PageOnce is an incredibly useful aggregator that’s available for free. What it does is it remembers your login information to various websites, ranging from e-mail such as Live Hotmail, utilities such as your cell phone provider and social networks. It can even keep track of pesky information such as your frequent flyer mileage, Starbucks cash card balance and your YouTube profile.
With the launch of the iTunes App Store, PageOnce has released its free application for the iPhone, and it works as intended. Once you set up your information on PageOnce.com, it will be available on your iPhone. Setting up is easy (as all you have to do is enter the PageOnce.com login information), and looking at the data is simplistic. The program feels sluggish when it comes to downloading your account information, but it still beats having to login to every one of those sites individually.
In short, if you’re already using PageOnce, getting your data mobile is an easy step when you have an iPhone or iPod Touch. After all, this mobile version is free as well.
[Read my review of PageOnce.com here | Visit PageOnce.com and create your account]
Today is July 11th 2008, and that means iPhone 3G is finally launching in Canada on Fido and Rogers. Reviews are slowly trickling in and most of it is positive, as the iPhone 3G improves upon the regular iPhone in both hardware and software deparments.
All Things Digital: “If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge”
Engadget: “For our money, you’re going to have a hard time finding a better device for two hundred bucks – or maybe even for any price.”
USA Today: “Still not perfect, but really close”
Guitar Hero franchise keeps expanding and has now reached the smallest screen available: your cell phone. Guitar Hero III Mobile is based on the latest console Guitar Hero III. By eschewing the plastic guitar, you have to rely on your phone’s keypad to rock. Instead of 5 frets, you have to contend with 3 only - activated by keys 1, 2 and 3. Of course there are blue glowing notes and when you hit a series of notes correct, you can collect star power.
The effort to shrink the experience to the small screen is overall succesful. The game ships with 15 songs initially, and there are 3 new downloadable songs each month. If you’re into the Guitar Hero franchise and you’d like quick fixes outside of your home (or when you don’t have a DS around), Guitar Hero III Mobile is perfect for quick diversion.
Rating: 80%
Just because iPhone is launching in just a few days doesn’t mean it will be the perfect phone for everybody. Fido has recently released Sony Ericsson’s W380a at $60 (with 3-year contract) or $300 without any contract. How does this multimedia-oriented phone fare?
CNET (6.7/10): “respectable, midrange Walkman phone that offers some nifty design touches. But there are better Walkman options out there”
There isn’t too many reviews available so far (as the W380a isn’t even offered by an American carrier)
Spot the difference is a pretty popular game that gets tiring quickly, and Crazy Spot for Windows Mobile (and Symbian) devices suffer from the same fate. Your goal is to compare 2 photos and find the 5 differences in each photo. Sometimes it is easy to see - thanks to some bad Photoshop jobs - and othertimes, they made it maddeningly difficult.
If you think spotting the difference is a game for you, you can try the demo for free, or download the PC version for no charge whatsoever. It is perfect for short burst games while you’re waiting for something (such as the bus…) but don’t expect a marathon gameplay out of this one.
[Download Crazy Spot for PC, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices]
Live Search Mobile, first released last year for Windows Mobile, BlackBerries and other phones, has now been updated that includes many new functionalities. (I first talked about it on May 31 2007.) In addition to Map, Directions and Traffic, the application can search for Movies, display local Gas Prices, search the Web, display local Weather and even get updates from other websites such as HomeThinking and Flickr. Another big improvement is the addition of voice search. By pressing "Speak" button, you can now search without typing.
Overall, the new additions improve the usefulness of the application over and beyond what Google Maps offers. Although there are plenty of websites and applications that offer weather forecast, it is a nice idea to put it all in one place. It is easy to find out gas prices in your region (especially if your phone has GPS capability since it will know exactly where you are, and then to route to the gas station).
As this is a free download, you should head over to wls.live.com on your mobile device and download Windows Mobile version as it will complement your other applications.
[Visit Live Search Mobile website for more details | Go to wls.live.com to download Live Search Mobile]
Herocraft’s game Robo has a simple concept: navigate a level and get through to the exit without getting killed by many lasers in the level. To do so, you must disrupt laser’s path using rocks and mirrors, move them or blow them up with bombs scattered throughout the level. While the premise is simple, the game is incredibly tough to beat as simply moving things around at random will not get you to the exit.
The game requires a lot of advance planning and strategy as you need to figure out how to change a laser’s path and which one to take out. Even if you think you have something figured out, you will have to try a level many times as it’s tough to anticipate every move. Robo does feature an undo button but you can only undo one move… the game would have benefited greatly from undo button that can take you all the way to the beginning of the level.
The biggest problem with this game is the difficulty spike. First 4 or 5 levels are pretty straightforward, and then you are suddenly stuck in a level where nothing you do makes sense. Often, there is only one way to get through the level, and it can take a long time and many tries if it didn’t click in your brain.
If you like a lot of strategy in your puzzle game, you will definitely enjoy Herocraft’s Robo. With 76 levels, you will get plenty of game time out of Robo. This game is available for many devices such as Windows Mobile (where I tested it) and even TomTom navigation devices at various prices (ranging from $7.77 to $15.85).
Rating: 75%
[Download trial and buy full version from Herocraft website]
As Rogers becomes the first carrier in North America to sell Nokia’s flagship N95, it is time to look at what has already been said about this super device. Nokia insists it is a computer, but we’ll settle for a pretty-smart phone.
CNET (7 out of 10): they like the fact that it is a feature packed phone, but dings it for poor standby battery life, sluggish performance and flimsy sliding mechanism.
Gizmodo: GPS and great quality 5 megapixel camera make this device stand out from the competition, but once again battery life and laggy performance are major turn-offs.
GSM Arena: they call N95 "crown of the entire Nokia portfolio" however they recommend you turn off 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS unless you want to charge the device twice a day.
Mobile Burn: this powerhouse smartphone is recommended for its amazing feature set, but they characterized the stand-by batter life as "horrible"
My-Symbian: N95 is a "great looking phone and a great performer" and suggests you go and get it.
If you want a feature-packed phone, there is no other device like it on Rogers lineup. With internal memory of 8GB, 5.0 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, 3G HSDPA network access, Bluetooth, 802.11g, and even built-in GPS will ensure your phone will have something for everyone.
Priced at $399.99 (after mail-in rebate), it is also the priciest phone available at Rogers. Only recommended for hard-core users that need everything (and more) in their phones.
Based on the PC game Westward (available from BigFishGames), mobile version was developed by Astraware for Palm OS, Windows Mobile Standard and Professional. It bills itself as a Wild West adventure, and it mostly delivers. Graphics are great for a mobile game, gameplay is very engaging and deep and it is an overall fun game.
You experience the life of a frontier settler by building towns, giving your folks places to live, employ them to produce food and gold, defeat bandits as you track down Mad Russian to bring him to justice. There are over 20 levels in the game and it will give you plenty of gameplay. The game is perfect for you to be playing in short bursts as it is easy to save and return to the game later.
It isn’t exactly bug-free though. On several occasions, I encountered game-stopping bugs such as characters not responding to commands. It is also pretty difficult to control multiple characters at the same time when your town grows to a certain size, particularly with the limited input options on the Smartphone version. You basically move the d-pad to select and issue commands, and when maps get big, it’ll take a long time to scroll anywhere.
Nonetheless, if you’re interested in a town-building game with some action/adventure components, this is perhaps your only choice. Priced at $19.95, it is a reasonable deal for the amount of fun you can get out of this game provided you don’t encounter too many bugs.
[Download trial/buy game from Astraware]
*Reviewed on T-Mobile Shadow running on Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard
Conversion softwares are incredibly useful on your phone and Paragon Software’s Handy Converter is a versatile and affordable tool. Capable of handling currency, temperature, length, weight, area, volume, speed, power, clothes size and even torque, it can convert practically anything. As for currency, it will connect to the internet and download latest rates to keep the conversion as accurate as possible.
It only costs $9.95 which is a pretty good deal for the functionality you get. Granted there are other free converter softwares available but none has as sleek, easy to use interface, and currency rate download is more useful than you think.
[Download Handy Converter for Windows Mobile, and other devices]
*tested on T-Mobile Shadow running Windows Mobile Standard 6.0
