Camcard(Business Card Reader) for Iphone
In an effort to clean up my desk this weekend I went searching for an IPhone application would scan all the business cards I’ve received over the years at various events and than ditch the physical cards. I found CamCard for $6.99 and it had a ton of reviews. I spent the $6.99 which is a little steep for an application price if I do say myself. I scanned my first business card and was amazed with the results, it created the perfect contact in my address book and captured everything I needed. I’m very satisfied with my purchase!.
Check out more here.
read moreGames of the Year
2010 was a year of many great games like Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Civilization 5, StarCraft 2, Grand Turismo 5, and Call of Duty Black Ops to name a few. With a pretty darn good year in video games how could I possibly pick a game of the year? The simple answer is I couldn’t. When I sat down to think about the year in review 2 titles came to my head Mass Effect 2 and Grand Turismo 5. Both games brought me many hours of joy and in the case of GT5 continue to do so.
But before I dive into why I choose GT5 and Mass Effect 2 I wanted to take this time to try and understand how we come to the conclusion on criteria is used for game of the year. What makes a game worthy? is it the most polished, most complete package? is it the game that we had the most fun with, is it the game that left us with the most awe dropping moments?
For me I sit down and thought of 2010 and instantly thought of Mass Effect 2′s opening scene where the Normandy is attacked and my living rumbled by noise of a battle of two ships. I was blown away and knew I was in for a very good ride. I sat down after worked and played for about 5 hours. I couldn’t put the game down but knew I had too. Bioware did a great job in allowing the decisions I made in Mass Effect to be carried forwarded and ultimately help shape some of Mass Effect 2. This was an evolution in the gaming industry in 2010 for myself and I sincerely hope Bioware takes this a step further in Mass Effect 3. I’m going to get into some spoilers here so stop reading the rest of this paragraph if you haven’t played Mass Effect 2. The plot generally involves the Illusive Man bank rolling Commander Sheppard’s operation. Sheppard travel’s around the universe recruiting individuals than goes out to ensure he has their loyalty by doing specific missions for those characters. They ultimately find the collector base and Sheppard needs to decide to destroy or preserved the Collector base. I sat there for almost a half an hour weighting the pro’s and con’s of each decision before ultimately coming to the conclusion that the Collectors need to be destroyed. Mass Effect 2 had me on the edge of my seat for most of the game but for when I was bored out of my mind mineral hunting.
After 6 years of development, a delayed launch and finally a very low profile launch of Sony’s biggest title of the year Gran Turismo 5 failed to live up to a lot of peoples expectations of perfection. This game is far from perfect, from it’s horrible UI, unlocking of damage, and confusing online lobby system when you get down and dirty and look past these faults this is a simulation racing game at it’s finest. Buying, racing and tuning car’s has been a blast. I just enjoy it, no gimmickie rewinds or anything, just pure racing if you screw up it’s your fault. The game has been out over a month and we’ve already seen 3 huge patches to the game. To me this means continued support as we wait 12 year’s (I’m only joking) for the next Grand Turismo game.
For these reasons I listed above I must co-name Mass Effect 2 and Grand Turismo 5 my games of the year.
Tetris For the Iphone/Itouch
Tetris has been released for the Iphone and is published by Electronic Arts. I saw this in the app store for $4.99 (50 % off holiday sale) and I thought to myself, “You need to pick this up!” As soon as I clicked the purchase button I felt some sort of nostalgia come over me. I instantly flashed back to 1992, walking out of a store (the name I can’t remember at this moment) with my grandmother who had just bought my Nintendo GameBoy with Tetris and Blades of Steel – At least this time I didn’t have my parents screaming at me for this purchase of Tetris.
Nothing new on the game play front, with the exception of the ability to listen to your Itunes music collection while you play Tetris. It does feature 4 original soundtrack songs. The game features 2 modes called Marathon and Magic, and 15 Levels. Marathon mode features level 1 through 15, can you beat all levels? I couldn’t get pass level 9. The difficulty in this game sky rockets from levels 9-15. Magic Mode offers special tools that take advantage of the Iphones capabilities. Magic mode gives you 5 powers that you earn throughout the levels to manipulate the pieces to your advantage so you can clear all the lines. The powers are Bubble Wrap, Magic Crayon, Wrecking Ball, Minimizer and Smashdown .Like most other Iphone games you touch the screen and drag ,rotate drop the pieces where you want them to go, just tab the piece on screen and the block will flip positions allowing you to place it just perfectly. Like most other Iphone games you touch the screen and drag the pieces where you would like them to go, simply tap the piece on screen and the block will flip positions allowing you to place it just perfectly. The controls are just perfect. The touch screen suits Tetris. There have been a lot of complaints that Tetris will crash your Iphone/Itouch.
If you are a Tetris fan and have an Iphone or Itouch and are looking for a game to play, I recommend you pick up Tetris before it goes back to regular price.
read moreBeejive IM for the Iphone/Itouch
The Beejive Company has released version 2.0 of the widely popular IM client on the Iphone. It may come with a steep price tag of $15.99(!!!) but it is worth every penny and much much more. It supports a wide variety of IM clients and is probably one the most intuitive applications available.
As soon as I downloaded the application and synced up my Iphone 3g on the Rogers network, I doubled clicked the application, added my MSN account, Google talk account and logged into both at the same time with zero problems. The tabs of the application are Buddy list, favourites, chats, accounts and more. As soon as I logged into MSN I was surprised to see my groups were imported as is, does it ever make communicating a lot easier when you have your contacts sorted into groups. Once you closed the application it doesn’t log you out, it simply will email you a notification of a chat if you have push email service enabled. You can also send and receive files with this application. I guess the single biggest feature it is it doesn’t kill your battery. That’s right it’s very gentle on your battery life!
Overall this is by the single best IM application in the Itunes Application store. I can’t wait to see what future updates this application holds.
