February 19th, 2010 by admin

Just a quick post to let you know about a new free game that got the thumbs uo at the MacWorld event yesterday. The press release says it all:

Austin, TX (February 18, 2010) – Gendai Games, in conjunction with IDG and the Macworld Expo, is pleased to announce STUNT SQUIRRELS by Fire Maple Games as the Grand Prize winner of the Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge. Stunt Squirrels, a fun new physics puzzler, features blasting death-defying daredevils safely to a goal, while navigating tricky mazes and high-flying obstacles.

The light version is free. We like to see new developers on the scene because that means new (and often free) and better games keep getting put out there. Check the game out and let us know if you agree with the judges decision.

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February 16th, 2010 by admin

The iPhonegizmo team have been great fans of the “win a free iPad/iPhone” contests and have done several posts directing you to some pretty fun contests.

Now, of course, the time is ripe for a “win an iPad contest” and with the Twittershere proving to be such a popular medium for running contests its now often a simple matter of “follow and twit” to get a chance to win something. So we went looking and found - yep, there are several “follow and tweet” contests already up and running, with an iPad as the prize. Here is five to get you all started:

1) Follow Geeksugar on Twitter

Then tweet at geeksugar with the message: “To win an iPad, I’d _________. RT @geeksugar http://ow.ly/13czw #geekipad”. Tell them what you are willing to do to get an iPad (they are looking for funny/entertaining)

But hurry as this one ends today!

2) Follow @Shutterstock on Twitter and send out send out their required tweet:

“Congratulations @Shutterstock on your 10,000,000th image! Pick me for the iPad giveaway! http://bit.ly/ssipad”

3) This one requires a bit more input - but is more fun. To help get the news out about their new Groundhog Day video (view below) mail2web.com is running an online contest with an iPad as the major prize.

This is a trivia game run through Twitter - so have fun and good luck!

4) Mediarecruiter have an iPad up for grabs - to win you just have to be a friend or follower on facebook or twitter.

5) Logos Bible software also have an iPad up for grabs. To enter for a chance to win, simply follow Logos on Twitter and Tweet this:

(Remember to read contest rules before you do anything else).

Haven’t yet got yourself set up with a great Twitter app? Check out the iPhonegizmo recommended Twitter apps.

And, just for fun, you can also check out who’s Tweeting near you using Twitter maps by Bing. In fact, we can eaves drop on the chatter in any city we want. Checking out the Olympics chatter at Vancouver, for example, has been quite entertaining!

NB: Unfortunately, Twitter Maps is not available as an app for iPhones and uses flash - so you will have to use your computer to play with this app.

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February 14th, 2010 by admin

Want to watch FREE live TV wherever you are - on 3G or wifi? Of course you do! How about 50 channels  including music and sport (yes, right now that means live Olympics coverage!).

Well, if you live in the UK - that is exactly what is on offer with this fantastic great service called TVCatchup  - a service which lets you watch 50 UK television channels online and on our iPhones for free.

Unfortunately the service is not yet available anywhere else.

For UK readers, all you have to do to get this service is go to http://iphone.tvcatchup.com via your web browser and follow the directions.

For the rest of us - if you have access to a good proxy service you might at least be able to watch free UK TV on your PC - as the service can also be accessed from PCs.

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February 12th, 2010 by admin

Or is this better called: the case of the missing Guacamole?

iPhone game developer, Gameheart, report that they have been forced to change the name of their game - till now called Guacamole. Apple were contacted by a bevy of lawyers from “the world’s biggest toy manufacturer” and told to remove the game from the App store. Apparently they (the biggest toy manufacturer) own the name!

Now understandably, Gameheart are surprised to learn that the word  “guacamole” is owned by anyone.  But the iPhonegizmo team are even more surprised that we could find out so little about it.

Mattel claims that it is the world’s biggest toy manufacturer. So we figured it would be easy to track down the Guacamole game - or whatever - that they were so concerned to “protect” (more on this below). But - no luck. As you can see in the following image - a search of their site turned up nadda.

But, hey, why should we take Mattel’s word for it that they are the biggest? So we checked out the next two contenders: Hasbro and BanDai: “Nothing”!

But there is more to the mystery of the missing Guacamole, Batman!

Because a game of that name - from Mindware - is available at Amazon and also at Funagain.  However!!!! There is no mention of that game on the Mindware site!

We suspect that the “biggest toy manufacturers” lawyers beat us there! And that while suppliers are gonna sell out their stock (can’t you see Amazon giving them the finger? well, only a bit of a finger as their listing changed from “Guacamole” to “Mindware Guacamole” overnight!)  We fear that game won’t be seen again!

Well, you can’t keep a good game down - and Gamehart have smartly renamed their game as Smash Fiesta. Now the game used the ingredients of guacamole as the basis for their fun game - so it made sense to call it Guacamole.

But here is the truly sorry part of that tale. The game has only ever been rated by 170 odd people (and 7 out of 10 give the current version a 4 or 5 star rating). The sad truth is that it is a virtual non-entity. A David to the biggest toy manufacturers’ Goliath! The thugs of the commercial world are afraid of the competition from this tiny, obscure and barely know little app developer. Pathetic really.

But the mystery of the missing Guacamole goes deeper. Because like Gamehart, we were surprised that the name guacamole could be owned by anyone. So we took a visit to the US Copyright Office. There were some 3316 names listed for Mattel, 1723 names listed for Hasbro, and 645 names for BanDai.

And not one of them are called “guacamole” !!

Maybe they are keeping this on the down and low so we all won’t get peeved and NOT buy their game? There is bound to be a backlash - there always is when big boys play bully boys!

Anyhow, we suggest you all go check out what the “worlds biggest manufacturer of toys” is so afraid of that they had to send in their bully boys in to kapow, kabam Apple!

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February 9th, 2010 by admin

We focus all our attention on finding great free iPhone downloads for our readers. But this post is about how we can use our iPhones to send free donations to our favorite causes. And it also does not cost us a cent!!

Social Media has made it so much easier to raise funds quickly in times of sudden disasters. It has allowed money to flow quickly from the masses to organizations - like the Red Cross - that are geared to react to emergencies and to help people to recover. The Haiti disaster is the most recent example and we wrote about that a while back.

So the iPhonegizmo team decided to take a look at the 140,000 Apps that Apple boasted about at their recent iPad Event and see just what is on offer there to help us make donations. And much to our surprise we found the cupboard was almost bare!

There are a few (very few) apps for donations or volunteer work, but they have been largely ignored by the iPhone world with mostly fewer than a half dozen people rating the apps - and with most indicating they are not at all happy with any of these type of apps.

Well, there was a donation App launched just three days ago. But, although it has been developed by a fairly well known company, they do not bother to mention the App on their site (even though this is the site they record on iTunes for the app) and the support site is also the home site for the company and so also does not mention the app?!!

Nor will we! We have written to ask them to let us know if they think the app is worth promoting on their own site and to let us know if they intend to do so. It could be a good app. It sounds good. We just maintain (and we have said this before) if a company is not prepared to promote its own app on its own site - that says”don’t trust it” louder than anything else we can think of!

So - that leaves us with just one app we can tell you about. ONE app - out of 140K apps!

And its a strange one - though popular - and has received a 3.5 star rating from over 6,000 users.

The way it works is this - if you are happy to report your shopping patterns to CauseWorld, then they will reward you with “karmas”, each time you walk into a store. The karmas will be turned into donation $$ by sponsors such as Kraft and Citi, that go the the charity of your choice.

Or, to be a bit more detailed, CauseWorld have:

lined up some great sponsors that have pledged to back each karma a user earns in the application. You earn karmas by walking into a store or restaurant and checking in. No purchase is required to earn karmas. When you earn enough points you can donate them for charitable actions, from planting a tree to caring for an injured animal. Donations are carried out by our partner charities.

If this sounds like something you are happy to do - after all there is little effort, no cost and hey presto, help flows out from your iPhone…then give the CauseWorld app a go.

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February 6th, 2010 by admin

Electronic Arts is a game developer that has released over 40  games for the iPhone with great success. They were in at the launch of the iPhone with Spore:

(Spore original - now free - has been rated by a massive 130,000+ users at 3.5 stars)

And they have done so well that Apple invited them back to be one of three game developers to do a presentation at the recent iPad release as well! (And, of course, they used Need For Speed - one of their most downloaded games - to show us just how good games will be on the new platform)

And they are a generous company - at least where potential iPhone  and other mobile users are concerned. Of the 38 EA iPhone games that have a price tag there are also free (basically demo) versions of eight of those games as well. Not enough, you reckon?

Well, we have some good news for you. The iphonegizmo team have discovered a free demo game player where we can try out the demo version of another 12 of the EA iPhone games, including: Need For Speed™ Undercover, American Idol: The Game, Clue, Madden NFL 10, Scrabble, The Sims 3, Star Trek, Tetris, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR, Wolfenstein RPG, and Yahtzee. As you can see in the following image, the screen for the demo is smaller than the iPhone screen - and the accelerometer feature is not available.

But, as many of the games in this list are in the top price bracket for EA games - we figure its definitely worth it to trial the game first. So we are pretty pleased with ourselves for finding a way to help you all to do that.

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February 4th, 2010 by admin

OK - many may wonder what the heck an iPhone could offer a baby? But it is truly amazing to see the Apps that have been developed for those too young to actually own an iPhone. While we were researching for two recent posts on apps for kids (free iPhone children’s stories and more free iPhone kids stories, we took a look at the App store.

We found a fantastic selection of top rated free Apps for parents with little ones up to pre-school age. We also found a LOT of very low rated apps! In fact it is clear that parents are quite selective about the quality of kiddie Apps they are prepared to let their little ones play with.

But first up, there were six great free pre-school apps, most with 3.5 star ratings or better (there were a lot more apps for babies and pre-schoolers but they were just canned by raters - often scoring 2 stars or less:

We just have to put the Peekaboo Barn Lite up first because it has been downloaded by over 8000 people and still has a 3.5 star rating!But wait - there’s more … great baby apps with this high rating. Baby Animals Lite provides facts about 90 baby animals using over 400 high quality photos for name and photo quizzes for toddlers. Look Baby! provides a stack of delightful images to calm babies and distract babies - and judging by its high ratings - it works! The last one of the freebies with a 3.5 star rating is the creative Baby Piano Lite:

The Piano app gets some pretty good comments as well:

 My baby loves it!! 

and

  I have toddlers, a three year old and a set of twins. My kids love this application.

 Just the graphics for these kiddie apps are impressive.

Two other apps we though worth a mention - as they are free and still get a 3-star rating: baby rattle bab bab lite and Baby Flash Cards.

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