EuroBasket 2011 Cards – Fantasy Basketball Manager iPhone App

The biggest basketball event in Europe is currently going on in Lithuania and as a hoops fan, I was searching for apps in the Apple iTunes Store. That’s when I came across the EuroBasket 2011 Cards iPhone app, a fantasy basketball manager game.

A short disclaimer to begin with, if you are not a basketball fan or if you aren’t acquainted with top European players like Nowitzki, Parker and Gasol, you may find it a little difficult to get a hang of this app. This app has been created with hardcore basketball fans in mind.

Now that I have informed you, let’s come back to the app. The app is based on the EuroBasket 2011 Championship and player’s scores are updated based on their live performances in the court. Once you have installed & opened the app, the UI is pretty simple – name your team, pick your players within the credits allowed and wait for them to perform in the Championship so that the score of your team gets updated based on it.

EuroBasket 2011 Cards iPhone App - Dirk Nowitzki's ProfileNow the trick, as in the case of any fantasy manager app, is with the budget. So you don’t get to pick all the top players. No point in that, right? But what’s more interesting here, is that the ratings of the players are based on their live performances in the EuroBasket championship and this means you’ve got to be on top of all the games, identify the best players and then buy/sell to improve your team’s overall score. Don’t be surprised if you see no scores once you have set your team. The ratings get updated only when your players have played.

So what are you waiting for? Download the EuroBasket 2011 Cards app from iTunes now, for free. Be quick, as the Championship is already in the second round and it ends on the 18th of this month. So don’t miss out on this chance to catch up with the latest basketball action. Make sure you add in comments about your take on this app.

Worldictionary – The Perfect Travel Companion

Have you found yourself staring at signboards in an attempt to decode the unfamiliar words written in a foreign tongue? Have you sighed in despair wondering why you didn’t think of carrying that bulky multilingual dictionary when you set out on your world tour? Wouldn’t it be unnerving to find yourself lost in a strange land?

If it wasn’t for Worldictionary, I would have felt like a fish out of water during my recent trip to Germany. Thankfully, a friend of mine had told me about it earlier and I was able to make the most of my vacation. With the simplest and most efficient translation tool in my hand, I didn’t have to pore over tourist brochures or look for assistance from locals.Worldictionary iPhone App Translation ScreenshotDesigned to be the best travel tool, Worldictionary is an iPhone app that provides instantaneous translation of words. It recognizes words in several languages like traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Germany, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Czech, Slovak and Romanian and translates them immediately.
This app is synonymous with versatility. All I had to do was point my iPhone’s camera at a word and Worldictionary swung into action! The word was translated in a flash. And I didn’t have to manually type it in or take a snap of the word. This is indeed technology at its best.

Worldictionary keeps a record of the words you’ve searched for, making it easy to come back to them for later reference. This feature is indeed of great help to those who are interested in learning a new language. There is also an option of taking a picture of a line of text and getting it translated word by word. I found this feature to be quite helpful. Images of words saved in your phone can be easily translated too, without any typing.

The only improvement I would hope for this app is the ability to recognize and translate handwritten fonts too. Though there were places where I couldn’t use this app due to the unavailability of a network connection, I still think it is the perfect travel companion one can find.Worldictionary iPhone App Dictionary ScreenshotThanks to this app’s instantaneous translation services, you need not fret when you come across words on a signboard, in a menu or in a newspaper that are in a language that’s not your own.

Download Worldictionary now and visit exotic holiday destinations all around the world. Its available in iTunes for £3.99.

Improve your cooking experience with an app

Having a tough time inside your kitchen? Cooking is not an easy task, especially for those who feel it is strenuous and time-consuming. Favorite Recipes is the app that changes those notions and adds a new dimension to the overall cooking experience.

Developed by CulinartMedia Inc. for iCook2day, Favorite Recipes has a bunch of delicious recipes with clear explanations on how to prepare the dishes. Their collection is divided into categories like soups, salads, seafoods etc. On choosing a particular recipe, you can easily add it to the menu list by checking the orange circle given alongside.

Favorite Recipes iPhone appPreparing a dish is really exciting as each recipe has awesome images and details like cooking time, preparation time and the level of difficulty. You can see the ingredients for each recipe and easily add them to your shopping cart by checking the required ingredients.

There is an option called ‘Serve‘ on the top right corner of the screen. It indicates the quantity of ingredients needed to cook a particular dish for a certain number of people. This ingredient calculator provides options to cook for only 4 or 6 people. It would have been good if there was more flexibility so that users could have a wider choice, may be from 2 to 10 people.

I also noticed that the app crashed in this particular area when I tapped the ‘Cancel‘ button.

The ‘Directions‘ tab gives you an explanation of the steps to be followed while cooking. You can see the text version in the landscape mode and text with associated images in the portrait mode, which is a cool idea from developers. The ‘Shopping List‘ is a convenient option to collect all the ingredients you need to purchase for different dishes. You could place your order via Email or take your list along with you when you go shopping. Ingredients which you already have at home can be easily removed from your list.

Favorite recipes iphone app shopping listMenu‘ option is similar to the add to favorites section, where you can add recipes to the menu thereby deciding on the dishes you will be cooking for the day. Apart from all these great features in the app, there is a collection of Chef Michael’s cooking videos! This section has a list of dishes with detailed videos on the making of each recipe. It’s quite less in number and I feel a version update with more new recipes and videos would be welcomed.

This app is well-designed with beautiful photos of finished recipes, high-quality videos and some interesting features. The developers should have kept the user’s perspective in mind while developing the app’s interface. Apart from some minor bugs like the app’s tendency to crash, Favorite Recipes is a much recommended one!

You can download the Favorite Recipes app here.