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Using the iPhone and iPad as a tool to quickly lookup something (often to settle a bet!) is an often under-appreciated and useful feature (it’s even the biggest folder on our homescreen for some of us!). While one can argue that a Wikipedia app or just using the browser is sufficient for looking up everything, a dedicated and specific reference app can’t be beat in its category. So this week lists our favorite four reference apps.
iBartender
This app (which is surprisingly the #7 top paid iPhone reference app) is the ultimate companion for a bartender. iBartender is a simple enough app to explain, it's one of those books that can be found behind a bar listing all kinds of alcoholic drinks no one knew existed. iBartender trumps all of those bar books with an easily browsable encyclopedia of drinks, a search feature, and the ability to save specific drinks as favorites. This app is a must-have for anyone, not just bartenders, looking to find and try out new drinks.
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is a kart racer from Sega featuring Sonic and Sega characters racing across tracks inspired by several classic Sega games.
Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
It’s a rule that if a company has some kind of mascot, that they must put them in a kart racing game full of powerups and wacky courses, along with pitting them against their mortal enemies in more friendly competition than they’re usually accustomed to. Sonic and Sega All-Stars is Sega’s entry in this genre, putting usual Sonic series suspects Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Robotnik up against a rogue’s gallery of Sega characters past and present such as Beat from Jet Set Radio, a mouse from Chu Chu Rocket, Shenmue’s Ryo Hazuki, and more. The game features the standard single-player single race, grand prix, and time trial modes across 12 tracks. Extra characters and tracks can be unlocked by collecting “miles” by playing the game.
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing gets a lot right. The gameplay is easy to pick up on, with a drift mechanic that rewards players with turbo boosts for drifting around corners. The game features crisp Retina Display graphics and is a universal app. The game has great Game Center implementation through OpenFeint, supporting not just achievements, but also online multiplayer for both races and battle mode, with the ability to search for random matches or to send invites to online friends. The online mode works well, though there are a few oddities that occur on poor connections, like opponent racers suddenly jumping ahead after thinking they were far behind. The game is full of Sega fan service, and it’s great to see long-forgotten characters playable in this game.
Pretty much the only real complaint about the game is that a lot of the levels and character themes are more approximations of concepts from the games rather than actual elements from them. Sonic levels have loops, the Jet Set Radio levels take place in Japanese-esque cities at night while some crazy annoying music plays (actually, that’s Jet Set Radio to a T), the Samba De Amigo levels look like driving through Spanish villages while salsa music from the game plays. Plus, the whole concept of putting these characters in cars just doesn’t make sense at times; most of these characters are fast on their feet, and one character goes from a car to skates when their special powerup is collected!
The best compliment I can give to Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing is that the game does just about everything right. Great graphics, universal app support, online play, solid controls; this is Sega’s best game so far on the App Store, and is well worth a pickup for fans of kart racers and Sega’s characters.
While the name is a little repetitive, and doesn’t really roll off the tongue, we’re proud to announce that the 148Apps app is now available. Created by a friend of 148Apps, David Mitchell, the app is free, lightweight, and oh so useful for tracking the latest app and game reviews from right here on 148Apps.
In this first version you can read the latest 30 reviews from 148Apps, save a review for later reference, and search our nearly 2,500 app and game reviews. Over the coming months we hope to expand the app features, bring it to the iPad, and much more.
But we also want to know what new features you want to see come to the app first. Let us know and we’ll do what we can to make it happen. Post a comment to this post below and let us know.
Keep track of medication and other health elements with Aspirin.
iPhone Integration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-use Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Keeping track of medication and general health is sometimes a job in itself. For the unfortunate souls who need to take multiple different forms of medication a day as well as keep track of other elements of their health, there’s a lot to remember. Sure, simply writing a note down of the various details works but it’s prone to mistakes or forgetfulness. Aspirin might still require the user to remember to enter the information but when alarms are so simple to set up, it’s no great hardship.
Aspirin aims to be as simple as possible to set up. There’s the ability to add multiple users and keep track of things individually. Each user can then import or take a photo of themselves or an item that represents them. Photos can also be taken of each drug as and when it’s added making it easy to know what bottle or packet is needed without necessarily having to read the labels (although it would be recommended for safety reasons!). Users can then add the required dosage and frequency for each drug to ensure easy consultation.
Once the drugs and user has been set up, it’s possible to keep track of drug usage, blood pressure, blood glucose levels and set alarms for everything also. Event alarms can be set either specifically to remind the user to take a drug, test their blood pressure or glucose levels. The various tracking options then allow them to keep track of when drugs have been taken through the day and how their blood pressure and glucose levels are performing. Particularly useful for diabetics is the ability to track glucose levels before and after a meal. All this information can also be synced with Google Calendar, adding a future layer of functionality.
The only useful feature I’d have liked to have seen in Aspirin is that of a glossary of common drug names. Even if it had just covered the likes of paracetamol and over the counter anti-inflammatories, it would have been convenient. Other than this though, Aspirin is a pretty complete app for those who have plenty of different medication to keep track of.
Snapseed brings a standard feature set to the photo editing app on the iPad, but it then goes a bit further by providing tools to get creative.
iPad Integration Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-use Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 3.83 out of 5 stars
Nik Software is most notable for their work on Photoshop plugins, and how powerful these plugins are in the hands of photographers. Not content with helping picture makers with their processing on the computer, Nik has decided to venture into the land of iPad photo editing apps, and now the question is just how well do they stack up in this new arena?
Snapseed is a photo editing app, and not much different from what one might already expect. After all, there is the obligatory adjustments like brightness, crop, saturation, contrast, and even white balance fixes. Even the sharing options include the standard email, print, Facebook, and Flickr exports. These are all features that are already included on several apps that precede Snapseed, and they will continue to be included on new apps coming out down the road.
Where Snapseed excels is in the UI, and how friendly it is for users to quickly make photo edits. Swiping up and down will change the various adjustments, while swiping left and right will increase or decrease the amount of the effect. There is also a compare feature that will display what the image looked like before and after the current changes, so users can determine if they are happy with the final result before tapping apply. The last bit of UI aesthetics comes in a little meter in the center of the bottom of the screen, which quickly gives users a visual of how much of any given effect is getting applied. The UI is by far one of the better, and easier to grasp, solutions in this realm.
The second part of the app is where the creativity is harnessed. Editors can apply several fun and enjoyable effects ranging from simple black and white conversions to grungy textured overlays, and just about everything between. There is a crazy amount of effects included, and users could spend large chunks of time just stylizing their images to their liking.
Snapseed may appear as nothing more than just another photo editing app at first glance, however, the ease of use and the creative features help make this app stand out. The quality of the exported photos is also extremely good. Overall, anyone looking for another way to edit and share photos, need a bit of creative inspiration, or just want another way to enhance their photo production workflow, this is a good app to consider.
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