Need for Speed Undercover

Need for Speed Undercover is a new game I reently downloaded to my iPhone. It’s certainly the most sophisticated racing program currently available for the iPhone/Touch. It has a simple story line complete with videos of the characters you are interacting with. It features a rock sound track and amazing graphics. You play an undercover cop attempting to infiltrate the illegal racing scene. The game is easy to control, and just difficult enough without being frustrating. You particpate in a vareity of races, and each race is challenging and not too long. All-in-all, I’m finding this to be a very sophisticated and very fun game on my iPhone.

Metal Gear Solid Touch for iPhone/Touch

Metal Gear Solid Touch is a fairly new game for the iPhone and Touch. It’s a shooter that makes innovative use of the touch interface of the iPhone and Touch. It’s got interesting graphics, a simple story line, and just enough challenge to make for an interesting but not overtaxing game. You’ve got access to an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, and sometimes a rocket launcher. I’m not a hard-core gamer, but I found this game to be enjoyable without being frustrating. Hard-core gamers my be disappointed but I think most people will find this game quite enjoyable.

MapsBuddy for iPhone/Touch

MapsBuddy is a wonderfully simple little 99 cent program that I’ve found to be extremely handy to have on my iPhone. It does just one thing, and one thing well. It allows you to tap on a search term contained within the program, and have the built-in Maps program launched using that search term. It has multiple categories of search terms and allows you to create new ones, and to move search terms into a favorites section that appears at the top of the list. Above you’ll see my favorites – the terms I use most when I’m travelling on business.  This little program saves me lots of typing, especially when driving!

DirecTV for iPhone/Touch

DirecTV is a very handy free application for subscribers to that satellite television service. The application allows you to search for shows up to two weeks in advance and then remotely program your DirecTV DVR to record them. Very nice little app!

Pocket Informant for iPhone/Touch

Pocket Informant was a favorite PIM application for me back in the days when I owned a Pocket PC PDA. It provided a wonderful view into all of the critical data for managing my daily activities.

Now there is a version of this program available for the iPhone/Touch. I’ve been using it for over a week now and I must say I’m quite pleased with it. Be aware, however, that this is definitely Version 1.0 of this application and it does not yet have all of the features available in it that the current Windows Mobile version of ths application does. It is quite a bit nicer than anything else I’ve seen in PIM applications for the Apple platform, though. It syncs very nicely with Google Calendars and Toodledo.

One warning should be noted – appointment alarms don’t work unless the application is actually running at that time. This is a limitation imposed by the current lack of access to the Notification Manager by developers and should be remedied by the release of Version 3.0 of the iPhone/Touch firmware this summer. In the meantime, I’m syncing both Pocket Informant and the built-in Calendar application to Google Calendar and just using the built-in Calendar application as a way to set off audible alarms when appointments come due. Although this sounds kind of kludgy, once it’s set up it works flawlessly.

Flight Control for iPhone/Touch

Flight Control is a very fun little game I recently bought for my iPhone. It’s very simple to play, but quite challenging. It puts you in the role of air traffic controller directing landings into an airport. There are two runways and a heliport for accepting aircraft, and four different aircraft types arriving: helipcopter, private plane, jet and jumbo jet. I’ve wasted hours playing this game. It’s easy to pick up during odd moments of downtime and play. I really like it’s combination of simple play and challenging strategy. You’ll quickly become overwhelmed at first, but with experience you’ll be able to safely land more and more aircraft. Highly recommended!

Kindle Books on the iPhone/Touch

Amazon now has a wonderful free application for Kindle owners available for download from the App Store: Kindle for iPhone. It gives you access to all of your Kindle books archived on Amazon’s Web site.  You can change the font size and set bookmarks and the overall reading experience on my iPhone is excellent. It doesn’t seem to support subscriptions to magazines and newspapers – at least not yet. It even claims to sync current reading locations between a Kindle and the iPhone/Touch, although I haven’t figured that out yet.  I’m really happy to see this application as I’ve been a big Kindle fan since they were first released.

NYC Subway Map for iPhone/Touch

Because of our recent vacation in NYC, I wanted to find a nice subway map to carry with me on my iPhone. During the many years I worked in NYC I always carried such a map application on my Treo and found it invaluable for getting around the city. Well, I think I’ve found such an application for my iPhone: Kickmap. It’s contains a plethora of information on daytime and nightime subway service in the Big Apple, and is extremely easy to use. It’s also well integrated with the built-in Map application. If you plan on going to NYC anytime soon, be sure to check out this very handy application.

Silly Little iPhone/Touch Game

MewMew Tower is a very simple yet amazingly fun and quite addicting game from Japan for the iPhone/Touch. The premise is extremely simple: stack cats on top of each other to make a tower as tall as possible, tilting the iPhone/Touch as necessary to compensate for any leaning of the tower. The implementation of the game is what makes it so fun: the cats are all hand drawn and vary greatly in size. They mew appropriately, especially when a very large cat is placed on top of a smaller one. The game is cute, sweet, and downright fun!

Street View Comes to Charleston, WV

The street view function in Google Maps has recently become available for the Charleston, WV area. The picture above shows the street on which I live (although you can’t actually see my house) as it appears on my iPhone. Amazing!