Category: I-phone

The App Store is full of games trying to capitalize on a current trend, so when I first heard about Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty for the iPhone, I was a bit skeptical. Most companies have a hard enough time getting a movie adaptation to work as a console game. Is it possible they could make magic for the iPhone?

To find out, I decided to play the game and give it a fair shake. Was it worth it? Let’s find out together after the jump.

The Plot

Now, I have yet to see the movie, so know that there are no spoilers here, and if there are, well I would have no idea. Got that full disclosure part covered? OK, good. Now let’s get into it.

The graphics in the cut scenes and load screens are excellent.

The premise here is that some of Captain America’s teammates are trapped by Hydra, and the only person who can save them is, you guessed it, Captain America. To do so, you have to run through the outdoors and then the indoors to catch the bad guys, free your friends and save the world from Hydra rule. Sounds fun, right?

How It Plays

The game itself is a side scroller, which the iPhone lends itself to nicely. Often times I find that games on the iPhone that try to get too three dimensional and really work all of the angles are difficult to control, and I find my fingers slipping off of the screen in the process of trying to move the character. With Captain America, the protagonist runs by default, you just swipe in various directions to get going. Swipe left or right to move left or right, and you can stop and go again as well.

Your guides walk you through each level to give you tips.

Jumping and fighting are handled by swipes also, but you don’t have to learn a million different combos just to get things going. As you approach an enemy, the game speed slows down and you can then make your decision on how you want to take them out. You can throw your shield, jump and attack, slide and attack, or just run right through them to knock them off their feet. It seems simple because it is, but that doesn’t make it less fun.

Action

Once you’ve started an attack, you can then string that together into a combo move. Once the combo is started, the next step is depicted on the screen in that same slo-mo effect used previously. This gives you time to work the combo, but doesn’t give it too much of an edge that it will upset pro or novice users. It still manages to keep up the pace and even after hundreds of hits, the combos still look cool along the way.

Using combos is quick and fun.

There are other action moves as well, such as wall climbing which you accomplish by bouncing back and forth up a vertical corridor, as well as wall running, which involves timing your swipes perfectly to get yourself on the board. Later levels incorporate multiple moves, making it more and more difficult to get through the level.

Movement and Longevity

Even though this is a platformer at its heart, this isn’t just about running to the right and occasionally doubling back. Once you get into the underground levels, you’ll have to go up and down and back and forth to get to your destination. Better yet, the complexity level goes up a tick or two because finding your exit point is no longer a straightforward process. Instead, there are twists and turns and confusing loops to get to the end of the level, and that makes it even more fun.

The load screens between levels diagram how each combo works.

As for how well this game stands up to the test of time, I can say that I’ve been playing this game pretty solidly for a few weeks now. I don’t spend an hour at a time on it or anything, but I have found myself opening up the app frequently. Although it seems like it would get repetitive, it just hasn’t for me yet. I even moved it out of a folder on my game screen because I played it so much.

Verdict

So is this the best platformer for the iPhone? Even though it’s based on a movie, this game is still lots of fun to play. The cut scene graphics are pretty cool and evoke both the comic book and the film, plus the graphics in the game aren’t too bad either. Sure, it’s essentially about running and beating up bad guys, but isn’t that really the point of lots of games?

For me, the big win here is that I want to play the game often. It’s pretty easy for me to pick up a game and play it once or twice then put it down for a month or two at a time. But this one — for me — is more like Angry Birds or Plants Vs. Zombies. I want to play it again and again. Why? Well I’m not quite able to put my finger on that one, but I can say confidently that it is a heck of a lot of fun.

If you’ve played the game and have some thoughts, drop us a note in the comments!

Staying organized in school can be pretty difficult. You have to keep up with homework, papers, projects, tests and all sorts of stuff. Sometimes pen and paper can do the job quite well, but it’s not for us techies. I personally prefer to be able to use my iPhone to stay on schedule, and finding apps that are just for that can be quite difficult.

Here’s where inClass comes in. By letting you set terms, courses, teachers, tasks and even take text, audio and video notes during lectures, it makes your school life a whole lot easier. More after the jump.

Getting started

First thing we need to do is to set up our term. In order to add assignments or take notes, you need to have some courses configured. Doing so is easy: tapping on the bottom right tab takes you to the list of terms. inClass comes with one preconfigured, so tap on “Edit” to add courses.

Setting up your first term

Tapping on “Add New Course” lets you configure a new course, where you can set the name, code, color, location, schedules and the instructor. Note that you can configure multiple class types, like lectures or labs, with different locations, schedules and instructors for each one.

Creating a course and adding an instructor

Calendar View

Looking at your schedule is great on this app. Simply tap on the lower left corner tab and you’ll get a view of what courses you have for the day, and even due dates for assignments or projects.

Day and Month Views

The best comes by rotating your device to landscape. This way you get a full-screen calendar showing you everything for the week, which is the view I like most, since it’s easier to know what you have the next few days. Swiping left or right here lets you switch weeks.

Rotating the device to landscape mode reveals a week calendar

Taking Notes

Probably the best feature of this app is the ability to take notes. Going to the “Notes” tab and pressing the plus button let’s you start a new one, where you can add text directly using the keyboard (which I don’t find very comfortable, although maybe a bluetooth keyboard would do the trick).

You can also add voice notes, take pictures with your camera (like pictures of the whiteboard for instance), shoot video and even attach files such as PDFs. The latter feature isn’t as comfortable as the rest, since you need to upload the files to your iPhone using iTunes File Sharing first. You can open them from another app (like the iPhone Dropbox App), but it doesn’t let you attach them to any note, it just creates a new one with the file already attached.

Taking notes and exporting them

You can also export your notes 3 different ways: by email, on Facebook and via iTunes File Sharing. This lets you have your audio notes and pictures on your computer when you want to study, which is more comfortable than watching (or hearing) them on the device.

Keeping track of tasks

The app also lets you keep track of all your To-Dos. Tapping on the “Tasks” tab on the bottom takes you to a list of all your tasks, sorting them by Course, Date and Priority. Adding a new task lets you select the course to which the task belongs, the task type (you can choose between Homework, Paper, Project, Exam, Midterm and Final), a due date, whether it’s a one-time, weekly or monthly task, and an alarm. You can also add some notes to the task, and assign a priority.

Adding and listing tasks

Settings

There’s not much to customize for this app. The settings pane lets you change the recording quality settings for audio and video. By default, the app records audio and shoots video in standard definition, which can be changed to HD quality. There’s also an option to backup all data and send it as an email, which is pretty useful sometimes.

Adding and listing tasks

Apart from that, you can also link your Facebook account in order to share notes on the social network.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great app for all of us still in school. It’s simple to use and provides all the needed functionality. The note-taking feature is very good and handy, and I would say it’s this app’s killer feature. The interface is still a little rusty, and I think it could be improved, plus it crashed on me once while adding a task. Despite not being perfect, inClass is pretty good and works on both iPhone and iPad, which is pretty awesome if you ask me. In any case, it’s free, but, as you may have seen on the pictures, ad-supported, although they can be removed for $0.99 as a limited offer via In-App Purchase.

Any personal experience with inClass? Let us know in the comments!

The other day I ran into a buddy of mine who I hadn’t seen in a long time, and I noticed that he was using an original iPhone. I was shocked — not only that he hadn’t upgraded, but that it still held a charge. But he was happy with it, so he felt no reason to upgrade. Then I ran into a friend of mine who bought an iPhone 3G when it was deeply discounted (but still a new phone), and he loves it too.

So how about you? What model iPhone do you have? Let us know in the poll, and if you’ve got any interesting stories about it, tell us in the comments.

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Babbleville. The developer describes Babbleville as an app designed to let you communicate with other users in your immediate area through either individual random message threads (babbles) or through local specific forums (villes).

You don’t need to “friend” or “follow” anyone for others to read your messages. The idea is that you want to discuss with other strangers in your area, e.g. in college, at a stadium, a convention etc.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Babbleville

About the App

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

• Create as many forums as you would like.
• Privacy ensured (no location tracking, do not have to use real name).
• Reach only a local (and more relevant) audience.
• No fees of any kind.
• Available on Android, iPhone, and the web.

Requirements: iOS 3.0

Price: Free

Developer: Babbleville

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of Babbleville? Have your say in our poll:

Would you like to see Babbleville reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?

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.

Another Sunday, another live TUAW Talkcast! This week we have news of shiny new educational iMacs; remember those? We also have a bit of Newton love to talk about, and perhaps we will look back fondly upon other old Apple hardware, like Spartacus or perhaps the PowerBook World Saver slash hibachi.

Prepare to join me and… well, I’m not sure who else, but you know it’ll be a good time. Kelly hosting the show means there will be aftershow, which we never record. Perhaps you should drop by to find out why…

It’s really all about you, the community, so please join me won’t you? To participate, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for +5 Interactivity, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (Viva free weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you’ve got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Blink or X-Lite SIP clients, basic instructions are here. (If you like Blink, the pro version is available in the Mac App Store.) Talk to you tonight!

Talkcast tonight, 10pm ET/7pm PT/4pm HT: Old school hardware edition! originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It appears that at one time Apple was exploring 3G-capable MacBook Pros. eBay seller Abhw752579 has listed a prototype 2007 Santa Rosa MacBook Pro with an integrated 3G antenna built in to the LCD screen. The eBay seller is not the original owner or the machine, but bought it from someone on Craigslist who was selling the laptop “for parts.” However, upon disassembling the MacBook Pro, Abhw752579 discovered it contained a red motherboard, which typically signifies an Apple prototype model. Of course the other feature that should have immediately tipped off Abhw752579 that something was out of the ordinary with this particular MacBook Pro was the huge 3G data antenna hanging off the laptop’s screen.

As you can see from the image above, the 3G antenna is extendable, and Abhw752579 notes that its underside is marked with “Tyco Proto / #006” in ink. In addition to the 3G antenna, there’s also a standard size SIM card slot located underneath the memory cover on the bottom of the MacBook Pro. Abhw752579 was able to get the prototype powered on and discovered that OS X did pick up the 3G antenna, but there was of course no data signal.

Users have been hoping for a while now that Apple will add 3G connectivity to their laptop line and this prototype confirms Apple has at least explored the option. However, after seeing how ugly a MacBook Pro looks with an antenna hanging off of it, I’m glad Apple never brought the laptop to market. Then again, 2007 was a long time ago (in tech terms) and if Apple can build a concealed 3G antenna into an iPad, they can easily fit the same antenna into the existing form factor of today’s MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros.

[via MacRumors]

3G MacBook Pro prototype shows alternate history of mobile Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We reported last year that Hyundai was offering a free iPad with a pre-loaded manual for everyone who purchased the new Equus sedan. Well, no more. USA Today reports that Hyundai America CEO John Krafcik says the 2012 Equus will have plain old paper manuals.

Krafcik adds that a year ago an iPad was a novelty, but no more. It’s “redundant to our owner base.”

Hyundai heavily promoted the iPad with a manual last April when the car was introduced. Now it’s just a memory.

Free iPads no longer offered with high-end Hyundai originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The folks at ConFoo recently contacted us and asked that we pass the following information along to our readers.
——–

We are looking for the best speakers willing to share their skills and experience with developers and managers.

This year, ConFoo is dedicated to software development, project management and best practices.

The technical part covers different aspects of Web development such as: mobile development, Ruby , PHP, Python, .Net, Java, security, content management systems, frameworks, databases, system administration, Web standards, accessibility and software architecture.

The management and best practices parts includes: project management, agile methodology, referencing (SEO), Web marketing analysis, social networking, and start-ups.

The conference will be held in Montreal from February 29th to March 2nd, 2012 at the prestigious Hotel Hilton Bonaventure and will be preceded by a few days of training.

Talk proposals must received by September 2nd, 2011.

Visit ConFoo.ca in order to submit a proposal.

Last Saturday Apple released iOS 5 Beta 5 to developer along with iCloud development tools.

You can view the entire notes and known issues here.

Will Russia be getting the iPhone 5?

Apple already approving app updates for iOS 5, which is scheduled to be released next month.

Apple says they would only release a cheaper iPhoneif it can dominate the market.

It has been confirmed by IDC, Apple is the global smartphone leader in Q2 2011.

iPhone 5 seen in the wild?

The long awaited iPhone 5 will start shipping in September according to Digitime:

Pegatron Technology has landed orders for 10 million units of iPhone 5 to become the second ODM of the smartphone. Shipments will start in September, according to industry sources.

Source: Pegatron to begin shipments of iPhone 5 in September

Forbes has identified the hacker behind the popular jail breaking site JailBreakMe.com as 19-year-old Brown University student, Nicholas Allegra.

Yet Allegra has managed to find a path around those locks. In JailbreakMe 3, Allegra used a bug in how Apple’s mobile operating system iOS handles PDFs fonts that allows him to both locate and repurpose hidden commands. That critical flaw allowed a series of exploits that not only gains total control of the machine but leaves behind code that jailbreaks it again every time the device reboots –all without ever even crashing the operating system. “I spent a lot of time on the polish,” Allegra says with a hint of pride.

Source: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

An Apple led consortium has purchased all of Nortel Networks patents and patent applications. It is rumored that Apple contributed $2.6 of the $4.5 billion purchase price. The sale is pending a US Anit-trust investigation. Here is the press release:

TORONTO – Nortel Networks Corporation [OTC: NRTLQ] announced that it,its subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited (NNL), and certain of its other subsidiaries, including Nortel Networks Inc. and Nortel Networks UK Limited (in administration), have completed the sale of all of Nortel’s remaining patents and patent applications to a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony, for a cash purchase price of US$4.5 billion.

As previously announced, the sale includes more than 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patents. The extensive patent portfolio touches nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as well, including Internet search and social networking.

As previously announced, Nortel does not expect that the Company’s common shareholders or the NNL preferred shareholders will receive any value from Nortel’s creditor protection proceedings and expects that the proceedings will result in the cancellation of these equity interests.

Overseas sales responsible for the majority of the iPhone sales growth, Verizon a “small bang”.

HTC would really like to negotiate a patent deal with Apple.

Recent survey indicates consumers will by the iPhone 5 sight unseen.

EA CEO says consoles only responsible for 40% of the game industry.

Apple is selling every iPad they can make, crushing the Motorola Zoom.

Most Android phones have a search button. this button is used to search contacts,applications or anything on the phone. We can make use of the search functionality in our apps.

In this post we’re going to see how to implement search functionality to search for entries stored in a databaseand display them in a ListView.

Creating database:

our database has two tables: Countries and Names:

public class DBHelper extends SQLiteOpenHelper {

	public DBHelper(Context context) {
		super(context, "DemoDB", null, 1);
	}

	@Override
	public void onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) {
		StringBuilder builder=new StringBuilder();
		// countries table
		builder.append("CREATE TABLE Countries ");
		builder.append("(_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,");
		builder.append("NAME TEXT) ");
		db.execSQL(builder.toString());
		// Names table
		// Virtual table for full text search
		builder.setLength(0);
		builder.append("CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE NAMES USING FTS3");
		builder.append("(");
		builder.append("name TEXT) ");
		db.execSQL(builder.toString());
		builder=new StringBuilder();

		//dummy  data
		InsertData(db);

	}

	 void InsertData(SQLiteDatabase db)
	 {
		 ContentValues cv=new ContentValues();
			cv.put("NAME","USA");
			db.insert("Countries", "NAME", cv);
			cv.put("NAME","UK");
			db.insert("Countries", "NAME", cv);
			cv.put("NAME","Spain");
			db.insert("Countries", "NAME", cv);
			cv.put("NAME","ITALY");
			db.insert("Countries", "NAME", cv);
			cv.put("NAME","Germany");
			db.insert("Countries", "NAME", cv);

			 cv=new ContentValues();
				cv.put("name","John");
				db.insert("NAMES", "name", cv);
				cv.put("name","Jack");
				db.insert("NAMES", "name", cv);
				cv.put("name","Ann");
				db.insert("NAMES", "name", cv);
				cv.put("name","Adam");
				db.insert("NAMES", "name", cv);
				cv.put("name","Sarah");
				db.insert("NAMES", "name", cv);

	 }

	@Override
	public void onUpgrade(SQLiteDatabase db, int oldVersion, int newVersion) {
		// TODO Auto-generated method stub

	}
}

notice that the Names table is a VIRTUAL table. we created it as virtual to make use of Full Text Search (FTS3) feature in SQLite. this feature makes queries faster than that in regular tables.

then we add two functions to retrieve all rows from both tables:

/**
	 * Return all countries
	 * @return
	 */
	public ArrayListgetCountries(){
		ArrayList countries=new ArrayList();
		SQLiteDatabase db=this.getReadableDatabase();
		Cursor c=db.rawQuery("select * from Countries", null);
		while(c.moveToNext()){
			String country=c.getString(1);
			countries.add(country);
		}
		c.close();
		return countries;
	}
/**
	 * Return all names
	 * @return
	 */

	public ArrayListgetNames(){
		ArrayList names=new ArrayList();
		Cursor c=this.getReadableDatabase().rawQuery("select * FROM Names", null);
		while(c.moveToNext()){
			String name=c.getString(0);
			names.add(name);
		}
		c.close();
		return names;
	}

and another two functions to retrieve data based on a search string:

/**
	 * Return all countries based on a search string
	 * @return
	 */
	public ArrayListgetCountriesSearch(String query){
		ArrayList countries=new ArrayList();
		SQLiteDatabase db=this.getReadableDatabase();
		Cursor c=db.rawQuery("select * from Countries where NAME LIKE '%"+query+"%'", null);
		while(c.moveToNext()){
			String country=c.getString(1);
			countries.add(country);
		}
		c.close();
		return countries;
	}
/**
	 * Return all names based on a search string
	 * we use the MATCH keyword to make use of the full text search
	 * @return
	 */
	public ArrayListgetNamesSearch(String query){
		ArrayList names=new ArrayList();
		Cursor c=this.getReadableDatabase().rawQuery("select * FROM Names WHERE name MATCH '"+query+"'", null);
		while(c.moveToNext()){
			String name=c.getString(0);
			names.add(name);
		}
		c.close();
		return names;
	}

Implementing The activity:

then we will create our activity that has a list view like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    >
<ListView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:id="@+id/list"/>
</LinearLayout>

we load data from database like this:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        list=(ListView)findViewById(R.id.list);

            DBHelper helper=new DBHelper(this);
            ArrayList items=helper.getNames();
            ArrayAdapter adapter=new ArrayAdapter(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1,items);
            list.setAdapter(adapter);
}

Handling the search dialog:

In order to handle the search dialog ourselves we need to create a xml file with search configurations such as the search dialog title, voice search capabilities, content provider for auto complete and so on. we create a file with the name searchable.xml in res/xmldirectory:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<searchable xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:hint="@string/hint"  >
</searchable>

the android:hint attribute denotes a string that acts as a water mark on the search text box.
then we need to add an Intent Filter in out app’s AndroidManifest.xml file to our activity to handle the search dialog:

<activity android:name=".MainActivty"
                  android:label="@string/app_name">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
             <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEARCH" />
        </intent-filter>
        <meta-data android:name="android.app.searchable"
                   android:resource="@xml/searchable"/>
        </activity>

Understanding the Search process:

when you press the search button, type some text and click on search the activit’s onSearchRequested() function is called, then an Intent with the action Intent.ACTION_SEARCH is created and you activity is re-created with this intent.
the search intent has you search string as a string extra with the name SearchManager.QUERY. also it can carry a bundle of other extras with the name SearchManager.APP_DATA.

what if the device doesn’t have a Search button:

not all Android devices have a search button, so we can start the search dialog manually by calling the activity’s onSearchRequested() from a button or a menu item:

@Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    	menu.add("Search").setOnMenuItemClickListener(new OnMenuItemClickListener() {

			@Override
			public boolean onMenuItemClick(MenuItem item) {
                                //launch the search dialog
				onSearchRequested();
				return true;
			}
		});
    	return true;
    }

adding extras to the search dialog:

we can pass some extra data as a bundle with our search dialog or an initial search string by overriding the activity’s onSearchRequested():

@Override
    public boolean onSearchRequested() {
    	Bundle bundle=new Bundle();
		bundle.putString("extra", "exttra info");
		// search initial query
		startSearch("Country", false, bundle, false);
		return true;
    }

Handling the search query:

we said before that the search query is passed as a String extra when our activity is re-created. so we can handle the searcgh string in our onCreate() like this:

@Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        list=(ListView)findViewById(R.id.list);

        DBHelper helper=new DBHelper(this);
        Intent intent=getIntent();
        // if the activity is created from search
        	if(intent.getAction().equals(Intent.ACTION_SEARCH)){
        		// get search query
        		String query=intent.getStringExtra(SearchManager.QUERY);
        		ArrayList items=helper.getNamesSearch(query);
        		//get extras, just for demonstration
        		Bundle bundle=intent.getBundleExtra(SearchManager.APP_DATA);
        	    String info=bundle.getString("extra");
        		Log.v("extra", info);
        		//bind the list
                ArrayAdapter adapter=new ArrayAdapter(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1,items);
                list.setAdapter(adapter);
        	}
        //activity created normally
        else{
        	ArrayList items=helper.getNames();
            ArrayAdapter adapter=new ArrayAdapter(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1,items);
            list.setAdapter(adapter);
        }
        helper.close();
    }

we just extract the search string and any other extras and perform our search logic based on the search string.
and that’s was all about implementing search, stay tuned for another Android tutorial