Pangea’s latest iPhone title is another port from their set of Mac games. You play as Skip, a grasshopper whose backpack is stolen by a bee on the way to visit his famil-ee. He decides not to take this insult lying down and chases after the bee throughout the game’s 10 levels. The makeup reminds me a lot of Pangea’s most recent game, Billy Frontier, in which you play a cowboy throughout a number of different and loosely related mini games. Bugdom 2 certainly looks a lot more polished and put-together at first glance, but hit the jump to see how well their 3D adventure translates from a keyboard and mouse to an accelerometer and touch-screen.
edit — whoops, just wanted to add that 2.2 is NOT released yet. These are just some leaked screenies from devs and whatnot.
This isn’t a ground-breaking change, but apparently Apple thought that the magnifying glass button in Safari wasn’t getting enough use. So now they’ve changed it and put a mini search bar just to the right of the address bar and moved the refresh button right inside of the URL bar. Things certainly look a bit more cramped, but I’ll wait until I give it a shot meself to start my complaining.
It’s been a real PITA trying to get back into reading. I used to read books fairly often when I was in high school, but the habit just kinda withered away and died when I got more PC and console games. This is going to sound ridiculously pathetic, but I actually get annoyed by having to hold the book up and turn the page. Yes, I realize I sound like a spoiled digital brat.
Luckily for me there’s Stanza. For the low low cost of $0 cash money I get an incredible ebook reader on the iPhone that even does wi-fi syncing of books from my PC. I’ve already read four books on the iPhone and am just loving the experience. You can swipe or tap to switch pages, you can edit text size, and you can even lock the orientation (something I wish I could do in Safari sometimes). The wi-fi sync is as simple as opening the desktop app, opening the book you want to sync, and then loading up Stanza on the iPhone to download the file to the device.
If you haven’t tried Stanza from the App Store for your eBooking needs, I highly suggest you give it a shot!
Their website is here, and you can find their App easily enough through iTunes.
I’ve played a few racing games on my Sony Ericsson k750 and used the little joystick on the phone to control things, but the experience never really came together. Joysticks are good for certain things, but I always thought racing games needed steering wheels. Then the App Store came out and everything changed. The makers of a fancy pants game called Cro-Mag Rally claimed that we could treat the whole iPhone as a steering wheel. I smiled and frowned (simultaneously – it looked weird). Would tilting my iPhone left and right make for a better experience, or would I just going to give myself vertigo while sitting still?
I first saw Enigmo in a video of the unveiling of the iPhone SDK. I’ve tried a fair number of games on the DS and on my Sony Ericsson k750, so I was wondering how the iPhone could handle gaming. A lack of hardware buttons is a pretty big deal when you’re dealing with controls.
Thankfully, Pangea has really paved the way in terms of porting an experience with gameplay that really feel like it’s meant for the iPhone. Enigmo’s premise is a simple one: guide the droplets of water from the coloured drip into the similarly coloured vessel. You use a variety of tools to bounce, drop, and shoot the droplets – ultimately guiding 40 of them into the vessel to win the level. It’s like a pachinko machine, but with water!
I’ve gotta say I’m pretty psyched to see these games, and I hope that they can add more depth to than their mobile Spore version, which looks like a very casual version of the Spore experience. I want deeper gameplay experiences on the iPhone like the stuff PSN and Xbox Live seem to be getting with their downloadable games that retail for $10-15.
So there I am relaxing on my couch, looking for a new Cydia update, and then you bust out this dot upgrade and add all sorts of incredible new features.
Right on the top of my list here is the new Quickview (shown above), which allows you to actually read e-mail and text right on the unlock screen. You can even ‘mark as unread’ or delete.
There are also disgustingly cool new swipe features that lets you hide and reveal Intelliscreen with one swipe. Clean wallpaper one second, swipe right on the clock, Intelliscreen reveals itself – ambushing you with all the information you want.
These are just my highlights, though. The release notes page for the other upgrades and all the bug fixes. I strongly suggest you update ASAP. This update rocks! I’m really digging the new Quickview feature. I get all these stupid SMS for Voicemail and I used to have to take 10 seconds to delve into SMS just to clear it. Now I swipe right on the SMS and it’s marked as read. Perfect!
Posted By Ragart on Saturday, August 30, 2008 under General | 2 Comments
30
Aug
So my best friend was whining to me the other day about how low I was speaking on my iPhone. I chided him for his comment and thought to myself: excuse me, that’s because I’m a really great and polite person and I try not to speak too loud on my phone in public.
Later on, another friend called me up (I have more than one friend!) and she told me to speak up some more. I had to start shouting at home (so much for being polite…) just so she could hear me say “OK”. Obviously something had gone amiss in iPhone Land.
I started looking around online and found an Apple support ticket. Article #4 about Lint or dust covering the speakers and mic were of particular interest to me. I set off to investigate the issue with a toothpick, but it wouldn’t fit through the stupid micro holes. Then I took up the threader I use for flossing, then micro tweezers – but nothing could fit into the stupid holes enough to really get the gunk out. Then I got a set of hand needles for sewing and set those bad boys into the holes like a cellular acupuncture session.
It worked! I wouldn’t exactly recommend this to anyone, since pressing too hard might just damage something, but I thought I’d share my quick experience. I just stuck the needle into each of the holes (even the speakers – they’re loud as they were when I bought the iPhone six months ago). The needle felt like it was piercing layers of dust at some points…as if the stuff was caked underneath the black grill. I might still have to open the iPhone to clear it all out, but for now I’m fine having poked holes right through the dust cake.
First generation iPhone users like myself are used to the idea of adapters for use with the iPhone. After all, Apple, in all of their infinite genius, decided to make the 3.5mm port for earphones too bloody small for a large number of earphones on the market. Their solution? Hey, use an adapter (or buy an iPhone 3G)!
Another thing Apple kinda skipped out on with the iPhone (3G version included) is Bluetooth a2dp, which allows for wireless stereo sound on your compatible stereo Bluetooth headphones. You can pair headsets with the iPhone natively, but only for the making of the phone callings. Forget music – unless you count your ringtone.
But there’s got to be a way around, right? Like maybe Brando’s INFINXX Bluetooth Adapter that snaps onto the bottom of your iPhone? Something like that?
How many GPS-based applications do you expect to see for the iPhone in the future? A hundred? Two hundred? I say, all of them. Whenever it makes sense, the app will know where you are and where other iPhone users are, and make use of it. It’s going to be useful, it’s going to be fun, and it’s going to be huge. — Mashable
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