Productivity Problems

As you may (or may not) know, my university has been on strike for nearly three months. After a slight scare of classes commencing, I realized I should buckle down and get some serious work done. Now… being the über-geek I am, I was on the hunt for a really smooth to-do app for the iPhone.

After a few minutes of searching and several podcasts, I cam to ‘Things’ for the iPhone. It’s by the same people (Cultured Code) that brought Things for the Mac desktop. After a bit of debating, with my mind of course, I dropped some serious coin for this app ($10!!!).

So what’s the point of this blog post? Feedback. I’m using this app and plan to post my thoughts of course, but I would really like foe you guys to give me feedback on your top productivity apps. Either post below, tweet at me on Twitter (link in the top right), or shoot an email to drj0k3r@mac.com. Thanks in advance!

Top App Store Games of 2008

It’s been a long time coming but I really wanted to wait as long as I could before I post my top ten choices of 2008. Mind you, this is my opinion. You are more than welcome to post (in text or video) your picks, but don’t hate on me because I have an opinion. And ere it is folks… DRJ0K3Rs’ top ten games for the iPhone/iPod Touch of 2008:

10. Monopoly
An instant classic. Dare I say that if you own an iPod or iPhone, you probably heard of monopoly. The two aren’t correalated, but that’s beside the point. An easy to use interface. Up to four player multi-player. And a relatively fast UI. This is a great addition to your collection. I just wish there was a way to switch back to the old property names instead of the world edition. Control the red and control the game!

9. Space Ninja
This game came out today (new years) and was good enough to make the cut. It’s best described as a top-down shooter + bullet time. Any further description would only confuse and disservice the game. Check it out. Fast. Simple. And plenty of longevity.

8. The Creeps
I really enjoy tower defence games (for the iPhone at least) and I vowed I would only choose one for this list. The Creeps beat out plenty (see below) to be my favorite. Despite the lack of a soundtrack, it’s gameplay is stellar. It has varying levels, plentiful towers, and overall is pretty challenging. If you want the best tower defense game as of now, this is it.

7. Dr. Awesome
There’s no doubt that ngmoco:) makes some great stuff. Dr. Awesome has to be their second best game to date. It’s fun. Extremely simple to learn, but there’s plenty of challenge ahead of you. The fact that patients cab die if you don’t play the game for a long time is just an added touch that makes you come back for more. Definitely a must-have.

6. Tiki Towers
This is World of Goo + monkeys. If you don’t know what world of goo is, just go buy it (don’t ask why, you’ll thank me later). I haven’t had as MUCH time with this game. But I’ll tell you now that this game is super fun and VERY deep! I won’t bother explaining the premise… Too complicated to put into words. Just get it and play!

5. MotionX Poker
I believe I mentioned this game store in a video of mine, and rightfully so. It’s poker with dice. With virtually no real wait time and great physics, this just one of those games you whip out while waiting in line at starbucks as that greaseball behind the counter is trying to perfect his mochiatto.

4. Burning Monkey Casino
Not only is this one of the best casino apps inthe app store, it is an absolute steal! You get 7 familiar (or unfamiliar) casino games that’ll have you preoccupied for several hours. Really helpful during those monthly meetings at work.

3. Galcon
This is a very stripped down, but addictive, RTS for the iPhone. You start off with one planet and you fire your minions to conquer others. With multi-player over wi-fi, and an unforgiving AI, Galcon is definitely worth the cash for the pro version.

2. Scoops
Not only is this the best iPhone app involving ice cream, it was my favorite app for a long time. It’s simple: catch ice cream but avoid vegetables. With a clean, cartoon look and quick start up, scoops is one of those games that you play and compete amongst your pals for bragging rights. Post here if you’ve hit the 300k mark

1. Rolando
This app represents the future of mobile gaming. It’s built around the iPhone hardware so tightly that you often find yourself fooling around with the controls in the menu screen! It has plenty of levels that can get pretty challenging and long. This is easily the best game on the app store. You don’t have to take my word for it… Try it yourselves. It may be the best $10 you spent on your iPhone and/or iPod touch.

It wasn’t easy to narrow down these choices. I pretty much asked myself, ‘if I could only fit 10 games on my iPhone for a flight, which would they be?’ However, there are some other games that really got my attention. The following are my, for lack of a better term, notable mentions:

- SimCity
- Fieldrunners
- Uno
- Super Monkey Ball
- Crash Bandicoot Racing
- Booty Blocks
- Topple

DIAA: Best Music/Navigation/News Apps

So since this was pretty much the only chance I’ll get to post here since I will be extremely pressed for time later today, I decided to cram all my remaining ‘Best of…’ posts into one awesome, super, mega-post. Take your time to look through. There may be many apps you already heard of, and several you haven’t. Check it out!

Shazam

This is my favorite music-related application. You hold it up to music, and 98% of the time (make sure it’s English, though it may support your odd foreign song) it will track down and find exactly what song it is. I use this ESPECIALLY when there’s that one song on the radio you can’t seem to figure out. It’s free and works amazingly well. Check it out.

Simplify

I don’t use this app much ever since I got my iPod Classic, but if you have a huge music collection and your iPhone/iPod Touch doesn’t have enough storage: get simplify. I don’t know if it’s still free or costs a few bucks, but it works great. You download a desktop app (Mac and PC compatible) that pretty much broadcasts your iTunes library. You can have up to 25 (I THINK!) iPods and/or iPhones synced to this broadcast. Once your synced over Wi-Fi, you can browse you entire library on the go. Sweet stuff.

Where To?

I made a YouTube video about this app. It then disappeared from the App Store. The developers sold the application and it is not back on the App Store for $3. It is a convenience application. Check out my channel to SEE how it works. It resembles a rotary phone and you pretty much choose from a bunch of categories to find the nearest ANYTHING! If you use the GPS on the iPhone, it’s simple… you NEED this app.

Red Rocket

So this app is solely useful to Torontonians and others that may visit Toronto. It’s just a really easy to use app that tells you where the nearest bus is. That may be an oversimplification since it does MUCH MUCH more. You can save your ‘favorite’ routes and know well ahead of time where your bus is coming. Minus the odd snow storm, this app was accurate to about 3 seconds each time! If you take the bus in Toronto, or have $0.99 to toss, check it out!

NetNewsWire

Go to www.newsgator.com. Create an account. Add your favorite RSS feeds from the websites you love to follow. Then download this app. This app, I’m going to ruin the surprise here, is my MOST favorite iPhone app. It is simple. Minimalistic. Fast. Accurate. And simply the BEST way to stay in tune with what’s going with any of the sites you follow. This app is so good, they may as well ship every iPhone with it! Oh yes, it is free baby!

Digg (The Web App)

Alright, so the image is a little misleading. I will tell you techies right now. Go to http://digg.com/iphone on your iPhone or iPod Touch, and save it to your homescreen. This web app is, in my opinion, MUCH better than the ACTUAL Digg application for the platform. It’s fast and easy to use, especially if you just want to know what’s on Digg. Try it out.

So there are some of my top apps (for their respective genres) of 2008. I will try to follow this up with another portion, and wrap the entire blog-series with a video higlighting my top games of 2008 for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Happy holidays everybody!

DIAA: Best Education Apps

Education apps can be hard to categorize. There are so many differing subjects with specific apps to boot. I’m in a health-related field so there is a LITTLE leniancy to the apps that appeal to my field of research. However, I’m sure my top pick will appeal to any enthusiastic student:

iProcastinate

This is arguably the BEST app to use to manage your busy school schedule. Tests? Assignments? Labs? Whatever the case, this tricked out To-Do app is free and offers enough features in a sleek interface to appeal to the user and offer a lot in terms of functionality. This is definitely something I use everyday (when I am in school).

Netter’s Anatomy Series

This app is no joke. Rounding out at around $40 each, they are DEFINITELY pricey. But when your degree hinders on your knowledge of the body, you gotta dish out the goods. This app is a bit slow on start up, but really delivers in terms of picture quality and information. Anyone in a health field should really consider this app. Heck, you may even want this app just to know more about the body in general. Now if only they highlighted the pressure points, I would have made this my number one ninja app.

Beats By Dre Review

WARNING: This is just a disclaimer that this review may or may not agree with your current fanboy-ism. Please do not take it personally. From hours and hours of testing, in conjunction with previous time with other headphones, I have compiled a pretty good overview of the Beats By Dre. Once again, don’t hate me because I have an opinion.

Now that we that out of the way, I shall tackle this behemoth of a review. It’s always difficult to review headphones because there’s so much out there and there so many different kinds of people. What do I mean by that last part? Well, everyone hears differently. Some people may have a wider range in which they can hear than others. Scienctifics aside, the Beats By Dre Studio headphones are great headphones. That’s not to say it doesn’t have it shortcomings. I’ll tackle the cons first.

The cable is only about 4 feet in length. So for all you ballers out there, you may to purchase a longer auxillary cable to get functionality out of these headphones. Also, the passive noise cancellation isn’t up to par with the price tag. How can you tell? Well, when you play your music loud, it REALLY leaks out, which can be awkward in many situations. Since a lot of sound leaks out, one can assume that sound can leak in quite easily, and thus the PASSIVE noise cancellation is mediocre.

Furthermore, when you activate the noise cancellation there is a VERY faint hiss that can be heard (which virtually dissappears from your senses when you begin to play musics). Lastly, these headphones can NOT be used without two AAA batteries. When you buy these headphones, buy rechargeable batteries. Sadly, that’s a must!

All that being said, these are amazing headphones. They provide MUCH better bass than many of it’s competitors (Bose QC2 and OC3’s) and have highs that are even comparable to those flashy Sennheisers. The mids can get a LITTLE muddy at times, but this is often due to poor file quality.

There is a iPhone attachement that is way to high up on the wire to be an ‘awesome’ idea, but the sensitivity of the button itself makes is a ‘good’ idea. It’s included in the package, but could have used a little more thought. That being said, the sound quality on the receiving end of the mic is pretty good.

Right over the power switch, the ‘b’ logo is a mute button that can be held to turn off the audio and noise cancellation momentarily. I wish that you didn’t have to HOLD it there in order to mute.

Aesthetically, you cannot argue that these headphones are SEXY!  The piano black finish is very slick. The hot red highlights are sick. And the overall design brings all these together to give a set of headphones that look like no other. All in all, these headphones are great. They come with a beautiful package and all the necessary accesories. The $400 price tage ($350 in the US) may be steep to many consumers, but mind you, the cost price is about $215 CDN. In other words: SHOP AROUND!

DIAA: Best Book Apps

This category, unlike the one the preceeded it, isn’t a very big one to choose from. It was actually pretty easy to pick my two favorite book applications for the iPhone of 2008. They are as follows:

Stanza

I cannot begin to explain how simple this app is. You download the app for free… then you download books for free. It isn’t the prettiest UI in the world. Heck, it may be on of the uglier ones, but it’s practical. It works. And most importantly, it is stupid easy to find and download books on the fly to your iPhone and get reading. Yes kids, people in the world still do read books.

Classics

Arguably one of the most underrated apps in the iTunes store. The UI alone for this app is worth the price of purchase. With a sticker price ranging from $2.99 to as low as $0.99, you can ALL afford to check out this book reader. You pay a price, and then you get this application that comes preloaded with 12 books (13 now, since they added A Christmas Carol). After about a month on the shelves, they added another book, with promises of more to come. Definitely check out Classics. It may be on of the most good-looking interfaces you interact with on your iPhone.

DIAA: Best Entertainment Apps

This is a pretty tough category to narrow down. It shouldn’t be surprising considering the plethora of apps in this category. After quite a bit of thinking, I narrowed it to the top two that I use a bunch. Many of you may not agree, but then again, a specific niche of you will agree entirely. As always, feel free to let me know what you think below.

Lightsaber Unleashed

Okay… this is a HIGHLY questionable first choice. Especially controversial way to start off this series. But try this app. For crying out loud, it’s free! Now… just tap the button, and let your inner padawan run wild. This will go down in iPhone App history as one of those defining apps of 2008. From young to old, anyone with even a remote amount of Star Wars knowledge will find app fun beyond words. Go ahead… *hear comes the REQUIRED, but overdone, Star Wars quote* may the force be with you.

Remote

If this app made noises as I swung my iPhone side-to-side, it may have taken the top spot here. Alright, maybe not… but in all seriousness, whether you are a Mac user or PC user, if you use iTunes to manage your multimedia, this app is a must have. Once again, it’s free, but does quite a bit of work. Simply connect onto the same network as your computer, and in a few easy steps, you’ll be controlling and monitoring your media via you iPhone from anywhere in the vicintiy of your wireless network. Take it a step further by connecting an Airport Express to your main speakers and damn… you feel pretty damn confident about yourself. Enjoy. You deserved it.

DRJ0K3Rs’ iPhone App Awards

Am I a highly paid and internationally spoken about technology pundit? Probably not. But do I have a pretty good idea on what applications on the App Store may be worth your time and/or money? Hells yea! Allow me to introduce the *deep breath* 2008 DRJ0K3R iPhone App Awards!

This is a blog series I will post throughout the month for all you lovable readers of mine. Basically I will tackle a handful of categories and choose what I think are the two best in each. Yes, this is MY opinion, so if you don’t agree… don’t take it personally, just comment on what YOU think is worthy.

Lastly, I will end off with the best iPhone games of the year, once again, according to MY opinion. I’ve been gaming on the iPhone since October 2007, jailbroken and not, so it’s safe to say I’ll have a pretty good critique on what’s available. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know in a comment below (oh snap, did I just rhyme there?!).

Review: Liquid Case for the iPhone 3G

When you go form retailer to retailer, it’s hard to find very much differentiation in terms of iPhone accessories. I admit, I’m a bit of an accessory whore, but that’s only because I want the best (or the best at the time). I’m not about to tell you that the Liquid Case is the best iPhone case, however, it does hit a lot of points that make it best in it’s class.

Attention to details

As soon as I heard about the Liquid Cases by Element Case, I knew there was something different. These guys seriously take their job seriously. Let me try and break it down for you. You get to choose from three different backing colours (black, white, grey) and then theres another seven flip lid covers that you can choose from (you get two with each purchase). On top of that, you can choose from several design you want to be laser engraved on the flip lids. If that wasn’t enough, you can even go as far as e-mailing the guys over at Element Case to get your own logos on the product. In the infamous words of Paris Hilton, that’s hot.

For the inquiring minds

There are five essential portions to the Liquid Case. You have a brushed aluminum plate (embedded with the Element Case insignia) that is on the back of the tough backing itself. There is then the backing which thick, glossy polycarbonate that provides a !@#$ load of shock protection. This thing isn’t going to crack like most shell cases upon dropping it. You then have a plastic bezel that holds the iPhone in place. Correction: there are four screws (the fourth portion) that holds the bezel, which holds the iPhone down. Finally, you have your flip lid. Magnetized at the corners, it’s your last line of defense.

So my verdict?

The element case is truly a creme de la creme of iPhone cases (I really hope I got that French proper). The looks may not appeal to everybody, but there will be a select niche that love the construction/industrial design. The case adds a bit of heft, but in return you get a product with amazing finish, and improtantly, protection. With a $100 sticker price, the real dilemma is whether the case is worth it or not.

In my opinion, it truly depends on your situation. You will most certainly find cases that provide the same, if not more, protection for a lot less. But you will have a hard time finding a case with so much flexibility in terms of design for the same price. The holiday seasons are coming up, and this is an AWESOME present to that iPhone addict of yours. Though I would second guess whether I would buy this for myself, I would totally buy this for a family memeber or close friend as a gift. The fact you have so much say in the final look adds to the uniqueness of this product, which will translate immensely to anyone on the recieving end of this case.

All in all, its a great product that has so much to offer. Though the sticker price isn’t for everyone, you can assure yourself that with a little creativity, no one on the planet will have the same case as you. If you have that special someone you don’t mind spending a few bucks on in these beautiful economic times, check out the Liquid Case. You can gaurantee that they’ll love you for the following days (at the least).

An app-auling situation…

There is something about the iTunes App store that I have thought about (and has concerned me)in the back of my mind since I started purchasing apps. It’s the whole “Top Paid” and “Top Free” lists. I seriously believe there is a serious flaw in the way the App store (and maybe even the entire iTunes store) is set up. Let me start off my semi-rant by a situation…

Classics ($2.99) is a great reading app. Recieved a lot of publicity and rightfully so: it’s amazing. It releases on the app store, climbs the charts and the developers quite a bit of money. A week or so passes and as usual… a boat load of $0.99 apps come out and knock Classics down, down, down in the charts. Fast forward to now, and the people at Classics have dropped their price to $0.99 (for a limited time).

The point of this post is not to say, “don’t buy an app when it comes out… it will be cheaper later.” It just pisses me off to a degree that I have to search a bit to find those premium QUALITY app. For the average iPhone user (of which many I meet when I activate their phone and teach them how to use it), all they know is price and see nothing more.

What do you people think? Post a comment or address it yourselves in a YouTube video. I’m surprised not many more people are talking about this. Sure, some will argue that it’s about the little guy and not the big name developers. Well, to be honest… I don’t care who the !@#$ develops it. I want to know (easily) which apps are the best at what they do. Written reviews are good to a degree… but you only get to see three of them and 90% of the time, not much info is revealed. I feel like like I’m ranting and touching several issues in this post so let me finalize by saying…

The App store sucks. It has to be refined. The way apps are ranked is a ridicule and a slap in the face to the hard working developers that DON’T rip off apps. That’s not to say there aren’t good $1 apps. I’m just saying a lot of $5-10 apps are taking a hit and being overlookd. Think about it people.