide is the premier travel guide for Iceland, designed to meet the needs of tourists traveling in Iceland as well as local residents wanting a simple, intuitive, and powerful travel guide. With almost 1200 categorized listings, and continuously growing, My Iceland offers a comprehensive and easy-to-use travel guide. "My Iceland was designed to help tourists make the most of their stay in Iceland, and it appears to be working. We have gotten an excellent response and our users seem to agree that it works the way they expect", said Thor Einarsson, Director of Product Management at SensiLogic. "In addition, local residents like it as well so that is a big plus. We have therefore decided to lower the price by 50%.", added Thor.

My Iceland is organized around the primary interests of tourists: accommodations, activities, arts and culture, events, food, and transportation. These categories then contain over 70 subcategories of information, making it quick and easy to find information of interest. It even includes information on most of the Icelandic volcanoes that have erupted in recent times.

My Iceland Travel Guide is an offline guide since visitors in Iceland often do not have an international calling plan. Users can therefore browse the information in the guide regardless of connectivity and get a list of nearby items of interest at any time. Additional features are available if a network connection is present. "We have taken special care to make the offline experience as smooth as possible", said Haukur Palmason, Director of Software Development at SensiLogic.

$1.99/£1.49/download

Independent children’s app publisher Nosy Crow is pleased to announce that its Cinderella app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch has won the Junior Design Award for Best Story App.

The Junior Design Awards were created by parenting magazine Junior to celebrate excellence in design & style for children’s fashion, lifestyle & interiors, travel, food, toys and books.

"The highly interactive nature of this sweet retelling of the classic tale, from Nosy Crow, makes it a winner. Telling the well-loved classic tale of the rags-to-riches romance of a young girl, Cinderella, who is forced into a life of drudgery by her wicked stepmother and two ugly step sisters, there is of course the ultimate fairy tale happy ending!" said the judges of the Story App category. "There’s plenty for your child to explore on every page, with lots of interactive fun as your child helps Cinders tidy up, and transforming her into a princess fit for a ball. Your child even gets a starring role appearing in the mirror – and spot a cute bird in each scene."

$5.99/£3.99/download

Drafts is the quick, easy way to capture and share ideas on your iPhone or iPod touch. In Drafts, text comes first – open the app and you always get a new, blank draft. Don’t get bogged down in a timeline just to tweet or post to Facebook. Don’t tap your way through multiple screens to get down an email or SMS. Don’t navigate folders, create files and name them just to jot down a note or create a todo.

Drafts has been featured by Apple multiple times, been consistently ranked in the Productivity category, and been featured on leading sites – including MacWorld, TUAW, Cult of Mac, MacStories, MacBreak Weekly, AppAdvice and more.

In the six weeks since it’s launch, Agile Tortoise has worked hard to bring additional user-requested features to Drafts. In two major update releases, new features added to Drafts include:

* Facebook posting
* Calendar event creation
* SMS-Messaging
* Direct integration for saving drafts to Dropbox and Evernote
* Integration with many additional apps, allowing you to easily forward drafts to OmniFocus, Things, The Hit List, Byword, Sparrow and more
* The ability to hide/show output actions, and action settings like the automatic creation of new drafts after an action, or require confirmation before an action is run
$0.99/£0.69/download

Touch Village, mobile game and application publisher, announced today that their new action-arcade game, Chin Up, is now available for download on the App Store. Chin Up stars Mr. Chin, a nimble construction worker under siege by a torrential downpour of the most bizarre items to ever fall on a construction site. Various food products (sushi, dumplings, bowls of rice), living creatures (fish, dogs, cats, horses), parts of former living creatures (severed cat heads, brains). It’s sort of like a politically incorrect version of the classic arcade game, Crazy Climber.

As Mr. Chin heads skyward on his bamboo scaffold, you can shift him from one side to the other, tilting the platform and dispatching dangerous debris. You can also swing the platform to position Mr. Chin for a needed power-up or dodge an incoming killer bird. But be careful with that platform or you’ll dump Mr. Chin to the hard ground far below (and then, Mr. Chin will hate you forever). Mr. Chin will travel to construction sites around the world – from the great Wall of China to Vatican City for a battle with The Devil himself. Every level has its own unique droppings, as well as a special life meter that ‘tastefully’ reflects the atmosphere.

Free/download

Everguide’s Ultimate Picks is the most comprehensive guide to the hottest events in live music nationwide. With Ultimate Picks, you’re able to plan, experience and share the anticipation and excitement around live music. From after-party rumours to tour and line up announcements to amazing photos, Ultimate Picks gives you the best in rock, hip-hop, dance and pop right at your fingertips.

Think of us as your most in-the-know mate, the one who always gets the best tickets and knows the latest gossip. Wait, that will be you once you’re hooked into Ultimate Picks.

Debit MasterCard has teamed up with Everguide to release this free, must-have guide, which includes exclusive details on the Take 40 Live Lounge presented by Debit MasterCard, a series of one-of-a-kind performances which give fans a unique opportunity to enjoy an intimate performance from their favourite artists in a much smaller venue than normal, breaking down the barriers between bands and their fans.
Free/download

Mother Tucker, LLC today is thrilled to announce the release of Speed PRO 3.0 for iPhones. Designed originally for GPS-equipped iPhones, Speed PRO is a GPS-based speedometer that gives users a digital view of their current speed, average speed, top speed, distance traveled, elapsed time and altitude and allows them to save their routes. The most significant features are: presenting speedometer information in an easy to read digital format; Saved Routes; Manual and Automatic Pause/Resume; Downloadable altitude readings; Sharing speedometers and routes with friends; and a customizable speedometer interface.

$0.99/£0.69/download

The Grabarchuk Family today is proud to announce the release and immediate availability of Fish Crackers 1.0, its most advanced puzzle game for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Fish Crackers features 100 original puzzles with real 2D physics. Players can move, rotate, and bump pieces as real physical objects. Puzzles are arranged from very simple with 3 pieces only, up to really hard ones with 9 pieces.

Main Features:
* 100 hand-crafted puzzles, more to come
* Realistic 2D gameplay – move, turn, and bump
* Designed for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
* Play in portrait and landscape views
* Scores: earn stars for each solved puzzle
* Can’t solve puzzles? Use hints
* Guest players: get your friends to play
* Game Center achievements and leaderboards
$2.99/£1.99/download

AngryOrange Studios today is pleased to announce Glow Worm Lite for iOS, their new Sim/Arcade Game that challenges the player to capture and skillfully transport 10 or more bacteria scattered inside a living cell. The goal is to save as many bacteria as possible using the Glow Worm, a neutrophil-like body, which automatically captures each nearby bacterium using a single filament. Once the microbes are attached, the filaments slowly retract while the player navigates the Glow Worm back to the safety of its spawning point with bacteria in tow. The player must successfully navigate their way back through various lethal obstacles, including oddly shaped micro-spaces, viruses, red cells, and rotating X cells. Once touch-activated, the Glow Worm begins to lose power, which forces the player to work as quickly as possible before the Glow Worm can no longer function.

Featuring a remarkable physics engine, Glow Worm delivers an eerily realistic simulation of conditions inside a cell, similar to sims set underwater. The intracellular fluid, the medium in which everything inside the cell exists, has a viscosity greater than water, making navigation especially challenging. Transporting large numbers of bacteria at a time improves efficiency, but heightens difficulty. In addition, the longer the filament, the harder it is to pull the bacteria through obstacles safely. Each filament begins to retract, ingesting the microbe, as soon as it captures a bacterium, but the filaments retract slowly. This creates a strategic problem of safety versus time.

Free/download

Ilium Software today is pleased to announce eWallet 7.3.1 for iOS – Password Manager and Secure Storage Database Wallet, an update to their award-winning Productivity app. The best-selling password manager, eWallet (Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office), now includes optional, built-in iCloud support for free backup and sharing wallets between iOS 5 devices. A convenient and absolutely secure solution to storing passwords, bank account info, credit card numbers, PIN numbers, memberships, user names, health info, insurance, travel clubs, calling cards, and IDs, the app even stores the answers to security verification questions.

Protection Features:
* Secure storage for passwords, usernames, PINs
* Strong 256-bit AES encryption
* Secure storage for bank and credit card info
* Time-out locks to keep your info safe
* Free (optional) backups to iCloud (requires iOS 5)
* Uses iCloud to share wallets between iOS 5 devices
* Live URLs that launch the official websites, without the dangers of phishing emails or typing errors taking users elsewhere
* Automatic password generator to create strong, secure passwords

In an age when so many rely so heavily on their iOS devices, it is essential that users be confident that the large amount of sensitive, confidential information they carry with them daily is both readily available and completely safe. eWallet from Ilium Software has been trusted by mobile users for over 14 years. With more than half a million users, in-house email support, and dozens of major industry awards, eWallet is the best – and safest – choice for storing confidential information.

$9.99/£5.99/download

Brite Kids launches Vixes – an amazingly bright and addictive interactive book for children from 2 to 7 years old.

We do believe, that the potential of the kids app market is huge and undiscovered,  says the producer of the project Alek Safarov, we wanted to make a kind, dynamic and interesting product for children. So, we tried to make our best to bring it to them. ‘Vixes’ is fully voiced by professional actors, boasts pleasant music, packed with hand-drawn art, lively animation and interesting puzzles.

The story leads us through the magical world of Vixes, little funny creatures, to the Dream Delivery Service, where our heroes need to make and send the dreams to couple poor kids, who haven’t seen the dreams for a few nights. The player is to help them, solving puzzles and playing with the elements on the screen.

All my doubts about the project were dispelled when I saw my two-year daughter playing hours in the game ang laughing, says Dmitri, one of the team members, as a loving father I’m very proud.

Vixes game features:
* funny and lovable characters
* beautiful hand-drawn art and detailed animations
* 27 scenes packed with fully voiced interactive screens with puzzles
* multiple language option
* pleasant music and fancy sounds

$1.99/£1.49/download

Yeinart today is pleased to announce the release and immediate availability of EQ Player 1.0, its new equalizer app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Give wings to your earphone freely! EQ Player turns your earphones into high quality headphone. Now, you can experience high quality headphone sound with 10-band equalizer and sound effects. You can also manage your songs using user-friendly play-list management.

Major feature list:
* 10-band equalizer – You can control wide range of sound frequency
* 3D reverb effector – You can control 3D reverb effector very easily
* Unlimited preset management (Basic Presets: Normal, Club, Classic, Live, 3D Concert, 3D Hall, Vocal, High Bass, High Treble)
* Unlimited playlist management
* Random/Sequential/Repeat play support

Also It is integrated with iPhone play environment:
* It supports background music play
* Integrated play control in lock screen
* You can use the remote controller in your earphone
* For bluetooth users, no problem, just use it
* You can use iOS’s basic timer to stop the music

Free/download