New Apps Discussed on November 1st, 2009:

1. Alice in Bomberland – $1.99 – Play as Alice trying to grab pages to her story as she dodges bombs and other obstacles. Nice artwork with a solid presentation, but the $1.99 price is a bit high and the $0.99 price point seems more in tune.
2. Hotel Negotiator – Free – Like a one-stop way of getting straight to Priceline. But the big positive doesn’t end there. What we really have is an awesome app icon featuring the totally awesome William Shatner. That should be your incentive alone. (The hotel negotiating and layout are quick, easy, and slick too.)
3. Wordpress 2 - Free – The new version of Wordpress that actually allows for much better control of posting and editing your Wordpress blog. With more fixes and options, this is the version of Wordpress we should have gotten from the beginning.
4. 33rd Division - $0.99 – Like Flight Control/Harbor Master mixed with stealth gameplay, this draw-based game involves sneaking WWII soldiers around under enemy lines. With two game modes (Life-based and Time-based), multiple missions, and different soldiers to command, 33rd Division has a lot to get through, but requires only minutes to get into.
5. webStrips – Free – A quick and easy way to get to a selection of great webcomics. The addition of unread strip notifications and organization are nice, but let’s hope there’s a bit more added in the future. There were some issues with xkcd strips, but the app is solid overall.
6. Earth Dragon - $2.99 – A very cute and well-presented game in which you control a tiny dragon hell-bent on destroying castles, collecting coins, burning archers, and stealing princesses. There’s a bit of a suggested narrative to go with the 15 levels included. Additional content is being promised should the game do well enough.

Apps of the Week:

Travel Kit - (Bob) – Free – Multiple tools that would be useful for travel such as Currency Converters, Flight Statuses, World Clocks, Translators, and more. Quick, efficient and certainly of great use to any traveler.

Wheeler’s Treasure – (Kevin) - $0.99 – An excellent platform-style game in which you run within a giant wheel to try and get across an obstacle course filled with cannonballs, skeleton pirates, treasure, and lava. It’s quick, easy, well-presented and fun. With additional items that you can get for your pirate, multiple campaign modes, and hidden items to collect, Wheeler’s Treasure is a game that will stay on your iPhone for a while.

Silly Apps of the Week:

Z is for Zombie – (Bob) – $0.99 – We’ve always been fans of the hand-drawn sketch aesthetic and this time we’ve got zombies in the mix. Z is for Zombie provides quick and simple gameplay with a cheesy stick-figure story and characters.

Fit to Drive? – (Kevin) – Free – A silly app that supposedly tells you whether you are too drunk to drive, but it doesn’t take itself very seriously. Some tongue-in-cheek humor is easily apparent and makes it almost seem like this is a joke app rather than a serious test of sobriety.

Core Topic: Weather Apps

WeatherBug – Free or $0.99 Premium Version – The Weather presentation and wind speeds (with an update timestamp) are certainly the cleanest and nicest to look at. The rest is just basics like the forecast and maps (and even some video forecasts if you want that). The included Camera tab lets you see Weather cameras in areas that are nearby and even play back the past few hours with an animation of how the weather changed. The Elite version is ad-free and includes some additional features, though they are certainly extraneous.

Umbrella – $0.99 – An app that provides push notifications to let you know you should bring an umbrella before you leave the home. The alerts can be programmed for different times and locations (though it can also automatically detect your location).

The Weather Channel – Free or $3.99 Max Version – It’s essentially the same as their website. There isn’t much here that sticks out, though everything a basic person would need is here. The ability to have the map identify points of interest in relation to the weather and rain layers is a nice standout point. The Max version is ad-free and additional features like beach and tide conditions.

AccuWeather.com - Free – Simple tab-based interface. Ad-supported, though it doesn’t get in the way much. The Alerts and Risk quick-tabs are nice if you want to check for dangers immediately. Otherwise, I felt it was just very basic. The cool feature is the Weather Indices, which give you some additional information, like the UV index, flu index, and even how good the day is for dog walking. You can set the indices from a large initial list and get through them fairly easily. That was a nice touch.

WeatherAlert - $0.99 – Push important weather alerts straight to your iPhone so that you will know of upcoming danger. Set up the alerts you want to receive and let the app provide you with the warnings.

WeatherEye - Free – WeatherEye is from the Weather Network, which is Canadian. I really disliked the tab layout since you need to hit arrows to scroll through the tabs. Otherwise, it was very basic.

The Snow Report – Free – A great way to quickly go through the different ski resorts and check out the amount of snowfall, temperatures, and other information about each resort. It’s weather, but for a specific purpose, which really allows it to include other items like trail maps and other details specific to each ski resort. There’s even a Twitter tab so you can see what other people are saying about that resort.