App Bites #41: Fotor

Welcome back to another App Bite. Before the break we were talking about some of the best apps found on Windows 8 and we will continue this trend today with Fotor.






Fotor:

Fotor is a photo-editing app that lets you play around and do all the very basic type of editing things that you might like to do. I like to think of Fotor as a the photo editor tool for the people of casual intentions. So what can you edit? Well basic things like the tint, temperature, contrast, brightness, etc. You also can add borders, captions, effects, and you can crop the picture. So like I said these are very basic photo editing tools, but this isn't what makes the app great. What makes it great is how nice the setup is, how smooth everything works, and how great the overall experience is. For someone who just wants to quickly make some minor adjustments to their photo this app is perfect. So to those people I recommend checking out Fotor in the Windows 8 app store, or just follow the link here. (Note that Fotor is also on Android here and iOS here) (Second Note: Fotor is free on Windows 8 and Android but three dollars on iOS)

App Bites #40: Khan Academy

Welcome to the 40th edition of App Bites. Wow we're almost at the big five-o.







Khan Academy:

Keeping with my Windows 8 themed app reviews of late, here is another great Windows 8 app. If you haven't heard of Khan Academy it's basically this website run by a guy named Khan who puts our hundreds and hundreds of videos that help explain everything from simple algebra to multivariable calculus to how haemoglobin functions and everything in between. Khan Academy is supposed to be like a way to bring the teacher or professor home with you so that when you go to class you already know what you're doing and can instead focus on putting the lesson into practise. Personally I just like Khan Academy because of all the medical videos which I find very interesting. Anyways I'm recommending this app because it takes all of the videos from the Khan Academy website and puts them into one nice Windows 8 themed app. So if you frequent Khan Academy, and have a Windows 8 device, then I recommend picking this free app up.

You can get the Khan Academy app here.

App Bites #37: ARMED!

Today's App Bite will be the first App Bite to talk about a Windows 8 app. Exciting eh?






ARMED!:

ARMED! is, as mentioned, a Windows 8 app and it was created by Sickhead Games and you can pick it up for free right here for any of your Windows 8 devices. Basically the app is like a much simpler version of Civilization but with robots instead of people. What you do is you build different buildings that either defend, heal or create units or your main powerhouses which are like your bases. ARMED! is a played through a turn based style of play over multiple modes including one to play against your friends online. There are currently seven unique maps, and tones of upgrades and things to build. The game is very fun to play, and seems relatively glitchless which is quite a feat considering its a Windows 8 app. I also love the graphics, sure they don't compare to console or other PC games, but they do look pretty darn good for an app.

So I recommend checking this app out, just hit up the link above if you can't find it. And I'm going to try and do more App Bites or full reviews on Windows 8 apps because there really isn't much information about these extremely new apps out there and I know most of you are curious as to how good (or bad) Windows 8 apps really are. So check back soon for more Windows 8 app reviews.

Apps Bites #36: Happy Street

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I am a fan of the app Happy Street.

In Happy Street you basically build houses and stores and other buildings for the people of your street and you try to complete all the missions the populous asks of you. You can also craft things and go fishing and play a few other mini-games in the app. This is a casual kids game all the way but man is it ever addictive.

Happy Street reminds me a lot of the extremely popular app Smurfs Village where you build a village for your Smurfs. Smurfs Village remains to date one of the highest grossing apps ever- even though the game is free- because of a little thing called Smurf berries. These berries speed up times to build things, go you special items, as well as other bonus things and just all around made the game better. But you get the berries you had to fork over real life money, which has earned the creators millions and caused a insane jump in the number of games that were based of this simple philosophy. This is why if you look at the top twenty grossing apps in the App Market, you'll notice that usually around 16 or more of them are free and rely solely on in app purchases. And this is exactly what happens in Happy Street, except instead of Smurf Berries, you're prompted to buy Flooz.

Regardless Happy Street is still an addictive (in a good way) and fun game that I encourage you to check out. You can get it for free here on the Play Store.

App Bites #35: Rayman Jungle Run

Welcome back to another edition of App Bites. Today we look at a relatively new app by Ubisoft Entertainment called Rayman Jungle Run available in the  Play Store for $3.02 (CA) and the App Store for $2.99.

Basically what you do in the game is just run around jumping through these various worlds trying to collect as many of these yellow "sprite" type creatures. The more you get the better of a jewel your awarded. This is one of those apps that you get to keep you entertained at the bus stop, in other words it's short. There are 40 levels in total in the game which span over four different "mode" styles. What I mean by mode styles is that there are, for instance,  ten levels where you can only run and jump, and then ten where you can hover, etc. Each of these levels are extremely short, but like I said it's more about keeping you busy for a few minutes when you have to kill some time.

The only complaints I have about the game is that it is short, and that it's on the pricey side. Three bucks is getting on the high end of the price point for apps, so for that money I expect a bit lengthier of a game. The game itself is great, I wouldn't change much about it except maybe the music- it's just the number of levels that bugs me. But who knows, maybe more levels will be added as is common place for such a thing to happen with apps.

At the end of the day though this is still a fun game, not worth three dollars, but fun nonetheless. Or maybe it's just the warm nostalgic feeling that I get playing this game as it reminds of the good old days playing Rayman.

App Bites #34: BBC News

I love my news, and I love my news apps. I've talked about one of my favourite apps called Pulse before which is a great app that puts all the articles from your favourite sources all in one spot. But for people who want perhaps what you could call a more "main stream" app for news, then I suggest checking out the BBC News app. The app is set up a lot like Pulse, the main difference being that the BBC is the source for the articles and as such there aren't as many articles. Pulse can tend to overwhelm you with articles to read, although that's not necessarily a bad thing, whereas BBC News is a little neater and split into categories a little bit better in my opinion. In Pulse you can only pick which sources you want articles from, and thus get every single article from that source. With BBC News you get all the articles, but they're split by category, as I mentioned. So if you want some news in one nice clean area and happen to love the BBC, then check out this app and pick it up for free over here in the Play Store.

App Bites #33: Best of Cracked Vol. 1

Welcome back to another edition of App Bites. Let's begin.







Best of Cracked Vol. 1:

So I talked about the official Cracked app for Cracked.com (one of my favorite websites ever) a little while ago. In case you don't know what Cracked.com is, it's a humor site that has articles, and videos and more that are all extremely funny and definitely worth reading. And they have an official Android app which has some of their articles and whatnot all in one convenient place. But there are so many hundreds and thousands of things to read on Cracked.com so what if you only want to see the best. Well that is why they came out with Best of Cracked Vol. 1 the app which has the top 25 most viewed articles, videos, and photoplasties of 2011 all one quick and easy spot to access. It's a really great app, and trust me you will not be let down by the articles, they're absolutely hilarious.

You can grab the Android app right here.

App Bites #31: Sim City 4

Welcome back to another App Bite. Today we look at one of my favorite PC games.






Sim City 4:

Sim City 4 is a classic in my world, having originally come out almost 10 years ago developed by Maxis and published by EA, and I'll never forget how awesome this game was. Like other Sim City games you slowly build up an entire city from the ground and you can add a plethora of different buildings and landscape styles. The great thing about Sim games is that they're so gigantic in that the customizability is so high that you can never repeat yourself and thus never really get bored of the game. It was just all around great, and unlike the previous Sim City games (the first being released way back in 1989 on the SNES) this game looks great too so visually the game is appealing. Of course it's nothing like what they have nowadays, but the graphics are good enough that it doesn't hinder the game in any way. All in all Sim City 4 is one of those classic PC games that everyone has to at least play once.