(Credit:
CNET)
If you're a strategy gaming type of person, you know there is no shortage of tower defense games in the iTunes Store. It shouldn't be that big of a surprise, I suppose, because the iPhone and iPod Touch touch screens might be the best interface for games of this genre. Using your finger to choose and place towers couldn't be more intuitive. But even with the huge amount of tower defense games, some manage to rise above the rest. One of my apps this week is a sequel to one of the more popular games in the genre, and after having played several rounds, I can tell you it's definitely worth the price for tower defense fans.
This week's apps include a program that lets you control your music library through screen gestures and a new open-field tower defense game.
A four-finger tap locks or unlocks the screen
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)FluxTunes (99 cents) is a simple but extremely useful app that lets you control your music using onscreen gestures. Simply start up FluxTunes and you'll have access to your music just like running the iPod, but now you can use a number of different gestures to switch songs, change playlists, and much more.
FluxTunes is particularly useful when you don't have time to go through the regular controls such as while driving or when you have it in a shoulder strap while working out. Touch and drag your finger up or down to raise or lower the volume. A swipe to the right or left skips to the next song or skips to the previous song. A two finger swipe to the left or right switches between playlists. You also can touch and hold your finger in place to get the full list of available gestures. Anyone who uses their iPhone to play music while driving or those with limited vision will appreciate this simple, but effective new way to interact with your music library.
Sometimes littering the grid with missile launchers is the only way to win.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)GeoDefense Swarm (99 cents for a limited time) is the sequel to GeoDefense, the hit tower defense game I wrote about in a previous post. The original game became known as the thinking man's tower defense game, requiring players to work out a strategy for the more challenging levels (and they were very challenging). GeoDefense Swarm continues in this tradition with another very challenging tower defense game, but moves the game from a set-path type of experience to an open-field game where you need to create your own maze of towers for creeps to navigate through.
GeoDefense Swarm has 30 playable levels split between the easy, medium, and hard categories, all offering the same vector-based graphics, pixel bursts, and warp effects found in the original. But now, along with the open-field gameplay in a hexagonal-grid, certain tiles have new properties to make the game even more challenging. Some tiles heal creeps or speed them up, forcing you to develop a strategy to stop creeps before getting to these tiles. Another type of tile can only be used by creeps, requiring you to work-around these tiles while trying to slow their path to the goal.
Along with the new maps and tile types, you get a new tower to experiment with as well. Called the Thumper, the new purple tower gives off waves of damage in its immediate area. Upgrades to the Thumper increase the damage and add a higher frequency of waves. Overall, GeoDefense Swarm is an excellent followup to the original game, but just like the original, might be better suited to those with a lot of experience in the genre or at least a high threshold for frustration.
What's your favorite iPhone app? Are you happy to finally find an app that lets you switch songs easily while doing other things? Is GeoDefense Swarm too hard for its own good? let me know in the comments!
Today is the last day we will ever see the triple single-digit date repetition--and Apple sure is making a big deal about it. As I'm sure you've already heard, the company has announced a noticeably refreshed Apple iTunes along with updates to all of the iPods in its line. We have a cadre of editors and photographers at the show who will be bringing you a feast of photos, videos, and info throughout the day. In the meantime, you can see some up-close-and-personal shots of the new hardware and software below.
Rhapsody's iPhone app will allow users to stream ad-free music and add selections to their playlist queue.
(Credit: Rhapsody)Subscription music service Rhapsody, a division of Real Networks, has announced plans to port its service to Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. In a blog post Sunday, the company said it will submit the application (demonstrated on the video below) this week to Apple for review.
Historically, Apple has steered clear of subscription music, making it impossible for services such as Napster or Rhapsody to work with the iPod, fearing competition with its own iTunes music service. But the success of iPhone music applications such as Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker, may have opened the door for subscription services as well. (Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET News.)
Rhapsody's mobile app will require that users hold a Rhapsody-to-Go account, which currently runs $14.95 per month. (Non-subscribers will apparently be offered a limited time free-trial period.) The Rhapsody app allows subscribers to explore and stream Rhapsody's entire online music catalog over EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi, as well as create and store playlist queues of their favorite content. The app does not, however, allow users to download and store Rhapsody songs directly on the device, or cache content temporarily to hear offline.
If Rhapsody's application is approved by Apple, it won't likely be alone. Competing services such as Spotify have shown off similar applications, and Napster will surely want to get in on the action as well. The real question is whether people will find subscription music capabilities valuable. With free, ad-supported services such as Pandora already dominating the spotlight, it remains to be seen whether Rhapsody can convince new customers to spend close to $15 a month for unlimited on-demand music streaming.
In the blog post, Rhapsody also revealed plans to develop an Android application. It's not known whether that version would offer greater flexibility (local storage, over-the-air downloads) than the version for the iPhone.
Rhapsody on iPhone from Jamie on Vimeo.
(Via PC World)
(Credit:
CNET)
I went to Portland, Oregon, to visit my parents last week and had a great time spending time with my family and checking out the local breakfast spots. I even found new places to explore (thanks to my trusty iPhone). One thing I knew going up there is that my father and his girlfriend had already bought two iPhone 3GS phones and I would not be hearing the end of how much better theirs were than my year-old iPhone 3G. But my mother and stepdad live up in Portland too, and once they saw how cool and fun my iPhone was (and had heard about my dad's iPhone), they brought me to the Apple Store in downtown Portland and bought two iPhone 3GS models for themselves.
Like many 3G owners who bought their iPhones when they were released last year, I have one year left on my contract before I can upgrade to a new iPhone at a reasonable price. This means, of course, that even as a reviewer of iPhone apps at Download.com, all my parental people have better iPhones than I do. My hope is that next year, there will be an even better iPhone, but for now I expect to be receiving a lot of iPhone 3GS videos, crisp 3.2 megapixel photos, mom saying, "I just called you using voice control!", and other iPhone 3GS madness. Just wait until next year, mom and dad. Just you wait!
This week's apps include an app that gives you a concert calendar for your favorite bands and a popular touch boxing game that came out last week.
You'll be surprised at some of the concerts available for the more obscure artists in your library
(Credit: CNET)iConcertCal is the iPhone version of an already popular iTunes plug-in for Mac that lets you find concerts for your favorite bands in your music library. The application starts by scanning the music library on your iPhone and then searches an online database to find upcoming concerts in your area using your location information. When it's done, iConcertCal presents a nice list of concerts at your local venues that you can touch to buy tickets, and get more information.
Beyond its concert-finding capabilities, iConcertCal lets you flip your iPhone sideways to get a full-month calendar view so you can easily plan which concerts to attend. Separate tabs let you view shows from artists in your library or all shows playing in your area. You also can search by artist or venue. Once you find the show you want to go to, you can buy tickets, send e-mail reminders to notify friends, and look at a built-in map with directions to the venue. Overall, we think anyone who enjoys going to live shows will find this app very useful, and with the ability to discover shows from your library, will make a great addition to any music lover's iPhone.
Keep your guard up and wait for openings to succeed in this game
(Credit: CNET)Touch KO is the long-awaited touch boxing game from Chillingo that mostly lives up to the hype. Either enter a quick match or battle through career mode to work your way to huge championship bouts. Play the tutorial mode to learn the type of punches you can throw by using different swipes on your screen. As you progress through your career, you can use your cash winnings to buy new trunks, gloves, and shoes to add bonuses to your stats, and there are several aesthetic options to personalize your boxer with such as tattoos, skin color, and facial features.
The thing I noticed right away about Touch KO, is that it's not your average arcade boxing game. You'll need to concentrate on blocking your opponent's punches just as much as finding the right moment to break through their defenses. But even with the more technical focus in this boxing game, the AI of each boxer is fairly easy to figure out, making it pretty easy to win fights against even the most challenging boxers. The folks at Chillingo have promised a better AI in future versions to make the game more challenging, but even in its current state, it is quite satisfying to go toe-to-toe in the ring against several different types of boxers.
There's no multiplayer component in Touch KO, but there is a leaderboard so you can match up against other players' records. Overall, Touch KO is a fun boxing game, and if Chillingo is able to enhance the AI for a more challenging experience, it will be tough for other boxing game contenders on the iPhone to compete.
What's your favorite iPhone app? Are you stuck in your contract and wishing you had an iPhone 3GS too? Is iConcertCal the live concert-finding app you've been waiting for? Have you made it to the championship in Touch KO? Let me know in the comments!
(Credit:
Ghostly International)
Mood-based music playlists have been a holy grail for audio entrepreneurs since the dawn of the MP3. There's just something unshakable about the idea that your iPod might sense your mood and play music to fit your precoffee grogginess or sun-filled Saturday frolic. Unfortunately, everyone from MIT to Memorex has experienced mixed success trying to crack the music mood algorithm.
The problem with automatic playlists based on mood is that the scope of music can often be overwhelming (what's more energetic, Techno or Oompah Polka?) and the technology used to analyze and assign mood attributes to music files is imperfect.
But just when all hope seemed lost that a mood-based jukebox would ever see the light of day, independent music label Ghostly International ripped the curtain off an iPhone app that takes a new approach.
Ghostly Discovery is a free application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows you to stream music from Ghostly's eclectic catalog of electronic, pop, hip-hop, and ambient artists. The streaming audio app serves up recommended songs based on your mood input (based around a mood ring-style color gradient) and settings for music style (digital/organic) and tempo (faster/slower). Once a song is playing, you can play, pause, and skip songs, read artist information, or choose to purchase the song through iTunes.
Ghostly Discovery from Ghostly International on Vimeo.
The brilliant part of all this is that it solves three problems in one shot. First off, it cracks the long-standing mood jukebox problem by offering a selection of songs small enough for the developer to tag individually and accurately (like a label-specific Music Genome Project). Second, it gives fans of the Ghostly's tightly curated roster of artists a way to hear songs free of charge. And finally, the app boosts the profile of the label, maintaining its relevance as a taste-maker, promoting its artists, and giving fans a cool app to show off to friends.
Let's hope other labels follow suit. I'd love to see indie rock labels like Sub Pop try its hand at this, or maybe a jazz label like Vanguard with an intimidatingly large catalog. Thoughts?
(via ISO50)
How good does a streaming-music service need to be before it replaces your collection of MP3s? That's the question Apple is asking itself right now, as it deliberates on approving the Spotify app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Here, finally, is a streaming-music app (and desktop application) that promises to stream any of over 6 million songs on-demand, give you the ability to create and save ordered playlists of songs, and best of all, Spotify can save your favorite tunes offline so you can play them even when you're not connected to the Internet.
Sound too good to be true? Well, you might be right. Spotify has been catching on like wildfire in Europe, but the company has been understandably cautious about coming to the U.S., where similar services such as Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker have all been subject to strict licensing and streaming arrangements that would make a service like Spotify seem unthinkable. Another wrinkle in the Spotify mobile app's appeal is that it will only work for users who've upgraded to Spotify's ad-free premium service ($14/mo). To use Spotify for free, you'll have to relegate yourself to the desktop application.
Here's a look at the Spotify desktop application. To understand Spotify, just think of all the music you could download on iTunes; now, imagine not having to pay for any of it. It's legal and it's coming soon the the U.S. whether Apple likes it or not.
(Credit: Spotify)Legal and financial barriers aside, the idea that Apple would let Spotify onto the iPhone seems a little far fetched. For starters, it competes directly with the iPhone's own iPod music player app. Its second offense is that it may require a substantial chunk of memory to cache offline content (a feature not granted to Slacker's app). Finally, Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk reports that songs played using the Spotify app do not include links for purchasing the songs using iTunes. While linking songs to the iTunes store isn't explicitly required by Apple, it certainly hasn't hurt the majority of streaming-music apps that have included the feature.
At this point, all we can do is wait and see. With or without Apple's approval of the Spotify mobile app, there's still some reassuring signs that the Spotify desktop client will hit the U.S. before the year's out. If Europe's speedy adoption of Spotify is any indication of eventual U.S. success, the online music landscape (especially subscription and streaming-music services) could be headed for another shake-up.
Yes, Last.fm--like CNET--is owned by CBS, but it's also pretty awesome.
In a world teeming with increasingly similar tech products, Apple is one company that seems to have no problem churning out standout products. This might be attributed to sleek designs, fun features, and friendly interfaces--or maybe you want to chalk it up to good ol' marketing tactics. However, in the case of the iPhone and the iPod Touch, there's one attribute that undeniably separates these devices from the masses: the ever-expanding cadre of third-party applications. You can find everything from cookbooks and weight-loss trackers to games and productivity tools, but the area in which the iPhone and iPod Touch really excel is music, and there are hundreds of applications to choose from in this category.
To help you sort through the mass of options, we rounded up five of our favorite iPhone music apps. To keep things simple, we limited our scope to free selections that have a heavy focus on full music playback. Not everything included here will be a perfect fit for every iPod user, but you're sure to find something that will float your boat.
Are there any sweeter words in the English language than "free music?" (I know, "free pizza" runs a close second, followed immediately by "free beer," "free chocolate," and "free Tibet.")
If you're looking to stock your iPhone, iPod Touch, or Zune with some fresh, new tunes, you can find a mountain of free stuff if you know where to look. I'm talking legal free stuff, not the "free" tunes you pilfer from P2P services. Bad user, bad!
Rhapsody generously offers a free MP3 every day of the week.
As you probably know, iTunes gives away one song every week (gee, wow, thanks). Head to Rhapsody, however, and you can score a free song every day. And not just obscure tunes from little-known artists: Green Day's new "Know Your Enemy" was a recent download of the day (ahead of the new album's release, even), and yesterday's selection was Poison's classic power ballad, "Every Rose Has Its Thorns." (Couldn't...help...myself.)
... Read more
Last.fm's music-centered social network is one of our favorite ways to discover, share, and stream music online. Currently in version 1.01, the Last.fm application for the iPhone and iPod Touch allows many of the best features of Last.fm to break away from your computer and go on the road with you. The Last.fm app isn't perfect, however, and people looking for a straightforward Internet radio application would do better with offerings from Pandora and AOL.
The Last.fm app's main menu offers many ways to hear streaming music...maybe too many.
When launching the Last.fm iPhone app for the first time, you'll be prompted to enter your existing Last.fm account username and password, or you'll be offered the option to create a new account. If you're new to Last.fm, we recommend you get started with the service using your home computer, since many features depend on an ongoing analysis of your computer's music collection (also known as scrobbling).
Once you're logged in, the Last.fm app offers eight ways to stream music over EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi. You can listen to songs Last.fm has already scrobbled from your computer's music collection, treat yourself to recommended songs, do a cold search for new music, or hear what your friends have been listening to. The music playback screen is similar to Apple's own iPod screen, displaying large cover art, volume, pause, and skip controls, as well as an iTunes purchase link and Last.fm's own song rating buttons, which help to steer the quality of song recommendations. On the very bottom edge of the screen you'll find tabs for the currently playing track, artist biography, similar artists, events (such as related concerts), and a More tab that includes the track's tag information and Top Listeners.
With all its features, tabs, and buttons, the Last.fm app is one of the most in-depth and dynamic streaming music applications available for the iPhone. Unfortunately, despite its ambitious list of features, the program is bogged down with performance issues that make it frustrating to use at times. During testing in both Wi-Fi and 3G modes, we often experienced 5 to 10 second buffer delays each time we initiated a music stream or skipped between songs. The buffer issues subsided under ideal circumstances where Wi-Fi or 3G reception was strong; however, similar streaming audio applications from Pandora and AOL offered better streaming performance under more realistic conditions.
With any luck, future updates to the Last.fm app will improve streaming music reliability and refine the somewhat confusing assortment of menu options and playback screen features. In its current state, the Last.fm app presents a bite-size version of the Last.fm Web site experience in a way that may satisfy existing users, but is unlikely to win new converts.
Editors' note: Last.fm is owned by CNET's parent company, CBS Interactive.
I remember a time when making ringtones used to be a very cumbersome experience. My technique of choice was to use the open-sourced Audacity then do various conversions in iTunes or Quicktime Pro by tweaking some of the advanced settings. However, the Web has spawned newer, less tedious methods. On of them, Audiko, is a particularly well-done effort, letting you grab audio tracks from your hard drive or the Web and customize them for use on your mobile phone.
While I think ringtones of popular songs are largely annoying and superfluous, the tools to create them are actually quite fun. Audiko simply layers the entire track on one timeline, while giving you a magnified area for each minute of the song to manipulate up to a 40-second ringtone from the segment of your choice. The entire editor is overlaid on a waveform of the song, and you can toggle whether or not you want a fade on the in and out, which can be helpful if your phone doesn't automatically do it for you.
When you're all finished creating your pocket masterpiece you've got three simple download options. One will save it as a normal mp3 ringtone compatible on most major handsets, as well as an option to download the .m4r iPhone-compatible ringtone--something you normally need an application like iToner or GarageBand (both Mac-only apps) to create. There's also a WAP-friendly URL to simply grab the audio file on your handset without having to sync to your desktop. Whatever you've created gets put into a pool of other songs, and you can even see and download other ringtones from the same artist that have been created by other users when you're all done.
See also:
Bring the canaries, we're going ToneMining
3Guppies gets media to your mobile
Pocketfuzz: Create your own ringtones, sort of
Edit MP3 tracks into ringtones for your phone without software or visual distractions using Audiko.
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