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Games for the weekend: Mini Motor Racing

Geoffrey Goetz — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:12:49 +0000

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome enough to keep you busy until Monday, at least.

Mini Motor Racing and Mini Motor Racing HD ($0.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad) are excellent top-down racing games from The Binary Mill. A good racing game requires three main features to come together: vehicle control, a variety of challenging courses and a heart-thumping soundtrack. Mini Motor Racing excels at all three. But the real kicker is the game’s head-to-head multiplayer action.

Mini Motor Racing supports four styles of steering and an optional auto acceleration feature to accommodate your prefered style of gameplay. “Wheel” mode uses a virtual steering wheel on the left side of the screen very similar to the iconic d-pad. “Toggle” provides a left and right button on the left side of the screen, whereas “Tank” places the left and right on separately on either side. “Slider” allows the user to control the car by moving a slide bar to the left and right.

Each style of play will cater to different drivers. Some prefer the Wheel, but I found Tank mode to be the easiest to control. The final control in all modes is a button that gives the car a boost of nitro during the race. Thanks to the way that the car navigates the track, as well as careful camera placement, you will never find the controls getting in the way of the game regardless of your control scheme of choice.

The opening sequence and smooth 3-D transitions when navigating the game’s menu system attest to the development team’s attention to detail. There are over twenty different courses to choose from, and variations in weather and time of day keep replay value high. All fourteen cars on offer are customizable: You can select the color and style, as well as upgrade each as you collect money and customizations along the various tracks. If you want to upgrade in a hurry, you can use in-app purchases ranging in price from $0.99 up to $14.99.

Even without multiplayer support, the game is worth buying. Being able to play with up to four racers over Wi-Fi or two over Bluetooth, the multiplayer mode just adds to the bargain.

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Gas Cubby by FRAM: A Mutually Beneficial Partnership

Nick Santilli — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:00:54 +0000

Over a year ago I had the pleasure of profiling David Barnard’s App Cubby and their growing selection of iPhone applications. David’s attention to detail and the feedback of his many customers has allowed him to grow Gas Cubby into a great app for tracking your automobile’s maintenance, costs, and data. When it was selling for $10 I thought it was worth it, but now with Gas Cubby by FRAM, you can pick it up for free.

While the iPhone gains momentum like the juggernaut it appears to be, the App Store has continued to draw criticism, and yet, developers are still flocking to the platform. The result is that fart apps aren’t cutting it anymore, and every developer must bring their ‘A’ game if they want to have a chance at making it in this business. As with the rest of the business world in this economy, making it as an iPhone App Developer also means being able to evolve.

Gas Cubby evolved as many others have done, and began offering a Lite version that allowed the user to judge for themselves, while logging up to 5 records. But now they’ve taken it to the next level with the free version supported through targeted ads by FRAM (a division of Honeywell). Gas Cubby represents a solid and proven automobile maintenance tracking application for the iPhone platform — something that likely would’ve taken a company like Honeywell a significant amount of time to bring to market and cultivate to Gas Cubby’s level of accomplishment.

What makes this partnership interesting is that it’s one-to-one. The ads within the application aren’t coming from some ad service that rotates several ‘targeted’ graphics, but rather represent a unique collaboration of developer and product manufacturer. The graphics and landing page are all customized to coordinate with Gas Cubby, rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with a link out to a general product page. Tapping one of the ‘Tough Guard’ ads for instance, loads an in-app browser page for FRAM oil filters with information on how to buy. It’s all very well integrated and doesn’t distract from the task at hand.

For Honeywell, they can now target users who care enough about their vehicles that they track all of its data. And thanks to the partnership with App Cubby, they’ve got an insider’s knowledge of the iPhone platform and the landscape of the App Store. The combination sure appears to be a solid match-up that will likely benefit both parties.

If you have yet to pull the trigger on Gas Cubby, you no longer have an excuse not to with Gas Cubby by FRAM. It’s a terrific way to track the health and maintenance of your vehicle, without missing anything important that could lead to more costly expenses. Of course the non ad-supported full version is still available for $6.99.

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ZipCar: Car Sharing/Renting With Your iPhone

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:00:15 +0000

Perhaps one of the most amazing partnership announcements made during WWDC’s keynote yesterday is ZipCar‘s exciting story of iPhone app design. But it could easily fall through the cracks, for a couple of reasons: One, hardware announcements took center stage, and two, people who don’t live in major urban centers might not be aware of what exactly ZipCar even is. Most people will be familiar with the wacky science fiction future portrayed by “The Jetsons,” however, and that’s the sort of tech magic the two companies previewed yesterday.

For those who don’t know, ZipCar is a car-sharing alternative to vehicle ownership that operates in big cities like New York, London, Chicago and Toronto, to name a few. The idea is that many urban dwellers don’t need a car often enough that it makes financial sense to own one, so instead ZipCar provides an accessible fleet available for use when you need it, where you need, for as long or as little as you need it. It’s almost like a car subscription service, and though I’ve yet to use it myself, friends review it very favorably.

The new app from ZipCar takes advantage of the iPhone’s geolocation and wireless communication capabilities to allow it to help users locate, reserve, and even remotely control cars in their fleet. Before you get excited, this doesn’t mean that you can drive your ZipCar remotely, thereby fooling onlookers into believing that ghost cars are real. But it does mean that you can unlock the car, and/or possibly even honk its horn, so that you can pretend it’s recognizing and greeting you, if that’s what suits your fancy.

The app even looks good, displaying car images for each available model, and featuring a detail view with the rate and model information for the car of your choice. Two tabs not demoed in the app are the Drive and My Alerts pages, which it’s not a stretch to imagine might provide some kind of maps or navigation app, and maybe a traffic or severe weather alert system.

If you don’t happen to live in one of the cities where ZipCar has a presence, I can understand if you’re stifling a yawn right about now. But think about what this means not just for ZipCars, but for cars in general. Major car manufacturers could conceivably outfit their automobiles with the same kind of tech. It could be the death of the key fob, and the advent of iPhone integration that extends beyond just media and phone functions. Combine ZipCar functionality with Bluetooth stereo/calling connectivity, and turn-by-turn GPS navigation as demoed by Tom Tom, and your road trip just got a whole lot less complicated.

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Gas Cubby Gets 2.0 Update

Nick Santilli — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:50:37 +0000

About two months following the pricing experiment by App Cubby’s David Barnard, Gas Cubby gets a 2.0 upgrade.

Gas Cubby provides a way to track gas mileage for your automobile. But more than that, all maintenance and other costs sunk into your vehicle are dutifully tracked as well. Tilt your iPhone horizontally and view graphs that can tell you how well your car is performing (or not), and how much of a drain on your wallet it may be. And my favorite feature: setup maintenance reminders so you don’t miss that oil change when the sticker falls off the inside of your windshield.

Here’s a listing of what Version 2 adds to Gas Cubby:

Online Sync – backup your data (useful if migrating from Lite and Full versions)
Custom Service Reminders – remember to change your pine tree air freshener
Data entry shortcuts – move through data entry in succession rather than back and forth
Gas Stats Chart – quick look at all stats numbers
Swipe navigation of Detail view – no need to back out to list of entries first
Date filter buttons for charts – narrow your view based on time frame
Line for averages in charts – your average results
Custom Octane ratings – in case fuel is different in your neck of the woods
Setting for calculator style number pad – a change of scenery if you like
Badge icon for past due service reminders – visual reminder from the home screen

As I’ve been among the beta testers for Gas Cubby 2.0, I can say the updated features are nice. This already polished app has received a solid handful of features, making it even nicer to use. Would I call it a pleasure to track my vehicle’s statistics? Actually, I would.

As in the past, I definitely recommend Gas Cubby if you’re looking for a good way to keep your vehicle’s records up to date. Grab your own copy from the App Store for $9.99, or try out the Lite version for free.

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Apple Places Order for 100 Million 8Gb Flash Chips

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:57:21 +0000

Let’s not jump to any conclusions. Maybe they just want to redecorate the Cupertino campus, and they thought covering the walls in 8Gb (gigabit, not byte) flash chips would be original and visually appealing.

Actually, that’s probably the last possible reason Apple recently placed a massive order for 100 million 8Gb chips from their suppliers, most of which will come from Samsung, according to DigiTimes, the source of the report. Yes, that is a lot of chips, and apparently the whole industry will feel the strain as the NAND flash supply will be pretty tight up until the end of May, thanks to fairly large orders by Sony and Nokia, in addition to Apple.

In case you didn’t guess, Apple is most likely going to be using the new chips for the new iPhone that’s been all but confirmed as due this June in time for WWDC ’09. The tiny chips can be combined by Apple into larger configurations of 16GB and 32GB sizes, which is what most are expecting from the new iPhone models. For those still skeptical about the new iPhone’s imminent launch, the same thing happened last year around this time before the release of the iPhone 3G, except that time the order was only half the size. Which doesn’t mean Apple is planning on producing double the launch units, but that those units will almost definitely have double the storage capacity.

Would it be too much to ask for a leapfrog of the 32GB capacity and go straight to the 64? Probably, but I’m going to anyway. Though as it is, I don’t use the 16GB I already have. But there’s a difference being needing something and wanting to be able to do something, if the mood strikes me.

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9 iPhone Apps for Your Car

Weldon Dodd — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:24:56 +0000

Check out our list of 9 iPhone apps for your car-related needs. Each app links to a full review, so you can get more information on the features and cost of each app. Enjoy!

Fuel Consumption / Efficiency: AccuFuel

Maybe you’re into hypermiling, or maybe you’re just looking to see if your car needs a tune up, but if you’re looking for an app to track fuel consumption and efficiency, then I really like AccuFuel. The interface is simple and doesn’t get in the way of entering information quickly. AccuFuel produces graphs of your fuel efficiency over time for multiple vehicles.

Service Tracking: Car Care
Care Care gives you a way to track service expenses on multiple vehicles. The tracking reports might be too simple for some, but the fuel consumption tracking features that are also included might make it a good buy for the person looking for an app that will do both.

Cheap Gas: iGasUp
Everyone needs help finding cheaper gas these days. iGasUp has the most accurate and the most current data available. Read the full post to see some free options as well.

Expense Reporting for Mileage: MileBug
In my job, I need a way to track mileage for work trips around town. MileBug does a great job of providing a really simple (and IRS friendly) method of tracking my trip logs. I really like how I can export the reports to email for reimbursement and reporting.

Carpooling: Carticipate
Carticipate isn’t quite there yet as the community continues to grow. But if you’re looking for ride-sharing info in an iPhone app, this free download is where it’s at.

Parking: Parking Meter
Parking Meter is a simple app to track where you parked your car and/or how much time is left on that meter. I don’t always need the GPS location of my parking spot, but I like the ability to send myself SMS reminders before time expires on the meter if a meeting goes long and I forget to run out and drop a few more quarters in the slot.

Speed Traps: Trapster
Trapster helps you avoid speed traps and traffic cameras as you drive. The audible voice warnings are driver-friendly and help remind you to check your speed and drive safe.

Car Buying: iLeaseMyCar
If you’re looking to buy a new car, iLeaseMyCar (and now iLeaseMyCar Pro) is a great tool to carry with as you look at financing costs. This app lets you calculate your payments by changing your down payment, interest rate, and so on. Another app to check out is Auto Fuel Economics, which gives you a very simple run down on the fuel costs for two different cars with different MPG ratings.

Music: Shazam
I find Shazam indispensible for figuring out what song is playing on the radio as I drive around. I love the simple interface that’s easy to use in the car and the accuracy, even with some background road noise.

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