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- PadGadget Daily App Deal – 13 iPad Apps on Sale
- Trade Nations for iPad – Game Review
- Dylan Monkey & Squishy Face – App Review
- Gazelle Offers You a Way to Buy or Sell Used iPads!
- mybookshelf – A Great iPad Book App for Kids
- Hyperlight – iPad Game Review
| PadGadget Daily App Deal – 13 iPad Apps on Sale Posted: 23 Apr 2011 09:34 PM PDT
For today’s Daily Deal we’ve found 13 great apps to add to your iPad collection. We have five productivity apps, two entertainment apps, a kids storybook and five game apps in today’s bundle. We used our PadGadget Apps Tracker to find these great deals and we’ll continue to look for the best app deals as they pop-up. Some of these apps are up to 66% off, so be sure to check them out because they are on sale for a limited time.
We use our PadGadget Apps Tracker to constantly monitor the App Store to find the biggest price changes on iPad apps. Our editorial team goes through the data, picks the best deals on the most interesting apps and then brings them to you on a regular basis. All app prices are checked at the time of posting but prices are subject to change without notice. When developers put their games on sale it’s usually for a very limited time, often 24 hours or less, so be sure to check pricing on iTunes before making a purchase. » Related posts:
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| Trade Nations for iPad – Game Review Posted: 23 Apr 2011 09:29 PM PDT
Just like any other game like this, it is a "freemium" game. You start out with 14 magic beans and are immediately asked to use one up to "hurry" your logger to get the wood cut. These types of games are frustrating for me because there are very few ways to get magic beans (or Smurf berries, or carrots or whatever) without paying for them. A nice thing about Trade Nation is that they offer ways of getting free magic beans by allowing you to download other apps through them. I think this idea is brilliant and keeps me from just quit the game after I run out. Plus, it is a great way to discover new apps that you may not have seen before. All parties benefit from it. The game play is nothing special and is typical of every other game in its class. You build a farm and assign a villager to work on it. You build a bakery and earn gold by baking things. You unlock bigger items as you gain levels. You can decorate your village with plants and paths. You can expand your land as you go. All the usual features.
You earn badges for achievements that you can share on Facebook or twitter. You have to sign into Facebook or know exactly who is playing the game, in order to benefit from the trade aspects. When you want to trade, you visit your neighbors, but there is no access to unknown players. You have to add your friends by inviting them or searching for them if you know their username. The graphics are fairly typical of this type of game. However, there is a lot of detail in each little item, from the grain on the wood to the bricks on the chimney. There is a pleasant song playing in the background that gets annoying very fast. What I liked: It is easy to play and the villagers just go to sleep if you don't take care of things. Your crops don't burn down and your cows don't run away. I really like the "earn free magic beans" feature. What I didn't like: You can't randomly visit a neighbor's house. You can't turn off the music in the background. The game is just like all of the other social networking, Farmville-style games. To buy or not to buy: If you like these types of games, it's as good as the rest of them, maybe even a little bit better. And, since its free, you should give it a try.
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| Dylan Monkey & Squishy Face – App Review Posted: 23 Apr 2011 01:05 PM PDT
Dylan Monkey & Squishy Face is based on those whimsical and creative ideas that only kids can come up with. The book is absolutely adorable, with enticing art and a unique and interesting story line that is both funny and educational.
Each page of the story was meticulously and gorgeously crafted using ink, water colors, and photographs. Every page is animated, and they all have interactive drawings that you can tap on for zany actions and fanciful sounds. The hand drawn look is completely captivating, and the entire story is bright and colorful. It's really a joy to look at.
There are several ways to explore this book: read to me, read to myself, and auto play. With the first option, the story is narrated, but you turn the pages. The second option allows you to narrate the story, but retains all the sounds and animations. The third option will allow your child to use the app on their own, because the pages will automatically turn after the narration and animations, which is excellent for car trips. At the end of the story, there are questions that you can use to start dialogues and improve reading comprehension.
Interactive books like this one are certainly the future of children's literature, because they are so immersive. I know people who believe that actual books can never be replaced, but a book that you can touch and really explore is enthralling for a young audience. Dylan Monkey & Squishy Face is certainly a great contribution to the interactive literature genre. What I liked: I loved the art style, the vibrant colors, and the animations. What I didn’t like: I could not turn the book pages during the animations. At times, I accidentally clicked an animation when I wanted to flip to the next page, and as a result, there was a delay of several seconds before I could move on. To buy or not to buy: Yes, absolutely. This app is perfect for bedtime, car trips, or anytime you want to entertain your children with a lively, interactive story that's fun, thought-provoking, and humorous.
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| Gazelle Offers You a Way to Buy or Sell Used iPads! Posted: 23 Apr 2011 11:05 AM PDT
Just over a year ago, the first generation iPad captivated the imagination of millions. This year the iPad 2 has created a huge backlog that has seen a large amount of resellers standing in the streets of New York and Los Angeles waiting for every bit of iPad 2 inventory to resell it overseas. Make no mistake about it, these resellers are making $400 per day on iPad reselling. All of this has created a new market around the first generation iPad recycling. Electronics recycler, Gazelle, has seen a large increase on iPad 1 recycling, and is now ready to buy them from you, or sell them back to you for a nice price. In case you’re not familiar with Gazelle, they’ve grown to become probably the largest electronics “reCommerce” company in the United States. The company handles approximately more than 100,000 gadgets every year. I couldn’t agree more with the way the company prides itself with their service on their website – “This is about changing the way we all think about buying, owning, selling, and recycling. We are working, together with you, to bring about smarter consumption.” If you’ve been thinking about replacing your first generation iPad with a newer one, this may be a good chance for you to contact Gazelle. The company will let you send your used tablet for cash, of course, if you want to avoid selling via other channels like eBay. Your used iPad will be valued based on the model and the current condition. I played around on Gazelle’s website with different iPad models. The company seems to be paying around $200 for a 16 GB WiFi iPad model in good condition, which is the most basic iPad model out there. You can easily get approximately $340 for an iPad 64GB WiFi + 3G in good condition. When Apple launched the iPad 2, it surprised consumers with its latest technical specifications. This resulted in a large amount of first generation iPads sold to Gazelle. Surprisingly, the majority of the used iPads (more than 90%) were received in very good condition. With so many first generation iPads in its inventory, Gazelle is now ready to sell and place several units in the market. Considering the large number of iPads in great condition, Gazelle has avoided refurbishing a large number of tablets before it resells them to you. Gazelle will be launching its own online store in the coming weeks. It will be an extension to its current website, and the used iPads will probably be priced anywhere between $300 and $500 depending on the model. The company will probably collaborate with Square Trade, which is an electronics gadget warranty specialist, allowing Gazelle to provide optional warranties on the iPads. Stay tuned. This is a great chance for you to get your hands on a used iPad in a very good condition. » Related posts:
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| mybookshelf – A Great iPad Book App for Kids Posted: 23 Apr 2011 09:54 AM PDT
Children ranging in age from 2-7 will appreciate the entertaining stories, as well as their colorful illustrations. Each book is adapted for the iPad and gives readers two reading options. Read to me provides professional narration and brings characters to life on the pages of the screen. The read by myself option encourages independent reading from older children or maybe lets Mom and Dad spend some time reading a bedtime story to their little one. Stories on the shelves include: Mrs. McGee’s Coconut - A crazy story about a woman and her adventures with her coconut. Panda-Monium - Discover what happens when a bunch of hungry pandas search for bamboo. A Little Bit of Love - Mouse and her mother collect ingredients and put a little love into making a pie. The Dancing Clock – A whimsical story featuring a monkey named Milo and the Delacorte Clock at New York City’s Central Park Children’s Zoo. My Favorite Michael – Join the adventures of Michael as he spends the day as a businessman, knight and pirate. The Ice Cream King - Teddy explores a world full of yummy ice cream before he realizes something isn’t quite right. What could it be? I’ve reviewed quite a few apps from mytales digital and enjoyed every one. Although there are no interactive features in their latest app, mybookshelf is a nice collection of high quality books and sure to be one kids will like. There are no push notifications and consequently no annoying messages asking you to purchase additional books to add to the collection. If you’re looking for another good app to add to your children’s book collection, this one is a good suggestion. You can download mybookshelf from the App Store now for $3.99. Happy reading! » Related posts:
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| Posted: 23 Apr 2011 09:04 AM PDT
Your goal in Hyperlight is to keep your spaceship alive, which is actually a daunting challenge. On the left side of the screen, there's a single bar you need to keep an eye on. It measures how much fuel you have to maintain FTL (faster than light) speed. The only way to destroy enemies is to enter FTL mode, which you do by quickly tilting your iPad until your ship glows, and zooming right through them. Be careful though, because when that bar empties, you're completely vulnerable. Luckily, there are blue teardrop shaped power-ups that will restore some of your power, and the main objective becomes collecting these fuel refills while avoiding and destroying enemies.
After launching Hyperlight, it's best to take a look at the instructions. There's no tutorial level, and if you dive right in, you may end up frustrated. There's a lot going on between enemies, power-ups, and weapons. This is a tough game and there is a bit of a learning curve to get the hang of the acceleration controls. It can be hard to accelerate quickly enough (through tilting) when an enemy spawns right next to you. Speaking of enemies, there's no shortage of them during gameplay. There are seven types of standard enemies, plus special enemies, dimensional enemies, temporal enemies, mid-bosses, and bosses. Oh, and all of them have different abilities with one thing in common – they're out to get you. Generally, you can avoid blue enemies, but purple ones will lock on to you like a homing missile so they have to be blown up right away. Other enemies will form complex arrangements to defeat you and sometimes these formations must be destroyed in numerical order.
You have one more thing in your arsenal to help you succeed: a variety of weapons. There are four different weapon types in the game, each with a different and devastating effect, from explosions to laser beams. These will be your only recourse for survival if you run out of FTL. If you're interested in achievements, it's important to amass a lot of points. In order to rack up a high score, you need to snag combos of two or more points by annihilating enemies in quick succession. Gameplay may be simple, but some of the achievements are formidable and will take serious skill to master. For example, one achievement is to complete arcade mode without being killed once. Did I mention that you only ever get one life to begin with? That's right, run in to one enemy and it's back to the start menu. There are two modes in Hyperlight – Arcade and Infinity. In Arcade mode, the difficulty ramps up slowly, while Infinity mode gets you right in to the heart of the action. The accelerometer in the game is calibrated to work in two different ways – flat and tilted, so you can hold it in whichever way is most comfortable to you. Hyperlight's gameplay can be infuriating at times when you're back at the start menu for the hundredth time in a row, but the awesome retro style neon graphics and fast paced gameplay more than make up for it. What I liked: The simple line graphics were very appealing and contributed to the feeling that I was playing a classic arcade game. The challenge was actually refreshing, as a lot of iPad games can be too simple. What I didn’t like: Only having one life frustrated me. Many times I would progress only to die to something inane, usually an inability to tilt fast enough to destroy an enemy that appeared right next to me. While I did enjoy the classic "pew pew pew" sounds, I ended up muting my iPad while playing because I got tired of hearing "GAME OVER," and the music wasn't great anyway. It seems like the accelerometer is difficult to use at times, and I think a button on the side to tap to enter FTL mode instantly would help game play. To buy or not to buy: Buy, especially if you're a fan of tilt motion games. At only 99 cents, this arcade style game is a great deal. It's tough, but that just means there's a greater sense of achievement when you finally beat it.
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If you have kids and an iPad, then you've inevitably been introduced into the wide world of children's books, games, and learning applications. There are a lot of amazing and beautiful books available for kids on the iPad, but Dylan Monkey & Squishy Face is definitely the cream of the crop.
I think one of the best things about the iPad is its entertainment factor and regardless of my location, I’ve always got a large collection of apps to entertain the whole family. If you’ve got little kids at home, here’s a great book app for them to enjoy at home or on the road. Created by developer mytales digital, 
Hyperlight is a fast and furious psychedelic shooter game, controlled only by the accelerometer. Enemies, power-ups, and weapons whizz by in a hypersonic blur and the only way to win is to go faster than everything around you. Don't play this game when you want to relax, because there's nothing calming about it. You've got to be QUICK – it's destroy or be destroyed.
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