Needless to say, we can help you out with a new dose of wonderful App Store entertainment. Click through and get ready for some gaming!

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What Have You Been Playing?

Have a great weekend, folks, and come back next Friday for some more games to keep you happy during the week!

I have a little device to tune it, a physical thing I have to lug around with me, and while it’s not all that big, it’s one more thing I need to keep on me at all times. Tunable can fix all that. It’s a great little app for tuning, and it can do a whole lot more. But can it replace the tuner I use everyday?

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You Need a Tune Up

Tunable, unsurprisingly, will help to tune your instrument, even if your instrument is your voice. Play a note with your instrument, in my case a ukulele, and Tunable will tell you what note you’re really playing. The app will also give you an idea of how long you stay in tune over several moments with a note history. This wasn’t incredibly useful for me, as I’m either in tune with my uke or I’m not, but as players of wind and brass instruments know, you can go out of tune while playing if you’re not doing everything properly. Same for singers, and Tunable can help them check whether they’re going sharp or flat at the end of a note.

If you’re in tune, you’ll get a friendly green bar across your screen.

There’s a tone and chord generator, too, and they’re in the app to help improve your ear. I’ve used apps that would play tones to help me tune instruments, but that’s not really what Tunable does. An app like that plays a note that sounds like what you’ll get from your instrument, but Tunable plays a tinny, sort of MIDI sound. I’m sure there are people who can tune to that, but as an enthusiastic amateur, I’m not one of them. The tone and chord generator is a good learning tool, though, helping me to train my ear.

Included is an easy-to-use metronome. It’s simple to adjust tempo, beats per measure and subdivision. If you don’t want to manually adjust the tempo, select from one of the predefined tempo markings, such as Adagio, Andante and Allegro. The metronome can be seen and heard from afar, and it flashes on each beat, changing color on the first.

The metronome is useful for keeping a specific beat, and can be set to lots of programmed tempos.

If you don’t know what musical temperament is, leave this alone. You’ll want to stick with equal temperament and will be just fine as you are. If it is something you need to tune your instrument, though, there are more temperament choices here than you can shake a stick at, stuff I’d never heard of and had difficulty finding with a good Internet search. Musicians who regularly tune with one of these systems will be happy to see them in this handy app.

Fine Tuning

There are some settings you can adjust if you’re an expert or ignore if you’re a novice. Tunable calibrates the frequency of A above middle C to 440 Hz, referred to as A440. If that doesn’t suit you, and there are at least a few reasons it wouldn’t, you can change it, but if all of that stuff about frequency sounded to you like the chorus to “Mahna Mahna” by the Muppets, you’ll probably want to leave this as is. If you’re a beginner, tell Tunable that in the settings, because it won’t judge your attempts at tuning as harshly. (Hey, we all had to start somewhere.) If you’re further along, Tunable will want to hold you to a higher standard.

Adjust some advanced settings or keep things simple.

Tunable includes some easy settings for everybody, though. Switch the display between vertical and horizontal alignment, a great one to toggle since you’ll likely have the app running with your phone propped against something while you use both hands to play. Turn the metronome flash off if you find it brings on convulsions — it’s incredibly bright. You can also choose a theme you like best, light or dark, which can help with eye strain if you’re staring at the screen for too long.

Train your ear with the tone and chord generator.

Final Thoughts

Tunable is a great app for musicians to have in their back pockets. It’s a nice one to turn to for a quick tune or if you always need to have a metronome close at hand. It’s sort of a Swiss Army knife for music. It can’t do everything all your gear at home can, but it sure can do a lot, and it’s in your pocket to boot.

Maybe the best thing about Tunable, besides how cool it looks, is how useful the actual tuner turned out to be. Not only can it help me tune my ukulele or any instrument, but note history will also tell me if I stay in tune when I’m singing or playing my trumpet, priceless information if you’re worried you’re not sustaining the note. That’s pretty spectacular and not easy to find in other tuners. For such a small app, Tunable turned out to be pitch perfect.

Enter MiTapes, a nostalgia-inducing app. With MiTapes, users can create their own playlists that can be “played back” on a cassette — at least visually, as your iPhone screen becomes a tape deck with two spools winding away. Can this throwback novelty re-ignite your love for the original form of peer-to-peer file sharing? Find out more about it after the jump.

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Mastering the Mix

To get started, MiTapes will have you choose the length of your forthcoming masterpiece. Three options are available here for your playlists, clocking in at 60, 90 and 120 minutes. That equals out to 30, 45 and 60 minutes per “side” of each tape, respectively. It looks like the app adds an extra second to the duration of a song, so if a tune measures in at 4:59, the space used will be 5 minutes.

Choose the length of your mixtape (left) and then give it a name (right).

After choosing the playing time of your tape, you will then choose a name for it. Names can be as creative as you want, though given the display of playlists, you may want to keep them relatively basic. After your mixtape has a name, you’ll see it displayed on the tape’s “case,” looking as though it has been written by hand. The same effect will also show itself on the track list, as well as on the cassette itself, which scrolls the name of the track currently being played.

Playing, Skipping and Sequencing

MiTapes instantly reminds users of the importance of planning ahead. When using the app, it mimics the craft of making a mixtape in that the creators should theoretically know the order of the songs they want to put into the mix. This may be a challenge for those used to making tracklists and shuffling them around to suit their fancy. Thankfully, there is a way to go in later and either delete or rearrange the order of the tunes, just so long as they collectively fit within the time constraints of the cassette. Naturally, songs used in MiTapes are sourced from your device’s library.

Select songs from your iTunes library (left). After mixes are complete, select which one you’d like to listen to (right).

While compiling your mix, you will be able to tap the plus sign next to a song to have it included. While making these selections, you can concurrently add tracks to side A and B of your cassette’s playlist, but should you want to include a song in your playlist twice, you won’t be able to, so make sure the one place you want it satisfies your musical needs.

Reel to Reel, Beat to Beat

As mentioned before, while in playback mode, the app becomes a full-screen cassette deck, with one reel winding into the next. Touch the bottom of the tape and a few buttons will appear, including those that let you skip forward or backward to the next or previous songs (where was this feature back in the day?), pause, flip the tape to its other side and one that will take you to the main menu. Pressing some of the buttons for these functions will create a plastic-on-plastic noise or clicks reminiscent of using a boom box and adding to the retro vibe.

A look at the “case” of your cassette mix.

As a tape plays, its transition from song to song is padded by a little bit of air, but that’s the only awkward change between tracks. Unlike real cassettes, you won’t have to wait for any unfilled time on a side to run out before you can listen to your next jam. The mixtape also plays continuously until you make it stop.

As songs play, the title will scroll across the label as the left spool winds into the one on the right.

What Doesn’t Stick on Tape

Say you update your phone’s music library. How will this alter your playlists? Unlike a cassette where a song is stored until it’s recorded over, taking a song out of your library will remove it from your playlist, marking its title in red. Mixtapes won’t play if even one song is missing. In order to fix this, you’ll have to delete the red songs and should you choose to, can add more available songs from your library to fill in the gaps. Otherwise, you can just have a smaller playlist for a particular mix.

Edit your mixtapes using the drag-and-drop feature, but remember time constraints still apply.

A word of warning if most of the music on your iPhone was downloaded from iTunes: those songs will not play on MiTapes. Yes, those songs can still be included within the playlists that you create, but you will hear nothing but dead silence as your tape plays until the next non-iTunes track queues up. To fully utilize MiTapes, songs will have to be re-imported as MP3s, or you can rely on your selection of songs that are CD rips, or were purchased from Amazon and other download sites.

If you delete songs from your iPhone, they’ll disappear from your tapes and will be marked in red.

Press Play?

MiTapes is a fun throwback in that it will take those familiar with tape-to-tape dubbing back to their younger days and the archaic methods we once used to share music and make playlists. What might hinder users is not being able to use iTunes-downloaded content within the app, as well as the time limitations on the playlists and not being able to share your creations with friends. Creating a list of songs to play is very simple on the iPhone’s version of iTunes and comes standard with the device, so it might be a harder sell to get folks to cough up the asking price. But with the iPod and other iOS devices doing so much to change the way we listened to music, this might be one of the few apps that takes listeners to a time when their listening habits were more distinctive.

But is this adaptation enough to define its place among the many endless runners and coaster games? Find out after the jump.

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The Scenery is the Charlie Brownest

Snoopy Coaster feels like an authentic extension of the Peanuts’ kids’ adventures — if one can get past the idea of these kids being stuck on an endless roller coaster that’s being driven by a beagle. Anyway, the characters look very much like they would in a comic strip or an animated holiday special.

Master the art of the jump … it’s going to be very helpful throughout Snoopy Coaster.

As an added bonus, each is given a voice that sounds much the characters would in the cartoons. The one-liners spit out by Snoopy’s coaster pals sound as though Charles M. Schulz penned them.

Additionally, the background environments are inspired by various events within Peanuts’ mythology. For example, one stage of the endless coaster adventure takes place in a pumpkin patch that references moments from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. There are also scenes from Snoopy’s visions of being a famous World War I pilot who fights the Red Baron. And the winter-themed stage looks an awful lot like Charlie Brown’s Christmas special.

Upgrade coasters to Peanuts-themed rides, like this Great Pumpkin-inspired train.

Even roller coaster upgrades and special items will look familiar, like one train looking like the Great Pumpkin (it moves fast, too, likely powered by the momentum of belief generated by Linus). There’s also a bonus stage, where players collect coins among trees that eat kites. When here, the kite is one’s means of staying afloat, so be sure to dodge the hungry oaks.

How to Score

While the Peanuts gang is roller coaster riding through a series of backgrounds, they’ll have a few tasks. The first is to collect as much stuff as possible. Within this stuff are animals, such as birds and butterflies, which Snoopy and his crew can simply drive into (don’t worry, no animals are hurt during the collection process) or can jump into the air and grab with a tap on the screen.

So many items to collect! Get as many of them as you can.

There are also other items, such as balloons, kites and paper planes that are floating through the sky. Players can capture them in the same fashion as the animals and add them to their bag of collected goodies. Doing so will add numbers to the growing list of things a player owns and will also add points to their tallies. Some power-ups are also scattered throughout stages that can be scooped up by driving the train into them or by utilizing two helpful tools, but more on that in just a bit.

Finally, there are coins aplenty throughout Snoopy Coaster. After loop-de-loops, before jumps and even on stacked tracks, coins both small and large will shine up any environment. Getting these will let players buy fun things later on, such as roller coaster upgrades and power-ups.

Ready to shop with the coins you’ve collected? There are plenty of things to purchase, from upgrades to power-ups.

And don’t forget the objectives. Each round will present a series of things that should be completed, like making a certain number of perfect jumps, making Charlie Brown dizzy (use your finger to make the coaster circle a loop three times) or traveling 1,000 meters and so forth. Execute these tasks well, as players get graded at the end of each game of play.

A Little Help from Friends

While zooming through Snoopy Coaster, it may seem impossible to get to all of the coins, animals and identified flying objects that inhabit the screen. But Snoopy’s pals have that handled with the occasional use of special moves.

Peppermint Patty’s vacuuming skills and Linus’ blanket help Snoopy collect stuff in tough-to-reach places onscreen.

Peppermint Patty, who occupies the rear car of Snoopy’s roller coaster, will grab a vacuum cleaner, which pulls objects from every corner of the screen into the player’s bag of items. The effect is temporary, but can be very rewarding, especially toward the end of a stage, where hundreds of coins linger.

Then there is Linus’ security blanket grab. When Chuck’s buddy starts swinging it through the air, it has a similar power as the suction of the vacuum cleaner. Items found near it, whether the coaster is jumping or simply driving down the track, will get scooped up and added to the bank.

Some other helpful tools include a booster, which rockets Snoopy’s roller coaster across the screen for a select period of time. It will sort of make the train fly through scenery, so it’s possible to fly high above and low below the tracks. But pay attention to how much longer the booster is powered. If energy runs out and there’s no track below the roller coaster, it will fall the to the ground and that will result in one life lost.

Don’t lose your lunch on these crazy loop-de-loops.

Of course, more lives can be earned with the acquisition of wrenches, which are found throughout each stage of the game and can be bought in the store’s shop. Also be on the lookout for ramps, which will launch roller coasters through the air temporarily and at high speeds.

More goodies, special items and in-app purchases can add trading cards, access to comic strips to the player’s collection of Peanuts paraphernalia.

Fun On the Run?

There’s no denying that Snoopy Coaster is great entertainment. Seeing these characters run the courses will bring back memories of childhood (or, at least, the last holiday when one of the specials aired) and since they’re all-around engaging personalities, it’s hard to not be in love.

It’s not the most unique game or concept and at times feels as though it’s simply Mad Coaster with Snoopy and his pals subbed in. The one-liners may get repetitive, and so will the background scenes. Those may affect how long players are interested in the game, but the characters’ history and devoted fan base will likely keep in demand for quite some time.

And because you and the other partygoers will be having such a great time, you’ll want to take lots of cool photos that you can edit, jazz up and share with everyone. Here, we present a few top picks that cover all these bases and more. Check them out after the jump.

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What Do You Think?

Which apps do you find indispensable when you get together with your family or party with your friends? Let us know in the comments section below!

For the hard working folks amongst us who are looking to mingle with like minded folks for motivation and encouragement, the Internet has become the go-to platform. Everest leverages the power of both the Internet and mobile to help you connect with inspiring people and to stay focused and motivated. Lets us take it for a spin after the break.

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Getting Started

In just three slides shown when you first open the app, Everest gives the user a very clear idea as to what one can expect. Past the tour, you aren’t forced immediately to sign up or login. This indeed is a great user experience idea that I wish many other apps in the app store would start using as well.

To fuel your imagination and to give a glimpse into what other people are planning with the app, an endless stream of ideas are presented. The design of the user interface and the presentation of the stream is really nice to look at and the design elements against a white background offer a soothing effect.

Sifting through dreams and saving them.

Use of images enhance the effect of the idea. So does the “I would like to join” button. It’s true that we might not know at all times what we want to do and Everest is a great place to start. There are just so many inspiring ideas to choose from!

Before committing yourself by pressing the “I want to do this” button, take a look at the brilliantly thought out status messages. There are currently two of them — one that indicates if the person is just thinking of doing it or has actually started working on their dream. Personally, I would suggest that you check out the dreams where people are putting effort to make them come true, rather than subscribing to a ton of “I might do it someday” ideas.

A Look at the Dream

As I noted earlier, you can save the dreams you intend to do by pressing the “I want to do this” button. The app saves them all for you. But, to actually start working on it, you’ll have to create an account or sign in. Facebook connect is a quick way to gain access and there is the conventional sign-up form as well.

Creating your own dream and figuring out ways to achieve it.

After logging in, you’ll be taken straight to the dreams section which lists out the ones you have saved. Before diving in, let us check out the ways to explore for challenges and dreams.

Exploring Dreams

A thoughtful design masks the daunting five-tab layout cleverly and evokes curiosity. The tabs to the right are dedicated to exploring what others are doing and what you might want to take on as a challenge.

Exploring dreams and challenges.

The news feed like view to see what steps others are taking to accomplish their goals is nicely done. And, the best part is you can simply copy those steps and add them to your list of tasks.

Breaking Down the Dreams

Breaking down dreams and challenges to multiple, manageable chunks is the next logical step. You can add a step and select the dream that’s associated to it. Adding notes and thoughts to keep track of something related to the task makes sure you have got all the info you need to do in a single location.

Breaking down a dream into manageable chunks.

If you look closely, Everest resembles a well designed to-do app with an interesting wrapper. You’ll find all the standard features of a modern day task management app. There are deadlines and reminders. There is a repeat functionality to take redundancy out of the equation. And there is a neat screen that lists out tasks that are ahead of you in the coming days.

Setting reminders and the calendar view.

All in all, there is no way you could go wrong by choosing Everest as your motivation companion. Even if the social motivation isn’t helping you, the stellar task manager definitely will.

Final Thoughts

Any way you slice it, Everest looks like a winner. There are ton of motivation, habit forming and goal tracking apps in the App Store. Checking off or striking off everyday that you have accomplished a task and watching the chain grow is one great way to do things. The regular check off when done is another.

Everest stands tall in its own right. In the age of epic attention deficit disorders, a phenomenal user experience is what spells success for an app. From that standpoint, Everest wins over the competition hands down. Everest is for those of us who need some external stimuli to move forward.

This is an app for coffee lovers and those just learning to appreciate the beauty of the crema. Use it as a quick reference when you come across an unfamiliar espresso drink or just enjoy perusing the stories for interesting coffee trivia and watching the video demos. The thoughtful app design and artistic representation of each cup will leave you with a greater appreciation for the barista’s art. Great Coffee App does one thing many instructional coffee apps fail to do — it inspires!

Want to explore the world of espresso drinks? Keep reading to learn more about this unique coffee app.

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Getting Started

Launch the app for the first time and it walks you through a demo of the various motions needed to navigate through each screen: swipe down to view the menu, swipe left to browse through the drinks, tap the mug to view a more detailed diagram, swipe up for a full description, etc. Some apps just expect users to figure it out organically, but the guidance is helpful in getting you on your feet, ready to explore with a bit more confidence. Browse through the 17 most popular espresso drinks by swiping left, or have a look at all the drinks on the Great Coffee Menu, which is the grid icon that appears at the top of any screen when you swipe down.

Browse through the 17 most popular espresso drinks by swiping through each drink, left, or have a look at them all in the Great Coffee Menu, right.

The toolbar also includes options for turning off the music, sharing the app on your social networks, replaying the introductory tutorial or changing the language preferences. From a basic espresso to the elaborate Vienna coffee, the drinks follow a natural progression from simple to complex. If you’re trying to figure out the world of espresso-based drinks you’ll appreciate the variety covered in this app, like the nuanced Espresso Lungo, everyday Latte and multilayered Irish Coffee. The first impression of Great Coffee is a modern, fresh, beautifully designed app that’s a pleasure to use.

The Drinks

Each espresso drink is beautifully photographed, displaying the layers of each drink so you can see the ratio of coffee to milk or foam or whatever else. Tap the screen to zoom in on the cup and view a labeled diagram of each layer. This design feature is fun and does a great job utilizing the visual capabilities of the mobile phone. Swipe up to read more about what defines the drink and how best to enjoy it. Drink descriptions are thoughtfully written and often include a bit of backstory you may have been unfamiliar with, like the Americano, a term “coined during the Second World War when American soldiers diluted espresso with hot water trying to satisfy their preference for more sips in a cup.” The app needs more stories like these to flesh out the content. At a price of $2.99 it can feel like you’re paying for design and left wanting a bit more substance.

Each drink is beautifully photographed and accompanied by a short yet thoughtful description and backstory.

It’s nice to see that since its release in September 2012 the app has been updated several times with improvements and new features. The latest addition of videos demonstrating the espresso methods was a great idea. Again, the videos are beautifully shot; each with a unique music score, but it’s more about the art than giving users detailed instructions for achieving the perfect cup.

Tap the screen to zoom in on the drink layers, left. Swipe upwards to find a video demonstrating how to make each drink.

Videos download quickly if you’ve got a good Internet connection, and it’s nice to see the elevated design feature of icons users can tap to view only certain steps in the process. While the video plays, written instructions appear at the bottom of the screen. As apposed to a sterile video demonstration with audio, this silent style is refreshing and in keeping with the artistic, visual nature of the app.

Conclusion

This app reads more like an appreciation of fine coffee than how-to manual, so if you’re looking for a reference tool you’re in the wrong place. You’ve got to appreciate the Great Coffee App for what it is — an inspiring, eye-opening introduction to appreciating the art of pulling a shot and creating a delicious drink. To me, it’s a Renaissance app, with great attention given to the experiences, sensations, and stories behind the drinks. Some criticize this app for “not being useful enough,” but I say there are plenty of useful coffee apps out there — if the creators want to give users more bang for their buck they should keep expanding the storyline. Add more interesting features, like an interactive timeline of coffee evolution or more cultural tidbits, like how Italians only drink cappuccino in the morning.

It’s obvious the creators are passionate about coffee. Check out their “Making Of” video and it all makes sense. Every detail is lovingly attended to, from the professional photography and videography to the thoughtful app design to experienced barista input to the creation of an original music score for the app. If you’re just getting to know espresso you’ll fall in love, if you’re already a coffee aficionado you’ll appreciate this unique app dedicated to the crème de la crema.

When I bought my black iPhone 5, I was ecstatic. I loved the matte black and gloss black finishes, and figured that there was no way that I’d ever put a case on such a beautiful device. I’m an adult, I can be careful, right?

Yeah, not so much. While I never had dropping issues with my iPhone 4S, I seem to be quite the klutz with my 5, and now it has little silver chips to remind me of my past mistakes. My wife’s, meanwhile, looks brand new. Must be that fancy plastic case she has.

So what about you? Do you use a case on your iPhone? Let us know in the poll to the right!

I’m aware, of course, that most people are using Netbot these days; It’s free and admittedly awesome. But it’s wearing Tweetbot‘s clothes, and I want my ADN experience to feel visually unique from Twitter without losing the power of Tapbot’s app. In the past, I’ve tried Rivr (for iPhone), which was full of features and pleasant to look at, but after several weeks of use, it didn’t capture my attention anymore and I was back to Netbot (which also has an iPad app).

Zephyr is the closest I’ve come to the Netbot experience. In colloquial terms, I’m really stoked about this app. Read on to find out why.

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The Interface

Zephyr’s interface is, in some ways, similar to Netbot’s. Both rely on darker colour schemes and tabs along the bottom of the screen. That being said, there are some significant differences. Typography is an obvious one to anybody who has used both apps, and to my pleasant surprise, the font is adjustable. I like the Medium font that the app uses as its default; it allows you to fit more posts on the screen than you can in almost any other client that I’ve tried.

Welcome to Zephyr’s take on ADN.

Beyond that, the tabs are broken up into your Stream, the Global Stream, your Profile, Search and Settings. Tabs are sadly not adjustable. Admittedly, I’d prefer to have a Mentions tab and lose the Settings tab (my personal motto is “set it and forget it”), but Mentions and Starred Posts are available in the Profile tab.

Mentions and Starred Posts are only available from the Profile tab.

The interface itself is incredibly fast, which Zephyr states twice in its App Store description. In fact, it’s so fast that if your Wi-Fi or cellular network is slower than it normally is, your Stream or users’ avatars could have a hard time keeping up! I don’t think that’s much of a problem, but if Zephyr’s developer is able to speed up the caching process while keeping the speed of the interface this quick, they could have the fastest social networking app in the App Store.

Getting Pretty

Visually, the app is simple and responsive. All the visual elements behave exactly as you’d expect, which makes the app feel incredibly polished (and that’s more than I can say for most of the competition). Other apps will stretch Cover Images on profiles, but Zephyr wisely leaves them alone. Reposts are indicated with elegant grey text and a bold user name for the reposter. It’s really well done and it’s incredibly pleasant to look at.

The conversation view is really nice.

The colour scheme is dark without becoming overly robotic. Some elements, like the blue light that illuminates the Stream tab when there are new posts, are almost playfully beautiful. (In a nice touch, that same blue light is visible in the app icon. Smart move.)

There are some elements I miss from Netbot: I like having the avatar appear on the right instead of the left for your own posts; it helps differentiate what you’ve said and what everybody else has said. If I star a post, the star symbol for the post becomes hollow. I feel like it should be the opposite. (That being said, a starred post will always have a grey star beneath the avatar, and maybe that’s enough of an indicator in and of itself.)

The Feature Show

Zephyr supports almost every major ADN feature, mostly in grand fashion with subdued visual flair. Most of this stuff runs in the background and Zephyr doesn’t make a big deal out of it — things like synchronized posts aren’t even mentioned in the app description.

Zephyr also supports multiple accounts and is a universal app, which is big for me. In my experience, using different clients across multiple devices seems to prevent proper syncing with ADN, so it’s nice to jump between the same client on two different devices and always find them in sync.

The Settings tab, despite its prominence, doesn’t give access to as many features as I think it should.

There are a couple oddities, though. Zephyr will use yfrog or CloudApp for photos, but it doesn’t use ADN’s storage. (Also, I wish somebody else would adopt Rivr’s Instagram-like photo filters.) Zephyr supports Instapaper and Pocket, but not Readability (you’ll still need to use Netbot or Felix if you want that feature). And although Zephyr supports notifications, it doesn’t support them granularly, which means that you can’t choose to receive notifications for a mention but not a repost.

That being said, who knows what you’ll receive notifications for, anyways. Zephyr doesn’t tell you, but I can say that Netbot tells me every time I get a new follower while Zephyr does not.

My Wish List

The first item on my wish list is better notification support, preferably to the point that it’s granular. I’d also like to see photo filters, not unlike what Rivr supports, and a Night Mode. Minor visual enhancements, like adjusting where your avatar shows up in your Stream, would be nice as well.

Mentions have a nice blue shade to them (and Pedro and I like to chat), but it would be nice if my own posts also had some sort of visual cue.

I’d like to see more features. Zephyr should be competing with Netbot and Felix instead of Rhino and Rivr. It’s as beautiful as any app out there, but it’s missing some functionality for advanced users. And arguably, $4.99 is a lot to pay for an app that doesn’t cater to advanced users.

Beyond that, I’m not even sure development is still active. The last time the app was updated was December 2012 (and that update had some essential bug fixes), but beyond that, it’s hard to say if it will ever be updated again.

The Bottom Line

Zephyr is expensive, and it’s hard to justify the cost without assurances that development is ongoing. But it holds a lot of potential, and if the developer is working on it, we’re looking at an ADN client that could be the go-to in six months’ time. As it stands, the most feature-packed options are Netbot (which is still too similar to Tweetbot for my own liking) or Felix (which is only for the iPhone).

App.net is still in its early stages, and seeing as Zephyr is currently a 1.01 app, so is it. I want to see where development goes with it and I’m really excited about the possibilities. My breakdown right now is that Zephyr is my preferred iPad client and Felix is my preferred iPhone client, but Zephyr makes me want more. Hopefully the developer keeps updates coming.

In November 2011 I reviewed Ness, which I called a “sure fire winner.” Recently, Ness received a major revamp, including a new method for finding recommendations, list creation and more. Find out after the jump if the revamp is an improvement or hindrance to an already fantastic app.

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A New Way to Navigate

Ease of navigation is one of biggest improvements in version 2.0 of Ness, which is accomplished via a hidden navigation menu. Accessed by tapping the menu icon in the upper-left corner, the menu allows you quickly navigate between the app’s many new features. I didn’t have an issue with the navigation scheme prior to the update, but I often find hidden menus to offer a more enjoyable navigation experience.

The hidden navigation menu makes it easy to jump different sections within the app.

Search & Recommendations

One of my favorite aspects of Ness prior to the recent update was the search interface, in which six cuisines are displayed in tiles and tapping a cuisine provides a list of restaurants from which to choose. This manner of finding restaurants is still available in the app’s Search feature, but Ness now offers a new method of finding your next dining establishment in the form of Recommendations.

The familiar search functionality is still as good as ever.

When searching within Recommendations you’ll need to perform three steps, which is done by interacting with three icons in the top menu bar — What, When and Where. In What, you select a cuisine type (e.g. sushi, steak, burger), whether you want something casual or upscale, and whether you can to include places you’ve previously rated. In When, you select either a Now option, which will pick a meal type (e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner) based on the current time of day, or you can select a specific meal type in the Later option. In Where, the app will choose your current location (or you can enter a city) and you can change the search radius. Once you’ve made your selections, tap Done.

The What and When steps in the new Recommendations feature.

After a rather fun search input animation, restaurant cards will be displayed. Each card displays general information about the establishment and an estimated likeness rating (or your previously selected ratings), which is all pretty standard. Some cool new features include the ability to dismiss a card, which will eliminate it from future searches, and an option to save a restaurant to a list (done by tapping the Save button or flicking down on the card). Flicking up on a card brings up Go and Share Details features, which allow you to quickly get directions or call a restaurant, or send information about the location to a friend via email or text message.

Cards provide most of the information you need front and center.

After using Recommendations a handful of times, my fondness for Ness strengthened immensely and my hat is off to the developers. With just a few taps, a search criteria is selected and a list of restaurants tailored to my preferences is loaded for review. I love the use of cards, because it allows me to focus on one restaurant at a time and see the most relevant information all at once. Not to mention that every element of Recommendations is pure eye candy.

Lists

On most occasions, I’ll fire up Ness when I’m in need of feasting. However, there are times when I’m chatting with a friend and they’re going on about a new restaurant I have to try, or my fiancé brings up a local restaurant to which I’ve never been. With the inclusion of lists, Ness is now the place I’ll go when I need to keep track of places I want to visit to in the future. If people often ask you where they should go for a meal, you can create and share a list — a feature only afforded to other Ness users, unfortunately.

Use lists to keep tabs for restaurants you want to try, or when you’re in the mood for something particular.

Saving restaurants to a list is accomplished by tapping any Save button displayed throughout the app, and then selecting your desired list(s). While you’ll have a few set up automatically, new list categories can be created in the List section or when you’re adding a new place to a list. My only disappointment with the list feature is the inability to add restaurant to a list within the List section; the app requires you to utilize the search function when you want to find and add a specific restaurant to a list.

You can app a place to multiple lists, if desired.

Additional Features & Improvements

Previously, Ness required you to sign in with Facebook, which I’m sure was a major bane for many. Now, you can simply create a Ness account by providing a few items of information. However, attaching your Facebook and Foursquare accounts continues to be a plus as Ness now includes a Newsfeed, which displays check-ins and status updates from friends when they’re visiting and/or discussing a restaurant.

If you have friends that use Ness, you’ll also see their activity in the Newsfeed.

The new Personalize section is a great place to visit if you want to rate more establishments, which in turn improves Ness’ ability to provide better recommendations. If you check into places with Facebook and/or Foursquare, Ness keeps tabs of them so that you can quickly rate places to which you’ve already been (a great feature for me since I often forget to rate places while I’m there).

To get the most out of Ness, make sure to visit the Personalize section to rate restaurants.

In my previous review, I discussed the inability to select a specific navigation app when making use of Ness’ directions feature (the app automatically opened the first-party Maps app). The Ness developers have granted my wish, because now when you tap the directions button a list of navigation apps you have installed on your iPhone is displayed. You’ve gotta love choices!

You can now choose which navigation app to use when getting directions.

The Bottom Line

As much as I love app updates, which is quite a lot, I’m always a tad wary of major updates to my favorites ones. On most occasions the updates end up being an improvement, but I’ve also run into instances in which the update ruined my fondness for the app. Luckily, version 2.0 of Ness falls into the former’s camp. I absolutely adore the Recommendations feature, which simplifies the experience of finding a place to eat to three of the most basic criteria — what, when and where.

If you often use apps like Yelp or Urbanspoon to find places to eat, or don’t use any services of this nature but are in need of one, I strongly urge you to give Ness a trial run. After all, you’ll spend far less time reading through other user’s reviews, which may or may not be valid, and can instead rely on Ness’ ability to determine if a restaurant is good for you based on your own personal tastes.

But today, 12 years later with two kids and a wife, I’m no longer that guy. I’ll watch the F&F movies, but at this point it’s all about entertainment, not wishing I could get my car in the film. So what appeal will Fast & Furious 6 — a game based on the latest installment in the series — do for me? Let’s find out after the jump.

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The Premise

Like most movies that contain the words “Fast” and “Furious,” there isn’t much of a plot to be had. You’re a street racer, and you have a car that you race to earn cash to modify your car. Your goal is to join a group of racers — the main characters from the films — so you can commit crimes and what-not.

Characters from the movie like Ludacris — or Tej, as it were.

The plot is just a device to move you around the game, with various levels offering different options. You can also check out some unique movie features, such as trailers or the soundtrack if you like.

Avoiding the Common Flaws

The biggest problem I have with most racing games on the iPhone — or any iOS device — is that you usually have to lean or tilt the phone to get the car to turn. Between pivoting the phone constantly and trying to tap virtual buttons on the screen, it can get quite irritating. That’s why I typically don’t play (or review) racing games.

The walkthrough gives you very clear instructions.

Fast & Furious 6 avoids this problem by turning the game into a series of quicktime events. For example, each race starts off with a launch. To get the best start, you need to tap the Launch button just as the proverbial checkered flag drops. If you want to drift, you tap the Drift button just as you enter a certain segment on the course. And of course, there’s shifting and nitrous to work with as well, all of them just requiring a quick tap or hold of a button to progress. That keeps things simple, and fun as well.

The Pretty Stuff

The graphics in the game are pretty spectacular. The cars show reflections in the paint, the streets have a glossy appearance and the lighting in the background is impressive. On the Retina display on the iPhone 5, this is just a good looking game. It’s not Infinity Blade, but it’s up there.

See? It’s pretty.

The Evil Inside

The problem, as it is with most free games, is that in-app purchases make a sinister appearance. Each race earns you money, and some earn you golden FF tickets. As you play, you’ll need to modify your car so you can beat faster rides, and to do that, you need to spend the money or tickets. Of course, if you want to get those tickets faster, you can buy them.

IAP. Ugh.

But that’s not the insidious part to me. What offends me the most is that your car takes gas. And of course, when it runs out of gas, you can’t race any further. To get gas, you can spend the money or tickets that you’ve earned, sure. Problem is, the cost for gas is exponentially higher than most upgrades, making it almost a given that if you want to continue, you’ll be forced to make an in-app purchase. That’s crap. Admittedly, you can earn gas just by sitting around and waiting, but that can kill a vibe when you’re in the middle of a big session.

Final Thoughts

Overall, F&F 6 is a fun game to play. It is a bit repetitive — drift, race, get money, spend money, wash, rinse, repeat — but that’s not a bad thing. This type of game has a short shelf life anyways, so for the month or two that we’re playing it, I’ll have a good time. And since it’s free — assuming you ignore all that IAP stuff — then there’s nothing to worry about.

What’s unfortunate is that the game doesn’t have more depth. With a bit more to it, this could be a game that I could really sink my teeth into. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and it probably won’t be with this type of licensed app. Oh well, I suppose there’s next time.

If only I’d had Arro back then, an app to narrow down your choices and take the guesswork out of major purchases. Can Arro point you in the right direction and get rid of all of that decision-making anxiety?

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Take Aim at What You Want

Arro’s great if you need to buy something, especially something expensive, but you don’t know what to buy. There are five categories to choose from: electronics, personal care, baby, fitness and appliances. If you’re looking for something that falls outside of those buckets, Arro can’t help, but if you need a new TV or stroller, you’re all set. Tap the category that matches the thing you need to buy.

What are you looking for?

Choose the type of product you’re looking for on the next screen. Is it a makeup concealer in personal care or a camping stove in fitness? Once you’ve told Arrow what you need, it will ask you what’s most important to you. Do you value durability over ease of assembly? Comfort over portability? (These attributes will all change based on category; Arro won’t ask if you want a comfortable Blu-ray player!) Scroll to the bottom for any extra options, set your price range and tap find.

Arro will return your search results, with a top match highlighted. This is the product Arro thinks most closely fits your needs. There will be a star rating taken from user reviews, and you can see how much it’ll set you back. If you’re ready to pull the trigger, Arro also links you to an online retailer where you can go ahead and buy your new eyeshadow, crib or dishwasher. For big items that are difficult to ship, you can also search stores near you.

Tell Arro what you’re looking for, and it will find your best match.

If you’ve already got something in mind, you don’t have to go through the dog and pony show of listing out your must-haves. Instead, tap Buy Or Not at the bottom of the screen. Here you can search for anything you’re thinking of buying directly, as long as it fits in the five Arro categories. Anything Arro thinks is a good buy gets a green Yes screen, but if not, you’ll be met with a large, red No that leaves no room for misunderstanding.

Arro thinks I made a better choice and has a better suggestion for me.

Buy Or Not will then give you recommendations of better options similar to the potential purchase you’ve just input. Often, Arro will recommend a new model of the same thing or a better brand. Here, though, Arro isn’t taking into account any of the attributes you would have used in the product matchmaking feature above, nor does it keep its recommendations to a set price range, so you’ll want to take the Buy Or Not product list with a grain of salt.

Favorite Things to Buy

I’m not someone who rushes in, and I take some time before making big purchases, especially if I’m buying something big like a television. I’ll want to read lots of industry reviews in addition to all of the user reviews I can access on retailers’ sites through Arro. Luckily, I can save anything I’m really digging to my favorites in Arro and review it later. That way, if there is something I’m thinking of purchasing but I’m not ready to hit the Buy Now button, I can keep track of it and come back to it later when I have more information.

It’s not all electronics with Arro.

It would be great to separate out all of my favorite items in Arro by category. Currently, I have Blu-ray players, a dishwasher and some makeup in my favorites list, and they’re all jumbled up. I’d like to easily compare the Blu-ray players, but to get them into any coherent list, I need to manually reorganize everything. While that’s certainly doable, category listings would be awesome and would quickly rid my personal electronics comparison chart of moisturizing facial wipes.

Final Thoughts

Arro is really a neat app to have on hand. The first time I tried it out, I put in all my requirements for a camera and it spit out the newest model of the camera I already own. While it felt nice to be affirmed like that, told I had made the best choice a couple of years ago when I last bought a camera, I couldn’t help thinking Arro was spot on. I love my camera and haven’t had any complaints. Arro knew what it was doing.

If you’ve ever looked to buy something that you really knew very little about, it can be incredibly overwhelming. You know what’s important to you, but you don’t know which products have those features. And I bet you want it to be reliable, too. On top of all that, you have to search a ton of sites to get the best information. Instead of spending hours or days researching before you finally make a purchase, Arro takes care of all of that for you, giving you back a feeling of confidence when buying big (or even small) ticket items.

Don’t worry if you’re a fan of other genres though — variety is the spice of life, and we’re always keeping things spicy here at AppStorm. Click through for some crazy fish antics, a bit of petty theft and a variety of mind bending puzzles!

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What Have You Been Playing?

Good luck puzzling through this week’s collection of games! See you back here next Friday for a fresh set.

Again based upon Nick Risinger’s stunning cosmological photography, Sky Guide is the new iteration of Sky Survey — the most beautiful app in the App Store, until now. Like Apple, Risinger knows even the best products can be improved, and with Sky Guide his team has brought a wealth of new material to give any astronomy enthusiast goosebumps. The idea may remain the same but there’s plenty of features to get excited about whilst scanning the Milky Way. Let’s take a look.

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Natural Beauty

The unblemished night sky is one of the finest sights known to man; the trouble is that such a sight is becoming increasingly more difficult to witness. For the uninitiated, Nick Risinger’s 5,000 megapixel mosaic is made up of 37,000 photographs captured from some of the most remote locations on Earth and shows an incomprehensible array of celestial sights in unadulterated clarity. This extraordinary image forms the very fabric of Sky Guide and allows for an experience rarely had in the flesh.

The stunning panorama of the Milky Way.

Competing apps like Night Sky show a computer render of the Milky Way with thousands of banal, indistinguishable dots miserably representing the beautiful spiral galaxy’s components. Sky Guide incorporates the built-in gyroscope to accurately mirror the sky above with real images, thus enabling instant recognition of every planet and constellation on show. No data connection is required to traverse the skies and it is even possible to enter raw coordinates to mimic a specific area from anywhere in the world.

The panorama can be dimmed to match the sky above your head.

The core image behind Sky Guide is incredibly detailed and, due to its enormous size, is not shown at full resolution. Such intricacy shows thousands of real stars, some impossible to see in even moderately light pollution free areas; therefore, with a two-finger scroll gesture the panorama can be dimmed in order to match the sky above, enabling easier identification of the visible stars. That’s not where the beauty ends with this app, however.

Information, Beautified

Sky Guide, although perfectly capable of being a browsing app, is innately educational with complete disregard for degree of knowledge. Whereas its predecessor relied upon Wikipedia for content, this time multiple academic sources have been utilised to provide higher quality content. Much of the information has been handcrafted by a number of highly respected individuals giving an unparalleled level of expertise in this app category and a vast amount of educational resource.

Detailed information can be accessed by selecting specific objects with external links below.

To access a particular object’s information, simply tap on the panorama to uncover the necessary icon from where a slide-out panel appears. Rather than occupying only a portion of the screen as with Sky Survey, the new app utilises the full display to reveal beautiful, specific images alongside the relevant information and links. The interface itself is marvellous and allows focus to remain on the rich content featured with the sans-serif font set against deep black panels being a beautifully minimalist touch. After all, it is simplicity that makes for a great UI and this app has it in abundance.

Customise what you can see in the panorama.

The interface is exemplary throughout with a slimmed down menu and simplistic sharing options that allow selected areas of the panorama to be showcased on Twitter and Facebook. The main menu — accessible from the ubiquitous hamburger button — lists options for customising the panorama; however, compared to Sky Survey, the detail options are very few and far between. That said, Sky Guide is light years ahead of the former app in terms of general speed, fluidity and beauty making the trade-off more than worthwhile.

Serene Utility

One major addition to this title is the presence of music. A collaboration with Mat Jarvis of Osmos HD fame has yielded a melodic soundtrack oozing with ethereal, dulcet tones. As with Osmos, I highly recommend using Sky Guide with a set of headphones to become fully immersed in the app; an experience I promise is like no other on iOS. Amazingly, it’s even possible to play the stars as each recognised star has a related note that sounds when tapped. Hotter stars emit a higher pitched sound compared to the deeper tones of their cooler counterparts. The integration of the special sounds and the overlying track is intriguingly brilliant with each extra sound seeming to fit perfectly every time.

Insert specific coordinates and see when your favourite constellation is due to rise.

Searching for specific objects is possible from the magnifying glass icon quietly displayed to the top right and allows for a manual search or object-specific browsing. Every app has small, seemingly irrelevant features that can help bring the entire project together of which Sky Guide has several, however, one in particular stands out. With each search result a time is given in which the constellation, galaxy, planet or star is due to rise then set. This not only means you know what to look for but also when to look upwards, such a feature exemplifies the thought that has been given throughout the app making it a real pleasure to use.

An App For Every Space Enthusiast

I love everything about this app if you couldn’t tell already, right down to the icon itself. Let’s face it, an icon has to be picturesque to warrant a spot on any homescreen and Sky Guide’s may be one of the best. However, that’s enough of the minutiae, the simple fact is this app is fantastic and a marked improvement upon its already near-perfect predecessor. Given the nature of the apps, owners of Sky Survey already have the predominant feature of Sky Guide; however, personally, between the far superior information bank and gorgeous soundtrack, I believe there is more than enough here to warrant taking a look.

Find out why you should grab a sword and join Usagi on his noble journey after the jump.

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Get Going Down the Rabbit Trail

Usagi Yojimbo’s mission is to retrieve a mirror that is being held onto by priests. Somehow, obtaining this mirror will free the Old Ones, who are currently in a cave. Once they’re freed, they’re capable of ridding the world of evil, so what valiant hero wouldn’t take up arms to help out?

Start Usagi’s journey and follow this map through forests, mountains and various villages.

Usagi will engage in dialogue with the rogues he runs into. After waxing poetic grunt speak about how they plan to hurt the hero, battles ensue. Some opponents will simply be muscle, while others may carry a weapon or fire off arrows with their bows. Regardless, keep track of who’s on the screen and who has Usagi in their crosshairs, because once the rabbit’s life gauge is empty, that’s it for this hare.

The Bunny Battles Back

Of course, a good offense can be a great defense against bad guys. The red and blue buttons on the bottom-right portion of the screen represent strong and not-as-strong attacks, respectively. Use them at their most simple to fend off the thugs trying to take Usagi down.

Get slicing against the variety of foes that are ready to rip Usagi Yojimbo apart.

As Usagi progresses from one stage to the next, he’ll unlock attack combos that will make short work of his enemies. Make a note of the order of which red-blue-button combination will complete the fierce techniques.

For example, double tapping an attack button may get the long-eared hero to strike someone twice or perhaps cause him to jab his sword with more force to take out the enemies. One of the more fun power-ups earned is a technique that allows Usagi to jump and spin in the air, wielding his sword to thrash enemies standing on either side. That move is helpful during fierce fights where the odds aren’t in the ronin warrior’s favor.

Learn new attack combos as Usagi progresses through fierce battles.

Friends and Other Benefits

Since a two-player game isn’t an option, Usagi Yojimbo gives players the next best thing. Throughout the anthromorphic adventure, Usagi will meet up with allies, and it usually isn’t long before a gang of toughs follows. Like some role-playing online and video games, Usagi’s allies will join the fray, controlled by the app’s internal computer, and help him slice and dice his way to the next part of the stage. This is no small advantage, so let them get in a few hits or tackle tough guys that may be more difficult to conquer. Be warned: their help is only temporary and the cast of sidekicks changes throughout the game.

Be lucky the lady is on Usagi’s side when the app helps out our hero.

Once an enemy has been exterminated, he’ll fall flat on his back, exhale a skull and crossbones, and may leave behind a goodie such as a coin or even a heart, which can revitalize Usagi’s health meter. Coins can purchase Health, Damage and Armor upgrades, each of which will improve how strong our hero becomes and improves how long he will hold up during the vicious battles that come his way.

Get chatty with friends and enemies.

Keep track of how much progress Usagi has made by giving the map a glance every now and then. Downward pointing arrows will indicate which stages have been completed and players can get an idea of the terrains they will battle in during future fights. During gameplay, what look like movie reels show up on the screen that ends each stage. These will rank players as to how well they have completed a level. They’ll also transition players into an educational session, where they will be schooled on a new ninja technique or weapon that they can use to Usagi’s advantage during battles. Pay special attention to these tips!

The action gets intense, so keep your hand close to your sword.

Grab the Rabbit by the Ears

Usagi Yojimbo: Way of the Ronin is a treat among iOS games. The graphics are impressive — characters are nicely drawn and have detailed facial expressions. It’s almost always easy to identify which creature they are a caricature of and it’s fun to have some underused members of the animal kingdom (walruses!) present and accounted for. The background scenery is also well done, be it the intricate design of the forest or the obvious thought put into the distinctive look of the rooms of home and buildings in village.

Gameplay is simple enough, but players bored with button mashing can use finessed techniques to add some style to their fighting. Usagi is also very responsive to the controls given to him, executing moves fluidly and efficiently during the violent confrontations.

Some of the conversations that take place between Usagi and his friends and enemies within the game can be too frequent and too long. Players who love a good story might enjoy the interludes, while those looking to beat up Noah’s Ark may get annoyed at the delay.

But overall, the intensity of the battles is challenging, as are the opponents. This is an app that will draw in and keep entertained the casual gaming fans as well as those who take the craft seriously.

On the other hand, sometimes a home just needs a little freshening up as your style and tastes evolve over time. If your abode is in need of a makeover, look no further. Herein you’ll find tips and tricks, plus plenty of inspiration. Now roll up your sleeves and click “more” to get started.

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Home Sweet Home

Where does your home design inspiration come from? And which apps are crucial to your home improvement and other DIY projects? Let us know in the comments below.

Here, I have compiled a list of ten iPhone essentials that will guarantee to make your road trip run that little bit smoother. Hit the jump to read on!

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Destination Unknown

So there we have it — ten iPhone essentials that will ensure your trip goes without a hitch. Are you planning on hitting the open road this year? Where are you going? Leave a comment and let me know!

Rovio is back with yet another sequel, but this time, it’s not an affiliation with a big blockbuster movie. Angry Birds Friends is all about bringing deep Facebook integration to everyone’s favourite bird-flinging game. Let’s take a closer look at what Rovio has crammed into its latest title, after the break.

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Overview

The idea behind Angry Birds Friends is to take the same renowned and loved gameplay formula of the Angry Birds series, and create a new title that essentially plays the same. But instead of working your way through stages, it has you compete against your Facebook friend’s scores in weekly tournaments, all whilst enjoying the same great gameplay style that made Angry Birds so popular since its introduction in 2009.

The stage selection screen, where you choose what stage to play next.

While this formula isn’t wholly original (tons of games already integrate with your FB friends list for personalised scoreboards), the addition of weekly tournaments and other time limited challenges keep things fresh and keeps you coming back to see if you can finally get a win.

Getting Started

Once you’ve downloading the app, you’re presented with a tutorial that comprises of a few test levels to introduce you to the gameplay mechanics. Upon completion of the tutorial, the app will request access to your Facebook information to fill the game’s scoreboards with your friend’s scores and profile pictures. This is all done securely through iOS’s Facebook integration, so there’s no need to reveal any login details to the app itself.

The main menu.

After the tutorial is completed and your friend’s scores are integrated, you can jump straight in and hit the week’s tournament. A tournament comprises of six different individual stages to complete, with your total score tallied up at the end and displayed in a leaderboard amongst your friend’s scores. You can go back and play any of the six stages as many times as you like within the seven days to improve your score and hopefully step up a place of two in the rankings.

Gameplay is pretty much the same tried-and-tested formula we’re used to.

This freedom to keep replaying stages helps with the longevity of the title. You could be in first place, then half an hour later you could have lost your top spot because your friend went on and improved their score. I like this style; instead of you playing the six stages then just waiting to see the rankings at the end of the week, it’s ongoing. It reminds me very much of N-Gage’s shadow racing tournaments back in the day (props to you if you even know what they were).

Gameplay

Gameplay has remained pretty much the same as previous Angry Birds titles. As a brief overview for those who aren’t familiar, in each stage there are several “bad piggies” that are (most of the time) stationary, and you have to fling your birds at them to destroy them. Sometimes the piggies are underneath or next to obstacles, like pieces of rock or a wooden tower, that you must either move or knock down with your bird flinging skills. The game is a cartoon styled 2-D, and very much physics based. You sometimes find yourself having to hit obstacles to then knock them into a piggie to destroy them, or skillfully bounce your bird off a surface to then hit an intricately placed piggie.

It’s all very addicting stuff. Add in different birds you can fling that have different skill sets (such as exploding when you tap the screen during flight, or ones that split into three smaller birds to take out multiple piggies at once) and you have a winning formula. Angry Birds Friends also features four classic power-ups from previous titles, as well as an exclusive new one.

Some stages are quite creative.

As with all other Angry Birds titles, it’s very much skill based and the more you play, the more accustom you’ll become with what angles to fling the birds at, what piggies to aim for first, and when to use your power-ups.

The only thing people may find a little strange is that once you’ve had your fun with the weekly tournament, that’s kind of it. There is no other game mode, apart from power-up practice (which doesn’t really count as a game mode).

Performance & Presentation

The cute cartoon-style presentation we’re all used to is back with Rovio’s latest addition to the series, and it’s as great as ever. Everything is sharp and crisp, in-game environments look great and overall the title is a joy to look at. Sounds are brilliant too, just as ever. The birds squawk as they fly through the air, say “ow” when they hit a rock and there are loads of other background sound effects to add to the whole cutesy nature of the title.

The blue triple splitting bird is my favourite.

Playing the title on my iPhone 5 is fantastic in terms of performance. I experienced no dropped frames and no crashes. Some users have experienced difficulty connecting to Rovio’s server, which has resulted in a few one-star reviews on iTunes, but I haven’t experienced that myself.

Pricing

Rovio has opted to make this title free, which is great. However, there are in-app purchases available (surprise, surprise). To be honest though, these are purely for coins which allow you to buy more power-ups, and these coins can be earned by playing stages anyway. Therefore, whilst I’m sure these in-app purchases will annoy some users, those who choose to invest a little cash in coins won’t be at a huge advantage — free users will just need to play a little longer to get as many power-ups.

Some in-app purchases are available, but they keep things fair.

Conclusion

Any Angry Birds fan is sure to find some value in this title, and those who haven’t played before are sure to find it good fun too. Having your friends in the leader boards adds a competitive edge to what is widely regarded as one of the best casual games out there.

It seems like when people want to start complaining about iOS, skeuomorphism — the concept of making digital interfaces that look and act like their real-life counterparts — always seems to come up. Sure, the Podcasts app was pretty rugged for a bit, and no one likes Game Center, but is it all that bad?

Well let’s ask you. What do you think? Does skeuomorphism work for you or do you hate it? Let us know in the poll to the right!

Sparrow and Gmail both have filled in some gaps for Gmail users, but they’ve mostly addressed issues such as filters and labels and things that non-Gmail users are never going to use. But maybe the real problem with mobile email is that most developers are so busy trying to replicate the desktop experience that they’ve forgotten to address the needs of the mobile user first. This is the gap that Triage is trying to fill.

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The Details

First things first: to use Triage, you need to have a Gmail account, Yahoo! Mail account or an iCloud account. Most IMAP services are also supported, but developer Southgate Labs isn’t making any guarantees (it was only recently that support came for FastMail and DreamHost).

It’s important that I tell you right away that this is not a desktop email client. There are no folders or labels. Gmail users can’t tag anything and there’s no search. You won’t be browsing through old emails only the newest unread ones in your inbox get displayed. Triage has Archive support for Gmail, but that’s it. Nothing fancy.

This is as simple as it gets.

There isn’t notification support and there’s no way to send a new email from within the app (you can, however, reply to a message without a problem). This is an exercise in making design decisions that some people will feel compromise mobile app design. That being said, Triage is unique and its compromises are brilliant solutions to unsolved problems in the mobile industry.

How Does Triage Work?

Triage simply fetches your email from the server and displays it as a stack of small cards in the middle of your iPhone screen. If you tap the card, a full-screen view comes up that allows you to read the email. There really isn’t much to do in an email, either: there’s a Reply button and an icon that essentially acts as a Back button to get you back to your stack of messages.

What’s really nifty about the app is more the stack of messages itself. Instead of letting you organize email into folders or anything like that — things that take, frankly, too much time — you can either choose to get rid of the message or keep it for later. Depending on your email provider and your settings within the app, getting rid of a message means either deleting or archiving it (but not both). You flick the message up to get rid of it, which means it’s gone like you would expect. Of you were to open another mail app on any device, the message wouldn’t be in your inbox.

Because I’m using Gmail, swiping up archives the email. But swiping down keeps it so I can respond later.

If you choose to keep the message by flicking down, the message disappears from Triage, but not your inbox. Triage doesn’t even mark the message as read. That being said, you’ve dealt with it. Now you’re on to the next message and you get to do what you choose with that one too.

When you keep a message, you’re essentially saving it for later. If you open the stock Mail app, it’s still sitting there and it’s waiting for you, unread. You can reply to it there or categorize it however you want. It’s also waiting for you on your desktop or work machine whenever you get to it.

This is the detail view of an email.

Let’s not ignore the Reply function, though: if you do feel that an email is pertinent enough to get an immediate response, you can do that within Triage without a problem. Actually, the interface is clean enough that I felt its Compose window was, in some ways, superior to Apple’s stock app. Not that you’ll be seeing the Compose window a lot in Triage; again, there’s no way to send a new email. You’ll have to rely on a different app for that kind of work.

But Why?

I’m so glad you asked that question. The point of Triage is simple: make handling email on your mobile device easier. The whole point is that by stripping away what you’re capable of doing in an email client, it lets you actually think about what you plan on doing with the message itself.

You can tap the header to see a bit more detailed information as well, but the app doesn’t overload you with information.

When I wake up, I check Triage. There are no notification dings or vibrations. From there, the decision becomes simple. If I can type out a short response on my iPhone and it’s important enough to do so, I’ll do that. If it’s not, I’ll save it for later or delete it. If I save it for later, when I move to a computer or iPad, I’ll type out a response then. After all, it’s still sitting unread in my inbox and waiting for me whenever I’m ready. My twenty minutes spent checking email on my phone every morning while making coffee turns into twenty seconds.

This is the Reply window. As you can see, there’s no way to insert an image or anything like that.

And that’s the point: Triage lets me take care of my emails quickly, when I’m ready. Because there’s no notifications and no way to turn them on and because I can’t waste half my day organizing email into the appropriate folder, email is back in my control. It’s like a controllable way of reaching Inbox Zero. Triage will tell me there aren’t any new messages, because there aren’t any new messages. There are just the messages I’ve seen, and they’re either gone or waiting for me whenever I’m ready.

Is It For You?

I’ll make no bones about it: this is a user problem. I’ve been trained, as a user, to respond to notifications when I first see them. I’ve been trained to use every function of my email client. By stripping it all down, I’ve rethought how my email should work and it’s made things easier for me. Maybe I’m crazy, but I think I need an email app like this and I think there are more people like that out there. True, you could treat email in Mail or Gmail or Sparrow similarly on your phone, but Triage forces you to.

I’ve reviewed a lot of apps and said a lot of good things about them, but not all of them have stayed on my phone and none of them have made their way into my dock. But Triage has done both of those things and the stock Mail app now sits where it belongs: in my Utilities folder. I wish Triage would let me compose a brand new email, but it’s not meant to do that. It’s not replacing those apps or your desktop client, but it’s making email feel as fast-paced and mobile as I am. And to me, that’s worth my $1.99.