19th August 2010: Astraware joins Gelaskins as an affiliate
You might be wondering what the little Gelaskins banner is that you can see on the front of the website, and we're pleased to let you know that we've become a Gelaskins affiliate. What does that mean? Simply put, it means that we like the skins that they produce for a range of smartphones and other devices like e-readers, iPads, games consoles and laptops.
If you also like the beautiful, artistic skins they produce, or if you want to create one from your own photographs or artwork, then please click through to their site from ours. Each time you do that and order something, we get a small percentage of the sale price, which all goes towards us making more games!
16th August 2010: Brad Mitchum: Lost in Time - new for Windows Phone 5/6
If you're a fan of classic action arcade games then Brad Mitchum: Lost In Time is perfect for you! Inspired by classic ball-shooting games like Pang or Buster Bros, Brad Mitchum tells the story of an archaeologist who searches for ancient mysterious objects. He finds a legendary talisman but realises all the gems are missing from it. At that moment a bright light appears and he's attacked by metallic balls. Brad Mitchum is lost in time, and he doesn't see the funny side!
The game is available for Windows Mobile/WIndows Phone 5 and 6 devices with touchscreens, and includes 3 high-action play modes: Story, Pure, and X-Trem, each with different styles, and challenges. If you like the game, you can also become Brad's friend on Facebook!
16th July 2010: OddBlob and Police Range: two new games for Windows Phone!
It's been absolutely ages since we released anything new for Windows Phone (formerly Windows Mobile) users, and now 2 games come along at once!
First up is Police Range - our take on the classic shooting range game. Put your skill and accuracy to the test as you choose from 2 ranges to train on; Target Practice where speed and accuracy are key, and Crime Alley where you test your nerve as you aim to shoot the bad guys and avoid the civilians as the targets pop up in windows and doorways!
Next up is OddBlob - a fun puzzle arcade game made entirely from modelling clay. Guide OddBlob across the squishy maze to grab bonuses, chomp fruit, and win points as quickly as he can as the chasing tiles disappear behind. Bounce and double bounce tiles can help him reach his goal or throw him to his doom below!
Both games for Windows Phone include Astraware's new online high score tables so you can see how you compare to other players worldwide. Both games are also available for iPhone and iPod touch and use OpenFeint for online high scores!
24th June 2010: My new iPhone 4 by Alison Barclay
Having been lucky enough to witness the announcement of iPhone 4 in person at this year's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, I was keen to get my hands on one as soon as possible after release. This morning, at an hour much earlier than I usually awake, I dragged myself out of bed and got ready to head down to our local O2 store. O2 had opted not to offer any kind of pre-order, but had specified that they would only sell the iPhone to existing O2 subscribers. As I was out of contract with them, I decided to queue up nice and early and take my chances.
I arrived at the O2 store just after 6.00 am to find myself 9th in the queue. There was some debate about how many iPhones the store would have in stock and we chatted generally until the store manager arrived and started to take information from people in the queue. Just before the opening time of 8.02 am, the manager got to me, took my details and gave me a voucher for the phone. I was in! Now I just had to fill out some paperwork and before long I was walking out with a lovely new boxed 32GB iPhone4!
I headed back to the office and with keen onlookers opened the box to reveal the new iPhone. I unpacked it to reveal the earbuds, USB sync cable, and a very neat little wall plug for charging your phone. Inside the documentation pack there was a tiny tool for opening the SIM card tray, and I put this to good work, removing the SIM from my old iPhone, extracting the micro SIM section and inserting it into the iPhone 4. Once that was done it was time to plug the phone into iTunes to activate it. The activation took a matter of seconds and soon I was looking at the shiny new default home screen complete with background wallpaper - a new feature that was added in iOS4!
The first thing that strikes you is just how incredibly clear the screen is. The type is beautifully defined, and the default wallpaper really shows off the screen well. There's also a new 'glassy' dock at the bottom where you can keep your 4 favourite/most-used apps! Once I was done admiring the screen, it was time to sync my phone with the backup from my old iPhone. It took a while to optimize all my photos for iPhone 4, add several GB of music and install updated versions of some applications I'd downloaded, and whilst it was copying everything across I took a photo close up of the syncing screen so you could see how smooth the fonts are.
Even at close range the micro mode on my camera didn't show the screen as pixellated. The type is very easy to read and the claim that your eye cannot discern the pixels at 300+ pixels per inch certainly rings true here! Once syncing was complete I launched iBooks and opened up Winnie The Pooh (a childhood favourite). The quality of the typeface and the original illustration is amazing - very sharp, easy on the eye, and reminiscent of a real book. Even very small type is clear and crisp. I also ran a small test outdoors and the screen is also easy to read in bright sunlight (unusually we actually have bright sunlight in the UK today, so I could test it!)
As a final test of my new phone I decided to check out a few applications on iPhone 4. I'd had an update from Twitter yesterday to say it was updated, so I launched the app and sure enough the graphics and typeface were all very high quality. I tried double-clicking iPhone 4's Home button and it popped up the multitasking bar at the bottom of the screen, so I was able to switch to another app and then go back to Twitter finding it in exactly the same place I'd left it! We're in the process of adding this functionality to as many of our games as possible, so look out for updates soon!
We haven't updated any of the graphics in our games to optimize them for iPhone 4's 640x960 resolution Retina screen, but in the meantime, the phone will automatically resize the existing graphics using Apple's pixel-doubling technology. I must say that even without optimization, OddBlob looks really amazing. Can't wait to see what the updated graphics look like! If you've got your hands on a shiny new iPhone 4, why not visit our Facebook page and give us your impressions and feedback!
3rd June 2010: iPad Nuggets by Howard Tomlinson
Howard recently took delivery of an iPad here are a few hints and tips he's found in the first week of use:
Reading nuggets:
iBooks is great - but you're not just limited to books from the Apple store - ePub format works fine, and there are plenty of places to find free eBooks (Project Gutenberg being the #1 stop!). Set the font size to the size most comfortable to you and read away.
There's a setting (hidden away in the Settings app) that allows you to change the behaviour of a single tap on the left side of the screen, so you can make that also advance a page. Might not sound like much of a change but if you're reading in bed it gives you the choice of which hand to advance the pages with, and with minimal effort :D (You can still 'sweep' forward and back to turn pages in either direction.)
TV nuggets (for UK readers)
TV Catchup - an awesome service that lets you stream the live broadcast of a number of terrestrial channels straight to your iPad. It's actually a web site, you'll have to register (just an email address required, no fees). To use it, go into Safari and browse to iphone.tvcatchup.com and you'll get the options of which channel to watch. I love to watch BBC News, and being able to stream that wherever I am over wifi is very liberating!
There's a handy feature in Safari that lets you make an App screen icon which is really a link straight to a bookmarked page. Just tap the '+' icon in the menu bar, and select 'Add to Home Screen'. It'll give you an icon that you can move to wherever is most useful for you!
BBC iPlayer - another great option for UK iPad users is that the BBC iPlayer has a bigscreen version in beta here. The quality of the video is great, but I have noticed the sound isn't always perfectly synced. (Not quite at the badly dubbed martial arts movie level though ;) )
Picture Frame nugget:
Go into Settings and you'll have the option of setting up your 'locked' screen to be a picture frame. That means while you leave your iPad on charge, you can tap on the little flower icon towards the bottom of the screen, and it will slideshow through the images in an album of your choice! Very nice :D
One final nugget for now:
On the iPad you can get 6 icons on the fixed menu bar, rather than the 4 on the iPhone / iPod Touch. Nice to have the extra space to fit in a couple more favourites!
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