Monthly Archive: November 2015

The previous couple of months have been a great time for iPhones and their users with the large influx of new apps continually released into the App Store. The two applications discussed below are definitely the best of their respective kinds launched this month, the great thing about the sudden energy that’s reflected in the App Store is that new months always spell an influx of new apps. So if you are not happy with whatever current applications you have on your iOS device next month might just bring a new solution that better suits your tastes. The greatest problem in sifting through all the new kids on the block to find the win that suits your requirements is the daunting quantity of new releases each month. One of the problems cropping up that may hamper you to find your perfect solution is the fair amount of substandard apps and games that somehow find a way to reach the top of the charts. The problem is mostly due to developers taking advantage of certain manipulation practices to get their products noticed.

The Room Three was launched as a sequel to the first two games of the same name and this latest rendering of the brilliant physical puzzle game is the best yet. Gameplay action certainly doesn’t hang about, it starts off with your character inside a train carriage. As you rocket along a tunnel a ghostly apparition materializes in a seat opposite you. Frightened and distracted for moment, your character suddenly notice the box sitting in front of you, and you experience a distinct feeling of déjà vu. The tense gameplay revolves all around boxes, these boxes reveal even further boxes as you go along unlocking the secrets through a combination of exploration, experimentation, and your common street smarts.

The game is mysterious and tactile, you end up turning screws, flicking switches, and sliding open drawers always uncertain of what you’ll find next or exactly what’s going on.
Google Fit’s app has just been updated today and now offers real-time tracking of exercise routines and incorporates a number of new features that causes any android phone or smart watch to become a far more capable fitness tracker. The real-time tracking includes real-time stats for any form of exercise including strength training, bike rides, walks, or runs, along with options to document your sleep and nutrition habits. The new features expands Google’s quest in being a serious competitor to the likes of Samsung and Apple by creating a universal fitness data hub.

The application in the below discussion will hold value for any enterprising iOS user with it being quite innovating and unique in its approach to finding solutions to problems that users have been forced to live with for a number of years. It even provides excellent full-time use mobile solutions to programs that were previously the sole domain of desktop hardware.

Assembly, is an app that has been subtitled a “graphic design for everyone”, and has been crafted into a clean, clever tool that can be used to create one’s own unique designs by utilising in excess of 180 pre-packaged shapes. Whatever it users may wish to create may be exported, shared, and printed, immaterial of whether it’s logos for T-shirts or billboards for shopfronts. Assembly is certainly the most powerful and easiest design tool currently available in the App Store, users can create literally anything with only the imagination setting the limits.

With this app anybody would be able to create vector art, and creating a design of something beautiful becomes as easy as the placement of premade shapes anywhere on the screen. It users can export their creations as either a high-resolution image or a vector object that offers the of being able to resize virtually any volume. The app’s vast shapes library enables its users to easily snap any creation together they might have dreamt up, with smart guides making the positioning of shapes precise and easy. There will also enjoy the ability to infinitely zoom into its art board to accomplish even the most detailed of artwork.

Users will be able to choose from a multitude of professional colour palettes selections for the creation of perfectly balanced colour designs. If the colour palettes does not meet with the users approval they may even create their own colours by using its powerful eyedropper tool matched to its colour selector, that allows users to customise every one of their shapes’ opacity and fill.

This app also sports powerful design tools that allows users to arrive at professional results by using its powerful tools that would normally only be found in high-end design suits. These tools allows its users to speedily create new designs by using its features such as flip, copy, rotate, multi-select, and grouping.

Launchers represent one of the million ways in which Android users are able to customise their personal experience on any Android smart device, either tablets or phones to the own personal liking, both visually as well as functionally. There are always the most obvious, but superficial items such as customised screen transitions, changed fonts, redesigned icons. However, great Android launchers provide their users with the ability to tweak and tune a device’s behaviour to accommodate the demands their personal require from a personal assistant/smart phone.

The only caveat being that players must be willing to invest a bit of time and effort to define this specific required customisations. Users can choose to create screens as complicated or simplified as they wish, by tweaking and tuning each tiny available detail, alternatively or just continue using the default settings the launcher arrived with. Each launcher provides its users with refreshing new look to their cell phones, which is perfect for those desiring a change of pace and face to to their tired old smartphone.

The launcher discussed below is one of the best currently in the market.

Google’s Now launcher represents one of the most obvious choices for any user desiring a clean, pure Android experience. The app supplied directly by Google themselves and represents the original in all things Android, it also arrives pre-installed on all Nexus smart devices. This launcher allows its users to rid themselves instantly of all preloaded manufacturer bloatware that arrived with their devices, and all achieved in just one clean easy install.

This purist form of the Android OS allows for quick, clean transitions with no bloatware and unnecessary interface tweaks coming between the user and their widgets and apps. One of its neat features is the Google Now screen that appears on the far left, Google Now delivers incredible user-friendliness and versatility via its customisable viewer cards that refreshes and re-populates itself based on your location and time of day as well as general browsing behaviour. It will also perform numerous hands-free okay Google commands. This launcher represents a sleek clean experience without the massive customisability available in other launchers.

Role-playing games differ from any other type of gaming, the difference being that this genre of games places a premium on graphics and the storyline, this leaves developers free to be graphically extravagant or alternatively create unfettered simplistic scenery as the game and atmosphere requires. The style of gameplay offers no attempts to pipelined users into an unending adrenaline loop and requires very little and skills involving eye coordination, or the requirement to show that hard earned cash in order to proceed further into a game. The below represents the best of the breed in RPGs

Evoland’s creators borrowed one or two gaming aspects from a multitude of classic titles in the genre to create this brilliant title. This borrowing from previous titles is not a bad thing if applied correctly and Evoland certainly excelled in the way they accomplished it. Players are tested with Zelda-esque moves requiring rolls and slashes, followed by Final Fantasy styled turn-based RPG’s, as well as Chrono Trigger styled will travelling all beautifully blended to create a fantastic style of gameplay. The great thing about this game is that it performs all of these styles and features well, the controls are smooth enabling players to steer their character accurately. This gateway adventure at $4.99 will have players scrambling for their copies of their old classics as soon as they manage to tear themselves away from their phones and tablets.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery offer players an unusual mixture of new and old in various ways, with the mechanics being a traditional point-and-click adventuring game and the occasional reflex style mini game blended into the mix. The graphics and artwork comprises of stylised, chunky pixel art in a gaming society where 3D is all the rage, this illustrates a classical fantasy theme that gets offset via modern character languages and an overbearing semi scientific meta-narrative. Until now the style of gaming never found many supporters amongst mobile device players, but those discovering this game certainly will enjoy it. Players looking for something different and new have definitely found a good starting place.

Due to a massive proliferation of new products app stores can at times feel like you’re tackling an overgrown garden with a pair of blunt trimming shears. Each time you logon literally hundreds of new apps have appeared for you to filter through. Below are a couple of apps that needs to be highlighted to any Smartphone user.

Operator is for those busy individuals that at times just cannot create the necessary time in which to perform the required research to make purchases. Operator’s creators aim to have their app handle those tasks for its users, and order to perform these tasks reliably they felt the need to develop a new human powered virtual concierge that will connect its users with businesses and their experts. So that its users can easily acquire the correct advice on the first shopping stop without the need for time-consuming travel to various different glass front stores before making their purchases. The app allows it users to communicate via in app instant messaging with a person that wills the requests and after making their decision regarding choice, allows them to pay via the app as well.

QuizChat is one of the few things that quickly become more addictive than a coffee junkie’s afternoon Frappuccino habit. This BuzzFeed quiz allows its users an endless stream of questions where after they may even share them with their friends, obviously via BuzzFeed’s own QuizChat app. The app links up with and allows its users to use their Facebook Messenger as well as SMS texting to exchange quizzes between themselves and their friends.

Dohop is just the ticket for those that are frequently afflicted by a sudden wanderlust that causes them to turn around scratch their head, suddenly catch a taxi, hop on a flight, to wherever just because they felt like seeing it or like enjoying a quick getaway. This app will search and display available flights leaving from your closest airport, even providing suggestions where you may want to go to that you’re not aware of yet. It users can enjoy browsing flights to compare prices and view digital media of each potential destination.

In a recent release the pioneering Web browser from the developers at Mozilla have become available for service on iOS devices, however sit it seems to be just a shadow of its mighty desktop browser. Mozilla may still have the influence to sway open technology and web standards, but the relative lack of fortitude it has displayed with this latest release of its software in the mobile arena has left supporters of its technology with options that all seem to be extremely similar.

Firefox, recently allowed re-entry into the Apple App Store after numerous years spent in exile. Initially Apple banned Mozilla from its App Store, because the web-browsing giant remained committed to developing its apps via its Gecko render engine, whereas Apple at the time required that all iOS app development done via the WebKit render engine.

Recently the Mozilla team decided they would not sustain their commitment any further due to Apple’s unrelenting market power and the continual shift in the direction of mobile devices causes Firefox’s desktop reputation to have less and less meaning as time passes. All the above factors basically means is that Mozilla and Firefox now develop for iOS via WebKit; score one for Apple.

The company originally built its reputation by bringing competition back to a comprehensively dominated browser market by toppling Internet Explorer’s reign. It did so by driving with technology further forward at a faster pace than ever before to the great benefit of all. Before the initial break between the two companies Gecko, offered Mozilla a competitive edge with a decided market advantage, but two years later the tables have changed and Mozilla now finds themselves adhering to the rules in contrast to challenging the rules.

One of Firefox’s unique and most popular features to enjoy in its desktop browser was its powerful support to block ad extensions. Apple has now followed suit by endorsing ad blocking in its Safari mobile browser on iOS 9, and this is where the playground becomes in-equal with Firefox enjoying the status of a third-party app not being able to implement the ad blocking feature it most became known for while operating under the rules laid down by Apple.

Fantastical already enjoyed great popularity amongst iPhone and iPad users in its first version; its second version has since been extensively revamped to provide support for the Apple 3D Touch displays via a brand-new peek and pop motion. This new gesture UI control feature allows the new iPhone 6s and the 6s Plus users to tap down on-screen elements to expand the content, the capability presents one of the most scintillating features made possible by Apple’s 3D Touch displays. The feature was already available in OS X but in a noticeably less prominent manner as can be seen in the Force Touch trackpad, that made its effects felt during dictionary definition checks as well as hyperlink previewing. On newer iOS versions, this new peek and pop feature became far more prominent.

Fantastical 2.5.2 is currently the latest application to feature the peek and pop gesture, now its users are able to utilise the new peek and pop feature to see previews of both reminders and events. Naturally, these functions and features will only be available to iPhone 6s and 6s Plus handset owners, since these are the only two devices sporting Apple’s 3D Touch functionality at the moment.

IPhone owners that are not yet position of these two latest handsets have no need to despair as the above-mentioned features not only new additions to Fantastical 2.5.2, the app features numerous other changes that includes customisations aimed at Apple Watch. These new changes provide a clear indication when a search, with no matches, a Today widget that takes the system setting for text size into consideration, a Google Map location bug fix, completed task reminders will now disappear quicker from Apple Watches, and a fix enabling changes to the repeat rule.

Fantastical 2 is currently available for download from the iStore for $4.99 fully optimised for iPod touch, Apple Watches, and iPhones, with an iPad version made available separately. The most exciting new addition remains the peek and pop preview capability, which will have some older handset owners rushing for the latest version of iPhone hardware after they tried the new software features.

In comparison to the other two widely use mobile Oss, the Windows Mobile platform presents a whole host of advantages for its users. Firstly, the hardware that Windows Mobile tend to come preloaded on are generally devices from distinguished manufacturing brand names such as Nokia who as a company have proven themselves to be one of the most popular brands in the founding years of cellular technology.

That said, it also needs to be pointed out that the Windows Mobile platform have, due to high degree of commitment from both Microsoft and Nokia, been developed into an excellent choice of mobile OS with few flaws that developed an excellent reputation for stability and reliability amongst the relatively small number of users that opted for their latest devices. The main problem for Nokia is that Windows Mobile became one of the lesser-known platforms mostly due to early teething problems and a then lack of commitment and focus from Microsoft. This caused the OS to fall behind in development in comparison to iOS and Android, both of whose manufacturers were fully committed at the time, and it’s a petition with each other, to developing the best possible mobile operating platform. All these issues have however been addressed, the only possible remaining issue might be related to a perceived relative lack of choice in the Windows Phone Store. This is currently a pure matter of perception since the store currently offers close to 400,000 top-quality apps.

The below apps are two brilliant examples of what is available to Windows Mobile users.

Vine’s popularity, despite sceptics opinions, since its inception took off like a firebrand with its manic and often hilarious six-second video clips. The most popular objection being that nothing worthwhile could be relayed in a six-second video clip, all objections have been answered in great detail with the proliferation of Vine clips that generates smiles all over the globe on a daily basis several times a day. Their Windows Phone app offers a brilliant way to allow Windows users to enjoy their own daily dose of these mini-vidis. It’s currently still missing a few features that are available on its Android and iOS counterparts, but this lack is sure to be rectified in short order.

Netflix caused the smaller screen to get much bigger and currently provides a brilliant way to enjoy one’s Video entertainment on the go. It has become the foremost source of movie and TV show content streaming. The Windows Phone app from Netflix is certainly up to any task that one would expect of it, the app allows you to continue watching content you originally started viewing on larger devices while on the go. Alternatively you may choose to spend your commute time drawing up playlists for future entertainment on this fully featured minimalist media player sporting a simplistic interface offering easy navigation.

Since the spate of recent additions to the Windows Phone Store, users will find it entirely possible to partake in any of the characteristic mobile activities directly from Microsoft’s mobile platform. Whether you prefer to text, game, watch a video, photo share, or any imaginable activity to enjoy via smart phone, and a multitude of others that its users find amongst the over 200,000 apps preloaded in the Windows Mobile store.

Windows phone users can be assured of the fact that they start-off well ahead of all other platforms with the fact that typical Windows phones arrive in your sweaty palms with a fully licensed and activated latest version of Microsoft Office preloaded. The office package would normally be available at $69.99 from Dell computing, this is in addition to numerous extremely handy Windows phone OS apps that arrive as part of the OS bundle, with functionality reaching way beyond the standard realms of the Office Suite. Windows phone users receive the added benefit of brilliantly designed apps take care of by Tim such as news, photos, music, and emails, as well as several other functions, particularly so on any Nokia phones.

The Mint app offer Windows Mobile users some of the best personal financial management tools available anywhere. While its features might not meet or match each & every feature found in alternative OSs such as iOS or android, it still offers absolutely valid and comprehensive functionality. The app design offers a clear, clean interface that provides users with instantaneous access to their various account balances; keep track of financial transactions as well as the user’s personal spending traits or considering their budgets. A handy additional function will warn users with an alert to bring any unusual spending patterns to the attention.

The 6tag app brings a better than original Instagram app to the Windows Mobile platform, this is in contrast to the fact that the official Instagram app is still the top app download. However, currently the 6tag app delivers a much more fulfilling Instagram experience, where users enjoy the capacity to utilise an in app video and photo shooting functionality.

Additionally users are able to enjoy a excellent little Matthew of all their fighters and the latest revision even allows users to save their videos to Skydive accounts in cloud storage. The only possible future concern may be the potential where Instagram might shut down 6tag’s API access to counter competition to its own fledgling windows mobile app.

Google Play currently features in excess of 1.7 million apps with over a hundred billion downloads served to date. These kinds of figures make searching for and finding apps with the precious space on your smart phone extremely difficult and time-consuming process, therefore the list of apps discussed below should make life for android users a bit easier. It will also shorten the task of compiling your new list of favourite tools to make your smart phone the most useful it could possibly be.

Texpand is available for free on Google Play. This handy little app allows its users to text in acronyms, which it will then expand into full sentences and phrases. For example, users may for instance type “FYI” on the keyboard and the app will then automatically expand the abbreviation to “for your information” or “TGI” expands into “Thank God Its Friday”. This app effectively gets rid of most cell-phone spoken texting language, making short work of often-texted locations and names.

Band is another free app available on Google Play that allows it users to search for and find groups of like-minded individuals from around the world, make contact with them and enter into discussion in a gathering around an endless variety of interesting subjects and hobbies. Users may choose to share their passions with the community and receive information on all subject matter surrounding their interest, and if the nation appeals the may even organise event meetings with similarly interested people. The app after fashion supplants the trusty old Internet forums.

Komoot, also free to use from Google play, is specifically targeted at bikers and hikers who find joy in exploring a multitude of less trekked routes. The app allows this like-minded community to boast and share photos taken at amazing venues, with other users wanting to follow in your tracks able to benefit from a turn-by-turn navigation system that offers topographical maps. They will then benefit from your experience, so that you may at some stage may benefit from another’s journey onto the roads less traveled. This extremely handy app always provide interesting hikes without the downside of arriving at a destination totally lost i.e. your destination became circumstantial.