Recently, we posted a head-to-head match between Pulse and FLUD, two attractive and innovative new readers for the iPhone. Today we want to get your input on which unique news aggregator you like best.

Our contestants are Pulse News Mini, FLUD Mobile, Reeder, Taptu and News360. All of these are quality attempts at versatile, customizable and design-conscious news readers and all are free with the exception of Reeder.

Cast your vote on the right and tell us which app you think is the best, then leave a comment below ranking those that you’ve tried. Obviously, we couldn’t list every news reader on the App Store so feel free to write in your favorite if we missed it!

Besides ushering in a new era of interface design and raising the bar for smartphone functionality, the iPhone’s tactile interaction has helped spark a revival of one of the oldest and most respected gaming genres in history: the point & click adventure game. One of the happy consequences of this revival has been a game called City of Secrets, from Aidem Media.

Right from the unusual opening, the game’s polished presentation and engaging story draw you deeper (literally) into a hidden city beneath the ground where the plot unfolds. The game’s popularity has prompted the release of iPad and Mac versions, but today we take a look at the iPhone version to see what makes this a city you’ll want to visit.

Enter the City

What is it about point & click adventures that makes them predisposed to humour? Some of the most famous titles in the history of the genre (Monkey Island, I’m looking at you) have expertly used the formula to make us laugh. In similar spirit, City of Secrets offers a fairly uncomplicated plot that nevertheless draws you in with its cute and voice-acted characters, its outstanding graphical presentation, and its subversive and uniquely self-aware sense of humour.

In Search of Rex

Following the exploits of Mr. Moles and his friend Rex, the dog. What starts out as an innocent search for a fishing hook quickly evolves into a political tangle in the secret underground city of the moles as Rex is imprisoned for espionage. The game spans five different “episodes” and will take you all through the underground city, and further to another locale beneath it…though it will take you less time than you might think to complete. All the while, you’ll find yourself greeted by voice-acted characters and expertly hand-drawn artwork that, combined, makes for an extremely refined presentation.

Gameplay

As is common for the genre, you’ll spend most of your time in City of Secrets tapping at your screen to search for objects, read signs, talk to people, combine collected items into unlikely and unusual hybrids, and construct things that help you progress. That being the standard, City of Secrets does a good job of exceeding expectations by including a number of occasional mini-games that help break up the gameplay and add variety to the experience. Some of them, like the magnifying glass clue finding, feel a little obvious and aren’t terribly fun, especially on a small screen where pixel hunting becomes a chore. There are others, however, that are much more innovative and make good use of the iPhone’s accelerometer.

Look Closely

One thing that Aidem Media has made sure to do, thankfully, is learn from the mistakes of past point & click adventure games. This is evident in their robust but unobtrusive hint system. Fans of these games will know that you’re often called upon to combine items and perform leaps of reasoning that often defy conventional logic. The simplistic core gameplay system means that it’s often outside the box thinking that provides the challenge. This is certainly true of City of Secrets and its quirky plot progression, but the aforementioned hint system offers some respite for those who don’t have time to puzzle over the occasionally obscure solutions. To pull it up, just tap the lightbulb in the lower left of the screen. This will highlight all items on the screen that you can interact with, which gives you a leg up when it comes to figuring out what you need to do next.

Hint Hint

Something you’ll notice while playing is that the game has a narrator (a rarity nowadays) and that this narrator actually interacts with the characters and with you. This breaking of the fourth wall (to use a theatrical term) is a large part of what makes City of Secrets’ humour work: it’s gently self-deprecating and pokes fun at some of the common tropes of point & click adventures, all the while providing you with an experience that refines those idiosyncrasies.

Presentation

While the game’s oddball humour and relatively short story may draw some criticism, its presentation is almost flawlessly executed and deserves the praise it’s been receiving. The visuals are detailed and colourful, with diverse environments and thoughtfully designed paths and interaction prompts. The game’s full year of development shows. There’s also an interesting blend of 3D perspectives and 2D graphics combined, all the more impressive because the two do not clash.

Places to Go, People to See

Furthermore, the game features an excellent audio treatment, with some catchy tunes in the musical score and organic sound effects. What sets it apart is of course the fact that it’s fully voice acted. This is one area where there is room for improvement, as not all the actors have managed to put out the same quality of performance. That being said, they’re still better than most other iPhone voice acting you’re likely to encounter, and the most important consideration — how annoying they get — is one you won’t find yourself encountering very often at all.

Conclusion

Though it might seem easy to dismiss City of Secrets as a game that will only appeal to fans of its genre, the truth is that it brings so much fresh spirit to the table that it’s impossible not to appreciate it even if you’ve never played a point & click adventure before in your life. The developers have really done an admirable job of adapting the best aspects of the genre to the modern gaming world, and their consciousness of cross-platform gaming shines through in their slick interface design that works just as well on the iPhone as on a bigger screen.

Coupled with great graphics and sound, a solid (if short) story, and a strangely endearing sense of humour, City of Secrets packs a lot of material into its modest asking price. In a world of puzzle game clones, it’s always refreshing to see something a bit different, especially when it’s executed with as much love and attention as this.

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting HalfCamera. The developer describes HalfCamera as an app that reproduces amusement & fun from the half frame camera which takes two pictures in a film.

Half frame camera is used by classic camera fans in the world, and now on you can enjoy it with your iPhone. We cooperated with professional photographers from start to finish. That’s why we are sure that you will totally enjoy the experience in using HalfCamera if you like taking pictures. Apply effects, arrange poses and take a photo with an 18×24 format view finder. One film roll consists of 6 shots (12 photos). You can develop an image by choosing two photos which are close to each other. You can write text between photos and frame images.

Screenshots

HalfCamera

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

• HalfCamera reproduces classic Half Frame Camera style.
• HalfCamera takes two pictures in a film.
• HalfCamera Supports 10+ beautiful effects.
• You can enjoy or post contact sheets which consist of 12 photos in a picture.
• You can post pictures and contact sheets to Twitter and Facebook.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch Requires iOS 4.0 or later
Price: $0.99
Developer: B1VISUALEFFECTS

Vote for a Review

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Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the poll if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review! If you’re a developer and would like to have your app profiled, you can submit it here.

Don’t you hate it that you have to connect your phone to your computer to transfer a photo? Doesn’t it seem like this sort of action should be performed over Wifi?

Today’s app, Wifi Photo Transfer, does that very thing. It’s a simple, no-fluff application that allows you to access your phone’s photo libraries right from any web browser on any computer.

Why Is Transferring Photos Such a Pain?

I spend a good portion of each week testing and writing about iPhone apps, which means that there are certain actions that I repeat over and over that really start to get monotonous.

For instance, no review is complete without a gaggle of screenshots. Now, the way that Apple proposes that I handle this situation is a bit ridiculous and is in fact the way I worked for a long time. First, I take a few screenshots. Then I plug in my iPhone to my Mac, pop open iPhoto, import the images to my iPhoto library and then drag them to Photoshop for editing.

iPhoto Importing Screenshots

By itself, this is already a lot of steps, but it gets worse. Inevitably, as I’m writing my review, I realize that I need a few extra screenshots that I didn’t get the first go round. So I snap them on my phone, but iPhoto doesn’t recognize the change, forcing me to either unplug my iPhone or quit iPhoto to get everything to reboot.

Further, for whatever reason, I’ve noticed that iPhoto likes to freeze when importing my images from my iPhone, an action which eliminates all of the screenshots that I just spent ten minutes creating!

One of the most frustrating aspects of this daily struggle is that I’m forced to take my multi-hundred dollar wonder-device that can make wireless face-to-face video calls with someone from across the globe and physically connect it to my computer just to transfer a single image. Hey Apple, isn’t that a bit nuts? Shouldn’t I be able to transfer music, images, contacts and anything else to and from my iPhone wirelessly with no third party software or subscription services like MobileMe?

Apparently, the answer is “no.” Fortunately, third party developers have stepped into the gap once again and created several awesome apps that help me handle my screenshot troubles. One of these in particular seemed like the best deal to me. It’s free, requires no software installation on the Mac end and works like a charm! Let’s take a look.

Meet Wifi Photo Transfer

Wifi Photo Transfer is a very simple app aimed at transferring images from your iPhone, nothing more. The two screens below are literally the only screens in the entire app.

Wifi Photo Transfer

As you can see, interaction here is a big fat zero. You don’t do anything to setup this app and you can’t change any settings. You simply open it up! From here the rest happens in the web browser on your Mac.

Connecting To The App In Your Browser

Once you have Wifi Photo Transfer up and running on your iPhone, step two is to open your browser and enter the address shown on your iPhone’s screen, in my case “http://10.0.1.2:15555/”.

Type in the address shown on your iPhone’s screen

As I mentioned before, other apps require you to download and install software on your Mac to perform this same action. I love that with Wifi Photo Transfer, all I need is Safari or any other browser.

In the screenshot above you can see that once you’ve got the address entered in correctly, you are taken to a list of the photo libraries on your phone. In my case, I only have the camera roll so I click on that to enter the thumbnail view for that library.

Browsing and Downloading Images

Once you’ve entered a specific library, you are taken to a simple grid showing the images on your phone. To see the options for downloading an image, simply click on it.

My phone’s camera roll

Once you click on an image, WifiPhoto gives you several options for downloading. Right away there’s a version that you can drag to your computer, but there are also links for a small, medium, large and full-size version of the file. This is great for anyone who doesn’t necessarily need the fill retina-resolution image.

Download options

Downloading Multiple Images

If you have several images to transfer, the workflow we just saw can be a pain. Fortunately, back at the main grid there is a link to download a zipped file of several images. Clicking on this link brings up checkmarks and text fields that allow you to quickly select the images or range of images that you want to download.

Selecting multiple images to download

Not Quite Perfect

When downloading a .zipped file, there is one unfortunate bug. Every image that you download is given a “.jpg” extension, which is accurate for photos taken with your iPhone’s camera.

However, iPhone screenshots, like Mac screenshots, are PNG files, which means they are improperly labeled and won’t open in applications like Photoshop until you change the extensions to what they should be. This is definitely a major blemish on an otherwise great application.

Further, it would be nice to see just a few extra features. Two that immediately come to mind are Mac-to-iPhone transfer and password protection.

Conclusion

There are several apps that attempt this same functionality, some better, many worse. Wifi Photo Transfer certainly isn’t the prettiest or the most fully-featured, but it’s my first choice because it’s free, dead simple and just functional enough to fit perfectly into my workflow.

One of the reasons that I really like this app is that I can get high quality images from it. I tried using the official Dropbox app for this same task and noticed that it was actually compressing my screenshots without warning. Consequently, the image quality suffered quite a bit and I set off in search of another solution.

If you’re looking for a way to transfer images from your iPhone to your Mac without the hassles of cords or complicated setups, download Wifi Photo Transfer and let us know what you think.

Productivity apps comprise one of the hottest niches on the app store. For whatever reason, we simply can’t get enough todo list applications! The problem of course with these apps is that, despite being fairly simple, many of them can run you upwards of $70 by the time you purchase the Mac, iPhone and iPad versions. Even after spending all that money you don’t always get synced tasks between the various versions!

Wunderlist is the app that’s changing everything. It’s free, gorgeous, has professional features like list-sharing, exists on almost every platform you can think of and is always up-to-date no matter where you access it from.

We sat down with Robert Kock, the co-founder of 6Wunderkinder (the company behind Wunderlist) to see how they created such a successful app, why they can offer it for free and what other goodies we can expect to see in the future.

Tell us a little bit about 6Wunderkinder – where are you based, how many of you are there and how did you get started?

6Wunderkinder was founded in August 2010 by six friends in Berlin, Germany. We were running a web and design agency here in Berlin for several years and we worked together with many clients and different startups.

During that time we tried out tons of collaborative software tools and learned a lot about productivity. So we developed this idea for a productivity platform for everyone and literally two weeks later we found two business angels that helped us getting started. It was our dream coming true.

6Wunderkinder’s flagship product, Wunderlist

You created Wunderlist at a time when the market is nearly over-saturated with productivity applications. Why?

We ourselves have particular things in mind when it comes to great software. Fore example, good usability, mobility and, most of all, a good user interface design. We just didn’t find this one single tool that solved all of our task management problems, so we decided to make it on our own.

Wunderlist is dead simple, it looks beautiful and it provides synced and shared todo lists for every major platform. We tried to keep it clean and simple and cut every feature that is not necessary. On top of that, it is completely free. It is the combination of all these things that makes Wunderlist so wildly successful.

Robert Kock of 6Wunderkinder

Wunderlist seems like it’s far too amazing to simply give away freely, how is this going to be sustainable in the long term? Should we expect to be charged for it in the future?

First of all, thanks for the compliment. We are happy about every single user and that is already part of the answer: our main goal with Wunderlist is to get as many users as possible. We just want pure growth and we want to build a huge fan base for 6Wunderkinder and our work. That’s why we give it away for free.

Nevertheless, there are thoughts about monetizing Wunderlist later this year, but we’ve decided nothing yet. We are planning to ask our user base about how we should do this. But no matter what the future holds, all the cool features like syncing and sharing will definitely stay free.

I read that you used the Titanium platform to help develop your iPhone app. Can you explain what this is and how it helped you?

Titanium is a really advanced technology created by Appcelerator. With the help of Titanium, developers can build apps for different platforms like Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android just by using web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. That’s what Wunderlist is all about: it’s a web application packed into different forms for every platform. We launched five different apps within only four months. We wouldn’t be able to be so fast without the Titanium framework.

Titanium allows developers to build native apps with web technologies

Wunderlist recently crossed over a stunning one million downloads. What advice can you give other developers looking for this kind of attention?

There are two things I would recommend to everyone making software. The first one is: be honest with yourself. Do you like to use your own software? Do you really think it is good enough? You’ll probably find one or two things you want to change. Do it!

The second one is: show your application to your grandma and try to explain it to her. She doesn’t get it? Well, maybe she is just too old to understand it, but maybe you didn’t spend enough time thinking about usability and your user interface.

As you may have noticed, both pieces of advice are basically about the same truth: you already know the answer and often enough it is not really hard to find. It’s as simple as that.

Wunderlist is everywhere!

You now have Wunderlist on Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Android. What’s next for this great app?

We will make Wunderlist even better. We want to enhance the whole user experience, that means providing better usability, wiping out some bugs and implementing improvements and new features for the different platforms. Another big issue for us is localization. There are already many translations for the desktop apps and the web app, but parts of them are outdated by now and we still need translations for Wunderlist mobile. We are also thinking about new platforms, but I cannot say anything yet.

Wunderkit is an exciting secret project from 6Wunderkinder

Your website mentions a new secret project called Wunderkit. Can you give us any hints about this new application and how it will be different than Wunderlist?

Wunderkit is the original concept of a perfect productivity platform we had in mind when we were starting. It is a platform for collaboration that will, hopefully, change the way people think about teamwork.

You can barely compare it to Wunderlist, because it is much more like an own ecosystem for productivity and not designed for a single purpose like task management. Anyway, we will reveal some Wunderkit secrets during the next weeks. I cannot say more right now, sorry!

Thanks Robert!

We are extremely grateful for Robert’s willingness to give us some insight into what makes 6Wunderkinder and its products so awesome. We are super excited to see what the future holds for Wunderlist, Wunderkit and any other “wunderful” things these guys are dreaming up!

Head over to the 6Wunderkinder website to learn more about the company and download your free copy of Wunderlist, an awesome productivity solution that you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.

We’ve all re-visited a restaurant and after bit of menu wandering just cannot remember the amazing dish we had when we were here two months ago. It was the best thing you’d ever had and you told yourself you wouldn’t forget, but you did. Or maybe you’re trying to recreate that fantastic dinner you cooked up a few weeks ago, but you can’t remember exactly what you included in that salad. You knew you’d remember because it was so good, but guess what? You forgot.

Memorable Meals gives you a crutch in scenarios like these and some others as well. It allows you to quickly and easily catalog meals and their details to help you remember them. Seems like a killer idea, but how does it work?

Design & Interface

Memorable Meals is built with a minimalistic, and simplistic notion. The first thing you’ll notice is that it feels as if you’ve just pulled out a basic, spiral reporter-style notebook from your pocket. The application was built to be able to quickly record meals and things you’d like to remember about them. The home screen only has two options. You can either add a new meal or view your existing meals. Those two options accompanied by a beautiful logo and overall style put off an really nice style and comforting feeling.

Memorable Meals home screen

The developers make note of the fact that Memorable Meals “is focused on simplicity and ease of use” and that is very evident as you move throughout the application. The form to add a meal is simple enough to quickly complete as it has several canned tags and options (we’ll go through this in more detail shortly), but allows enough information to be input so that your entries are easily sortable and useful down the road. A nice balance between giving you what you need and giving you more than you’ll use really does create a simplistic and easy to use interface.

Some may argue that there aren’t enough features and options available, but for the purpose of quickly recording a meal to refer back to later the design of the interface feels perfect.

Add a Meal

Obviously, this is a core feature of the application. From the home screen you simply tap “add a meal” and the form to do this will slide up from the bottom of the display. Each new meal form will allow you to enter a specific set of details for the meal. You’re able to select the date though the use of a spinner if you’d like. It will default to the current date as that will more than likely be the case. Naming the meal will then be your next task. From there you can enter in some more details to help you remember this meal from some pre-established categories and tags.

Memorable Meals add a meal

There is no way to create your own tags and if you were like me you’re concerned that could be a serious hindrance. After a little thought and some use I realized that with an application with a more narrow focus (meals in this situation) there isn’t a big need for a lot of customization. The categories and tags available are sufficient for cataloging meals to remember and in fact, removing that level of customization simplifies the application further. It’s something you don’t have to worry about. Record your meal and pick a couple categories and tags if they apply and you’re done.

Memorable Meals record a voice memo

Photos are also a big part of cataloging your memorable meals. Right within the new meal form you’re able to take a photo or grab one from your camera roll. There is also an option to record a voice note up to two minutes in length. Sometimes there is more to note than you’d like to write and this is a nice feature to cover that gap.

Memorable Meals full meal listing

I did notice one issue with the voice note recording. When you go back into a previous entry to edit it and record a voice entry the photo for the entry gets removed! You see the thumbnail in the My Meals list, but the full size photo doesn’t display on the full entry. Not a major problem but from what I can see it is a glitch in the current version.

Oddly, with the exception of a date, which is inserted automatically, none of the fields are required. If you don’t want to include a photo or a tag you can just leave those spaces blank. It makes sense to include as much info as you’re able to and it is quite easy to do that, but the application doesn’t force you to include anything.

Once you’ve got the information you’d like to capture recorded, tap the save button at the top. You’ll be taken right back to the home screen ready to record another memorable meal or view your meal listing.

My Meals

You’ve built up a considerable number of meals you’d like to remember and now you want to go find that Lobster Mac & Cheese you had a couple months ago. The My Meals list is organized to start by the most recent record. You’ll see a thumbnail of the image with the meal (if there is one) along with the date, categories, and meal name.

Memorable Meals my meals listing

There are filter buttons that can be activated and deactivated at the bottom of the list. For example if you’re interested in filter down to dinner meals you’ve had at restaurants simply activate those two filter buttons and the list responds. You’ll also find a live search function at the top of the list. Nothing like a live search to find what you’re looking for when you can’t exactly remember.

Tap on a meal to open it up and view all of the details. You’ll be presented with the full size photo along with all of the information you included in the original post. Tapping on the listing will flip to a more minimal style listing without the image.

Memorable Meals two meal listing views

You’ll be able to share your listing from either view to Twitter, Facebook, or send it to someone via Email.

Memorable Meals share your meal

Conclusion

I’ll admit I was a little worried about the simplicity about this application when I opened it for the first time. I felt like I needed more. The truth is the developers have done a nice job of allowing enough options to allow you to record information about meals in a meaningful and useful way, but not so much so that you get lost in the process. By making the process to document a meal quick and easy I will guarantee I am much more apt to use it.

Memorable Meals is priced at $1.99 which is a very reasonable price. This application was designed in a very thoughtful way to be as useful in it’s intent as possible and I think the developers nailed it.