Besides this, iMekka also got a new programmer. iMekka 2 was developed by Fabian Kreiser! As a result, it’s a completely new app as far as the App Store is concerned, which would mean that you would have to pay to get the upgrade. But we think, updates should be free, even if the developer changes! So, we made iMekka 2 available for free for the first week! This way we would like to say Thank You to all our existing customers. Download your new copy of iMekka 2 today!

Think for a second why you would want »SMS touch«: your mobile provider charges way too much for text messages, your iPod touch does not even allow for texting, you are frustrated by cumbersome texting websites? You want to send birthday greetings at 0:01 AM but don’t want to do this in the middle of the night? You can even use a short custom term instead of your mobile phone number as the sender ID.

If you want you can participate in the development of »SMS touch«. Please let us know which functions you miss or which providers you would like to see supported.

Plans for future versions of »SMS touch« include multiple message boxes, templates and a way to check if a message has been delivered to the receiving party.

We are happy that he now joins the Team to share his experiences as an iPhone-User and App-Tester with us and you, of course. So, from now on every now and then JP will post some App-Reviews, his thoughts on the state of the world or his favourite cookie receipes…we will see!

If you got wishes, comments or hints on this, as always, feel free to contact us via comments or e-mail.

The App that I want to introduce is called ‘Safe’ and does what it says:

Manage all your accounts ID’s, Passwords, Gym Memberships etc that used to be in Folders along with all your Credit card and Mobile Contract bills and safes them on your iPhone.

If you are still hesitating and not rushing to your iPhone to buy the App I will give you a couple of standard situations when you will need this one!

The Grocery Store

You are standing in line to buy your usual loaf of bread, milk and eggs. The cashier asks for $ 4,95. You reach down your pocket, take your wallet out and realize that there is no cash left.

By asking if they accept Visa or Debit Card the cashier moves the card reader device towards you and asks if you would enter your PIN. You have forgotten about the digits and are in miserable situation, but lucky as you are as a iPhone owner, there is an App for that.

A Car accident

Who hasn’t had that one. Huge intersection, bright sunlight and traffic as long as the eye can see. You are on your way to work and suddenly some idiot forgot to set the blinker and rams into you. The Police arrives to get the information of the insurence companies.

What do you do now? Where are all the Papers which where stuffed in the sidedoor?

With ‘Safe’ you would have created a subfolder called ‘Insurance Paperwork’ as a digital backup.

The Applications Interface is easy to use and you are able to individualize it to your personal needs. Despite the fact that you are uploading a lot of personal data, the system is considered to be very save.

Furthermore a master password has to be entered every time you launch the application.

While it is no real substitute for your personal folder collection at home, it could be considered as a swiss army knife when your personal data is required.

The big ones in the AppStore seem to be very very thankful this year. Guess they all made a penny or two selling their games on the AppStore. ;)
Anyway, for the rest of us this means a lot of fun during the holydays and beyond. The big ones like Namco, Electronic Arts and Gameloft reduced many of their titels to as low as $0.79! So, just get wild and buy some…

After the break we have a list of the games that we consider the ones you have to buy. If new ones are added, we will let you know!

(Note: All these links are affiliate-links. So by clicking on them and buying something, we get a small bonus to feed our developers. For you it doesn’t make a difference! You don’t have to pay more!!!)

Monopoly Here & Now
Monopoly (Classic)
Tetris
Spore Origins
Sim City
Scrabble
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Trivial Pursuit
Auditorium
The Sims 3

Heros of Sparta
Blades of Fury
Brothers in Arms
Shrek Kart
Terminator 4: Salvation
Castle of Magic

Galaga Remix
Dig Dug Remix
Garters & Souls
Pac Man Remix
Time Crisis Strike
Pac Man
Ms. Pac Man

[UPDATE 1]
C64

[UPDATE 2]
Flashback is down from $4.99 to just $1.99

So, If you ask me, this game looks absolutely fantastic…will give it a try someday soon…for now, here’s the official game trailer for you:

Also I updated the advertising SDK inside Awake. This will reduce crashes on startup and I also removed the pinch media advertizing SDK, which was used as a backup when AdMob fails.

If you need or miss something special in Awake, just let me know! Send me a mail an we will see what I can do for you! :)

But…this time around it was a bit different: Gravity Sling and Eliminate got my attention and both are free with a limited set of levels or play time. Basically these are the free trial-versions we’ve been waiting for since day one. So I grabbed both and tried them. More Levels or play time can be purchased from inside each game as an In-App-Purchase. So, I played as far as I could…I liked both games and…didn’t buy anything afterwards. Why? Well, just because I had enough for the moment afterwards. But the games still reside on my iPhone and surely enough, whenever I like to play some I wont start looking around on the AppStore but play the games I allready have and like.

So, under the line I think IAP are a great mechanism to get the foot in the door at customers. People are free to try the App as long as they like and can enhance it if the need more levels, playtime, ammo, cars…whatever. On the other hand, People who don’t like it will probably give the App one of the infamous 1-Star ratings just because they were “tricked” into downloading the app and now “wasted valuable amounts of their lifetime” (I actually read this in one rating once…was a rating for a free(!) movie!). I don’t know what you think about app-reviews by users on the AppStore but I think they should be eliminated…but that’s another story!

I for one really like the mechanism behind IAPs very much and I’m happy to see it is becoming more and more adopted by developers. I’m thinking about it myself but right now I don’t see any of my apps suitable for IAPs…but maybe in the future…

What are your thoughts on this? Are IAPs cool or not? How would you like to have it? Share in the comments…

Now what do you say? Finally C64 made it back into the AppStore! After a short time in there being thrown out again with many people wondering why it disappeared. Now it’s back and just looking at it makes me feel young…like a little boy again.

Or maybe I should feel reeeeeeaaallly old now since the C64 is so long gone that it’s almost, no, it actually IS part of history! But anyway, it’s great fun of days long ago and every one who every had one of theses “breadboxes” or loved to play at one should get this App at once! It’s not just an option, it’s a must!

Everyone else, who got used to computer games by playing at a Playstation or something more advanced should definetly have a second guess about it! Maybe you first have a look at the video I embedded after the break for you and then decide wether this is for you or not.

With Commodore 64 you´ll get 8 games for free to get you started:

• Dragons Den
• Le Mans
• Jupiter Lander
• Arctic Shipwreck
• Jack Attack
• International Soccer
• International Basketball
• International Tennis

More games should be available as In-App-Purchases later on (haven’t tested the App so far)…which reminds me that I wanted to write a post about IAP itself someday… ;) …so, anyway, here’s the Video of the App in action:

As you might be aware of by now, I’m somehow a fan of linedrawing action-games. I’m not saying I’ve played them all but today I found a new one that certainly looks interesting! I’m talking about Harbor Havoc 3D, which was relesed just yesterday and is now available on the AppStore for $ 1.99.

As with all of these linedrawing games you play from a birdseye perspective and look down onto the terrain. Your goal is to command a group of vessels from their entrance point somewhere at the boundary of the screen to their destination. To do so, you simply draw a line from the vehicle to the airport for example. As time goes by more and more vessels enter the screen, you draw more and more lines, the lines cross, you get a little distracted and confused and…BOOOOM! Two of these tiny and stupid…things…just crashed into each other destroying your high score.

All right, that’s what you all know by now. But here’s the thing: Harbor Havoc 3D just doesn’t put planes at your command and you don’t play only in one layer…you play in three of them! You have to command submarines under the water. These can of course be crossed by ships and boats above them (unless they fire at them :o) …just kidding). And a bit higher above there are the planes we all know and love to command. ;)

So…this will definetly make you sweat! Everyone who thinks FlightControl is just too easy and plays without even looking should grab a copy of it! Below I’ve embedded a gameplay video for you. It’s shows all the action and features a score that somehow reminds me of Apocalyptica! :)

Just yesterday I found a game that made me try it and today there is another one coming straight at me. This time it’s Little Runner. This game is somehow similar to Canabalt since your goal is as well to run as long as you can but yet it’s completly different! :) In Little Runner you don’t control the runner but the environment he’s running on. The little fellow keeps running from left to right on it’s own, slowly first but gains speed as you go on.

To make it a little easier for the player you don’t have to grab your (virtual) shovel and move serious amounts of gravel. In the game you rather just slide up and down 4 or 5 plattforms to make sure the height difference between them is not too big. Otherwise little runner will bump into the wall or fall down. Both results in a lost game of course!

The game is about 15.4 MB big so this seems like a little…heavy and unsporty if you ask me! ;) But well, this might be due to the heavy use of comic-style graphics on the one hand and that the game was built using Unity on the other hand. Oh and of course there is a pretty cool soundtrack included as well that might add to the load.

Funny detail: This is, as far as I know, the first Indy-Game that sells it’s soundtrack standalone on iTunes! You can buy the Little Runner Soundtrack here. You don’t *have* to buy it of course and for my ears that’s not even an option. :) Don’t get me wrong! The soundtrack is kind of cool – in the game. Without the game…not so much. But that might as well be due to my ears being stuck back in the 80s! :o)

Oh and before I finish this post: Here’s one wish for the next update! Maybe the developers could include a second runner to choose? Maybe…something more like…this one?!

Anyway, I hope you like it and please be patient if some things don’t work over the next few days.
Thanks!

Space Master is a new entrant in the line-draw-category of games. So just as in FlightControl you simply draw lines to control your game. Instead of airplanes you have to land space-ships on the moon or – at higher stages – other planets with varying gravity and traffic density.

Space ships enter the screen at the top and “fall” to the planets surface, increasing speed due to gravity. Your task is to draw a line that will fire the ships rockets to make the ship fly in the indicated direction. For example: drawing a straight line to the right will fire the left rocket to move your ship to the right…sounds easy…BUT… while your ship is moving right it is also still falling. So, to make the long story short, steering your vessel is quite complicated at first but once you get the idea, it’s much fun to play!

Graphics are fantastic, the music playing in the background is very cool as well! OpenFeint-integration let’s compare your scores to that of your friends and the App ask for permission before connecting to the network! Thumbs up for this!

All in all Space Master is a really cool game and if you liked games like FlightControl or Wild Wild Train you can’t go wrong! Space Master is available on the AppStore for as low as $0.99 or €0.79.

Here are some thoughts I just had over my last cup of coffee: I just installed the Wordpress app on my iPhone and besides looking completely different than v1.0 I think it’s a bit odd to release a 2.0 as a new app. Why would you do this?

I mean, looking at Tweetie 2 this was done to raise some more money for further development – nothing special here. But why why why would you do thiswith a free app? The only effect I would imagine that a whole lot of users are missing out on the new version…so…maybe they dont want everybodey to see there is a new version!? Maybe this is…is this just a hidden beta??? ;)

Some of the frequent crashes might lead to this conception…but yet I still like it! Actually I’m typing this post on my iPhone.

One thing I still miss while blogging on the phone – cool as it may be – is that I now just can’t switch to iTunes to publish a link to the new app for you!!! That’s a real bummer…well…maybe next time? Maybe in 3.0???

It’s been almost a year now since the AppStore opened up it’s doors and literally flooded the iPhone- and iPod-Touch-Users with new apps for their devices. Some of them where not soooo good, some of them made people furious but some really hit it big and became popular blockbusters. Anyway, one year and over 50.000 apps later one thing is for sure: The AppStore was that best that could’ve happened to the iPhone-/iPod-Community!

And so we’d like join in as well and say: Happy Bithday, AppStore!

We hope you like it! :-)