My New Fave iPhone App - Words With Friends

Okay...

This is by no means a "new to market" app...but I felt the need to discuss it! For the past month or so, I've been hooked on Words With Friends - a Scrabble-esque app that allows you to play an extended game of word generation with known or unknown opponents around the world. So, if you didn't know already, I'm a huge fan of the Milton-Bradley "Scrabble" game...but "Words With Friends" is Scrabble-x-10!

Instead of having to totally concentrate on the game for two to three hours at a time, I can play at my leisure. Literally every day I find myself checking in to see if my various opponents have created impossible to beat words. So far, I've beaten as many people as I've lost to...and in some cases I'm playing my actual friends in real life - which always makes things a bit more interesting!

**Note: I downloaded the "Words With Friends" free app...so I see ads everytime I make a move...but it's worth it to me. I think the "ad free" version retails for roughly $2.99. These are iTunes prices...so I can't vouch for the prices on the Android store!

My New Favorite iPhone App: Expensify!

So, it's been a while since I've written a "my favorite iPhone app" segment...but this one was enough to make me revisit this segment. Last week I was having drinks with a friend when he mentioned an app called "Expensify". This is a handy app that helps you keep track of all of your expenses. And, if you're like me, you can pretty much find a reason to expense almost anything!

So basically, it works like this:

Instead of having bags/boxes full of expenses, you can easily add an expense within the app. Take a picture of the receipt, and then enter in the correct information in the corresponding fields: Date, Amount, Merchant, Category (transportation, meals, lodging, mileage, etc.). Then you click "Add" and now you have the receipt logged into your account.

You can also link your credit or check card to your Expensify account so that it will automatically keep track of all your purchases. And, with all the receipts/expenses that you track, you can create detailed reports which can be exported to programs like Quickbooks. It's a super easy app and is free for iPhones! The app is also available for other phone platforms...but check the website, www.expensify.com for details!

My New Favorite iPhone App (Weekend Edition) - Pen Pals

Keeping it short and sweet...

I just got this app last night, Pen Pals, and I'm already addicted. Okay, so I love meeting new people. And I especially love meeting new people from other countries because you never know when you'll get the chance to visit that country. And then, you'll have an instant friend. :)

So, last night I downloaded PenPals..I think it was like $1.99 but I decided to give it a try (although to be fair, it's getting mixed reviews because of connectivity issues with the Dos Hombres' server).

The deal is that you can create a random greeting message (either text or with audio & pics too) and then send it out to the ether. It will be sent randomly to someone else who's also using the Pen Pals app and then they can choose to either reply back to you or delete it. And from there you two can either continue chatting through Pen Pals or make arrangements to chat elsewhere (Skype, AIM, etc.).

So, I decided not to write a random greeting but to wait and see who might send me a random greeting. As of now, I've gotten 8 or 9 greetings. Half of them I tossed just because I wasn't interested and their greeting wasn't all that persuasive. But the others were interesting. And, get this, two of the people who's greetings I kept are from - yup you guessed it, South Korea! And one of the two also works in entertainment too...too funny.

So, I highly recommend picking up this app if you have an Apple compatible device. I haven't had any connectivity issues so far & you never know who you may meet! Plus the graphics on this thing are so cute...it's worth the $1.99!!!

My New Favorite iPhone Game App - Doodle Jump

Yup, it's that time of the week again...time for my favorite iPhone app.

Well this week, we're talking games and the winner is....Doodle Jump! I love this game because it's simple, fast paced and helps pass away the time on a long commute. The goal is to get the little Doodle Jump guy to jump on little platforms as high as you can without getting snagged by any of the obstacles.

Along the way there are little helpful things you come across that help your Doodle Jump guy jump higher, fly farther or protects him from being hurt by the weird creatures that might get in the way. My favorite is the rocket pack. Another added bonus is this game is always being updated - so there are always new themes, weird creatures and helps that show up from time to time.

Doodle Jump is only $0.99 for iPhone and iPod Touch users so I highly recommend it.

FYI, Lima Sky (the makers of Doodle Jump) also have another awesome app that I love called Flags Fun...definitely recommend it if you're in the mood for a fun brain teaser that also teaches you a 'lil something about which flags belong to which countries.

My New Favorite iPhone Korean Learning App - LingoPal

Yup, I'm doing it again...it's time for the "My New Favorite iPhone App" segment! Last week it was a game, this time, it's something educational (yet fun at the same time).

If you've been reading my blog or just know me personally, you know that I'm learning Korean. I watch my K-novellas (검사 프린세스), I have language apps on my iPhone, learning websites I use and I've run through a number of tutors (one of which is coming back this month - yay!). But I came across an app that is actually intended for you to use when you're actually in a situation where conversing in a foreign language would be extremely useful. It's LingoPal's Korean app on iTunes. They're a language company that produces apps and products for all different types of languages, but obviously, I was only really interested in their Korean content.

They have phrases that can be used in any situation from getting around the city, ordering food and flirting - and better yet - learning how to properly reject someone in Korean. ^_^ My favorite rejection lines are the following (things I wouldn't mind telling some obnoxious dude on the subway):

Leave me alone: 저를 혼자 두세요 (jeo-reul-hon-ja-doo-se-yo)
I don't like you: 난 너가싫어 (nan-neo-ga-sil-heo)
Fuck off: 꺼져 (keo-jyeo)
(Because seriously, after I say I have a bf, I'm not interested in you telling me "well why can't we be friends" - I don't want to be your friend. I have plenty of friends & they don't look at me like I'm the last rib on the plate)

Anyway, the app is free (a huge bonus when dealing with learning apps) for those with iPhones/iPod Touches. If you're wondering why I said it's a huge bonus when trying to learn or make an application part of your daily life, the reason is nothing is worse than paying for an application with limited functionality - especially when trying to learn a language. I usually don't "buy" language apps just because I hate to be disappointed, but the most I've ever spent on a language app is $1.99.

The other useful thing is, it has a pronunciation guide that you can play for each phrase as well as showing you what the phrase is supposed to look like (extremely useful for languages like Korean where the writing system is entirely different from Romance languages). A word of warning, you need to have at least a basic knowledge of the Hangul (Korean) writing system and pronunciation for this to be an extremely useful app because there is no romanization available. If you don't know what "romanization" is, go back to the list of Korean phrases I wrote above (the pronunciations I made for each one is considered "romanizing" the phrase to make it easier for non-Korean speaking people to understand how to pronounce the word).

My New Favorite iPhone Game App - The Impossible Test

Yes, I have an iPhone - as if you didn't already know if you're following me on Facebook or Twitter. My app selections usually fall into a few categories:

Social Apps (FB, Twitter, HootSuite, Four Square, etc.)
Korean Learning Apps (WordPower, KC101, LingoPal, etc.)
Games (DoodleJump, Sheep Launcher, Flags Fun, Unblock Me, etc.)
Travel: (Zipcar, Expedia)
Randoms: (Currency Converter, All Recipes, Shazam, eBay)

And now I have a new "must have" to write about for the Games category. Last week I bought "Impossible Test" which is a free* app made by Pixel Cube. This game is addictive, short and definitely a brain teaser. There are about 40 - 50 (you lose count after a while) quiz screens. Nothing is inherently hard, but it makes you think through and actually read and digest every little thing that you see. The goal, once you finally make it through all the quizzes, is to try to get the fastest time. My fastest time so far has been 235 seconds. ^_^
*incidentally it looks like there's a charge for the game on the actual website - so non Apple product holders may have to pay to check out this game...

If you have an iPhone, iTouch or iPad (although I don't know if it's free on the iPad), I highly recommend you get it! Especially since it's free, you have nothing to lose by downloading it!

A Shameless Self Plug!

Yes, It's a shameless self plug, but I'm so happy that I was finally able to get it up and running on Amazon that I don't care. The book I started writing in November of 2008 is finally available for download as an e-book on the Kindle and Kindle for iPhone app!

The Book: Mind Games

About: Set against the backdrop of one of the most mysterious secret organizations in the world, this story focuses on how one person’s actions can deeply affect everyone remotely connected to them. In Mind Games, no character is perfectly good or completely evil, and nothing is as it appears.













Also, 10% of all book sales go to a very worthy charity - Building Community Bridges! They work to build water pumps to provide clean drinking water for the members of West African villages. www.bcombridges.org