Quit frozen iPhone apps with Home button double-tap

I have used this many times when applications freeze, and neither the Home button nor the Lock button have any effect.

If this happens, try double-tapping the Home button to invoke the Home button shortcut. My double-tap shortcut is for the iPod, but this also works with Phone favorites. By starting the Phone app, or the iPod app, the iPhone kills the hung application.

Export Shazam tagged songs list from jailbroken iPhone

If you have a jailbroken iPhone, and want to save the Shazam tagged songs list, you have to connect to your iPhone via ssh, then go to this path: /private » var » mobile » Applications » long_string_of_characters » Documents. Replace long_string_of_characters with your phone’s unique string, then download the file clarusx6.sqlite.

Next, download sqlitebrowser for OS X, open the file you just downloaded from your iPhone, and the game is done.

[robg adds: I believe the 'sqlitebrowser' referred to above is this program, but I'm not positive.]

Scrabble, Just Right for Tough Times

Scrabble was invented by Alfred Mosher Butts, an out-of-work architect, during the Great Depression. Hmm, I wonder whether it’s coincidence that Electronic Arts has just released its version of the popular word game for the iPhone, or a sign the economy is set to go further down the drain?

If you know how to work a crossword, then you know how to play Scrabble. How true is EA’s version to the real thing? Pretty close, with a few extras mashed in.

The app’s rules are almost the same as those of the board game. Both rely on the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 4th Edition. Some significant differences between the virtual and real: If you attempt to spell a word that’s not in the dictionary, you can recall your tiles and try again. I didn’t catch the computer making any mistakes for me to challenge either! Finally, there’s a “best word hint” mode that leaves it to the computer to figure out the best combo of tiles you should play. No self-respecting Scrabble player would want those features.

Still, game play is high-class. You double tap to zoom the board and drag and drop tiles. You’ve got a shuffle button if you want to mix up your tiles automatically instead of manually. Shaking the iPhone scrambles the tiles in the bag. In sum, this Scrabble app takes advantage of all the iPhone’s capabilities in a way that simulates playing the physical board game.

The one thing I’d like is to be able to pick up and drop a tile. As is, you can’t point at a tile and then the square where you want it to go. It’s not a deal breaker, but the option would be useful.

You can play against the computer or against another player over Wi-Fi. There are three levels: Easy, Normal and Hard. I’m a regular Scrabble player, although no where near expert level, and I found the Normal mode too easy. My iPhone average was 50-60 points higher than my board-game average.

Earlier, App Store reviewers complained about load times and flaky app behavior. I’m playing version 1.0.53 and find it loads in about 10 seconds. It hasn’t crashed on me yet, either.

Something old, now new, with I See Ewe

I See Ewe – Matching games are always a sure bet when it comes to designing children’s games. They’re great for younger preschoolers because they’re easy to learn and they keep the older ones coming back for more because each game presents new and fun pictures.

I See Ewe, a kid’s app for iPhone and iPod touch by Claireware Software, continues in the matching game tradition with Match Items, and expands the appeal of the app by including a second game: Learn Words. Designed for preschool age children, I See Ewe features various settings that make this $0.99 app adaptable for players at various ages and levels.

Match Items follows the rules of the old standard memory game: touch two cards at a time and try to — you guessed it — match items. With I See Ewe successfully pair up two cards and win audio props, mismatch a pair and the device vibrates. (A word of caution — for younger players, a pillow on the lap is helpful to avoid your iPhone or iPod touch hitting the ground in case the vibration catches your little one off guard).

In Learn Words, a series of pictures is presented. The name of one of the items is listed at the bottom and a voice announces the word. Identify the item correctly by touching the picture that corresponds with the word. For younger children learning new words, the variety of pictures helps broaden a young vocabulary. Turn the voice command off and the game becomes a pre-reading tool for older preschoolers becoming familiar with letters and sounds.

An options page allows you to change the set of cards used in either game, as well as control the level of difficulty for each by adjusting the size, and therefore the number, of cards that are displayed.

I See Ewe was recently updated to include more card set choices. Now players can choose between geometric shapes, colors, household objects and animals.

The developer of I See Ewe clearly used some tried and true games as a starting point in designing Match Items and Learning Words, but regardless, I See Ewe still managed to take something old and make it new.

A Test Drive with Ferrari GT: Evolution

The last thing you or I need is to spend even more time playing driving games than working, but you must take Gameloft’s Ferrari GT: Evolution for a test drive.

I can’t put the darn thing down.

The graphics are terrific — the 3D visual effects are lush and crisp at the same time. You have a ginormous array of options: 33 different Ferraris, 8 tracks,3 difficulty modes, 3 control modes, 5 car customization settings… There’s more: 5 camera positions, 4 colors for each car, up to 7 opponents for each track, screen orientation and that’s still not all. Whew!

Okay, so you want to know, what’s it like to test your mettle on the pedals of one of these fine Italian steeds?

With Ferrari GT Evolution you have three steering control options — accelerometer, screen taps and steering wheel. The accelerometer works best for me. It’s more intuitive than screen tapping. The wheel control is too small for me to use comfortably and it’s positioned awkwardly to the left side of the screen. It might be better if it were larger or closer to the middle, but I can’t say for sure.

The difficulty modes range from easy to hard, and vary according to track: Rome, Fiorano, Italy, Berlin, New York City, Athens and others. With Ferrari Gt Evolution you can choose between portrait and landscape modes and a range of camera positions from inside the car to “Very Far.”

Ferrari Gt: Evolution provides several ways to customize your car’s set up too: adaptive steering, ceramic disks, ABS, for example.

Steering Ferrari GT takes some getting used to. It could be more reactive even though after some practice I was able to compensate some. There’s a sensitivity adjustment and my setting is close to the most sensitive.

As you might expect with a racing game of this complexity, load times are on the long side in some places. It takes about 75 seconds after you launch the app to get to the first track you can play. Ferrari Gt Evolution takes about 20 seconds to exit to the main menu and switch tracks. It’s easy to get impatient, but just tell yourself the wait is worth it.

Fire Art Garden Not That Explosive

Fire Art Garden is a puzzle offering that puts you in a race against time to launch fireworks. To do so, you must rearrange a rope maze to let a spark makes its way to the launchers. While Fire Art Garden is novel in concept, some unresponsiveness from the touch screen keeps it from being a truly great app.

The title screen give you the standard three offerings of levels — easy, medium and hard. When Fire Art Garden begins you will see one or more sparks burning their way through a puzzle-like rope course. The screen is divided into tiles that you must move with your finger to connect the untethered portions of the ropes. Connecting the ropes will send the spark on its happy little way until it reaches the fireworks launcher. The points for completing the round are tallied and it is on to more challenging puzzles.

As Fire Art Garden progresses, there are more sparks to keep track of — sometimes two or more will launch at the start of the round. To pass you only need to get one into each launcher. When a spark burns out, two toga-clad individuals appear and hammer away at where the spark went out; probably to repair the rope. Should all the sparks burn out, the round is lost.

Fire Art Garden definitely makes the player think and plan ahead about how to maneuver the tiles, especially as the rounds become more challenging. The music, as with many apps, was quite annoying. However, the developers made it easy to turn off.

The biggest flaw was how inconsistent some of the tile-moving worked on my iPhone’s touch screen. It was not uncommon for it to take two or three swipes to get some of the tiles to move. It seems like you have to tap and swipe at just the right location in the center of the tile.

It’s a shame for a good game to fizzle because of usability. The sensitivity issues aren’t a deal-breaker for me, but they could change the outcome of Fire Art Garden for some players.

Even Real Smoking Would Be Better than Electric Smoking

Do you enjoy smoking cigarettes but are bothered by the whole lung cancer thing?

Nico Becherer’s Electric Smoke app is a realistic-looking cigarette or cigar that you can “smoke” by inhaling through the iPhone’s microphone. Tap a button to light up and inhale on the microphone. The harder you huff, the hotter the head of the butt gets. The length of the ash never varies, unlike the real thing..

What’s pretty cool — conceptually, anyway — is that you can light your cigarette or cigar with other apps such as Smule Sonic Lighter. Electric Smoke, which uses Smule’s audio tech, is an example “proximate networking,” Smulean for something that “fosters physical interactions in an increasingly virtual world.”

With Electric Smoke there’s a stats page where you can track the number of cigarettes and cigars you smoke, the average time it took to smoke each of them and other information. What other information exactly? I’m afraid to go back and find out. You see, four out of five times I went to the stats page, the Electric Smoke crashed. Now, I don’t go there any more.

Trust me, you’re better off sucking on a real cancer stick, while standing in the rain, in front of the lobby of the building where you work, when your health-nut boss walks by than messing around with this foolish smoking app.

Related Articles: Smoke 51

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Imangi Invites Players to Join in a Multi-Player Word Challenge

Imangi may seem like just another word game a first glance, but Imangi has a twist that makes the game different and challenging. Each row and column is actually a dial that lets you rotate the letters. The plan is to get as many words as possible on that one board. Imangi seems like it would be simple, but it is actually very difficult.

The instructions page, which can be accessed from the home page is well written and explains everything you need to know to get started. It also breaks down Imangi into sections, so if you are only confused about one part of the game it’s simpler to find help rather than searching through 100’s of words of text in order to find out one little thing. The game options lets you choose your word list, toggle the game sounds, and decide whether you want to have popup instructions appear during gameplay.

Once you push new game, Imangi offers up four game types. The first is pretty standard — there’s no time limit and just involves getting as many words as possible. Speed, also self-explanatory, is a timed game that allows you to clear words as you form them as well as create adjacent words to earn extra points.

Daily Challenge is a gameboard that gets posted each day. It allows Imangi players from all over the world to play the same gameboard and see how they rank against others. Friend Challenge follows a similar idea. If you do well in a particular game you can challenge your friend by sending them the same board to see if they can beat your score.

One of the best things, however, is that Imangi isn’t limited to the english dictionary. Imangi supports many other main languages including Spanish, French, and Italian. So, not only is Imangi more challenging than other word games, but it’s the most inclusive I have seen yet.

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Motorola MOTOPURE H12 Bluetooth Headset – New in Poly-Bag – Includes Charging Stand and Charging Case

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