Social Networking
PetitionOne (iPhone, iPad)
Price: $0.99 (was $2.99)
In the quest to eliminate the use of paper forever, PetitionOne is an interesting advancement into the world of social change and politics.
The app allows you to create, build, distribute and collate online petitions right from your iPad or iPhone, which is actually a pretty brilliant idea. It supports signing in with Facebook and seems to connect to standard social networking sites such as Twitter to get the word out about a petition. Activists and community organizers might be able to really increase their efficiency and efforts with PetitionOne.
Games
Darts-Hero (iPhone)
Price: Free (was $1.99)
Ah, to be young and filled with dreams of international dart-athlete stardom. Relive your childhood ambitions of playing before thundering crowds in bars around the world with this free game.Darts are thrown using a flick motion. Darts-Hero looks to be pretty simple – don’t expect a lot of depth. Its primary feature seems to be the ability to change the background behind the dartboard you’re trying to hit.
Go Native! (iPhone)
Price: Free (was $0.99)
Go Native! is on sale for a few more days and operates like the TV show Family Feud. The game asks you questions and you have to guess what the response of a majority of people is.
The app’s big selling point is that you can play it with a lot of other people. Go Native! supports up to 30 players in a single game, and ranks you globally by score as well as among the people you’re playing with. When you’re not answering questions, you’re moving your character around in something like a board-game format. It even sounds like you can set traps for trailing players to slow their progress to the end.
Productivity
Nice Bulb (iPhone)
Price: Free (was $0.99)
I wasn’t going to get any help from this app’s iTunes description, so I downloaded it this morning, since I’ll download anything if it’s free (hackers: please forget that last part).
What few reviews there are for the app are just as vague, and the developer’s website is in Chinese. Let me explain – Nice Bulb is an app filled with a series of lit light bulbs. They come in a whole lot of different designs, but what the app’s actual function is (the app is in the Productivity category), I still have no idea. Nor does anyone else, it seems.
After looking through the blub images and settling on one I like (it’s a light bulb shaped like a pig), I took it into a dark room. So we’re settling on this being a flashlight/night light sort of app. Anyway, it’s free. Hit the link to see some images from the app – they’re about all the real information you’re going to get.
Entertainment
Eyes Bug (iPhone)
Price: Free (was $0.99) [sale price for another week]
Here’s another confusing one. The description for Eyes Bug says, “You’ll find your eyes have some bugs!” And then one line later, almost in a defeated tone at the failed attempt to explain what you might getting: “Just download it.”
I did (it’s free for another week or so), and it turns out that Eyes Bug is a bunch of pictures showing optical illusions. Some are paintings in which one portion of the perspective creates an image of, say, a child on a swing near a fence, but as the fence moves into the foreground, it becomes a building. Others are just those pattern pictures that play tricks on your brain, appearing to move.
There are lots of images to be found in Eyes Bug – just be aware that the app warns of some explicit content (it doesn’t seem too racy, like Renaissance nudes), and you need to be 17 to download it.
