Free stuff-limited time

Edit2: Acorn is spoken for.

Edit: added iSale to the list and changed the expiration date.

Sorry to sound like an ad, but read this and ACT NOW.

I'll make this simple. I'm buying a MacHeist software bundle and it's got some apps that I may not necessarily use. So if you want the eBay page creation app iSale,the photo editing app Acorn, the picture touch-up app Picturesque, or the animation suite program Kinemac for FREE, let me know and I'll gift it to you. Google them if you don't know what they are and want more info. There are other apps in the bundle (see link above) but the ones I mentioned are ones I most likely won't use. You can look at the list and ask me about any of the others if you're interested. Please tell any Mac-using friends too.

These programs are Mac only, so sorry Windows users. I need to know as far in advance of Tuesday, 4/7, midnight Eastern Daylight time as possible, preferrably 9pm eastern, 6pm pacific on 4/7, so I can gift them to you during the buying process. This is "first come, first serve". All I need is your name and email address.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Kindle App

I first mentioned the free Kindle App for iPhone in this post. At the time, I had downloaded it but had not tried it out. Today I got some time to play around with it on my iPod Touch, and here's my report.

As I said, the app is free. When you turn it on, you get the Kindle "splash screen" showing a person sitting under a tree reading a book. At the top it says "Amazon Kindle" and at the bottom it says Kindle for iPhone, with Whispersync. More on that later. When I entered the app, it showed me the "Home" screen. This is where the books are, though it didn't come with any books. This list can be sorted by Recent, Title, and Author. On the top right there is a "Get Books" button. I had assumed that it would take me to a mobile Amazon.com store where I can buy books, but instead it showed me a small page saying "Get the best shopping experience by visiting www.amazon.com/kindlestore on your Mac or PC. You can also use Safari on your iPhone to buy books." Well, I wanted to get the whole mobile experience on my iPod Touch, so I avoided going on my computer.

Fortunately, this page provides a link to the Amazon Kindle Store, which will open in Mobile Safari on your device. The Kindle Store is simply a section of Amazon.com dedicated to selling eBooks for the Kindle device (and now for the Kindle iPhone app as well). There doesn't seem to be a mobile-optimized version, so there's going to be some zooming and pinching. Generally not a bad experience though. Not wanting to spend money at the time, I just started looking around, and managed to find a couple user-created "lists" on the left column of the page. These lists happened to be lists of free Kindle books. I was soo there. Currently, the Kindle versions of Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and Blood Engines by T.A. Pratt are free, so having heard of them recently I figured I'd buy those books... for free.

Keep in mind that you need an Amazon account to even use the app, and of course to buy Kindle books. Your existing Amazon account will do; no need to get a special Kindle account. I clicked "Add to cart" on one of the books, and it said "you cannot buy this item with a cart, please visit the item's info page to purchase." I thought that was odd, but it didn't stop me for very long. On the book's page there's a Buy Now with 1-Click button, which I promptly tapped. The next page I was presented with said something to the effect of "thank you for purchasing this book. It will be sent to your iPhone/iPod Touch the next time you open the Kindle app." Isn't that cool? It knew I was going to use the eBook on my iPod because I'd logged into my Amazon account when opening the Kindle app earlier. I bought both books mentioned above for a total of $0.

So I went back to open the Kindle app, and the Home screen showed an Activity icon, and after a matter of seconds, both books that I had purchased appeared on the list. I picked one randomly, Red Mars. The reading interface should be fairly familiar to those who use their iPod touch or iPhone for looking at pictures. Each page of the book is a screen on your device, and you swipe left to go to the next page and swipe right to go back. Tapping the screen brings up some onscreen controls, including a progress slider, which 1) indicates how far you are and 2) allows you to slide to go directly to a certain part of the book. You can also create and access your bookmarks from here, as well as choose 5 different sizes of text. Great for those who can't read smaller text as well. One neat feature for owners of multiple iPhones, iPods, and/or Kindles, is the sync feature, which gets your current page and synchronizes your reading progress across all devices. So if you use your iPhone on the go but read your Kindle when you go home, when you get home your Kindle will be on the right page.

This is the extent of my testing. It's just a very brief first impression. So far, it works. I don't know if I really plan to do a lot of reading on my iPod, but the fact that the option is here in the Kindle app, along with others such as Classics or Stanza, really improves the versatility of the device. I don't plan to get a Kindle any time soon, but Amazon made a great choice in making this app available to those like me. After all, they will be making money on book sales.

Killing Monsters

Well, now that I've given a boring description of a bad game, it's time to write an exciting review about a good game.

Ever felt like your life is too boring? Wouldn't it be great if you were to walk out into the street and suddenly be surrounded by hordes and waves of monsters? And you were armed only with a single shot musket? Well it ain't gonna happen. Not in real life anyway.

But for the absolute bargain price of $0.99US(at the time of this writing) you can pick up the iPhone/iPod touch game iDracula and live your dream.

Built around blood-boiling metal-type music and Diablo II-style graphics, iDracula is described as a "survival shooter." You play as a Van Helsing type dude who must fight off endless waves of werewolves, vampires, and other mythical creatures. Two "virtual directional pads (D-pads)" are shown on screen; the lower left one is for moving your character around and the lower right one is for aiming the gun and firing.

The two game modes as of this writing are Survival and Rush. First, survival. At the beginning the enemies come in small groups and kind of move slowly so you can easily pick them off. As you kill more, they slowly get stronger, faster, and more numerous. To help you out, the game has the enemies randomly drop items, including health recovery potions, stronger weapons including a crossbow, flamethrower, shotgun, and a BFG, as well as ammo and "omens". Omens are the only items that stay with you between play sessions, and determine your rank as an iDracula player. You gain points by killing monsters, and after gaining certain amounts of points you earn a "perk" which allows you to choose from a variety of permanent (e.g. increase max health) or temporary (e.g. increased damage) upgrades.

Once you get to a certain point the game gets really frantic with enemies coming at you from all over the place. This where the game shines. Even with so much activity, the beautiful graphics engine doesn't hiccup, doesn't skip a beat. And there is a certain great sense of satisfaction in taking out hordes of ugly monsters in your spare time.

Oh yeah, real quick note on Rush mode. In this mode, you are equipped with a really powerful weapon from the get-go (the chaingun when I played) and they just throw tons and tons of werewolves at you right off the bat. Quick and intense.

I'll try to post some screenshots later, but in the meantime get this game before it goes up to $2.99 at some unspecified point in the future.

iDracula: iTunes Store, AppShopper

EDIT: here's a sneak preview video of the upcoming Free update to owners of iDracula

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Beejive Sale and Free Kindle App

Here's a quick one. There's a multi-service IM app for the iPhone and iPod Touch called BeejiveIM. Out of all the IM apps, it is my opinion that Beejive is far and away the best. Despite the fact that the others are mostly free and BeeJive is regularly $16, if you're going to send and receive a lot of IMs, I would totally recommend Beejive. I will try to do a review of it later, but my point here is to mention that it's currently on sale for $10 for this week only. This is the price I got it for (Black Friday sale, I believe) and it's back down to it now. That's a whole 33% off for what I feel is the most useful app I own.

Now on the other side of the spectrum is the Kindle App. The Kindle is a two-part product from Amazon. One part is a handheld "eBook" reading device (the Kindle itself), and the other is the Kindle Store, where you can purchase books and periodicals that get wirelessly beamed to your Kindle. However, today Amazon released the free Kindle app for iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing those users to buy books and periodicals from the Kindle Store and view them on their iPhones/iPods; no Kindle required. If you like or are interested in reading books on your iPhone or iPod, check out the free Kindle app. Disclaimer: the books are not free.


Beejive Links: iTunes Store, AppShopper

Kindle Links: iTunes Store, AppShopper

iPhone app sales and new games

I've been totally remiss in posting anything at all, partially because I've been out of town. So I thought I'd put up this quick one. If you like the recommendations, please leave a comment.

Since the inception of the iPhone/iPod Touch app store in July, developers have been running limited time sales on their apps to bring in more customers. Sites like appshopper.com are great to follow if you want to know if the app you've been considering has come down in price, or just to see what's out there, available for cheap or even for free. The App Store provides a really really convenient way to get apps on your iPhone or iPod, but the sheer number of cool apps can help you to empty your bank account really really fast. That's why I check sites like appshopper as well as The Unofficial Apple Weblog at tuaw.com (i.tuaw.com for a special iPhone-formatted site) and toucharcade.com, which focuses more on games.

Speaking of Touch Arcade, today they posted a link to NewYearAppBlowout.com, which is a collaboration between several app developers to celebrate the new year by discounting their apps. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch I encourage you to check them out. Five of the apps offered are free, including DuckDuckDuck, a casual tilt-game where you maneuver rubber duckies onto miniature whirlpools in a pond. I definitely recommend that one, especially because the price is right.

Finally, there's a new game that's been announced called "Rebel Onslaught," which will be a 3-D space shooter which seems to be in the vein of the Starfox or Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games. Screenshots are available here. Definitely looking forward to this one!