Dan Lipert

This week, I’m gonna mix it up a bit and focus on two great music apps, one for iPad and one for iPhone. There has been a lot of hype over apps like mixr and similar DJ emulations, and I can totally see why. Everyone wants to be a DJ right? But they don’t appreciate that DJing is some seriously hard work. So on that note, on to the reviews.

iElectribe from korg

The iElectribe, at $9.99, is one of the more expensive apps I’ve bought, but consider that the real version of this amazing groovebox/drum machine is hundreds of dollars… this app is a complete steal. I definitely give it 5 out of 5 stars. Instead of writing a ton about the app, I’ll just share some little beats I’ve done on it.

Beatport

While music production is not neccessarily the realm of every DJ, track selection is. One thing I heard at the beginning of my DJ career is that anyone can learn to mix well, but developing taste, track selection, and just the knowledge to rock a party is the real difficulty. Now that the age of digital DJing and online music purchases is here, anyone can see whats hot. On the converse though, finding those hidden gems and breaking new tracks has become even harder.

Enter the Beatport app. Beatport is an online music store for DJs, which I use fairly often. Add the fact that you can now, from anywhere, preview hundreds of thousands of tracks… its truly, truly amazing. Beatport took their amazing website, and compressed it into a very well designed iPhone app, that runs quickly and without memory issues. Another 5 star.

Bit Pilot is a new game from Zach Gage, and it’s amazing. It’s probably my favorite iPhone game, but I’m definitely partial to shmups and bullet dodgers, so I’m biased. But the game is so polished, and the gameplay is so perfect for a mobile device like the iPhone, that I’m sure anyone will find it a worthwhile download.

The game is somewhat like the classic ‘Asteroids’, but you have no gun, and as time progresses, you get attacked by a swarm of space debris, interstellar time rips, and pharmaceuticals. Actually, the shiny pills flying across the screen are shield layers and points, which level you up. So, the basic gameplay is grab the pills and avoid the rocks.

So, there could have been a simple high score and that would be it, but no. Zach includes OpenFeint achievements and leaderboards, an amazingly bumping, slowly unlockable soundtrack, and two different play modes. And there could be more content, since I’ve probably played the game a total of an hour, and I still haven’t unlocked the last music track.

The retro graphics are super smooth as well, as Bit Pilot uses the openFrameworks software library. I’ve used this library myself, in my ARDJ software as well as in sketching visual effects or just playing with ideas. I could, and should do an entire entry on openFrameworks, aka ofx, so look for that in the future. Anyway, the game is probably one of the fastest loading and smoothest experiences I’ve had yet on the iPhone, probably due to the fact that Zach is part of the team that ported ofx to the device!

If you couldn’t tell, I love this game. 5 out of 5 stars! Go buy it!

I’ve been slacking pretty hard, but I have good reason. I successfully went apartment hunting, had a couple of DJing gigs, and then I got super ill, as in in a cold or flu. You would think I may have spent some of that downtime wisely but mostly I messed with openFrameworks and cocos2d (hint hint) and watched a ton of movies. I also played with my iPhone.

I saw that this game was free for a bit so I downloaded it and loaded it up. Wow! Nice custom menu UI. I registered and account and went through the tutorial. Now I’m pumped. Quick game it is! Oh.. it crashed.

Well, whatever. A lot of games crash the first time you play it after installing (thanks apple?). So I reloaded it, and it hangs, and crashes, and I never got to play. Maybe there aren’t enough people on it yet or something, but I give 0 out of 5 stars because I can’t friggn play it, and if I shelled out $3 I would be sort of pissed.

The newest franchise from Keita Takahashi (who apparently doesn’t have a web page?) is Noby Noby Boy, and it is weird. I’ve played the PS3 version, usually while quite elevated, and even then I couldn’t figure out the weirdness, but it definitely left an impression on me, which most games cannot. The iPhone one is similarly weird, and the charming translations, graphics, and sfx make it a must own, 5 out of 5 stars. I still can’t figure out what you are supposed to do though.

So I’m a little late, already on my second friday app reviews, but I’ll get on the ball, I swear. I am in Portland again, finally, and I’m so happy, but its been stressful looking for an apartment, as it always is. Anyway, last week I said I would get the paid version of instapaper and write a review so here it is: Also.. keep reading for a review of doodle jump (its annoyingly fun)

Instapaper has really been a godsend, and as I imagined last week, getting the pro version was really just a thin layer of icing on the cake. I feel good that I’ve helped out another independent developer who has made a great product. The added features are ho-hum, I haven’t really used them too much, and when I did try to read a wired article the app crashed. Blech… I sent in a bug report and haven’t heard anything so.. that kind of sucks.

Anyway, the service is still good, if you have extra money I would say get the paid version but you really won’t get anything out of it other than a bit of feel-goodness, which may dissipate quickly when you start seeing some bugs. 3 out of 5 stars for the paid version.

Doodle Jump

Doodle Jump is 99c, tons of fun, and will haunt you when you try to sleep, because you will definitely get a doodle jump effect when you close your eyes after playing for only 20 minutes. So watch out. 4 out of 5 because of the haunting.

I’ve decided that since I’ve been pumping some $$$s into the app store lately, both to check out the competition ;) but mostly to get inspired, I might as well generate some content from it. So I figured I’d reduce my ADD a bit, try to digest the app fully, and then poop out a little review.

This app is very slick. It models a real metronome in terms of the way its controlled, and you get a nice little ‘wow’ factor when you first figure out how to get it going and adjust the tempo. The controls are simple: just interact with it as you would a real metronome, or tap to start and stop the ticking. Also there is a little info button that explains the developer’s intent- apparently he is going to open source the code soon, and it was done as an exercise/demonstration of Adobe’s upcoming Flash CS 5 ‘export to iPhone’ feature. Found via Creative Applications

Instapaper is amazing and I think everyone knows it. The mobile version is great too, and the lite version is maybe-even-too good, in that I don’t feel super inclined to buy the paid version. The author includes a snippet about what features you get when you buy the full version, of which the most compelling feature is to support an independent developer, which is great. In fact, I’m going to buy it this moment. Look for a review of instapaper pro sometime soon.

Anyway, if you aren’t aware, instapaper is like readability combined with an rss reader. I’m all about focus enhancing apps, and I’ve been using readability for awhile now. Instapaper is pretty much readability on the go. This is a killer app for the iPad and I hope that Marco makes a shitton of money off of it, because he deserves it.

I bought Chromixa because it was part of the Indie+Relief charity thing, and I have to say its a really inspiring app. The idea is fresh: take your typical tangrams puzzle and have the user mix colors to fill in the shapes. My only complaint is that some of the color mixing seems non-intuitive? I’ll often be surprised when two colors combine to form white, or don’t combine at all. I guess it doesn’t follow color physics too exactly in order to simplify the puzzle, so what can you do.

I gave all of the apps five stars, and I’m going to post them on the iTunes store. Remember, developers loooove getting 5*s and love getting written comments even more, even if they are negative. I should know ;)

Another release in my series of facebook game utilities, farm clock tracks all of your crops, animals, and tree harvests. Check it out at the Farm Clock tumblr.

I released a new iPhone app recently: it’s called Cafe Clock and it helps you track your cooking on Zynga’s facebook game “Cafe World” . The app is doing fairly well which is good of course, and despite the fact that it isn’t going to earn me a TED talk or anything, I’m kind of proud of it. I initially submitted it to the iTunes store about a month ago, but found some major bugs and decided that I had to reprogram how I was storing information, especially since the Cafe World cookbook updates so frequently.

There is a ridiculous amount of technology under the hood of this thing. What started with a simple NSUserPreferences data storage system evolved into having a full SQLite database with reading and writing capabilities, as well as grabbing XML off the web to update. Thankfully, like with every project, I learned some new tech which I will surely apply to other, more exciting projects. After I do a FarmVille app, of course. And FarmTown. And FishVille. And PetVille.

I hate money. :(

Anyway, check it out at this other tumblr.

Prior to starting this blog, I first started using tumblr as the support pages for the iPhone apps I’ve made. Tumblr allowed me to have a quick, easy to copy, and easy to maintain little site up and running super quick, plus with the way I’ve styled them it barely looks like a blogging engine. That’s one of the greatest things about tumblr, that you can shape it to be what you want, and I’m definitely not the first to refer to tumblr as a decent allround CMS.

The Apps

Anyway, I have released two iPhone apps. iRorschach is a goofy little rorschach quiz using the controversial public domain Rorschach blots, and I make a few bucks a day off it. Not too shabby, I guess it pays for my morning coffee and toast, or it will once the less prominent regions finally hit that $150 limit.

The other is the iPhone Animal Kill Counter, which is a port to the iPhone of the great animal kill counter that has had so many ports to everything from facebook to flash to mobile. It basically tallies the numbers of animals slaughtered worldwide, and is meant as a kind of ‘wake-up-call’ for people who are on the fence about veganism and animal rights. This app I love, cause I got to get some really cute art in it, its entirely positive with no slaughterhouse pictures, and it gets thousands of downloads! It was my first app, and it really gave me a sense of fulfillment. I highly recommend writing something like this for your first app. Not neccessarily a social justice app, but anything that you can do quickly and give away for free.

Next Projects

So, I just wanted to get some links to that material on my site. I have some new apps and projects coming in the future, some commercial and some not. Stay tuned! I’ll also be giving out free codes for future apps, so make sure to subscribe to the RSS for your chance to snag one. :)

Marek Bareza created an amazing, free groovebox app for both the iPhone and for Mac OS X 10.5.  It’s a really fun little program named Thump, reminiscent of a Korg Electribe stripped down to the bare essentials.  I made a screencast of me playing with some really simple patterns in a Detroit Electro style.