Reviews

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Review: Ninja Assassin for iPhone Has Fun Survival Mode, Slow Story Experience

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Ninja Assassin the movie is an anticipated Hollywood swords and sandals epic from James McTeigue, director of V for Vendetta, with a story from J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5 and the only Spider-Man comic in which Dr. Doom cries (though the artist allegedly came up with that last bit).

It’s also now an iPhone game, and a quite nicely produced one, at that. It might, in fact, be the bloodiest game to ever come to the platform, if that’s your thing. Seriously — you get measured on the number of successful decapitations per level.

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Review: Star Wars: Trench Run Blows Away The Dark Side — And Any Other iPhone Shooter I’ve Played So Far

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This is what you’re about to ask: Is Star Wars: Trench Run so good that it’ll have you wondering how magically your iPhone becomes an X-wing fighter? Answer: No. It’s better — it’s actually so good, you’ll be trying to figure out why your X-wing looks suspiciously like an iPhone.

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Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

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New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

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Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

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Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.

“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite it hitting the shops a couple of months ago.

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Review: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1 Camera Is One Ruggedized Point-and-Shoot

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Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-TS1 shockproof camera is designed for outdoor activities like mountain climbing and scuba diving, but for this accident-prone mom, it’s tough enough for birthday parties, school trips and Saturday soccer matches.

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Review: V-Moda Vibe II Earphones With Microphone (Verdict: Tasty Ear-Candy With A Purpose)

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Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

According to Wikipedia, which is where I’ve learned 92 percent of the useless stuff I know, the phrase in Latin above means something along the lines of “don’t make things more complicated than they should be, dumbass.”

The V-Moda Vibe II with Microphone fits this explanation so exquisitely, you might well see them being whipped out as a teaching aid by your Latin instructor when the above phrase comes up.

Carpe diem. (Seize the day. Best way would be by clicking on the link for the rest of the review.)

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Review: Zooom/2 Helps You Keep A Tidier Desktop

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Screens of all shapes and sizes can end up cluttered with windows and palettes all over the place. On tiny little MacBook screens you get everything overlapping everything else; on ginormous 27″ iMac screens, everything’s so far apart you have to crane your neck to take it all in.

Step forward Zooom/2, a utility designed to make managing all those windows a little bit easier.

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Cult Favorite: FastFinga For iPhone

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What is it? FastFinga is a cheap iPhone app that lets you write hand-written notes with your fingertip, then export them as images or send them by email. Why it's cool? To be honest, at first I was uncertain but now I rather like it. It's good for personal notes to loved ones, or for kids learning their ABCs. And it's not restricted to words...

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Lots Of Small Fixes In Yojimbo 2.1 Update

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Bare Bones released a Yojimbo update this afternoon, which adds a handful of nice new bits and pieces.

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Review: The iHome iP1, Sexy Italian Sports Car Of Docks

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We’ve seen this before: A company that’s built a reputation offering stuff to the budget-minded shopper suddenly does an about face and starts wooing the uptown crowd. Sometimes it works brilliantly; often it’s a misfire.

Earlier this year, it was iHome’s turn at bat. The company, well-known for their cleanly simple, inexpensive line of iPod/iPhone accessories, stepped in a bold new direction with the release of their flagship iP1 iPod dock, a product that costs double their previously most-expensive item.

Hit the jump to find out if iHome struck out or hit a home run with the iP1.

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Review: LogMeIn Ignition, Super Simple Desktop Access for the iPhone

Download the App->Download the Application->You're In

Sure, I could write a whole How-To on rolling your own “Back To My Mac.” It involves port forwarding, obtaining a Dynamic DNS, blah blah blah.

Or you could use the iPhone app LogMeIn Ignition [iTunes Link] to remotely access to your Mac or PC in three steps.

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Launch Balloons From Your iPhone To The World

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This is a great idea, and bound to go down very well with your kids.

Balloons is simple: you launch a virtual balloon into the air from your phone. You add a photo and a text message to the label that dangles below the balloon, and send it off.

Anyone with the Balloons app can catch that balloon and add their own message. If you shell out for the paid version, you can track the balloons you’ve launched and see what other people have added to them.

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To celebrate and set things off, we’ve created a Cult of Mac balloon for you to catch. It’s purple with green stripes, and has a photo of the Cult home page at the top. If you catch it, let us know what you think about Balloons.

This is a particularly friendly application. I can see school classes all over the world launching balloons to make contacts in other schools. And Shiny development have wisely kept the choice of balloons fairly limited to start with; I wouldn’t be surprised to see custom balloons appearing soon, as an in-app purchase.

Review: Waterfield’s Muzetto Urban Man Bag Is A Total Chick Magnet

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The San Francisco based company Waterfield presents the Muzetto laptop bag. This “urban man bag” will make the geekiest nerd feel hip. Don’t be surprised when your fashion-forward girlfriend tries to steal it.

Designed as a lightweight laptop tote, this bag is high quality; it’s made from distressed dark brown leather and offered in six accent colors. It’s a pleasant change from the over-used nylon of most laptop bags.

I really like the gold liner which makes items highly visible. On my first use I accidently scraped the bag with my keys and made a horrible mark. But no worries! The well-oiled bag is designed to scratch easily for a distressed look. The marks will blend in time or you can just give it a good rub.

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Review: Kensington’s LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit Is Only As Strong As Its Weakest Link, Its (Weak) Microphone

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Seems like a no-brainer: Take two different concepts that work great separately, Frankenstein them together and — viola! Instant more amazingness!

Except we all know how the Frankenstein story ended. The LiquidAUX story isn’t as ugly as that. But it isn’t pretty either.

Bash the jump for the full review.

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Cult Favorite: TapeDeck

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TapeDeck is one of those apps that I don’t use very often; but when I need it, I’m glad it’s there.

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