The Appcast #52: February 7th, 2010 – Cat and Dog Apps

This week’s show: Cat and Dog Apps. We take a look at apps that might help out pet owners as well as some silly animal apps.

Episodes can be downloaded by clicking the Episodes tab above.

Intro Music: Borderline D.U. Mix  from Mixter Two – I Don’t Know What I’m Doing by Brad Sucks.

 

Show Outline:

  1. Introductions
  2. News: Firmware 3.1.3 released
  3. News: iTunes HTML pages
  4. News: Slingbox now works over 3G
  5. News: Apple not allowing location-based advertising
  6. News: Homerun Battle 3D goes cross-platform
  7. Listener Feedback
  8. Core Topic: Cat and Dog Apps
New Apps Discussed on February 7th, 2009:

  1. VANQUISH: The Oath of Brothers – $2.99 - Gamevil’s latest creation is an artsy action game in which you control characters from the famous Chinese Romance of Three Kingdoms saga. The gameplay is simple: you move on a horse using the joypad and attack enemies as they zoom by. The presentation is very unique and kind of presents a painting-stye to the game. I was somewhat let down since it seems so simple to begin with, though I really like the presentation and wonder if others can improve on how it plays out. Check out some videos for sure, since the visuals are what truly bring out this game.
  2. ContactPoint – Free – If you ever wanted to visualize the relative distance to and between your Contacts, then ContactPoint will have you covered. You can bring up the Contacts near you in a specific radius and see where everyone is placed via integration withe Maps default app.
  3. Parachute Ninja – $0.99 - A simple Doodle-Jump style game in which you propel a Ninja ball into the air using a nifty physics engine. You continue to boost your ninja into the air and catch fireflies to boost your score.  It’s casual and charming, while also maintaining really solid touch controls and graphics. It could definitely be a bit hit.
  4. Minigame Party – $0.99 Premium version or Free Lite version – Play a set of minigames with yourself, online with friends, or locally on one iPhone or iPod Touch screen. Controls are pretty simple and easy to understand right away. Though the gameplay is shallow, there’s a lot to do and you’ll be having too much fun to realize how simple it all is.
  5. Space Miner: Space Ore Bust – $4.99 - Asteroids has never been too exciting to me, but Space Miner incorporates RPG elements to the formula while also providing different mission settings, lots of touch control options, and a humorous story. There’s a lot of upgrades, 24 missions, tons of crazy characters, great graphics, and very frantic and fun action. It’s got everything you want from an arcade-acton title and will definitely be showing up in Top 10 lists for 2010.
  6. Fingering – $4.99 – Fingering charts for multiple instruments, along with more instruments to be added, can now be at your fingertips. Note names for different clefs are also provided.
Apps of the Week:
  • Welcome - (Kevin) - Free Lite version or $1.99 Premium version – Now you can have all your bookmarks in a nicer gallery format, providing you a context on what the site looks like, what it’s about, etc. Sure, it’s something we wish was built into Safari, but I like the presentation of the sites in this format. A bit annoying since you have to enter the bookmarks in manually, but if you get things set up, you could use this to start up browsing rather than Safari. Clicking any bookmarks will bring you Safari as well (or you could set it to open in-app). The free version only lets you have 1 page on the Welcome screen and a few options.
  • Bluetooth Helper – (Bob) – $0.99 – Sync your Bluetooth headset controls to allow you to control your iPhone or iPod Touch Music controls wirelessly. With OS 3.0, you can control Play/Pause, but with this app, you can get more control like Seeking and Skipping.
Silly Apps of the Week
  • Dog Piano Jr - (Kevin) – Free Lite version or  $0.99 Premium version - This is similar to the older Cat Piano app I talked about in Ep 2 of the Appcast, except with dogs! Rather than have keyboard sounds, you can play different dog parks as notes instead. Simple, cute, and a good waste of a minute.
  • MAEGAMI - (Bob) – Free – Cut a girl’s bangs. Yep. What else is there to say?

Core Topic: It’s Raining Cat and Dog Apps
We take a look at Cat and Dog Apps for pet owners and those of us that just want to see and hear some silly animal apps. What really surprised us was that there really wasn’t much in the way of iPhone apps that really enhanced or brought anything new to the pet owner’s table.
For Dogs:
  • Off Leash – Free – Find the closest Dog parks.
  • Pet Services Finder – Free – A listing of Dog daycare centers, parks, sitters/walkers, clinics, groomers, and vets in your zip code along with reviews from other users.
  • Dogbook – Free – Basically the Dogbook app from Facebook.
  • PetMinder – Free - Manage your dog’s classes, grooming, medicine/vaccinations, and play dates with this simple planner. There’s email reminders that you can set as well. I found this to be very useful since I normally put my dog’s reminders in my calendar, though that’s usually full with my work event info and I’d like to keep things separate for the dog only.
For Cats:
  • MeowLingual Cat Translator – Free Lite version or $0.99 Premium version – Record your cats and get a “translation”. It’s just for fun. The cats didn’t really say anything.
  • Cat Chat Language Translation – $0.99 – Record your own voice and have it translated into Cat Chat in an attempt to speak to your cats. The cats ignored the chat.
  • Cat Toy – Free – Essentially a way to allow cats to touch your iPhone screen to interact with the movement on the screen. Didn’t really get a reaction from the cats.
  • iControl Cat – $1.99 – Press a button and hope your cat does what the remote will command them to do. More of a silly app.
  • Cat Teaser – $0.99 – A soundboard for playing with your cat. Unfortunately some buttons made no sounds or didn’t sound like what they were supposed to.
  • Cat Fight – $0.99 – Play some cat sounds that make cats go crazy. Annoying to humans, too!
  • Where is my Phone? – $0.99 – A whistle beeper for your iPhone. Silly in that you need to have the app on all the time to work, which you likely won’t be doing. There are some animal sounds choices that did actually cause the cats to react.

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categories The Appcast | suberunker | datetime February 9, 2010 2:05 am

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