Posts tagged app store
InstaDesk
21 year ago
by Sam
in Photography
As a huge fan of the photo sharing app Instagram, I often want the ability to check my feed from my Mac but as yet Instagram do not offer an official web interface for doing so.
I found InstaDesk in the Mac App Store today whilst browsing the Photography category and it didn’t take me long to lay down the low price of £1.19 to purchase the app.
With InstaDesk you can browse beautiful pictures, newest uploads of your friends, or interesting people to follow. Furthermore, you can comment on pictures, like them, download them, or watch them in slideshows.
Features of InstaDesk:
- Find new people to follow
- View your Friend Feed, Popular Tags, Popular Pictures
- Comment on pictures or like pictures
- Save beautiful pictures in albums
- See when you get new comments or likes
- Follow / unfollow people
- View pictures in slideshows
- Download images
- Sadly, NO uploading due to Instagram policies
I’ll still always prefer browsing Instagram on the iPhone as the app is totally intended for that, but if I don’t check on a regular basis then I do have a tendency to miss some friends uploads. By having InstaDesk open on my Mac(s) I will be notified as regularly as I wish via the dock icon badge or menubar icon of how many new pics are available to view.
Another app I discovered a few days ago for the Mac which allows you to view your Instagram feed is Carousel. Whilst a nicely polished app, scrolling through felt too much like the iPhone interface. With InstaDesk I can have the app maximised to cover my whole screen if I so wish, therefore find it pulls me in more.
InstaDesk is available for £1.19 on the Mac App Store [direct link]
[rating: 4.5/5]
Track your App Addiction
3Yesterday one of my Twitter friends tweeted the amount he’d spent on the iTunes App Store, courtesy of a clever little Mac application called App Store Expense Monitor which gathers all your iPhone applications from your iTunes folder and provides you with the total amount of money you have spent on the App Store.
I must admit I was a little surprised to see that I’d spent a whopping £190.18. However, I do remember that in the early days of the App Store, many apps were priced at £5.99, but have happily reduced in price over the last 18 months. But it just goes to show how those 59p’s and £1.19′s soon add up.
What’s your total? (if you’re comfortable sharing in the comments, of course)
Cocoto Kart Online
32 years ago
One of the first apps I bought in the App Store was Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D (iTunes link) and it provided hours of fun. I really enjoy driving games, but the fun karting ones not the serious souped-up sports car ones.
When I read a review of Cocoto Kart Online (iTunes/59p) at Touch Arcade yesterday, the words ‘online multi-player’ was the deal maker for me. At only 59p I felt I had nothing to lose. I played in single player mode and found it much more enjoyable than Krazy Kart Racing that I’d paid five times as much for recently.
Cocoto Kart Online really comes into it’s own in multi-player mode. To play against others, simply go to the games menu and select Play Multiplayer, then choose a character to represent you. Once you’re back in the menu, select Choose Table. This will show you various races, some in progress but some empty. You can join a race with others or create your own by pressing one of the empty available Race 0 Players cells as shown below…
And this is the message once you have entered yourself into a race…
I did this for the first time the evening and asked my good friend Tom to meet me in there. Less than a minute later Tom joined me and we were able to battle it out against eachother. This is the first time I have experienced online racing against a friend and it was terrific fun! I was delighted to be the victorious one in our first race against eachother, but of course I did let him win a couple after that 
For 59p, this game is an absolute bargain. What makes Cocoto Kart a winner for me is being able to race against people you know if you arrange a meet, rather than just random strangers you pick up in the race rooms! I hope Tom and I will be able to race against other friends if they decide to buy this game. If you have already bought Cocoto Kart then let me know your nickname and I’ll look out for you in the race table, or we can arrange a specific time to meet and do battle. I’ll be gentle, I promise.
My Cocoto Kart Online nickname is purplelime. See you there.
[rating:5/5]
Ping!
32 years ago
Yesterday I downloaded a messaging application called Ping! from the app store, following a recommendation by a friend. Earlier in the day I had been looking at WhatsApp, but since I wasn’t too keen on sharing my phone number with online friends, I gave Ping! a whirl.
Above is a shot of a section of my iPhone home screen. As you can see, Ping! is there. My home screen is reserved for my favourite and most opened apps only. You can see where this review is going.
Ping! is an iPhone to iPhone messaging app, oh and the iPod touch. A cross between IM and SMS. Unlike the latter, it doesn’t incur any additional carrier charges. It works over wifi and 3G on the iPhone and wifi only on the iPod touch. A friend sent me a Ping! notification via GPRS yesterday. Worked a charm. Ping! works with push notifications so that messages can be delivered anywhere in the world, instantly.
The great thing about Ping! is you don’t have to share your phone number with anyone. Once you’ve downloaded the app you simply pick an ID (choose carefully, this can’t be changed currently) then tell your iPhone/iPod touch using friends about the app and once they install it you can send messages to eachother for free.
One of the refreshing things about this app is it’s unique notification tone. A lot of apps out there use the default text messaging sound which can cause confusion, but Ping! gives us a lovely “ping ping” sound which I have recorded especially for you to sample, here…
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I’ve been messaging a few of my iPhone using friends over the past 24 hours and it’s a great way to keep in touch or just send a reminder to eachother. Nicky notified me via Ping! when the news about Tweetie 2 broke, since I wasn’t going to be at the computer, so as soon as I heard my Ping! I knew he was bringing good news.
I wouldn’t say the app was perfect just yet, but I expect future updates will change that. I had a couple of app crashes when deleting a typo and the timestamps aren’t reliable. But, all the time I was using it, the server status remained green and OK. There appears to be a character limit per message but at the moment I’m not entirely sure what that is. I sent a message more than around 200 characters to a friend last night but was told it got cut off at a certain point. I’ve e-mailed the Ping! developer to ask what the maximum character limit is and I’ll report back once I get a response. So, to be on the safe side don’t natter for too long, like me
[UPDATE]
The character limit per message is 150. In the absence of a character counter within the app, you’ll have to rely on guesswork. I hope we can expect a character counter in a future update.
Overall I am absolutely and totally impressed with Ping! It’s currently free for a limited time only, so head over to the app store and grab it today.
[rating:4/5]
The Apps Your iPhone Shouldn’t Be Without
9Today is iPhone 3GS launch day. So, you’ve probably picked up your new shiny device and are wondering what wonderful productive and time-wasting apps you can download to fill it to it’s capacity. Let me help you.
Here’s a list of some must-have apps, for every iPhone user.
Tweetie [iTunes] : If you have a twitter account then you need this. Don’t try or buy the others because like me you’ll only regret having spent more than you need to: Tweetie does it all with a beautiful and uncluttered interface. The best twitter app bar_none. Great price of £1.79 to boot. Tweetie for Mac is also available.
Shazam [iTunes] : The gem of the app store if you are a music lover. How many times has that DJ played a song on the radio and doesn’t mention who the artist is? For me Shazam is a DJ in my pocket – he knows pretty much all there is to know about every song ever made, almost! If you hear a song on the radio and don’t want to take a chance on waiting to see who’s behind it, just fire up Shazam, point it to the speakers and press Tag Now. It will listen to the song, send it, analyze it and bring you back the results with name of the artist and track. There are rare occasions where the results come back as unrecognised, but 99 times out of 100 it does it’s job. And it’s free.
QuickPigeon [iTunes] : This is a new app for me and I have yet to see whether it can be something I will use regularly, but is an awesome idea which is what gets it on my list – along with the fact it has push notifications especially for iPhone OS 3.0. Say you want to ask a friend something which requires a Yes or No answer, such as “Coffee at 1?”. You fire up QuickPigeon, ask the question, pick ‘members’ (that’s people in your address book) click on their e-mail address and then it will send that question to them via HTML e-mail and when they hit the Yes or No button then it will send that notification straight back to you, like so…
If I can get my other iPhone friends to install this (hint hint), which is absolutely free, then I could see this proving handier and much quicker than going into Mail app to ask a simple question. You can watch a video demonstrating it’s usefulness here.
Peggle [iTunes] : After reading a review of Peggle and then downloading the trial version for the Mac, it was 10 minutes in before I bought this for the iPhone. A wonderfully addictive game which just keeps you going back if you fail to get through a game. I completed the Adventure in around a week and now I’m desperate for Peggle 2. If you aren’t entirely sure what Peggle is all about, like I was, then I recommend downloading the Mac or PC version so you can get the hang of it. Peggle costs £2.99 in the app store.
Chop Sushi [iTunes] : From one addictive game to another. I’m on my second round of the Adventure stage and this game NEVER gets old. Great music, great colourful graphics and characters. Tom wrote an indepth review of this game over at tomacintosh.com, complete with screenshots. Priced at £1.79 for the full version with Lite version also now available to try it out.
Convertbot [iTunes] : Aside from this being one useful little app for converting everything from currency, length, speed, temperature and more, Converbot has a beautiful sleek interface. An app just to fire up for it’s sounds and UI. Thankfully this app has beauty and brains for just £1.19.
Paper Toss [iTunes] : if you’ve ever sat in the office bored, rolled up a piece of paper and see if you can throw it into the nearest rubbish bin then this is for you. Strangely addictive – and free.
FStream [iTunes] : Great app for listening to radio stations on your iPhone – even the BBC stations. Read my indepth review here.
IM+ [iTunes] : Now, I’m not the biggest IM-er in the world admittedly. Infact I can count on two fingers the amount of times I’ve opened iChat this year. But, it’s good to be prepared for any eventuality and IM+ is the nicest Instant Messaging app for the iPhone. I grabbed this for the sale price of £2.99 earlier in the year and at the time of writing it’s at the sale price of £3.49. This has push notifications, so is OS 3.0 compatible.
SKY News [iTunes] : I was pleased to finally see an app for SKY News for the iPhone as it’s the news channel I tend to watch. Excellent app with Top Stories, UK News, Sport, Business News and more. Also includes a video section and ‘Your Report’ so you can snap a photo of a potential newsworthy story and send it directly to SKY News from the app.
Instapaper [iTunes] : With Tweetie having Instapaper integration so I can save links my contacts have tweetes to look at another time, Instapaper Free is a great solution for me. Basically it’s saving web pages for offline reading later. Instapaper for your browser too!
So, those apps should keep you going for a little while. My faves list changes all the time with wonderful new apps being introduced regularly, but the above are with me all the time. Touch Arcade is a great resource for discovering newly released games and price drops of existing games.
GTS World Racing
03 years ago
Today I bought GTS World Racing from the iTunes App Store for £4.99 after seeing a demo on YouTube a few days ago from the developers of the game, which you can watch below (my thoughts after the jump)…
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My favourite type of games are definitely the racing ones. I have Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart which is my absolute favourite. I also bought Cro-Mag Rally but I find that very boring and definitely not worth the £5.99, in my opinion, although I have noticed it’s been reduced to £3.49 now. So, when I saw the demo for GTS World Racing I was itching to buy it.
I have completed quite a few laps on GTS World Racing and I’ve got to say first of all that the graphics are excellent and it really looks like a quality game. Soundtrack is okay as are the sound effects. The controls are also very good – no problems at all with steering. To accelerate you simply tilt the iPhone/iPod slightly forward but not too much otherwise the screen will go red and you’ll be told “Too flat!”. To brake you tilt the device towards you. It’s very quick and easy to get the hang of, unlike Super Monkey Ball
Now onto the tracks. This is where it falls down for me. All the tracks in every country available look pretty much the same. I picked ‘Japan’ hoping to see bright neon lights and a cityscape. All I got were mountains. It didn’t look any different to Peru, Finland or Scotland, so you pretty much feel like you’re in the same place, seeing the same things. If the surroundings were more unique for every track then it would feel much more thrilling. I hope we see some changes in future updates for that otherwise I will be quite disappointed.
Overall the game play is good. I have won every game so far, lapping my competitors on the track, although that is on the Easy setting so I may have to pump that up to Normal or Hard to ensure I don’t get bored with winning so easily all the time.
If you’re stuck between buying Cro-Mag Rally or GTS World Racing then I’d say go for GTS. However, if it’s between Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart or GTS World Racing then I’d say go for Crash. The tracks all look different, it feels more challenging and after 3-4 weeks of playing Crash I’m still nowhere near bored – definitely worthy of the £5.99 price tag.
I’m Pushy and Touchy
43 years ago
After an agonising wait all day Friday, I was finally able to download the iPod touch 2.0 software update yesterday for £5-99 which enables me to download lovely shiny apps from the App Store in iTunes to my iPod touch, aswell as benefit from the MobileMe features.
Friday was a long and painful day as iTunes frequently informed me that the 2.0 software update was available, but as soon as I clicked on ‘learn more’ I’d get an error saying the iTunes store was unavailable. So, I went to bed in the hope that it would be fine by the morning, which it was. I have purchased three apps so far: Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart for £5-99, Super Monkey Ball which was also £5-99 and Air Hockey which was 59p. The latter is quite boring and not nearly as much fun as the air hockey tables at the amusement arcade, haha. Crash Bandicoot on the other hand is a lot of fun and the graphics are superb. I bought Super Monkey Ball on a whim but it is going to take some mastering as it’s very sensitive indeed, so I haven’t succeeded in getting very far with that.
I have downloaded just a few of the free apps so far including Twitterrific, Facebook, Exposure, iPint, NetNewsWire and Remote. I won’t link to these in iTunes as I know it’s a bit annoying to have all that pop up at you and they’re easy enough to find in the App Store. Twitterrific would be great if it didn’t repeatedly ask me if I wanted to share my location. By repeatedly I mean every single time I access the app and sometimes even if I’ve been on it for a minute or two. I’d like to see an option in preferences to disable that rather than me having to switch off Location entirely in the device Settings which I have unfortunately had to do for the time being so that this pop-up doesn’t annoy the hell out of me.
With all the fun of looking through the App Store and playing Crash Bandicoot, I haven’t played too much with the ‘push’ services in MobileMe on my iPod touch yet although I do know this updates marvellously and instantly having put a date into my Calendar which showed up on my other devices like that *clicks fingers*. MobileMe is working fine now having made the long the transition from .Mac on Wednesday night, which took a lot longer than anticipated.
So, after a rocky few days I’m glad that everything has shaped up okay and everything I wanted to get my hands on is now in my hands. Sadly the same can’t be said by many people who wanted to buy the new iPhone 3G on Friday due to o2 and the Carphone Warehouse having ridiculously low stock levels which couldn’t meet the demand. You’d think Apple+o2+CPW would have guessed that much, wouldn’t you? But, I was watching TWiT live with Leo Laporte on Friday afternoon (which was so fun + first time I’ve watched Leo) who was covering the simultaneous launch across the world and it seems the long delays and short supplies were in full effect across the pond aswell. If you missed SKY News report on the UK iPhone launch on Friday then fear not, I uploaded it here…
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Am I the only one who thinks that (forced) pillow fight was a little bit lame? No wonder the guy behind looked like he was thinking “Yeah yeah, just gimme my iPhone already!”.
But back to the apps for a moment: anybody got any game suggestions, especially for driving games which I seem particularly good at? I would love to see a Sega ‘Super Hang On’ app because that was my most favourite game on the Sega MegaDrive – that would take me to retro heaven!
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