Macgasm

Screeny is a small utility for capturing both screenshots and screen-casts. Once opened you will find it sitting patiently in your menu bar until the time you call upon it. It’s not a very complex app — and it needn’t be for what it is trying to achieve.

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Today Twitter has announced — via their blog, as well as in person by Dick Costolo at the D9 conference — that they are going to be launching a brand new search system and their own photo sharing service.

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I live in the UK. This frequently means that I do not get access to cool stuff like the Google Music Beta or Amazon Cloud Player. But the music service we do get is arguably the best — Spotify. And it just keeps on getting better…

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Since Angry Birds exploded on to our iDevices in a fit of feathers and colour, there has been a dearth of multi-level casual games on the iOS platform. The subsequent successor to the throne was Cut The Rope — a game that also had a gazillion levels with an addictive play-style.

The most recent game that I have come across that takes a stab at this formula is House Of Mice. You play as a mouse that is trying to collect his three cheeses – like in Cut The Rope – before finally blowing up the Cheshire Cat waiting at the end of the level, who is your goal for completion — like Om-Nom in Cut The Rope.

I think that you can already see which game this most resembles. There are some definite similarities between House Of Mice and Cut The Rope. The level select screen is similar, as is some of the core gameplay. But there are also some key differences.

This game is quite heavy on geometry. Instead of relying on gravity – like in Cut The Rope – you must fire your balled up mouse (I know how odd that sounds) into objects and off the walls to collect the cheeses and complete the level. Throughout the game you are trying to guess the angle at which you need to propel your mouse to achieve the desired effect. House of Mice is very heavy on trial and error.
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That was the first word I wrote using Grandview. This review may read peculiarly and this is due to the fact that I am writing it using Grandview. This is the first time I have actually used the application so please bear with me as I come to grips with it. There are many, many ‘distraction-free writing’ applications available for all Apple platforms and Grandview is a new addition now available on the Mac App Store.

However, out of all that I have tried, Grandview is definitely the most granular—currently my 27-inch screen has been taken over by a huge white background with plain, simple, black text filling it—one word at a time. After each period, you are presented with the last sentence you have written, which allows you to go back over it and make any necessary revisions to ensure that what you are saying actually makes sense.

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Marco Arment recommended this game on his personal blog, so I figured I’d check it out. It’s rare to see recommendations of apps – especially games – on a blog like Marco’s, and I trust his opinions and therefore his recommendations.

Super Stickman Golf is a 2D platform-ish game based around golf. That would be my one line summary, as that’s kind of what it is. Golf games on iOS usually follow the conventions of a simulator – typically 3D – with the camera positioned behind your character. You would then select your club, pay attention to wind resistance, how many yards from the green, etc. However, Super Stickman Golf (SSG) pays no attention to any of this—it’s effectively a golf game boiled down to the nuts and bolts with a zany platform element thrown in for good measure.

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I had been waiting for this Tweetbot for over a year. Seriously. Back on March 12th, 2010, Tapbots posted on their blog that they were working on a new Twitter client — Tweetbot. I’ve been a fan of their previous apps, so my expectations were set pretty high.

Twitter apps are by far my favourite kind of iOS app, and I try pretty much any new – well designed – client that’s released. So, imagine my excitement when I saw my timeline explode with news of Tweetbot’s release on April 13th. To the App Store I ran, purchasing immediately. I then lost hours of my life.

My Twitter app is easily the most used on my iPhone, and I have very specific features I require — I assume most users are like this. Tweetbot delivers all of these features for me. Nothing is missing. Tapbot appears to have created a Twitter client to the quality that we have come to expect from them. Obviously not everyone will be happy as there will always be ‘X feature’ that doesn’t work as they expect. But this lends itself to the idea I set out—we all have our own specific preferences.

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As a rule of thumb I try to download the ‘Pick of the Week’ in the iTunes store, as they tend to be high quality, and it gives me the opportunity to always have new apps to play with. Death Rally was a pick a few weeks back — for the iPad – so I figured I’d give it a shot.

Death Rally reminds me a lot of the old Micro Machines console game in that you drive a — seemingly miniature — car around a track from a top-down perspective. The controls are very simple to grasp, with a thumbstick on the left to control your car and a button on the right to fire any ammunition you may have.

Death Rally was developed by Remedy Games, who are currently working on Duke Nukem Forever—Duke even has a cameo in Death Rally as an opponent. It’s a universal title, which is always a bonus, although I’ve been playing mainly on the iPad as the game lends itself to the larger screen.

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