Category / AOTW

App of the Week

by assortedletters

Add-on of the Week: Spool

First off, Spool, an innovative new add-on available on Firefox and Chrome, as well as being an app on iOS and Android. Think Instapaper but for EVERYTHING. Any media: video, text, pictures, all collected at the touch of a button and uploaded to the Spool servers, where you can enjoy them offline, on any supported device ‘in a clear format’. Using an innovative new ‘spoolbot’, all data is captured without the ads. Although the bot sadly has to watch all video before it can be uploaded, it’s still very impressive.

Even better; fretting about whether that video you just spooled was in Flash and so can’t be watched on your iPhone? Don’t! Spool automatically converts everything to HTML5 and so can be enjoyed on any device supported. We hope for a Windows Phone version as well as quicker upload times in the future. Best of all, right now it is in free, private beta. Don’t hesitate, join up now. If your interested, that link will give both you and me a shorter time of being accepted as the more people invited, the quicker the invite.

Much obliged

CS

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: Temple Run

Today’s app of the week for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is Temple Run by Imangi Studios.

The best mobile games are ones that you just cannot put down with simple controls, and Temple Run hits the nail on the head in this respect. The game starts with you being given control of an explorer who has stolen an idol from a temple hidden deep inside a jungle. You have to run away from the vicious monkeys who want the idol back and, by swiping and tilting your device, you collect coins, slide under fire, jump over gaps and try to avoid smashing your face into a tree. Coins and power-ups are scattered around the place and are used to purchase upgrades to your character. Additional coins can be purchased in-game if you want them as well.

Temple Run is fantastic and addictive and that is precisely why, despite the fact that the game itself is free, it remains the top-grossing app in the UK App Store.

Temple Run, iOS, Free
Download from the App Store or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

App of the Week: Crazy Survival

This week’s app of the week is Crazy Survival by Techsoft Ventures.

In this game you play as a small stick figure that has to avoid a large number of bouncing balls coming from the left of the screen. At the start of every game you have ten lives, with each hit removing one life. Although this is a simple idea, I have never played anything like it before. The simple controls (an arrow to each side of the screen) make getting good at this game fairly simple but mastering it is something completely different. My personal high score is only around 250 while the world record is in excess of 800.

This game is just what you need from a mobile game – quick, simple and addictive, and that is why we are proud to call it our first cross-platform app of the week.

But no Android. Sorry.

Crazy Survival, BlackBerry/iOS/Windows Phone, Free
Download now from the App World, App Store or Zune Marketplace

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Android AOTW: Launcher 7

For our first Android app of the week, I have chosen Launcher 7 by Timo Kujala.

This app is a perfect cure for those of us that have #droidrage and crave a Windows Phone. It replaces whatever launcher you have, in my case HTC Sense 1.0 for Android, with a smooth interface that looks just like that of Windows Phone 7. While you don’t get the full OS, you do get a live tile for your contacts and some bitmap images to use as app icons such as a smiley face for the messaging app and the IE logo for the browser. The status bar takes on a WP7 look when you are on the home screen and widgets are supported by being embedded in tiles. Most noticeably for me, however, Launcher 7 is less processor intensive than HTC Sense and other OEM skins and the phone therefore runs much faster in everything and multitasking actually works. While I struggle by with an HTC Wildfire, I assume that a slight performance improvement will be noticed on almost any Android device, be it a phone or tablet.

If you have an Android phone, download the free version of this. (You have to put up with 1 ad in the app list but it’s not obstructive or distracting.) You WILL love the Metro UI and then you will almost certainly want to get a Windows Phone at the earliest opportunity.

Launcher 7, Android, Free or £1.28

Download from the Android Market

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint

2012’s first iOS app of the week is Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint.

This game is incredibly addictive. Based on the game of billiards, this game is pretty simple. You use your finger as a cue to connect discs of the same colour while creating shapes out of them and scoring bonus points from combos. 20 standard levels come with the game and the rest, along with 3 arcade modes and more to come in future updates, can be purchased with a ‘Skeleton Key’ at £2.49, which the developers say will soon increase in price due to the sheer amount of content that they have planned. Watch the first trailer below and hit the link to get the app if you have nothing planned for the next week as you try to get an ‘S’ in every level.

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint, iOS, £0.69

Download here or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Ask Ziggy

The first WP7 AOTW of 2012 is Ask Ziggy by Averotek.

This app is (to quote the description on the Marketplace) ‘your personal assistant that goes beyond Siri functionality’. It is basically Windows Phone’s answer to Apple’s Siri.

To use this app all you need to do is ask it a question and it will give you an answer, rather like Siri. This app however goes into a great deal more detail than its iOS counterpart. An example of this is when I asked Ziggy how old the American President Barack Obama was. The reply was this:

“Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961 and therefore he is fifty years old. He is the 44th President of the United States. He is the first African American to be appointed to office.”

As you can see, Ziggy goes into a great amount of detail which cannot always be said for Siri.

If you have a Windows Phone and want to talk to your phone like those iPhone guys do, Ask Ziggy is the app for you.

Ask Ziggy, Windows Phone, Free

Download on the Marketplace or visit the website

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

The Digixav Awards 2011

2012 is now here and Digixav’s first calendar year on the internet has come to an end. We decided that there was only one way to celebrate and that would be to give out some virtual awards to the techy things that have made this year great.

Continue reading →

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

App of the week: Flipboard

This week’s app of the week is Flipboard.

Flipboard is a fantastic app that lets you add whatever content you desire to a virtual ‘social magazine’. Complete with Facebook and Twitter integration, it is more than a conventional RSS reader as it corroborates your social feeds and go-to websites in one place with a beautiful flipping interface. A free account will sync your feeds across devices, and a recent update allowed the app to work on iPhone and iPod touch. Take a look at what Flipboard themselves have to say about it in the video below.

Flipboard is now my only source for news and social updates. The app is free and gloriously ad-free and I would recommend it to anyone with an iDevice. Even Apple love it, having made it their iPad app of the year. It might also be in the running for a more prestigious award from a certain website this weekend…

Flipboard, iOS, Free
Download from the App Store or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Face Swap

This weeks WP7 AOTW is Face Swap by Microsoft Research.

This app, to put it simply, swaps two people’s faces. There is no practical purpose to this app as it is just to waste time. To use this app, you simply select a photo in your photo albums and the app automatically finds the faces in the image. You then proceed to select which faces to swap and the app does all the rest. You can then proceed to laugh at the results.

Simples.

Face Swap, Windows Phone 7, Free

Download from the Marketplace

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

iOS AOTW: iTunes 12 Days of Christmas

This week’s iOS AOTW is a simple one – Apple’s own 12 Days of Christmas app.

It is the most wonderful time of the year and therefore Apple’s annual European promotion to give away a new free thing every day from December 26th to January 6th has returned. Grab the app now to get notifications of each gift, with something sure to take your fancy. Last year we got Mirror’s Edge, a Charlie Chaplin film and the amazing Father Ted Christmas special to go with the Kings of Leon and Kylie Minogue, so the good must surely balance out the bad this year as well. Although not all the gifts may be to your tastes, remember Apple don’t have to do this and something good will surely pop up.

Merry Christmas from all at Digixav

iTunes 12 Days of Christmas, iOS, Free

Download from the App Store