For its latest title, EA has brought Bioware’s Mass Effect to iPhone. This installment builds on the story from the original critically acclaimed console game.

Set in the same universe as the original console game, Mass Effect Galaxy features a rich story peppered with action-packed gunplay.

As you’d expect with a game set in the Mass Effect universe, the game is driven by a strong plot, leading you from one shoot out to the next. Imagine an episode of 24 set in outer-space featuring feuding alien races, with you as an intergalactic Jack Bauer.

Talk First, Shoot Later

The story is compelling, but the conversation branching — being able to guide your character through interactive dialogue scenes — seems like smoke and mirrors. More often than not it seems thst there’s a predetermined outcome to a conversation and that there’s nothing that can be done to change it.

Setting dialogue navigation aside though, the artwork and animation is impeccable. Instead of going for hi-res 3D motion graphic sequences, we’re treated to a cartoony take on the Mass Effect universe. Indeed it was so effective that I was left hankering for a Mass Effect Saturday morning cartoon.

Tilt ‘n’ Tote

The combat sequences, slotted in between each dialogue segment, are played from a birds-eye view. The controls are a great twist on an established genre: your mercenary fires automatically, it’s up to you to tilt the iPhone, moving him to a more strategic area of the map.

Unfortunately, on my iPhone 3G, the combat sequences suffer from slowdown. At times, the game is rendered unplayable to the point that I rebooted the iPhone several times throughout the game. Plus, the game suffers from an occasional bug whereby a combat sequence begins but you’re unable to control the main character. It’s a horrid bug and, for EA and BioWare, unexpected and improper.

There are also long loading times between combat rooms. Its frustrating enough to have to wait a minute or more to play through a 30 second sequence, it’s worse still that EA has seen fit to place advertisements on the loading screens. It’s a real drag to be advertised to in a premium app, especially when the advertising breaks up the story and ruins what little immersion the game has to offer.

Summing Up: Rotten Apple Award

EA needs to up its game on iPhone. It may be the big boy on console and PC, but young upstarts like ngMoco, Chillingo and BulkyPix are making better games — games that are fun and stable.

Gamers who are familiar with Mass Effect would be forgiven for expecting more from the iPhone iteration. The game’s bugs are a major disappointment and, while it may be an interesting play for avid followers of the franchise, this is one to avoid for everyone else.

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Years ago I discovered a little futuristic hovercraft racing game on the PlayStation called Wipeout. The concept was simple, and in many ways it was pretty much the same gameplay as Mario Kart or Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart. What set it apart was that there were no cartoon graphics, and no toy weapons, just stunning futuristic graphics, unique craft handling (being hovercrafts) and the most important element: speed. These crafts could go really fast.

So as an avid fan of the Wipeout series, when I found out about Phaze I immediately had to try it. Phaze is pretty much a Wipeout clone for the iPhone. There’s nothing new added, it just takes the concept and translates it. This suits me fine. The question is how good the implementation is. Does it capture the magic that got me hooked to Wipeout all those years ago?

Game Mechanics

The basic game mechanics are simple and combine the following components: race track, hovercraft, weapons and three laps. As you fly your craft around with other computer opponents, the aim is to finish first, second or third. As you race around the track you can fly over special markers that will either give you an instant speed boost or drop a weapon into your slot. There are various weapons such as bombs you drop behind you, or missiles or rockets to launch at an opponent ahead of you. You can also pick up speed boosts to use at your strategic time, or shield top-ups.

You control your craft by turning your phone in the desired direction and adjust your speed by tilting the phone up or down. There are 10 different crafts to be unlocked over the game, requiring you to finish the game in Championship mode on various levels of difficulty. Of course, each craft handles differently and has a unique combination of power (speed), shield (take more damage) and agility (ease to control).

If you hit the side of the tracks, you slow down and take damage to your shield. Bumping into other opponents, or being hit with weapons, also damages your shield. When your shield is gone, you blow up. It’s not over; a new ship will get brought into play — but you suffer a significant time loss as this occurs. You can’t afford to blow up unless you’ve got a very strong lead on the pack.

There are 16 tracks, with most also requiring you to complete the game in Championship mode to unlock them. These are available in four difficulty modes: Easy, Normal, Hard and Extreme. Once you’ve unlocked a track, it can then be played in Single Race mode.

What’s Great

I’m always very skeptical of accelerometer controls, but these handle impressively. They’re well tuned, and the sensitivity can also be adjusted manually in the options, although I found I didn’t need to touch them at all. I handed my iPhone to some friends who were also skeptical and they agreed — I had a hard time getting my phone back.

On my iPhone 3G the graphics and animations are very smooth and most importantly, that sense of speed is realized strongly — which is an absolutely crucial element to this type of game. One slight wrong move doesn’t just give you damage to your shields, but really slows you down. You feel it, along with the horrible metal grinding sound that provides great audible feedback.

The game autosaves when you exit it, even in mid-race, and allows you to have quick games while passing time without worrying about wasting any progress made. This isn’t absolutely stable, however. I received an SMS during game play and instead of saving my position and exiting cleanly, the game crashed — I lost several levels from my progress. This only happened once, however, and didn’t take me too long to catch up, so I suspect it was an anomaly.

What’s Missing

The biggest element missing from this game is an on-screen map overlay so that you can see where you are on the track, and more importantly, where the other players are. Knowing how far ahead or behind you are provides a crucial tactical advantage in these kind of games. Without it, you can feel like you are miles ahead and then with one small bump to the side of the track you get overtaken by three crafts without realizing they were even on your tail.

While you can choose to have the in-game music and sound effects or turn them off to keep listening to whatever you were playing on your iPhone, I’d prefer in-game sound effects with my music. Ideally they will update the game to support the 3.0 OS’s ability to select a personal playlist from the iPod.

While the graphics are smooth and look great, the tracks all have the same general look, except for the backgrounds for the level. A little more visual variety here would be nice. Additionally, a ‘mirror’ track mode would instantly turn the 16 provided tracks into 32 with little effort. You can also notice on some parts of tracks the clipping that occurs so only the next few segments of track is drawn. No doubt this is for speed, but it does look funny.

Summing Up

The issues with this game are minor, but for me, if addressed, would take this game from a Silver rating to a Gold. Ultimately, the comparison has to come back to Wipeout. The truth is that it doesn’t feel like a cheap Wipeout rip-off. It could be an official part of the family. It brings back those warm fuzzy feelings I had playing too much Wipeout on my PlayStation years ago, and has provided much enjoyment. For the small price, I think any other Wipeout fan would find the same.

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Due to hefty 3G roaming rates, Apple’s Maps app just won’t cut it when you’re out of the country. The oMap app lets you download maps for offline viewing — dodging a shocking bill post-vacation.

The iPhone is an almost perfect companion for travels to distant lands. With a bit of foresight and time set aside for planning, it’s possible to mix and match the perfect blend of vacation apps, ensuring you make the most of your journey.

My own package of essential travel tools includes Evernote, QuadCamera, Gengo Flashcards and HearPlanet. Without a 3G connection overseas, though, Apple’s Maps app proves utterly redundant — if I can’t connect, I can’t use it.

oMaps brings offline mapping to the iPhone. The app includes GPS, multiple zoom levels, map bookmarking and search functionality.

Don’t Google It

Notably, oMaps doesn’t make use of Google Maps. The developer, Thomas Bonnin, cites licensing restrictions from Google as the reason. Instead, the app utilizes OpenStreetMap, a service referred to by Bonnin as “the Wikipedia of maps.”

Despite being a community-maintained mapping service — meaning that there may be lower detail in some areas — in practice, the maps seem to be accurate, detailed and certainly useful for tourists. Even better, OpenStreetMap includes restaurants, ATMs, bus stations and other notable landmarks — a boon for lone travelers.

Best of all, because oMaps makes use of an open-source solution, after purchasing the app, individual maps are free to download. Admittedly, in-app purchasing of new maps would have been a neat iPhone OS 3.0 feature, although for me to grumble about that is akin to performing extended dental work on a gift horse.

Making Your Map

To create a new offline map, you simply open the app, browse to the location you’d like to view later and click save. Maps can only be downloaded via Wi-Fi, due to potentially large download sizes (the app saves the current zoom level and each increasing level of detail beyond that).

Although the developer states that you can save unlimited maps, there is one major constraint. The app will only start saving a map from a certain level of detail. If you zoom too far out — in my case when trying to download all of Helsinki — oMaps will refuse to save.

Essentially, the app draws a line as to how much you’re able to download in one go. It certainly doesn’t ruin the app or its functionality, but it’s a seemingly arbitrary obstacle, surpassed simply by downloading a given area in several separate chunks.

On Your Travels

Downloading a useful portion of a given city takes time and requires a stable connection. To make the best use of oMaps, you’ll need to plan ahead and prepare at least a day or so before traveling.

Once you’re offline and on the move, the app comes into its own. For me, flipping the iPhone to Airplane Mode and opening oMaps felt like cartographical witchcraft — the app located me immediately and I could zoom in and out, viewing my surrounding area in various levels of detail.

It’s worth clarifying for less tech-savvy users how this works. Your data connection — 3G, Edge, GPRS — may cost money to use overseas, usually at an inflated rate. The GPS in your iPhone — used for locating you — is free. oMaps uses the GPS to locate you and requires no data connection because the data itself, the map, has already been downloaded and saved to your iPhone.

Just like Apple’s Maps app, oMaps includes a GPS button. Pressing the button will locate you, assuming you’ve downloaded the corresponding map for the area you’re occupying. There are a few differences and drawbacks, though.

Unlike Maps, once you’re on the move, there are no directions or search functionality. Directions may be an arguably complex function, however Search does seem like something that could have been achieved — even if it means downloading a little more data when initially saving the map.

Summing Up

The app has a few issues that, while irritating, don’t ruin the overall functionality. Saving multiple maps for one city can be a drag, but then it’s all free and can be used offline, even with GPS. Plus, the lack of search functionality means that you may have to do a little extra pre-planning before setting off.

Rather than comparing oMaps to Apple’s Google-powered Maps, it’s perhaps best to see the app as a replacement to a traditional map. It saves purchasing horrid foldout maps and, as such, is more discreet and agreeable for meandering tourists.

Most importantly though, oMaps is a time and money saver. Although it won’t prove useful at home, when you’re in foreign lands this really will be an essential app.

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GyPSii brings GPS-fueled social networking to the iPhone, but do we really need to sign up for yet another network?

Any effective social-network connoisseur will already have a bevy of accounts to frequently check. Aside from the regulars — Facebook, Twitter, and so on — there’s already a stack of networks I’ve tried and duly abandoned, including fading giant MySpace and location-centric services Dopplr and Brightkite.

GyPSii is a social-networking app for the iPhone which, similar to Loopt and Brightkite, is based around your mobile lifestyle. The app makes use of the iPhone’s GPS, camera, and on-the-go connectivity.

Navigating GyPSii

Due to the immense wealth of features and functions on offer, the app is split between several sections which, in turn, are separated into an array of sub-categories and menus.

With such a large selection of sections, categories, menus and buttons, the app will prove overwhelming for first-time users. There’s no tutorial or first-time guide either, so attempting to get acquainted feels like being blindfolded and thrown into the ocean for a game of Marco Polo with several friends who insist on whispering.

The general idea behind the app — and the service — seems to be based around tagging places you visit, ideally with images, staying in touch with friends in the vicinity, and making new friends. There’s no clarity of purpose that GyPSii boils down to, though, so it ends up being a blur of user-enriched maps and traditional social networking.

The News section, for example, features a compose message button and drop pin button, alongside sub-categories for recent events, friends in the area, local places and messages or invites. For one section to be jammed with so many different options suggests that the developers just kept jamming ideas in there, not knowing when to stop.

People & Places

Moving on from the aforementioned mess of options, buttons and pages — delving deeper into the app, it’s clear that GyPSii’s true potential rests in the People and Places sections. These areas of the app give you access to locations and individuals (friends and strangers) in your vicinity.

The People section brings up a list of other folk in your local area. It’s an enjoyable and almost voyeuristic way of window-shopping through the locals, incognito, picking and choosing who to make friends with.

The Places section is similar in that it grabs a listing of nearby venues, buildings and locations that other GyPSii users have tagged. The problem is that the list comes across as a slapdash random catalogue of questionable curiosities. There’s no quality control, and it’s certainly not comprehensive, meaning that apps like Locly end up proving more useful in the long run.

Having said that, iPhone owners with a sense of adventure may have fun with GyPSii’s People and Places sections. Assuming there’s an active GyPSii community in the vicinity, it could present some exciting options, particularly useful if you’re on vacation, or even moving to a new city and looking for new friends or places to go.

Summing Up

Using GyPSii, I can’t shake the feeling that, despite the app’s wealth of location-centric features, the service itself is somewhat redundant.

The obvious, but no less insightful, comparison is Facebook. With Facebook’s massive hive-like installed user-base, the first hurdle for any new GyPSii user seems to be convincing friends and contacts to download the app and register an account. And that’s all before getting to grips with the GyPSii app and platform, which is buggy at worst and crawls along like a confused baby at best. The app, like the online service, feels cluttered: For first-time users, it’s an overwhelming mess of menus.

There are alternatives, too: Brightkite and Loopt, which, while they may have slightly different feature-sets than GyPSii, are polished and have a higher penetration in terms of frequent social networkers.

Despite GyPSii’s best efforts to create a formidable service, the app isn’t up to spec, and the service feels redundant — as such, this is an app to avoid.

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By converting your voice messages into text e-mails, Quick Voice Pro could be a time-saving boon for busy iPhone owners.

Empowered by our emails, tweets, IM conversations, and blogs, we’ve become modern-day information conduits. We collect knowledge, then discharge it into the ether, spurting out a constant fountain of fact, fiction and entertainment.

Quick Voice Pro is a new tool that could make sharing your thoughts even easier. The app converts audio recordings into text-based e-mails, using an online voice-recognition system.

Learning To Talk

If there’s a thought on the tip of your tongue, Quick Voice Pro immediately accommodates: The app loads up in a snap and is ready to record from the off. You’re able to open the software, blurt out whatever is on your mind, and get it converted, all in a short amount of time.

The layout of the app is incredibly simple, too, meaning there’s no possibility of friction with the interface. All the different functions are presented on one page; plus, there’s no settings screen and absolutely no configuration needed for first-time users.

While the tech-savvy may be impressed with the app’s advanced voice-recognition capabilities, Quick Voice Pro really seems to have been designed with novice users in mind, offering a big red record button and a large play button. And it doesn’t feel patronizing, either. The app simply incorporates well-considered, functional design.

It’s not all perfect, though. Recordings are all named MyRecording by default, which will make sifting through them a real chore for regular users. There is a button for renaming recordings, but it just doesn’t feel as intuitive as it could in comparison to the rest of the app.

Speaking of Email

Tapping the record button initiates record mode. Although you can’t go back and edit a recording once you’ve saved it, there is a pause button, letting pensive people stop for a moment and gather their thoughts before continuing.

Once recorded and saved, the app can auto-generate an e-mail for you, leaving you to enter the from and to address. The body copy of the email will be your recorded message. The actual voice-to-text conversion doesn’t happen on the iPhone; it’s all handled server-side. There was a major issue that stood out with the emailing process: The subject line always reads, “You Have QuickVoice Mail!” There’s no way to change it, and so effectively, you’re sending your contacts a message headed with an advertisement for the app.

Speaking Aloud

UK-based startup Spinvox provides the voice-to-text recognition and conversion. It’s incredibly accurate, which was surprising, and of note was that it’s comfortable with long words and both American and English accents.

To test the app, I made up a nonsensical sentence with a few long, potentially clumsy-sounding words thrown in:

“Rebellious, insidious individuals, find it highly probably that they will be libelous for their erroneous actions.”

This was then converted to the following:

“Rebelious(?) insidious individuals, find it highly probable that they will be libelous for the erroneous actions.”

Voice to text email brought to you by QuickVoice.

Note the question marks on words the software is unsure of. It’s a nice touch, clarifying that it has taken a chance and may be incorrect.

Summing Up

During testing, I found that messages take around 10 minutes to convert and arrive in the recipient’s mail box. Considering the impressive degree of accuracy, this is an acceptable amount of time.

On the flip side, there’s a 30-second limit to all recordings — this can wind up being a drag if you’ve got a lot to say, however, it’s understandable. SpinVox probably doesn’t want people clogging up its server, trying to convert entire hour-long presentations.

The only substantial problem is that, since this isn’t a free app, it doesn’t seem fair that paying users are responsible for spreading advertising it via email subject lines. And, just in case your contacts didn’t notice the branded subject, the message text always ends with, “Voice to text email brought to you by QuickVoice.”

The voice-to-text conversion works, however, I would hesitate to send any emails that contain such clear advertising for a product that, while effective, sees its users as billboards rather than valued customers.

This could have been a Silver TheAppleBlog Award, but, due to its uncalled-for product placement, Quick Voice Pro earns a Bronze.

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A bag of metal balls, a rockabilly soundtrack, exploding pegs: Rockchinko is the pachinko machine from hell.

Harking back to the old American parlor game Corinthian Bagatelle, pachinko has captured the imagination, and yen, of Japan. While the game may not have invaded Western casinos, there’s a steady stream of pachinko apps arriving for the iPhone.

Rockchinko gives pachinko an injection of rock ‘n’ roll, featuring physics-defying tilting, plectrum powerups and tons of guitars across more than 40 levels.

Pinball Wizard

Breaking away from the seedy glitz and smokey fog of traditional pachinko parlors, Rockchinko restyles pachinko’s dated look for the rock generation — installing a twisted metal board coated in a neon glow.

The design can be a little inconsistent at times though, one moment shiny metal, the next pixellated skulls — it’s a messy milieu that floats between edgy and geeky.

Of course, there’s a rocking soundtrack too: Each stage is based on a different sub-genre, including blues, rockabilly and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll. Although none of the music seems to be directly licensed from well-known bands, à la Tap Tap Revenge, the music certainly captures the theme of the game.

Scales and Modes

There are three main game modes, two of which are initially locked and unavailable. To unlock the two game modes, you’ll have to complete Normal Mode — a feat that’ll only take a couple of hours at most for a new player.

Once Normal Mode has been beaten, Randomizer and Rock Mode are unlocked. Randomizer allows you to play through the array of stages on offer in Normal mode in a random order — it’s simple and effective, and revisiting even the early levels can still present a challenge to seasoned players.

The third game mode, Rockstar, contains a set list of brand-new stages to launch, tilt and turn through. The Rockstar stages blend together all the previous features and gameplay twists discovered in Normal Mode.

Everyone Can Play Guitar

The aim of each level is to destroy all the red pegs by bouncing your metal ball around the stage. The balls are fired from the funnel at the top of the screen, which can be adjusted by dragging side to side.

Tapping anywhere on the screen launches your shot and, once the ball is in play, the iPhone can be tilted, affecting the ball’s direction. With enough practice it’s possible to move the ball around the playing field, squeezing out each shot’s destructive potential.

There are obstacles, too, unlocked as you progress through Normal Mode. Windmills, moving platforms, and warp holes can prove formidable hindrances or useful tools, depending on your perspective. Also enhancing the puzzle aspect of the game is a range of effective powerups, from the tame Triple Ball to the impressive Flame Thrower and bombastic Mega Ball.

Destroying all but one red peg instantly throws the game into “Matrix”-esque slow-motion. The camera dramatically crash zooms on your ball and you’re given full control, even the ability to turn the iPhone upside down, sending your ball plummeting upwards and defying the laws of physics.

As your metal ball speeds across the screen, combusting any pegs it collides with, you’re thrown in to slow-mo for your coup de grâce. Oddly, this destructive slow-mo finale reminds me of Burn Out (the hyper-destructive crash and burn driving game) as it’s so exciting, needlessly dramatic, and satisfying.

Summing Up

Even with the levels I couldn’t beat on first try, I knew I could adjust my strategy, come back and keep advancing through the game. And that’s where Rockchinko introduces depth. You’ll need to be strategic, planning out your shots and tilts before hand, for each stage.

There’s still work that needs to be done, though. It needs more stages, online scoring, and some kind of competitive element. Plus the load times are abominable. However, the main game is executed almost perfectly. It’s incredibly satisfying, so much fun, and has consistently left me wanting more after every session.

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Amplitude pushes the iPhone in a new direction, transforming the device in to a hand-held James Bond-style surveillance tool. An intriguing concept indeed, but would Q approve?

Setting aside the more recent Bourne-esque gritty romps of the latest Bond movies — which are, for the record, utterly brilliant — I’ll be forever enchanted with the classic laboratory scenes where Q presents 007 with an array of innocent-looking yet lethal gadgetry.

Amplitude transforms the iPhone in to a surveillance device, allowing you listen in on distant conversations.

Covert Conversing

Originally released under the guise of iHearClear, the app was designed specifically for individuals who are hard of hearing. The intention being that the iPhone could act as a tool for amplifying quiet sounds.

Gripwire, the folks behind the app, suggested that iHearClear could be used in a variety of ways such as improving the sound quality at a movie theater or at parties and gatherings to communicate easier with friends.

Amplitude is a re-skinned, re-imagining version of iHearClear, designed with a younger audience in mind and pitched more as a tech-styled spy gadget than a listening tool.

With both apps, your iPhone essentially becomes the electronic equivalent of one of those unsettling old-time ear trumpets. Certainly not as glamorous as Bond, but perhaps a more accurate description of what the app does.

Seeing & Hearing

The app is designed to look like a kids-version of a spy gadget with all dark brushed metal, exposed screws with a couple of buttons, and a big slider. The centerpiece to Amplitude’s visual is an oscilloscope, a pulsing green screen ripped straight out of a scientific laboratory.

The idea behind the oscilloscope is that it allows the user to view, and visually quantify, signal voltages, as you’re able to see the volume of the sound your listening to. More importantly though, it lends the app some much needed visual authenticity — in short, it looks super-cool.

The slider beneath the oscilloscope controls the amount of microphone boost to be applied. This is essentially the active component of the app — the useful bit — as, in essence, Amplitude is merely boosting the volume of the sound coming in to the iPhone mic.

There’s also a mute button, enabling the app to be muted (useful in instances where the sound-level may have jumped up unexpectedly) and an info button. The info button, aside from displaying the credits, provides access to a settings screen where you’re able to set the app to mute on startup (advisable as a precaution for your ears).

Spy Games

In testing the app, I decided to try out a few different situations. My initial experiment consisted of listening in on two friends whispering to each other.

Pointing the iPhone’s mic towards the duo and plugging my headphones in (note that the app works best with headphones without a built-in mic), I discovered that, despite a bit of hum, I could hear them whispering.

However, upon removing the headphones, I discovered that I could still hear them whispering and, without the hum of the boosted iPhone microphone, everything sounded much clearer. My next test — listening to a friend’s heartbeat — ended similarly. I discovered that while Amplitude could aid me in listening to their heartbeat, my ears did a much better job.

The creators of the app posed the question, “Have you ever heard the sound of a hummingbird’s wings beating back and forth.” Yes, it’s like a tiny motorcycle being driven by a little biker man. “Using Amplitude it’s a truly amazing experience.” No, if I could locate a real, live hummingbird, using Amplitude, I’d most probably discover that the sound is slightly louder and more annoying than just listening with my ears.

Summing Up

According to the marketing text in the App Store, Amplitude can be used a tool to help fix your car. Or to spy on baseball players communicating in the batting circle. Or any number of a variety of utterly bizarre situations where, in actual fact, I doubt Amplitude really would work. Unless of course you stood next to these people, in which case you wouldn’t need the app anyway.

Amplitude is about as much actual use as a novelty fart apps. However, setting aside the grotesquely exaggerated claims of Amplitude’s ability by the app’s creators, it’s good fun as a 99 cent novelty app.

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Music, Internet, Google Maps, telephone calls, taking photos, and now fixing your broken relationship… is there anything the iPhone can’t do?

For most of us, the iPhone makes life better — it’s like a gorgeous bio-mechanical addition to our bodies: augmenting almost everything. And, in an odd sort of way, I suppose it seems natural that this super-device — this digital deity — should turn its attention to our relationships, in an effort to make life better. To make our relationships just work.

Available for iPhone and iPod touch, RelationTips aims to proffer advice and helpful suggestions for your close relationships.

Honeymoon Period

The app begins with a quick configuration process. There are eight empty picture frames, in which you can access advice for eight different relationships, with accompanying photo, from a pre-defined selection: husband and wife, girlfriend and boyfriend, son and daughter. Having eight relationship slots will come in handy for users with several children. Or a mistress.

Intuitive to configure and with a beautifully designed interface, RelationTips feels like a luxury item from the App Store. Attention has been lavished on the smallest details, with welcome embellishments such as being able to change the type of frame on photos of your loved-ones.

The advice proffered is split in to three different categories. The Dates category provides suggestions for things to do, such as train journeys, picnics or a day at the movies. If you’re in need of inspiration for something to say, the Words category focuses on communication. Finally, if you feel like actions speak louder than words, the Actions category contains pearls of wisdom like, “Surprise your husband by cleaning out his car and gassing it up.”

With Dates focused on injecting fun and/or romance in to the things you do with your partner or child. The Words and Actions category offer up suggestions that are intended to display or communicate how important this person is to you, or how much you love them. The language is occasionally a little stuffy, but most of the time (aside from the amusing example above) it’s arguably good advice.

However, there are a couple of problems with the library of advice. The first being that the suggestions, regardless of who they are aimed at, are much the same — even to the point where your husband is swapped for your wife — it’s just not personalized enough. The other problem is that there isn’t that much advice to go off: it’s not long at all before the helpful suggestions start looping and the ideas run dry.

We’ve Got Issues

The advice offered up by RelationTips isn’t always useful, though. Playing the role of iPhone-toting wife, the first piece of advice proffered to me was the following: Is there a chore that really needs to be done but seems to always get pushed down the line in priority? Tell your husband you’ll wear his favorite lingerie and help him complete it. He’ll make the time.”

It’s true, if my partner put on her lingerie and helped me to complete a given task, like clearing the blocked gutters, this would indeed be a welcome encouragement (I suppose someone has to hold the ladder).

However, this shining nugget of advice is merely a lump of steaming fool’s gold. It would be a shame if my partner felt that in order to encourage me to do something helpful for both of us, she had to objectify herself in this way. If the relationship is at this point, maybe there are deeper issues worth discussing. I dig a bit of naughty fun, but in this instance the advice just seems like the wrong way to be tackling the situation (and impractical too — holding a ladder in your lingerie can get uncomfortably cold).

Summing Up

The idea behind RelationTips, to provide gentle relationship guidance, is very sweet. However, if your relationship is in such a condition that you really are turning to an iPhone for this kind of support, there may be deeper issues at play. This app won’t fix what is already broken and, conversely, it’s more than likely not needed if your relationship is working. There are some things that an iPhone probably shouldn’t do and one of those things is dishing out automated morsels of relationship advice.

That said, I can see this app providing support for individuals as part of a larger effort to improve a relationship. For those that may have trouble communicating, need ideas for romantic treats or inspiration for meaningful displays of affection, RelationTips may not fix your relationship, but it could provide a point in the right direction.

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Do you tweet? Then maybe you should Boo! It’s like a multimedia Twitter, designed especially for iPhone users.

Over in the UK back in 2008, Channel 4 (Britain’s edgy TV channel) launched a unique funding program entitled 4IP. Cut to 2009 and, having just announced a dedicated iPhone 3.0 fund, the suits over at 4IP seem particularly keen on Apple’s device as a platform for pushing interactive wares. In fact, 4IP has announced a fund for developers, with almost $150,000 up for grabs at a maximum of approximately $40,000 per app.

Made possible by 4IP and developed by BestBefore, AudioBoo is among the first of Channel 4′s original iPhone commissions to hit the App Store. As developers ready their funding proposals, AudioBoo is set to be a showcase of the kind of app 4IP will be looking for — making use of various media formats, community-focused, and integrating with the most popular social platforms.

Designed to work alongside Twitter and iTunes, AudioBoo is an audio blogging platform created especially for iPhone.

Anatomy of a Boo

On paper, AudioBoo’s feature set reads excellently — it’s a tour de force of current buzzwords and trends. Using the iPhone you can record an audio message, the message pops up on your Twitter stream and there’s even an automatic, iTunes-compatible RSS feed for your followers to subscribe to.

The sign-up process is simple, taking place either on the iPhone (via a Safari link within the app) or on the desktop version of the web site. Plus, once signed in, it only takes a couple of clicks to link your Twitter account and activate Facebook Connect. The site even grabs your Gravatar, saving the hassle of uploading a profile picture.

It’s worth noting, however, that there’s not much to do on the desktop version of the site. AudioBoo really has been designed for iPhone; the app is where are all the key features are and, as such, there’s no way to record a Boo via the site.

Making the Perfect Boo

Once logged in on the iPhone, the app displays the main Boo stream, similar to Twitter’s public stream. Unlike Twitter, though, there’s no way of following other users; this seemed somewhat odd to me initially, until I realized that — with Twitter and Facebook Connect integration — it’s not needed: AudioBoo pushes messages to the big social platforms where all the action happens.

The focus throughout the app is on simplicity and ease of use. This is reflected in the audio-recording interface — there’s no friction with the technology and so creating a Boo is so quick it retains a real sense of fun throughout.

Although the App Store page states that recordings can be up to three minutes long, there’s actually a maximum length of five minutes. It’s the perfect amount of time to do a blog-style update, sing a little tune or make an impassioned rant.

EmbeddaBoo

Each Boo can be posted alongside a photo, either from your photo album or taken with the iPhoto camera. You can also add tags and, if you’re not the secretive type, even include GPS data. After that it takes a few seconds to publish a Boo — even over slower Edge connections — resulting in a page like this.

If you clicked the link to my test Boo, you’ll have heard that the audio quality from the iPhone mic itself is surprisingly good. And, because I’m a Twitter user, I’ve linked up AudioBoo to auto-tweet for me too. The site even generates code so that you can embed specific Boos on your blog or web page of choice.

There’s one feature, though, that seems to be a real stroke of genius on the part of BestBefore: Alongside an RSS feed, your Boo page also has an iTunes button — clicking this button automagically subscribes users to a podcast feed within iTunes of your Boo updates.

Summing Up

Despite having launched in the App Store, AudioBoo is still clearly in its infancy. The site design is incredibly dull, profile pages lack any sort of personalization options and the iPhone app can be a little crash-happy, too.

While there’s still a long way to go with the main site, the core technology works and, after configuring your account, you’ll find yourself primarily using the iPhone app and never having to visit the main AudioBoo site again — everything is automated for you.

The technology, and all the other added extras, more than make up for any complaints. It’s genuinely exciting to be armed with this fun little tool that enables you to record an audio message (with accompanying photo) and instantly publish to Twitter, Facebook and iTunes.

Simply put, AudioBoo is great fun and totally free. For Twitter users, Facebook members, potential podcasters, and regular folk who have something they’ve just got to voice, it’s well worth a download.

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Developed by Mobelux, and formerly known as Tumblrette, the official Tumblr iPhone app has now arrived.

Tumblr is essentially the short ‘n sweet side of blogging: Posts are ultra-snappy, comprised of mixed-media uploads such as images, quotes, audio and video. The service is free, via Tumblr.com, and, since the site is so intuitively designed, it’s incredibly easy for new users to dive straight in.

The result of this platform, paired with such a simple and effective interface, is the ultra-diverse Tumblr community. Browsing through various tumblelogs is like sifting through the Lost and Found Department of the entire Internet. It’s a beautiful mess of everything and anything, from the shocking to the spectacular.

Over on the iPhone, the official Tumblr app integrates all the features of the main site, plus a couple of unexpected welcome additions.

Get Ready to Tumble

The app is split in to three panels. First-time users are initially presented with the Tumblr Settings panel (accessible only via the app itself as opposed to the iPhone’s Settings app). From here you’re able to sign in to your Tumblr Dashboard, register a new account and configure Dashboard settings.

Although there’s a Sign up for a Tumblr Account button, the registration process doesn’t occur in-app. This means that tapping the button drops out of the app and moves in to Safari; it works, but it’s certainly not an elegant way of handling new registrations.

Furthermore, the Settings panel displays the name of your primary tumblelog but doesn’t display the name, or otherwise even mention the existence of, any other tumblelogs you may own or contribute to. For prolific users, this could be quite a drawback.

Dashboard Confessional

Once registered and set up, you can configure the Settings panel to always display an iPhone formatted version of the Tumblr Dashboard every time the app is loaded. The Sites panel displays your Tumblr Dashboard — an overview of new content posted to tumblelogs that you’re following.

Clicking on a post in the Dashboard allows you to view it in full, plus there are two buttons: Like and Reblog. Clicking the Reblog button allows you to post content from other tumblelogs straight to yours, automatically crediting the source too.

Rather unexpectedly, and again quite inelegantly, clicking Reblog actually loads the standard web-based Reblog page embedded within the app. It feels clunky to have the standard web-interface within the app and ends up being ineffective for quick-fire tumbling.

Those prolific users that I mentioned earlier may be pleased to note that the Dashboard panel provides quick access to all tumblelogs of which you’re a member. The drawback, though, is that there’s still no configuration options on these pages — it’s simply an embedded page within the app’s browser — so there’s no clear benefit to this feature and as such it feels half-baked.

Mixing Your Media

The Post panel is where the action happens. There are six different post types that can be sent directly to your tumblelog: text, photo, quote, link, chat and audio.

Without copy/paste on the iPhone, the text, quote, link and chat options seem particularly redundant. There is apparently a bookmarklet available, although I couldn’t find it in spite of various Google and Tumblr.com searches.

The other two posting options, photo and audio, are downright brilliant, grin-inducing joys. The former allows you to snap images on the iPhone camera, add text and then upload directly to your tumblelog. The latter is exactly the same, except instead of imagery, it’s all about making sound recordings.

Being able to get away from the computer, snapping and capturing images and sound from the world at large, is exactly what Tumblr is about. It sums up the essence of tumbling while furthering the concept and freeing Tumblr users from their desktop computers.

Summing Up

The inelegant registration process and embedded web page for reblogging only stand out as issues because, the rest of the time, the Tumblr iPhone app is so coherent in its design and ease of use. These niggles will, I hope, get resolved in future updates.

As for the post options for chat, links, quotes and text, these will become incredibly useful once copy/paste is introduced to the iPhone.

The app comes together when you find yourself out on the streets, wanting to capture a moment, an incredible sight, or an odd overheard conversation. The photo and audio features that make this possible are deliciously addictive.

If you’re a regular Tumblr user, or you’ve got an eye (or ear) for interesting happenings when you’re out and about, the Tumblr app will be your ideal companion.

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Increasingly, geeky pasttimes are seeping into the mainstream. Like creatures in a Neil Gaiman story, the boundary between the dimension of the fantastical and the land of the normal is blurring. And with that blur, faithful adaptations of heroes and villains have made the leap to the world of movies.

That means that in addition to Spider-Man, regular folk are suddenly familiar with the likes of Dr. Manhattan, Coraline and Hellboy. What’s more, graphic novels are showing up on our iPhone screens. Scrollmotion’s latest app, Daniel X, brings to us the adventures of a teenage alien hunter with a vivid imagination.

Creating The Hero

“Daniel X”‘s backstory is a little different than that of standard comic book fare. Created by author James Patterson, it’s not part of the Marvel or DC stable; there’s no rich history or über fan cult of longtime readers, either. He’s a completely fresh character, seemingly designed with a teen audience in mind.

Although Patterson has found success with the “Daniel X” series, he’s also written a stack of celebrated books, several of which have made the transition to film, too. Yet despite all this, Patterson kicks off “Daniel X” with little more than a hackneyed genesis of our soon-to-be hero.

Back when Daniel was knee high to a grasshopper, his father was an alien hunter. One ill-fated day, a particularly irate alien decided that he’d do a spot of murdering and Daniel’s folks were, due to all the alien-hunting stuff, fair game.

Much like various X-Men, Harry Potter, Batman, Spider-Man and an array of other heroes, Daniel X ends up an orphan before discovering his superpowers. Poor Daniel. For a character with so much potential, it’s a shame he had to wind up on the wrong side of a particularly unfortunate cliché.

Although the kid happens to be from Kansas, it seems that he’s stationed in Tokyo, apparently a hub of alien criminal activity. Plus, he has super strength, super agility, the power to imagine things into existence and the ability to morph. Apparently the author also has the power to morph things, too, as he’s managed to transform the entire graphic novel into one massive cliché.

Tip of the Iceberg

Above and beyond the core story, the app itself isn’t a total disappointment; the technology is impressive. Designed by Scrollmotion, their engine, entitled Iceberg, is custom-designed for playing back exactly this sort of content.

The app opens with a tutorial — as you drag your finger across the screen, a watermelon explodes. Dragging back rewinds the fruity detonation. The control mechanism is novel and feels like you’re leafing through frames of a film.

There’s an automatic mode, too. Tapping the screen reveals a control menu, allowing you to set the speed of playback, alongside a play/pause button.

Using Iceberg, the graphic novel’s artwork has been brought to life. Reading “Daniel X” feels less like a comic and more like scrolling through scenes in a cartoon: The camera pans across each shot, bringing the characters to life as speech bubbles pop into existence and gracefully fade away.

The artwork seems to be painted as opposed to inked. It has texture, which, when combined with the kinetic nature of Iceberg, makes Daniel X’s adventure seem less humdrum and a little more exciting.

Iceberg Issues

There are, however, several enjoyment-impeding issues with the software worth pointing out. The inertia, when dragging pages, is incoherent — a small drag can seemingly whizz through several frames, or sometimes a big drag squeezes just a tiny bit of movement out of one panel.

Plus, switching to automatic mode can be frustrating. Even at the slower speeds, speech bubbles can zip past, with barely enough time to digest Patterson’s corny dialogue.

The iPhone screen also dims while the app is running and as there’s no settings menu within the app, there’s no way to stop this happening. What this means is that when reading “Daniel X” in automatic mode, you’ll find yourself having to tap the screen every few minutes to wake it up again.

Summing Up

The screen sleeping issue is irritating; it detracts from any opportunity to become engrossed in the experience. But then, the same could be said of the story and dialogue, too.

Patterson’s writing is downright awful. The dialogue is tired — we’ve heard it all before, but by arguably better comic writers — the story is predictable, the journey it takes us on more like a boring cruise than a narrative roller coaster.

Furthermore, at $9.99, the price is a serious shocker. In fact, it’s like Scrollmotion decided that since “Daniel X” is devoid of any effective narrative trickery, they’d throw in their own plot twist of sorts by charging $10 for the app.

I understand that a great deal of work — and as such, cost — went in to developing the app engine, licensing Patterson’s uninspired graphic novel and, most evident of all, taking the accomplished artwork and creating vibrant cartoon-esque scenes. I really do get it.

However, if an app is so costly to develop that it’s set at an unrealistic or prohibitive price point, then somebody is being greedy or unrealistic, or both. Whatever the reality is, speculation aside, there’s a lot of fun to be had from the App Store, much of it at significantly lower prices than that of Daniel X.

This is potentially good tech and yet it’s filled with vapid content, certainly not worth the price tag. I want to support graphic novels making the leap to a fresh medium but this is poor content at a baffling price and as such, should be avoided.

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A calendar specifically designed for tracking your goals, Streaks aims to join the pantheon of excellent iPhone productivity apps.

Both the touch and the iPhone, the latter in particular, are ideal platforms for productivity tools. The connected nature of the pocketable Apple devices means we can be grabbing all sorts of data about our daily lives — processing, tracking and taking action.

This latest productivity app, Streaks, is an interesting offering in that it totes only one feature — tracking a repeated task on a day-to-day basis. The objective in using the app seems to be to motivate the user in to staying on course and so gives a serious boost to productivity.

Winning Streak

Once installed, Streaks takes moments to configure — you simply name your first calendar and then get tracking. Naming and creating new calendars is as simple as tapping the in-app settings icon and adding a new calendar.

Essentially the app is designed for those times in life when you need to ensure you’re repeating one task — the same task — on a daily basis. I wanted to make sure I work on my album everyday and also setup another calendar to encourage me to tweet on a daily basis.

I tested Streaks by tracking my Twitter use (ensuring I try to tweet on a daily basis), although more common uses could be tracking your daily run or exercise, a daily study or revision regime, or even as an aid for quitting smoking.

Each task you wish to track is given its own dedicated calendar. Each day, you simply load up the app and mark the calendar (by tapping today’s date) to indicate you’ve completed the task. The app gets exciting when you start to generate various stats related to each task.

Task Statistics

Displayed prominently on each calendar is the current streak and the longest streak. It’s a nice touch that highlights the app’s usefulness as a motivational device. Stats geeks can delve further in to the sea of numerical goodness via the list icon at the top right.

The in-depth stats screen provides further detail for the current and longest streak — displaying specifically which month/day the streaks began and ended. There’s also a potentially handy readout of past streaks, perhaps useful in showing when you may have been at your most productive.

Looks & Features

The app looks great, and yet take a closer look and you’ll see it’s incredibly light on features. The lack of features is a good thing, though; it’s less convoluted and therefore allows for the user to be much more focused on their tasks rather than grappling for control of the app.

The settings menu provides access to basic calendar management and the choice between two themes: Paper and Chalkboard. The Chalkboard theme seems a tad gloomy in comparison to the former, however it’s still a definite plus to be able to choose between two skins.

When first trying the app, it wasn’t immediately clear as to how to swap between multiple calendars. After much tapping, dragging and pinching, I discovered that simply dragging the current calendar up the screen slides the next one in to view — not so intuitive, but quite satisfying in practice.

Another nice touch to Streaks is the use of icon badges. Streaks will actually display the current streak on your primary calendar as a number on the app icon. It’s a great way of keeping the user informed and engaged with the app even when it’s not in use.

Quotidian Quest

The developer claims that the app can be used in less than two minutes, intended to be used daily. I wouldn’t disagree with this — it is indeed very simple to use — however I wonder if there’s enough meat on the bones of this concept to hold the target audience’s interest.

I’d imagine that the kind of person who uses Streaks feels that they need a tool to help them in becoming habitual about completing certain tasks. These people might just be busy, or they might be prize procrastinators, whatever the case, they need that extra boost when in comes to integrating certain tasks in to their daily routine.

It seems somewhat odd, therefore, to further convolute someone’s daily routine by adding in another tool, and thus another task — that of using Streaks — to simply keep score of the various objectives the user has.

There are also several improvements that I’d like to see in future updates to make it truly enhance a daily routine. Specifically, Streaks should do more to take advantage of the iPhone’s connectivity — mailing the user with congratulation notes on successful long streaks and nudging the user if they’ve stopped focusing on a specific task.

Summing Up

The app’s aim is admirable — in essence it makes you feel good for staying on track with a given daily task — and its execution is undoubtedly charming. It’s just that, despite the concept’s excellent execution, this clearly isn’t a tool that will prove effective for everyone.

However, there are going to be those that could certainly do with tracking tasks in this very specific way. And, for those that could use a tool like this, I think Streaks could potentially be a wonderful motivational device.

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Convert, an app for converting an array of different units, looks great and, in theory, should be quite useful. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good on this one.

The iPhone isn’t just about gaming and entertainment. Admittedly, I’ve got two screens worth of music and gaming apps, another screen for news, books and recipes, and then a screen dedicated to file-sharing and chat.

On my fifth and final screen, however, is a selection of software tools. There’s the basics, like Calculator and WeDict, sat alongside GPS-tools such as Locly and HearPlanet. Until now though, there was no unit converter.

The clever people at Polar Bear Farm have created Convert, a unit conversion tool that marries a variety of seemingly esoteric units — to the layman — with a polished interface.

With quite a history behind them, having launched in 2007, Polar Bear Farm is no strangers to app development. Notable past releases included Nice List, a stylish holiday gift manager, and Note Pad, a replacement to the iPhone’s own Notes app, upping the game with graphical flair and desktop syncing.

Then there’s Telegram, filling the iPhone voice-messaging void by allowing users to send short audio messages to each other.

The point is, Polar Bear Farm is an app developer who seems to specialize in creating tools that manage data and make life easier. And what’s more, these tools are always visually stunning.

Units and Values

Moving on to Convert, the most exciting thing when first opening the app is the aesthetic. It’s not at all iPhone-esque — gone is the Apple-aesthetic we all adore. Instead is a reductionist approach — metallic and digital, calling to mind expensive electronic tools created for specialists.

This may not be too far from the truth though as, while the app is indeed visually stunning, it also seems to pack in an array of esoteric units for converting. The units are separated in to ten different classes: Angle, Area, Length, Mass, Power, Pressure, Speed, Temperature, Time and Volume.

All the basics are present and correct too, so entering the Length section will bring up Inches, Kilometers, Miles and Feet, among other conversion options. Notably, however, the app does not convert currency, something which — as an iPhone user who travels frequently — would have proved incredibly useful.

Perhaps more importantly, the app incorporates a diverse range of less commonly-used unit-types, such as radians, nautical miles, and drams. Unfortunately, Delorean owners will be disappointed to find that there is no option to convert Gigawatts.

Although the UI isn’t quite as intuitive as it should be, the actual conversion process is incredibly easy. Select the unit to convert from and then the unit to convert to, then tap the numbers on either side of the equation, enter the new figure and instantaneously the equation adjusts to display your answer.

Comparing Problems

When I initially heard about the app’s $1.99 price tag, I felt somewhat unsure, questioning whether a unit converter is really worth two bucks. For my own conversions, I use Google. It’s free to use, although admittedly somewhat clunky on the iPhone and requiring a data connection.

In comparing Convert to Google’s calculator, I discovered a couple of interesting anomalies. When numbers are displayed, it always expresses them in full, so 596 days in microseconds would be 51,494,400,000,000.

There are, of course, shorter ways of expressing the same value. Google’s calculator outputs 596 days as 5.14944 × 10^13 microseconds (see it here displayed properly). The issue is further compounded with even larger numbers — Convert doesn’t seem to like really big numbers, in fact. It seems if a number is too big for the display, nothing at all is shown. As such, converting 596 days to nanoseconds leaves the display blank (whereas Google has no trouble).

The point is that the tool should be able to handle these kind of equations and express the outputted value clearly to the user. Convert seems to have been designed as much for the layman as for Make enthusiast or even coders and physicists. Esoteric units of measurement are all well and good, but the app should be able to handle esoteric equations too.

Furthermore, there’s some notable competition on sale in the App Store. One app in particular, The Converter, packs in a serious amount of units for converting, including currency conversion too, for 99 cents. However, The Converter (and all of the other conversion apps on offer) certainly aren’t as aesthetically impressive as Convert. I just don’t know if a pretty user interface is enough to warrant an extra buck, though.

Summing Up

With its appropriately stylized visual, so much work seems to have gone in to creating an app that looks professionally produced. The sound design is excellent as well. The app clicks and bleeps just at the right time, giving a satisfying level of tangibility to this digital tool.

However, there seem to be a couple of drawbacks to an app that could be accused of putting form before function. Firstly, despite the range of different units on offer for conversion, in comparison to other (cheaper) apps, Convert actually only seems to provide a paltry selection. The app therefore needs an update that expands the unit library to something much more substantial.

The other issue is with the way the app displays — or occasionally doesn’t display — values. With the user interface so rigidly set as part of the design and the apps current inability to express x to the power of y, it literally leaves no room to display incredibly large numbers. I’m surprised that this issue didn’t get caught in the testing phase.

As the app currently is, despite the fact it looks so gorgeous, I really can’t recommend it. There are cheaper apps out in the store that, while they certainly don’t have the good looks, have the features and the brains to hold their own. Until this app gets a much-needed upgrade, I suggest you avoid it.

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These days, gaming is all about getting physical: tilting and shaking, shouting and whispering and now apparently the occasional bit of pinching and smacking. Sounds like fun!

All this talk of touching reminds me of a great toy I had, back in my student days: Bop It. A group of us would play together, flicking, spinning, bopping, pulling and twisting to a never-ending funky beat. The experience was intensely physical, surprisingly fun and overwhelmingly frustrating.

Clearly inspired by Bop It, Smack Me transports the toy’s increasingly furious antics to our handheld Apple devices. The question is, does the iPhone have what it takes to support such a tangible experience?

Thrill Me!

Ever since hearing Add N to X’s electro-anthem Plug Me In, I’ve known that robots can be a little naughty. It’s no surprise then that FunMobility’s latest iPhone game features a naughty bot repeatedly demanding to be pinched, shaken and smacked. It may be painful but we all know he really loves it.

Literally getting to grips with the gameplay is super-simple. Ito the robot is a demanding sort of guy — he’ll be barking orders at you in his electronic voice. If Ito shouts, “Smack me,” you tap the screen, if he hollers, “Shake me,” you shake the iPhone and, if he firmly requests, “Pinch me,” you give the screen your best multi-touch pinch.

There are three game modes — Easy, Medium and Hard. Completing the Easy mode also unlocks two extra orders from Ito: “Freeze me,” which is kind of a curve ball as you’re meant to stay perfectly still, and, “Lift me,” where you’ll have to quickly raise the iPhone (a vertical shake, if you will).

The limited, but moderately engaging, gameplay is wrapped up in the most fantastic graphics and sound, like a special candy for geeks: it looks and sounds delicious, the audiovisual experience is akin to having a retro rainbow blasted straight in to your brain-box.

The music bleeps and bloops along, faster and faster, as Ito barks his digital orders at you. The ever-changing soundtrack is accompanied by an continuously shifting visual as each of the robot’s requests arrives accompanied with an odd explanatory image too.

Disappoint Me!

Once you’ve played a few rounds and given the robot a good pinching, shaking, smacking, freezing and lifting, there’s nothing else to it. It’s the same thing, ad infinitum but increasingly faster, with different music. Indeed it’s fun for a while but there’s just no depth — nothing beyond the initial ten minutes of play.

Plus, there’s no true multiplayer mode either. Where Bop It really came in to its own was multiplayer mode: there would be hours of secret solo practice before the toy inevitably came out at a party with everybody wanting to grab at this strange, noisy object.

The iPhone isn’t designed for fast-paced pass-and-play games and, rightly so: it’s no fun to watch folks slap ‘n shake your iPhone then throw it to the next person to do the same. It’s sado-masochism for tech-fetishists and I’m just not in to that. All that said, the game does feel like it’s missing some kind of formal multiplayer element.

Summing Up

If I judged Smack Me based upon the first ten minutes of play, I would be exalting its delights. The artwork captures that classic 8-bit vibe in such a way that my inner-geek is awkwardly jumping for joy. The sound is old school lo-fi and frequently funny — locking in with the graphics like two missing pieces from a giant retro jigsaw.

Ten minutes passes though and, assuming you unlock the extra functions, you’ve seen it all, and done it all, repeatedly. You’ll get bored, feel disappointed at spending three bucks on this, hit the home key and check your email, Ito’s tinny robo-voice fading in to the distance.

The issue is that the game doesn’t have enough depth, particularly in relation to its price. Now if this was a quick-fix 99 cent time-waster, my opinion may well be different. Unfortunately it’s not 99 cents, it’s three whole bucks and, as such, my opinion isn’t wholly positive. This is fun, but fun that is priced way above its station — despite the polish — due to a lack of depth.

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Taking the iPhone’s potential even further, Tapulous is here to show us how games can play good and sound awesome.

The Tap Tap Revenge series has come a long way since its humble beginnings almost two years back. Indeed, back in September ’07, indie developer Nate True spent a couple of days designing the game’s first incarnation: Tap Tap Revolution.

The latest edition of the game, aptly titled Tap Tap Revenge 2, arrived at the App Store today. Tapulous has been hard at work polishing and updating the original, bringing it right up to spec with App Store high-flyers like Rolando and Zen Bound.

The game sports a wealth of features — online multiplayer, a library of free tracks to download, career mode — alongside a serious graphical overhaul, taking the title into 3D territory.

Start!

Taking its inspiration from the rhythm-action genre, in particular the Dance Dance Revolution series, Nate True’s original 2007 creation squashed the rhythm experience down to the touch and iPhone. It was a different time though — there was no App Store and therefore no official Apple-sanctioned place for True to develop his creation.

And so Tap Tap Revolution found its first home on jailbroken iPhones and iPod touches across the globe. The game design and aesthetic evolved, the community grew and bustled, Tap Tap Revolution became an illegitimate classic.

Jump to present day, almost two years later, re-named Tap Tap Revenge, the rhythm-action series has found its home at the App Store. Now published by Tapulous — the crew behind Twinkle and Friendbook, amongst others — it’s got serious backing and has been embraced by the music industry, evident by the wealth of tracks available in the latest edition.

The folks at Tapulous have been crazy busy since releasing the original Tap Tap Revenge. Capitalizing on the game’s engine and boiling hot reception by iPhone and touch owners alike, TTR has become a series in its own right.

In the past year, Tap Tap Revenge has been followed by two other editions. There’s TTR: Nine Inch Nails, a re-skin of the game which exclusively features Reznor’s weird industrial dabblings and, for folks who fancy something a little more upbeat, TTR: Dance which includes tracks from Justice, Moby and Daft Punk.

No Limit

The latest addition to the series, Tap Tap Revenge 2, isn’t just a small tweak, it’s a complete update, upping the ante with a new features, new graphics and new modes.

The basics of the gameplay are still intact, though. After picking a tune to tap along to, you’re presented with a playing field with lots of glowing orbs flying towards you from the distance. Once the orbs hit the threshold at the bottom of the screen, you simply tap them.

For beginners to the whole rhythm-action thing, it can seem a little strange and unnatural at first, kind of like putting your jeans on backwards to be just like 80′s hip-hop sensation Salt-n-Pepa — it works but it doesn’t feel right for a while.

After some practice, you get your head round the notion of tapping in time to the music and your focus can turn to the brand-new achievements board accessible via Career Mode.

Modes And Scales

It’s an all-encompassing game, as is evident in the various different modes offered; there’s One Player for soloists, Two Player for those who like to swing to the groove together and, ideal for those with a competitive temperament, a feature-rich Online Mode.

The One Player mode comes with the standard difficulty options — Easy, Medium, Hard and Extreme — but also includes a new one that I’d not seen before: Kids.

The Kids mode is a particularly clever addition on the part of Tapulous. The idea is that the game is stripped down to a kind of immensely simple level, nothing too demanding, flashing light to tap on.

Testing Kids mode out, though, I couldn’t help but think it would be perfect for beginners, too. There’s a whole raft of potential new players who would find this mode an ideal starting point but may find the fact that it’s called Kids a tad alienating. But I’m nitpicking because, so far, there’s so much to love and so little to complain about.

The other difficulties seem to be paced just right for players looking to skill up before learning the game’s nuances — like scoring even higher by using Revenge Mode — and taking it online in an attempt to advance up the ranking board.

When I’m not writing for TheAppleBlog, or making music, rhythm-action games are something I adore and like to think I excel at. As such, after a few practice rounds on the lower difficulty levels, I tried out Crystal Method’s exclusive TTR 2 track Double Down Under in Extreme and had a serious blast: It was challenging, fast-paced and, I’m pleased to note, seriously good fun.

Getting The Band Together

Several months back, I was sat on a train speeding through Finland. My travel companion and I had an array of tech goodies to keep us entertained, including a Nintendo DS, Macbook and iPod touch. We ended up playing TTR’s original Two Player mode on my touch.

The updated version of Two Player overhauls the graphics and adds in a catch-up feature, but keeps the essentials that made it so appealing in the first place. The big thing is that two people can play off one device, simply by laying it flat on the table and putting the iPhone between you.

It leads to crazy, kinetic tsunamis of tapping as both of you frantically tap and bash away, trying to eek out the track’s rhythm amid the flurry of tapping and confusion which ensues. There’s not much to it but there doesn’t have to be, it’s quick and easy fun, and a great way to get beginners involved in the game.

TTR has a dedicated following and its this base of users that will make for a vibrant TTR 2 community in the weeks and months to come. The online mode certainly makes sense in the general scheme. One Player becomes a place to practice alone, building up your technique and learning tracks, then, when you’re ready for live musical carnage, take your game online.

Unfortunately, while testing the game, the Tapulous server seemed to be inaccessible a couple of times. Not a good start but I have faith in Tapulous. This game is a big deal and a massive investment of time and money to them; as such I know that they’ll be working to resolve any day-one toothing issues and I’m already looking forward to some hectic online battles in the coming weeks.

Wired For Sound

The music selection on offer in TTR 2 is a seriously big deal. The folks at Tapulous have been hob-knobbing with the industry big wigs, meeting with the fresh talent and even getting independent artists in on the action.

What essentially results from all this deal-doing is that there’s an immense library of music on offer. Before you even get to the downloads, there’s an exclusive track included with the game from Crystal Method which, while it isn’t my cup of chai, fits the game perfectly.

Tap on over to the downloads section and there’s purportedly over 150 tracks on offer, absolutely free. In among the stuff you’ve not heard of, there are some big names in the Tap Tap Revenge 2 library, including Death Cab for Cutie, Daft Punk and The Whip.

As if that wasn’t generous enough, apparently there will also be new tracks released every Thursday. It’s not all about giving though, dig a track enough that you’ve just got to have it and you can also buy it by clicking a handy iTunes link. It’s savvy on the part of Tapulous and genuinely useful for us players.

Summing Up

Tapulous seems to have gone above and beyond anything I expected for Tap Tap Revenge 2. The game is still very much part of the series, there are no massive, paradigm shifting changes, however what is on offer is an overwhelming evolution, a bold and engaging step forwards.

I’m pleased to be awarding this game TheAppleBlog App Review’s first Gold Award. This is no small thing, these awards will be rarities reserved for essential App Store releases. For iPhone and iPod touch gamers, Tap Tap Revenge 2 is an essential download.

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Oh the sheer horror of it! I’m feeling uneasy at the very thought of my iPhone getting half inched. At the moment, my strongest defense against thieves seems to be keeping my iPhone within a 1-foot radius at all times.

Beyond simply keeping a keen eye on one’s iPhone, it would be much more appropriate to leverage some of the device’s actual technology in an effort to ensure its safety and, at the very least, assuage the owner’s simmering worry.

Caught You! is the first app to hit the store that has awoken the tiny gadget-loving Bond inside of me: the app utilizes the iPhone’s raft of connectivity features — specifically 3G/Edge and GPS — in a bid to combat theft.

The Honeypot

Once installed, Caught You! masquerades as a standard iPhone app called Bank Details. The idea is that when your phone is pilfered, the thief — unethical and prone to stealing things as they are — will be sifting through your apps, spy Bank Details and decide to load it up in a bid to access your precious savings.

The Bank Details app invites Mr. Thief to enter a pin number. The thing is, there is no pin number, and so while Mr. Thief is excitedly trying various combinations, the app is covertly mailing its location back to you.

It’s an ingenious concept, executed in an efficient way, putting the iPhone’s Q-esque feature-set to potentially good use. And it’s exciting to think you might catch the thieves at their own game, should that fateful day ever come.

Preparing The Ruse

The setup process is simple — it requests your email address — this initial configuration screen will, the app warns, never be seen again. After this, you simply have to close and open the app a few times — each time agreeing that the app is allowed to use your current location — in order to initialize it.

A tip though: the address you use will be the one that future covert messages are sent to, so it’s best to set that to a rarely used email account, certainly not the email account that you have synced to your iPhone’s mail application.

After this quick setup process, the app will never again ask for permission to use your current location. To all intents and purposes it seems like an iPhone app designed for holding various bank details, account numbers and such.

The developer’s instructions don’t mention this, but if you manage to botch the setup process, by entering the wrong email address, simply delete the app and re-install it. Once freshly re-installed, the app is ready to be initialized.

In The Wild

After the setup period, I took to the streets of central London and tested out the Bank Details app several times. I was looking for speed and accuracy, in terms of the app locating me and firing off an email as fast as possible.

While the app’s performance wasn’t perfect, it was admirable — locating me down to the nearest block. The alert email hit my account seconds after opening the app. The message itself containing activation time, latitude and longitude, plus a very handy Google Maps link.

Now there are of course some unmentioned caveats that may not be obvious to the average user. As discussed, the app needs to be initialized before use. In practice, when the app is activated, the iPhone will need to be able to locate itself quickly and it’ll need a data-connection signal in order to fire off the covert email.

Furthermore, standard practice once your mobile phone is stolen is to call your carrier to de-activate the SIM, contact the police to report the crime and call the insurance company. Delaying any of this might mean you’re ineligible for your insurance and will almost certainly give the individual who scampered off with your iPhone more time to rack up the bill.

Summing Up

Caught You! really does work, in so much as it accurately determines your location and consistently fires off emails to your chosen address. However, it’s unclear just how useful this app would really be. Where it shines is in its psychological comfort-value. It really feels good to know that there’s an extra degree of protection for such a valued possession.

Knowing which block, in which neighborhood, your kidnapped iPhone is on may not be so helpful in practice though. Furthermore, is this the kind of information the police could take seriously or act on? And, if not, surely it wouldn’t be advisable to go knocking on doors in a desperate bid to retrieve your stolen goods.

For worried iPhone-owners who fear that their device could be pinched at any moment, Caught You! is a worry-allaying app that you’ll hopefully never have to use. However, for the rest of us, the app’s prime-feature, while impressive, is vastly outweighed by its lack of practicality. As such, I just can’t see this being useful in a real-world iPhone-theft situation.

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