iPod - Tag Archive

Situation SHUFFLE – iPhone App Review

11 Replies RonF

Today, I am going to introduce you all to a gaming app thats both fun to play and needs brains! Yup, I recently came across this app, Situation SHUFFLE, in the iTunes store while strolling around as usual and to be honest the puzzles in this game will make you scratch your heads but won’t bore you.

Situation SHUFFLE iPhone app

The Situation SHUFFLE app comes with a big collection of mind-challenging puzzles that focus on reasoning and strategy representing real life situations. To pass these puzzles, you need a keen sense of problem solving skills and a little bit of attention to detail which makes sure your brain gets a complete workout. To start with, the puzzles seem like child’s play, but they need your complete attention and concentration to crack them.

The app has 30 IQ puzzles, 30 extra quizzes and 6 hidden SHUFFLE quizzes. As and when you complete an IQ puzzle you can take up the corresponding extra quiz. Each IQ puzzle consists of 6 slides representing common events and occurrences like a trip to an amusement park, a busy day at work, a birthday celebration, a scene in an elevator etc. The slides have to be arranged in the right sequence and have striking graphics and you get 4 hints for each puzzle. You can zoom into the slides to compare them and make a mental note of minute details. The details may be really subtle at times, but that could make all the difference.
Situation SHUFFLE iPhone app
Once you have arranged the slides in order, you can submit your puzzle by pressing on the Check option. Your scores are calculated based on factors such as the number of hints you’ve used, the number of times you check whether your answer is right etc.
The extra bonus puzzles that come with the app are also of the same type but are a tidbit easier to solve.

The 30 SHUFFLE puzzles get unlocked based on conditions like, the number of IQ & extra puzzles you’ve cleared and your score. These puzzles are quite challenging and your IQ points are determined by the number of combos you score.

The UI of the app is pretty cool and the graphics are pleasant. Moreover, the app is simple to use and you can get started immediately playing the puzzles. But it would have been good if the tutorial had a better video like demonstration for users to easily grasp how the app works. Though there is one present, its just too slow and lacks details.

Also, there is no information as to if additional puzzles will be added. I was hooked on to this game for about a full day and managed to complete almost 75 percent of the puzzles. I think its just wait and see. But if new puzzles are added for additional cots or even if the developers could offer in-app purchases, I will be buying them for sure.

Go try this app and share your feedback in the comments below. The Situation SHUFFLE app is available in the iTunes store for 99 cents.

Is paying for music a thing of the past?

27 Replies Christopher Roberts

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With the availability of streaming music services like Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio all available for free and unlimited access, there are fewer people than ever actually paying for their music. According to a recent article on TechCrunch, Tom Conrad, the CTO of Pandora, said that about 50 percent of Americans don’t pay anything for music while another 40 percent only pay $15 a year for it.

If you were to walk into a big retail shop ten years ago, one of the biggest sections in the electronic media department would have been a massive collection of compact discs. Today with the likes of iPhone, and Android, CD’s have made technologies like compact discs seem old and obsolete technologies of the past.

The biggest culprit to the recording industry has been the proliferation of bit torrents and peer-to-peer piracy software. According to Torrent Freak, the Canadian Broadband Management Company says that forty percent of all internet traffic in North America comes from either Netflix or Bit Torrent. While the original intention of this sharing software was to make it easier for business to transfer important files, most of the traffic from it today comes from the illegal trade of music, television shows, and movies.

While services like Pandora, Spotify, and Rhapsody have a paid-premium option available, their free services are so convenient that there is no real reason to purchase them. Unless you want a completely advertising-free experience or simply want an unlimited data cap on what you can access per a week, the free versions of these programs work just as well and include almost all of the features. Ironically, the only companies that actually have to purchase these plans are the small retail stores that are selling you the music.

Spotify's LogoThe RIAA is having an abysmal time selling digital copies of singles and albums to consumers. Not only are the versions that are available online cheaper and make less money, they are also much easier to steal, copy, and distribute illegally over the internet. Google is partially to blame for this widespread availability of illegally traded music.

According to an article in the Daily Mail, if you type in your favourite artist into a Google search, several unauthorized and pirated versions of the song will show up available for stream or download. While Google is not implicitly to blame for this, they are turning a blind eye to the practice by ranking them higher in search results.

The person who is most responsible for the digitisation of music is the late Steve Jobs. When the iPod first appeared on the market, Steve spearheaded the movement to make iTunes the ultimate way to purchase music online. In an article in the Inquirer, David Hughes (head of technology at the RIAA) claimed that Steve was a hypocrite for claiming to be a spiritual leader but not putting enough piracy protection on digital downloads.

There is no turning back from the digital way of selling and listening to music. We have come too far in our technological advances and reverting to older methods such as CD’s and cassettes would seriously hamper our tech advances.

The music industry will need to find new ways to make income such as advertising, product placement, and incorporation in order to continue to make a profit… or it could just go away and make music an art form.

Will an Apple Television ever happen?

17 Replies Armenante

Since the release of the Apple TV set top box there have always been rumours that apple will try and break into one of the few corners of the entertainment world they are yet to conquer: the television market.

With the Apple TV set top box offering features such as streaming from iTunes to your television as well a streaming YouTube videos its a handy little device. However that functionality is in most television sets now a days, so what’s stopping apple joining the already quite competitive market?

Well for a start competition is already well established in the TV market with companies like LG, Sony and Samsung all offering so called smart TV’s. This means that apple would have to would have to do something very different to create a unique selling point. The features and the GUI of the Apple TV are already there, meaning that surely they already have the building blocks they need.

LG's LogoIf they were to add the Siri (their intelligent voice assistant) surely this would make a very effective home entertainment system. This is something similar to what Microsoft is already doing with the home entertainment system on the Xbox but it’s not quite as intelligent as Siri! The Xbox service can only follow commands and is not able to interpret them.

Rumours about an Apple TV are on the up again due to the pending release of Steve Jobs official autobiography. In an excerpt from a Washington times post Jobs has been quoted as saying to the author that:

“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,”

Walter Isaacson wrote.

Isaacson continued:

“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

Apple hasn’t announced any TV based products in its line up and the blogosphere doesn’t appear to be covering it that much, however I personally wouldn’t be surprised if Apple decided to make the Apple TV into less of a hobby and more of a competitive product for the television market.

If they did they would probably do it with the same drive, determination and overall design quality that they have carried along with the Mac computer range, iPod, iPhone and iPad.