MobiPress: iPhone Apps

Legend Camera – one of many interesting apps that can replace or serve alongside the iPhone’s built-in camera – has had an update this week, to Version 2.0.
This app already offered a good range of features not found in the built-in camera, and here are some of this latest version’s additions:

• Night mode
• Bright picture
• Black and white mode
• Continuous shots
• Timer continuous shots

I’ve only tried out a couple of the new features so far, but I like the strong list of abilities this camera app has overall.  I am not so impressed with the time it takes to process shots – but have not yet spent a great deal of time with it.  Would love to hear what others think of this one.

You can find Legend Camera in the App Store now, priced at $0.99.

Contrary to popular belief, COD Zombies is not a game about zombie fish, but rather zombie Nazis. You see, there’s a clubhouse of the living, of which you are the sole surviving member. The titular hordes of undead are not members of this club, so it’s up to you to dis-member them because they do not belong…and because they’re trying to eat you. Thankfully, the fortified building you’re in is filled with something else they can eat instead: hot freaking lead.

Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies was released for $9.99 a few days ago and I’m delighted to say that it’s a blast. Sure, the game really only features one level (more to come as DLC), but consumers and developers please take note: THIS is how you can make a first person shooter work on the iPhone.

Nacht der Untoten..
COD Zombies is based on an extra multiplayer mode in Call of Duty: World at War (released on PC and consoles) where you and a couple of friends are left to fight off wave after wave of Nazi zombies. You shoot zombies to score cash, upgrade your weapons, and then shoot zombies with bigger guns.
This game starts you off with a pistol, half a moment to breathe, and then throws zombies at you from every direction until you inevitably slip up and die. Trust me, though, you’ve never had so much fun literally staring death in the face and then shooting it.

Every room you go into has a barricade on the windows that can be destroyed by the undead, and repaired by you, the not-dead-yet. Keeping the barricades in place means that you can slow zombie progress and fire on them as they tear the barriers apart. However, you can also play the game a little more recklessly: let the barricades go down, allow the horde in, kill everything in sight, and then make a little money by repairing the defenses. Zombies come in waves, so there’s always at least a few seconds to catch a breath before you ventilate more undead.

As I mentioned earlier, you can use the cash you earn from repairing barricades and killing zombies to upgrade your weapons, but you can also use it to unlock other areas of the level. There are two other areas to unlock in “Nacht der Untoten”, and opening them allows you access to other weapons and gives the zombies more windows to climb through. It’s a necessary sacrifice, though, since the zombies get faster and tougher with every wave, and you’ll need bigger guns like the BAR and Trench Gun to dispatch them.

Ich liebe dich Headshot…
The zombies in COD Zombies aren’t really all that scary until you’re surrounded by them or until they start screaming (they’ve got ridiculously scary screams!). But then again, you’re no fluffy pushover yourself: you’ve got a great set of controls and a variety of weapons to punch hurty holes in the enemy.

There are three control sets in COD Zombies: the first two are pretty similar implementations of digital analog sticks, but the third, the tilt control option, offered me the best gameplay experience. You still use a left analog stick to move and strafe and two buttons on the right to activate iron sights and pull the trigger, but all of the looking is done by tilting the device (and you can recalibrate the default tilt and sensitivity at will). I dare say that COD’s controls are actually better than those of Eliminate Pro.

The trickiest part after mastering aiming and movement is finding a weapon that suits your play style. I love the shotgun since I can shoot it from the hip while running circles around zombies, but most other weapons require liberal use of the iron sights for any semblance of accuracy. There are also grenades for when you find yourself surrounded, and a combat knife for particularly personal encounters — both of which are satisfying extra ways to paint your enemies all over the walls.

That’s the thing about fighting zombies: it’s messy business, and the weapons and effects are pretty fantastic at showing you how true this is. Headshots are gorgeously gory, limbs can be blown off, and there were quite a few times I stopped before shooting because I actually couldn’t register *what* was coming at me…it certainly didn’t look human any more. You’re going to be fighting a lot of zombies in this game, so thank goodness it’s so much bloody fun.

Besser mit Freunden…
It’s a real blast going out in a blaze of glory and taking as many zombies as you can with you, but the whole experience gets even better if you can trick your friends into fighting alongside you. You’re essentially asking your friends to join you as dinner, but if they’re real friends, they’ll say yes.
COD Zombies features easy ad-hoc wifi multiplayer with up to three pals or a Bluetooth pairing for two people. I wasn’t able to gather a full squad, but I did get to try a bit of two-player co-op out. My partner’s movement didn’t look quite as smooth as my own, but the action felt much the same as in single player. I could also swear there were more zombies, but it was hard to tell, since we were gunning them down so quickly 

Extra…
There’s only one level in COD Zombies right now, but there should be more coming soon as paid downloads. However, there are some other things to work towards while you wait for extra content. There are online leaderboards that are tied to your global Call of Duty account, as well as a huge list of global and map-specific achievements. They don’t seem to earn you anything (as far as I can tell), but they’re something else to gun for besides headshots.

Gut Game…
Call of Duty: World at War Zombies is a long title for a game with only one level, but all of the action packed into that claustrophobic space more than makes up for the lack of variety. The inclusion of auto-save, orientation changes (just flip the iPhone), and a smooth playing experience are also greatly appreciated. I did experience a few crashes here and there, but that was likely because I was too lazy to restart the device to clear my RAM before playing. Otherwise, the game flies on my 3GS and even the iPod Touch 2G (iPhone 2G didn’t fare as well).

COD Zombies is another “premium” game on the App Store, but it’s one of the rare ones to actually earn its $9.99 price point. It’s a fantastic new way to rip zombies apart on your iPhone, and it’s a kickass shooter to boot. Go on, now, duty calls!
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Call of Duty: World at War Zombies is available for $9.99 on the App Store.

I’m not sure how long this app will stay up (Cydia rules are different than App Store rules, I’m sure) but there’s a new $1.99 app for sale on Cydia called OverBoard, and it’s an admitted copycat of Orbit — but with a few more features right out of the box.

You’re still getting your money’s worth in terms of iPhone Exposé to see all of your home screens at once, but you’ve also got some other goodies. Overboard features alternative activation methods (pinch or home button), winterboard compatibility, and more screens to call home (err, extra home screens) — none of which are present in Orbit 1.0.

Steven Troughton-Smith says he already knows about OverBoard and seems to cite it as one of the reasons he has delayed Orbit 1.1, which is supposed to bring pinch and homescreen support to the app (if not more).
The two solutions are obviously very similar, but it’s not as though Steven thought the idea for Orbit up himself — even Orbit is actually based on the concept video made by Ocean Observations. I haven’t had experience with Orbit or Overboard so I can’t say what the performance differences are (if any), but it’s interesting that Cydia users now have similarly priced choices for iPhone Exposé goodness.

Today we’re continuing our series called Desert Island Apps.  It’s based on a very long-running and brilliant BBC Radio show called “Desert Island Discs’.  The premise of Desert Island Discs is simple and wonderful – a guest is invited to choose the eight musical pieces (originally records) they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island.

In our case of course we’re not interested in our guests’ choice of music.  What we want to know is which six iPhone apps they would take with them if stranded on an island. We’re leaving the playing field pretty wide open for them – letting them assume they’ve got WiFi and full connectivity on their island.

Today’s guest is a guy who’s a good friend and someone who frequently helps me out with site enhancements, Karthik Ramadoss.  Karthik is also a huge tech enthusiast, an excellent tech blogger and a big WordPress fan. Here are a few marks he has created on the web

Founder of tech blog – ShanKrila
Founder of iPhone blog – Top iPhone Resource
Co-founder of WordPress web development business – KarShan Media

You can find Karthik tweeting about tech at @KIntheHouse and about iPhone at @TopiPhone.

Hit the jump for Karthik’s Desert Island picks …


So, I’m conveniently stranded in an island with full wifi and network connectivity. Here are the apps I’d most definitely have with me

1. Dropbox 
I have been a fan of Dropbox since it’s earliest beta release and use it to sync my documents across all my computers. It has a great web interface plus clients for Windows, Mac & Linux. Plus, the Dropbox iPhone app is a joy to use and has built in file viewers for most common file types.

2. WordPress iPhone app 
I would SO be blogging about my experiences in the island. And is it a surprise WordPress is my choice blogging platform?

3. NetNewsWire 
With Google Reader sync, NetNewsWire has become my favorite RSS feed reader recently. I still use the free version but I wouldn’t mind to pony up for the paid version. Plus, the Twitter and Facebook update feature is a nice extra.

4. Extra Extra 
Using RSS feeds to consume news for the last 3-4 years has made me nostalgic for actual newspapers. This iPhone app shows you the front page of actual newspapers in originality. Plus, you can zoom in and read them just as you would on the web page.

5. Flickr iPhone app
I love photography and just bought my first DSLR – a Canon Rebel T1i. The Flickr app will let me upload my pictures and videos from the island plus let me explore other cool pictures from all over the world.

6. HomeRun Battle – Baseball Slugger
After reading Patrick’s endless praise for this game here, I did get it and now I am so addicted to it. I play in online mode pretty much everyday and get my butt kicked. It’s still a lot of fun.
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Huge thanks to Karthik for doing Desert Island Apps with us!  I hope this series will help all of us to discover some great new apps.
If you’d like to see all the previous entries in the Desert Island apps, just go HERE – and if you feel like sharing what your Desert Island Apps picks would be, please fire away in the comments

Multifl0w is a not-yet-released app that promises a different and very promising looking approach to app switching on a jailbroken iPhone.


One of the very best things about jailbreaking an iPhone (especially a 3GS) is the ability to multitask – to run non-built-in (Mail, Safari, iPod) apps in the background and switch between them.  There are a few jailbreak apps around that provide this extra functionality – Backgrounder provides the ability to let apps remain running in the background, and apps like Kirikae and mQuickDo offer ways to switch between those ‘backgrounded’ apps or other favorite, most frequently used ones.

Multifl0w offers a coverflow / Palm Pre Cards style method for switching between backgrounded apps – so once you invoke it (via home button presses) you just swipe to switch between running apps.

I’m very keen to see whether this one is as good as it looks.  Hopefully we may see it soon – the only ‘status’ listed for it on the multifl0w site right now is: This is going to be submitted to both Cydia and Rock.

Check out the demo video below and let us know what you think of multifl0w.

I spotted this via a post over at the iPhone in Canada site.

This has been a heck of a week for press approaches about new iPhone apps.  The previous highlight was an app that encouraged ladies to ‘let it rip’ in the restroom and use the app to cover up all their unseemly noises.  Late in the week I think we have a new leader in eye-catching opening lines though.

Dear Patrick Jordan
Have you ever hit the balls of a frog?
No, not the eyeballs – the other ones.

I usually feel as if I’ve had a pretty well-rounded life – lived in a fair few different places, got to know lots of great people and cultures, had an extended misspent youth that lasted well into my thirties, and so on.  But now I’m kicking myself (though not in the ghoulies) and wondering how I’ve managed to go all these years without any kicking frogs in the balls at all.

Luckily for me, the PinFrog – The Nutcracker app looks like it will let me make up for lost time in terms of my lack of frog bollocks bashing.  Here are some of its key features:
FEATURES
- Retarded frog
- Softbody physics
- Accurate ball hit detection
- Random combined levels for endless replayability
- 3 kinds of rackets to kick PinFrog
- 10 hideous bosses to fight against and loot
- Up to 40 achievements to win
- Online highscore and ranking
- Play your own music during playing the game

I feel most impressed by ‘accurate ball hit detection’ – being a novice in this whole area of kicking frogs below the belt, that seems like something I’d absolutely need.

I’m not sure I’ll be going for this one, but if you’ve got a big urge to kick frogs where it counts you can find PinFrog in the App Store now for $1.99.

It can be difficult to maintain visibility in the ever-growing iPhone accessory market — especially if your product is essentially invisible. That’s why I imagine some of the brains behind ZAGG held a meeting one day to talk about what else they could do to diversify:

His ZAGGssistant: You mean, like, a Shield? A VisibleShield? Or, like, a Skin?…



General ZAGG: …a ZAGGSkin, that’s it! We’ll slap designs on the back (or let customers design their own), provide the same 30-day money back guarantee we always have, and charge $20 for every purchase. We can even create a new website to feature this new line and then send a newsletter about it to great sites, like that Just Another iPhone Blog. Are you getting all of this down, ZAGGssistant?



His ZAGGssistant: Yes, sir! As soon as I find my InvisiblePen, sir!