Touch Racing App

Touch Racing Nitro is a great racing game, though it takes some getting used to thanks to the unique controls. Instead of the virtual directional pad popular in most iPhone games you lead a race car on a virtual leash controlled by your finger.

The control system is a break from the many racing games that have the user steer the car by tilting the iPhone as if it is a steering wheel. Because the controls take a bit of getting used to, it is highly recommended that you play through the Touch Racing Nitro tutorial to get a feel for them (even the app’s home page includes the phrase “Warning! Extremely challenging” in the title).

During gameplay the race car follows your finger around the track. The race car will be sped up or slowed down based on how far your finger is from the car. Making turns or sudden speed shifts in Touch Racing Nitro can particularly take some getting used to.

Once you have the hang of things, Touch Racing Nitro is a pretty good experience. There are several different models of cars and tracks that can be unlocked by compiling victories.

Probably the trickiest piece of finger work when driving is the use of the Nitro boosts. At the bottom right of the screen are several icons that, once tapped, shoot a burst of nitro into your car. This speeds you along the track at a much faster rate. The trick here is doing this while also maintaining one finger on the screen to steer the car. Accomplishing this can be quite the feat. Even with lots of practice, it still is an awkward move.

Touch Racing Nitro is connected to the OpenFeint gaming network, which is available on several App Store games. OpenFeint is currently the king of social gaming on the iPhone, so if you’re an Xbox Live or PlayStation Network junkie this will feel right at home.

The good graphics and responsive gameplay make Touch Racing Nitro an intriguing option for racing fans. If the tricky controls don’t present a barrier, this may be another good way to kill time gaming with an iPhone.

iPhone OS 4.0

Steve Jobs Explaining iPhone OS 4.0 New Features

On April 8th 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled some of the new features available to iPhone App developers as well as the end-users, namely us iPhoners, that will be available with the iPhone OS 4.0 coming this summer.

The new iPhone OS 4.0 host alot of new features that we have been asking for. The number one on my list is the ability to multi-task. This is something that other smart phones have had over the iPhone in the past such as the Droid and the Nexus One.

iPhone OS 4.0 also adds 5x digital zoom to the camera application as well as adding tap to focus for the video on  3G S. That will be nice to have since the 3G S shoots a decent video. More media enhancement tools include GEO tagging for photo taken with your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3G S. iPhone OS 4.0 will also permit non-Jailbroken iPhone users to change your home screen wallpaper to whatever you like.

Another useful utility is the ability to group all your apps in folders. This is good if you have alot of games and business related apps and would prefer to arrange them in groups relative to their use. Also a handy spell check has been add and you can also use a bluetooth keyboard if you don’t like using the small touch screen for writing emails or other daily task that consist of alot of typing.

There are many more features available in this up coming update. We will post more as they reveal more of the features. In the mean time, check out the video…

iPhone OS 4.0

Epi App for iPhone

Throwing a party this season? Want to impress your guests? Let the App Store  plan your next soiree.  Buried beneath all those 100,000 apps are several clever apps that will guide you through the tedious party planning.  Fromage will help improve your cheese plate.  This handy pocket guide disguised as app gives you tons of helpful information. It has 380 cheeses from around the world. You can search by name, region, texture and even milk type.  The app also gives you cheese and wine pairings, in case your unsure.

Speaking of vino, Wine PhD is all about the grapes.  It will impress the amateurs and sommeliers (fancy word for wine-os) alike.  It has wine ratings, recommendations and wine pairings.  It also provides news articles with the latest trends from winemakers, vineyards and tips on popular wine regions and best values.

As you start thinking about your menu, you at might consult the Epi app.  The Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List, its full name, will present you with 25,000 recipes to browse.  These recipes are all from professionally tested kitchens, top gourmet magazines and top recipe sources.  So, go ahead amaze your dinner guests and take all the credit.  Whole Foods Market Recipes is another dinner app that provides meal options with all natural and organic ingredients.  For a casino approach to dinner planning, All Recipes Dinner Spinner and Big Oven Shake both equip you with meal ideas and recipes for any occasion. All Recipes is set up like a slot machine with categories like dish type, ingredients and even prep time. Big Oven Shake has over 170,000 recipes donated and shared from over 100,000 contributors and fans.  If your unsure about what to make, give your phone a shake and it will randomly pick something for you.  Grocery IQ app will help you with your grocery list and even has predictive text and a favorite’s list history.  You can even email your list to someone and  have them do your dirty work, I mean grocery shopping.

So,  save your energy for your guests,  let your iPhone do the work for you.  These are only a few of the apps you can use to your party planning advantage.  You’ll have more wine time and less whine time. These apps are all available through iTunes.  All are free except Wine PhD, which is $4.99,  Fromage is $1.99 and Grocery IQ is $.99.

The new version of facebook is finally here. Version 3.0 gets some fresh updates that should make the iPhone/facebook experience more fun. The home screen has a new look to it (we approved). One of the main features that I like is the video upload capabilities from the new iPhone 3G S. I’m pretty sure that facebook will have a sudden increase of video uploads in the next couple of weeks. Let’s hope their servers are up to it.

Here are some of the new bells and whistles:

-”News Feed”
- Events
-Notes
-Create a new Photo Album from iPhone
-Upload photos to each album
-Zoom in photos
-Revised Home Screen with better options
-Friends messaging in landscape keyboard mode

There are more, but these are the ones I thought were the most important and fun. This version also fix some bugs from the last version that was available. The user  interface that they have now is really way cooler than the old one. The instant access to everything from the home screen is really a great step forward in making the iPhone as user friendly as the computer is when it comes to facebook.

I’m interested in how the next update will be when iPhone OS 3.1 comes out…

With the new iPhone 3.0 firmware upgrade, there seem to be a ton of complaints about iPhone 2G, 3G, and 3G S having issues with the wifi working on the phone. It seems that the iPhones ability to maintain signal strength has been hindered in some form from the new update. Apple has said that the way the wifi is set-up on the 3.0 Firmware has been altered in order to increase battery life when wifi is in use on the iPhone (6 hours iPhone 3G, 9 hours iPhone 3G S).

Judging from the huge amount of complaints on the Apple discussion board, they have missed the mark. I upgraded one of my 1Gen iPhones and my wifi stopped working all together. It seems to be a random problem from iPhone to iPhone, but the fact that it is occurring on all 3 generations of iPhones seems to indicate that it is definitely a software issue. This may explain the quick release of 3.1 Firmware soon to be available.

Currently Apple has released the iPhone SDK 3.1 beta 2 to developers, which is usually a good indicator that a public release of the official firmware is right around the corner. I’m sure they will also attempt to patch up more of the security holes that were exploited on the 3.0 firmware as well as fixing the wifi problems. Lets hope that this firmware update will be the solution and allow us to have fully functioning iPhones again…