I should have bought the 32 GB iPhone, I thought to myself as I tried to update GarageBand on my iPhone. I don’t have enough space to download the update, the dialog box tells me.

For those of us that tend to fill our phones to the brim with apps and media, this is a familiar scenario. However, there’s a neat trick to make it easier to temporarily reclaim space on your iOS device. In short, simply delete music on your device until you have enough room, and then resync (wirelessly, of course) with iTunes when you don’t need the extra space anymore. All of the music you deleted will be right back where it was.

Deleting music is easy. In the Music app, you swipe across the title of an artist/song/album, then hit the delete button that appears. By deleting all the albums by Modest Mouse on my phone, I was able to save about 600 MB of space, which was enough to download the GarageBand update. A quick resync later, and my music was back.

If you have any more tips on saving space in iOS, tell us about them in the comments.

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It’s Halloween and so my top pick for this week is Alive 4-ever, a top-down zombie shooter with plenty of guts and gore to go around. I’ve also been checking out TowerMadness Zero, NASA and WordPress 2.

Alive 4-ever ($1.79)

As it’s Halloween, I thought that at least one of my top picks this week should be themed for the occasion. Despite the clumsy sounding name, Alive 4-Ever is a surprisingly polished top-down shooter. The plot is simple and disgustingly cliché: for whatever reason, a zombie apocalypse happens, you take to the streets to rescue other survivors.

The game takes its inspiration from some of the best zombie titles out there, including Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead. There’s a battalion’s worth of weaponry on offer, including zombie-slaying classics like the AK-47. Plus, if you’re after more firepower you’re able to purchase bigger, stronger, faster guns in the shop after each level.

There’s also a Bluetooth multiplayer mode, allowing you to jump into the action with three other friends. Alongside guns, zombies and survivors, the game throws in experience points too. Completing a stage earns experience points, these precious points go towards upgrading your character. In effect, you’re able to become the ultimate undead-destroying warrior.

TowerMadness Zero (Free)

Earlier this month, our own Alfredo Padilla took a look at 49 different tower defense games for the iPhone. Owing to the epic nature of his list, days later Alfredo distilled the document down into five tower defense games worth owning. All of Alfredo’s picks costs a few bucks though and, in this cash-strapped climate, some of us don’t have much money to burn on iPhone games.

That’s where TowerMadness steps in. The game is available in two monetary flavors. You can purchase it for a couple of bucks, or you can download the Zero edition: a totally unrestricted ad-supported version of the game for free. The ads are unintrusive and targeted in such a way that, for the most part, they feel relevant.

Of course the iPhone doesn’t need another tower defense game. Aside from being free, TowerMadness is a pretty good representation of the best qualities of the genre. All the usual TD staples are there — waves of enemies, upgradable towers, strategic play — but it’s all wrapped up in excellent graphics too.

NASA (Free)

National organizations seem to be slowly switching on to the iPhone. Last year, the BBC decided to create an iPhone-specific version of its excellent iPlayer site. Canada’s National Film Board just released a wonderful app for viewing its content on the go. And now NASA has released its very own app, allowing us earthlings to keep up-to-date with space mission news.

The app is essentially like having a tiny mission-control in the palm of your hand. There’s a listing of all NASA Missions, all of which have awesome names like Mars Express and Mars Odyssey. Tapping through to a mission section provides a mission briefing, photos, videos and an ever-so-slightly ominous countdown timer.

For me, the best part of the app is the video section. Rather than attempt to visualize the various space happenings described in the app, the videos bring these extraordinary happens closer to home. You can observe spacecraft launches, see astronauts float around in zero gravity, listen to people in space describe their experiences, and watch history in the making.

WordPress 2 (Free)

The original WordPress app just wasn’t so hot. With a clunky and convoluted interface that was all function and no form, it immediately felt dated. And, for writers and bloggers alike, it certainly wasn’t the most inspiring environment in which to attempt to pen a post.

The user interface has been updated but still, on first look, the app looks worryingly basic. In fact, it’s disconcertingly similar to its clunky counterpart, WordPress 1. I appreciate that the WordPress app is here to serve a function, but, discounting features, surely it could have been executed with a little more pizazz?

Anyway, looks are not the most important thing with WordPress 2. This version introduces several new features to the mix. There’s automatic saving and restoring of posts. A new comments interface which includes author URL and Gravatars. The app even stores password in the keychain. If you’ve got your own WordPress blog, this is certainly an app worth checking out.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with a fresh selection of App Store recommendations.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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An epic RPG has arrived on the iPhone, featuring battles, leveling up, upgradeable weapons and online features. Forget goblins and warlocks though, The Void takes the adventure to the final frontier.

The gaming section of the App Store has been subject to a serious cute overdose as of late, with Rolando, Topple and even Zombieville USA leading the colorful pack. Now it’s time for everything to get a little darker — a little more Star Wars Episode II — with the release of The Void.

Beaming down to the App Store, The Void is an RPG that aims to blend traditional leveling up with Asteroid-esque space combat.

Launch Configuration

Before even purchasing your first ship, you’ll discover that the instructions are bewildering, and the size of the soon-to-be-conquered galaxy, overwhelming. This blend of information and visual overdose culminates in the idea that you’re about to delve into an epic adventure.

In fact, it’s a multisense overdose as the music — a sci-fi soundtrack featuring ’80s-esque sweeping orchestral synthesis — instantly sets the scene. While the in-game sounds are somewhat lacking, the music is to be applauded, as it draws the player in and intensifies the atmosphere.

Flight Path

Jumping into a battle and making your way across the galaxy requires a ship and considerable weaponry. The game hub is where all of the planning, purchasing and managing occurs. The hub is broken down into four sections: Galaxy Map, Weapons, Equipment and Shipyard.

The Galaxy Map provides access to different areas of The Void’s sprawling world. The galaxy is, however, separated into stages that need to be completed in order to advance. As such, it’s worth noting that The Void is not free-roaming, à la Elite, but takes a more traditional, non-RPG approach.

Throughout the game, you’re represented by your ship. There’s no avatar or character and, in fact, seemingly no other individual characters with which to interact. Setting that issue aside for a moment, the Shipyard allows you to choose from a selection of ships, each carrying a stack of stats detailing their varying defensive and aggressive ability.

Once a ship has been purchased, it can be armed and upgraded in the Weapons and Equipments sections, respectively. During battle, you’re able to pick up new weapons and equipment from defeated enemies.

There’s a spectacular range of gear available to unlock — homing missiles, machine guns, turn thrusters — all of which bring an added element to battles, whereby you’ll be scavenging dropped gear from defeated alien craft. Additionally, you can sell scavenged gear, which is great for raising funds or ridding yourself of duplicate items.

Battle Stations

The main game takes its inspiration from Asteroids and, after all the anticipation, is underwhelming. Missions are disappointingly simple, too — a typical level sees you having to destroy all the enemies or all the space crates on a given stage. Although the game makes use of the iPhone’s motion-sensor for turning your ship, the rest of the controls are poor.

Dogfights are slow, flight is sloppy and each stage ends up feeling like a sci-fi chore — more akin to cleaning up the galaxy. If the game was called Space Janitor, my expectations would have been appropriately set and I probably would have enjoyed it more.

Impact Imminent

Despite the fact it’s pitched as an RPG, The Void most certainly is not. The game is light on story, barely establishing the player’s role within the intergalactic milieu. Throughout playing, I felt unsure as to what the purpose of all this space combat was.

This mindless feeling stemmed from there being no establishing story — and thus no story arc — as I advanced through the game. As such, it feels like The Void has a large portion of the experience missing: There is no actual role-playing and no interaction with other characters.

Summing Up

The Void succeeds in several ways: the sci-fi atmosphere, complete with Jean Michel Jarre-esque music, is a real joy. Plus, the range of weapons on offer, alongside being able to unlock and purchase new ships, really pushes you to keep playing. However, there’s nothing inventive or inspiring about the actual levels and they end up feeling more like a grind than an epic adventure.

Perhaps if the combat was executed more effectively, it would draw attention away from the lack of story. Unfortunately though, the plot is severely lacking and, in essence, the game is a nothing more than a beautified rendering of Asteroids. And although Asteroids is great, it’s certainly not epic.

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Apparently not. A little app called Xslimmer claims to free up wasted disk space by removing unnecessary code from Universal Binaries that doesn’t fit with your machine’s architecture. It will also remove unneeded languages from various apps (Adium, for example, has over 20 languages according to Xslimmer’s site) to help slim them down and recover your disk space.

How it Works

Xslimmer’s interface is extremely straightforward. You simply drag applications onto Xslimmer and in analyzes each one to see if it can be slimmed. If the app can be slimmed, Xslimmer will display the current size of the app and it’s estimated “slimmed” size. Some applications cannot be slimmed because there is no extra code or languages, or its on Xslimmer’s blacklist (which, as the name implies, are applications that are not allowed to be slimmed for various reasons). For example, most of CS3 sits on the blacklist:

You can add apps one by one or use the “Genie” to scan your entire disk for potentially fat binaries. When you’re ready, click the “Slim!” button and you’ll be prompted with a warning to back up your applications. You can choose to have Xslimmer save backups somewhere locally, so that you can make sure all applications run as expected after slimming and restore them if needed. Restoring is a simple process – just click the “History” button, and click the restore icon in the history dialog.

The Skinny

I was able to save 2.5 GB from 95 applications in less than ten minutes (though I won’t see my real disk savings until I nuke my backups). That beats the heck out of the 100mb or so that it would take me hours to free up by sifting through all my documents that might be scattered across my machine. Even better, your apps will run the same or even faster than they did before slimming (though there are potentially applications that will not run after the slimming process – good thing the backups seem to be sound).

Overall, Xslimmer is extremely intuitive and kind of fun to use, especially when you see some of the notable savings:

Automator: 28.7mb to 2.95mb
Calculator: 13.4mb to 1.59mb
Disk Utility: 32.7mb to 3.88mb
DVD Player: 42.7mb to 6.48mb
iTunes: 129mb to 31.4mb
Preview: 70.1mb to 9.71mb

At $11.95, Xslimmer is a steal. My only real gripe is that you can’t slim Adobe CS3 apps, but I think that’s something to take up with Adobe and not Xslimmer. You can try a demo and save up to 50mb, if you wanna take it for a test drive before you drop the cash. I would strongly suggest that you make sure that all your apps run as expected after slimming though. I haven’t experienced any issues yet, but better safe than sorry.

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