Daily iOS App Digest – 05/18/11

So you want to share your real time location with a select group of people, and for only a limited time. And, just as important, you need your phone to stay on the whole day and not get drained of battery power within 4 hours. Oh, and you want total control over the whole thing. Sound about right? Then Tracklings is the answer. A location sharing iOS app will be available for free this weekend only.

Tracklings 1.2 helps you organize an event by sharing your location with other participants, but unlike common "I am here" applications, Tracklings gives you full control over who participates and who and when can see your location and status updates. Everything is based on the event.

Create events on the fly – a few simple clicks starts an event, no account or login required. Invite participants from your contact list and you’re all set! Close the event when you no longer need it. Your position is shared only by other participants in the same event and only while you choose to be active within that event (even when Tracklings runs in the background). You’ll always know who else is active! Once the event is concluded or you decide to leave it, your location is no longer shared.

$1.99/Download here

While a calendar reminder keeps track of the exact time of an event, it’s difficult to know just how far away the event is. Also, calendar reminders represent "just the facts" of an occasion. Count the Days recognizes that most occasions have a "meaning" which is enhanced by anticipation and personalization.

Designing applications with simple, yet powerful, features is one of the goals of bobasoba. "One measure of success for any product is whether it can be used in unanticipated ways," comments Robert Gallup, Count the Days’ designer and developer. While keeping track of occasions in the future is Count the Days primary use, The application can also be used to remember occasions in the past. For example, keeping track of the number of days since a first date.

$0.99/Download here

Your move is a powerful and user friendly word solver available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The app is designed to be a companion for popular word building games such as Zynga’s Words with Friends(TM) and EA’s Scrabble(R). A few taps of Your Move’s intuitive interface imports the user’s favorite word game for analysis. After the built in optical character recognition technology automatically populates the tiles, the app performs millions of calculations to "illuminate" the board and highlight the absolute highest scoring moves.

Unlike simple anagram apps, Your Move takes into consideration tiles already in-place on the board. Hidden multi-word scores become immediately evident and fifty point words become commonplace. For users who would like to develop their lexical skill with minimum guidance, simple anagram finding functionality is included. Multitasking support allows the user to quickly change between the word game and the assistant.

$0.99/Download here

Dano Pirate & The Numbers helps children:
* Write by tracing outlines of the numbers 1 through 9 with their fingers. Unlike other preschool math apps, arrows and guide points appear along the way
* Read by matching spoken numbers with the written numbers
* Understand order by filling in the gaps of a numerical sequence
* Comprehend quantity by matching sets of objects with the correct written number

The app features beautiful animations and music, an engrossing interactive pirate story and artificial intelligence that increases the activities’ difficulty based on the child’s performance and understanding. Parents also can monitor their child’s progress within the app.

Dano Pirate’s activities were selected and refined by educators at top U.S. elementary schools and support national mathematics standards.

iPad version $2.99/Download here

Whether you are a mortgage broker, leasing agent or notary public, say goodbye to time consuming paper transactions. Whatever business you’re in, look into the present and ride the wave of the future. Free up your time with Sign Doc to focus on what matters most to you. Go green, organize your business and give yourself piece of mind with unprecedented flexibility in managing your document.

Manage your documents by client and project, and store as many files per client as you need. Create labels within seconds and drag them to the appropriate fields within the document to have it filled out prior to meeting your client. Made a mistake? Correct it immediately without messy white outs by editing or deleting the label.

$6.99/Download here

TouchTen has announced the launch of Castle Runner, a fast paced running game for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The reaction based game is designed to test both users’ patience and reflexes and offer them a great source of excitement and fresh challenge.

Players are invited to enter the tumbling dark castle and need to use smart techniques to escape from it alive. The game involves plenty of running and concentration. The ceiling is falling rapidly which constantly increases the tension. Furthermore, users will have to overcome various obstacles on their way by jumping and sliding. Bonuses will give them some power to stop the ceiling from falling or raise it for a limited time. At the same time users have to keep an eye out for bonuses that may increase the speed of the falling ceiling or put the light out forcing users to run in the dark.

$0.99/Download here

Hamster Breaks loose from the new iOS game developer JoyBeams has been available worldwide for iOS iPhone and iPad Touch platforms from iTunes. The physics based arcade/puzzle game focuses on a Hamster who is kept prisoner by a Spoiled Brat until one day he breaks free and goes after all the tasty nuts he wants while facing ever more fascinating and challenging puzzles.

Users begin Hamster Break with level one inside a training cage which allows them to get used to the game’s navigation and then, once complete, the hamster ‘Breaks’ free of the training cage and the player must navigate the increasingly challenging puzzles while collecting tasty nuts and avoiding the Gold Fish who has plans of her own.

The user must help the hamster using different sticks and springs together in patterns that allows with one push of the balloon the hamster to strategically accomplish his goals of avoiding Goldie and getting to the next level, nuts and all.

$0.99/Download here

Announced that Binary Jigsaw., the developers of Four Walls, has released an indispensable real estate evaluation product for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users. The application is a practical tool for home and investment property hunting, providing valuable calculators in an easy-to-use format that shows users the financial realities of a potential purchase and allows them to compare price and features between multiple properties. Four Walls is also educational, blending guidance and information with its robust features.

Four Walls is a young product that has hit the marketplace at just the right time. Now that the economy is gaining strength again, the app is helping people to assess potential real estate purchases, whether they’re looking for their next home or planning to buy investment property.

$1.99/Download here

Baked Ham Games, a North Carolina-based creator of mobile applications, has announced the release of Otto the Otter, a new children’s book app for the iPhone/iPad. Based on the children’s book written by Ian Mehr and illustrated by Erik Reichenbach, the Otto the Otter mobile application provides an electronic version of the hardcopy book currently available for purchase at Amazon. The app has multiple modes for children to interact with the book, including narration in paid versions. Free versions of the app are also available for trial, but they are missing some of the key elements that allow the paid apps to really connect with children.

$2.99/Download here

The Drug Wars! app has been featured as a top 100 strategy game in the App Store of more than 40 countries worldwide. The game brings back the original challenge where users need to buy low and sell high in order to make as much money as they can before time runs out. Players travel around New York selling their wares and avoiding the police.

"People tell us how much they loved playing Drug Wars so we decided to remake and update it, with some surprising modern twists," said Shannon Holland, President of Deep Thoughts Software.

To update the game and make it more lighthearted, the app’s creators decided that users would trade in the drugs that anyone who has received a spam email is all too familiar with. With stylish graphics and colorful characters, the Drug Wars! app might seem like a basic game. But looks can be deceiving, the creators say.

Free/Download

MaxKDevelopment has announced iTopCharts 1.0 for iOS, their new app that displays the top Music, Podcasts, Audiobooks, TV Shows, Music Videos, Movies, Mac Apps, and iOS Apps from 62 App Stores worldwide. Each of these eight types of Media has between one and nine Categories, for a total of 26 Categories. Users may also drill down to more specific listings. For example, Music has six Categories, and each of these has 20 Sub-Categories. iTopCharts also includes the following features: preference settings allow each list to contain 10 to 100 items, top songs may be previewed for 30 seconds from within the app, there are direct links to the artist and album in the iTunes store, country listings may be re-ordered by the user, and they may save their favorite Charts in a Favorites Library for immediate access.

$1.99/Download here

In partnership with Concord Hospital urologist and Dartmouth Adjunct Assistant Professor Dr. Ronald L. Yap, 9magnets LLC has developed two new medical iPhone applications to help men and women monitor their prostate health.

Available for free in the iTunes App Store, Prostate Pal 2 allows men to track liquid intake and output through an intuitive voiding diary, take and track AUA test scores, and graph PSA score data over time. When used in conjunction with a healthcare provider, men can use Prostate Pal 2 to track their health and provide more accurate information to a physician, allowing for better treatment and improved health. It is the sequel to the original Prostate Pal, with additional user optimizations and an email export mode.

Bladder Buddy is a sister application to Prostate Pal 2, offering a refined feature set and interface designed to be more gender neutral. Through utilizing Bladder Buddy, men and women can track liquid input and output, AUA score results, and much more.

Free/Download – Prostate Pal
Free/Download – Bladder Buddy

fraga-games Ltd. announces the release of Ming’s Memory 1.0 for iOS. Ming’s Memory is based on Traditional Chinese Medicine, and will give the user the opportunity to de-stress with the help of The Five Elements.

This App was created to bring people who live in modern society with all the stress, hectic and anxiety back to the wonderful world of Asian Landscaping, soothing sounds and Ying-Yang-Marbles.

Designed like a game, Ming’s Memory indulges the player into a virtual landscape of Asia. Soothing marbles are falling down from the sky and landing softly on a bambus-rope. Turning the marbles will reveal Chinese characters. The user needs to find exact pairs of white and black symbols. After matching them they simply dissolve giving way to the marbles lying above, thus creating a flow and ever changing scene.

$2.99/Download here

Vito Technology, the Apple Design Awards 2010 winner, introduces Solar Walk 1.7, a major update to their 3D Solar System model application. Take your seat in Solar Walk spaceship that will take you on a grand tour around our cosmic backyard. The new features like search, explanatory movies, Twitter and Facebook sharing added in this version will make your flight both adventurous and comfortable.

In-flight entertainment includes an explanatory movie collection about essential phenomena of the Earth and two modes for observing the Solar system during your lengthy flight. On your demand educational movies will explain what changes day to night and summer to autumn, when a Solar eclipse happens and why the Moon looks different every night.

$2.99/Download here

Elite Gudz, creative leaders in designing content for multi-media mobile, tablet and personal-use consoles, announces massive upgrades to Graffiti Spray Can, the best selling graffiti art app on iTunes that has had almost 5 million downloads since its initial release. The free upgrades include a full-length Concrete Immortalz comic book, access to the Wall of Immortalz global graffiti art sharing community, new graphics and an advertisement removal option.

"This update lays the groundwork for Graffiti Spray Can Pro and Graffiti Spray Can HD, which release on May 24th. These apps will be the portal to the Wall of Immortalz online community." said Brian Ferrara, Creative Director for Elite Gudz. "We’re proud to be the only graffiti art app endorsed and used by real graffiti artists, who can now share what they create on the Wall of Immortalz."

Graffiti Spray Can will now allow users to upload their best works to the Wall of Immortalz, vote on the work of others and share it all via Facebook, Twitter and email. Designed by graffiti artists at Elite Gudz, the Wall of Immortalz allows users to upload their creations to the online Wall of Immortalz, where other users can view and vote on them. The feature will be viewable from within Graffiti Spray Can Pro, as well as on the app’s official website, linked below.

Free/Download

r busy people who seek for a solution for responding efficiently to unanswered calls – whether by sending a predefined text message, by setting an automatic reminder for a call back call or by simply calling back quickly to the last unanswered call. Responsive also enables editing your own messages in any language.

It has happened to all of us. You are in a meeting and get a call that you want to answer, but can’t. Responsive enables you to easily and immediately send a text back to the caller and set a reminder for yourself to call back later. The templates are predefined and include things like "I am in a meeting, call you later" and are also able to be edited, in any language.

The idea for the app came from many occasions, where we’ve found ourselves in meeting, and didn’t have the chance to response to calls that came during the meeting. Writing a message takes time, which we don’t always have. Responsive allows you to send a message in just a second. The second problem with this situation is we don’t always remember to call back. The app offers a quick reminder, which will automatically pop up in the designated time and make the call.

$0.99/Download here

Playwords, the 3-in-1 word learning app for kids, received its first major update today. Now with over 350 beautiful pictures and words, this update also brings fun reward stickers and stamps, and new difficulty level controls.

"Our customers love the hand-drawn artwork in Playwords, so we’ve added almost 50 new drawings for them," said Luke McDowell, Playwords’ Designer. "Parents can now choose an appropriate difficulty level for their child, and kids will love the new reward stickers and smiley stamps they receive for answering multiple questions correctly."

Playwords 1.5 is available now for Mac OS X on the App Store. The upgrade is free for existing customers, and is only $1.99 (USD) for new customers.

$1.99/Download here

Quapps Interactive today is pleased to announce Scott Mills iQuiz Live for iPhone and iPod touch. This is your chance to be a part of something new. Something original. Something that will change the standard format of TV Game Shows forever.

Scott Mills iQuiz Live is the first application of its kind for iPhone and iPad. iQuiz brings the gameshow into a new era allowing everybody to join in and compete against each other LIVE every week. Season 1 will feature a LIVE show every week consisting of 20 questions about Music, Sports, Movies and General Knowledge. Leaderboard positions are based on total score and time taken to answer so answer correctly and quickly for your chance to win.