Evan Killham - page 29

Cake Ideas — Food & Drink — Free

Sometimes the name of an app is a woeful understatement.

Cake Ideas doesn’t contain “ideas” so much as the most complicated baking projects I’ve ever seen. Some of the recipes contained within include lists of things you must pick up at a hardware store because the cakes in question are so badass that they have freaking skeletons. It won’t show you how to make all of them — instructions for the one shaped like a wedding gown would probably melt your phone — but if you’re planning a wedding or just like looking at fancy cakes, prepare to be impressed.

Cake Ideas

The universe has a problem: It has all these planets lying around with no life on them. So obviously, the solution is some kind of forced cosmic osmosis to spread vitality throughout the void.

That’s the premise of Abductor Pro, anyway. It’s a new iOS title that puts players in the space boots of Antaris, a green alien tasked with grabbing humans from Earth for transplantation to other, less human-y planets. But the planets are picky, and possibly racist*, and they’re very particular about who gets to live on them.

Your job as Antaris is to make sure the right people get to the right place.

Official 100 Pushups — Health & Fitness — Free

Recently, I realized that I didn’t even want to look at myself without a shirt on. So I downloaded the new official 100 Pushups app, and it claims it can do something about this whole … situation I have going on here. It’s a six-week program with three sessions per week, and it will send you reminders so you don’t “forget” to exercise. First you show it how many pushups you can do, and then it assigns you to a Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced program. Somehow, I’m not so out of shape that I didn’t qualify for the Advanced tier.

…ladies.

Official 100 Pushups

I almost wrote off Numerity.

After about 10 minutes with the hidden-number game, I thought it was ridiculously easy and almost insulting. All the game was doing was showing me numbers, and then I’d find them in the onscreen jumble and tap them until they formed a picture of Charlie Chaplin or Marilyn Monroe. It took about a minute for each puzzle, and I was ready to give it up then and there.

But then some weird things started happening.

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a map of the moon, a big green button, and a diary for your dog.

Here you go:

Dog Diary — Lifestyle — Free

Dog Diary is an app that helps you keep track of all the people and events in your canine friend’s life. You can store important, pet-related contacts, expenses and photos. You can also create entries for multiple animals to keep everything organized. It’s an address book, a photo album and a bookkeeping program all in one. You can also track measurements like body temperature, provided you’re not shy about pulling out your phone as soon as the vet pulls out the thermometer.

I’m still waiting for an app that will walk the little guy for me once it gets snowy out, but we might need a robot for that.

Dog Diary

Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free

Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page.

It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari and it covers information for TVs, computers, cameras, software and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.

Mobile Support by Sony

Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99

If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.

Moon Chart

TimeStamp — Productivity — Free

I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.

My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.

TimeStamp

TimeStamp — Productivity — Free

I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.

My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.

TimeStamp

The Inner World is one of those “throwback, but in a good way” titles that reminds us of how good we have it nowadays. That sounds harsh, but remember that a time existed in which point-and-click adventures were everywhere. Very few of them gave you any help or hints, and all of them required you to play Amateur Psychic with the developers.

This is what I’m saying (slight spoiler, but it’s the first puzzle): I have no reason to believe that a drunken worm would make for a good slingshot.

And it’s a good thing that The Inner World is so cute and sympathetic to its players or that would really annoy me.

Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99

If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits, and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.

Moon Chart

Dark and light should probably sit down someplace and talk. They’re always fighting.

Their senseless war continues in Darklings, a new endless survival game from developer MildMania. You play as Lum, a being of light going up against the Darklings, evil beings who have stolen all the stars from the sky in a plan to plunge the world into darkness. Because that’s how the dark operates in these things.

Lum is alone against endless waves of evil beings, and only your quick shape-drawing powers can help it prevail.

Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free

Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page. It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari. It contains information for TVs, computers, cameras, software, and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.

Mobile Support by Sony

Kiwi & Me is for girls.

The new free-to-play, match-three game from developer Beeline Interactive (the mobile arm of Capcom) has all the “swapping two things to form lines of other things” that you’ve seen in every other match-three title, but it’s all centered around an adorable little bird-thing named Kiwi who is looking for her lost mother.

Kiwi watches you solve the game’s puzzles, and every once in a while, you unlock a new accessory for her and dress her up. If you couldn’t tell, Capcom and Beeline are specifically targeting female casuals with this one, but that’s not to say that non-girl types can’t also appreciate it.

It’s cool. Nobody will judge you.

Look: We know that not every iOS game is perfect. They all have their little quirks and irregularities, and some are flat-out broken. But among those that are actually playable, some contain a core mechanic that stumbles somewhere along the way. And maybe it’s a cool idea, but it feels like it could just be executed a little better.

That’s where this series comes in. We round up games that are not necessarily bad but just fall short in some area, and we suggest other titles that do it better.

Dog Diary — Lifestyle — Free

Dog Diary is an app that helps you keep track of all the people and events in your canine friend’s life. You can store important, pet-related contacts, expenses, and photos. You can also create entries for multiple animals to keep everything organized. It’s an address book, a photo album, and a bookkeeping program all in one. You can also track measurements like body temperature, provided you’re not shy about pulling out your phone as soon as the vet pulls out the thermometer.

I’m still waiting for an app that will walk the little guy for me once it gets snowy out, but we might need a robot for that.

Dog Diary

I grew up in the 80s, so I know how close we came to total nuclear annihilation when the WOPR computer became self-aware, as we saw in the 1983 documentary WarGames. The only thing that saved us back then was Tic Tac Toe, a game that became the savior of all humanity just by being stupid and largely unwinnable.

Tic Tactics aims to solve its predecessor’s “what the hell, we’re bored” factor by adding eight more boards and some much-needed lateral thinking.

And it succeeds admirably.

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include guides to this day in history, redecorating and cooking steaks.

Here you go:

On A Day Like This — Reference — $0.99

On A Day Like This is a brand-new app that fills you in on significant events for any day you choose. You just swipe in the date you want, and you can flip through events, births, deaths, and holidays and observances. It’s a simple, clean, easy-to-use app that contains a lot of interesting and potentially useful information.

For example, did you know that November 14 is the day that scientists discovered 90377 Sedna, an object that is orbits the sun at three times the distance of Neptune? Slip that into conversation at work and see what happens.

On A Day Like This

Houseplan — Productivity — Free

In the past, whenever I’ve wanted to change the furniture layout in a room, I’ve broken out the graph paper and made a tiny scale mockup of the space and everything in it. HousePlan is a new app that is designed specifically to keep things like that from happening. First, you place the walls, windows, and doors, and then you can figure out where the furniture goes before you actually have to lift anything. It’s quick and easy to use and the best part is that you don’t have to wonder if that piece of paper you just threw away is a scrap or your chifferobe.

Houseplan

SteakMate — Health & Fitness — Free

How do you know when a steak is done? You have the finger and thumb trick, the weirder face test, the less elegant “cut it open and look at it” test, or a meat thermometer.

Those wanting a more high-tech way to handle meat cookery might want to try SteakMate, a new app that provides custom timers for your grilling needs. You enter in the cut, thickness, cooking method and desired doneness, and it tells you what to do, including when to flip and how long to let it rest. It can even track multiple steaks simultaneously.

Plus, it’s way cleaner and less awkward than touching the steak and then your face.

SteakMate

1 Minute Desk Workout — Health & Fitness — Free

You know how it goes: You’re sitting there at work and you know you should take a break before your hands fall off, but you have all this stuff to do and you’ll get to it after you do this one last thing, but then you don’t. And then you get carpal tunnel syndrome. Like, immediately.

Enter 1-Minute Desk Workout. It will remind you to take hand and back breaks every hour and it’ll walk you through 60 seconds of exercises while it’s at it. It’s kinda like your mom telling you to stop playing video games and go outside. But for your cubicle.

1 Minute Desk Workout

Upcycling — Entertainment — Free

Green-lifestyle blog Eve of Reduction saw your landfill at Whole Foods the other day and thinks it looks tired and kinda flabby. It wants to help, so it has a thing you might want to check out.

Upcycling is a free app full of instructions and suggestions for repurposing and repairing out-of-use items. It’ll show you how to reupholster a chair, what you can do with used paint cans, and show you cool things other people have done with their would-be junk. It’s all arranged and indexed conveniently within the app, and even if you don’t do anything in there, it’s still interesting to browse through.

Upcycling

EndlessTV – Seasons — Lifestyle — Free

Now that we’ve gotten that pesky “Halloween” thing out of the way with all its gross movies and candy and fun, we can get down to the serious business of planning “The Holidays.” And if you’re getting ready to celebrate American Thanksgiving and need appropriate programming on your phone or iPad right now, EndlessTV’s “Seasons” app might be what you need. It features quick-loading, topical shows (mostly about food) that you can swipe through at your leisure.

I learned how to make a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin, and I don’t even know what I’m going to do with that knowledge.

EndlessTV – Seasons

I only really have a Facebook account for work purposes, and I usually only go there when I want to feel bad about myself. So I typically have no idea what’s going on there.

Apparently, Alpha Zen, a quotation-focused new game by developer Large Animal Games, wants me to know what’s going on with my friends, so it includes a mode that makes their statuses into game pieces.

It’s a little weird, but let me explain how the game works.

Writedown — Productivity — Free (Pro version: $2.99)

Sometimes, you have to write something really quickly on the go. Like, say, if you were supposed to find an app to write up for your daily post on a tech blog.

Actually, nevermind that example. It’s crazy and would never happen. But if it did, Writedown might be a good fit. It’s a quick and easy document creation tool that cuts out all the distractions (other than ads, in this Lite version). You just type your thing in a clean interface, and then you can export it to a text, e-mail, social media, or share it with AirDrop.

It’s bare-bones, quick, and easy to use. Not that I’m using it right now.

Crazy.

Writedown

The Shivah starts with a joke:

“A goy came up to Rabbi Moishe to ask, ‘Why do rabbis always answer with a question?’

To which Rabbi Moise replied, ‘Why not?'”

First released in 2006, The Shivah is a noirish, murder-mystery adventure game centered around a money-deficient New York synagogue. Its hero, Russell Stone, is not a hardbitten private investigator or a disgraced former police officer like the genre typically demands. He’s a cynical rabbi with a heavy conscience who stumbles into the investigation completely by accident. It sounds odd, and it is, but it also totally works.

Now, developer Wadjet Eye Games has released The Shivah: Kosher Edition, an updated iOS and PC version of the original game with all-new graphics and music. If you’ve never played the original and you’re a fan of adventure games and (well-meaning) Jewish humor, it’s a great take on the well-trod genre.

Upcycling — Entertainment — Free

Green-lifestyle blog Eve of Reduction saw your landfill at Whole Foods the other day and thinks it looks tired and kinda flabby. It wants to help, so it has a thing you might want to check out.

Upcycling is a free app full of instructions and suggestions for repurposing and repairing out-of-use items. It’ll show you how to reupholster a chair, what you can do with used paint cans, and show you cool things other people have done with their would-be junk. It’s all arranged and indexed conveniently within the app, and even if you don’t do anything in there, it’s still interesting to browse through.

Upcycling

I mentioned high-concept games with evocative titles earlier this week when I reviewed Tilt to Live 2, and here’s another one.

Don’t Shoot Yourself! is a quick, often frustrating little game in which the name says it all. You control a little ship (I guess) trapped inside of a series of shapes. Your main goal is to keep moving for until a number on the right side of the screen counts down to zero, and all the while your little guy is firing bullets all hither and thither. Your secondary goal is not to fly into any of those bullets.

If it sounds daunting, that’s because it is. But it’s still a game worth trying if only to see if you’re up to the challenge.

1 Minute Desk Workout — Health & Fitness — Free

You know how it goes: You’re sitting there at work, and you know you should take a break before your hands fall off, but you have all this stuff to do, and you’ll get to it after you do this one last thing, but then you don’t. And then you get carpal tunnel syndrome. Like, immediately.

OK, so you won’t, but 1-Minute Desk Workout will remind you to take hand and back breaks every hour, and it’ll walk you through 60 seconds of exercises while it’s at it. It’s kinda like your mom telling you to stop playing video games and go outside. But for your cubicle.

1 Minute Desk Workout

The best puzzle games either have a single rule (Tetris: “Make lines.”) or a few basic rules based on things we know innately or intuitively (Where’s My Water?: “Dig holes, water goes down, steam goes up, poison is bad.”).

Flux Free is a new iOS title which falls into the latter category. It’s a shape-matching game built on a few basic concepts like color theory that keep it from becoming obtuse even when all of its mechanics are in play.

That’s not to say that it’s incredibly easy, but you’ll never spend any time trying to remember how anything works. And it’s smart and fun, so that’s good, too.

SteakMate — Health & Fitness — Free

How do you know when a steak is done? You have the finger and thumb trick, the weirder face test, the less elegant “cut it open and look at it” test, or a meat thermometer.

Those wanting a more high-tech way to handle meat cookery might want to try SteakMate, a new app that provides custom timers for your grilling needs. You enter in the cut, thickness, cooking method, and desired doneness, and it tells you what to do, including when to flip and how long to let it rest. It can even track multiple steaks simultaneously.

Plus, it’s way cleaner and less awkward than touching the steak and then your face.

SteakMate

Tilt to Live is one of those high-concept games with a name that says it all. Kind of like Press X to Jason, but not quite as flippant or mocking.

And it was popular, so a sequel was inevitable. And so we have Tilt to Live 2: Redonkulous, which came out last week for iOS devices and delivers on its name almost immediately.

It’s kind of hard to explain until you’ve played it, though, and you should definitely play it.