Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break
TowerMadness / TowerMadness HD (v1.12)
Picked by: Joe Tomasone
If you are a fan of Tower Defense type games, stop reading this and immediately go and buy Tower Madness ($2.99) and/or Tower Madness HD for iPad ($7.99). Then, select a block of time to be incommunicado with the world – because this game is immensely addicting, intense, and challenging.
As with all Tower Defense games, the object is to prevent the enemy (in this case, aliens) from reaching something you are defending (in this case, sheep). There are various types of aliens with different strengths, weaknesses, and abilities; and to combat them, you can deploy different, upgradeable weapons to stop them. However, Tower Madness has a few unique aspects to make the gameplay more fun. First, many maps are open — allowing you to place towers in the same area as the aliens are moving – which allows you to block and re-route them, perhaps with a maze of destruction for them to travel through. Second, each level can be played normally, or in an “endless” mode – which will keep throwing aliens at you until you cry uncle (or your sheep do!). Endless mode has four options: Easy, Medium, Hard, and “Sandbox” – in which you are given $10,000 to start with (and that builds a lot of towers!). Lastly, if you get stuck, you can check the leaderboard to see who has the highest recorded scores for that level and actually replay their game to see how they did it. You’ll appreciate this, because some of the levels are absolutely and absurdly difficult (code for “I lost quickly and often ’cause of my lack of skills…”). Tower Madness is the only iOS game that has ever made me actually lose track of time – and I mean the serious holy-crap-it’s-3am type of lost time. I am confident that you will forget to eat and sleep enjoy it just as much as I do.
($2.99) iTunes Link
($7.99) iTunes Link
Taptu (v1.4.1)
Picked by: AliciaB
Taptu for iPad that is another app that offers a unique way to experience news feeds. It doesn’t claim to reinvent the wheel for news junkies, but compared to others like Flipboard, Zite or Pulse, it offers a way to expand and further customize news stream navigation by letting users modify viewing windows, choose label colours or by mixing and matching sources to form a single stream. Since I already use several news apps, I decided on a different approach for Taptu. Rather than input my Google reader info, I added Taptu created iPad and iPhone streams, combined them, then erased a few sources I already regularly visit in another format. Indeed quite a novel and welcome idea. Although I’m not a big fan of horizontal stream bands and the UI is too cluttered for my tastes, I intend to use the app to mix and match so that I can discover interesting content from sources yet to be discovered.
(Free) iTunes Link
NBA Game Time Courtside (v2.5.1)
Picked by: jhrogersii
As you read this, the first round of the NBA Playoffs is quickly drawing to a close. If you are a fan of the NBA, or just enjoy a good Cinderella story, but sure to tune in Friday night, as the 8th seeded Memphis Grizzlies send the 1st seed in the Western Conference, the San Antonio Spurs home to their rocking chairs. Allow me to suggest the perfect app to follow along on your iPad while you are taking in the Game 6 carnage live from the FedEx Forum in Memphis. NBA Game Time Courtside is a free app from the NBA that makes a perfect companion for your television viewing experience.
While the NBA playoff announcers on ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV are generally very good at keeping you up to date on stats and pertinent information during the game, there are only so many breaks in the action where they have time to do so. Then there are the even longer than normal Playoff TV breaks. Courtside bridges this information gap, giving you updated scores, team leaders, game statistics by team and individual players, and analysis for any game, right at your fingertips.
You get about as much detail as you can handle. Before and after the game, you have articles either previewing or summing up the action, which you can browse at your convenience. You also have access to NBA video highlights and interviews after your chosen game. All games, from the first round to the finals are available for viewing in the app from the schedule interface. You can also see all of the game times and TV networks from here, as well.
Where Courtside really shines is during the game, as you have easy access to the current lineups on the floor, complete player bios with yearly and career statistics, shot charts, and performance breakdowns by area of the floor for each team, as well as all of the aforementioned statistics. That not enough? If you can’t watch or listen to the game, Courtside also has an up-to-date running play-by-play window. You can even minimize the window to see the last play while you browse other information on the screen
Courtside’s last feature major feature is the Turnstile window. This is a pop-up social media area where fans of both teams can chat back and forth during the game. These kinds of features are becoming more and more common in streaming and companion apps. However, I like Turnstile more than most, as it allows you to also broadcast your messages via Facebook and/or Twitter. This is a nice touch, as it allows you to stay in the app more while you follow the game, rather than having to jump back and forth between your social media apps of choice all the time.
All in all, Courtside is just about the most polished sports companion app I have seen recently, and I highly recommend it. Best of all, you can’t beat the price. Be sure to download this app if you plan on watching any of the rest of the NBA Playoffs. Oh, and GO GRIZZLIES!!!!!!!
(Free) iTunes Link
iAssociate 2 (1.6.3)
Picked by: Jay
Quick! When I say “DAIRY” and “BUTTER” what other 4-letter word comes to mind? If you thought of “MILK” you got it! This week I’m sharing a free, and addictive little game called iAssociate 2. By connecting and associating words to each other, iAssociate 2 spins a word web of connected ideas. Your task? Given a topic (e.g. “Food”) complete the word web. You don’t get the full web to fill in, however, just a few at a time. When “MILK” is typed in, more associations may open.
In each level you are given 20 Hints to expose the starting letter, and you can always enter any word as a guess – which may reveal the letters at the beginning if they were right (for example, if I’d entered “MOLK” on accident, the “M” would be revealed as correct). Frequently, I find myself entering the parts of the alphabet to unearth the next letter in a word. This time-consuming method also impacts your score since you only get 5-points for each correct letter but 250 points for a correct word.
I stumbled on this game when someone came to me and asked for help to reveal the “bonus” word on a level – a word in which you get no help or hints. These little words can be quite challenging if they aren’t in your (cultural) repertoire – “CHEESE,” “FRIES,” and “GRAVY” was tough because I’m not Canadian (*ahem*).
If you’re a word game fanatic, you’ll love the ad-free iAssociate 2!
(Free) iTunes Link
Sporcle (v1.6.0)
Picked by: PatrickJ
Sporcle is by far and away the best trivia game for iOS, and the best trivia game I’ve seen anywhere, on any platform. It’s not your typical trivia game where you just get a standard set of categories and questions. Instead it’s full of very specific and fun quizzes covering a range of subjects. Under Sports for example, you’ll be challenged to name all the members of the 500 Home Run Club in baseball, or every male and female winner of Wimbledon, or every team that has ever been a member of the English Premier League, or every quarterback in the NFL Hall of Fame. The quizzes in all the other categories are just as challenging and unique – from naming Academy Award winning movies based on names of actors who starred in them, to famous sidekicks or advertising slogans, to naming four letter countries.
All the quizzes are timed – from 60-second quickfires to 10-minute marathons, and you can do all of them as many times as you like. You can pause and resume quizzes with a single tap – so it’s an easy game to dive in and out of when you’ve got time to kill.
Every day the app delivers new quizzes, so you never run out of material.
($1.99) iTunes Link
There you have it! Hope you enjoyed this week’s installment of Picks of the week. Please let us know what you think, and share with us some of your favorites.
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