If there was only one guitar app I could have on my iOS device, I can easily say GuitarToolkit would be my choice. Numerous times, I have been sitting around a fire or on someone’s deck and a jam session broke out, but the guitars were out of tune. With my trusty iPhone and GuitarToolkit to the rescue, the guitars get tuned up together and the music much improved. The ability to look up chords and scales at anytime is important to any musician; there is rarely a time I play the guitar that this application is not used. This new update introduces “an all-new iPad version that is free for existing GuitarToolkit users… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I featured it as my ‘game of the week’ … and now it is here. The classic, controversial Grand Theft Auto III. Here are the details:

Welcome to Liberty City. Where it all began.

Rockstar Games celebrates the 10th anniversary of one of the most influential games of all time. The critically acclaimed blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III comes to mobile devices, bringing to life the dark and seedy underworld of Liberty City. With a massive and diverse open world, a wild cast of characters from every walk of life and the freedom to explore at will, Grand Theft Auto III puts the dark, intriguing and ruthless world of crime at your fingertips

Virtual City Playground Update for iOS and Android:

The Virtual City Playground 1.3. Update with new quests, winter-related content and decorations hits the App Store and Android Market today.

Through January 2, 2012, players will be able to “switch on” winter in their dream cities, decorate buildings for the holiday season and build Santa’s residence.

What’s new in the update:
UPDATE YOUR CITY! New city decorations and a new entertainment building.
NEW DECORATIONS! 68 New building decorations.
NEW QUESTS! 5 New quests – already finished your quests? Here are some new ones to fill while sitting by the fire.
SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS! Post screenshots of your winter city on Facebook.
About Virtual

Is your network feeling a bogged down? Perhaps someone in your house is downloading App Store updates … again! In fact, the image at top is from the FOURTH time yesterday I had waiting updates available! This time it was only three, but I would estimate more than 30 apps have updated in the last 24 hours! That is because this is the time of year where everyone tries to get their updates released … because next week updates and additions are closed until the 29th. The reason? The Christmas holiday means millions of new iPod/iPhone/iPad owners will be flocking to the App Store to fill their new toys with great games like Avadon… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Oh cork boards!  You’re so 20th century, aren’t you?

NO! say the folks at Appigo.  Nope; what the poor cork board needed was to be updated, slip-streamed, modernized, and . . . put into iOS.  You bet!  Here’s what the Appigo folks say about their app Corkulous 2:

You’re familiar with Todo® Task Manager from Appigo. Have you seen Corkulous?

Corkulous is now a universal app (for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) designed to help you create, plan, and organize anything you think of.

So whaddya think?  Worth checking out at the very least.  Available for an MSRP of $4.99 at the iTunes app store.

Full… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

When the iTunes App Store first opened I owned and ran one of, if not the, first iPhone app review sites. It was a fun gig although, I must admit, being here on Gear Diary with Judie and the rest of the crew far surpasses that experience. In December of 2008 I reviewed a number of apps that would be good for Hanukkah. This year I did a similar roundup for a local newspaper. (I’ll be sharing it as soon as the article is published later this week.)

One of the apps I reviewed in 2008 was iMenorah, which is a virtual menorah that is actually quite handy. The developers just released an iPad version of… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

This post had a different working title of “‘Evernote Food’ Not So Tasty but We Can Spice it Up” but I settled on the more descriptive “Evernote, There is a Better Way to Add Functionality than Releasing crApps”. Regardless, here’s what led to the post and what I want to suggest to remedy the company’s current trend of releasing all-but-useless-apps.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

During my week away I noticed that eReaders seem to have hit critical mass. Yes, this year, more than any other, saw Kindle’s, nook’s and iPads in use on the beach and at the pool. (Interestingly, I did not see a single Kindle fire!) I have seen an uptick in the use of devices over the past few years but this year seemed to show a huge jump in their presence. In fact, a cursory look this past Saturday saw MORE electronic devices than dead-tree reading material at the pool.

But that was only a small part of the tech I witnessed while traveling. Here are a few more tidbits.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

There’s a bucketload of location apps, but this particular here one, localscope, has a couple of things going for it that not all other location apps do:  it’s hooked in through various social media sites, and it won Apple’s Rewind 2011 award as the best navigation app.  And at $1.99 at your local iTunes app store, that’s a lot of functionality for the money.  Or so it seems to me.  Check it out for your own self and give it some thought.

Full information below.

localscope is your social data powered GPS app.

Always know where you are and what’s around you with Localscope. Search for and discover places around your location

(image courtesy Styletap)

My first PDA was a Palm M100. My first smartphone was a Treo 650. I loved Palm OS. But I didn’t hesitate to move on when iOS and Android pushed the envelope in the smartphone world, and personally I don’t miss any Palm apps. Now, there are plenty of people who did, and Styletap tried to reach them with their Palm OS emulator, which was jailbreak-only on the iPhone. But it’s been YEARS since a Palm OS device was produced, and now WebOS is open source. So does the world REALLY need a way to keep Palm OS apps alive?

Apparently, Styletap thinks so, and they’re offering a way to wrap them in… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

If you read Michael’s post about our early reactions to Infinity Blade II, you’ll know that I was really excited to get this game.  I loved Infinity Blade I, and couldn’t wait to get the sequel.  One of the things I love about both IB, and other games that use the Unreal Engine game driver, is that they don’t utilize “virtual controls”.  That is, rather than having a “virtual” joystick and buttons on your device screen in an attempt to emulate a PS2 or other handheld device, Unreal Engine games use taps and swipes for the gameplay.  This both frees up screen real estate for the game itself–pretty important on the iPhone or iPod… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I like puzzle games, me.  Particularly puzzle games where there is no time limit and reflexes aren’t a factor.  I’m old, my reflexes suck, and I have two kids that interrupt me all the time, so that makes action games tough to play, but puzzle games pretty good.  In general.

Which brings us to the new release by Danish developers Sybo Games, PowerFlow.  PowerFlow is a puzzle game that, the press folks tell us, “plays as a mix between Entanglement and Pipe Mania.”  If you look at the above screen snap, and if you’re familiar with Entanglement and Pipe Mania, maybe that gives you enough to go on.  If not, you might want to surf over

I love almonds. If we are what we eat, I’m a Hershey’s Kiss and a handful of shredded coconut away from becoming an Almond Joy bar. When we’re grocery shopping, Sarah is always trying to find which nuts are on sale and keep us well-stocked. We do try to compare the labels and make sure we’re not getting nuts with tons of additives, but it isn’t always easy to make the right call when they all sound the same. That’s where Fooducate is an incredible useful shopping tool!

Fooducate scans barcodes and gives you a breakdown of the ingredients and nutrients… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

The iBooks apps for iOS, that means iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, just made the leap to version 1.5. It is a nice update that includes a new arrangement of annotations, full screen reading mode, new fonts and an awesome new nighttime reading mode. I used the nighttime reading mode last night for a bit and it worked great.

It is nice to see iBooks maturing but it also reminded me that, when it comes to something like eBooks, it isn’t the app that ultimately matters but rather the ecosystem one has decided to use. I decided some time back that I would be investing in the Kindle platform since it is more “universal” so, while I’ll certainly use iBooks for… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I’m always looking for ways to use Siri with new iOS applications to allow me to write on the go. But if I am going to pay for an application I want it to do more than one thing at a time. As I was reading through Dan’s article on using Elements to be able to sync dictated notes I thought I would download Elements.

During my search I happened upon the iOS application Knowtilus Pro. Knowtilus is a web browser that has 3 tabs.  I usually don’t buy iOS applications that cost more than a few dollars but I made an exception with Knowtilus Pro at $9.99. I like the ability to… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...