You choose my next review

Hi guys, I have decided to let you guys, my loyal followers, decide on which app/game I review next. I've set up a small poll on the right of this site, please vote what you'd like me to review next...

Thanks!

100k and counting

Today this blog of mine passed the 100000 page view mark. Thanks for everyone who has visited so far! I'll keep the posts coming as long as there's interest!

I'm quite active on Twitter as well, so if you want, you can follow me on twitter as well. And for those interested, I have some other blogs going also:

• Battlefield 3 Platoon blog - I like Battlefield 3 for PC, and have some nice tips and tricks regarding the game here
• My Herbalife blog - I've lost 16kg since starting on the amazing Herbalife products. I am now blogging about my experiences
• Sugar + Spice blog - this is my wife's blog - she likes all pretty things :)

Anyway, Thanks again for the great support!

Cheers,

Rudi

Humble Bundle for Android 2!!!

Hi guys, I have excellent news! The awesome guys from Humble Bundle are running another Android bundle!!! For those of you who still don't know what the Humble Indie Bundle is, it's basically a bunch of independent developers who makes their games available through the Humble Bundle site, and then, the best part is that YOU can decide how much to pay for them!

You can even then allocate the money you're spending as you want to the developers, a charity or the guys from Humble Bundle.

This time around, they have the following games available on the bundle:

• Canabalt
• Zen Bound 2
• Cogs
• Avadon: The Black Fortress

And if you pay more than the average people are paying, you get Swords & Soldiers included in your bundle as well! And, based on past experiences, they usually add another game or two as the bundle comes to an end... ;)

Edit: They've added another game!! (I like it when they do this!) - Snuggle Truck is now part of the bundle :)

Now, Avadon appears to only be for tablets, but the rest I've already downloaded and tried, and they are pretty awesome! I'm really liking Zen Bound 2 at the moment, here's a couple of screen shots of it in action:

I'll do a review of it soon, it's really a fun little puzzle game :)

They've already sold 53000+ copies as I'm writing this post, and there's still 13 days remaining! So head on over to www.humblebundle.com and get yours as well!

Enjoy!

All about you :)

This post will be all about you guys - I started this blog in August last year, and didn't have any sort of clue that it will draw as many visitors as it does!

So firstly, thanks to everyone who visits, I really appreciate the time you take to read what I have to say.

Secondly, I have decided to get some feedback from you guys, so, by leaving a comment, please let me know the following:

1. Your favourite GAME
2. Your favourite APP (has to be NOT a game hehe...)

I'm always on the lookout for decent apps and games for my Galaxy S2, so please, share with us! I'll use the comments and compile it into its own post as soon as I have enough feedback.

Thanks in advance!

App review: Pixlr-o-matic Photo editor

The other day I was browsing the app market, which they've renamed to the "Play Store", and I saw this little gem of an app called Pixlr-o-matic, and best of all it's a free one!

Usually I don't have high hopes for free apps like this, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway.

What it basically does is it edits your photos, by doing a combination of three effects, namely a colouring effect, lighting effect and a frame effect.

Then you can save and share your photos with ease from within the app itself. Anyway, when you open the app, here's what you'll see first:

From here you select which photo to start working on. This can either come from your phone's camera, be one of your existing photos, or as you can see, they have some of their own photos there that you can use to play around with.

Once you've selected the photo you want to work on, you get to this screen:

Here you'll be presented with several buttons and things. In the middle you'll see the photo I selected to edit, which as you can see is a bit of a boring one...

At the top there's a little film roll Icon - if you tap on that, you can get access to a lot more presets and options, all for free - I went crazy, and downloaded everything :)

Next to the film roll icon is the randomize button. That does just that, it randomizes the 3 different effects you can get. So if you're lazy, you can just hit that one a couple of times until you get to a combination you like. Here I quickly set a preset for each of the three options:

On the first preset, I selected "Dean" which gives the photo a washed out look, almost like a photo taken in the 60's :)

Here on the Lighting option I selected "Gaze", which gives it this red streak in the middle, giving it an even more classic and washed out look.

And here I added the "Dirt" frame, which as you can see, puts a dark edge with dust specks and stuff like that around the image.

So in a matter of seconds, I transformed a pretty dull photo into something a bit more lively :) Obviously you can save your photo as well - the app gives each image a unique file, so you don't have to worry about it overwriting the original.

From here you can Save your photo and share it.

I'm very impressed with how quick and easy it is to use this app, and most of the effects are really cool (of course there's some corny ones as well, but sometimes that's actually the look you're going for!)

As a little test and just to show you, I took two images and made 5 randomized versions. Here they are, the one at the top is the original:

Pretty neat huh? And here's a photo of Einstein (our mutt :)

Not too shabby for just hitting a button a few times.

If you like photos at all, then this is definitely a must to get.

Get it here.

Till next time!

Galaxy S2 Ice Cream Sandwich Update

Hi all, everyone is waiting in great anticipation for our beloved Galaxy S2 to finally get updated to Ice Cream Sandwich, which is version 4.0.3 of the Android Operating system.

Edit: On 7 April, here's how the ICS updates are coming along:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• China
• Cyprus CYO, CYV
• Denmark
• Hong Kong TGY
• Hungary XEH (unlocked)
• Indonesia
• Ireland (Three)
• Italy is busy updating (means they're testing, will be soon now!)
• Korea
• Lithuania
• Luxemberg
• Netherlands also busy updating
• Philippines (XTC, GLB)
• Poland XEO
• Russia SER
• Sweden (Tre)
• Taiwan
• UK (Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone) busy updating
• UK (unlocked) busy updating
• UK (Three)
• Nordic Countries NEE (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Greenland)

I just checked here as well, and we South Africans are definitely not on the list either :(

Edit: Thanks Philipp, he phoned Samsung South Africa, and it seems we're only getting ICS the end of April here in SA. That sucks!

If you live in the one of the above countries, and you have updated your phone, please leave some comments and tell us your experiences so far :)

Will keep everyone posted!

Full Screen Status Bar

If you regularly use apps that go full screen on your Android phone, you would have noticed that you cannot get access to the status bar (you know, the thing you swipe down from the top to get?) - but, I've found a very handy little app that allows you to get to your status bar while in a full screen app (think GAMES :)

Here's a screen shot of it in action:

See, here in the Freeplay Sims game, at the top you'll see my status bar peeking out. A very handy little app.

Anyway, it's called Smart Statusbar, and you can get it here

Till next time!

QR codes to some of my Favourite Games

Here are some QR codes to some of my favourite games (at the moment, sure it'll change in the future hehe):

Alchemy (see review here)

Edge full version and the demo

Minecraft Pocket Edition and the demo (see review here)

Osmos and the demo

World of Goo and the demo

Game Dev Story (see review here)

If you don't know what to do with these codes, have a look at my review on QR Droid

Game Review: Minecraft Pocket Edition

If you don't know what Minecraft is, chances are you've only started using the internet this very second. :)

Minecraft is the Indie game that took the world by storm. It's a big sandbox game where you can shape the world to your exact liking. Add to that the harvesting of resources and building stuff (anything from a small log cabin in the woods to deep underground mines and glorious works of art!), as well as zombies and sheep, and you've got a pretty amazing and addictive game!

People will complain about the blockiness of the graphics, but that is what gives this game so much charm and personality! It just shows you, a games doesn't necessarily need awesome and high detailed graphics to be awesome!

Now, the pocket edition is a work in progress, much like the desktop version was for so very long. As you can see in the above screen shot, we're on version 0.2.0 alpha. So at this stage, it's not even close to what the desktop version is, but it's definitely getting there!

I bought the game for $0.10 when Android had there massive app download drive, but you can still buy it for $6.99 - a little steep for my liking (very happy that I got it for ten cents!), but I foresee great things for this little gem in the mining (see what I did there?? Gem? Mining? Minecraft??? ;P

Luckily, a demo version is available, so you can get that to first check it out.

Get the full version here

And the demo version here

So, at this stage the game has two modes - Creative and Survival. Creative mode just gives you this big, randomly generated world which you can sculpt to your exact liking, where the Survival mode adds a few things, like gathering some resources, and fending of zombies at night!

Here is my little house by the sea, which I started when the game was still version 0.1.0 (no survival mode back then):

In the second screen shot, I'm actually flying (something you can only do in creative mode) - you'll also see the on-screen controls on the left. The button in the middle is to jump - double tap that one to fly.

I must say, the game's performance on my Galaxy S2 is extremely smooth and without drops in frames per second at all. It does take some getting used to using the onscreen controls like that. Looking around is done by tapping and moving your finger across the screen. If you tap an hold in one spot, you'll start digging that specific block if it's close enough.

Here's a few from my little house's "porch" :)

The survival mode introduces a few extra things, most notably zombies that want to do nothing but eat your brains. So the first thing you always do in a Survival game is build a shelter, so that you can survive the night's horrors!

As you can see in the above screenshot, I made my little shelter by digging out a cave in the side of a hill. I recommend doing that because it's quicker.

You'll also notice the health bar, so in Survival mode you can die! EEK! ;)

Furthermore, you can start gathering some resources, with which you can only build at this stage. In the desktop version, you can craft all kinds of stuff, like weapons, doors, furniture, traps, etc. I'm sure these will be added to the game as new versions get released! (Hopefully!)

With this version you have a limited range of blocks that you can place, but I'm sure this list will also keep growing as time goes by:

As you can see, you have an unlimited supply of most of the blocks and items, but some of them you have to gather in your adventures.

I was lucky and survived my first night :) I did face a few zombies, but that wasn't too hard:

Anyway, this is a really good little time waster, and the promise of more updates to expand the features of the game means it'll keep on getting better and better. (I'll keep everyone posted on the updates as they happen!)

One thing I haven't tried out though, is joining some friends in a multiplayer game. If you have, feel free to leave some comments on how that is! Also, if you've build a masterpiece, and would like it to be featured on this blog, please let me know, I'd love to show off some of your hard work here :D

Time to go build a basement for my house! (will post some screen shots of that later!)

Till next time!

A nice 3d Live Wallpaper

This is my live wallpaper at the moment:

It's basically a landscape with these floating islands (think Avatar), and this big planet in the skyline. All very nicely rendered in 3d. The free version only includes the one option, but if you buy it you get some extra scenes as well.

Here's a movie clip of it in action:

Note: Only Avalon's Falls are in the free version...

Get the free version here

Till next time!

50gigs free Cloud Storage by Box

I have some good news for all of you with Android devices. The guys from www.box.com have created an Android app, which you can get here, and by simply registering for a free account, they'll upgrade your storage space to a very very sweet 50 gigs!

Here's the instructions which I copied from their site:


This promotion ends on Friday, March 23, 2012 at 11:59pm PST, so grab your free 50GB on Box by following these steps:

1. Visit the Android Marketplace and download Box for Android
2. Log into your account or register for a new one directly from the app
3. Start sharing and collaborating in the cloud
4. (optional but recommended) Tell the world how you'll use your 50GB with the hashtag #Box50GB

As you can see the special is about to run out, so do it quick!

You can then backup your files online, like your photos and important documents. Very handy indeed, and 50 gigs is quite a lot, especially if it's free!

Hope you get it! I got mine a few minutes ago...

Till next time!

Nintendo Entertainment System (aka NES) Emulator

I'm going to cut right to the chase. See the below screen shots:

Yes, your eyes aren't deceiving you! I was playing Super Mario Brothers on my phone! To do something like that, you need something that we call an emulator, and together with that, you need the actual ROMs, which are the games themselves.

The emulator I'm using here is a very nice, and most importantly, free one called John NES Lite (NES Emulator).

Get it here.

The free version works just like the paid for one, but it is ad supported.

It includes several customization options. For example, you can hold the phone portrait or landscape, you can alter the size of the buttons on screen, you can take screen shots, etc.

Now the only thing you need to actually play some games on it, would be the games themselves. I am not sure how the copyrights and that kinda stuff works for games on the NES. I take it, if you own the game, you can download it without worrying.

To get some games, simply google "nes roms", download the roms, copy them to your phone, and the app should automatically scan your phone for new games :)

Ahh, nostalgia! Enjoy!