Welcome to Monday – we’re bringing you three new apps and one update to get your week going. The updated app is Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, which has new capabilities for finding apps. Following it is AutoCorrector, an app that lets you save words to your iOS device’s dictionary so they won’t get auto-corrected in your text messages. Grab a couple of games while you’re at it: first is House of Mice, a puzzler that uses geometry to help you snag cheese, and Rocket Bunnies, a game about fast timing and careful planning, as well as bunnies in space.
Bing update (iPhone, iPad) Free
Search engine app Bing makes a pretty decent alternative to Google’s Search app, which is handy but not always the best for searching for specific topics. Bing, on the other hand, narrows everything down by categories right at the outset, making it easy to find things like travel information, news and weather. It carries a different visual style from Google, and while it might not pack all the same capabilities, it’s still a powerful tool.
Bing’s uses have been increased with its latest update, which adds apps to its search results. Now, if an app for a certain service or function is offered, Bing will bring it up in results: for example, searching for Facebook will show you lots of results for the site and its various web incarnations, but you’ll also get a quick link that brings you to the App Store to download the service’s app for your iOS device, if it exists. It’s a quick way to find all your options, both on the web and on the App Store.
AutoCorrector (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
One of the more hilarious sites on the Internet is DamnYouAutocorrect.com, which aggregates hilarious instances of iOS devices accidentally twisting the meaning of what a person is trying to type in SMS messages. These result in some pretty horrible misunderstandings and quite a few laughs, but they can be mostly avoided with the help of AutoCorrector, an app that lets you train your device’s auto-correct to recognize words you use often.
AutoCorrector works by tapping into your device’s on-board dictionary and allowing you to add words to it. Because of restrictions built into iOS, there are certain swear words that can’t be corrected, but proper nouns like names and other terms can be added to sidestep pesky auto-correct intrusions on your messages.
House of Mice (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
There’s a big scary cat standing between a mouse, some cheese and freedom, but that mouse has a trick up his sleeve: rolling into a tight ball and barreling through everything. Your job in House of Mice is to steer the mouse-ball, bouncing it off objects and walls in order to catch the cheese and take out the cat in a set number of moves. Geometry plays a big part, as does careful planning.
Each level of House of Mice features different obstacles to dodge and destroy. You’ll often get a set number of mice, which you can expend blasting through wooden boxes or hitting spikes in order to grab all three pieces of cheese on a given level. Grab all the cheese without losing all your mice to clear each stage with the highest point total, with your best times going on the game’s leaderboards, supported by Game Center.
Rocket Bunnies (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Space bunnies need feeding, so you grab your rocket and start orbiting tiny planets in Rocket Bunnies. The game is all about carefully navigating from one planetoid to another by tapping from one planet to the next, timing your movements to get speed bonuses. When you reach each new planetoid in a level, your bunny rocket will orbit it, distributing carrots to any bunnies that happen to be there.
Rocket Bunnies includes 60 levels in which you’ll carefully blast from one planet to the other. Tapping the next planet at the right time dishes out a speed boost – the faster you can clear each level by feeding all the bunnies, the higher your star count at the end of each stage. You can share your high scores and fastest times on Rocket Bunnies’ Game Center leaderboards.
Download the free Appolicious iPhone app
