Macgasm

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Photo Credit: DeclanTM

Ever since the iTunes app store became popular, I’ve been overly excited for one game: Q*bert. Just a few weeks ago, Q*bert Deluxe ($1.99) was released in the store, and as soon as I found that out, I was jumping for joy. Since, I’ve been extremely enthusiastic about this game, especially as I haven’t played it in about 20 years.

Just like the game of the old days, Q*bert on the iPhone is all about the little dude, Q*bert, who must jump on every step before he gets crushed by an enemy. It’s rather difficult but fun and challenging all the same. In this game, you can play a “modern” version with improved graphics, or you can revisit the Atari old days with an 8-bit version that looks like the old video game days of yore. There’s also Jungle mode for more fun and excitement. Also, the cool thing about the game is that you can vote on themes for the next iteration of the app, making Q*bert a real fun and exciting treat.

There’s a lot of fun stuff happening for Q*bert, too. They have a blog at Q*bert where members of the community can contribute their thoughts. So far, there’s actually a lot of feedback. I know the development team is listening too.

If you miss this old game of your childhood, grab the game now. It’s a real enjoyable game. I’m especially looking forward to the new themes of this game — with the addition of the Jungle theme, we’re seeing a lot of great potential for this app.

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In this episode, Josh talks about the possibility of an Apple Tablet.

[02.9 MB] [0:08:40] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

I have a real sweet spot for retro games.  If it’s retro, and even remotely resembles something that was available on an Atari 2600, or NES I’ll likely love it–a lot.  Infinity Gene takes space invaders and really ramps it up and modernizes it.  It’s a real treat to play.  The whole concept of the game revolves around evolution, and the concept is pretty apt for the game design.

It starts out as a basic space invaders simulation and then evolves into a more modern take on the concept.  They’ve even added a mode where you can listen to your own track and get immersed in the game at a speed that’s based on the BPM of your song.

We’ve been doing some thinking about ways to expand our article base a little, and we eventually decided that it would make sense to add a section that reviews some books. There’s a whole slew of tech-related and tutorial books that we figured it would be beneficial to let you know what ones we think are worth recommending.

We’ve been negotiating with a couple of publishers to get review copies, and most have been receptive to the idea. Print might be dying, but technical manuals will always be around.

Our intention with these reviews isn’t to educate the educated, but instead help those who are just getting into Apple-related products and might be in need of some further information on things like the iLife bundle, or using some of the hidden features in Snow Leopard. We provide a lot of beginner tips and tricks here already, but it would be a huge disservice to the new users if we never got around to letting them know about some print resources.

The first one we intend on reviewing is the iMovie ’09 and iDVD Portable Genius by Guy Hart-Davis. I’m not completely through it yet, but you’ll see a review in the near future.

I just want to give you a heads up so you’re not all confused when you see us recommending some print books.

Finally! Flickr has released their native iphone app. Took long enough, but it’s here and it’s good. Not only do the team at Yahoo know how to make good iPhone apps, they make them look good too. Pretty much all the functionality you would expect on the Flickr website is in the iPhone app. The only thing missing is multiple file upload, but that ain’t so bad.

So the first step is the authorization to allow the Flickr native app to use your Flickr login (Yahoo ID). This part is a bit wonky as it prompts you that it will open Safari and then you proceed to the crap-tastic login page. Don’t worry you should only have to do this once and forget about it. (Unless you have multiple flickr accounts, which would be problematic.)

Then you get into the real meat and potatoes of the app, and I can honestly say that I prefer using this to the actual Flickr site. It’s so easy to use and intuitive.

Highlights:

• browse/search/star/comment/email yours or other contact’s photos
• tag your photos
• set privacy levels
• upload photos from your iPhone

I guess you only need the Flickr site to do bulk uploads of non-iPhone photos, but once they are on your account you can browse them and brag to people about your cool Flickr sets or go wild with tagging in your spare mobile time.

A very cool touch to the app is when you start it up (after login is setup) it will slideshow your contacts photos in random order, with a “by friend” tag at the bottom.

Overall, Yahoo has done a great job on the first version of the Flickr iPhone app and looking forward to more enhancements in the future.

Can be had for a mere, $0.00 in iTunes.

I grew up in college playing Snood. It helped pass the time and it was always a ton of fun. I remember it being available only for the Mac for the longest time and then when it came out for PC, I was ecstatic. I played forever. And then I stopped as I finished school, but I never forgot those good ole days with Snood on my laptop playing at the latest hours of the night.

Thankfully, Snood is not going away anytime soon. With the Snood ($3.99) application now available for the iPhone, I’m in love yet again. But this new version brings much more awesomeness: the graphics of the game (and the sound effects are brilliant). The one thing I miss is the “boing boing” sound I used to hear as I bounced the snoods off the wall (this game still has a “boing” sound, though it just isn’t the same), but boy, this game sure rocks. Plus, you can substitute your own iPod library in place of the game’s music.

Snood brings back the favorites of the desktop application, including levels (Child, Easy, Medium, Hard, Evil in Classic Mode, Time Attack Mode, and Puzzle Mode) and Story mode. But there’s a lot more here, including “wildcard” snoods that have special attributes once fired on the game board and sleeping snoods. This way, game play doesn’t get boring at all. Plus, with the graphic upgrade (the snoods have become enhanced!), you’re never frustrated with these little dudes.

Do I love Snood for the iPhone? You bet I do. It’s got everything the old versions of Snood had plus more. It’s well worth its price for Snood fans, and if you’ve never played the game before, you’re bound to become addicted.

Somewhere between Steve Jobs appearing on stage and my non-stop reordering of my iPhones apps, I missed the big news that Skype has FINALLY appeared in the Canadian App Store.  I’m usually on top of these things, but the new iTunes kinda sucked me in, did I mention that already?

Anyway, I’d be totally stoked for the announcement, if I didn’t completely trade in my Canadian iTunes user account for my American one.  It’s kind of a necessity if you want to review iPhone applications considering you can’t redeem iPhone coupon codes on the Canadian store.

I wonder if it was all planned this way on purpose, in an attempt to not have to answer too many questions about its absence up until this point. Ah well.  It worked.

Skype’s now available in Canada.  Eh OH!