Author: Geoffrey Goetz

There are many reasons you may want to create your own audiobook: Perhaps you are the author of your own book and want a version of your book spoken in your own words. You can even create an audio only version of a favorite family story spoken by the person that lived through the event and pass it down from one generation to the next.  For me it was a chance to capture my children’s voices while reading their favorite stories and nursery rhymes (for personal use, not for reselling of course).  Now when they grow up, they can play them back to their own children.

Whatever your motivation, creating your own audiobook isn’t that difficult. The following will walk you through the steps necessary to record the spoken word, capture it in digital audio, and convert it into the audiobook format.

Choosing a sound location

Finding an acoustically sound location to record your reading sessions is probably the single most important decision you will have to make in this process. Annoying ambient noise, room echoes and outdoor wind can make for a poor recording. Provided you do not have your own private recording studio, a large closet packed full of clothes will prove to be your best bet. The material in the clothes will absorb most of the unwanted background noises as you record.

Record with Apogee MiC and an iPad

Choosing a decent microphone that can produce the sound results you are looking for is the second most important decision you will make. Considering the fact that you will be retreating to your closet to do most of your recording sessions, choosing one that works well with your portable iOS devices is recommended. The Apogee MiC ($199.95, Accessory) works extremely well with both the iPad and the Mac, and has a really great sound to it.  Using any external microphone is preferred over the onboard mic that comes with the iPad.

To record your voice Apogee recommends using Apple’s own GarageBand for iOS ($4.99, Universal). When you first create a project in GarageBand, be sure to select Audio Recording as your instrument. GarageBand can also be configured to record in the background, which comes in handy when you are reading a book from your iBooks library.

Offload recordings to iTunes

As things progress and you continue to read your book you will want to offload your recorded sessions as GarageBand project files organized for each individual chapter. Follow a naming convention that makes sense to you from the start so you don’t get your recorded sessions out of order. To offload your recording from GarageBand on the iPad, you tap on the recording you want to save and then choose to share the file to your iTunes Library on your Mac.  Once the process is complete, you then must tether your iPad to your Mac and open iTunes on your Mac.  Select your iPad and navigate to the Apps tab.  By selecting GarageBand in the File Sharing section, you should see the individual recordings you shared.  Simply save them to your music folder on your Mac.

Edit recorded audio with GarageBand on a Mac

When you are recording, you may have extended sessions of brilliance. But not every session will be so great. Cutting and splicing your recordings together can best be accomplished with GarageBand ($14.99, Mac) on your Mac.  In GarageBand you can cut and splice your recorded sessions to remove any unwanted audio.  So you don’t have to worry too much about being interrupted or flubbing a sentence or two when you are making your original recording.  You can always cut it out later.

Share each chapter’s project as a song

GarageBand is a great tool when it comes to editing multiple tracks, one song at a time, or in this case one chapter at a time. But it is not so great when it comes to organizing multiple songs into an album, or in this case multiple chapters into a book.  Each GarageBand project should be thought of as an individual song.  This means that each book will need to have multiple GarageBand projects, one for each chapter.  Once a chapter is complete, you need to click Export Song To Disk, which is located under the Share menu item.  Repeating this process for each recorded chapter will produce a series of audio files, one file for each chapter.

Bind the chapters into a single audiobook

Audiobook Binder (Free, Mac), available in the Mac App Store, can be used to combine all of your individual chapters into a single audiobook. Simply drag and drop the audio files into Audiobook Binder in the proper order. Once in Audiobook Binder, you can change the chapter titles to be whatever you want them to be.  If you happen to have multiple audio files that comprise a single chapter, you can even combine them at this point. Be sure to edit the author information, book title and add your own cover artwork.  Once everything is set, you simply click on the Bind button to produce the audiobook music file.

And there you have it, you have just learned that GarageBand may have an equally promising future being known as ClosetNararator. Try a practice run through the steps and actually listen to your first chapter before moving forward.  Finding the ideal location and microphone for your needs will prove to be the most difficult aspect of this endeavor. When doing recordings, it pays to invest as much as you can afford in the initial recording, rather than try to fix things later. There is nothing more annoying than to listen to a constant hum when you are trying to hear someone speak.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• New challenges for the IT organization
• Tablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Dude Perfect ($0.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad) is a sports game of sorts. There is a basketball, there is a net, and the goal is to get the basketball through the net. The difference here is that rather than scoring points for getting the ball through the net, you score points for hitting everything else on the screen except the net.

The dynamics of throwing the ball are as simple as choosing a direction and deciding how hard to throw. Anywhere you tap on the screen will engage the throwing mechanics of the game. Drag your finger in the opposite direction you want to throw as if you are pulling back a slingshot. Lift your finger from the screen and the ball is off.  The important thing to remember is that you don’t have to start the shot by touching the ball on the screen.  Tapping anywhere on the screen will start the shot.  This is good to know as many times the player is situated near the edge of the screen.

Clouds, buildings, trucks, balloons, fences and even flying saucers. There are all sorts of obstacles you can use to rack up your score as you make one amazing shot after another. The game was inspired by the real world YouTube sensation of the same name. A series of videos depicting amazing shots that include outrageous bank shots and bouncing the ball off all sorts of objects.  Watching the videos you get a sense that the game is not too far removed from reality.  Except perhaps shots involving bouncing the ball off of alien spacecraft.

There are over 80 different levels to play in seven different themed settings. Basics, Backyard, Ranch, Camp, Amusement Park, City and Space. Each theme has different obstacles that you can use to make your shot earn higher scores. You can also choose which of five different players to use to make your shot with. Each player has their own style and abilities. The twins, as an example, can be used to pass the ball before making a shot.  Keeping things interesting, you can also choose between a basketball, bowling ball or beach ball to throw. As you can guess, neither the bowling ball nor the beach ball have the same aerodynamic characteristics as the basketball. While you may get lucky with a power throw using the basketball and hoping it will eventually bounce in, the bowling ball in particular is not as forgiving.

Multiplayer has two different modes. The first multiplayer mode is for challenges between you and a friend with only one device.  This requires you to pass the one device back and forth between you and your friend.  You each then take turns making shots to see who ends up with the highest score. The second multiplayer game mode is a wireless mode where you can challenge your online GameCenter friends.  You can even let the game set up a quick auto match for you.

Through in-app purchases you can acquire additional payers, unlock all of the levels, and even enable a feature that allows you to create your own custom levels. While skill can keep you advancing in the game, and the included characters have the skills necessary to play any of the levels, the one in-app purchase you have to buy is the level editor.  Like the actual Dude Perfect Team, this is where you can plan and set up your own crazy shots.  You create your own custom levels on any one of the themed settings. You simply go through a series of edit modes where you choose where to place the basket, how to position the player and ultimately the number of objects you want to place on the screen to bounce your shots off of.

The cartoon-styled graphics of this game are well drawn and colorful.  While some of the challenges seem impossible at first, it is the rush of actually completing a difficult shot that keeps you coming back for more.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

One thing you will not see in Disney’s own Carousel of Progress is a huge crowd of people being led around an amusement park by their iPhones.  But that is exactly what you will see when you visit any one of Disney’s theme parks.  So what is it that is so interesting on all of these iPhones?  Disney theme park tourist apps.  Where to go, what to see and even how long it will take.

I can attest that the following are the best apps out there for a Disney trip after field testing on a recent visit to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

Before you go: Trip planning with ebooks

You should first look to see if your local library has any up to date ebooks that you can borrow. I was able to check out a couple of titles before our trip to Disney World began. Additionally there are several titles available on Amazon and iTunes for your Kindle and iBooks app. One of my favorites is The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World ($9.99 Kindle, $9.99 iTunes).  Being able to read and bookmark travel guides on my iPhone saved me from packing heavy books in my carry-on.

Guidebooks are better as apps

Beyond electronic books you will also find some great informational guides in the App Store. One provider in particular, TimeStream Software, has a couple of iPhone apps published under the title of Notescast that you will find have the same insightful information as the best-selling books.  The difference is that the apps are much easier for navigating and finding what you are looking for when you are in a hurry inside the various parks. In particular their Walt Disney World Secrets ($1.99 iPhone) is a great supplement to any ebook you may already have in your library.

Searchable maps of nearby attractions

Both Apple and Google have decent satellite and regular maps of the parks in their mapping apps.  However, you will find that specialized maps that include the ability to annotate the maps with interactive pins that highlight nearby attractions will help get you to where you want to be.  VersaEdge’s Disney World Magic Guide ($4.99 Universal) does exactly this by including the wait times alongside the location.  Seeing the wait times on the map may change where you are headed in the first place.  The app also comes with a database with details about the attraction as well schedule for your dinner reservations.  This is something that neither Google nor Apple has in their maps.

Avoid waiting in line

There are two things you will want to keep track of when visiting Disney’s attractions: wait times and FastPass times. While VersaEdge’s Disney World Magic Guide will show you the wait times on a map, what it does not do is show you are the times that the next FastPass is available.  FastPass is Disney’s way of controlling large crowds by allowing everyone a chance at getting to ride their favorite rides at least once.  But FastPasses do run out.  Knowing that the next FastPass for SpaceMountain is for 9 p.m. when it is just 11 a.m. is a good indication that you had better run over to Tomorrow Land and get one before they run out.  And the busier the park is, the more likely the FastPasses will run out.

Disney’s own My Disney Experience – Walt Disney World (Free, Universal) proved to have the most accurate and up-to-date FastPass information in each park.  Disney’s app also has the current wait times, maps and database of attractions.  While it did not have FastPass information, I did find that VersaEdge’s Disney World Magic Guide was more responsive while looking up nearby park information.

Have some fun too

Not every app is about managing your time and keeping track of where you need to be next. One of the fun apps will help you find the Hidden Mickeys ($7.99, Universal) all around the resort. You may have seen the book of the same title in various bookstores for about the same price, but the app is much better than the book.  Unlike the book, the app will show you how close you are to each hidden Mickey when you are in the park using the device’s GPS.

Another great app to have is actually not a native app.  When in the park, you will notice that Disney has a program called PhotoPass where you can be photographed in front of some of the main attractions in the park. There is a mobile web app on Disney’s site that you can create a home screen icon for.  This will allow you to view the photos Disney’s photographers take right after they take them.

And finally, there is another great Notescast app that focuses on one specific historical Disney feature. While shopping on the Magic Kingdom’s Main Street be sure to check out the Main Street Windows (Free, iPhone). All along Main Street each window has a business title, which is a tribute to various Disney employees and major contributors to various Disney productions over the years.  It is sort of like Disney’s own version of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

While these apps are all specific to visiting Disney World in Orlando, there are versions for its other theme park locations.  Be sure you are specific when looking for other books and apps about Disney. You don’t want to get all excited about riding Gadget’s Go Coaster realizing later that it is only at the Anaheim and Tokyo Disneyland locations.  Just be sure to devote a little time to loading up your iPhone with apps that will help you enjoy your trip to Disney this year.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Skylanders Cloud Patrol ($1.99, Universal) is a carnival-style shooting game where you tap to shoot at your target to win coins. The targets you are shooting at are mischievous trolls that have broken out of prison.

In this game you play one of a number of different Skylanders. As a Skylander you are responsible for hunting down and eliminating the escaped trolls. To shoot a troll, or anything else for that matter, you simply tap on the screen at the target you want to hit. You can also swipe your finger up, down, across and in a variety of pattern to lock on to a series of targets in quick succession. When shooting in such a manner, the game has the same interactive feel as Fruit Ninja. And like Fruit Ninja there are targets on the screen, in this case mines, that you must avoid shooting at all costs. If you shoot and hit a mine, it will explode and end the game.

As you progress through the game you are presented with a never-ending series of targets at which to aim. Each collection of targets are laid out like individual levels. After you successfully hit all of the targets on a given level, you will be flown to the next level in the cloud and presented with a new collection of targets. These targets can be barrels, boxes, balloons, presents, sheep (yes, sheep) and of course trolls. Things do get progressively difficult as the targets you are aiming to hit do not stay in one place.

The trolls will hide behind shields, duck under rocks and even fly around the screen using propeller caps. It really does resemble a carnival-style shooting game. Some of the trolls are armed with weapons that they will use to shoot at you. You must shoot down the projectiles aimed at you before they get too close and kill your Skylander.

Swirling around the screen intermixed with the trolls are the mines.  The mines always seem to change their pattern and place themselves right in front of a troll as you are tapping on the screen to shoot. There are also magical power-ups, crates packed with explosives that will kill all visible trolls on the screen, and golden coins that you can tap on to collect. When you do finally get overwhelmed and either shoot a mine or get shot by a troll, the game will end. Your score will be tallied, coins will be counted and you will be awarded gems for each of the posted achievements you have accomplished.

The coins and gems collected can be used to buy magic items as well as different Skylanders.  The magic items can be used while playing the game to give you an advantage over the trolls you are shooting.  However, switching out your Skylander for a more powerful Skylander with special abilities can really make a difference in how well you perform.  Between each level, there are in-app purchases where you can buy more gems.  The gems can be traded for gold coins.  This can certainly help you power-up at a faster rate by enabling you to achieve your goals faster.

What really sets the game apart however is that you can also make out-of-app purchases.  This is actually the main reason that the entire Skylander series of games exists.  By purchasing real toy models of the Skylanders at your local toy or hobby store, you can use the web activation code that comes with the toy model to unlock its corresponding Skylander character within the game itself.  Through earning gems and coins in the game, buying gems and coins through iTunes in-app purchase, or buying toy models at a retail store, you can grow your Skylander army.

Rather than exclusively use Apple’s GameCenter, Skylanders also utilizes Activision’s online gamers community, Activate. With Activate you can save game progress and challenge your Activate friends to various Showdowns.  These Showdowns are like goals, and if you win the Showdown you will be awarded with gems and coins.  The interaction between the game and Activate is smooth and reliable.  This weekend is as good a time as any to Activate an Activision online gaming account and start hunting trolls.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

An iOS feature you may not know about is one where you can have your notifications spoken to you. It’s not Siri EyesFree, which is a mode designed to be integrated with cars. But it does use the same Siri voice to speak to you.

Spoken notifications can come in handy when using your iOS device while working out at the gym, riding a bicycle or attached to your car’s hands-free audio system via Bluetooth.  No need to actually look at the screen and read the message you just received. All you need to do is listen. Here is how to set it up.

Enable the VoiceOver Accessibility setting

The iOS setting that you need to enable is actually an accessibility feature called VoiceOver.  This feature can be used to read all aspects of the screen using Siri’s voice, including notifications that pop up on the screen.  The following steps will also allow you to easily turn on and off the VoiceOver setting, as it may not be a feature that you want enabled all of the time.

• Open the Settings App and navigate to the Accessibility setting located within the General settings.
• Select the VoiceOver settings located at the top of the list, but do not turn it on just yet. Instead scroll down to the bottom of the VoiceOver settings and turn on Speak Notifications.
• Navigate back to the list of all Accessibility settings and scroll down to the bottom of the list.
• Set the Triple-click Home Button setting to turn on VoiceOver and exit out of the Settings app.

That’s it.  Now every time the Home button is triple-clicked, the device will enter into VoiceOver mode.  Once in VoiceOver mode, Siri’s voice will read aloud all of the information on the screen, including notifications. To turn off VoiceOver, simply triple-click the Home button again.

Works with any Notifications-capable app

This VoiceOver feature as configured above will work with any app that takes advantage of iOS’s notification system.  Just be sure to configure the notification setting so that the app you are interested in can display an alert on the lock screen.  Using VoiceOver this way will respect your Do Not Disturb settings.

One app in particular that is useful to use in association with this feature is Twitter.  I have enabled certain news accounts that I follow on Twitter to be able to send me notifications.  With VoiceOver feature enabled, Siri will speak over the music that I am listening to and read the tweet to me.  It’s like adding your own custom news service to your favorite music stream, which I have found to be a very useful feature.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter
• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

As computer sales overall have dropped sharply in recent years, Apple has put most of its attention on the source of its growth: mobile products. And its main focus on chips has transitioned to the kind that go inside its smartphones and tablets. Apple has spent a lot of time and money optimizing iPhone and iPad chips for speed and battery life. It still makes computers, but the focus is mostly on laptops, and making them fast, but also optimizing for weight, display quality and battery life. Meanwhile the company has let its workhorse, the Mac Pro, lapse.

With what most perceived as a minor update in 2012, the Mac Pro had gone two years prior to that before receiving a meaningful upgrade. Still, Apple has a loyal following among Mac users looking for power. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated last year that Apple is working on “something great” in reference to the Mac Pro, and we’re still waiting for that.

While things are not quite what they used to be, the company does still have a shot at impressing its seemingly forgotten Mac Pro customers by putting the power back into its Macs.

It was not too long ago when part of the Mac versus PC debate took place in the lab with a series of benchmark tests. Try to find such a comparison since Apple switched from IBM’s PowerPC chipset to Intel; you will be hard pressed to do so. When Apple first introduced the PowerMac G5 we witnessed the worlds first 64-bit desktop computer.  Those days are long gone, as Apple has apparently elected to step out of the computer chip speed race.

To see how big of a gap we are talking about, we must first look to see how much faster today’s PCs are when compared to the Mac.

Benchmarking the current gap between Macs and PCs

Comparing Macs to Macs – If you look at Primate Labs, a long standing provider of benchmarking software on the Mac, you can see how each of Apple’s computers stack up against each other. Looking only at this list, one would think that Apple’s older lineup of Mac Pros is still doing quite well being situated at the top of the GeekBench’s performance list. That is until you look outside of Apple’s product line and see how the Intel Xeon X5675 chip that powers the top performing Mac Pro compares to other Intel chips.

Intel chipset benchmarks scores – One such benchmark to look at when comparing Intel chip performance is the PassMark CPU Mark. Using EveryMac.com as a guide to figure out what Intel chips are used in each of Apple’s Macs, you will find that the chips being used in today’s Macs are not among the fastest currently available. With a CPU Mark of just 9,382 for the fastest chip available in the Mac Pro, and a score of 9,461 for the fastest iMac chip, Apple comes in at roughly two-thirds the performance of the top rated Intel chip scoring 14,969.  Keep in mind that this top performing chip is Intel’s Xeon E5-4650 with a street price around $4,000, for just the chip.

A fair comparison to PCs – Looking at the chips used in last years round up of top performing PCs from both PC World and PC Magazine, the Falcon Northwest Mach V and the Maingear Shift Super Stock both used Intel’s Core i7-3960X processor.  Since then, each PC company now offers an updated configuration with the slightly faster Intel Core i7-3970X. It is also worth noting that the newer i7-3970X is currently available in Dell’s own Alienware line of desktop computers. Each of these new systems sell at prices comparable to Mac Pros. With a CPU Mark score of 12,976, the i7-3970X is still faster than the CPUs used inside of Apple’s top performing Mac’s.

And that’s just the current state of where Macs and PCs in the CPU performance race. The GPU race doesn’t look any better for Apple.  What may surprise many is that Apple does in fact support the latest drivers for many of the fastest GPUs on the market in each updated release of OS X.  It is just not an option when you build your own Mac in Apple’s online store.  You have to look elsewhere to get one added to your Mac after you buy it.

Why Apple should design its own Mac chips

Apple has two options to consider when it comes to increasing the performance of its Macs.  A short-term tactical play where it catches up with the PC by continuing to make modest upgrades to its existing lineup of Macs, or a long-term strategic play to surpass the competition by boldly stepping away from the component-based chip market all together.

Matching the competition – The first option is to simply match the fastest PCs in performance by updating the chips being used inside Apple’s Mac lineup.  This tactic of adamantly keeping pace with Intel’s release schedule has been employed by Apple in the past and every other computer vendor to keep making their machines performing slightly faster each year.  So long as Apple continues to use off-the-shelf chips from the likes of Intel, AMD, Nvidia and ATI, Macs will never again be faster than PCs since everyone uses the same exact chips.

Surpassing the competition – The other option open for Apple is to follow the same path that it has taken with its mobile chips. That is to optimize the chip specific to Apple’s own software and hardware design specifications.  Adding to this strategy, by continuing the complete adoption of Thunderbolt technology, Apple will likely be among the first to adopt Intel’s new Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt controller later this year.  And finally with the advent of integrated SSD technology directly on a logic board rather than conforming to a more modular SATA design standard, the design of desktop powerhouse systems should start to change dramatically. Breaking from the modular design that has dominated the top performing computer market for decades now, a radical new design that maximizes the potential of all of these advances in technology is in order.

Apple is not only not losing the laptop and desktop speed race versus the PC at the moment, it appears that it’s not even interested in competing in it. Apple’s own marketing shows how its newer hardware is only faster than its older hardware; as old Macs race against new Macs, PCs have meanwhile moved ahead in a race all their own.  If Apple truly does want to get back out in front of the PC market, and produce a lineup of Macs or even one Mac that outpaces the fastest PCs available, it will have to leave the off-the-shelf chips behind and show the world how to best take advantage of all of the changes we have seen in technology over the last few years.

Taking a chip design and making it your own is not something that just any company can do.  Apple has proven that they can do it with ARM-based chips on its mobile platform.  The question remains if Apple can successfully pull off the same feat with a chip design that places them in the forefront of desktop processor speed.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• New challenges for the IT organization
• The new IT manager, part 1

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Gravity Hook HD ($0.99, Universal) is a high scoring arcade-style game that is more challenging than it may first appear. If there were such a genre for side-scrolling puzzle games, this game would define that genre. Except for one minor detail: it’s vertical.

In Gravity Hook, your robot shoots out a grappling hook towards an orb that you believe is stable enough to propel the robot upward. The problem is that the orb is not attached to anything. As the robot is pulled closer to the orb, the orb is getting pulled closer to the robot.  Gameplay is simple enough to get the hang of — just tap on the orb you want to attach the hook to and the robot shoots its hook at that orb. As the robot moves upward, more orbs become visible for you to grab on to. When you select a new orb, the robot releases the hook from the orb it is currently attached to and fires the hook to the new orb.

Sounds simple enough, but there is one slight catch. The closer the robot is to an orb when it gets attached, the faster the robot moves toward it. So fast, in fact, that the robot can use the momentum to fling itself up even higher. The opposite has its ill effects as well: the farther away the robot is from an orb when it gets attached, the slower the robot moves toward it. If the robot happens to be too far away at the time it gets attached, it will fall further away from the orb rather than get closer. You can, however, attempt to recover from choosing an object that was too far away by targeting a closer object. The problem is that your downward momentum is often times too much for the cable to handle. Extending the cable between the robot and the orb too much will cause it to snap. With no cable to cast out, the robot will fall, crashing downward and ending the game.

The orbs themselves have different properties as well. The farther up you go, the more complex the choices get. Toward the bottom of the game, the green orbs you grapple on to are quite benign and easy enough to get the hang of. The blue orbs on the other hand turn into mines as soon as you attach to them. When attached, a timer starts counting down. Detaching from the blue orbs stops the timer. If you stay attached too long and end up bumping into the blue orbs as you get pulled closer to them, the blue orb will explode and destroy the robot in the process.

The gray orbs are chained to one another and will quickly break free. Once free from the other gray orbs, they begin to plummet toward the ground. Staying attached to them for too long and the robot will be pulled to the ground with them. And the red orbs, lets just say you need to avoid those at all costs. With all of the objects the idea is basically the same, don’t stay too attached to any one object for too long.  Use your momentum to propel the robot upward to the next collection of orbs.

There is a classic play mode as well. I found the classic mode to be much more challenging than the normal play mode. So you might want to get the hang of things in the HD version before you try out the classic eight-bit version. The first rendition of the game was originally inspired by a program that was use to teach students how to type if you can imagine that.  Whichever version you feel more comfortable playing, this is the weekend to grab hold of Gravity Hook.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

With Mother’s Day just five days away, it’s already too late to send your artistic masterpiece from iPhoto for printing with Apple – the cutoff was last week. But that does not mean you’re out of options for photography-related gifts when it comes to doing something nice for Mom. The following apps can be used to tap into your creative side and make a customized gift.

Create an original photo collage – Shape Collage ($1.99, Universal, $24.99 Mac) will arrange your photos into just about any shape imaginable. You could arrange your photos to resemble a word, phrase or sentence. You can even arrange your photos into different shapes like flowers, symbols and hearts.  The Mac version will even allow you to save the collage as a Photoshop file, where you can re-arrange each photo individually.

Shape a mosaic of your own – Mosaics take every day objects and create an image by placing different size, shape and colored versions of the objects next to each other. cf/x also does this with their Mosaic ($19.99 Mac) app. Take a photo of your mom’s favorite garden or landscape and use it to creat a really cool image that looks like you put it together yourself by hand.  The controls let you choose how realistic, or artistic you want the piece to be.

Discover a photo mosaic – Take a large set of photos from your childhood and have them arranged to resemble a single more recent photo of yourself — it is a magical process to witness. AndreaMosaic (donation, Mac) has been doing just this for just over 10 years now. AndreaMosaic also has the ability to create your own library of photos to make the final mosaic from rather than use stock photos from a shared online repository.

Remember a comic moment – Take one of your favorite scenes from your life that you love to talk about and document it with Comic Life 2 ($4.99 iPad, $29.99 Mac).  You can even cartoon-ize the photos and distort the images for dramatic effect.  Comic life also has a library of speech bubbles to help you bring the photos to life.

Craft some thoughtful text – What you want to say is up to you, how you say it is another matter entirely. With Art Text 2 ($19.99 Mac) you can express yourself with an endless arrangement of textual options.  Make your words glow with style by adding layers of borders, shadows and even adda glossy effect to the font itself.

Print it all out – When all is said and done you may be looking for some place to print out your masterpiece. Using your iPhone, iPad or Safari on your Mac, you can send your photos directly to a nearby Walgreens (free on iPhone, iPad and Safari) for same-day processing. This same-day processing includes creating Posters, Canvas Prints and even Photo Books.

Any one of these apps can be used to create a single piece of artwork worthy of framing for Mom. You can consider combining several techniques together and craft your own card to accompany whatever else you are getting for Mom this year. Even when the mother on your shopping list is your spouse, the above can be great art projects you can do with the kids. Show them how they can use their iPhone, iPad or iMac to create something really special this Mother’s Day.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Star Command ($2.99, Universal) is a mission-based space game where you are responsible for the safety and well-being of your ship and its crew. However, as captain, your primary objective is to stay alive. This is a game where the ship goes down with its captain.

From the very start, you spend a series of colored tokens to add different types rooms and crew members to your ship. The more rooms you have, the more crew you will need to operate these rooms. Each colored token represents a different capability.  Red represents tactical for your weapons room and security team.  Next is blue; it represents science, this is for your medical team.  Finally there is yellow, which represents engineering.  Striking a balance between the three is essential as the game progresses.  With no in-app purchases to bankroll a fully manned ship, you must earn your tokens as you travel through the galaxy by completing a series of missions.

The ship you start with is basically empty. You need to add weapons, engineering, and medical rooms. Each room will cost you three tokens. Hiring crew members is your responsibility as well. Crew members can only be added on earth and will cost you one token each.  When it come to weapons on board the ship, each crew member wearing a red uniform is equipped with a standard issue laser pistol.  Once your ship is built and your crew is on board, you are ready to take on your first mission.

Throughout the game you will encounter alien battles both in space with ship-versus-ship combat, as well as on the board with crew-to-crew combat. In ship-to-ship combat you can only use the weapons and defenses from rooms that have crew members assigned to them. You only fire your weapons when they are fully charged. Once charged, each weapon has its own mini game you need to play in order to get the weapon to fire and hit its target. These mini games only take a few seconds to play and look like something you would expect to see on the console of a weapon’s targeting system.  As the battle progresses, your attention is focused on when the enemy is about to fire, what levels the enemy’s shields and hull integrity are at, and how long it takes your ship’s weapons to fully charge.  There are enough things going on all at once to keep you on edge.

In crew-to-crew combat, enemy aliens teleport onto your ship and start tearing it apart from the inside. You will have to hunt them down and destroy them before they kill all of your crew. Situating your security team a safe distance from the intruders, you find that you are constantly adjusting their position to keep them from getting overrun. You also need to reposition your teams when more aliens teleport onto your ship. If you are fortunate enough to have a medical room staffed with the necessary personnel, you will also start rotating your security teams in and out of the infirmary as they get hurt. When moving your crew around to fight the alien invaders, be sure not to leave one of the ship’s critical weapons rooms understaffed, or else you will leave your ship more vulnerable to attack.

The rooms on your ship can be upgraded, as can the crew members. At the end of each victory, you will be awarded tokens, which can be used to hire more crew members, add new rooms, or upgrade existing rooms. Also at the end of each victorious battle, each crew member that played a role in the battle will earn experience points based on what action they took in the battle.

There is a lot going on with each battle. While you are managing each crew member individually, you are also keeping track of each weapon to see when they are fully charged and ready to fire. At the same time you are also need to pay attention to the enemy’s weapon system in order to try to dodge an attack at just the right time.  Leaving a fully charged weapon sit idle too long, missing an opportunity to dodge an attack, or allowing just one crew member lose too many health points in a shootout could be the difference between winning or losing the battle.  If you feel like you are up to the challenge this weekend then consider joining Star Command as captain of your own ship.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Girls Like Robots ($2.99, Universal) is a puzzle game where the pieces of the puzzle each have their own likes and dislikes. In this game, the nerds like robots too, but that is not the problem. The problem is that the girls do not like the nerds.

Oddly enough, the nerds don’t like other nerds either. About the only puzzle piece that can tolerate a nerd is a robot. It is these very basic social rules that lay the foundation of the game. The playing board is laid out in a grid of squares, with each piece occupying a square on the grid.  Each puzzle piece can be happy, mad or indifferent.  The score you earn is based on how many puzzle pieces on the board you make happy. When every piece on the board is happy you earn the maximum points allowed for that board.

From these simple beginnings a truly complex series of challenges await. Of course the size and dimensions of each board can change. But with certain levels there are already immovable pieces placed on the board that you have to contend with. Once a piece is played you cannot move it. There is an undo that allows you to keep undoing your previous moves one at a time. Or if you prefer, you can reset the entire board and start all over again.

As the levels progress, additional player pieces are introduced. Each new piece has its own set of likes and dislikes. There are even girls who like bugs in this game. What makes the game interesting is that each player piece has a personality, and a part to play in the storyline.  If you ever forget who likes who, you can always tap and hold on each player piece to see a cheat sheet outlining its interests. There is also a heart on the screen that you can press to see how the pieces you have already played on the board like each other. Green indicates a positive relationship and red a negative one.

Some levels play out like a game of solitaire where you decide which piece is played where and when. In the earlier levels you can even see the count of pieces you have remaining. And, a s things progress, some levels present you with the exact order the pieces must be played in what can best be described as a sort of Tetris-style of gameplay. On these levels, you only know what piece is coming next.  There are levels where the pieces are moving, and you must box in these pieces in order to keep them from moving about.  These variations are what make each new level a challenge to complete.

There are three different acts to play out as well as a series of bonus levels. Each act is unlocked as you complete earlier acts. Within the acts there are over 100 levels with their own  unique story to tell, which helps explain the rules for completing that level. For instance, you may be responsible for keeping a space next to June in the cafeteria so that Ben can sit next to her.  Ben wants to ask June to go with him to the upcoming school dance.  Or you may need to situate a robot between Ben and the other girls, as Ben has become quite excited to get to the dance.

With each level played, there is a thermometer that rates the total happiness of all of the pieces on the board. The more pieces that are happy, the higher the thermometer rises. Once all of the pieces are played, a final score is tallied and you are awarded from one to three happiness points. These points are collected in your Bag of Happiness.  The bonus levels — or challenges as they are called — are unlocked when you earn enough happiness points in your Bag of Happiness.

As you get familiar with each of the characters in the game, you begin to look forward to learning what comes next in the story.  As challenging as the puzzles can become, the story continues to string them all together into the three acts of a play.  Each obstacle, additional character or new aspect to the game can be associated directly with a twist in the main plot of the story.

So this weekend you should set aside time to come to understand exactly why Girls Like Robots better than Nerds.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Even before AppGratis was famously removed from the iOS App Store earlier this month, AppShopper, a similar app discovery service, had already been there: it was removed from the App Store late last year for similar reasons. It had been so long that I thought I would never see an updated version of the native AppShopper app back on my device again. But I was very happy to find out that AppShopper has recently returned to the iOS App Store with a completely new app titled AppShopper Social (free on iPhone).

The team behind the app announced the news in a blog post on Sunday.

AppShopper Social has a very familiar look and feel to it when compared to the original app. The app name has changed, which means I can continue to use the new app and the older version of App Shopper to find new apps to download. But the big difference in this version is that is no longer lists every app in the App Store in ranked order, which was too similar  to what Apple does with its own App Store lists.

If you’re familiar with the old version of the app, what you’ll find missing from AppShopper Social are the What’s New and Top 200 lists. Thankfully the Wish List and My Apps lists are still present and are linked to my AppShopper.com account data. While I may not be able to use the new app to shop for apps that are trending toward the tops of the lists, I will at least be able to track all of the apps on my Wish List again.

Another notable difference from the old app is a switch from a Popular list of apps to a new Stream list. The Stream, as AppShopper calls it, is a continuous list of app recommendations that have been made by the friends you have added to your friends list. Your friends list can be compiled by manually adding other users within the app. You can also enter your Twitter account credentials, which will let you add all of those you follow in Twitter that also have AppShopper accounts as friends. Attaching AppShopper to your Twitter account is currently not required, as I was able to add quite a few AppShopper friends to my list without linking my Twitter account directly.

The current version will not allow you to drill down into your friends list of apps or wish lists directly.  It would be nice to see the apps my friends also want to buy, and that is a feature that AppShopper claims to be working on for a future release. Also on AppShopper’s to-do list is a way to make friend discovery an easier task. I can definitely see where I may want to follow one group of friends because they have interesting things to say, and another group of friends because they have interesting taste in apps. AppShopper will also be looking to update the iPad version of the app as this initial release is only for the iPhone, the developers said in their blog post.

The team behind AppShopper is still treading on thin ice with Apple’s App Store rules, apparently: its recent blog post states that “a few features didn’t make the first cut,” referring to the What’s New and Top 200 features. But the developer promises it “will see about returning those features in a future version.”

I am just happy to see the app return as it has been an integral part of my app shopping experience for quite a while now.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• How do developers ride the Siri wave?

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Repulze ($2.99 Universal) is more than a racing game with insanely fast courses, upgradable hovercraft and challenging obstacles — and those hovercraft are equipped with weapons.  In what plays out as a roller derby style of fighting, you can either race ahead and avoid the fight entirely, or lag behind and take your opponents out one at a time.

There are three different control settings to choose from. The first set of controls are easy enough to understand: tap right to go right and tap left to go left. There is also a tilt-to-steer setting that uses the device’s accelerometer and a back-and-forth slider control that is accessed in the center of the screen. Going right or left is the easy part, what takes a little getting used to is the fast-paced graphics and knowing exactly when and how far to go to the right or to the left in order to maximize your speed potential.

Each course will take a few passes to learn where the obstacles and various power-ups are located. Along the tracks are energy gates that you pass through in order to gain energy during the race.  These energy gates are color-coded indicating their polarity. Your hovercraft switches between red and green energy polarity throughout the race.  When your hovercraft requires red energy, it is important that you avoid the green energy gates. If you happen to hit the wrong color energy gate, your speed will decrease. Hitting three consecutive power gates of the same color earns you a booster. This adds to the challenge of each as achieving some of the more demanding record times requires you to earn every possible booster in the race, without hitting the wrong color power gate even once.

There are three different phases to choose from when you start the game. Phase One is considered the boot camp level. There are nine gravity-defying tracks and six hovercraft to choose from. Here your biggest challenge is to avoid hitting the walls while going as fast as you can. This is a great place to start as you can get familiar with the various hovercraft and get into the groove of the game’s racing style.  In Phase Two the game introduces Wildcard Gates and Toolkits. Wildcard Gates instantly grant you a power booster and change your hovercraft polarity. Toolkits are collected and spent to power up your hovercraft. In Phase Two additional vehicles are on the track as well.  Phase Two is basically an advanced version of Phase One, with new tracks to explore.

Phase Three is where your hovercraft gains weapons and the additional vehicles on the track are hostile. With plasma canons and rocket batteries your hovercraft becomes an instrument of destruction. There are no additional controls to learn as your weapons have an automatic targeting system. You just need to control your hovercraft and keep it steady long enough for the targeting system to lock on to its target.  You are also warned when an enemy hovercraft has you in its sights.  Your screen starts flashing red, alarms go off, and if you don’t respond quickly to the threat, you may get incinerated.

As you win more races, you will increase in rank and earn badges.  Your rank determines which hovercraft you can use and your badges unlock additional tracks.  Each hovercraft is upgradable as well. You spend the Toolkits you collect.  The power ripper power up is the only power-up available in Phase One and Two, as they are not battle courses.  In Phase Three, you have access to the Plasma Canon and Rocket Battery power-ups.

The graphics are extremely smooth for a racing game that moves so fast.  The gravity-defying tracks that the hovercraft races on really add depth to how you approach each track.  Keeping your hovercraft from bumping into the walls while at the same time earning the much-needed energy gates makes each course a real challenge to master.  This weekend is a good time to brush up on your hovercraft skills, and take on the challenge of battling other hovercraft in the futuristic world that is Repulze.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

It is no secret that smartphones like Apple’s iPhone are getting better and better at taking some really good pictures.  With sales of compact cameras dropping by as much as 30 percent in 2011, entry-level snapshot cameras manufacturers have tried to stand out by adding features smartphones don’t have: cameras with better lenses like Canon’s S110 with its extremely fast f/2.0 aperture for low light situations, and the SX280 with its 20x optical zoom for far away shots.

But Canon, for one, also sees the advantage of pairing up with the iPhone. It has an app called CameraWindow that allows devices to wirelessly access photos directly on the point-and-shoot camera. This year Canon started including the feature that enables similar apps to be used by its higher-end cameras; previously it was all low-end devices. I had a chance on a recent holiday to try out the CameraWindow app on the just-updated S110. Here’s what I was able to do with my iPhone 5.

Access camera photos on your phone

The way it works is simple: both the camera and your iPhone join the same Wi-Fi network. (If a Wi-Fi network is not available, the Canon PowerShot camera will create a local Wi-Fi network that can be used solely for the purpose of reviewing and transferring photos.) You start off by pairing the iPhone and the camera together. Upon the initial connection there are a few steps to complete, but the Camera will remember the nickname of the iPhone it paired with to make future connections fast and easy.

Once the connection is established, you can either review the photos from your camera or from the iPhone. When you see a photo you like, you can transfer it from the camera to the Photo Library on the iPhone. As soon as the photos are on your iPhone, you can then use any number of applications to modify and share. I was able to use iPhoto on my iPhone 5 to create a great gallery that documented our trip, and was also able to share the images in my iCloud Photo Stream.

Update location information remotely

Another interesting feature of CameraWindow is its ability to record your GPS location when taking pictures. You set up the app to record your location information to a log while you take photos with your Canon PowerShot camera. When you are finished, you pair up your camera with your iPhone and elect to add the location information to the photos you just took. The photos on the camera are then updated with the latitude and longitude information. No need to transfer the photo to your iPhone first in order to perform this operation. The photos stay on the camera making the whole process quick and easy.

Canon’s CameraWindow works with iPads and Android devices as well.  The functionality provided in an app like CameraWindow is a great way to extend the capabilities of my point-and-shoot  camera.  It’s a handy way to get photos off of the camera when in the field and quickly edit and share them with family and friends, as well as update the information of each photo while it is still on the camera.

While some have already written off the era of the compact point-and-shoot camera entirely, I still feel that there is a need for a better optics and saving the original RAW image file when it comes to taking truly great photos. Looking beyond the compact market, Canon has also been introducing this smart app strategy into their DSLR lineup.  So it all just depends on how much you are willing to spend on the ability to take better photos.   With Canon pairing with smartphones like the iPhone 5 using their CameraWindow app, it’s a good way to have the best of both worlds.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

He-Man: He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe (Free, Universal) is an arcade-style game based on the classic 80s cartoon hero He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Skeletor is up to his old tricks and manages to steal He-Man’s key to castle Grayskull. It is up to you to get it back.

Sliding your left thumb back and forth controls which direction He-Man is moving. Tapping on the right side of the screen will attack and a quick swipe up on the right side of the screen will cause He-Man to jump. A double swipe results in a double jump.  After you jump you can continuously attack while in the air. Attacking in  such a manner will keep you floating until the attack has completed.  This is a helpful trick as enemies can come at you from both sides, while you can only attack one side at a time.

Throughout the game you collect crystals that can be used to purchase power ups in the in game’s store on Ethernia, He-Man’s home world. These power ups vary in strength and cost.  When it comes to the combat upgrades for He-Man in particular, there is the overhead combo, the tornado spin, arial smash, thunder punch, axe throw and power slice.  Each one of these special skills can be used to help defeat He-Man’s enemies on various levels throughout the game.

Chasing Skeletor throughout seven areas of Eternia, He-Man faces several different foes from the cartoon series on each of the 27 different levels. There are huge boss fights that are more challenging to fight than the common foes you face along your journey.  The levels themselves get more challenging and puzzle-like as well.  Fireballs come crashing down upon you, traps try to crush you and lava pits try to drown you.  Getting your timing right and figuring out when to attack becomes a key element in gameplay — so much so that saving up 20,000 crystals in order to purchase the Strength of Eternia is well worth it.  Do you suffer an attack or risk getting killed by the trap?  The Strength of Eternia will give you an extra heart container and raise the combo multiplier to five times.  It is the most well-rounded upgrade available in the store.

Once you feel like you are the master of this game’s universe, you can switch characters and start the game all over again as She-Ra, He-Man’s twin sister. One thing you will notice right away is that She-Ra can jump much higher than He-Man in the earlier levels, to the extent that hidden passages and extra gems are much easier to obtain when playing as She-Ra.  The controls respond a little differently as she is a bit quicker and more responsive. She-Ra also has a different collection of power up skills that she can use: a glitter wave, honor dodge, air dance, power thrust and stiletto stomp atr her combat upgrades.  Her style of fighting can affect the way you approach certain levels.

When you do happen to die you will be introduced to Orko’s Game of Chance.  Orko is a magical character that helps out He-Man and She-Ra from time to time.  The most common way Orko helps out is by bringing you back to life at the very spot you ended up dying.  If you are lucky, you will be granted Battle Armor or a Gem Pack that you can utilize more effectively in the game.

Knowledge of the cartoon series is not required to enjoy this game, but does add a better understanding to the characters’ interactions with one another. It is interesting how the two main characters, He-Man and She-Ra, really do change how you play the game based on their unique set of power ups and abilities.  This is a great game if you are looking for a platform-based, arcade-style game and, of course, 1980s cartoon heroes.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

One of the most challenging things to do on any iOS device is find a good app. Not because there aren’t any out there. Quite the opposite: there are thousands of good apps, which can be a problem.

With over 800,000 apps in the iOS App Store to sift through, Apple isn’t helping by cracking down on some of the better apps for discovering apps you might like. Finding what you are looking for remains a challenge.  While there is no one way to tell if an app will meet your needs or not before buying or downloading, the following will shed some light on the challenges in identifying apps you might like, and offer some advice on how to find them.

The App Store’s search problem

iOS apps are searchable by app name, company name, and keywords only in the App Store. Since most apps try to limit their names to what is viewable on the home screen (about 12 characters depending on what letters are used), company names do not necessarily represent the functionality of the app. Developers are also limited to a total of 100 characters in listing the app’s keywords; which can present a challenge for developers getting their apps discovered by customers. While the 4,000 character description may be enough to explain the functionality of the app, that description is not used in the search.

What does not help matters much is that there are three different search interfaces. When you search for apps on your iPhone, you will not see any results for apps that only install on the iPad. This can be frustrating if you are looking for an app that works well on both the iPhone and iPad, and the developer has elected to create an app for each device, rather than a universal app for both.  The iTunes search on a Mac will initially show you results for all content matching your keywords, including songs, movies, books and podcasts.  You can filter the results to show only iPhone or iPad apps, but this gets frustrating each time you refine your search.  The iPad has the best search experience of the three as you see only apps in the search result, and you can search for both iPhone and iPad apps.

The problem with all three is that the search results are presented in a fashion that you can only see a handful of the search results initially.  You must click, swipe, tap or scroll to see more than a few results.

Fortunately Apple is not the only place that you can search for apps available in the App Store.  Apple has made what is called the Enterprise Partner Feed available to third parties.  It is a data feed of every piece of metadata in the iTunes Store and App Store. This enables third parties like AppShopper.com, AppAdvice.com and 148apps.com to organize, display, and query all of the metadata information in the App Store.  If you have become as frustrated as I have with Apples search, try one of these instead.  Note though, you will find the search results different with each service.

Wish lists and app lists

A great resource for me has always been AppShopper’s Wish Lists. Once you open a free account with AppShopper, you have the ability to create and manage a wish list of apps that you are interested in. With this list, you can monitor apps that interest you and set up an email alert whenever the app is updated or the price drops. This is a great way to keep up to date with apps that caught your eye but you weren’t quite ready to buy because it was missing a key feature or was priced a little too high.

AppAdvice on the other hand has a different twist to lists: rather than you coming up with a list of apps that interest you, they have created topic-based lists called AppLists.  Examples include Apps for Volunteering, a collection of apps that was put together for individuals that are interested in volunteering their time and resources in their communities.  There are also lists for Foodies, Comic Geeks, Poets and Coffee Lovers.  These AppLists are a great way of discovering apps that are more narrowly focused than Apple’s broader categories.

From time to time, Apple will come out with a good topic list of the top apps that is very similar to AppAdvice’s AppLists. Two of my current favorites are titled Entertain your Kidsand Apps for Parents.  While topical categories from Apple are great ways to discover new apps that are closely related to one another, there is no one place to go to see all of the topic based lists of apps that Apple has put together. You will see a select and frequenlty updated number of these lists on the iTunes home page or on the features page in the App Store, but not all of them. The best way to gain access to these lists is to subscribe to Apple’s iTunes newsletter when managing your Apple ID.  Under language and contact preferences you will see a checkbox for iTunes newsletters. This is where Apple tends to announce the new lists they have pulled together.

Do your homework

Reviews, releases and rankings are the three Rs of app shopping.  One of the first things you should look at is the original release date of the app and how often it has been updated. With services like AppShopper.com, you can also see how often the developer has decided to change the price of the app as well.  Apps that are frequently updated likely point an attentive development team and can lead to a better experience overall.

Reviews posted to the App Store can go either way.  Give less attention to reviews that complain only about the price rather than features or quality.  Just because an app costs more does not make it bad.  You may find value in an app that others may not.  If, on the other hand, you see lots of reviews claiming that the app crashes or is buggy, then you need to look back at the version history to see if the developer is paying attention and trying to resolve the issue.

You also need to consider the total cost of ownership when buying an app, which includes in-app purchases. This is not hard to figure out as each app in the App Store will list its available in-app purchases.  Something to look for is how the in-app purchases are ranked since they are sorted by popularity: if you see high-priced items listed before lower-priced items, then you know that users of the app have found it necessary to buy those in order to use the app.

Use Genius to replace outdated apps

Genius is a great tool for finding new games that are similar to the games you have already purchased. But it is not a great resource for finding new apps that are completely different from the ones you already own. A good use of Genius is to locate a replacement for an app that you used to love, but has not been updated in a while or has just stopped working all together. A great example of this is when Google announced that it would be shutting down its Reader service. You can use Genius to look for alternative news apps that are not dependent on this service.

For now, there is nothing out there better than word of mouth that can assist you in finding great apps that will enlighten your life or make you more productive.  And with Apple pulling apps from the App Store that can help make this task easier, one begins to wonder if the situation will ever improve.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• How do developers ride the Siri wave?

Though Adobe’s Creative Suite is still the top choice in creative software by professionals, for individuals and smaller businesses Creative Suite may not be affordable, especially if they only need one or two tools included in the set. CS6′s Design Standard suite costs $1,299, and is composed of Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and Acrobat but will cost you roughly $500 each if you buy them individually. Luckily, much of the core functionality you will find in each of Adobe’s products is available in alternative products for a much lower price.

Through apps mostly available via the Mac App Store, you can decide which components of the software set matter most to you and build up your own custom suite over time to meet your creative needs.  Here are the best alternatives I’ve found that offer similar functionality to what is available in each of Adobe’s products.

Acrobat to SmileOnMyMac’s PDFPen ($59.99, Mac) Possibly one of the best apps on the Mac is PDFPen. Like Apple’s Preview application that comes with OS X, you can annotate and add signatures to your PDF documents. Looking beyond annotations, you can scan documents directly into PDFPen and use its OCR feature on the scanned in text to make the scanned document editable. Being able to edit a PDF document directly, not just annotate it, and saving changes to it as a PDF document is another important feature PDFPen has. Exporting the document to Microsoft Word is a recently added feature that is also very useful. There is a Pro version ($99.99, Mac) that adds the ability to create interactive PDF forms, which allows you to add text fields, check boxes and radio buttons, as well as add submit buttons to your forms.  It is also one of the few apps on this list that has an iOS companion app ($4.99 iPhone, $14.99 iPad) with which you can share your PDF files with your iPad and iPhone via iCloud.

Photoshop to Pixelmator ($14.99, Mac) By now it’s no secret that Pixelmator is one of the favorite apps on OS X for many. When you think of Photoshop, you think more than just applying filters to your images; you want to edit them. With its multilayered support, you can easily touch up and enhance your images with Pixelmator.  Many of the same tools that Photoshop users have become accustomed too are here too, like the smudge, sponge and brush tools.  Pixelmator also comes with some basic vector tools that may be all that you need from a full-featured vector editing tool like Illustrator.  For most of your day-to-day image editing needs, and at the current low price point of $15, it is hard to beat Pixelmator.

Illustrator to Indeeo’s iDraw ($24.99, Mac) If you have not worked with a true vector drawing tool then you have been missing out on being able to make some really crisp and sharp graphics. Indeeo’s iDraw comes with a decent library of shapes to choose from and supports PDF and SVG import/export.  This means that you can import professional shapes from sites like VectorStock and iStockphoto and tailor them to your needs.  For shapes that are not included in iDraw’s library, you will find the pen tool up to the task of drawing your own set of custom shapes.  The gradient editor is more than adequate and you can edit and modify your paths with ease.  About the only feature that is great to have in Illustrator is the ability to automatically trace a path around an existing graphic — an important feature if you happen to inherit a library of graphics that you need to modify and resize to a higher resolution.  iDraw also has an iOS companion app ($8.99 iPad) that can be a useful as well.

InDesign to Belight’s Swift Publisher ($19.99, Mac) When it comes to page layout editors, what you are looking for is one that comes with plenty of pre-defined templates to choose from; this one has 180 different templates.  It also has the ability to create additional templates.  With Swift Publisher, you can create professional-looking brochures, fliers and newsletters.  It has a large clip art library, many different shapes to work with and a decent layer editor that allows you to work with multiple layers within your documents.  It also has some convenient features like the ability to quickly center objects on the page with the touch of a button — something that makes Swift Publisher a better choice as a layout editor over alternatives in the App Store like Apple’s own Pages app.

Premiere to TechSmith’s Camtasia ($99.99, Mac) If you are looking for a quick and easy movie editor, then look no further than iMovie (free, Mac). If you want something a little more full-featured, then consider stepping up to Final Cut Pro X ($299.99 Mac). But if you are looking for a tool that will help you create screen captures then Camtasia is the best tool that will deliver everything you need to make a professional-looking video.  Some of the included features with Camtasia, like the tilt and restore animations, will bring a level of professionalism to your online screencasts.  Besides being a great screen-capturing tool, its included video editing tool is also easy to use.  Definitely consider this one if you are not splicing together a feature film.

Audition to Amadeus Lite ($24.99, Mac) Of course there is Garageband (free, Mac) and LogicPro ($199, Mac), but if you are looking for a something with a simpler user interface for dealing directly with an audio file, then Amadeus is what you need. Zooming in and out and scrolling through an audio file is straightforward.  It even comes with full support for Apple’s Audio Units,  plug-ins that can be used to process audio.  There is a Pro version ($59.99, Mac) that adds multi-track editing, batch processing and some audio repairing features that enable you to remove some of the background noise from your recordings. As a free alternative, you may also and to try out Audacity (free, Mac).

DreamWeaver to Realmac’s RapidWeaver ($79.99, Mac) With the dawn of technologies like WordPress, Drupal and online hosting providers like SquareSpace, the need to create a website from the ground up for many has almost become a forgotten art form.  RapidWeaver includes 45 different themes that you can use to help kickstart your website development without having to learn how to code HTML and CSS.  RapidWeaver has more of a traditional WYSIWYG document editor feel to it than a traditional HTML low-level development tool.  It really picks up where Apple’s now-abandoned iWeb application left off.  Another great alternative to consider when editing HTML and CSS files on the Mac is Tumilt’s HyperEdit ($9.99 Mac) if you are looking for an editor more appealing to developers.

Flash to Aquafadas’ MotionComposer ($149, Mac) While MotionComposer is not available on the Mac App Store, I was able to pick up a license as part of a bundle from MacUpdate and I’m glad I did. This tool brings the same animation effects that you’d get in Apple’s Keynote and helps you publish them on your website.  MotionComposer will create both Flash and HTML5 animations from the same project.  You get to decide which format you want to publish on your site.  It can also integrate your animations into your iBooks Author document.  If you are just looking to add a little animation to your website, then this is the tool to get.  An alternative to Flash in the Mac App Store that you may also want to consider is Tumult’s Hype ($59.99 Mac), it too can output your animations as HTML5.

Provided you have a clear idea of what you are looking for, shopping for individual apps may be a much more economical route to go.  There are times when you are participating as part of a creative team that you must support the input and output formats of the tools your teammates are using.  This is especially true when you must hand off your artwork to a publisher or printer that requires a specific file format. When this is the case, you must purchase the tools that your team supports.

None of these apps listed are complete replacements for such development shops, but these alternatives will get the job done in smaller or one-person creative teams.  And at these prices, each one of these great software titles are definitely worth the investment.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The state of cross-platform media measurement
• Listening platforms: finding the value in social media data
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Block Fortress ($1.99, Universal) is a mix of tower defense and first person shooter style games where you must create your own fortress to defend.  As if defending a fortress is not challenging enough already, you must also collect rare minerals to craft better and stronger defenses to use while protecting your fortress.  This game will push your warrior, engineering and crafting skills to their limits.

When building up your defenses, you can fly around the environment putting the various elements and materials in place. This helps you survey the land to determine where the most defensible position is, as well as check out your fortress before you go to battle.  The left side of the screen is a virtual d-pad for strafing left and right as well as moving forward and backward. When designing your fortress, on the right side of the screen are two arrows that allow you to fly by controlling you movement up and down. However, when you are battling the enemy and defending your fortress, you are not able to fly over your opponents as you remain firmly on the ground. Also when battling, your player will be equipped with a weapon and a red fire button will appear on the right side of the screen replacing the up and down flying buttons. You look around as well as turn directions when walking or running by dragging your finger across the screen.

In this game your barracks is your home base that you must defend.  If destroyed, the game is over.  Placing your barracks in a defendable position and building up a fortress to defend them is more than half the fun of the game. More than just your creative building skills will be used as you must think about how the enemy will attack your fortress; there are over 30 different building blocks to choose from, each with their own characteristics, strengths and costs. You will choose between different types of wood, stone and steel materials when you build your defenses. The weapons you mount on your turrets have their own characteristics as well: each has a different range and will inflict varying amounts of damage. Some weapons will require mounting an accompanying spotlight when fighting at night. You are also responsible for placing power blocks and boosters around your fortress in order to supply your weapons with the energy they need to operate.

Your fortress is not the only thing that needs to be well equipped to fight off the enemy. Being a first person shooter as well, your avatar also needs to suit up for battle. For the most part, this involves selection of various hand weapons that you will use to take out individual attacking units on the battlefield.  As you continue to play the game, you will see that your avatar levels up and unlocks additional weapons, armor and tools.

There are three main gaming modes to choose from. Survival is the most difficult of the three as you must gather the minerals you need in order to build up your defenses. There is no pause button in survival mode. In Quickstart mode, you are given enough resources to build a defendable fortress. When the game begins you are given time to build these defenses before starting the battle. With the Sandbox mode of gameplay, you have an unlimited supply of resources and you can start and stop the battle whenever you need to in order to readjust your strategy. Sandbox is a great mode to get started with, as you can work your way of to playing in Survival mode.

You can also choose where on the map of a fairly large region you would like to set up your barracks. Green Hills, Jungle, Snowy Hills, Rocky Mountains, Tropical Islands and Tidal Cliffs are the terrains you have to choose from. Each terrain has a set of minerals that are more common in that area of the map. The Jungle and Green Hills, for instance, have an abundance of rare green minerals. If you don’t want to choose where you start, there is a random setting that will pick the terrain for you.  It is important that you play in different locations in order to collect minerals from each region.

As you accumulate these minerals, you can use them to create crafting mods that will permanently upgrade your blocks, weapons and equipment. Each resource you use to build up your defenses and equip your avatar for battle can be upgraded. The more minerals you collect in each of the different regions, the more you can upgrade your favorite gear.

There is certainly a lot going on within this game.  The 3D environment you play, while not the most stunning graphically, does captivate you.  The landscape you have to work with is very large, and you are free to roam around while your fortress is being invaded.  You are even able to save your creations so you can modify them and tweak them in order to get your strategy down to a science.  So this weekend find a secure location in your household and prepare to defend it, because you will be spending a lot of time playing Block Fortress.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Blueprint 3D ($0.99 iPhone, $2.99 iPad) is a three-dimensional puzzle game where you construct two-dimensional pictures. It is the sort of puzzle game that you really need to have a knack for gaining the proper perspective on things.

Think crop circles and wheat fields. Imagine standing on the ground on the middle of a wheat field.  You can’t really see what you are standing in, it just looks like flattened grass. If you are familiar with the anamorphic sculptures of artist Jonty Hurwitz, like the The Thinker on display in the lobby of Tower 42 in London, then you start to understand how Blueprint 3D works. There are collections of lines, marks and dashes arranged in three-dimensional space, that when viewed from exactly the correct position, reveal a two-dimensional drawing. The trick is finding the proper perspective in order to see the drawing.

The mechanics of this puzzle game are straightforward. The way things move on the screen is similar to how they move in a 3D drawing tool. You can rotate and spin the object in every possible diction; it’s very similar in fact to how Google Earth can pitch, roll and rotate planet Earth in order to see various locations. Use one finger to spin the objects into the screen, and use two fingers to rotate the objects on the screen.  The image you start out with can be inverted, tilted and flipped over backwards.  It’s up to you to figure out just how to move things around, in order to reveal what the image truly is.

There are three difficulty settings for each level, and they do make things much more challenging. What makes the Normal setting somewhat easy to complete is the fact that there are words, equations and numbers on many of the diagrams that you will tend to focus on. Lining up letters to make up common words is a whole lot easier than trying to figure out what shape a bunch of random lines makes.  As you move on to Advanced, you lose these visual cues and are forced to figure out the actual shape. With the Pro setting, the various line segments are broken into different layers that must be moved into place individually. This proves to be much more difficult as you are challenged to figure out what you are looking at by manipulating only one part of the picture at a time.

There are over 300 levels to play that are organized into 11 themes. As you start to get the hang of the game, you will start to race through each level in a minute or two, especially in Normal difficulty. You may want to challenge yourself by playing either Advanced or Pro difficulty before you gain familiarity with the objects in Normal difficulty.  If you cannot figure out what the picture is in Pro before the timer runs out, then decrease the difficulty to Advanced, start the timer over again, and see if it is any easier.  Only when you cannot figure out how to solve the puzzle in Advanced difficulty, should you then try it out in Normal difficulty.  This seems to be backwards, but I found this method of play to be much more challenging.

What makes this game truly amazing is the fact that you can create your own levels from photos in your library or ones you take in the game with the camera. Each image is processed much like a photo is turned into a drawing or a cartoon character with other apps available in the App Store. There are some basic slider controls that allow you to tweak the look of the final design.  You can even touch up the final image by erasing what does not belong. When finished, you then choose the background theme and save your levels locally.  After you play the level yourself, you can share it online via email, Facebook or Twitter.

I had some fun creating levels based off of designs used in patents Apple has submitted. One of my favorites was a design Apple used for the famous glass staircase used in its retail stores. You can of course use the designs of your own house car or workplace.  You can even try it out with the artwork created by children (it works best with line drawings).  So take some time this weekend and look at the objects in your life from a different perspective.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Vector ($0.99 iPhone, $0.99 iPad) is a side-scrolling runner that mimics the street gymnastics of modern day free running. Given the fact that the character in the game is attempting to free himself from a mind controlling regime, there is more of the philosophy of parkour, which is free running with the intent of expressing your own freedom, at play here.

As a practitioner of parkour, your traceur as they are referred to, starts every level running from the authorities. As obstacles present themselves, you have to decide how you want to get around them. For instance, there is a water tower obstacle in the game that you can either jump up and climb over, or slide under from a distance. Sliding under the water tower is quicker, and helps increase your distance from the authorities that are chasing you. Jumping up and climbing over the water tower on the other hand could allow you to grab extra coins that may be stashed atop the water tower. It’s up to you how you approach each obstacle.

There are two major environments to choose from, with a third new environment on its way via a future update. Each environment has 57 levels to complete. There is a countdown timer on each level where the faster you complete each level, the faster you earn your stars. These stars are important as they unlock various elements throughout the game. The second environment, Construction Yard, will only unlock when you earn 25 stars in the first environment, Downtown. With each level giving up a maximum of three stars, you will need to complete at least seven levels Downtown before you can take a chance on jumping into the Construction Yard.

Along the way you also collect coins that can be used to increase your character’s abilities. You can purchase gadgets, tricks and gear with these coins. The gadgets can buy you extra time, slow things down to help you perform difficult combinations, and even stun the authorities when they get too close.  Don’t be too quick to purchase a hoard of coins through the in-app purchase, as many of the items you will want to purchase are only unlocked when you achieve a certain number of stars in each environment.  The game does truly reward your skill rather than block you from advancing until you pay.

Increasing your character’s abilities is important as each level requires a different skillset. If you do not have a skill, you are offered a chance to purchase the skill at the beginning of the level. If you do not have enough coins, you can either go back and try to improve your score and earn more coins on previous levels, or make your way to the store to purchase more.  I have tried completing levels without all of the necessary skills just to see what would happen, and it ended up being much more challenging than I expected.  After gaining the recommended skill I was missing, passing the level was much easier.

Stars are also used in the game to unlock bonus levels. Each of the 57 levels in each environment also has an accompanying bonus level.  After achieving the right number of stars, previous levels you have already completed unlock their bonus levels. This is a great way to go back and play previous levels and collect some more stars and earn some extra coins.  You never really can play each level exactly the same way, so going back to play earlier levels with newly acquired skills can be more fun the second time.

The opening cut scene looks like it is taken from Apple’s famous 1984 commercial with a single authority figure speaking to a mindless society. While the backstory explaining why you are running is a nice addition to a game of this genre, it is the variations you can apply to your jumps that keeps the gameplay interesting.  You will play Vector this weekend, you will enjoy playing Vector this weekend, everything has already been thought of for you, you have no choice.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Apple may have left out a lot of useful features when its iOS Podcasts app first showed up in the App Store last year, but the latest revision shows the company has not given up on improving it just yet. When Apple last updated the app, I found it was missing some key features that would prevent serious podcast listeners from using the app on a day-to-day basis. Most of the gaps, like not having the ability to create playlists, have been closed, and Apple now has a solid contender in the genre of serious podcasting apps.

To demonstrate those improvements, here’s a comparison between the update to Podcasts (Free, Universal) and my current favorite podcasting app, RSSRadio Premium ($2.99, Universal).

Episodes to keep on the device

To start, managing downloaded episodes and choosing which episodes you want to keep on your device is important when you have limited storage space. As an example, one way to configure news podcast settings is to set your app to download only the most recent episodes, and to keep only the most recent episode.  This helps keep your list of episodes up to date, without taking up too much space on the device.  These setting would be configured differently for an episodic podcast where you want to listen to each and every episode produced.  Apple’s Podcasts offers just as good of control over your downloaded episodes as any other podcast app out there.

Download and notification settings

This is an area where podcasts apps struggle: scheduling the downloading of new episodes. It’s not clear if Apple is breaking its own rules of when an app can be running and implement a scheduling mechanism that seamlessly downloads new episodes as soon as they are available. Other apps tend to struggle with this: they have to invent timed schedules or implement a notification system in order to wake up the app and fetch new episodes to automatically download. Apple’s download scheduler is about the best there is right now.  When a new episode is available, it just shows up.

When it comes to notification settings, Apple allows you to control just how and when you are notified of a new episodes availability. Many of the top podcasting apps out there offer exactly the same level of control.

Show and episode Information

“Show information” is information about a collection of episodes. You really just want to see the status of the entire list of episodes that are available, and manage how each episode is to be downloaded. Apple’s interface for managing shows is on par with what you need to get the job done.

The same is true when it comes to each individual episode’s information: what you are looking for are things like the show notes. Apple’s Podcasts app has them right where you would expect them to be.

Now Playing user interface

While Apple may have updated the look of the now playing user interface to exclude the reel-to-reel tape deck, what is has implemented in its place is right on par with the rest of the podcasting app pack. You can increase the playback speed, set a timer for when to stop playback, share the currently playing episode with friends, and control where the episode is played via AirPlay. Forward, reverse, play and pause are easy to access as well. Really a nice clean implementation.

Podcast playlist

Playlists let you have control over the content you want to listen to. You may download and manage 20 different podcasts, but that does not mean you want to listen to all of them all of the time. Apple calls this new feature “My Stations,” but it really is just a playlist. The one thing that Apple did that I really like here is it added the ability to manually set the order of your playlist.  That way you can listen to your podcasts the way you want. Most podcasting apps only allow for the list to be sorted by earliest or latest.

Overall, Apple has done a really great job with the Podcasts app this time around. Rather then try to reinvent the genre, it picked the best features already out there and caught up with the pack.  There really are no gaping holes in the implementation as there were previously. In fact, Apple’s app will likely become my new go-to podcasting app. With a solid implementation for downloading new episodes, a clean Now Playing interface, and the ability to control the sort order of my playlists, there really is not much left to ask for.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Confused about the wireless markets? Here’s a breakdown
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust