App of the Week: BubbleWrap

Week of September 21, 2009

What greater joy in the world is there than bubble wrap?  Now we can take this glorious packaging material-gone- source of entertainment to go on the iPhone/iPod Touch.  It is called, quite creatively, BubbleWrap.  In this lovely free game, one has 45 seconds to pop as many bubbles as possible, however they stay deflated for a few seconds.  The player must use careful strategy to find which bubbles have re-inflated and pop them first.  If you have popped all the bubbles at once, you get a bonus.  Squee.  My personal record is 176, however my friend has gotten to 201.  It was her first try too, so obviously the mastery of BubbleWrap is an innate skill, not gained from practice.  Even though I may never be a professional, I give this app five stars out of five.

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App of the Week: Flood-It!

Week of September 14, 2009

Flood-It! from LabPixies is possibly one of the greatest games ever created for the easily entertained.  It’s challenging.  It’s addicting.  It’s free.  The game itself is simple: Use the six color swatch buttons at the bottom to change each of the pixels in the game to the same color.  Sound easy? It’s not.  You only have 22 steps to do it in.  But being the expert that I am, I’ve beaten it in 17.  So in addition to your standard “Easy” board, by pressing the little gear icon at the top,  medium and hard versions can be selected.  These do not involve less steps, but include many more pixels than easy mode.  However for those with less than 20/20 eyesight, I really don’t recommend hard.  It’s blindingly small. I stick to medium.

In conclusion, Frei recommends that you get yourself over to the app store and download Flood-It! now.   Just don’t get too addicted.

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App of the Week: Facebook

It’s the Facebook we all know and love: Now mobile in a touch-friendly format.  I give it two stars out of five.  The only reason I didn’t give it one is because you can view/upload pictures and make comments on peoples’ posts.  Facebook apps have no function here.  You can view your wall and notices.  But when you see that Jane Doe tagged you in a note, you click on the notice only to find that you can’t view it.  From here, you have to break out Safari and take the long route to Facebook, which quite honestly is much more functional.  You can’t view events either.  John Doe invited you to that football party at his house, too bad you couldn’t view the event to see that it was yesterday.

All in all, if you’re more of a Facebook stalker who just wants to read into other parts, then this app may be sufficient.  But if you like to participate in the world of Facebook, then bookmark it on Safari.

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