Kitten Cannon: Not PETA Approved



Kitten Cannon is a simple game produced by Hands-On Mobile and sold on the Android Market for $0.99. The goal of Kitten Cannon is to launch a kitten, puppy, or baby monkey out of a cannon the longest distance you can by any means possible. After launching your animal of choice, you will notice small TNT packages, trampolines, Venus fly traps, and death spikes. TNT and trampolines propel your animal longer distance while death spikes and Venus fly traps stop you in your tracks.

The cannon has a power meter that goes up and down. The more “full” it is, the further your initial shot goes. You also pick the level of the cannon for your shot as well. Of course the large part of the game is to hit the TNT and trampolines which are randomly placed along the trajectory of your cannon. For added difficulty, they are not placed in same spot every shot, meaning that no two shots are the same. This adds a great re-playability to the game, as you cannot simply find a certain power and angle to shoot to get the best distance. Instead, you must experiment and have a bit of luck to succeed.

Pros:
Added Facebook and Twitter support for posting scores.
Scoreboard
$.99 price
More than one option for projectile

Cons:
Currently the only sound effects are for the Kitten. For a game as polished and well known as this, I would expect to have sound effects for all options, not just one.
No Baby Seal choice

Final Verdict:
Like many games for your cellphone, you want something quick and fun that will keep you occupied and keep you interested. With the recent update slowing the power meter to a more reasonable speed and the addition of Facebook and Twitter support, this game has been taken to a new level. If support is added for better sound effects and more animals, this game would be a solid 10. Until then, rest assured that it is well worth the $.99 and will keep you, your friends, and/or kids well occupied.

Download:

Soccer Multiplayer: The paperless paper soccer



Wandering through the market looking for something new and interesting one day, I was immediately captivated by a game called ‘Soccer Multiplayer.’ The developers took a real gamble not actually naming the game and won. Soccer. Multiplayer. It’s a game. Jackpot! I like all three of those things, and with it being free and only 513kb I couldn’t pass it up.

The actual game is easy to learn, but hard to master. It has a local mode for taking turns on your phone playing against friends, and also an online multiplayer option. The game play is just like paper soccer only digital, and it’s a ten minute battle to the first score. The outcome of the game immediately reflects in your record and ranking, helping keep the competitive drive alive.

Another plus for the game is the chat and friend features. While playing you can open chats and befriend those you’ve competed against. The game developer has also mentioned that the ability to search for friends is an update being worked on.

For all the positive that can be said for this game’s simple, direct execution, it also can leave you wanting more. Soccer Multiplayer is sorely missing any sounds or music and is truly underwhelming graphically. While it was kind of the developers to give you the option of customizing your colors and field, it just isn’t enough to convince me that the developers were concerned with anything besides the game being compact and functional.

The Goods
Chat option is always great to have
Being able to save friends is awesome
Small file size and quick game play

Needs Improvement
Group chat outside of games would be greatest
Single player mode so you can practice on your owners
Music or sounds listening to the vibrations gets annoying

Final Verdict:
This game is addictive and doesn’t tax your phone’s memory. It brings back fond memories of paper football, paper soccer, dots, and tic-tac-toe. Soccer Multiplayer is definitely worth a download.



Download:

GDE: The new home experience



Does your homescreen seem a bit plain? Maybe you just don’t have the real estate for all those widgets? Or perhaps those transitions from page to page are just…well, dull? If one or probably all these sound like you, I might just have something to perk up your Android.

GDE is a home replacement application. It is similar to PandaHome or OpenHome, though from personal experience, GDE has shown the best stability of the three. Along with great stability (which is important since nobody like force closes), it allows for up to 7 homescreens. Each can probably hold every widget you could ever want, and with it’s fast fling option all of them are just a swipe away.

One of GDE’s best points is it’s four unique transitions: Cube, Stretch, Fade, and the latest, Normal Cubed. Cube works like it sounds, changing the whole desktop and wallpaper setup into a spinning cube. Stretch presses the screen while dragging in the next. Fade uses a fade effect to switch screens. And my personal favorite, Normal Cubed, combines the standard Android transition with the Cube creating a pretty cool effect.

GDE has two widgets of it’s own: a conversation widget that comes in 4×3 and 4×4 sizes, and a 4×1 dockbar widget that allows quick access to your favorite apps.

Pluses:
GDE is only $3.53, which makes it one of the cheaper home applications
It’s exceedingly stable and offers multiple transitions
Internal widgets allow quick access to both apps and conversations
Up to 7 homescreens for all your widgets and apps

Things I’d like for the future:
Although GDE has plenty of it’s own themes, the ability to use other homescreen application themes would be a welcome feature
Perhaps a screen selector for those who have plenty of screens active

Bottom line:
GDE is a stable, capable, and customizable home replacement. You can’t get any better for your phone.

Xpenser: A feature laden expense tracking app



Unlike other expense apps that I have seen on the Market, Xpenser stores all the expenses in the cloud. This is done by syncing with Xpenser.com using an Xpenser account you create on startup. This is a nice feature which allows you to log into Xpenser.com and edit or print your expenses.

One differentiating feature of this expense app is the ability to take pictures of receipts and attach them to expenses. This is a very useful feature for the business person that has to file and carry around receipts from business expenses. Now, just snap a picture of the receipt and it is uploaded to Xpenser.com.

On first startup of the app, you are greeted with a login screen where you can use your existing Xpenser account or create a new one. From there, the UI is very user friendly and pleasing to the eyes. You can start entering expenses right away using the Quick Add function, or you can navigate to the Detail Add screen to enter more specifics for the expense and attach a receipt. Xpenser also supports multiple reports. This is a practical feature that gives you the ability separate expenses and allows for a more organized approach to dealing with numerous expense items. With Xpenser, you are also able to use Locale to setup recurring expenses based on specific conditions that are met.

So far, the developer has been very quick to respond to questions and looks to be quickly adding new features to the app.

Future features include:
Help screen (near future)
Integrating Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to the receipts to pull in amount, type, and location of each expense
GPS tags to notes
Linking phone contacts to reports
Automated SMS/email notifications of amounts due are other possibilities

What I like about the app:
Easy to use
Syncs with Xpenser.com
Handles multiple reports
Can attach receipts
Can use Locale for recurring expenses
Runs on 1.5

Areas that could use some improvement:
Add help screen (as mentioned previously, this is in the works)

Final Verdict:
Xpenser is a very useful app for keeping track of expenses which includes many features that are missing from other expense apps on the market. The $1.49 price tag is reasonable and well worth the added organization of expenses it gives you.

MyBackup Pro: A ROM flashers lifesaver



If there is one thing a rooted phone user does most, it’s flashing. What I found most annoying when I first rooted my phone was the lack of good backup software. I could flash three to four times a day trying the latest and greatest of what some new developer was able to port to the G1. The only problem was, when I found a good ROM that I liked, getting it back to the way I had it before was extremely time consuming. Things like changing the notifications and re-downloading all of my applications were taking forever. I had lost hope of finding a good solution until I found MyBackup Pro.

With the latest update, you now have the ability to back up everything to your SD Card or the Online Storage (50mb). This application can back up everything, including your SMS, MMS, Settings and Home Settings. To the stock user this may not even hit your radar, but to an everyday flasher, this is a lifesaver. With MyBackup Pro you can save hours of time and just restore all of your data to your new ROM.

Along with saving a lot of time for rooted users, this application is easy to use. There aren’t a whole lot of options for the user and the interface is pretty straight forward. Once you click on Backup, it’ll ask you exactly what you need, where you want to save it, and get the task done for you. The same speed is noticed in the restore as well. It’s a bulk one click install, which is nice because some of the free apps in the category require you to click “install” for each application you have.
NOTE: The more data/applications you have, the longer it’ll take.

The Good:
One click install for applications
Easy interface
Does the job well
Able to restore across software versions: meaning going from 1.6 to 2.1 is no sweat!

The Bad:
If you back out of the application while it’s working, you’ll have to start over
When restoring Android Home, it won’t restore your widgets.

Final Verdict:
Overall this app does so much for $4.99. It is a lifesaver.

Vec se pojavila na netu Pre-Alpha.... Nazalost, ne mogu da probam jer je za Android 2.0, 2.1 

Probao sam Fennec i mogu da kažem da je očajno (jeste da je pre alfa ali baš je loše), ni dizajn mi se ne sviđa a ni ovo skrolovanje levo desno mi se uopšte ne sviđa. Ima još puno da se radi na ovome.

Pa dobro, polako, sredice se

A ovaj skyfire je za 2.1, ili 2.0.1, posto na mom 1.5 magic-u ne postoji na marketu...?

edit: uspeo, izabrati opciju da telefon nema market, onda ga standardno downloaduje, i instalira... mada nisam odusevljen, nema pinch and zoom..