iSmell Phone Wars Nearby

I just saw an interesting commercial while watching the Yankees-Angels game. If you haven’t seen it already, the video is below. Motorola bashed on Apple’s iPhone, explaining all of the things the iPhone doesn’t have, and then claiming that all of those features are implemented in the Droid. Now, obviously Motorola doesn’t know what the capabilities of a jailbroken iPhone has, but the Droid may put up a good fight against the iPhone.

Motorola’s Droid commercial, running with Verizon.

Some iPhone fans have responded back to this commercial with their own “commercial” (not aired on T.V.).

Here is a list of features the Droid will contain:

Video

Tunes

10,000+ Apps

The Network

Multitasking

High speed

Hi-Res

5 megapixels

Android 2.0

Speech Recognition

Notification Panel

Directions

(list cited from Quick Pwn)

Someone pointed out that WiFi is not listed here. A smart phone without WiFi can be a major problem to people. I don’t think that the Droid will be able to compete with all of the hype the iPhone has. I don’t suggest switching to get the Droid if you have an iPhone already, as it will be the same, and possibly less. If the Droid is up to potential, it will probably be like the Xbox 360 vs. PS3 console wars all over again.

Having problems with Jailbreaking? Look no further!

Jailbreaking 3.1.2
     I have noticed that many people are having trouble using blackra1n to jailbreak their device that is running on OS 3.1.2. Here is a in-depth guide on how I and many others have gotten blackra1n to work.

Step 1
Make sure you have the latest iTunes version, and your device is running on 3.1.2 (iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS). Also, this is Windows only. No Mac jailbreak has been released that I know of. I am also not sure if this works for the iPod Touch. If anyone has tried with an iPod Touch, please leave a comment saying which iPod Touch you are using and whether it worked or not.

Step 2
Download blackra1n.

Step 3
Unplug your device if it is plugged in, but have your USB cord ready to go into your device. Also close anything related to Apple (ctrl-alt-delete, then click the processes tab).

Step 4
Run blackra1n via command prompt (Start>Run…>Browse).

Step 5
Blackra1n should now say “waiting for phone.” Hold the sleep and home button on your device until the Apple logo appears. THEN immediatly plug your device into your computer.

Step 5
Let blackra1n do its work. Within a few minutes your device should have a picture of geohot and a couple iPhones, just wait from here.

Step 6
It should reboot your device when it has finished. Congragulations! Your device is jailbroken! But how do you get Cydia, Icy, or Rock? Keep reading.

Step 7
There should be a new icon on one of your device’s pages called blackra1n. Open it, select the programs you wish to install and install them. Your device should respring. THEN your done!

Thanks for reading and leave a comment if you have any problems.

iPhone update 3.1.2 released, Jailbreak too!

     Just wanted to throw this out. 3.1.2 has been released. It’s all just bug fixes, but fixes the bug that made the iPhone not respond to any buttons while it was asleep. Also a jailbreak is already released called blackra1n (scroll down and click the windows logo). This jailbreak actually installs cydia/rock/icy, whatever ones you want, unlike the Dev Team’s jailbreak for 3.1…

The Free App Pack

     Do you need apps that will help you daily and don’t cost a cent? Well you have come to the right place. Here are eight apps that are completely free and make life a lot easier. The apps include: Shazam, Pandora, WikiTap, Dictionary.com, Evernote, Score Center, Flixster, and Twitterrific. I highly recommend downloading all eight apps as each one is salutary and used with ease.

Shazam
     Shazam allows you to have music played into your microphone and identifies the song, artist, and album. This app is a must if you don’t have a paid radio service, such as Sirius Radio. Once a song is identified you can preview and buy it on iTunes, view on YouTube, tweet the song, send a postcard, view where you discovered the song, read a biography on the artist, read a discography of the artist, view the lyrics, save the album work, and attach your own picture to replace the album cover, all via the app. I should note that not all of these options will be available for every song you tag.

Pandora
     Pandora is almost like a radio, but with no advertising between songs, and free! The only advertisements are on the screen, which are small and close-able. When you create a station, you enter a song and/or artist that acts like a seed to find related songs. You can add more seeds if you wish to get more songs you like. It’s so simple yet incredible how this works. I always get songs that I enjoy and I even learn new songs. Pandora is a great way to listen to music you like and to find new songs. Pandora recently had to limit all users to a 40-hour limit a month to avoid lawsuits, but I have yet to surpass the limit. Overall Pandora is a great way to listen to music.

WikiTap

     WikiTap is a portable Wikipedia. Type something in the search, such as lacrosse, and it opens the Wikipedia page on lacrosse. Of course you could use Safari, but this is much faster and no need to type in wikipedia.org. There are three tabs at the top, Cached, Wiki, and Contents. Cached shows you very large excerpts (almost full size) without the pictures. Wiki displays the actual Wiki page (with pictures and links and all). There is also a link at the top to open the page in Safari. Last, Contents is the table of contents of the page. Pretty self-explanatory. Shows a list of all the sections, tap one, and takes you to the section under the Cached tab. There are also videos stickied to the bottom of your screen that are about the subject you searched. To recap all that has been said, WikiTap is a shortcut to Wikipedia, which is formatted to fit your screen. Even though Wikipedia has a lot of useful information, the man who made Wikipedia said that Wikipedia should not be used as a reference for school assignments.

Dictionary.com
     Dictionary.com decided to release an app called Dictionary. I have been calling it Dictionary.com just to keep it distinctive from other dictionaries. Dictionary is extremely useful. There is a dictionary and thesaurus inside of the app. Search a word and quickly switch between the definition and related words. Also, there is a Recent tab, which allows you to view your searches is newest to oldest order, and there is a Word of the Day tab, which doesn’t have much to describe. Dictionary is a very simple yet convenient app.

Evernote
     Evernote, recently reviewed here, is pretty much a notepad. But what makes this app stand out is that it syncs with your phone, computer, and there is even a Firefox extension. You can take text, picture, and voice notes. These notes are synced with your account. The desktop version lets you view and edit your notes, the iPhone/iPod Touch version lets you view an edit notes, and the Firefox extension allows you to take notes on a website. This takes note taking to the next level.

ESPN Score Center
     Score Center lets you create tabs of your favorite pro and college sports. The tabs shows you all of the recent, current, and upcoming games/scores. It even lets you put your favorite team at the top to quickly see how they are doing. Other then when the server is overloaded and the app won’t connect (which doesn’t happen that often), Score Center is a very easy way to keep track of scores when you are on-the-go.

Flixster
     Ever wonder what movies are in theaters, or ever want to watch that preview again because you missed part of it? Your adversaties are solved! Well, your movie problems, maybe not your other ones.With Flixster, you can save a list of movies you wish to see, watch previews, order movies via NetFlix, and much more.

Twitterrific
     There are many twitter apps out there, and some other free ones, but Twitterrific is a great way to use Twitter on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Twitterrific allows you to sign into multiple Twitter accounts, and has an option when tweeting to compress text and/or URL’s, which is great! Twitterrific is a great Twitter app, especially the compressing text part. 

Out with the Old, in with the New

     Apple’s new 3.1 release has new features and bug fixes, but has newly reported bugs. The bugs include unordered podcasts, random freezes/shut downs (which happened to me), wifi problems, and decreased battery life.

     I said before, it has been reported that podcasts are trading places with each other so they are out of order. It’s like if you were doing a science fair procedure and listed the steps in this order: 3,5,1,4,2. To clear things up that is how the podcasts get order, just an example. The second reported bug is random freezing or shutting down. Earlier today I picked up my phone and couldn’t get my phone to react to any button presses. Even moving the vibrate switch didn’t cause the phone to vibrate. After some time I had my phone plugged in and I was holding the sleep button. The screen went white for two seconds and went to the lock screen. No Apple logo or anything. This has happened to many people, and unfortunately multiple times a day for others. Third, few people are unable to discover WiFi networks. Manually searching may work after many tries. Last, and after almost all updates, decreasing battery life. It is not very significant, but it’s happening. The iPhone’s battery life is getting smaller and smaller. I suggest to put your brightness settings below half way. My settings are always the lowest with auto-brightness on. When you change it though, make sure it’s still legible and won’t damage your eyes. Also, turn WiFi off when you’re not at home, work, or whatever. Leaving it on causes it to always look for WiFi.

     That’s it for today. The choice to upgrade to 3.1 (if you haven;t already) is up to you. As 3.1 comes with MMS, it has it’s downfalls. If you already upgraded to 3.1, save all of your contacts to your email and do a restore (via iTunes). That should put it back to the factory default firmware. If that doesn’t restore it try Google. Thanks for reading and comment if you encounter more bugs.

Never Everlose notes again.

     Today I am reviewing a free app called Evernote. Evernote is a note taking app. Now, you may be thinking, “Oh great, another one?” But this isn’t just a text form with a paper background. This is quick, easy, and convenient.

     As you can see here, you can take text notes, take pictures, browse pictures from your iPhone/iPod Touch, and take voice notes. Taking text notes is very easy. Give it a title, choose the notebook take save it under, maybe add some tags for even more organization, and start typing. Usually what I do is when I see something I want to save off of the internet, I copy it and paste it (OS 3.0) into Evernote. Adding pictures creates a new note, and you have to select it from the Notes tab to edit it. I’d much rather have it take you to the editor right away but it’s nice and quick for saving photos on the fly. I think that the best part of this app is that it syncs with the desktop version (also free, on Windows & Mac). Also, which I use at home, is the Firefox extension. I love it. Just click the icon after you have copied your desired text or URL, paste it, and click “done.” I should also note that your notes are all saved on your account, but you can also save notes offline, and then they will sync later.

Click to view full size.

     Okay so, this will be quick since it’s just a note taking app. Well, the UI is great. Nice and big buttons with pictures next to the text. The look of the app when taking notes looks similar to the email app, so it’s easy to find what is where. Saving notes and syncing them doesn’t take long at all. Last, being able to save them over the internet, view them on your computer, iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, OR Palm Pre is very nice. Personally, I use this app almost everyday if not everyday. Wow, just this second I realized that you can right click on items or words in Firefox and it says “Add to Evernote.” Even more useful! So, I rate this app as…

9/10
Outstanding

Movies & Netflix & Twitter oh my!

MyMovieList is a nice little app on the iPhone/iPod Touch that lets you manage what movies you have watched, who your favorite actors and directors are, share your list on Twitter, and even order movies from Netflix.

When you first open the app it defaults you to the Search tab. The interface of this tab is pretty straight forward. Search by actor/actress, director, movie name, year the movie was released, or the genre. When I first went to “Search by name” I was astonished at how many movies can be in such a small application. It lists, what I am guessing, thousands of movies. Luckily there is the alphabet scrolling thingy on the left, and a search field at the top. Under the “Favorites” tab, it shows all of the actors, actresses, and directors you have marked. “iWatched” shows all of the movies you have marked. When you tap one of the movies you have searched, it shows when the movie was released, how long it is, the director, and all of the actors. This feature is pretty nice if you are in a conversation with someone and you are trying to remember the actor or director of a movie. Or if you are just plain curious, that works too. Last, under the “Share” tab, you can share your list with your Twitter followers.

The interface that MyMovieList has is very plain and simple, which I believe is all this app needs. Not too much and not too little.The repository this app contains is incredible. There are so many movies listed, including new movies, such as Jennifer’s Body. This application is a great movie reference. If I were to choose the price for this price, I would choose either free (and place an adsomewhere) or 99 cents.


Overall Rating: 8/10
Great

Cartoons fighting each other again… Sounds like fun!

As you can see, this is my first review I have ever done. I hope this will be good for a start.

Cartoon Wars is a strategy and defense-like game. The object of the game is to destroy your enemies castle. You send units, which costs mana (that regenerates overtime), to attack the enemy’s base. At the same time you send units, your enemy is sending units. It does not seem as if the enemy has any mana since they can send expensive units at the start, but there are random pauses where they won’t send units for some time. This is balanced with you having a tower that shoots arrows at your command. This feature used to be a thumb-killing experience before the newest update. Now this feature is enjoyed how it should be. Set the range that the arrows will shoot with a sliding button and tap a button to start/stop shooting arrows.

 

           The upgrades screen is very simple and user friendly.

Before, after, and during a battle you can visit the upgrades screen to improve your units, arrow tower, and castle. Most units have 10 upgrades, while the stronger and more expensive units have 8 upgrades. After upgrading a unit to a veteran (level 5) their appearance changes, and changes again around 8 and 10. This feature is nice because it makes you want to have the last appearance, and to get that you need money, and to get money you need to play. You earn a decent amount of money after every round, depending on how long you take to destroy the enemy’s castle. You get more money when you take longer, but sometimes the round already takes a good 15-30 minutes to beat.

When you first download Cartoon Wars, I believe it defaults the difficulty to medium. If you start off easy to get used to the game, you change the difficulty under the options screen, located at the main menu. While you are at the options screen, take a look at the other features you can change. For example, you may want to change the arrow firing controls, as I find type B much easier to use rather than type A. I should also note that there is a nice little “Save game” feature in Cartoon Wars. I save my game after every round in case something should happen during the next round, I can always restart the round. When you save your game, it only saves before and after rounds, not during rounds. This can be frustrating if you are about to beat the round and you get a phone call, but just be happy there is a some kind of saving feature.

Now that I am done reviewing the app, time to rate it. Lets start with graphic shall we? I enjoy the graphic that Cartoon Wars has. I am not a fan of those round 3d-looking graphics some games have. They just don’t have a very eye-appealing look to me. I like either flat 2d graphics with nice solid colors, or realistic graphics that give a flat wall 4 billion different colors on it. Since the name of the game is Cartoon Wars, the graphics are pretty cartoonish. I give the graphics an 8/10 because the graphics are nicely made cartoon pictures, but some units start to fade into that weird, 3d-2d mix.

Now to sound. The sound of each unit attacking is pretty good, but if you are like me, the sound of 100 weak units can get rather annoying. Also, the music is kind of annoying. Especially when you hear the end of the song loop to the beginning. I play with the sound off, but my iPhone is almost always on vibrate anyways. I give the sound a 4/10 because the sounds fit the actions, but after a while it can sound like a whole iTunes playlist playing at once.

Gameplay. The very heart of the game itself. The gameplay is well thought of and made. Tap on a unit and watch him attack enemies. Not too many things to monitor and not too little things to do.I give the gameplay a 9/10 because you’re always either tapping on a unit to deploy it or waiting for your mana to regenerate to send another unit. It may seem like a waiting game sometimes but it doesn’t last that long.

Last but not least, the user interface. Cartoon Wars has a nice and simple UI. Units at the bottom, arrow angling on the side, and an on/off button at the bottom right for the arrow tower. Of course, the arrow tower’s controls depend on what your options are set to, but other than that the UI is great. I give the user interface a 10/10 because it is very user friendly, and your not playing Twister with all of your fingers.

• The graphics are a good fit. 
• Sound and music could use some work. 
• The gameplay is nice and has a good replay value.
• User interface is simple and easy.

Overall Rating: 7.75

Good