This Tuesday is all about social networking: up first, Let’s Talk – Private Messenger is a group messaging app that lets you send text, voice, photos and videos to friends, co-workers, family, or all three at once. Next, igobubble is a means of meeting people around you and sharing things like photos and ideas that others can comment on and even change, starting conversations. In the games department is Carrot War, a shooter-style side-scroller where drawing is your weapon, and Shoot The Birds, where you crossbow some flying pests to rack-up a high score.
Let’s Talk – Private Messenger (iPhone, iPad) Free
Skip paying for text messages and sending emails. Let’s Talk is a private messenger client that uses your iOS device’s Wi-Fi or 3G connection to send messages, using the much cheaper data rate you pay on your cellular plan instead of your SMS plan. Let’s Talk allows you to send videos, photos, text and sound to other users quickly and easily.
Let’s Talk is also a group messenger, meaning you can send to multiple recipients whatever you have the need to share. And if you send a message to someone who doesn’t have the app, you can invite them to the service in the same message.
igobubble (iPhone, iPad) Free
A social networking service, igobubble takes something of an interesting approach to sharing things with other people. Rather than encouraging users to post status updates about whatever they’re eating, igobubble lets you create bubbles. A bubble can be just about anything – a thought, a feeling, a photo, a video – but once it’s out in the network, anyone can see it, comment on it, or even change it. You get to see everyone who interacts with your bubble, allowing you to open up new lines of communication and meet new people.
Bubbles are actually presented in the world around you, tied to certain locations, so igobubble uses your iOS device’s GPS capabilities to find and place them. When you fire up the app, you can check your immediate surroundings for bubbles, so it’s interesting to take the app with you to work, school, and around the neighborhood.
Carrot War (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Carrot War is a bit of a mix between a 2-D side-scrolling shooter and the game Max and the Magic Marker. You play a superhero bunny fighting off aliens, and your weapon of choice, an actual magic marker. You’ll spend the game flying around, avoiding the attacks of enemy aliens by moving the bunny around with touch controls, while defeating them by drawing lines with the marker through glowing weak points. The more enemies you can take out in one continuous line, the more points you’ll rack up.
It’s a pretty simple premise but Carrot War works because it requires you to juggle a few concepts in your brain. On the one hand, you need to keep dodging attacks to keep yourself safe, and on the other, you want to draw the most efficient lines as quickly as possible to maximize your score, since your marker power is limited. Your scores are tracked on Game Center’s leaderboards as you progress through the game and take on bosses at the end of each set of levels.
Shoot The Birds (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
It’s a simple concept, really. You’re a scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head, and there are some evil, angry birds on the loose. Also you have a crossbow, so using physics in the vein of Angry Birds, your goal is to take out as many as you can before darkness falls over the farm. Shoot The Birds is a really simple game – you get one round to rack up the highest score you can, trying to skewer multiple birds on the same arrow to earn extra points.
It’s in Shoot The Birds’ simple arcade action that it gets fun. Drawing your finger back nocks an arrow and letting go fires it, but aiming and leading the birds can be tough. There are multiple types that move at different speeds, and racking-up more points “levels up” your scarecrow to earn you a higher score. All those points get tracked on Shoot the Birds’ Game Center leaderboards.
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