Apple and Avid have been battling it out on the big screen for years, but now they’ve brought the video editing battle to the iPad — and the winner may not be who you think.

Avid Studio for iPad launched this week in the App Store, instantly becoming the first real competitor to Apple’s iMovie video editing app. What makes this so interesting is that Avid was king of digital video editing in Hollywood for a long time, and then Apple came out with the far more affordable Final Cut Pro/ Final Cut Studio, and enticed a few big name directors to give their new software a try.

So is Avid getting a little payback here by bringing the video editing battle back to Apple’s home turf? Most definitely, and as good as iMovie is — some of the best mobile software we’ve seen to date — Avid may be even better.

Similarities

Both iMove and Avid Studio can do the basics that you would expect from any video editor. You can insert videos, photos, and music, trim clips, add titles, and export to YouTube. Unfortunately for iMovie, this is where the similarities end.

Audio management

Layer up to 3 audio clips at a time with Avid Studio

In iMovie, the only thing you can do with music is insert it as the background of your movie – your entire movie. It’s impossible to take just a clip of the music to place where you wish – you’re stuck with playing the whole song. In Avid Studio, you can trim your music clips and insert them anywhere in your movie. You can also layer up to 3 audio clips at a time.

Inserting photos and videos as picture-in-picture

Insert picture-in-picture image over movie clips with Avid Studio

One of the cool features Avid Studio provides is the ability to insert photos or video over the main movie in the timeline. Meaning, if you want to have a photo or video play in the middle of a movie clip, you can do so while still having the audio and elapsed time from the main movie playing in the background. This is one the features I most like about Avid Studio. The only thing you can do in iMovie is split up the clip and put a photo or movie clip in the middle. Avid’s way — which Apple does support on the desktop version of iMovie — is more useful.

Video management

Access movies that were synced onto iPad from iTunes with Avid Studio

I was surprised when I learned that iMovie did not allow me to access videos that I imported onto my iPad with iTunes. The only videos accessible with iMovie are the ones in your camera roll or albums. What a huge disappointment. Avid provides just such access.

Titles and montages

Avid Studio come preinstalled with 15 montages

Both iMovie and Avid Studio allow you to insert titles for you movie, but iMovie requires that you do it with one of their themes. There is not an option to insert a black slide with text like Avid Studio. This means that all text inserted in iMovie must be overlaid with part of your movie.

Avid Studio also comes preinstalled with fun montages to add to your videos. These are made up of anywhere between 1 and 4 photos and may be static images or mini video clips.

Conclusion

Avid Studio is the clear winner!

Avid Studio may be iMovie’s newest competitor for video editing on the iPad, but it’s not a fair competition. Avid Studio is the clear winner. iMovie doesn’t offer any significant features that Avid does not, but Avid can do much more than iMovie. Since they both cost $4.99, it’s almost a no-brainer. Right now, the only thing iMovie has going for it over Avid Studio is that iMovie is a universal app and also works on the iPhone.

With iPad 3 on the horizon, I hope Apple has a more feature-rich iMovie 2.0 up its sleeves to help show it off. Either way, I can’t wait to try video editing on a 9.7-inch Retina display.

• Avid Studio – $4.99 – App Store link
• iMovie – $4.99 – App Store link

Phil from Android Central put the brand new (and currently pulled for bug fixes) Gmail for iPhone and iPad app on an iPhone 4 and iPad 2 running iOS 5 against the Gmail app on a Samsung Nexus S running Gingerbread and a Galaxy Tab 10.1 running Honeycomb.

It’s easy to see Google took the easy way out with Gmail for iOS, going for a tragically thin native wrapper around the similar-old web content. Maybe they’re still limited by the iOS SDK, maybe they want to keep Android as the premiere Gmail experience (and who could blame them?), maybe it’s a hormone thing, or maybe they just want to prove Facebook isn’t the only rich, powerful web company that can’t release a stable iOS app, who knows?

Hopefully Google takes this as an opportunity to learn and gives their massive iPhone and iPad wielding user base a new Gmail app worthy of the name. And of Google.

Source: Android Central

Passwords are an important part of having an online presence. I always tell friends and family that you should never ever have the same password for all of your accounts. (Do they listen? Probably not.) Either way, having the same password means if someone gets hold of one of your accounts, they could potentially have access to all of them. Having separate passwords is the best idea but then comes keeping track of all of them. Apps like 1Password and DataVault set out to solve that problem.

I took a look at both of these popular password management apps and pitted them against each other. Follow along to see which one came out on top!

Management & Syncing

When it comes to password management, I want to have easy access to my passwords regardless where I’m at. Both of these apps seem to provide that. Both 1Password and DataVault have iOS apps, desktop apps, and syncing services. So if you need to reinstall your desktop client or iOS client, you won’t have to re-enter all your passwords.

I’ll have to give the edge to DataVault on this one simply for the fact that they offer many more ways to sync your data than 1Password does. 1Password currently offers wifi syncing and syncing with Dropbox. DataVault offers the same but also offers syncing with MobileMe, iTunes file sharing, ad-hoc, and sync servers such as Box.net. So if you don’t feel comfortable syncing with Dropbox or over wifi, DataVault may be a good option.

Features and control

Both apps have tons of features. You can create any kind of entry imaginable from logins, credit card accounts, bank accounts, and more. The desktop clients also offer a ton of profile options to auto-fill forms. Even though we are talking about the iOS version of these apps, I think it’s still important to talk about their desktop counterparts since they do work together for one single solution.

In my testing, both seemed efficient and did their job well. Feature-wise they’re about even.

Interface and ease of use

I’m the type of person that doesn’t want to spend an hour learning to use an app before actually being able to utilize it. (I’m a Mac user for a reason!) I somewhat felt this way while using DataVault. The interface felt uncoordinated and clunky. I had to figure out what exactly I was supposed to put in each field and a lot of times, I was entering things in the wrong fields. DataVault is definitely a powerful application but I just felt as though entering information was a task in itself.

1Password seems a lot simpler. Entering a login or password is easy and doesn’t require much work. I also like that I can set two passwords. One being a 4 digit number and the other being a master. I can easily require a master on sensitive passwords and only a 4 digit code for passwords that aren’t so sensitive. I use the 4 digit code option on things like forum passwords or membership passwords that don’t have any financial data attached. It allows me to access those passwords much quicker.

From a user experience standpoint, I much prefer using 1Password.

Pricing

DataVault and 1Password for the iPhone are both $9.99 at regular price. The desktop clients will vary. As of now, DataVault for Mac and Windows is on sale for $9.95 (regular price is $19.95). 1Password for Mac and Windows is a bit steeper as it starts at $39.99 and goes up from there if you’d like to purchase bulk or family licenses. The setup was a bit easier on the desktop version of 1Password opposed to DataVault.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, DataVault may be a cheaper all-in-one solution if you want a complete password management solution but 1Password is definitely just as appealing. For me, I prefer the ease of use of 1Password over DataVault. Some users may want to save the $20 difference on the desktop client and spring for DataVault. The features and syncing capabilities are present in both apps. I do wish 1Password would add MobileMe syncing but for now, Dropbox syncing has always worked just fine. Since Dropbox is free, I somewhat consider it a non-issue for most.

If you decide to try one of these apps out (or already use one or the other), let us know which you prefer. If you prefer a different password management app, let us know why in the comments! Also check out the gallery below for more screenshots of both applications!

DataVault for iPhone – iTunes Link

1Password for iPhone – iTunes Link

When it comes to document editing and creation on the iPad, two solutions really stand out: Apple’s iWork Suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) and DataViz’s Documents to Go app. Which is better? Well, I wish the decision was that easy.

Both apps (or set of apps in iWork’s case — you can buy each separately) allow you to edit and create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. iWork also has the advantage of using Apple’s iWork format and Office format as well and is beautifully designed. Documents to Go does a stellar job of rendering and editing Microsoft’s Office format. Let’s begin by looking at each app a little more in-depth. I will focus primarily on the differences of how each application handles their word processing since this is the number one reason people would use these apps and, you probably don’t want a mini-novel to read. There is an incredible amount to discuss with both iWork and Documents to Go, I cannot conceivably cover it all here. My goal is to give you a detailed enough overview to help you decided which app will work best for you.

iWork

Apple sells the iWork Suite of applications for $9.99 each. The individual apps are Pages (word processor), Numbers (spreadsheet) and Keynote (presentations). Pages looks amazing. Just the aesthetic alone let’s you know this isn’t “baby software”, but the real deal. When you start off by creating a new document, you are presented with several beautiful templates to get you started. For our purposes, we will look at a standard blank document. You have a standard document toolbar at the top of the screen. The Body button gives you a good set of default styles. To the right you have the traditional Bold, Italics and Underline buttons. Finally you have a tab-like icon that gives you the ability to enter a tab, line break, column or page break. Wow, that is some serious stuff there.

On the top of the screen you have an “i” button. This allows you to define a style, lists and indents, text alignment and line spacing. To the right is the picture icon that inserts pictures, tables, charts and shapes. Finally you have the wrench icon that essentially has your settings for Pages; Find, margins, watermarks and more can be found here.

Once you begin typing, you have a very familiar experience, it’s just like a desktop whether you have been using a Mac or a PC. Use the tab button to quickly indent. Use the ruler to adjust alignments or place tab stops. Regardless, the interface is simple yet powerful. Do you have a multiple page document? A new innovative feature uses the ability to tap and hold in the right margin. This will bring up a magnifying glass that shows you a thumbnail preview of your page. Drag your finger down and it will preview the other pages in your document. Release on the desired page and Pages will instantly open the previewed page for you; no clumsy flicking or endless scrolling needed.

When your document is done, you can email it, share via iWork.com, send it to iTunes, copy it to iDisk or copy it to WebDav. The most popular method is to email. It is important to note that Pages creates your document in the .pages format which is not compatible with any other word processing application other than iWork for Mac. So, when you email your document, you are given three choices: send it as a Pages, PDF or .Doc format. The .doc option is compatible with PCs and PDF is comparable with just about any computer platform, but is not natively editable. If you send in Pages and PDF formats you will be quite pleased with the results. If you create a complex document with graphics, columns, , etc. and send via .doc format, your results may differ. I typically only create boring APA (American Psychological Association) formatted documents, and when sent via .doc format, they render beautifully. The same goes with importing a document, from say, from email. Though Pages does a really good job of opening and editing .doc documents, it is not flawless and some formatting loss can happen. Apple has improved this process with each update, but it is still not perfect. However, this is one of Pages strong points, it actually supports more than one format. You can also easily upload and download documents from the “cloud” via the iDisk and WebDav options.

At the end of the day, iWork gives you a beautiful robust set of tools for not only word processing but for spreadsheet calculations and creating presentations as well. Many of the same features carry over such as sending in Microsoft-friendly formats and access your files from the cloud. Though these apps are not perfect, they offer advanced features, many of which have only been available on desktop applications, until now.

[Pages - $9.99 - iTunes link]

[Numbers - $9.99 - iTunes link]

[Keynote - $9.99 - iTunes link]

Documents to Go

I have used Documents to Go (Docs to Go) for years, ever since the Palm V days of old. These guys have been at it for a while and I was expecting big things from them on the iPad and for the most part, Docs to Go doesn’t disappoint. Docs to Go is a single app that supports a wide array of files for viewing and Office files for editing and sells for $16.99 or $9.99 in the App Store. The launch screen is divided into several sections; Local files, Desktop files, Online files, Recents, Search and Settings. Yes, Docs to Go has a very robust means to access your files and search them.

Once you open a file in the Word app, one feature I noticed immediately that I really liked is the ability to pinch and zoom the text to the appropritea size. The text wraps around in real-time which is cool. After deciding on the fone size you like, It’s off to write your text. You have the typical fanfare as iWork does with text formats, colors, paragraph alingments, etc. Docs to Go does not support more advanced features in it’s word processing app like real-time image arrangement as iWork does, but it gets the besics done well and cleanly. Two quibbles that I have is that Docs to Go was not developed with the iPad in mind, it is basically a big iPhone app, which is such a shame. Menus are designed for the iPhone, not the iPad. What do I mean? A good example is the placement of the formating buttons; they are along the bottom of the app. At first that may not sound like a bad idea, however, when you are typing, the keyboard appears and hides the buttons so you can’t format while you time. Is it a deal breaker? No, but annoying none-the-less.

For me, where Docs to Go really shines over the competition is its “Intact” technology. At work, I use Microsoft Word to create my documents. Admittedly, I sometimes use fancy formats, tables, images, etc. As I mentioned earlier, these may not render very well in Pages. With Docs to Go however, if the app doesn’t know what the object is on the document, it doesn’t even try to render it, instead it gives you a “?” placeholder that tells you “if you delete me, you will lose this feature when you sync back your document”. What a life saver! You can edit a document and not have to worry about loosing formating any more.

Other benefits of Docs to Go include the fact that it is a universal binary, so buy it once and you can use on the iPhone and iPad, not a bad deal at al. You can also sync via iTunes Sharing and Docs to Go’s own Wi-Fi sharing app for PC and Mac.

[Documents to Go Premium - $16.99 - iTunes link]

[Documents to Go - $9.99 - iTunes link

Conclusion

You can also find previous reviews of these apps, Here for Pages and Here for Docs to Go.

Ever since the iBooks was announced, this is probably the single biggest issue an avid ebook reader will ultimately have to deal with: Kindle app or iBooks. What should you pick? Well, no one can tell you that for certain, but I hope to give you a little insight that might help you decide.

The fundamental difference between the two is the Kindle app has a very large ebook selection by comparison. 750,000 ebooks on Kindle and 60,000 books at iBooks launch (Apple has not released exact numbers). To me, this is the differentiating factor. Both applications support landscape view with two columns and a built-in dictionary as well as syncing of bookmarks, highlights and notes. Let’s look at some of the differences of each app beyond how many books they have.

(You can get our quick review of the Kindle app here and iBooks app here)

Kindle

The Kindle app is a free universal app so you can run it on any iOS device. You can tap the left or right of the screen to turn pages and tap the top right corner to bookmark a page. You have several levels of font sizes and colors to choose from to help create your reading experience as good as it can be. You can even sync your annotations to other devices that support Kindle, that includes any iOS device, Mac, PC, Android and BlackBerry as well as Amazon’s own Kindle.

There are a couple of innovative features that the Kindle has brought to the ebook table. First the Kindle app displays popular highlights in a book via underlined text while you read. You can easily see what other people have highlighted, quotes or whole passages. Second is data supplied by Shelfari. This content includes summary, character, spoilers and more; not a bad benefit. On the iPad, you can turn on a page turning feature similar to iBooks, but it is not has smooth or pays as much attention to detail as Apple’s iBooks. On iPad, you have to different ways to view your library; big icons that can use pinch to zoom to resize as needed or an alphabetical list. I like both options depending on my mood, but what is lacking is a manual arrange function; You only can sort by Recent, Author or Title.

Since Kindle books are in the cloud, there is no need to sync your book on any desktop. Simple navigate to the archive in Kindle and redownload your book and it will then sync your bookmarks and other annotations.

iBooks

These are all very nice touches iBooks. The look, feel and options are fantastic. However, content is king, just like available software for a platform and regretfully, iBooks falls flat on its face. 9 out of 10 books I search for on iBooks comes up empty. This is very disheartening. I remember in the early days of the Kindle, they only had a 100,000 ebooks or so and are now approaching one million. Sadly, iBooks is not even up to 100,00o yet. I have hopes that Apple will forge the relationships needed to foster a growing library.

Alas, at this time, Kindle really is the better choice for content and iBooks is a much better app. In the end, what s more important to you; books you can actually read, or a pretty application?

It seems that e-book readers are going to be technology’s next big thing. With the Kindle being named Oprah’s favorite gadget and other e-book reading devices battling for pole position, the e-book reader is populating daily culture. But who wants to pay that much money for a dedicated reading device that is admittedly limited and still has no true standard format?

Insert iPhone. We all know that the iPhone does a great job in converging multiple devices, why not add being an e-book reader to its capabilities? Obviously we won’t have any e-ink technology in the iPhone but the e-book readers in the iPhone, Classics and Stanza, offer ease of use and a great free selection—plus you don’t have to plop down an extra 400 dollars to read a book.

See what we think of Classics and Stanza in our App vs App!

Design

Classics is wonderfully designed. Upon starting the app, a virtual bookcase filled with the covers of popular books gives you your reading options. The interactive bookshelf definitely makes for a virtually pleasing layout—it gives a experience similar to grabbing a book from your shelf, but in this case, tapping will suffice. You can also rearrange the books in any order, though the obvious flaw is when more books become available this design layout may not be the most effective to navigate.

What’s great about Classics is that the look of the pages seems carefully designed and well implemented. The pages look like pages of a book, complete with a clothlike texture and instant readability. Another great touch is the flipping of the pages, swipe from right to left to move pages in the most accurate rendition we’ve seen in an e-book reader.

Stanza makes up for what it lacks in groundbreaking design by offering seemingly limitless customization. If you want the color of the words a certain hue of grey or the background completely black, you have the option to do so. This amount of customization allows you to create layouts that better suit your eyes.

Stanza’s library page is akin to the iPhone’s setting page—effective and efficient but hardly awe inspiring. It gives you a basic list to select from and it’ll narrow your selection from there. Overall, it works but it definitely feels like you have to learn how to use the controls before you read, rather than just get to reading right away.

Usability

Classics notable feature is its ability to realistically flip through pages. Because there is no customization options whatsoever in Classics, Classics needed to nail this feature to warrant any type of consideration. Luckily, they absolutely nailed it. The animation and physics of turning the page are extremely accurate and if you’re sliding the finger to turn but decide not to, it follows your movement and the page falls back in place. You really have to give it a try, it’s the most accurate representation of page turning that I’ve ever seen.

Also, I found that the overall page design of Classics was fairly easy on the eyes. It uses a tan/brown mix of colors to create a more paper-esque texture to the page. It almost looks cloth like. Overall, Classics did a wonderful job in presenting themselves and I enjoyed reading from the application.

But by no means is Classics perfect. It doesn’t have a great selection, offering only a handful of “classic” novels and it offers no customization whatsoever. There is no ability to customize page layout, to change fonts, no ability to add books—you really have to run with what the developers designed for you. You can’t even change the font size, so you’re stuck turning pages at a pretty fast rate. So though Classics looks great, it is definitely limited.

Stanza on the other hand, is completely customizable. You can add books, newspapers, magazines, and thousands of books from different publishers. The sheer number of books is simply staggering, you can always find something to read.

Also, you can customize the page layout to fit your eyes’ preference. The text color, background color, link color, font, font size, alignment, line spacing, margin width, images, and controls—it can really be tweaked to whatever you prefer. Want to read with a black background and white text? By all means! Black Helvetica text on a red background with justified alignment? Sure!

But in the end, I still preferred the overall look of Classics standard page layout over Stanza’s customizable options. No matter what I did, and I tried to emulate Classics, it just wasn’t as easy on the eyes. Also, turning the page is nowhere near as pretty. It only slides out in Stanza.

But the unarguable advantage of Stanza is its ability to add books. That makes it a much more powerful reader and definitely lengthens the life span of the application. You’ll never be able to read everything that the folks at Stanza offers because it really has a library worth of literature! 

Final Thoughts

So I guess what it really boils down to is: do you want an e-book reader that looks good with a limited amount of books or a fully customizable reader with limitless options of reading material?

In conclusion, I think having a greater selection wins out. The fact that Stanza can add a variety of books, newspapers, and magazines to your library makes it the winner in this week’s App vs App. The complete customization of the page layout also deserves kudos because it lets the reader decide what he or she wants to see.

It’s hard to knock Classics though. As a reading application, it deserves stellar marks for nailing the physics of turning the page and offering such a great, easy on the eyes, page design. Even though customization is huge in e-book readers, the stock look of Classics is still by far the best look in comparison with the two.

But Classics falls short by not offering a wider reading selection. It simply can’t seriously compete as an e-book reader when you can only read the same “classic” books over again. I love this application and think the developers did a fantastic job, but the lack of selection makes it hard for me to give my full recommendation. I definitely think it still merits consideration as the most exciting reader app for the iPhone. But as it stands now, Stanza has still got it beat.

Classics Rating

Stanza Rating

Ahh, sports. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. If you are old enough, you probably remember the “agony of defeat” guy – painful on more than one level (for him, and for you if you are old enough to know what I’m talking about). I love me some sports, and thankfully there are some great sports apps for the iPhone. Two of my favorites are freebies – Sportacular and SportsTap. Which one has the edge? Who comes out on top as being more competitive and “sportier?”  Who hits the shot at the buzzer FTW?! Check out the App v. App after the break!

How Do They Compare?

Sportacular

I will say up front that I carry a little bit of bias here. I’ve been using Sportacular for quite a while now and it’s become a personal favorite of mine. Brought to us for free via the App Store by Jeff Hamilton, Sportacular is packed with useful features for the sports enthusiast while still maintaining a simple, clean interface.

Sportacular offers regular updates to scores, team standings, stats, and news covering several of the major professional and collegiate sports. Updates come every 30 seconds so you know what’s going on as it happens. The major sports that are covered are MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, PGA, LPGA, and NCAA football and basketball. Season and game stats are now available for MLB, NFL, NBA, and the NHL.

It gets even better – Sportacular provides access to league and conference standings, the NCAA Top 25 updated daily, team schedules, NHL scoring and penalty details, NBA latest plays, and even BCS standings. There are other user features available for the sports diehard. If you are into fantasy sports and need to keep track of your favorite teams and players, Sportacular provides a means of creating custom groups for tracking teams and players so you can make important decisions for your fantasy team. Sportacular is now also part of the Citizen Sports network for even MORE access to all things sporty!

Having so many features and tools are just half the battle. The other half is won with a good user interface. Along the bottom of the screen you will find Scores, Standings, Schedules, Stats and More. All are self-explanatory, and More gives you access to News, a Featured Product (as I write this, my current Featured Product is a 49ers shower curtain on sale at Amazon.com – woohoo!), the Sportacular Blog for updates about the app, the list of Sportacular-related web apps, and App Info. 

For me, ease of use and having access to updated sports information that I want with a clean, attractive, and efficient interface wins the day. If you don’t have Sportacular already, I highly recommend it. 

SportsTap

The other favorite sports app on my iPhone is SportsTap by Mobile1Sports, LLC. Like Sportacular, it provides access to scores and stats for the major sports but also goes a bit further by offering even more: MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NASCAR, Formula One, IndyCar, AFL, CFL, PGA, LPGA, ATP, WTA, MLS, and top futbol leagues from around the world. If sheer number of sports alone is used to determine a winner here, then SportsTap would come out on top. However, it’s much more than how many sports a sports app provides access to – it’s HOW the information is delivered.

In addition to scores and stats for all the aforementioned sports and leagues, SportsTap also provides detailed box scores, in-depth team and player statistics, season statistics, and even league transactions for many of the leagues. The information can still be considered “real time”, but is updated slightly less frequently than Sportacular – 60 second vs. 30 second updates.

I do like the main screen for SportsTap. It is very iPhone-esque with icons for each of the sports along with notifications in the upper right-hand corner of each icon for any new news items or events. The interface for SportsTap is also pretty clean, but I think it lacks the same intuitiveness that Sportacular offers. For example, to return to the home screen, you tap the SportsTap icon in the upper right-hand corner of whichever screen you happen to be in at the time. There is also a tiny “Home” icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Instead, it would be nice if there were “back” arrows to return to the previous screen rather than have to start from the Home screen again. The devil is truly in the details.

To SportsTap’s credit, I do like the “Feedback” option on the Home screen. From here, you can contact the developer for questions or comments. Although well-intentioned, it’s a shame that a Feedback icon takes up space on the Home screen because, really, how often will you provide feedback?

Like Sportacular, SportsTap also offers the option for setting up Favorites to track your favorite teams, regardless of sport or league. I also give SportsTap the edge for providing more detail for upcoming games – not only can you access the spread and see who is favored, but scrolling down reveals the past history between the two competing teams and a very detailed game preview.

Conclusion

It’s truly hard to go wrong with either Sportacular or SportsTap if you are a sports fan and want all your sports goodness on the fly, conveniently on your iPhone. Given that they are both free and take up little memory space, it’s not a tough decision to make to keep them both on your iPhone. However, this IS App v. App, after all, and THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! So, even though it offers fewer sports by focusing on the more prominent professional and collegiate sports, I have to give the nod to Sportacular as the winner here. The simple, clean, and efficient interface and ease of use makes Sportacular a more enjoyable app, in my opinion. But hey, don’t just take my word for it. Try them both out and tell us what YOU think!

Sportacular Rating

SportsTap Rating

I love me some crossword puzzles. You can keep your silly Sudoku, I played enough logic games getting my philosophy major from a department that didn’t go for them crazy postmodern language games (seriously, the folks at St. Thomas love them some logic). I love having crosswords on my smartphone because it’s the perfect ‘quick game’ app: you can spend two minutes or twenty on them, there’s many new and free ones available every day, and they fend off cognitive decline in old age (Seriously, speaking of Catholics, look into the “nun study“).

Anyway, point is I want my crossword puzzle app to be awesome. So this week’s App vs. App is crosswords. Today’s contestants: 2 Across (1.2.2) by Eliza Block and Crosswords (1.13) by Stand Alone, Inc. Which one will better serve your word-puzzle fetish? Read on!

Getting Puzzles

Both 2 Across and Crosswords allow you to download around a dozen different free crossword puzzles, many updated daily. These puzzles are in the .puz format — which I know because I spent many an hour hunting for .puz files back in my days as a PalmOS Treo user (full disclosure, the best PalmOS cross app is developed by Stand Alone). It’s a standard crossword file format that can be made available for download by any crossword app and can either be free or by subscription (i.e. both can download the NYT puzzles if you’ve subscribed).

Both apps allow you do download these free puzzles as often as you like and also give you access to download a nearly unlimited number of puzzles by going backwards in time. 2 Across gives you a decidedly-standard-iPhone method of selecting a source, drilling in, and then choosing the date you want to download. Just press the “+” button at the bottom center and away you go.

It’s a simple system that’s very iPhone-esque in its UI and methodology (remember that, it’ll be a trend).

Crosswords has the same functionality — the ability to download any single puzzle from essentially the same sources and also the ability to download from previous dates. But Crosswords improves on the whole process in two ways. One: instead of using the standard iPhone ‘dial’ date picker, it presents you with a month view, allowing you to tap multiple dates very quickly. You find these by pressing the “+” button in the upper-left of the puzzles list. Two: the best thing about Crosswords is that there’s a big old “Get Todays’ Puzzles” at the top of your puzzle list every day. Quick, convenient, and automatic. Love it.

Managing Puzzles

Both 2 Across and Crosswords have a nice, clear list of your saved puzzles. Both show your progress — 2 Across uses a pie-chart and Crosswords a status bar. You hit the edit button to delete puzzles. Here again, 2 Across utilizes familiar iPhone elements and is clean and simple.

Crosswords listing also uses some iPhone UI elements, but it’s not as ‘standard’ as 2 Across. For one thing, there’s that “get puzzles” button I mentioned. For another, there are a lot more buttons on the Crosswords listing. This can be a little jarring for some, but once you figure out what everything does (note that one of the buttons is ‘help’), it’s pretty great. You can sort by date or by last played. The last crossword puzzle you were playing is always indicated by a checkmark, and those status indicators are nice.

Doing Puzzles

Turns out you use a crossword app for more than downloading, tracking, and managing puzzles! Both apps have great crossword-playing abilities, though again you’re going to run into some differences.

The same theme I’ve hit in the above sections applies to the crossword itself. 2 Across utilizes some very standard iPhone elements and has an immediate and intuitive feel to it. You can pinch-zoom, it has a standard iPhone keyboard, there’s buttons for useful bits like looking at all the clues, looking at them in split-pane, switching to ‘pencil’ mode, and so on. You can show and hide the keyboard, enter multiple letters in a square, and you can even swipe in the ‘clue area’ to jump between clues

In all, you’ll spend perhaps more time than you might like zooming in and out and so on, but here again I find this to be like standard iPhone apps. It might not be the most efficient way of doing things, but it’s certainly intuitive.

Crosswords, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. I hated Crosswords in its 1.0 version because its default way of doing things were very un-iPhone-like and it also seemed to suffer from crashes. At 1.13, however, things are noticeably improved. Where 2 Across uses the standard iPhone UI bits, Crosswords uses them and also tosses in all sorts of other options.

The downside here is that you really need to take a half dozen visits to the settings when you first start using Crosswords, because the different options can be confusing and some of the defaults are annoying (I’m looking at you, compact keyboard option). That said, once you know what all the options and features and widgets are, you simply enable the ones you want and disable the ones you don’t. After that, Crosswords can do, erm, crosswords in pretty much any way you like from the intuitive, iPhone-esque methods that are similar to 2 Across to a more traditional method that utilizes a floating directional pad for switching between clues.

There are also tons of nice and useful touches like the clue view showing you the letters you’ve already entered for a word. Unfortunately, I did run into more pauses and slowdowns in Crosswords than I did in 2 Across, so there are some bugs yet to be tracked down from that 1.0 release.

On the other hand, landscape mode! There’s not as much functionality when you’re in landscape mode, but it’s a neat option and a nice alternate view.

Conclusion

2 Across is $5.99 and Crosswords is $9.99, but for a crossword junkie like myself (Jai Alai!) 3 bucks is much less important than playing my puzzles quickly and easily. In that regard, both apps do make the grade. In point of fact, after several weeks I still can’t fully decide which one I like best and haven’t banished either from my iPhone. I don’t recommend this method, however.

The good news is that both apps have a ‘lite’ version which you can try for free to see which you like better before you lay your money down.

The thumbnail difference is this: 2 Across is intuitive, iPhone-like, and easy to use. Crosswords is a little too complex and option-heavy, but more powerful. I consider myself a ‘power user’ with smartphones (but not Crosswords, yet. I’ll get you, Sunday New York Times!), so Crosswords is likely to get the ‘stay’ on my iPhone.

2 Across

Pros

• iPhone-like UI
• Snappy
• Simple to learn

Cons

• Have to manually download puzzle-by-puzzle and day-by-day
• No Landscape mode

Crosswords Rating

Pros

• Landscape Mode
• Lots of options

Cons

• Some occasional lag and missed-taps
• Lots of options

[This is an iPhone blog App vs. App review! Last week, we ran our Google Earth vs. Earthscape showdown, with Google Earth scoring the win. But which commenter won an iTunes gift certificate? Congratulations musicobsession! Want your chance to win the winning app this week? Comment below!]

Have you ever had a song running on infinite loop in your brain but can’t quite place the name or artist? What about those times you are in a store or in your car and you hear a song that you really like, but you have no idea what the name of the song or artist is? Fortunately, there are two excellent FREE apps for your iPhone, Shazam and Midomi, that can help you name the song and artist, watch the music video, and even buy the song. How do they compare? Read on for App vs. App, music tagging edition!

How Do They Compare?

I’ll say this up front – both Shazam and Midomi are both excellent products and have nice interfaces, so the edge in this contest will boil down to feature sets. Without further ado, let’s dive in and compare these two contestants!

Shazam

The design and interface for Shazam is all about simplicity. When you open up the app, you are presented with My Tags, the main screen for Shazam which displays anything you tagged Today and anything you tagged that is Older. “Tagged” means you have identified unknown music with song title, artist, and other information associated with it.

From the My Tags screen, you can view older Tags or tap “Tag Now” in the upper right corner of the screen to tag some new music. Be sure to have your iPhone close to the music source when you tap Tag Now, because as soon as you hit the button, Shazam will start “listening” and do it’s best to identify the music your are listening to.

If Shazam is successful in tagging the music, your iPhone will display the artist, song title, genre, record label, and album from whence the song came. Album art will also be displayed. If you scroll down, there are several tag options: purchase the music via a link to iTunes, watch the music video on YouTube (if available), take and attach a photo, attach an album photo, share the tag with a friend, or delete the tag. All of this is very straight-forward, but requires an audible sound source of the original music. Shazam is simple and effective in it’s design and it’s easy to use.

So, to use Shazam, just open the app, select “Tag Now”, and let your iPhone listen to the music to identify the artist and track name. You can save your tag history and build your own list of music over time. You can buy the music you hear via a link from Shazam to iTunes. If your tagged music has a music video, Shazam will link you to the music video on YouTube. You can personalize your tagged music with your photos and send your tagged music to friends and family via email.

Shazam works well, is simple to use, and gets the job done. It does require a music source to tag your music.

Midomi

When opening Midomi, you will see a splash screen for a couple seconds, then the application will launch where you left off before. Midomi is similar to Shazam in that it helps you identify music and tag it, but if Shazam is the Toyota of identifying and tagging music, then Midomi may be the Lexus.

Midomi is loaded with more features. In addition to tagging music by “grabbing” the music (your iPhone listening to the music, then matching it with song title and artist), Midomi has additional options. You can sing the lyrics, hum the tune, speak the lyrics, artist or song title, or enter the information by typing it. This is all very handy if you have that song bouncing around in your head, don’t have a music source nearby, but want to put a name and face to your torment – just hum the song and Midomi will search it’s 17 million plus database.

Like Shazam, Midomi tags the song and gives you the options of watching the video on YouTube, buying the song from iTunes, bookmarking the song, and sharing with a friend via email.

There are a lot more screenshots for Midomi because there are many more ways to tag your music. If you have a music source, then great – select the “Grab” tab and let Midomi listen to your music. Or, use one of the other several tabs, like Type, Say, or Sing. Each is self-explanatory and adds additional dimensions to identifying and tagging your music on Midomi.

You can Type the artist, song title, or lyrics and let Midomi search it’s database. You can Talk into your iPhone and let Midomi recognize your speech, or if you are brave and consider yourself a shower-singing aficionado, then give it your best shot and Sing or hum the song. This latter method may be the least accurate given that it’s dependent on your talent level.

Another advantage of Midomi is the vast database of music samples. When you tag your music, you can play a sample of the music on Midomi, which may be helpful in verifying you have tagged the correct song. On a humorous note, when using the Sing method for tagging your music, the sample you play may be the singing voice of another Midomi user out there somewhere.

Conclusion

Both Shazam and Midomi offer features like tagging music with artist name and song title, linking to music videos on YouTube, and sharing your tagged music with a friend via email. However, this is where similarities end and Midomi takes it to the next level. With the additional methods of tagging (Say, Sing, and Type) and a database of music samples, Midomi is more feature-rich.

Midomi Rating

Shazam Rating

[This is a TiPb AT WORK App vs. App Interlude! Last week, we ran our Remote Desktop/VNC Showdown, with Jaadu edging out Mocha for the victory. But which forum voter and blog commenter won copies of the winning App? Congratulations MSZATNY and GOS

This week, while the TiPb iPhone Forums vote on THE TWIST Casey steps in to look at Earthscape and it's major-league new rival, Google Earth! They're both FREE, but if you comment below (and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you), you'll still have a chance to win an iTunes gift certificate from TiPb! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready to get things done -- the TiPb AT WORK Interlude: Earth vs Earth is on!]

Google has a certain love affair with the iPhone. Yeah, we know Android is Google’s baby but that doesn’t stop them from putting out top-notch applications for the iPhone. The Youtube App and Google Maps are both best in class and Gmail and Google Reader on Safari are setting the bar for web-based applications. So though Android is all Google, they’re still not ready to leave the iPhone.

Case in point, the release of Google Earth on the iPhone. Anyone a bit surprised that they released one of their more unique products on the iPhone before it got even as much as a sniff for Android? Luckily, as iPhone users we don’t have to worry about the politics of the situation and we get to enjoy the app for what it is.

But Google Earth isn’t the only player in town. Earthscape has been around, is free (used to be $9.99), and works admirably. So in this arena of mobile Earth based apps, is Google Earth the young challenger or the new champion?

Read on to find out in this special edition of App vs App!

Design & Input

Google Earth

Google Earth is a well designed app, which isn’t surprising considering its coming from the guys from Mountain View. The control layout is basic but purposeful, there is a My Location button, an Info button, a Search button, and a Compass feature that can redirect you to due north. There’s enough to be usable and nothing to distract you.

The core design of Google Earth lays in the control and all around power of the iPhone. There are a lot of multi touch gestures that behave according to whichever gesture you use. This leads to a greatly intuitive UI and a fairly low learning curve. Using multi touch allows the map to take center stage in the app with no dock or tabs blocking the focus.

Frankly, if you know how to navigate the iPhone, you’ll do well with Google Earth. Zoom in, Zoom out, Rotate, and Pan are all controlled by gestures that are similar to those system wide on the iPhone. There is also a two finger drag that can tilt the screen up and down. The accelerometer is also used by portraying the bird’s eye view of the map when faced flat and a 3D view when tilted up. A very neat feature.

Earthscape

Earthscape is also a full featured ‘Earth’ maps program. Though instead of fully using the iPhone’s multi-touch and accelerometer to its advantage, it chooses to offer numerous options on a dock. You get options for My Location, 3D mode, Camera, Search, Info, and an Earthscape button. I found this method to be less intuitive considering I wasn’t exactly sure what each button did which in turn slowed down usability.

To be sure, Earthscape still supports multi-touch. Zooming in and out is familiar and panning is all but second nature (there is no rotate feature). Also, the accelerometer is put to minimal use, only flipping the map to landscape—the dock remains static—and the map doesn’t turn into 3D mode upon tilting.

Verdict: I prefer the Google Earth method of relying on the iPhone’s multi-touch and accelerometer. Earthscape’s choice of a dock just isn’t as easy to use.

Usability

Google Earth

So once you enter the Google Earth, you are given a bird’s eye view of whatever location you choose. It’s kind of like Satellite View on steroids: offering a better overview of the ‘world’ and its terrain than anything Google Maps has to offer. However, it does away with the street names so you’ll have to instead focus on City Names, State borders, and Wikipedia Entries for your information.

I really enjoyed the Wikipedia Entries that showcase cool tidbits on local landmarks. You definitely learn a lot more about your area when you click on the Wikipedia ‘W’ and have the page open within the app.

The maps on Google Earth also seem to be recently updated. There are a couple new buildings that have sprouted up in recent years that are now viewable on Google Earth. The maps are also clear renderings of the area with seemingly accurate colors and geography.

As mentioned before, browsing Google Earth is simply a cinch. You don’t have to re-learn any icons or gestures because it uses everything that you’re used to with your iPhone. You’ll definitely be surprised at how flawless everything works and how well it performs.

However, Google Earth does have a tendency to crash on my iPhone. I found this to be an unavoidable problem and something I just dealt with. To offer an iPhone app that’s nearly better than the desktop version? Bravo, I’ll take the crashes in stride…for now.

Earthscape

Earthscape works well and if Google Earth didn’t exist, it’d be a great app to show off to your friends. But it simply can’t keep pace with Google Earth on two big, big features. Controls and Maps. Controlling Earthscape just doesn’t make as much as sense as it does on Google Earth. The cluttered dock takes a bit of time to get used to and the icons aren’t as easily recognizable. Though I may just be getting spoiled with how Goolge Earth does things, I’m surprised at the decision to use on-screen inputs rather than multi-touch and accelerometer based controls.

Also, the maps are a little bit older than those on Google Earth. The buildings that exist in Google Earth are nothing but a plot of land on Earthscape. The maps also don’t zoom in as close nor offer the clarity of Google Earth. There is also some choppiness in the images, some maps don’t line up properly.

What is unique about Earthscape is that it offers a few more features than Google Earth. There is a Camera button that allows you to take cameras and plot them with geotagging. You can also see nearby pictures from the Earthscape community. Earthscape definitely offers more social networking options than Google Earth.

Earthscape also suffered the same crashing issues as Google Earth and includes Wikipedia articles for fun and interesting facts around the area.

Verdict: Google Earth just works better. Earthscape is a great app that offers some social networking features but its maps and usability simply cannot compare to Google Earth.

Final Thoughts

In all, Google Earth simply outclasses Earthscape. Though Earthscape was the first to come to the market, it simply does not utilize the control mechanisms that make Google Earth seem so effortless. Also, the map quality and zoom levels on Google Earth are far superior than those of Earthscape and for an app based on maps, that simply can’t be ignored.

Both apps have limited real-life use other than the cool tech “show off” factor for friends. Though Google Earth and Earthscape don’t offer the pure functionality of Google Maps (they both don’t have any street names or basic directions) there are still some neat features like Wikipedia Entries and Pictures (on Earthscape) that make them fairly unique.

For both apps, use on Wi-Fi was preferred but 3G and EDGE performance was commendable. However, the 3D view for both was much too taxing on the iPhone and it caused multiple crashes, and let’s face it, the 3D view is what makes Google Earth and Earthscape cool to begin with, so if you can’t get that right, you’ve already lost half the battle.

For pure usability, they both work well enough. Their features are fairly impressive and you do get a great looking glass view of the world with both. But in the end, Google Earth simply translates too well on the iPhone for Earthscape to seriously challenge it. The multi touch gestures, use of the accelerometer, and detailed maps make Google Earth the app to get.

App vs App Winner: Google Earth

Google Earth Rating:

Earthscape Rating:

[This is a TiPb AT WORK App vs. App Review! Last week, it was the To Do/Task App Showdown, with Things squeaking out the victory. But which blog commenter won a copy of the winning To Do/Task App? Alex! Congratulations!

This week, the TiPb iPhone Forums voted on their favorite Remote Desktop/VNC Apps, we took the top two, and now they're going head-to-head. But wait -- there's more! One of the forum voters has already won a copy of the winning App... Congrats avt! Want another chance to win? COMMENT BELOW! and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready to get things done -- the TiPb AT WORK Remote Desktop/VNC Showdown is on!]

Like Brian, I use my iPhone for just about everything. So wouldn’t it be nice to use your iPhone to access your computer(s) when you are not at your desk? At work (no pun intended) I rotate with team members to “take” call, meaning, if something needs resolved on a weekend or evening, it is up to me to fix it. My work does not currently supply a broadband card, so it is up to my own devices to have Internet access wherever I go to remote into my PC. The VNC applications Jaadu and Mocha allow me to do just that! For those of you that don’t know what VNC is, it allows you to remotely control another computer. Now, this ability is available on your iPhone (side rant, why doesn’t Apple give us this ability as part of our MobileMe subscriptions? Ah, I digress…)

I can now leave my laptop behind and just use my iPhone to connect to my work laptop at home or my iMac desktop and save the day! Let’s take a look at these two VNC apps!

First Impressions

Jaadu VNC: Sells in the App Store for $24.99. Though this may seem steep, it offers ease of use its rivals do not match (more on this later). This application is very professional looking. The mixture of black and blue as well as animations while loading really give a good aura of slickness to the user, I was impressed. 

Mocha VNC: Sells in the App Store for $5.99. A little rougher around the edges that Jaadu, it still gets the job done. The lower barrier to entry might be more palatable for some not looking for a “regular” connection to their desktop. But who does it better? Let’s read on to find out!

Setup

Jaadu VNC: There is some configuration needed with Jaadu, but it is detailed and well worth the trouble. After installing the iPhone App, you need to install a free client on the Mac/PC. The Mac client is actually made by Jaadu, but for the PC they recommend using Tight VNC on your PC to get you started. After following the simple instructions I was up and going using Jaadu in about 5 minutes.

The setup screen contains the typical information such as Name, IP Address, Password, etc. The advanced button offers additional choices such as color depth (Hundreds-Millions or the server can decide for you based on your connection). If you are battery conscience, then you can even turn off “fast refresh” to save battery power. Honestly, I would never turn this off as it impacts the redraw of the screen…

Mocha VNC: Mocha VNC is a straight forward setup. You have to setup a VNC server on your own, but afterwords, setting up the connection on your iPhone is a piece of cake. Mocha allows you 20 different connections (wow, that is a lot) and similar configuration options to Jaadu. It does not have as many configuration options as Jaadu, but it covers the basics to connect. Setup is fast and seamless.

Keep in mind though, you will need to install a VNC server in order to use Mocha VNC. You can read more about this here. 
 

Use

Jaadu VNC: Once connected, Jaadu really is easy to use. There is a keyboard for you to enter information into your computer. You can use this for typing a URL into the address bar, sending an email, or whatever fits your needs! 

The cursor movement is nice to. You have an option for “momentum” which provides a “floaty” mouse feel. You can double click by tapping the screen twice and right-click by taping once with two fingers. You can also use multi-touch by pinching the screen to zoom all the way out, or zoom in to a useful level of detail. All of this is done very smoothly and accurately. 

If you swap often between portrait and landscape, you are in luck! Jaadu recognizes when you have rotated your device and orientates the screen to match, However, if this function does not appeal to you, there is an option to disable as needed. You also have your standard additional keys like FN, CTRL, etc.

It is important to note that you need to run the Jaadu application to access your Mac. On Windows you need to install a VNC server as well as the Jaadu app (with Back to My Mac, the Mac already has a server running, thus no need to install additional software beyond the Jaadu client).

Mocha VNC: Mocha behaves very similarly to Jaadu, but offers alternative input methods. For example, you have a series of icons located across the bottom of the screen. You have your typical options, etc, but what is different here is that instead of using two fingers and tapping on the screen for a right-click, you tap an icon. Once tapped, that icon turns green (the icon is of a mouse…) indicating that the next time you tap the screen, it will display the shortcut menu. 

One advantage that Mocha has over Jaadu is the extensive alternative keys. Mocha gives you full and easy access to all of the “F” keys as well as the FN CTRL, etc. keys. I prefer this input method (for the function keys) over Jaadu’s.

Additional Information (Tech Babble)

Conclusion

And the Winner is…

Jaadu!

The added ability of remoting in when you don’t have a static IP really makes all the difference in the world with VNC. The added “slickness” of the app also goes a long way. If you are using VNC on the same network, either will do. However, if you need to access your computer on the same network, Mocha will work just fine.

Pros:

• Easy setup
• Static IP configuration
• Ideal tool to access your Mac/PC on-the-go

Cons:

•  Difficult if not impossible to configure behind your corporate firewall

Jaadu Final Score:

Mocha Final Score:

[This is a TiPb AT WORK App vs. App Review! Last week, it was the Instant Messenger Showdown, with BeeJiveIM squeaking out the victory. But which blog commenter won a copy of the winning IM App? mr. Hi-Definition Congratulations!

This week, the TiPb iPhone Forums voted on their favorite Task/To Do Apps, we took the top two, and now they're going head-to-head. But wait -- there's more! One of the forum voters has already won a copy of the winning App... Congrats coreymol! Want another chance to win? COMMENT BELOW! and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready to get things done -- the TiPb AT WORK Task/Do To Showdown is on!]

I use my iPhone all the time. At work or play, it completes me. I have a few gripes (no sense beating the cut/copy/paste dead horse) – there are some glaring omissions that make it difficult for people to take the iPhone seriously for business or just everyday productivity.

Some kind of sync-able task or to-do list is such a basic feature, and fortunately, the advent of 3rd party apps have made it possible for developers to provide a plethora of apps to remedy this deficiency. The two apps that you folks in the forum picked for this TiPb AT WORK smackdown is Things and Appigo’s Todo. Users have given them both a 4-star rating in the App Store and, quite honestly, it’s a VERY close call to me.

Which of these two get-er-done apps are the best? How do they stack up? Read on!

First Impressions

Things, available in the App Store for $9.99, is a task app that promotes it’s simplicity to use and offers a time-based and priority-based approach. The interface is clean and easy to use, with customization for creating specific task lists. A desktop sync app is also available as a separate download from the main site. The simplicity of the interface and layout of tasks by order of priority and project is very appealing at first glance.

Appigo’s Todo is also sold for $9.99 in the App Store and has a simple interface that allows for the creation of task lists and setting priority of importance and due dates for tasks. Rather than provide a desktop syncing app separately, Todo will sync online with either ToodleDo or Remember The Milk, both of which are popular web apps for the iPhone.

The Same, But Different

Both Things and Todo offer similar functionality in giving you the ability to manage tasks/to-do’s on your iPhone. They both have ways to sync your tasks in a location other than your iPhone. They both allow creation of multiple task lists. Both have an “In-Box” to hold hastily created tasks that you can add detail in the future, like categorization, priority, scheduling, and notes. Both have a nice, easy, and clean interface. There are differences though, and the differences just might give one an edge over the other, but this “edge” may also just boil down to personal taste.

Things

Things is the task app that gives you a timeline/priority approach to managing your tasks. First, you have your Today items – obviously, the items that need to be done today and not tomorrow! These are tasks that you have entered to be completed for the day or are scheduled tasks that have become due. The Next list contains single to-do items and also action steps from active projects. These are the tasks you will do as soon as you can get to them. If the Today items give you a up-close look at your tasks, the Next list is taking a step back and seeing things from the 100 foot view.

Scheduled items are things you will do in the future. These are tasks you will begin at a later date, and as the date arrives, they will show up in your Today view. This may be like looking at your tasks from the 1,000 foot level.

The Someday box is where you place the things you want to do someday, no specific date required. Store your dreams here, if you want. It is like the 10,000 foot view of your tasks – no pressure, just a place to capture your ideas for more shaping and molding.

Things makes it easy to move tasks from one box to another. Then, as you complete tasks, they will appear in your Logbook so you can review the completed items later.

A nice touch is the “+” icon located at the bottom left of each screen. This app wants to make sure that adding tasks at any time is easy and straight-forward. Just hit that “+” icon no matter what you are doing and you can enter a quick task that will sit in your Inbox until you can give it more specificity later. Cool!

Right now, you can download a functioning desktop app that allows you to wirelessly sync your tasks between your iPhone and Things. In the future, this desktop app will be on the pricey side: $39.99 for those that register before the official release, and $49.99 for the johnny-come-latelys. However, if you are a big-time to-do/task person, this is a good investment. You will have a stand-alone app on your desktop that is married to the app on your iPhone so you can both backup your tasks as well as enter them easily from your desktop.

Appigo’s Todo

Todo takes a different approach to syncing. Rather than a desktop app and the additional expense that goes with it, their app syncs online with both Toodledo and Remember The Milk, two popular web apps. The upside to this is that these apps are free and are available to you anywhere you have an internet connection. The bad news is you need an internet connection or you aren’t syncing, period.

Multiple task lists and projects are also available on Todo. You can create repeating tasks, prioritize tasks, and also create tasks quickly that are placed in your Inbox for adding detail later. You can view all important tasks by setting the filter to “All Lists” so you can knock out those urgent tasks no matter what category they are in or project the are a part of.

Another very useful feature offered in Todo is the linking of tasks to contacts and websites. If you need to call someone or send them an email, you can do some right from a task. You can also share tasks by sending them via email. This adds a very useful dimension to your task list when you can link straight to a contact for a call, email, or visiting a related web site.

And The Winner Is….

Both Appigo’s Todo and Things are excellent choices to manage your tasks. They bear several similarities and are available for the same price. The winner is really …. you! In my opinion, you can’t go wrong with either app and so it’s really up to your personal tastes. The desktop syncing app for Things is a little pricey, but for some of you it may be worth it to have local syncing that isn’t dependent on having an internet connection. For others, spending another $39.99 or $49.99 is NOT a good deal when you can have online syncing for free with Appigo’s Todo.

If you need multiple task lists, projects, an Inbox for lighting-fast task entry, and task prioritization, then it’s hard to choose. The differences reside in the syncing methods and some personal touches in customization (using custom strike-throughs in Todo or the prioritizing method in Things, for instance).

Since I get to choose, my personal favorite is Things because it gives me the option of syncing with a desktop app, which I find more convenient than using a web app. Things also seems a little simpler and straight-forward to me, something I really value in a task manager. I like that I can be very specific with urgent items or just dump ideas for later thought in the “someday” bin. But like I said before, regardless of which app YOU choose, they are both winners.

Things Rating:

Appigo’s Todo Rating:

[This is a TiPb AT WORK App vs. App Review! The TiPb iPhone Forums voted on their favorite Apps, we took the top two, and now they're going head-to-head. But wait -- there's more! One of the forum voters has already won a copy of the winning App... Congrats duhockey! Want another chance to win? Comment on this post and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready to get things done -- the TiPb AT WORK IM Showdown starts now!]

Instant Messaging has become one of the most popular forms of online communication because it offers instant access, no SMS costs, and unmatched convenience. How Apple doesn’t implement an iChat Mobile on the iPhone is simply beyond us, we at TiPb think an iChat Mobile would be a top contender for an App vs App.

With that said, 3rd party apps are beginning to fill the holes that Apple left open. Two of the more popular, argued about IM Clients available in the App Store are Palringo and BeejiveIM. Though at the core of each is an IM Client, they could not be more different. How do they perform? Which IM Client is better? Who will win the first edition of AppvsApp: AT WORK ?

Read on for the rest of the review!

First Impressions

BeejiveIM

Okay, the $15.99 price tag is hefty and borderline egregious but it doesn’t come without cause. BeejiveIM is perhaps the easiest, most intuitive, and slickest IM Client on the iPhone. Everything makes sense, it supports a ton of different Instant Messaging programs and is very, very stable.

I had no problems logging into my AIM and Google Talk accounts at the same time and was off to chatting in a moment’s notice. The buddy list supports buddy icons, groups and status. The basic layout of the application includes tabs for Buddy List, Favorites, Chats, Accounts, and More

It also provides a very neat feature where it can keep you logged in after you exit BeejiveIM (24 hour max period) and will send you a notification of IM through your E-Mail account. This works best if your E-mail account supports push since it serves as a pseudo-push notification feature. So if you reason that you’re using their servers to remain connected, the $15.99 price doesn’t look as bad.

To put it into perspective, BeejiveIM is essentially everything you want AIM to be but better.

Palringo

Palringo is free. That’s a huge selling point in itself. But make no mistake though, Palringo isn’t some second-class IM Client; it is capable, almost as stable, and possibly even more full-featured.

The unique aspect of Palringo is that it strives to be more than just an ordinary IM client. Palringo serves as a full communication tool—you can send text IMs, voice IMs, or even picture messages—all in Palringo. It is limitless fun to send your buddies snapshots of your daily life and accompany them with voice notes.

However, with Palringo you have to sign up for a Palringo-specific account. Though this sounds easy enough, there have been reports of spam reaching your linked E-Mail account because of Palringo. Also, when I first tried to log in, the app just kept loading and loading and loading. Not until I re-installed Palringo could I finally get access.

Palringo also supports pretty much all the Instant Messaging programs available but its buddy list doesn’t support groups and buddy icons. It also lacks a favorite tab and a chat specific tab.

I found that even though Palringo is free, it is absolutely a full-featured IM Client that doesn’t cut any corners.

Usability

BeejiveIM

I really believe if Apple were to design an iChat Mobile, it would look strikingly similar to BeejiveIM. The buddy list is clear, the fonts are wonderful, and the whole experience is unbelievably smooth. Even the colors and sounds used are consistent with iChat and the iPhone in general—if you showed a Mac user BeejiveIM they would automatically think iChat—it’s simply that well made.

When in a chat, the typing interface is unique and well thought out. Instead of offering a small linear box to type in, BeejiveIM instead chooses to offer a text bubble overlay—the overall conversation moves to the background and what you type comes to the forefront—this offers more seamless chatting. The conversation is still visible because of the transparent text bubble.

Though this method of inputting messages is smart, it isn’t consistent with the iPhone and almost looks out of place in BeejiveIM. BeejiveIM uses a lot of blues and muted greys in their interface so using a black text bubble sticks out like an eyesore.

Though I absolutely love using the text bubble over any other text input interface and certainly appreciate the innovation, I just can’t wholly agree with its design—a more streamline color would have been appreciated.

BeejiveIM also offers support for landscape mode so our fat-fingered friends won’t feel left out. As an added bonus, you can even e-mail the current chat to your e-mail account for future reference. It also has a contact search button so your buddies won’t get lost. One more tip, theres a dedicated SMS button that makes it easy as pie to send SMS through BeejiveIM (which should be cost free to you).

Palringo

Palringo is well implemented and looks good but you can’t deny the fact that Palringo just looks like a third party application. Though it does use a mixture of greys and blues, the base color of Palringo is a deeper black than the iPhone that doesn’t stay consistent with the rest of the iPhone’s apps.

Let it be known, when using Palringo, sending text IM’s becomes bland and boring because of the alternatives offered. When you have voice and picture options, who needs text? It gets to become a minor annoyance when you want to send a text IM because every time you open a chat, it gives you three options: Text, Voice, and Picture. Select the option, than begin typing.

Sending voice messages and picture messages are a breeze, over Wi-Fi and 3G it is absolutely snappy and even on EDGE it can be considered quick. There is also a search bar option for contact search and you can swipe screens to move over to the next window. Palringo also offers support for hyperlinks, making it easier to surf the web and IM at the same time.

Negatives/Annoyances/Gripes

BeejiveIM

Though BeejiveIM is absolutely well-designed, there are still a few missing features and odd choices that make you question your money spent. Firstly, its chat-to-chat movement is less intuitive than AIM and Palringo. Instead of swiping the screen to move to the next window, you tap the top of the screen and select the buddy icon of the chat you want to jump to. Though this method is sometimes more effective than swiping multiple times to jump to a specific conversation, it is largely less intuitive. BeejiveIM also lacks hyperlink support which makes it much more troublesome to access web pages.

I had a few more complaints about BeejiveIM until I realized the features I thought were missing were actually included. BeejiveIM has different depths and layers to grow accustomed to, you won’t learn them all overnight. It is probably one of the most well-made applications in the App Store and has features that make you go “Man, that’s just smart”.

Palringo

There’s also no way to keep your message history, so good luck looking up information on your old IMs. Also, if you misspell the last word in Palringo it doesn’t automatically correct the error instead choosing to send the message as is. I also preferred the font of BeejiveIM over Palringo. The interface just didn’t work as well as BeejiveiM’s, it did the job but it never really raised the bar.

Final Thoughts

It can be argued that Palringo offers an arguably more well-rounded service than BeejiveIM. But when comparing IM to IM, BeejiveIM manages to run away with a victory.

BeejiveIM is simply one of the best applications available in the App Store: it is polished, it is well constructed and it is stable. It overcomes the lack of background apps and push notification on the iPhone by coming up with its own solution. It handles multiple accounts very well and is designed almost perfectly. The BeejiveIM team certainly needs to be commended for such great work. In the end, both IM Clients are great but BeejiveIM is simply in a class by itself.

BeejiveIM Rating:

Palringo Rating:

TiPb At Work Winner: BeejiveIM

There are now over 3000 apps in the App Store, many of them games, and many of the games are… racers? Yup, sure seems that way. A half dozen or so at least, and more on the way. How’s a gamer to decide? Simple, the TiPb GRAND PRIX!

Once a week for the last few weeks we reviewed 2 racing games head-to-head and app-vs-app. Based on our review scores, we picked the winner… and one of you, our readers, won the winning app! The winner of last week’s winning App, Moto Chaser, is:

SFGuy

And, after 6 reviews, 3 heats, and the month-long iPhone blog GRAND PRIX, our Grand Championship iPhone racing game is:

Asphalt 4: Elite Racing!

It was a close race, the comedic carnage of Crash with the motorcycle mayhem of Moto Crasher were neck in neck… but the full on fury of Asphalt just couldn’t be denied. With killer 3D graphics and super-tight gameplay, it burned up the back stretch and drifted clear across the finish line. Congrats to the developers!

Last and certainly most our Grand Prize winner of $10 iTunes gift certificate to buy the Grand Champ App, and a $50 TiPb Store gift certificate to stock up on their favorite iPhone accessories is:

Guille!

Congratulations, Guille!

And thanks to everyone who joined in our GRAND PRIX, and stay logged on to TiPb, because we’ll be back with our next contest very soon, with more chances to win more great prizes — starting in the forums!

[This is a GRAND PRIX App vs. App Review! Congratulations to our second heat winner, Patrick, who gets a copy of last week's winning racer: Asphalt 4! Want a chance to win this week's? Comment below, and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready race -- the GRAND PRIX starts now!]

Finishing off our TiPb GRAND PRIX and coming up the backstretch, we give you Moto Chaser (available from iTunes for $5.99) versus Auto Contra Sense (also available from iTunes for $1.99)! So we must ask again, who is going to get the checkered flag this time? Will it be the game with a throw-back to Road Rash-like gameplay or the one with a Spy Hunter type feel? See how they compare in Heat #3 of TiPb’s GRAND PRIX!

The Race Starts After the Break!

First Impressions

These two games are quite different. On one hand you have a no holds-barred, white knuckle racer, on the other, you have a slower paced methodical racing game that has more in line with a puzzler. Which will win?

Moto Chaser: This game is brought to you by Freeverse, Inc. This games boasts plenty of speed and excitement as you try your best to complete racing through a level as fast as you can! You earn extra time by clearing checkpoints, you can punch other bikers on the read (a-la Road Rash) and grab speed boost coins for that turbo-burst of wheelie speed that you will need to make it to the end of the level. 

Auto Contra Sense: This game is brought to you by Sonseo, Inc. (no, not the coffee machine company). This game is quite challenging! You must maneuver your car around traffic tilting the iPhone forward and to the side collecting coins and getting to the end of the level in one piece, and with a high score!

Graphics and Sound

Moto Chaser: This game moves fast and you really have a sense of speed in this game. You are typically going up and over hills, jumps and straight-always trying to get to a checkpoint. The graphics are quite good, placing it somewhere on the low-end PSP game, which is not too bad! I noticed little pop-up and there is plenty of scenery to absorb from bridges to lakes, this game is a beauty. The only detractor appeared in occasional slowdown when you went of course; the smoke appears to slow things down, however, since it happened every time, this could very well be intentional.

This game has an awesome soundtrack! There are rock tunes galore. Nothing I noticed by any existing recording artists, but very fun with melody and plenty of guitar!

Auto Contra Sense: This game is dramtically slower pace with 2D graphics in a top-down view. The graphics are simple and rather bland. You can change the look of your car to four different styles and color schemes, but they do not impact gameplay. I would really like to be more descriptive, but regardless of the level, your screen never really changes from what you see here. There is very little music in this game too. However, there are nice, subtle touches like when a truck is coming at you, the iPhone vibrates and you hear a honk from the oncoming vehicle.

Controls

Moto Chaser: To accelerate, you tap and hold the gas button located in the lower right screen. From there, simply tilt the iPhone left and right. At first, I really over compensated with the controls, but after a few minutes, I began to adjust to the sensitivity. In time, the controls become second nature. To pause, simply double-tap the timer in the top center of the screen. 

Auto Contra Sense: This game has unique controls; there is no accelerator or steering buttons. Instead, you tilt the iPhone forward and back to accelerate and decelerate then left and right to steer. Since the pace of the game is slow paced, these controls work well. As you avoid traffic and picking up coins for points, the accelerometer in the iPhone does a great job of sensing the slightest change in motion to ensure that you avoid the next on coming vehicle headed your way. However, the collision detection in the game is a little less accurate. If you so much as touch a pixel on another car, your car is destroyed and you lose a life. This aspect of the game really tested my patients. Even though the graphics are simple, it is fun to play until you have lost your twentieth life by barely touching the front left pixel of an on coming vehicle. 

Controls Result: I have to give this one to Moto Chaser as well. Even though there was a bit more of a learning curve to play, in the end, it was more rewarding due to its accuracy. I just got too frustrated with the Auto Contra Sense. Any progress I built up was immediately lost upon grazing a vehicle.

Gameplay and Value

Moto Chaser: This game can be purchased for $5.99 in iTunes and the App Store. I feel this is a great value for what you are getting. There are similar titles on the iPhone that have a $9.99 price tag on them. The tense checkpoint style gameplay in Moto Chaser is quite enjoyable. You can select multiple characters to play and can unlock several levels with different locations and graphics. If you like fast-time based games, Moto Chaser will deliver. 

Auto Contra Sense: This game can be purchased for $1.99 in iTunes and the App Store. If you are looking for a little frustrating distraction, give Auto Contra Sense a spin. The simple gameplay is addictive and can be very rewarding. There is even a training mode with unlimited lives. As the game progresses to high levels, the oncoming traffic begin to behave like drunk drivers, swerving in lanes, almost trying to take you out; this definitely adds to the challenge. For $1.99, this game is an almost impulse purchase. 

Gameplay and Value Result: Even at the higher price, I just had more fun with Moto Racer. Auto Contra Sense is a good game, but I want to come back and try to beat my times on Moto Racer. This is compelling gaming!

Conclusion

If you are looking for a game to show of the graphical awesomeness of the iPhone, get Moto Chaser. Not the prettiest game but it is a really good example of a fun portable game. If you are more methodical in your gaming, you might want to try Auto Contra Sense. Auto Contra Sense does of the ability to upload your score to compare to other players, almost giving this game a puzzle-like quality. 

In the end, if I have to choose Moto Chaser as this heat’s winner. Presentation, gameplay and graphics are top notch on this racer!

WINNER: Moto Chaser!

[This is a GRAND PRIX App vs. App Review! Congratulations to our first winner, Dorthensensens, who gets a copy of last week's winning racer: Crash! Want a chance to win this week's? Comment below, and make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready race -- Heat 2 of the TiPb GRAND PRIX starts now!]

Continuing TiPb’s GRAND PRIX we have two racing games with sophisticated graphics and sweet controls. Introducing Asphalt 4 Elite Racing (available from iTunes for $9.99) and GTS World Racing (available from iTunes for $7.99)! So we must ask again, who is going to get the checkered flag this time? Will it be the game with Ridge Racer like controls or the one with a Gran Turismo type feel? See how they compare in Heat #2 of TiPb’s GRAND PRIX!

The Race Starts After the Break!

First Impressions

Asphalt 4: Asphalt 4 Elite Racing, from Gameloft, is rooted in mobile platforms, in fact, there have been previous versions for other, less-capable cell phones. From the quick look of it, the gameplay falls more in line with Ridge Racer than anything else. Which essentially means: expect a more arcade like feel which includes pumping up the Nitro and drift like mad.

Choose between a Wi-Fi multiplayer mode, 28 licensed cars, and 9 different cities all with great 3D graphics and intuitive gameplay.

GTS World: GTS World Racing, from Handmark Inc., falls more in life with “realistic” racing games, choosing to pass on gimmicky elements such as Nitro and throwing bones and instead focusing on excellent controls and great simulation of the driving experience.

With GTS World Racing you are able to pick between 4 different race modes (single, challenge, grand tour, and championship), 3 different cars, and a multitude of destinations.

Graphics and Sound

Asphalt 4: Asphalt 4 Elite Racing claims to have the “Best 3D Graphics on the iPhone” and though it’s a lofty claim, you’d be hard pressed to find anything better. The environments are wonderful, Los Angeles has a Los Angeles feel which is entirely different from New York and Paris. We at TiPb are simply amazed by the detail in the environment.

Also, because Asphalt 4 Elite Racing attempts to be more than just a simple racing simulator, you get the added bonus of oncoming traffic (hate those taxis), cones, and mid-race instant replay. The one negative about Asphalt 4 Elite Racing’s look and feel is the sound teeters on the verge of annoying. The screeches when drifting don’t seem accurate and the soundtrack could use some work.

GTS World: GTS World Racing is certainly pretty, make no mistake, but the destination cities don’t seem different enough and the 3 car choices limit the range of the graphics. It seems like Canada is the same as New Zealand and Morocco is a carbon copy of Kenya. The graphics of the car and the road are well made but overall the limited options don’t exactly allow for versatile images.

What is a plus of GTS World Racing is its world-class sound—acceleration sounds perfect, braking is on point, and accidentally driving off road sounds exactly as it should. To be fair, GTS World Racing is graphically great, just not varied enough to be sophisticated.

Graphics and Sound Result: Asphalt 4 Elite Racing, though the sound could use some work, we at TiPb would still rather have it be pretty looking than pretty sounding.

Controls

Asphalt 4: What’s great about Asphalt 4 Elite Racing is the control options that it offers. There are three options to choose from that uniquely use all of the iPhone’s features: a touch based control, an accelerometer based control, and an on screen steering wheel. I personally found the touch based control to be the best—tapping a direction on the screen inches your car toward that direction. The accelerometer control was a bit too sensitive for my taste and the on-screen steering wheel was not sensitive enough.

Giving the option of 3 different control schemes is remarkably obvious but genius at the same time: it lets the player choose what they are most comfortable with.

GTS World: Though GTS World Racing only offers one control system: an accelerometer based tilt left, tilt right, lean forward to go faster—it is quite possibly the most accurate use of the accelerometer to date. The standard sensitivity is perfect and I found myself in awe of how well it read my movements. You can’t nail the iPhone-as-steering wheel as well as GTS World Racing did.

Controls Result: GTS World Racing, though I loved the choices that Asphalt 4 Elite Racing offered, you just can’t deny how accurate the steering is in GTS World Racing. Compliments to them!

Gameplay and Value

Asphalt 4: Though Asphalt 4 Elite Racing hits the price ceiling for iPhone gaming ($9.99), the incredible depth of the game makes it well worth it. The plethora of car choices combined with the varied destinations makes this one of the most complete racing games available. Without even mentioning Wi-Fi multiplayer, which enhances its replay value, Asphalt 4 Elite Racing is as good a buy as there is in the App Store.

Gameplay is great because when starting Asphalt 4 Elite Racing you’re pressed to hit certain money landmarks to unlock new features. Therefore, Asphalt 4 Elite Racing offers depth not found in other iPhone games—you actually have to win races to advance and enhance your car.

GTS World: GTS World Racing offers multiple game modes but after a while the racing got more or less the same. The tracks are varied by difficulty but the environment remains the same—you either get green grass, dead grass, or ice.

To be fair, GTS World Racing gets bonus points for varying the different race types but after a while you can only do so much. Even for a racing die-hard winning the same race gets a tad bit boring.

Gameplay and Value Result: Asphalt 4 Elite Racing, though GTS World Racing offers great immediate value at $7.99 it simply doesn’t have the replay value of Asphalt 4 Elite Racing.

Conclusion

But this is TiPb’s GRAND PRIX and for each heat there can be only one winner and for this race we are going to go with Asphalt 4 Elite Racing. The game depth simply surpasses most iPhone games and the added replay value of Wi-Fi multiplayer cannot be discounted. Combine that with the amazing graphics and control schemes, Asphalt 4 Elite Racing is in our minds the favorite to win the ENTIRE TiPb GRAND PRIX.

WINNER: Asphalt 4 Elite Racing

[This is a GRAND PRIX App vs. App Review! Comment on this post for your chance to win... the winning racer! Make sure you leave a valid email address in the comment form -- it won't be made public, but it will be used to contact you if you win! Check out the full contest details, then grab your iPhone and get ready race -- the GRAND PRIX starts now!]

Kicking off our TiPb GRAND PRIX and starting from the pole position, we give you Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D (available from iTunes for $9.99) versus Cro-Mag Rally (also available from iTunes for $1.99)! Who is going to get the checkered flag today? The wily Crash Bandicoot or those lovable Neanderthals? See how they compare and see who we choose as the winner of heat #1. As I’ve always wanted to say, “Gentlemen (and ladies), START YOUR ENGINES!” (and keep up with us after the break!)

First Impressions

Both contenders enjoy a previous following from their original release on different platforms (Crash from Sony Playstation and Cro-Mag from Mac OS X), and fortunately for all of us, they are now both available for the iPhone. Let’s take a look at both games while the engines are warming up!

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, from Vivendi Games Mobile, is a 3D Kart racing game in the spirit of Mario Kart. Race against AI opponents, grab power-ups along the way to better your chances of winning, and enjoy iPhone accelerometer-based controls and fluid graphics.

Choose from different modes of play: Quick Race drops you right into racing action, Cup Mode is a tournament-style racing series, and Story Mode is available as a quick unlock that adds plot to your racing fun.

Cro-Mag Rally, from Pangea Software, Inc., is also a 3D racer that resembles Crash and Mario with AI opponents, power-ups for both offensive and defensive weapons and car enhancements, and similar iPhone accelerometer-based controls and comparable graphics.

Choose your driver, be it caveman or cavewoman, and select from several different tracks of increasing difficulty and cars with varying performance characteristics.

Graphics and Sound

Crash: takes full advantage of what the iPhone’s impressive display has to offer. Rich colors, fluid movement, and even the nice touch of sunlight reflecting off the “lens” adds a little depth to this game. On-screen displays include a heads-up of the track and your location in proximity to your opponents, your racing time and position, and access to power-ups you pick up along the way. On occasion, the game loses a bit of fluid movement when things get really hairy, but only for a split second and registers very low on the annoyance index.

Cro-Mag: very comparable to Crash in that it is also very fluid and colorful. There is the occasional noticeable lag, but also like Crash, it is brief and doesn’t meaningfully detract from the overall experience. On-screen displays include a heads-up track with racer’s positions, a “forward” and “reverse” button, brake button, power-ups button, and your racing position.

Both games have nice sound with catchy tunes, although my preference leans a bit toward Cro-Mag for it’s music. Otherwise, graphics are very comparable and it’s difficult to give either game an edge here.

Graphics and Sound Results: TIE

Controls

Crash: driving your Kart is fairly straight-forward; hold your iPhone comfortably in front of you and “steer” left or right. The iPhone’s accelerometer is nicely calibrated for good steering responsiveness. Interestingly enough, Crash removes the option of controlling your speed in the traditional sense. Instead of worrying about pressing on the gas pedal, your Kart accelerates to full speed and you can control your speed around corners in a “Tokyo Drift”-esque manner. Pressing your thumbs on each side of the screen will power-slide your Kart left or right for cornering. Just tap the screen lower right to use your power-ups and lower left to pause your game.

Cro-Mag: like Crash, hold your iPhone in like fashion and “steer” left and right and let your iPhone’s accelerometer do the heavy lifting. Unlike Crash, Cro-Mag is more traditional in that there is an up/down arrow at bottom left for “forward” and “reverse”, a wheel next to the arrow for braking, and a bone on the right side of your screen for activating power-ups and throwing objects either to your front or behind you. I never use the brake, but that’s just how I roll.

Both games have easy controls that fit well with their respective style of game-play, so unless you have a particular bias toward one or the other, they are both very comparable.

Controls: TIE

Gameplay and Value

Crash: gameplay and value (replay value) factors heavily in giving Crash an edge here. There are multiple racing modes: Quick Race throws you straight into the racing action with your choice of unlocked vehicles; Cup Mode is a tournament-style race around four different tracks with points awarded based on your placement, the winner determined by total points after all four races; and Story Mode, which is unlocked early in the game, adding plot and automatically mixing up your vehicle selection, opponents and number of laps. Some other nice features are available unlocks as you progress through the game (like Story Mode and Time Trial Mode) and the storing of best times to measure your progress. Additionally, the game saves your progress and allows you to resume (handy if you are interrupted by a call or need to stop playing for something like eating, work, sleep, etc.). Crash is also reasonably priced at $9.99.

Cro-Mag: when this app was first introduced and sold in the iTunes App Store, it was $9.99. In the past few days, it has dropped all the way down to $1.99, making it a no-brainer to have on your iPhone. Cro-Mag offers up 9 tracks with increasing difficulty and landscapes that vary from desert and jungle to snow and underwater. Also, you have immediate access to 11 different vehicles with varying characteristics for speed, acceleration, traction and suspension. There are two game modes: Gather Mode requires collecting arrowheads along the way, then win the race; Race Mode pits you against three AI opponents and three laps to win. Having all the goods up front is fun, but also exposes a weakness in this game in that nothing is earned along the way. Each race is a race unto itself and there are no unlocks or merit for progression and improvement. With that aside, I am impressed with the ability to throw power-ups (like exploding bones, bottle rockets, and homing pigeons, to name a few) both forward and behind to delay your opponents. The lack of any kind of earned unlocks is offset by the current low price of $1.99, and the variety of cars and tracks give this game some replay value over the long haul.

Although I’m tempted to issue another “Tie” based on the features offered for price paid, I still give the edge to Crash for better gameplay and replay value. Although it’s more expensive at $9.99, it still offers more replay value.

Gameplay and Value: CRASH

Conclusion

Both Crash and Cro-Mag are excellent racing games for the iPhone, but in the end, it’s almost a photo-finish. Although a close match in almost every category, Crash pulls away at the end with better gameplay and replay value by offering more modes of play, a resume game feature, best times, and progressively unlocking better vehicles and additional modes of play. Fortunately, both are priced nicely and there should be room for both on your iPhone.

WINNER: Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D!

[Want a chance to win Crash? Leave your comment below. Winner announced next week along with the TiPb GRAND PRIX second heat!]

There are now over 3000 apps in the App Store, many of them games, and many of the games are… racers? Yup, sure seems that way. A half dozen or so at least, and more on the way. How’s a gamer to decide? Simple, the TiPb GRAND PRIX!

Once a week for the next few weeks we’re going to review 2 racing games head-to-head and app-vs-app. Based on our review scores, we’re going to pick the winner… and one of you, our readers, is going to win that app! (Technically: an iTunes App Store gift certificate in the amount of the winning race game app).

But wait! There’s more! Every GRAND PRIX needs a Grand Champion, and every contest needs a Grand Prize. So, when all the reviews are done, the TiPb staff is going to pick our Grand Champion race game app — and one of our readers will win that game AND an iPhone Blog Store gift certificate in the amount of $50!

How can you win? Leave a comment on any GRAND PRIX review. We’ll randomly pick a comment and announce the winner the next week on the following Grand Prix review. (First winner announced on second review, second winner on third review, etc.) For the Grand Prize, we’re going to randomly pick one comment from any of the preceding GRAND PRIX reviews, so make sure you hit them all!

Contest details after the jump…

Them Details:

• Open to everybody who has an iTunes store in their country
• Only one comment/entry per “Grand Prix” review counts (but feel free to post as much as ya like!)
• Eligible comments/entries MUST include a valid email address. If we can’t contact you, we can’t send you your prize!
• Contest will run once a week until all three (3) App vs. App GRAND PRIX reviews are complete, and the final Grand Champion is selected.
• We’ll announce the previous week’s Grand Prix app winner with the next week’s Grand Prix review posting.
• You can win no more than twice.