Author: jamesclay

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Cover Orange – Game Choice #07

If you like using your iPhone for games (in the main casual gaming) then you may be interested in the following games that I have enjoyed playing on my iPhone over the last few years.

Cover Orange

Cover Orange is an exciting puzzle game suitable for all ages. It combines realistic game physics, enduring levels, vibrant colours and laugh out loud animations.

It’s time to pump up the juice in a game made from pure orange concentrate!

Cover Orange

Cover Orange is one of those puzzle games that fits well into the category of casual gaming, something you pick up, play for five or ten minutes and then put down again.

The premise of the game is rather silly, you need to protect the oranges from the rain, or to quote the game:

A deadly genetically modified rain cloud of fruit dissolving vapour is heading for the orange capital of the world!

You do this by using a combination of logic, physics and various objects from wheels to barrels.

Once you have used everything, the rain appears and if it hits the oranges they shrivel and go black. Most of the levels can be completed in a few minutes, which is why it is such a good casual game, however with 340 levels, the game will take a fair amount of time to complete.

Overall a fun game that is simple to play, but can be challenging too.

Get Cover Orange in the iTunes App Store

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It was one of those days…

I have been meaning to upgrade my home iMac to Lion for a while now, with the end of MobileMe imminent (end of June) and wanting to use some features of iCloud on my iMac I knew that I would need to make the move.

What was key for me was to ensure that the process was as smooth as possible. The first thing I did was back up all my data files. Though I back up on a regular basis, this process was to ensure that all my photographs, video files and documents were transferred to a backup hard drive. Once this was done, the next stage was to run Disk Utility to repair permissions, that went fine.

So the next stage was to start the Lion install process, and at that point disaster struck!

The install routine failed!

Install failed. Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer. Mac OS X Lion couldn’t be installed, because the disk Macintosh HD is damaged and can’t be repaired. Click restart to restart your computer and try installing again.

Yes, tried again same message.

Ah well, I thought, so I then decided to restart back in OS X Snow Leopard… but the OS X Lion installer wouldn’t let me.

Tried Disk Utility to repair the hard drive with no success.

At this point I was glad I had taken a backup of my data.

After looking at Apple Discussions, I tried to use my Snow Leopard install DVD to fix the drive, however this didn’t work. After a couple of hours of trying to repair the drive using various solutions, I decided that I wasn’t going to be successful trying to do that. So made the plunge and decided to format the drive and reinstall.

However… that didn’t work! I kept getting errors with the OS X install routine failing to install on the drive. In the end I just gave up and using the iPad booked a slot at the Genuis Bar at my local Apple Store.

Taking the iMac to the store went very smoothly, they connected it up to their diagnostic software, confirmed that everything was working as it should, except the hard drive.

As I had taken out Applecare on the iMac, the cost of the replacement hard drive and fixing it would be covered, however it would take between 5-7 days!

Hopefully it will all be sorted by then.

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What? No visual voicemail!

no visual voicemail

My work iPhone was recently switched from O2 to Vodafone. Initially I didn’t notice too much difference, true tethering has been useful now and again. However one big difference has come up that is slightly annoying. It would appear on Vodafone you don’t get visual voicemail as you do with O2. As a result if you get voicemail you need to dial 121 to see who has left you a message and how many messages you have.

I believe that the only way that this can be fixed is at carrier level and if the “complaints” on the Vodafone forums are anything to go by then Vodafone aren’t in any hurry to add this feature.

Is this a critical flaw? No but it an annoying one!

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Halftone is free

I reviewed this app on my e-Learning blog, it was good value then at 69p, however for this weekend Halftone is free, so well worth checking out.

What it does is take a photograph and convert it into a comic style image that can then be used on a blog, in a presentation, or on a print document.

Tthis is a nice simple app that allows you to create a vintage comic panel from one of your photographs in a particular style. You can remove the captions and I quite like the built in photo editing tools.

Get Halftone in the iTunes Store.

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Even more Lego Harry Potter

Harry Potter is back, well in Lego form, on the iPad. The first Lego Harry Potter game for the iPad (and iPhone) was a great success in our house. Enjoyed by all and still played a lot today. However we have been looking forward to the next instalment, our anticipation getting hyped even more when Harry Potter: Years 5-7 was released for all the other gaming platforms.

However the wait is over…

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is now available for the iPad and is only £2.99

So far I’ve only downloaded the 466MB App and no one has had a chance to really play the game… so no idea if it’s better or worse than the original and no idea if it’s any good.

First glance is that the graphics are better than the first one, the app appears to be snappier (but that may be because my first glance was using the new iPad rather the original iPad, however the game is (allegedly) compatible with the original iPad, which is nice as some new games are only compatible with iPad 2 or better).

Gameplay is pretty standard Lego gaming style, combination of puzzles and processes to progress through.

My only real concern is that the latter part of Harry Potter is certainly darker than the first four films. However this is Lego and when you “die” in a Lego game, you basically fall to pieces and you can always build the Lego pieces back together!

Overall I think this is going to be a fun game and at £2.99 is very good value. I don’t know what (if anything) is missing from the game compared to the console version, but at first glance it does look more like the PSP version than the PS3 version.

What this game also does is ask the question, what is the future of mobile gaming systems, when you can buy the iPod touch (which supports this game) for about the same price as the Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita and not only does it so much more than those two systems, but also the games which are of a similar quality are so much cheaper. The same game for PlayStation Vita is currently £24.99 at Amazon and the PSP version is £15.49. Of course those versions were released back in November 2011, though were more expensive then too. Is the £2.99 price point on the iTunes App Store sustainable? No idea.

Get Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 in the iTunes App store.

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Monopoly for iPad – Game Choice #06

If you like using your iPad for games (in the main casual gaming) then you may be interested in the following games that I have enjoyed playing on my iPad over the last few years.

“GO” with the best MONOPOLY for iPad yet! Enjoy ALL-NEW gameplay features and improvements, including a Toyota Prius mover that lets you go for the green in more ways than one! From Mediterranean and Baltic to Boardwalk and beyond, enjoy a wealth of ways to play with friends – or friendly computer opponents!

Monopoly for iPad – £4.99

To be honest most people either hate Monopoly or tolerate Monopoly, there are also a few people who quite like it.

Playing Monopoly on the iPad makes me realise how many “house” rules there were in the games I played and how the actual rules can be quite different.

What I like about the iPad version of Monopoly is that when playing with others, it is easier and quicker to play and certainly takes a lot less time to setup and put away!

Playing against the iPad, using the AI, is less satisfying after a while, as you can predict the behaviour and use that knowledge to defeat it.

So for me Monopoly for iPad is an alternative to using the actual board game when you need a quick game or when you are in a place in which you can’t play the board game.

Get Monopoly for iPad in the iTunes App Store

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Tethering

I noticed on the O2 website that tethering on your iPhone or Android phone is now “free”, well free on the assumption you stay within your data limits.

Whilst my work iPhone is now on Vodafone, I still have my home iPhone, a 3GS model on an O2 simplicity contract. However in order to get “tethering” I would need to sign up to a new contract and they are more expensive than my current rather cheap monthly contract I have now.

I usually use tethering on my “other” home phone an Android device which I now use instead of a 3G dongle or MiFi. The 3G dongle was limiting as I could only really use it with my laptop and not with other devices (read iPad). Also my MiFi has stopped working properly, but I think that’s because the battery has died. So as I have tethering on my Android phone, I am probably not going to change the contract so I can have it on the iPhone. However it is nice to see that if you got a new iPhone or changed contract, tethering is now seen as “normal” and it’s up to the user to decide how they use their data allowances and tethering is not seen now by O2 as something special they can charge more for.

What I would warn though, is though 500MB is enough for most people for internet on the iPhone, you will go through that data very quickly if you use your allowance through tethering using the web on your laptop.

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Taking a Google Drive

Google has finally and eventually come through with their cloud storage offering.

Google Drive gives you 5GB of storage and there are apps that allow you to sync your Google Drive with a computer. Having installed the Google Drive on my iMac at home, it appeared to work just like Dropbox.

So will I be changing to Google Drive?

Probably not, in the main as there isn’t an iOS App for Google Drive. There is also, as is to be expected very little support for Google Drive from third party apps as there is for Dropbox. I suspect over time we will see increased support for Google Drive in third party apps, but not sure though. Think how little support there is for Google+ as Google have not yet released the APIs that allow that to happen with Google+, will there be a similar model with Google Drive, or will be made open enough for developers to embed Google Drive into their applications.

At this point I have installed the “drive” and will be using it for some stuff.

My main concern with Google Drive is that it may force Facebook to buy Dropbox…. Now that would really be a disaster!