The scrolling single player gameplay synonymous with Mario has been tried, tested and still beloved. Why? Because it’s simple, easy to understand, fun to play, and sticky beyond comprehension. But after you defeat every game’s “Bowser Level” that feeling of I can make a better game undoubtedly begins to creep up. But how are you going to do it? Learn native programming and hope for the best? That sounds great but what if coding isn’t your thing and design and creative conception is? Then head over to Kickstarter and back the Pixel Press project so it gets off the ground and helps turn design into actual scrolling games for you to share and play.
All you need is the app, a pencil or pen, and a good ol’ sheet of paper with your swirling brain of game mechanic ideas. Programming not required it’s already included. That’s the thought behind Pixel Press that makes game design an opportunity instead of a mountain of a task.
LUMOback, by zero2one is hoping to help 80% of Americans affected by back pain at some point in their lives. Back pain leads to lost work time, missed workdays, disability claims and is a $50 billion per year industry. One of the most common accelerators to back pain is poor posture; in the startup world being hunched over a laptop is common practice.
Founded in 2011, LUMOback is an iPhone app and accessory that senses poor posture moments and reminds you to fix it. The small, flexible accessory adhesively attaches to your back. While you move about and sit throughout the day, the device keeps track of poor body posture and sends a little vibration to remind you to sit or stand straight.
Great typography, smart usage of color, a bold presence and intuitive gesture-controls: when you combine all of these essential ingredients you get the very simple and awe inspiring alarm clock app for the iPhone. Rise has a very simple task, provide usage for a single alarm that you can have set off once or once a day. That’s it. A small task but an important one.
It may not be the app packed with hundreds of features, but it doesn’t have to be for it to be successful. We all use an alarm clock everyday, its one of those things that can be super annoying or it could turn to be something we enjoy. Rise makes it a joy to wake up.
Having a green-thumb isn’t a necessity to be a tech-geek, but for those that whisper sweet nothings to their green leafed friends, the Flower Power app by Parrot is the perfect gardening companion.
Using a wireless accessory shaped like a forked rod, the device is plunged into the soil next to your favorite plant. The app then monitors the plants stats in real-time. The information is pushed via Bluetooth to an iPhone app so you can be aware when your budding baby needs attention. The app catalogues over 6,000 plants by various characteristics, allowing for any green-thumbed environmentalist to be aware of the growing powers of their plant.
It’s one thing to find a popular restaurant, but what do you use to help decide what to eat when there? You could go through tips and feedback on Foursquare or Yelp, another option is to use Dish.fm. Dish.fm helps you discover the best dishes at any restaurant with confidence.
Having analyzed over 3,000,000 reviews for San Francisco and New York, pulled from Yelp, Foursquare and other sites, in one quick glance you can learn what is the best dish, drink or dessert to order.
Designed to keep your valuables close, hipKey is an advanced wireless proximity and movement alarm-tracking accessory for the iPhone and iPad. Developed by Denmark-based, hippih, they will soon make available their app and app-enabled accessory to the U.S. and Canada exclusively at Apple.com
Danny van der Poel, CEO of hippih says: “While other devices may track your belongings, hipKey is the only device on the market that provides four unique functions, in a practical, aesthetically pleasing device. We aim to make the lives of Apple customers easier with hipKey always by their side.”
2012 felt like the coming of age of food trucks. The once destined place for post-party goers to salivate over fat sandwiches and grease riddled 4th meals of the day is now a daylong enjoyment for everyone. Feeding lunchtime appetites with gourmet deliciousness from the convenience of a kitchen on wheels, food trucks are the most pleasant surprise to go mainstream of the past year.
However, unless you’re an avid Twitter fanatic or are meeting with the trucks regularly to find out where and when they’ll be next, keeping up with your favorite eats is still a problem. And if you’re visiting a foreign city trying to find the “Flying Pig” food truck it inevitably will be realized it’s an incredibly impossible task. The reasons for this are many, for one those driving food trucks may not be tech savvy enough to keep up with the changing mobile climate or the platforms are city specific and there isn’t a consistent usable solution for food truckers and eaters alike.
There was first American Idol then XFactor and of course the Voice, it seems there never seems to be a drought on people that think they can sing. Although some should keep their vocals double locked behind a 20 inch safe for no one else to hear, singing is one of those things that almost everyone loves to participate in.
Toronto startup Syrp is hoping our affliction for karaoke bars translates over to smartphones by recently releasing Jukeboxer, an app that that pits users against each other in an all out singing-brawl. Jukeboxer lets you sing as loud as you want (adding the help of voice filters if you wish) with friends and strangers as the community decides who should be the champion. Available with ads for free on the iPhone and $0.99 as a “Pro” ad-free version.
Designing and creating wireframes for web, mobile and tablet always should begin on paper. The creativity that gets explored while taking time to sketch ideas with a pen and paper remains the best tool instead of fumbling with software and apps. POP, also known as Prototyping on Paper, stays true to that fundamental, but then encourages you take pictures of your wireframes to auto-adjust sketches once the creative process has been completed. The app then lets you create interactive prototypes out of your drawings to round out balancing careful sketching with tools to quickly develop storyboards to showcase a polished idea the app.
Like many of us the creators of the newly launched Wanderous iPhone App realized that there are many marvelous un-explored places just blocks from where we live. We can spend years living in the same place, continuing in our same routines, but somehow be complete oblivious to the amazing things around us. That same problem occurs when we travel.
Wanderous is a navigation application for your iPhone that creates routes optimized for adventure. Routes created in Wanderous start and end where you specify, but the twist from all the other destination recommendation apps on the market is its unique algorithm to help you intentionally wander off the beaten path into more interesting, unique, or spots worth noting. Spots can include parks, landmarks, historical sites, busy city corridors, scenic vistas, and public attractions.
