"If there is an app for that"

After iPhone unlocking, Americans should still expect privacy: White House

March 30, 2016 by macjeff

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The American people should "absolutely" still have confidence in their personal privacy despite the government's success in unlocking an Apple iPhone belonging to a shooter in the San Bernardino, California, killings, the White House said on Wednesday. "The reason they should be confident in that privacy is because there are laws on the books that are assiduously followed ... that protect the privacy of the American people," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. ...

Momoka: An Interplanetary Adventure

March 30, 2016 by macjeff

Momoka: An Interplanetary Adventure ($6.99) by Felwig Games LLP is a gorgeous and charming platformer adventure game that will keep you busy for a while. If you enjoy lengthy platformer adventures like Swordigo, then you’re in for a treat with Momoka.

When I grew up, I spent a lot of my time playing platformer games on my SNES and Sega Genesis consoles, as well as my trusty old Game Boy handhelds. I’ll admit, I wasn’t very good at video games back then, but I still enjoyed them because they were just downright fun and great time wasters as a kid. But now that I’m older and know what I’m doing in games, I have an appreciation for platforming adventures so naturally, I was intrigued with Momoka: An Interplanetary Adventure. The end result of Momoka is that it feels like a homage to App Store classics, Soosiz and Swordigo.

The visuals in Momoka are beautiful, and anyone who appreciates retro-styled games will love what they see here. Momoka features 2.5D, low-poly graphics with dynamic lighting that will remind players of something like Super Mario Galaxy. Despite the rugged aesthetic, everything in the game is detailed, bright and vivid, and the animations are buttery smooth, especially as you move and everything just scrolls sideways with you. The world is circular, meaning players traverse through what seem like mazes that go deep into the earth, and it’s also possible to jump up on the rocks above, have the game flip upside-down, and continue making your way to whatever lies beyond the rocks. Be warned though — because of the side-scrolling and flipping upside-down constantly, be wary if you are prone to getting motion sickness from games. To top things off though, the game has a whimsical soundtrack that is a delight to the ears as you play, and the sound effects are a nice touch.

As with most adventure games, there are no set levels or stages since the game is about exploration and progress. Players must take control of Momoka, who sets out on a journey across Haruto to figure out why the sun is dying, and how to fix it. In the beginning, you will not be doing much besides jumping and collecting keys to advance through the story, but once you get your gun cell, things start to get much more interesting. While you jump and explore Haruto and nearby villages, there will be plenty of checkpoint flags scattered around that allow you to quickly pick up where you left off should you die due to unforeseen circumstances. Momoka starts out with two hearts, which are shown in the top left, and picking up smaller heart pieces will refill her health. Finding large hearts will add another heart to the bar, similar to how the system works in the Legend of Zelda games. If you ever get lost, it would be helpful to pause at signs, since they can point you in the right direction. Accessing the game’s pause menu will also bring up a map, as well as show you what items you’ve collected so far.

The controls in Momoka are pretty damn good, considering that I’m just using the touch screen controls due to lack of a MFi controller (also supported). In the bottom left are two buttons that let you move Momoka left or right along the round, side-scrolling world, and there is a button around the bottom right for jumping. Once you acquire the gun cell item in the game, then you will be able to use your gun by tapping the attack button, which will be adjacent to the jump button. Other action buttons will be available to you as you make your way through the game, and they will always be found in the bottom right section of the screen. To talk to NPCs or interact with objects, tap on the large, circular blue button.

While I usually think most platformer games have hit-or-miss controls, I believe that Momoka has a near-flawless control scheme here. The touch screen buttons are insanely responsive, and I have no issues with the positioning at all. In fact, I haven’t seen such great controls on a platformer since the Mikey Shorts games, so that is saying something. I give the Felwig Games many kudos for making fantastic controls for a platformer — this feat is not an easy one.

As you continue exploring Haruto on your quest to figure out why the sun is dying, you’ll encounter many different NPCs who will usually point you in the right direction as well. You can also collect “Frozen Stars” that can be traded for valuable items in the shops, and there are many upgrades available to make Momoka one tough intergalactic heroine. Plus, once you get the keys to your mother’s space ship, you can fly around in it, free to explore whatever interesting planets are out there. And with such a big galaxy out there, you’re bound to come across interesting baddies to get rid of.

I’m still early on in Momoka: An Interplanetary Adventure, but I’m loving the game so far. It’s one of the most beautiful platformer adventure games so far this year, and the music is just a treat for the ears. Plus, the controls are incredibly responsive, the game has plenty of content (with no in-app purchases), and things can get downright challenging as you have to time your jumps and attacks to survive, while also solving some puzzles along the way. The game also has Game Center support and there is iCloud for saving and syncing your game data across multiple devices.

I highly recommend checking out Momoka: An Interplanetary Adventure if you liked titles like Soosiz and Swordigo, or just love a good platformer adventure to spend several hours on. Momoka: An Interplanetary Adventure is available on the App Store as a universal app for the iPhone and iPad for just $6.99.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews

Filteract

March 29, 2016 by macjeff

Filteract (Free) by Filteract is a photo editing app that allows photographers to selectively apply filters onto images. If you are in the market for a standalone app that lets you be selective about how to apply your filters, then Filteract could be worth a look.

Ever since I got my first iPhone back in 2008, my interest in mobile photography bloomed. Even though the cameras were definitely not great back then, I enjoyed having the ability to take some decent enough pictures (at the time) that I was able to share with friends and family online. As time passed, the cameras got better and better (mostly since the iPhone 4), and one of my favorite hobbies is just going out and taking photos with my iPhone. I’m not a professional, but I opted for my iPhone 6s Plus because of the camera enhancements over the smaller counterparts, and have yet to regret my decision (though that iPhone SE form factor is tempting). Since the App Store opened up, I have downloaded many different photo editing apps to tweak my images into something share-worthy, and while I think I’ve reached peak photo editing app collection, I still enjoy checking out new things when they catch my eye. So when I saw Filteract info hit my inbox, I was intrigued because hey, an app that can make the selective coloring and filtering process magical? Why not? While the app is decent enough and works well, it may not be enough.

Filteract has a simple and clean design that tries to stay out of the way so you can focus on the photographs at hand. The app has a dark theme, as most photo editor apps do, which places the emphasis on your images for each screen section. The icons for each tool are pretty straightforward and recognizable, so there isn’t much of a learning curve here. The filters at the bottom give you a preview of what your image would look like with it applied, which means less guesswork and faster results. I found Filteract to be responsive and render filters quickly on images, which is always a good thing. Overall, Filteract’s minimalistic design makes it easy to get your photos in, edit them with a few taps and pinches, and then be on your way to share your creations.

There are two main ways to get images into Filteract: import from your Photo Library or get a new capture from the Camera. Other options that the app gives you include sample images, loading a saved session, or getting an image from your iCloud Drive account. Once you have your image, use your finger to scroll the filter ribbon along the bottom, which shows you a preview of how the filter looks on the image before you apply it. Again, this is a nice touch and means less of a surprise when you find out how bad a filter works with certain images.

There are a few ways to apply a filter to your photo. If you want the filter to be applied to the entire image, just long-press the filter and it will get slapped on the whole thing. If you double-tap a filter, it brings up the filter intensity adjustment slider, so you can make the effect stronger or weaker. By default, it seems the filters are set to 50 percent so they aren’t too weak or overwhelming.

Even after you set your first filter, the fun doesn’t stop there. Since Filteract is a selective filtering app, you can use several different filters at once on a single image. For example, you can take the color out of an entire photo by using the Mono, Noir, High-Key, or Wane effects, and that sets the stage for selective coloring of objects with the other filters. To do this, just select one of the colored filters you like, and then tap on the paint roller or magic paint tools in the toolbar to apply the color filter on certain parts of the photo.

The paint roller is your typical paintbrush tool, allowing you to “paint” the filter on wherever you want. Since there is no way to adjust the size of the paint roller, it doesn’t prove to be very accurate when your image is zoomed out so that it fits on the screen. If you opt for the paint roller tool, then it’s recommended to zoom in on the image with the pinching multitouch gesture that we are all familiar with by now.

If you are like me and don’t like to do a lot of the legwork yourself, then you can opt for the magic paint tool. This lets you touch specific parts of the photo and the color will automatically flow through. Or you can use strokes to color in specific areas. This method is better for complicated shapes and objects that you want to fill in with a colored effect, though sometimes it doesn’t get it 100 percent correct. If that’s the case, then you may want to use the paint roller to do final touchups.

Once you’re done with your image, just tap on the “Share” button to bring up a Share Sheet. You can save the image to photos, share on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or email it. Other actions you can take are saving the session, open the image in another app, save to iCloud Drive, copy, or print.

However, since Filteract is a free download, it will stamp a watermark on all of your images before it saves. I found the watermark a bit too large and obtrusive, since it features the logo and is always in the bottom right corner. To remove it, you’ll have to cough up $0.99 for an in-app purchase. I’m not sure this is worth it, since you can accomplish mostly the same thing in other premium photo editing apps, such as Enlight, which also does a lot more. There are also other filter packs (Color Swap, Photography, and Vintage) that will cost you $0.99 a pop, and there is no bundle option for all of the IAPs (including watermark removal), which is annoying.

I thought Filteract was a cool-looking app at first, especially the magic paint tool, since that could make life easier. However, I’m a bit let down, as it is still tricky to use with complicated objects and lighting, and personally, I am fairly tired of the one-trick pony photo editing apps out there. When I have complete and comprehensive photo editing suite apps like Enlight at my disposal, I don’t see a real need for apps that just do one thing anymore.

But since Filteract is a free download, it can still be worth checking out if you are in the market for a selective color and filtering app. Filteract is available on the App Store as a universal download for free with in-app purchases.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews

Draw your own typeface in minutes and use it in your favorite iOS apps with iFontMaker for iPad

March 29, 2016 by macjeff

Your iPad is a great consumption device, but you can also create all kinds of content on it. With iFontMaker for iPad, for example, anyone can create their own hand font in minutes and start using it on their iOS devices, Mac or Windows PCs, in creative apps like Adobe CreativeSuite, Microsoft Office or in any other app that renders fonts in the TTF file format. And to think that not that long time ago creating homemade fonts used to require a full-on desktop computer or laptop and apps that cost hundreds of bucks…

iFontMaker features

Created by development team Eiji and Tom in collaboration with 2TFF, the app is self-explanatory yet inviting and powerful, allowing serious typography aficionados to truly create their own fonts on the iPad.

You can create completely original hand-drawn fonts in minutes or start with a basic typeface and drag the lines to change the look. In pen mode, you draw vector shapes that make up your font’s characters.

To make precise adjustments, you can adjust a stroke with bezier handles in the Edit mode. Advanced options like kerning customization, tracing and guides, stroke width, pen style and radius, canvas zooming, image and GIF animation export and operations like moving, scaling or rotating an entire glyph tool are available as well.

The app supports international Unicode sets with special characters for Latin-1, Greek, Cyrillic, Thai and Japanese character sets, but you can edit unsupported glyphs as well.

Exporting and using custom fonts

Your homemade font creations can be exported in the True Type format (TTF) via the Setup and Build Font option in the Share menu. Your fonts are shared on 2ttf.com and can be set to private or public.

Now, iOS doesn’t expose a user-facing option for importing custom fonts.

Thankfully, an iOS configuration profile provides a workaround solution. Your just need to export your custom creation and share it on 2ttf.com. Then, open the font webpage on your iPad in Safari and tap the Install on iOS button. iOS will bring up a dialog asking if you would like to install a configuration profile on your device, which in turn will import the font file and make it available to the system.

Tap Install and you’re good to go.

You can now use your own font in any application on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad which supports custom fonts like Tweetbot, Pages, Microsoft Word and more. Or, use this typeface as your web font on your own homepage or blog. Web fonts are supported by Mozilla’s FireFox, Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge browsers.

To remove the font from your device go to Settings → General → Profiles.

You can see community-created fonts over at 2TTF’s online font gallery.

Availability

iFontMaker is iPad-only and requires iOS 8.0 or later.

The English-only app is $7.99 in the App Store.

Ninja Boy Adventures

March 29, 2016 by macjeff

Ninja Boy Adventures ($1.99) by The Clash Soft is a nice homage to the original Bomberman franchise. If you were a fan of that franchise, or just love a good strategic maze-based game, then Ninja Boy Adventures is for you.

When I was growing up, I remember having a few of the original Bomberman video games for what I believe was a Game Boy system (I didn’t have a great memory of what I owned back then). I am not sure exactly why I liked the Bomberman games at the time, but I think it was my joy and glee watching enemies get blown up as they stupidly walked into the path of a bomb I had planted for them. I was an easily entertained kid back then, and I think that still holds true even more nowadays when I play video games. So of course, when I heard that Ninja Boy Adventures was coming out and played like Bomberman games, I just had to get my hands on it and check it out. How can I resist a solid piece of my childhood?

Visually, Ninja Boy Adventures has a modernized aesthetic, but it still serves as a nice tribute to the old-school Bomberman games of yore due to the simple style. The mazes are laid out in simplistic or complex layouts that definitely give you a challenge each time you play, and the colors are bright and vibrant, especially the squishy-looking menu buttons. I like the character sprites of Ninja Boy himself, as well as all of the various enemies and bosses, because the game is just bursting with personality and the characters feel like a blast from the past (Ninja Boy has a close resemblance to Bomberman, you can’t miss the similarities in character design). Animations are smooth and fluid, with no lag on my iPhone 6s Plus. The game also has an awesome, quirky chiptune soundtrack and fun sound effects that definitely give players a sense of nostalgia, so it’s a nice overall finishing touch to the game’s great visual and audio package.

There are two modes in Ninja Boy Adventures: Story Mode and Battle Internet. The Battle Mode allows you to play up with up to three other people in real-time over the Internet. If you have an Apple TV, the game also works on that, and everyone can play offline on one device, which is nice. The Story Mode is where you will probably spend most of your time though, and it includes a total of 30 levels that are distributed over 11 different zones and three worlds. This also has an optional collaborative mode where up to four players can play together to try and beat the game.

So what is the goal of Ninja Boy Adventures? Each stage puts you in a maze of walls and boxes that can be blown up to reveal some nice power-up items. You have to make your way around the maze and eliminate all of the enemies and bosses before the exit appears and you can move on to the next level. While it sounds easy, things get a bit more complicated as you encounter enemies that can freely roam around, fly over walls, and many other abilities. You’ll have to plan your exit strategy with precision, because sometimes you just never know if you’re going to be cornered. Plus, you have to watch out for those bombs you’re planting down as well — if you’re in the line of fire for the blast, you lose a life, and you only have so many of those (indicated at the top of the screen). To make things more challenging, each stage has a time limit as well, so you have to think quickly for your best plan of action within the allotted time frame.

The controls in Ninja Boy Adventures are simple and intuitive. In the bottom left corner, there is a virtual joystick for moving Ninja Boy left, right, up, and down in the labyrinth. Don’t worry if your thumb ends up straying from the corner, though — the joystick is not pinned to the corner, so it will follow your thumb around as you drag it to move Ninja Boy. To place a bomb down (you have an infinite number), just tap on the button located in the bottom right corner. But watch out — once a bomb is put down, it’s recommended to move at least a few squares away from it, as it takes a few seconds to detonate, and will kill you if you’re caught in the crossfire.

As I mentioned, there are power-up items to be found in the destroyable crates. These contain useful things like extending the range of the blast (be careful though), increasing the damage, land mines that trigger when stepped on, and more. But you’ll have to look at the power-ups carefully, because some are traps, such as instant-death or reducing your bomb power. Since you have to keep an eye on what drops from boxes as well as steering clear of enemy movement patterns, things can become pretty hectic as you make progress. It’s all about timing, accuracy, and most importantly, skill, in this game. I mean, that’s what the old Bomberman games were about, so why should this be any different?

Thanks to the co-op play and online multiplayer battles, there is plenty of replay value here even if you beat the game and obtain the best possible score for each stage. Plus, there is Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements, so there’s plenty of reason to keep coming back for more.

I grew up with the old Bomberman games and have missed them a lot, so it’s nice to have Ninja Boy Adventures on my iOS so I can get my Bomberman fix (as close as I’m going to get) while I’m on-the-go. The visual style in the game is beautiful, the retro music and sounds are a joy to the ears, and the controls are easy to pick up and rather intuitive. The difficulty of the game also ramps up gradually, so I think it’s friendly enough for anyone to enjoy.

I highly recommend giving Ninja Boy Adventures a try if you’re a fan of Bomberman or like challenging maze strategy games. Ninja Boy Adventures is available on the App Store as a universal app for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV for just $1.99. There are no in-app purchases, so you pay once and get the game on every platform.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews