Recommendations of the Week: July 3rd

Welcome to the first recommendations of the week for the month of July! This time around our recommendations are themed around awesome free apps and games!

Ernesto  Guillermo recommneds duolingo, a learning app that should help you learn a foreign language, INCLUDING Spanish.

Hatok recommends arguably the greatest achievement in history: Octodad. This crazily unique game has you steer an octopus, disguised as your average everyday father through his average everyday life without arousing suspicion. More importantly, this game has the best tagline, period: "Loving Father. Caring Husband. Secret Octopus."

Check it out here: http://www.octodadgame.com/

Save the Date is a strange take on the dating sim genre. A must play for anyone with a passing interest in story structure!

Check it out here: http://paperdino.com/games/save-the-date/





Lorl recommends Digital: A Love Story, an interactive novel with a chill soundtrack and relaxed gameplay. Like any good book, you won't be able to put it down once you've started! You play as yourself in a time portal to the early days of the internet. Those of you who remember dial up will love the nostalgia of that screeching noise every time you dial a new number, and others can experience this amazing torture for the first time ever. This is a short, relaxing game that you can beat in one sitting, with a few puzzles as an added bonus. 

The story of digital gets more exciting the longer you play, and is rarely boring or monotonous. Best part is, it's completely free and roughly 35mb in size! 

Check it out here: http://scoutshonour.com/digital/

Pro Game Tip: Don't forget to download the notepad program in-game, it's your most useful resource!

Recommendations of the Week: December 5th

Well it's that time again, December! And with December comes winter break, delicious feasts, and of course shopping. "But Ernesto you're forgetting the most important thing that December brings", you might say, and in response I'd say "Oh right silly me, December also brings more Angry Birds!"




Angry Birds Seasons: Winter Wonderham

As always Rovio releases an update to their Angry Birds Seasons game which packs in another set of themed levels to the already massive Angry Birds archive. Like in years past, the levels from this update work like an advent calendar. Each day of the holiday season a new level becomes available for you to launch some birds at pigs (but with holiday spirit). Of course only a few levels are available at the moment, but so far nothing is new as compared to past Angry Birds games. Personally I would have liked to see an Angry Birds Star Wars Christmas themed level pack, so for now I'll just slash my lightsaver on some snowy levels and pretend its Christmas.

Of course the levels are still fun, so I can't complain. Yes I'm tired of playing Angry Birds (though the Star Wars version was great and definitely renewed my interest in the game, if only for that one app though) but I still feel I need to mention every time Rovio updates one of the many games.

If you don't have Angry Birds Seasons then you can grab it here for iOS or here for Android.

App Bites #38: Movie Guide

Welcome back to another edition of App Bites. As promised today I'll feature another Windows 8 app.






Movie Guide:

Movie Guide, created by Zühlke Engineering AG, is your go-to-source for all things about a movie. I love it because I can launch the app, then right in front of me are all the new movies (and other categories too of course) and I can pick one and see a quick blurb about the movie and more. When you select a movie it shows the user's ratings of the movie as well as how well it is doing in the box office, when it comes out, and other important information that I like to look at when deciding on a movie to see. It also has nice tiles with all the major actors, producers, and directors in the movie and if you select a particular tile it will give you some information about the person and a list of all the movies they've been in. You can also see a list of movies that are similar to the movie you're looking at which is great for finding other movies that are popular in the same genre of your selection. Of course there exists websites that offer the same type of service, but with Movie Guide you get it all in one nice convenient package that happens to look great too.

So if you're interested just hit up this link here to get Movie Guide.

The Artist's Picks: Any.DO

So I recently discovered the joys of owning an Android. Having a smartphone is absolutely incredible; it's like an extension of your brain. However, one of its best features is also the worst thing: the apps.

Have you, like me, ever searched for good apps? Cast vainly around the Play Store for good applications which will hold your attention? Do you as often as not immediately uninstall any applications that do make the cut, because they just don't live up to your expectations?

Well fear not, because I, the Cake Loving Artist, have gone through that exact same process many times. Throughout it, I have found several applications that I really like and which I have bestowed the honour of 'The Artist's Picks'. Every Friday I will be updating the blog with a new app that I've added to my list, so be sure to check it out!

One more thing: I'm a big cheapskate, so all of these apps are absolutely free!



We're starting off strong this week, with an app that will help you get organized and stay on top of the many things that you have to do in life.

Any.DO:

http://dft.ba/-anydo

This app is pretty. That's one of its best features, and it suceeds in that regard. It also contains some really great features under the hood, as it provides a great interface for adding tasks, supports sharing to-dos with others, and you can set repeating alarms for tasks if the need strikes you.

It also contains a smart algorithm for predicting what you're going to write for a task. For example, if you start typing in: "Call mom," it will pop up a whole bunch of predictions, such as 'Call back mom', or 'Call mom and dad'. I write very specific tasks and in my experience it doesn't come in useful that often, but it's nice to know it's there if I ever need it.

You can set reminders and due dates as well, but it also has a neat feature that you don't see on too many of these to-do list apps. You have the option to place a notification in your status bar up top, and it serves as a constant reminder of things you have to do.

Any.DO syncs with both Google Tasks and www.any.do (its website). You must create an account to use the latter, but in case you don't feel like creating yet another user account, there's always the option to sign in with Facebook. Signing in can come in really handy, as Any.DO also boasts of a Google Chrome extension, and an iOS app. This multi-platform functionality works very nicely, I find. For example, if you're browsing on your computer and remember something you have to do, you can just click the icon (or highlight some text and right-click), and your task is set. If you now leave your computer and go on your phone, the task you made will be right there in the app.

For a basic to-do list manager however, it excels. If you're looking for an app that will manage your everyday tasks and doesn't look too bad while doing it, feel free to check it out.

Angry Birds on Consoles

If you thought Rovio, the creators of the world's best selling app Angry Birds, were starting to stray away from the birds and towards other things like there two relatively new apps Amazing Alex and Bad Piggies, then you thought wrong. The first three Angry Birds games; Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio, are all now coming together in one giant Angry Birds game called Angry Birds Trilogy available now on the Nintendo 3DS as well as on the X-Box 360 and PS3. But don't worry this isn't just another shameless port of the same game in yet another attempt at a massive money grab from all the millions of addicted Angry Birds gamers. Rovio has said that there will be "exclusive content, and stunning new visuals" as well as support for Street Pass features on the 3DS version and something called lightning modes for all versions.

This sounds pretty good right? Well not really. If you were to buy all the games that come in Angry Birds Trilogy on your Android device it would cost a total of zero dollars, and buying it on your iPhone would cost you just under three dollars. The costs hover around plus or minus three dollars for the three games no matter where you look. But if you were to buy Angry Birds Trilogy on your 3DS it would cost you $29.99! That is ten times the cost compared with mobile devices, and you only get enhanced visuals and a few other minor features. And that isn`t even the worst. Buying Angry Birds Trilogy on your X-Box 360 or PS3 will cost you even more at $39.99! This is what I would call a rip off on a massive scale. Come on Rovio, enough is enough. I`d love to know what all of you think though. Would you fork over forty bucks for this?

Recommenations of the Week: September 26th

Welcome back to this week's edition of Recommendations of the Week. Let's begin.






Shop Deals:

For the majority of the "bigger" apps in the AppStore, and by bigger I mean closer to full fledged games such as Dead Space as apposed to a mini game like Doodle Jump, they can be quite expensive. Of course this is all relative. People complain non-stop when game developers released games for more then $5 on the App Store, yet they don't say anything for dropping $40 on a game for their X-Box which theoretically should have eight times more content (if we went by pricing) but doesn't actually. So if you're one of those people who complains about costly apps and resorts to not buying the app, don't fret, there are alternatives. And I'm not talking about jailbreaking your device (something that I originally did to get past the cost of buying so many apps), no I'm talking about shopping for deals. Apps actually go on some amazing deals and they go on sale more then you'd think. These sales often can be quite high too. For instance there was a great app a few weeks ago normally priced around $10 brought down to $0.99 for the duration of the sale. And it's prices like that that you really can't beat. So if you're in the neighbourhood for some "expensive" apps but don't want to cough up some cash, just wait it out a few weeks, there are good chances your app will go on sale.

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.