You may remember back in April we posted about Chopper 2 being played on a TV. Well if you ever wanted / needed a reason to get both an iPhone and iPad we may just have it. The long awaited to sequel to kiwi-made Chopper, Chopper 2 is going to be available from Tuesday and will work on both your iPhone or iPad. Best of all, this is one of the first games you will be able to use whilst the iPad is plugged in to your TV (via component cable or VGA adapter) and controlled by your iPhone!

Hit the read more to see our first look and a video of the game in action.

When I first got my iPhone one of the first games I downloaded was Chopper by Majic Jungle Software (if you don’t know, Majic Jungle Software is a NZ-based one man band run by David Frampton). A simple side-on shooter that sees you flying a helicopter and completing missions (pretty much by shooting anything that moved), it was instant classic. Now, a couple of years later we finally get to play the sequel, Chopper 2.

With the same premise as the first, Chopper…

The New Zealand Herald has launched an iPad app, just in time for the launch of the device here. I won’t beat about the bush: it’s fantastic, it’s beautiful, and it’s free. If you’ll forgive the obvious irony, words don’t really do this kind of app justice so we’ve gone hands-on with a video review and a gallery of screenshots. Hit the ‘read more’.

News apps on the iPad really show off the strengths of this medium. Yes, newspapers have been on the web for some time now, but somewhere between the printed page and the interwebs there is a sense of connection to the publication that gets lost in translation.

Despite the processing power available in desktop and laptop computers, the web experience is often less than engaging: images are often smaller and less detailed than their news-print counterparts, text (particularly on Windows machines) is rendered in such a way that the feeling of ‘print’ is lost altogether, and the layouts are often confusing and unintuitive with obtrusive flash adverts and all sorts of distractions that take you away from the story.

That sense of connection is restored with the iPad, and this app is a…

Do you ever find yourself in need of inspiration? If it’s inspiration for design, branding, art, photography, architecture and more then the Plethora app is for you. Read on for more.

The Plethora app is a very simple one. It puts over 70 of the worlds top design blogs at the tip of your fingers.

When you launch the app you are met with a gallery of photographs showing web design, graphic design, branding, art, illustration, photography, product design, interior design and architecture.

In portrait mode you can swipe up until something catches your eye. If you swipe to the right and keep your finger on the screen then a ring of options appears allowing you to share this item to Twitter, Facebook and email or add it to your favourites or trash.

By tapping the screen you move to more photos around that topic and you are told which company is on show to you with a link to their website which opens within the app. You can again share the item to your social networking hearts desire. A nice feature of the app is once you trash an item it is replaced with another…

Still weighing up an iPad purchase when they are released here? I’ve had mine for just over a month and I thought I’d share my opinion on the device and tell you how I’ve used it so far at home and at work. Read on for my thoughts.

Like so many millions of people round the world a new Apple product excites me. It started with an iMac, then an iPhone 3G, then a MacBook. Now it’s the iPad. I must have read every review about them after release, I weighed up whether or not it was worth it, should I wait till it was released here or find one by other means? I think for about two weeks I changed my mind every day about getting one or not. Once I’d convinced myself and reasoned it in my mind that I would get one it became a matter of when. This led to daily searches on trademe and the like until I was happy with a price. I finally bought an Australian 32GB model back in June.

The first few hours are just brilliant. You find yourself doing everything you’ve seen on the Internet. Using iBooks…

Even if a little overdue one of the great new hardware features on the iPhone 4 is the LED camera flash. Not only have Apple shown us the light so to speak they have also granted developers API access to the LED flash light. This will no doubt see an onslaught of apps taking advantage of this but one of the first out of the blocks is local NZ developers and friends of the site Smudge Apps.

Hit the read more to find out how they are using the LED in their new app.

iPhone 4 is here and gone are the days when a so called torch app was just a bright white blank screen which looked more like your iPhone had just had a meltdown than a flashlight, Smudge apps are here taking advantage of the camera flash LED API’s with their new LED Torch app.

The app is reasonably priced at $1.29 now FREE from the app store, and will be for the foreseeable future. Once downloaded launch the app and your off.

You know that when an app does not even have a settings page that…

I’m not sure if our readers will know this, but there is this game that’s played in New Zealand called “Rugby” and they have a national team called “The All Blacks” (apparently they’re pretty big here). Well if you’ve heard of the game and the team then this app might just interest you. Hit the read more for our look at the Official All Blacks app.

This app was pointed out to us a while ago by it’s developers, Paper Kite Ltd, but we have only just got around to looking at it and considering the All Blacks are a Kiwi institution we just had to take a look, after all you can’t get more Kiwi than this app. We all know how good the All Blacks can be, the question is how good is this app?

The answer, pretty good. It’s clean, simple to use and while I’ve been using the app I haven’t come across any bugs or crashes.

The app has pretty much all the information any All Blacks fan could need. From the latest news to the current squad and for those of you that can’t get enough of…

As we reported just the other day, Sella.co.nz is available now on the app store. Now I’ve had more of a chance to play with it, what do I think? Well I have to say it’s great and has changed the way I will sell online. In fact it’s an app that we feel is an essential app for New Zealanders and so we have added Sella to our App store Essentials. Hit the read more for, well, more and a gallery full of screenshots.

Well, first impressions of the app are good, very good in fact. It’s clean, well laid out, easy to search and find what you are looking for and you can receive all manner of notifications and the best thing…. you can both buy and sell from this app.

Listing an item for sale is the main feature of this app. With clear and straight forward steps and the ability to be able to switch between the app and notes, Safari or any other form of copying info about the item you are selling (for example I copied and pasted a feature-set for an item I am…

Gooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaal!!!
If we were to review every world cup 2010 app in the app store we would probably still be typing away long after the final whistle has blown, there are that many to choose from, free and paid from some well known trusted sports names and some not so well known. The app I have gone out on a limb with and have chosen to recommend and review is World Cup Schedule. How on earth did I pick this one over the others? read on to find out.

You want the facts and info quick: the time of the game, the venue, the up-to-date standings of the tournament  and maybe even who has to lose for your team to go through. That’s exactly what you get  from mahango’s world cup schedule iPhone app. The app is $1.29 from the app store and once you have it there is no excuse for missing a thing.

I tried quite a few of the free world cup apps from well know names such as ESPN, Sky Sports and BBC, some of these had video news updates, match highlights and even push notifications for goals. But then I thought:…

Along with the iPad Case that came the other day, we also received the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. This was one accessory I was looking forward to receiving and it turns out I was right to do so. Hit the Read More to see a video of the connection kit in action.

I have decided I am not going to do a full review of this, however I have done a video showing it in use. One thing I will say is it is fantastic. I would go as far as to say this has opened up a completely different side of the iPad for me. Being able to import pictures and videos and instantly show them to others is fantastic.

In fact just the other day at work, I had to leave the office so I took a picture of a diagram using my iPhone and then imported it to the iPad so that I could view it on the larger screen while I was out. Simply It is brilliant. This is one accessory I urge every single iPad owner to purchase.

For a full and detailed review see iLounge.com…

When I first got my iPad, and I’m sure many of you are the same, I felt it needed some kind of protection. As you may or may not have seen I went out and bought myself a Logitech case from Noel Leemings for $40.

Now, after I don’t know how long of waiting, I finally have my hands on the “official” iPad Case from Apple.

Hit the ‘read more’ to see my thoughts, images and video of the Apple iPad Case.

When you first get the case, (or should I call it a sleeve?), it is in a very thin box. This may sound odd but I expected the box to be larger (thicker). I’m not sure why, I just did. But it is packaged in the usual Apple way, very clean and crisp just leaving the product to speak for itself.

The case itself is made from a durable but light rubbery material, with strengthened panels to give it extra support. As I say the material is durable and makes you feel as though you have some good protection on your device. I am sure the case will gather marks from scratching with…

Ever wondered how much data you use whilst surfing the net on your iPhone? Or when you check your social networking sites throughout the day, how much does it eat into your monthly allowance? Well “Download Meter for Wifi & GPRS/EDGE/3G – reduce spending on mobile internet” is an app that (as well as holding the title for world’s most ridiculously long name) tracks your 3G/GPRS/Wi-Fi use. Read on to find out more!

If, like me, you find yourself on your phone during the day checking twitter or facebook and you are concerned about how much of your monthly data allowance you are using then this is an app for you. Without access to a Wi-Fi network during the day, anything I do with the Internet on my iPhone comes out of my monthly plan. Thankfully these plans are starting to come down in price but to make sure I don’t go over my limit I needed an app to keep track of what I’ve used. The good people at HedonicSoft have designed an app just for this.

Download Meter is a very simple app that can be set up for the individual user…

I don’t know, you wait around forever for a decent eBook reader with a store that actually works in New Zealand and what do you know – two turn up at once. Apple’s iBooks app has been drawing ever closer and tantilising the taste-buds of gadget-centric book fiends the length of breadth of the country, but look! Here comes Whitcoulls, completely out of the blue, crashing the party early and ready to nick your pocket money! Ready to go hands-on? Hit the link.

I’m going to start with the conclusion: Whitcoulls have a great product on their hands here. It’s slick, it’s well-stocked, it’s cheap, and it’s multi-platform. It’s a recipe for success and I congratulate them for getting on board with Kobo and delivering this to New Zealand ahead of Apple.

The app is divided into four main sections: the ‘I’m Reading’ section (your bookshelf), Discover (which lets you explore the catalogue by broad categories such as ‘Romantic reads’ and ‘Modern classics’), Browse (which lets you sort by genre) and Search.

The categories under ‘Discover’ are very well chosen and were a big help for finding books that appeal to me.…

The people at Twitter have finally released their official app. Is it any easier to use than all the other twitter apps out there? Read on to find out.

Like so many other people in the world I like social networking. When I heard of this twitter site that would take over from facebook, naturally I created an account. I then chose to follow a couple of people, I wrote a few tweets, somebody followed me and that was that. I wasn’t really sure of the point of it. A few months later I thought I’d give it a go again and looked at the apps available on my iPhone.

There were loads, some free and some paid but no official one. I used a few different free apps and really got into twitter.

The news that an official app was coming our way was, of course, intriguing. The fact that it was also free made it even more so. As I only ever tweet from my iPhone, any app that is easy to use is all I need.

As with the other Twitter apps the first thing you do is sign in…

New Zealand really does have a growing community of iPhone OS developers, we are even importing them now! The latest is a Wellington based company called HeyApps, and is run by Manuela and Lionel. Manu is Italian and Lio is French and they now live here in New Zealand. They have just released iShear, a sheep shearing game that is ‘NZ inspired’. We thought we’d take a look, see what it’s like and give Manu and Lio a bit of welcome to New Zealand. So what’s it like? Hit the ‘Read More’ to find out…

First off, Manu and Lio are not professional programmers. They started the project 2 months ago with no knowledge of Objective C, just a passion for the iPhone and willingness to learn. So after two months of hard work they have learned the language and managed to release their first game, iShear, and that’s not to be scoffed at.

The basis of iShear, as you may have guessed, is to shear sheep. You have a limited amount of time to complete as many sheep as you can.

iShear has 4 different game modes:

Speed game: In Speed you must shear the sheep as

…

New Zealand iPhone developers AlphaSprite have kindly provided me with a key to their latest iPhone game, Ducked Up!.

We all love hearing about successful New Zealand developers, so read on for more info about this game!

It’s an amazingly simple game, the objective is to get the duckies from one tube to another, while avoiding the dangers that lie in the way. However simple this may sound, the game is actually quite hard!

First you start off with some basic levels that teach you how to control the vortices and what to avoid. Very quickly the game throws you in the deep end with buttons to push, bombs to avoid, and labyrinths of pipes. To move the duckies and other objects around the screen you use controls called vortices, they are basically spinning circles that spit the items out in whatever direction you point the arrow.

And if you do touch a sharp end:

Normally I would play a game like this sitting on the bus on the way to work, however, now that I have a car, most of my gaming time is confined to the time I get home…

MagnumMac has kindly provided me with a Case-Mate Fuel Lite iPhone case to review. In the past we’ve looked at the Mophie Juice Pack and the Ecosol Powerstick and it’s great to get our hands on another player in this market – anything that helps the iPhone’s battery life is a blessing!

Does the Fuel Lite stack up? Read on for my review of this new contender.

My first impressions of the case were that it was quite large, but after the first day I started getting used to it.

First off, some specs. The Fuel is supposed to extend the talk-time, standby-time and internet usage by 1.5 times the normal amount.

The actual times are (as stated on the box):

2 hours more talk time
2 hours more internet time
2.5 hours more video playback time
5 hours more audio playback time
and a crazy 100 hours more standby time (but I mean really, with an iPhone who worries about standby time – we just want to be using it all the time!)

There isn’t much in the box, the case itself, a cable (not 30 pin) and some instructions.

When you plug the…

Wouldn’t it be great if you could type “ipnz” on your iPhone and then have your iPhone automatically convert that abbreviation to “iPhonewzealand”? Well, TextExpander by SmileOnMyMac lets you do just that. TextExpander has one sole purpose in it’s life – to make typing on your iPhone a breeze.

Read on for more.

TextExpander is a great productivity app for making typing MUCH easier. I have been using this app since it’s release in late 2009. The app has some restrictions due to the iPhone OS and is certainly not cheap at $6.49 but I still find this a must-have app which is used daily.

Upon launching the app you are greeted with a pretty standard iPhone app screen. Tap the + symbol and you’re off and running.

The app does exactly what the title would suggest and expands text. Simply enter the abbreviation followed by what you would like the app to convert the abbreviation to, hit done and it’s stored and ready to use. Below I have added the text ‘rl10′ and converted this to “Running late, I will be there in 10 minutes”.

“Snippets” as the app calls them can be organized into folders…

Photography has become a realistic hobby for all of us in recent years with the price of good DSLR cameras dropping every few months. Recognising the lack of a good and cheap tutorial on how to use these cameras, theDesign have created two apps to guide you through what your camera can do. Are you ready to venture away from the Auto mode of your camera? Read on if you are!

The digital age has opened up a whole new world for people who used to be afraid of photography due to the expense of mistakes and the inability to instantly review their work. Nowadays if the shot isn’t right we just delete and try again. Recent years have seen Canon, Nikon, Sony and others make DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) photography a relatively inexpensive hobby with immediate effects.

Many people over the last few years have bought a DSLR without understanding the settings and the photographic opportunities that await them. Photography books and courses to show you how to use your camera can be expensive and instruction manuals can be, well, instruction manuals.

Thankfully, the clever people at theDesign in Wellington have come up with two apps.…

Portable speakers. Let’s face it: they’re usually a bit rubbish. Cheap and nasty with tinny sound and awful build quality, most portable speakers hobble the quality of the sound that your iPhone, iPod or iPad has stored in its vast music library. So when we heard about the the Wowee One and its ability to output incredible bass, we had to try it for ourselves. Check-out our review of the diminutive and deceptive little musical block that pumps the bass louder than you’d ever imagine.

The Wowee One is a compact speaker, about the same size as the iPhone in width and length, but considerably deeper. There are two sockets: a mini USB socket for charging the battery, and a 3.5mm headphone jack for inputting sound. The sides are constructed of matte black plastic, with a glossy black top where the speaker itself is located. The base is rubbery and ever-so-slightly squidgy – more about that later.

Connect your iPhone to the Wowee One and a blue LED will indicate that it is ready to rock. If you start playing music with the Wowee in your hand, it will sound tinny but you will feel bass…

Ciao Baby is a Kiwi-developed app to help parents with hard-to-settle babies who have tried to use the ‘controlled-crying’ or ‘Ferber’ method (where baby is reassured at regular intervals while he or she ‘cries it out’), but who get lost with the timing. As a Dad to a seventeen-month-old baby boy I am no stranger to this problem, and depending on your take on this rather emotive subject, this could be the solution.

In a nutshell, the app is a timer to remind you when you need to go and reassure bub. The idea is that when you put baby down, if they start to cry you fire-up the app and hit ‘Start’. This triggers a countdown timer starting first at two minutes, then doubling to four, then doubling again to eight and… well, you get the picture.

Before countdown commences for the first time, a checklist pops up and ensures that you’ve carried out all responsible checks such as making sure that baby’s nappy is clean, baby is not hungry etc. Only when you have checked ‘yes’ to each will the countdown start, which is a nice touch and shows that it…

If you’re not familiar with LogMeIn, you’re missing out on one of the best online tools around. Available in free or paid-subscription versions, LogMeIn lets you access your Mac or PC from any other computer in the world easily and securely. And I don’t mean just accessing your files and folders, but the whole thing – your entire desktop environment. Through the web browser of the computer you’re sat at, you can log in to your home computer and control it just as if you were at the computer itself.

Well now LogMeIn is available for both iPhone and iPad. Both versions come bundled together as one app, and at $38.99 it sounds expensive but it’s an investment that is certainly worth consideration. If you want to be able to access your computer on the move, you’ll forget about the cost after just a few minutes of use.

First, let’s look at the iPhone version. You’re probably thinking: how usable can an environment like Mac OSX or Windows be when its shrunk down to a screen the size of a playing card? And you’d have a valid concern that I shared and that put me…

So after taking a look at the Apple Component Cables, when we were given the chance to take a look at the Apple VGA Cable we thought it would be a great opportunity to do a comparison of the two.

Hit the ‘read more’ to find out what we think and see a video of it in action.

First the Good:

The dock connector to VGA cable is a neat little cable (on it’s own). It brilliantly outputs certain apps to a Monitor or projector / presentation system.
If you have Keynote installed then it handles this output brilliantly, as soon as you switch keynote to presentation mode it outputs to the display and gives you handy on screen instructions. It also allows you to use the screen as a virtual red laser pointer, by holding your finger down on the screen.

Next, the not so good:

I realise that it is just a cable that outputs your iPad display to a Monitor or TV, but it was my understanding (and many others) that it would output…

There have long been apps for public transport in Christchurch and Wellington on the App store, and I have often wondered when somebody would do one for Auckland. Well, now a new app, Transit Auckland, finally gives us Aucklanders train, bus and ferry timetables at the touch of a screen. But will it make that trip easier to organise? Read on to find out.

This week saw the release of Transit Auckland for $1.29 from elounge software providing all the timetables for trains, buses and ferries in the Auckland region. It requires no internet access, so is aimed at iPod touch users as well as iPhone users.

When you launch the app the home screen gives you the choice of bus, train and ferry at the top, as well as a place to store your favourite timetables. Selections are made by scrolling through the menus to find the bus/train/ferry and start and end points for your journey.

If any of you have tried to use the Maxx website on your iPhone, you’ll know it can be troublesome at times so I was hoping that this App would allow me to…

Ever wanted to track your fuel top-ups without having all those little EFTPOS receipts hanging round? If so, VehiCal - Car Expense Management app is for you. Read on for more!

At just zero dollars it’s very easy on the pocket (not adding to those already exorbitant petrol prices!)

I originally started looking for an expense monitoring app when I got my car a month ago and decided that I wanted to see what sort of kilometers-per-litre I was getting. Of all the apps I looked at, VehiCal seemed to be the best.

So, onto the app itself. First off you need to set up your car.

You can add pictures, Name, Model and Year. You can also add more cars as required.

Once you have set up your car, tap on the cog on the image to set up your measurement settings. You will want to change these to ones that suit New Zealand, like KM for the distance and KM/L instead of the default MPG (miles-per-gallon).

The main screen shows an overview of your last gas purchase, expense and trip, as well as totals for each. It also shows you your fuel economy. This can be pretty inaccurate at first. I…

If you’re looking for some inspiration to freshen up your home with a lick of paint but are lacking in the old colour-coordination department, then this new Kiwi-coded app from Resene could help. By matching colours in objects and pictures that you come across in everyday life to a colour within Resene’s extensive range, Resene ColourMatch can help you achieve the look you thought was reserved for the home and garden magazines. How? Read on.

Resene ColourMatch is a simple-enough app to use – fire it up and you’ll be presented with the ‘Source’ screen from where you can select the starting point for your inspiration. You can pick from your camera, your camera roll or the colour spectrum. What this means is that if you’re out and about and come across something that is in a colour that you’d like to capture in your home, you can either snap a picture of it there-and-then using the ‘camera’ option and Colour-match it right away, or you can snap it with the iPhone’s own camera app and then access it from the camera-roll within the Resene app later on.

Either way, once you have your image on-screen within…

After a week of playing with the iPad and working out what does and doesn’t work, here is our look at the iPad, what it is like to use here in New Zealand (before it’s officially available) and what we think of it.

Now you may be wondering why it has taken so long to write this, and the answer is that I wanted to have a good sit down with it and figure it all out first. Whenever you get a new toy like this you tend to spend the first few days showing it off to other people who are eager to have a go, and consequently you don’t really get to know it enough to give your verdict on it right away.

So without further ado hit the ‘read more’ link to find out more thoughts of the iPad… a week later.

When I received the iPad, although I had read all about it, I was surprised at just how small the box was. For some reason, despite even having made a life-size cardboard cut-out of it (which Steve took a photograph of himself with and put it on his Facebook page on April fools’ day),…

We all love Safari on our iPhones with its ability to bring the ‘real’ web to our devices, but that ‘real’ experience comes at a real cost for those of us on a lower mobile data plan who can’t justify spending any more. As websites become more heavily loaded with photos and graphics they chip away at our mobile data dollar ever faster. So what is the solution? Well, one solution could be Opera Mini which was added to the App Store just today. Here we’ll take a look at the key differences between it and Safari and find out whether the savings add up.

Opera Mini is a free browser app that, whilst new to the iPhone, has been around for a long time on other formats such as Windows Mobile. The iPhone version was announced to the world in March but was widely expected to be rejected by Apple for being too similar to Safari. In a surprising move the app was approved and added to the App Store today. Opera Mini  has been designed from the ground up for both speed and low data consumption. To achieve this, the browser includes options to alter…