Daily App Digest – August 9, 2011
Latest apps and updates to hit the iTunes store today…
Fan Mail
A new mobile app called "Fan Mail" turns anyone who downloads it into an instant celebrity complete with legions of adoring fans.
"Movie Stars, Pop Stars, TV Stars, and Athletes get tons of fan mail everyday," explains Mark Kaye, a radio host and the developer of "Fan Mail." "Wouldn’t it be great if teachers, doctors, volunteers, and everyone else got fan mail too? Well, now they can!
" Kaye got the idea from a personal fan letter he received. "A twelve-year old boy sent an email telling me how much he enjoyed my morning radio show. He said, because of me, he wanted to be on the radio when he grew up. It made me realize how lucky I am to be in a position to receive encouragement from people who appreciate what I do."
Sports Speed Gun
With ‘Sports Speed Gun’ for iPhone it is possible to measure the speed of an athlete on a track, a baseball pitch, a tennis serve, an archers arrow or anything else configured in the App. The App works by timing how long it takes for the target object (baseball, tennis ball, athlete) to travel a particular distance. The App can then instantly calculate the average speed of that object over that distance.
US$0.99/Download
UK£0.69/Download
Middle School Writing
Middle School Writing, by Niles Technology Group, is being reintroduced to the App Store, with an all new, totally redesigned, platform. With its initial introduction last April, Middle School Writing became a top-selling essay app. Parents, teachers and schools praise the concise, step-by-step instructional content, which is found in no other writing product. The new Middle School Writing raises the bar, even more, for achieving high levels of writing productivity on mobile devices.
Wx
Hunter Research and Technology today is pleased to announce the iPhone version of its popular weather app Wx, which was named a 2009 Mac Gem by Macworld magazine. Wx displays current conditions, forecasts, alerts, and radar for U.S. locations using high fidelity XML data from the National Weather Service. The app is designed for two types of customers: serious weather watchers who want detailed information and facts with no fuss, and casual users who want a fast, clean, and functional weather app that has low memory overhead and low CPU/battery usage.
Rugby 2011
3dot5 today is pleased to announce the release of Rugby 2011 for iPhone, iPod touch and Rugby 2011 HD for iPad. The application is a full guide to Rugby World Cup 2011 in New Zealand, featuring information about venues, teams, pools and complete schedules with all the latest Rugby news from around the World including Tri-Nations scores and rankings, ITM cup coverage, NRL coverage and more.
Game Critic
Game Critic is an iPhone/iPod Touch app that provides information and reviews on thousands of game titles on all major platforms including: PS3, XBox360, WII, PC, DS and PSP. It offers advanced refinement and instant search features to locate games quickly and easily. This means for each game you’ll have access to extensive content such as descriptions, screenshots, videos, cheats, walkthroughs and more.
Game Critic uses a unique weighted scoring model to calculate the aggregated score. Essentially, the scoring model is used to weigh each critic based on their overall eminence in the game review world. The result is a single critic rating for each game summarizing the essence of their critical opinions. Game Critic provides access to your local Amazon store to help users quickly buy any game from within the app. Game Critic currently supports all six major amazon locations including: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan.
New HSK for iPad
New Chinese HSK allow you to study all vocabulary and pronunciation for the new HSK levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 comprising more than 1200 words.
The new Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) is a standardized international Chinese proficiency test designed by the Center of Beijing Language and Culture University. Certificate of HSK will be issued to those who have secured the required scores. It is a dependable measure of your Chinese level used in admission or course placement of colleges or universities, and job application.
System Status
Jiri Techet., an innovative independent mobile application developer, has today announced the recent release of an updated version of System Status for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. With System Status 3.0 users can fully monitor & manage their device’s activity a single location. Version 3.0 of this helpful app adds a number of useful features including an active connections list, display routing tables, and review system logs. Complete with a new homepage icon and streamlined user interface, System Status 3.0 is currently available for download on the Apple App Store for $2.99 in the Utilities category.
Paint
ABCiSoft, a burgeoning mobile application developer, was excited today to announce the launch of an updated version of Paint for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This artistically innovative app provides users with a variety of digital canvas options to draw on. Paint 2.0 includes five unique virtual strokes as well as a full spectrum of colors. Newly overhauled to improve the app, Paint now includes a diverse array of pre-designed characters that young budding artists can now incorporate into their drawings at their leisure as well. The perfect digital drawing utility for any iOS shopper, Paint 2.0 is currently available on the Apple App Store for $4.99 in the Entertainment category.
Visulax Poker Strategy & Mental Training
Prajnu, Inc., creator of innovative self improvement apps like Visulax Golf, today is pleased to announce Visulax Poker Strategy & Mental Training 1.1 is now available on the Apple App Store. This app combines visualization and relaxation to help poker players sleep, relax, overcome bad beats, and tilting. One of the most challenging aspects of poker is self management. Too many players start tilting due to running bad or being on the receiving end of a bad beat. Due to the variance of the game poker players encounter one or both of these things many times. The key is how the player reacts when they are on the receiving end so they don’t go on full tilt, start making bad decisions, and giving their chips away.
The Pedlar Lady and The Unwanted Guest
Moving Tales Inc., producers of innovative 3D Animated Storybook Apps, have released upgrades for the iPad and iPhone versions of ‘The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross’ and ‘The Unwanted Guest’ apps.
The ‘The Pedlar Lady’ and ‘The Unwanted Guest’ upgrades include additional functionality and content. Now the user can choose to lock the dynamic text in place, thus disabling the accelerometer’s effect, and the user can link directly to the App Store to buy additional content from within the app themselves. In addition, there is now more of an explicit visual link between the first three Classic World Tales by including characters and new elements that interconnect the first three stories.
"The first three tales form a trilogy – interconnected in terms of content, style, location, and presentation." says Moving Tales founder Matthew Talbot-Kelly. "Each have been realized by the same creative team, using the same techniques, in the same carefully considered manner. Though the tales are each quite different, they are each based on age-old narrative threads, so they share a similar spirit and intent."
Smart Way Lite
Smart Way Lite, the demo version of the first game from Novi Forum has seen the light of day. Smart Way Lite is a highly addictive board turn-based puzzle game, guaranteed to attract brainteaser enthusiasts.
The challenge is straightforward and simple. The goal of the game is to outmaneuver and outsmart the super-clever character that is trying to escape the game board by placing obstacles around it. As the game progresses, this simple task gets harder due to the growing difficulty of new levels that are characterized by the increased presence of ‘bonuses’ – fields that enable the escaping character to evade the obstacles easier and faster.
Word Triangle
After Launching his first game "Color Tower" 2 months ago, Indie Developer Tanu Kush today is pleased to announce the release and immediate availability of Word Triangle 1.0, his first word game for the iPhone and iPod touch. Word Triangle taps into a different genre of word building apps and games. By providing a unique user friendly approach and gameplay, Word Triangle adds a different twist to word games and demonstrates the evolution of the rapidly growing and popular gaming category. If you enjoy playing anagram games, crossword, word finds or any word game, you will love Word Triangle.
Word Triangle challenges your word building skills in a unique, challenging and fun word game. Each Word Triangle puzzle consists of 7 clues and 7 words starting with 1 letter on top to 7 letter word at the bottom in a Triangle shape. Start at the top move towards the bottom seven letter word by adding a letter at each step and rearranging. A correct and different word must be made at each step answering to the clue given. Each word in the Triangle has all letters from a previous word in the Triangle but in a different order.
Passaggio
WIV LLC today is pleased to announce the availability of its latest version of Passaggio, a revolutionary new app for the iPhone and iPad that helps you improve your singing through instantaneous graphical feedback. This unique app is one of the first to allow the user to make adjustments to their singing in real time.
The ability to see sung notes on your iPhone or iPad provides a tremendous advantage to any singer who is serious about improving their singing. "Passaggio is like having a vocal coach in your pocket, on call and ready to assist at any time," said Chris Shafer, creator of Passaggio. "With the portability of the iPhone and iPad, Passaggio is the perfect tool for lessons, auditions, recording, choir rehearsals or general practicing."
Mushroom Fantasy Puzzle
PICK Technology Limited has announced the release of Mushroom Fantasy 1.0.1, their free fantasy puzzle for iOS devices. A super cute Mushroom waiting for you to play. Mushroom Fantasy is our newest puzzle game with mushroom theme which uses drag and drop play methodology. Featuring 960×640 high quality graphics for iPad, iPhone 4 and iPod touch (Retina support), Mushroom Fantasy once again comes in new face.
By using drag and drop, align a set of mushrooms (at least three of the same colored mushrooms) vertically or horizontally to make them disappear, play within a specified time and achieve the highest scores. Another feature of this game system is that you can create lots of Combos – a combo is any two or more sets of mushroom aligned and disappeared (or what we called "Collected" in the game) from the 6×6 puzzle grid within a short period of time.
Elite Walls
Pizero Design has released an important update for his award-winning Elite Walls Apps for Apple iPhone and iPod touch, available on the AppStore worldwide. The update brings a new look, with renewed icons and splash screen, more stability thanks to small bug fixes, and plenty of new content. More features of both apps include:
Intuitive Interface:
Browse the collection just as in the iPhone image library. Images are stored on our servers, so you will require Wifi or 3G connection to see the images.
Simple Categorization:
We only included two main categories to make the app simple: "Art" and "Photography". You can browse one or both at the same time, and sort images by release date or popularity. Elite Walls Lite and Elite Walls PRO version 1.2 are available now on the Apple AppStore worldwide; the Lite version can be recognized easily by the silver bezel sorrounding the icon, while the PRO version has a gold one.
Deal Flow
Kima Labs has announced Deal Flow, a new free app for iPhone and iPod touch that helps solve deal overload, by creating a personalized deal feed that lets people browse the deals they care about, all in one place on their iPhone. Deal Flow is available today as a free app in the iOS App Store.
The past two years have seen an explosion of deals and offers. Over 200 companies now offer Groupon-style local deals, dozens of websites offer time-limited "private" sales, while hundreds more traditional online retailers have stepped up promotion of their own discounted merchandise.
The result is a new opportunity for consumers to save money while discovering products and services. But this opportunity places a burden on consumers, who face a torrent of marketing email and dozens of websites to check. A dedicated few do the work of deal finding, but an increasing number simply tune out and miss offers they’d love.
Healthy Habits
The importance of creating Healthy Habits is in the news almost daily now as people are looking for ways to improve their health. Despite good intentions, making lasting changes without a plan and support system is unlikely. Healthy Habit is a highly rated iPhone tool that helps people create healthier habits. With the latest update, it now offers powerful tools to help users share their experiences with their support system.
"We know that people working to create healthy habits benefit from sharing their progress," says Brandon Masterson, president of 2Morrow Mobile. Version 1.3.0 of the Healthy Habits iPhone app from 2Morrow Mobile went live this week and significantly expands the ability for users to share progress with others.
Step 4 Moral Inventory
Independent developer James Hollender has announced version 1.0 his Step 4 Moral Inventory app for the iPad. This app provides an easy-to-use, detailed process by which persons participating in Addiction Recovery Programs can be aided in completing Step 4 of the 12 Steps without the use of any spreadsheets. For those who have been thinking about getting an iPad, this app might provide the justification needed since a thorough moral inventory typically takes a full year to complete.
Bouncing Birds!
Bouncing Birds! has taken the App Store by storm featuring original physics based gameplay, challenging puzzles, beautiful rich environments, and hours and hours of addictive gameplay are sure to be a hit with players of all ages around the world. Bouncing Birds! can easily be one of the defining games of the casual gaming genre, a game that has both the depth and beauty of a full console game and the easy pick up and play qualities of a mobile game. Bouncing Birds! truly has to be experienced on a iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to truly appreciate the next great game.
Use your Bouncing Birds to save the world. Fight back against the mean coconuts who are taking over the land. Bounce your way over, under, and straight through the coconuts clever hideouts. Bouncing Birds features hours of challenging gameplay, physics-based puzzles to find out how to hit the coconuts, and tons of replay value. All 45 levels have been beautifully crafted with stunning rainforest, arctic, and deep sea locations.
Lead Wars
DemonStudios has announced the second big update to its real-life pencil and paper iOS war simulation, Lead Wars. Version 1.2 adds an all-new single-player Campaign, where players can rise up the Army ranks as they complete over 70 mini-missions. Two new Standard Maps have also been added to the newly named Battle mode, which lets players play head-to-head online over Game Center, 2-player on the same device or single-player against the CPU.
Many improvements have also been made to the Map Creator, the AI, and tweaks have been made to the shot/move mechanic making making it easier to move short distances. An introductory demonstration video has also been added, which will help illustrate to players what the game is all about by showing it being played in real life and how the game simulates the same physical pencil-flicking action. A longer hi-res version of this real-life demonstration video can be seen on the website.
UniQXcess
EgisTec’s sub-brand LiniQue has announced a new productivity app called UniQXcess. UniQXcess is a fast & secured remote access tool to view and share files from tablet devices. The company developed UniQXcess based on three main principles; fast, easy and secure. With unlimited capacity, users can view files in their PCs from their iPad or Android tablet without any complicated set-up requirements. The only requirement for real-time access is internet connection. Furthermore, there is no risk of data leakage as the files are not stored in the cloud and are automatically AES encrypted throughout the transmission process. "
These days with travel weight restrictions and the convenience of handheld devices, more and more people are leaving their PCs in the office. Most wish they could just turn up for a meeting carrying nothing else but their tablet or iPad." said LiniQue’s chief developer. "So, we developed a tool which allows users to access their files remotely via UniQXcess. It’s a fast and easy way to view and share files from a remote location. We are confident that this tool will increase convenience, lessen burden and even help busy businessmen all over the world for times when they need to urgently access certain files which have been absent-mindedly left in the office PC."
Farm Mania HD
Realore Studios has announced that their popular PC game Farm Mania is finally available for iPad owners. Based on a well-balanced action, the game features 60 challenging levels in arcade and casual modes and 12 hidden object mini games. With the variety of challenges one must face and high replayability value, the game provides long hours of diverse agricultural fun for both casual and hardcore gamers.
The action takes place on a colorful campaign map. The player’s mission is to build up an old farm from zero to hero. To complete it, users should not only plant and sell crops, but also water and feed multiple animals as well as bake tasty pies and cakes, make warm scarfs and gloves, and implement modern technologies and their own know-hows to make the farm of their dream. A wide range of available upgrades lets users improve their speed, harvest more products, ship out more goods and increase their working efficiency.
GeoTasker
A reoccurring scenario plays out all over the world. After traveling past several grocery stores, a person comes home to a fridge without milk. GeoTasker is an app that was built for this very reason. GeoTasker reminds users of tasks that need to be completed by setting off an alert when approaching an area where the task is located. There are other apps on the market that do this as well. However, that is all they do. GeoTasker does even more than that.
Jumvo
Genesix announces today the launch of Jumvo, a free voice-based group messaging service for iPhone and iPod touch. Revolutionizing the growing group-messaging trend, Jumvo brings the personality and nuance of voice to the convenience of texting with its unprecedented functionality and Facebook integration.
By logging into Jumvo through Facebook, users have access to their entire friends list, diminishing the need to remember additional usernames, handles, and even phone numbers. Jumvo enables its users to send individual, personal messages or start a voice-based group messaging thread so the conversation can continue no matter how scattered its participants are.
Card Scanner Pro
Readdle, the leading publisher of business and productivity applications, today is pleased to announce the availability of their new iPhone application – Card Scanner Pro. The application scans business cards with the iPhone camera, recognizes the information on it and saves those details directly to the Address Book.
Card Scanner Pro accurately pulls all the contact information from a paper business card into iPhone’s Address Book. The whole process takes 3 simple steps. The application scans the card with the iPhone camera, recognizes all fields on the card including the person’s name, email address, postal address and saves these details to the iPhone’s Contacts.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]