The App Store in iTunes, has a web browsing app that competes with Apple products, giving users a new choice in the web browsers they use on their iPhone. This makes the Norwegian company’s software the first product that Apple has approved that directly competes with one of Apple’s core iPhone functions.
“We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod Touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini App,” said Lars Boilesen, chief executive of Opera. “This app is another step toward Opera’s goal of bringing the Web to more people in more places.”
Having Opera Mini in the App Store means that iPhone users now have a choice: the Safari browser that comes bundled with the iPhone or the Opera Mini web browser. More importantly, the door has now been opened for other developers, such as Google and Mozilla, to develop and apply for permission to distribute their products in iTunes.
Opera claims that their browser will surf the web up to six times faster than Apple’s Safari . Independent tests by Eric Zeman, a writer for Information Week, have shown that it is not only faster than Safari but also faster than the native browser on Google’s Android.
Opera uses a “sleight of hand” trick to achieve this great speed increase. Opera calls their app a web browser, but it is actually a proxy browser. When you open a web site, the Opera Mini app sends a request for the web page to Opera’s server. The server retrieves the page from the Internet, compresses it by up to 90 percent, and then sends a compressed image of the page to the Opera Mini app on your iPhone.
However, The Opera Mini app does have a downside. The first thing users will notice is that Opera does not support the pinch-to-zoom feature of the iPhone. Also, Opera Mini is only for basic web browsing. Audio, video, and Flash are not supported.
Overall, the Safari browser is better, but Opera Mini does fill a niche. It allows fast web browsing, even when the faster 3G network is not available and your iPhone is connected to the older, slower Edge Network.
Are you sick and tired of your birds being angry? Check out the latest in phone app bird fashion with Tiny Wings. Get your bird, with his poor little tiny wings, to soar into the clouds as he tries to eat his little yellow ball things. It just isn't the same without smashing buildings and a pig picnic.
Creators of the widely popular game Angry Birds are being bought by Electronic Arts for under twenty million dollars. What does this mean for the game Angry Birds? Nothing. EA will be purchasing the company but not the franchise of the game. With the game just releasing onto Android for free over the last week it has already been downloaded over 2 million times. With the game being so popular they are already trying to produce toys and even a cartoon movie.
Tapfish for the iPhone is a virtual world game that allows you to create your own virtual aquariums with fish that you feed and care for. You can also breed and sell these fish to buy new exotic breeds or decorations for your tank.
Tapfish was created by Bayview Labs and lets you choose from over 27 varieties (and growing) of fish including Clown Fish, Blowfish, Piranha, and many others. You also have the option of breeding your fish to create your own unique fish for your aquarium. There are 40 types of accessories such as: plants, sunken ships, caves, lighthouses, backgrounds, reefs, and castles.
As you raise your fish, you earn coins that can be used to buy more fish or accessories. As your tanks grow and fill, you gain experience points for visiting your fish daily, feeding them, and even just giving them more decorations. You can also earn experience points and move up in levels by visiting aquariums owned by other people and helping them care for their fish by feeding their fish and cleaning their tanks. With each level gained new fish become available like Killer Whales, Sharks, and Sting Rays.
Tapfish is an amusing game and provides soothing sounds and images while you care for the various fish in your virtual aquariums.
There is both a free and paid versions of Tapfish in the Itunes App store.
Are you in the mood for some fun Halloween Droid apps? I had to weed through thousands of apps to pull these ones from the bowels of the droid! Muwahaha!
This app is pretty darn awesome for a ghost hunter that is looking for new territory to hunt. After you download and install this app it asks you to create a user name and password, this is needed so that you can post things about the locations that you may visit.
Once in the app you can use the “Near My Position” button and it finds all “haunted” locations around your area. It does this by using your GPS to find anything within 100 miles. This is pretty awesome feature because you could be anywhere and hit the near me button. After your results pop up then you pick the most appealing location. With in your location you have multiple options as in description, rate your experience, map location, forum, map route, browse website and suggest link. This is probably one of the coolest apps I have seen in a while for ghost hunting.
Ghost Stories
Created by: SusaSoftX
Cost:Free
A lot of camp fires go on this time a year and at every campfire you need a ghost story, am I right?! Ghost Stories has 34 short ghostly tales that you can tell around the campfire. Stories like “Present at a Hanging”, “An Arrest”, “The Isle of Pines”. Its pretty neat, its worth a free download.
SpecTrek is a neat game that you and your friends can roam around looking for “ghosts” on your GPS and camera. You start playing by selecting how long you want the rounds to be. Once selected you have to go outside and start using your GPS to find the ghosts, this game is not only clever but a great way to keep active! Once you run into the ghost hold up your camera and then snap a picture of it!
Can’t stand not knowing how many days until Halloween gets here? Download the Days2Halloween widget, this is a small 1x1 widget that goes on your desktop, remember its only a widget so you wont see it appear in your app menu.
If you are a big fan of bejeweled then you are going to really love Devilry Huntress. It’s all your bejeweled fun but with an awesome Halloween twist. The heads of the undead are your “jewels”. If you are going to play this game at work or somewhere that you have to be quiet make sure you mute the game before playing its SUPER loud. I got your back ;)
If you’re into getting out and running around this app is for you. Pick your “apocalypse” which is how fast do you want your zombies and pick your destination. You have to watch your phone to see if the zombies have spotted you and if you can get to your destination before they harvest you for food. Its pretty cool check it out!
Specter spy is half way decent app that lets you look around your location and read about ghost stories of locations, with this still in beta there is a lot of locations that are missing and that could be added to make this app a lot better. Since its free I am saying go for the download and see if you like to read the histories on places. It also provides you with mapping and “recent” activity. With some more work this app could be promising.
When I was just a young lad sitting in school, bored out of my mind, I would sit and draw war scenes. Lots of war scenes. I still have notebooks full of them. From your basic military to futuristic machinery to comic book super heroes fighting in battles as well!
That’s what this game is. It’s those war scenes brought to life. The game is actually really fun and is one of the only games I have found on the Droid to keep my attention for so long. Usually I will play a game for a week or two but this game I have been playing for a few weeks now and I haven’t gotten bored of it yet.
While the graphics seem just like those drawings it's neat to be able to drop bombs on the land below and alter the terrain. When you’re not just digging holes with the bombs you blow up the vehicles and buildings that you see below. You have several types of vehicles, like fast jeeps, troop transports, tanks and the dreaded anti-aircraft vehicles. You also have land to air based missiles.
After you get on into the levels you start having migs fly by and they cannot be shot down but they are deadly accurate.
Definitely download this game today and try it out. It really is a great game.
Have you stopped playing Parallel Kingdom but are still getting annoying messages from people destroying all of your flags? I haven't played for three months and I keep getting messages. I finally became sick of it and here is how you stop it.
Go to www.parallelkingdom.com
Log In
Click Notifications under your name.
Then you have a choice. If you pick the top one that is all notifications turned off, If you pick the 2nd one its just Email notifications from when someone destroys your items.
With any game especially mmo’s there are several different ways to make money during your adventures. You can make money from crafting items to selling your body out on the street corner. Wait, no. I mean you can go do tasks for people! Get your minds out of the gutter. With ParallelKingdom you also have two different types of currency. You have your typical gold and you have food.
Gold is the least valuable of the two currencies with in the game. You can use gold to buy anything, including someone is selling food. You need gold to buy roc feathers from the orcs. The roc feathers are used for travel. Without them you can only travel by GPS, but now I’m getting off the subject.
Making gold is super easy. Kill everything. Harvest everything. It’s really that simple.
The first thing you should come across when starting the game is your mentor. Your mentor is going to help you with any questions that you have. You should ask your mentor if you know of any towns that you might join and if they would take you there. They should message you shortly after starting the game. Once you have joined a town try to build an oil well. Oil wells create crude oil which can be used for other items in the game. With crude oil you can make oil golems, regular oil and a few other items. You will not always need to use the crude oil. Start selling it by just “dumping” it. This is a great way to make money.
After you build your oil well start working on building a home, you need at least a level two house to be able to store your items. I like to save up my oil so that if I need the oil or the money I can just go in there and take whatever I need. With the oil well you will need to build golems to harvest this oil for you. After you have the oil well and the house build a crystal hut near a pile of crystals. Crystals are used for buildings and expanding, but they also make a great resource for gold as well!
Now that you have established your homestead go on out in the world and start harvesting Mourning Berries like its no bodies business! Collect these berries and find a secure place in the world where you can go out and start a farm. After planting the berries it can take about 5-7 days to mature but make sure you check on them frequently because they get sick and you have to hit “tend” on the trees to make them healthy again. Mourning Berries are not only great to keep in your backpack to eat but they are an awesome “dump” money source. The berries come back every 6 hours for harvesting.
Don’t forget to harvest everything you see in the game. Cut down the dusk trees and save the lumber. Harvest fern trees, oleander bushes, mourning trees, lichen, and thistle. Get down and dwarven and start mining rock and ore. With all these things selling in bulk you can make some good gold and food.
If you’re not into building up your house and oil wells then ready your breakfast and eat hardy! For tonight we dine in Albuquerque! I mean just grab your sword and go out and start slaying everything you see. Everything that a mob drops you can “dump” for gold. It is just that simple. The higher the mob’s level is the better the loot that they will drop.
For the food portion of the game it is used for leveling yourself up and also for your pet. You can get food buy selling items on the market like lumber, or ore. So without food you cannot level. You can also get food by having your friend enter your special code into their freshly started game. If they already started the game and didn’t enter the code they cannot go back and enter it. If this fails pull out your credit card and drop some of your hard earned cash and buy the food that you require! (Always remember you don’t have to buy it!)
Parallel Kingdom is a MMORPG on the Droid and iPhone. While this game starts off slow with a twenty minute tutorial it eventually becomes a monster killing and exploring extravaganza. Then after a week or two, it simply dies off into something you want to uninstall.
Parallel Kingdom connects to Google maps and a GPS locator allowing you to travel around the Google Maps globe searching for fame, monsters, weapons and gold. You start off on an Island talking to an old monk. This monk will guide you through a tedious tutorial. After twenty minutes, you get to go off to your starting GPS location, This location is the exact spot you’re standing at in the actual world. You can start building flags which you click on to travel, using your GPS, or calling your dog on the dog whistle and touring around with your four-legged friend.. Don’t get too crazy though because you are going to need gold to buy “Roc Feathers”. Roc feathers are needed to go from one place to another and depending on how far you travel, the number required can increase.
There is live in game communication with chat rooms. The most popular room is the help chat where you can find everyone being helpful or just being social. There are several other chats including trade chat, general, and over 18+ chat There is also in game mail. You can’t chat to the people you run into unless you meet in the chat room or send them mail.
The game currently has two forms of currency: gold and food. The gold is a lot less valuable than the food. Gold can be used to buy more food, weapons, items for crafting and just about everything in the game. The food in the game is used to level your character and your pet dog. You may also buy the food at the Parallel Kingdom store or have someone else with a Droid install it and use the friend code in the tutorial. The food in the PK store will require real money because this is a micro-transaction game..
It’s not all about fighting and chat rooms. You can dabble in farming by . collecting berries from certain trees and replanting them as an orchard . Of course, you can also simply eat them. Alternatively, You can mine for stone and iron, which can be used to create buildings and weapons.
With so much to do it’s not long before you find something you are interested in, but as the weeks dwindle on you become a little bored. You've been slaying the same monsters and using the same weapons and armor. Those same weapons, I might add, have been upgraded repeatedly. After a few weeks of play Parallel Kingdom finally pans out to be nothing more than cheap entertainment. There is a little more to the game, such as dungeons and building cities with friends, but over all it all starts to blend together.
Overall Likes: The socializing was fun. Some of the crafting and building making can be fun. Hunting monsters for the “grind”.
Overall Dislikes: Gets old fast. There are only about 10 different mobs in the whole game. While the mobs have different toughness, they are still the same. It doesn’t matter what weapon you choose, whether it’s a sword or a neat black iron sword, they do the same amount of damage.
Overall: I do recommend at least trying the game. It’s free. If you are a fan of MMO games it’s worth the download.
