Sponge
Sponge is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Price: $2.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1.1
Controls Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
iDevice Integration Rating: 4.15 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4.35 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.38 out of 5 stars
Oobah studio’s “Sponge” helps to bring all of your news and social networking needs together in one convenient app. Currently Sponge supports Facebook, GMail, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and RSS feeds from sites that you input. The app is extremely simple to use, just click to add a feed, insert the website, user name and email, or required information. Head back to the home screen, and refresh the page.
![IMG_0028[1]](http://www.148apps.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_00281-200x300.PNG "IMG_0028[1]")
Between my regular day job, part time reviewing apps for 148apps.com, a fairly active social life, and a pregnant wife, my days are pretty full. Sponge is an app that helps alleviate some of the time constraints I face on a day to day basis. I like it because it allows me to one click update all of my most visited sites with any of the recent news articles, Twitter posts, status changes, and news information that I would otherwise have to spend time gathering myself.
I love using my iPod touch for social networking. The big limitation to iPods however, is their lack of 3G coverage. For those of you with constant wifi access, a 3G connection, etc., this app has even more to offer. The neat grouping of information makes navigating through the various accounts a breeze. Facebook and Twitter messages can be uploaded, emails sent back and forth, YouTube accounts of various users reviewed, and the most recent news stories retrieved, all from the comfort of one app. Find a news story you like? Post it directly into your Facebook or Twitter account without ever leaving Sponge.
Sponge is not without its flaws, however. This is especially true for iPod Touch owners. The first and most significant is the need for a wifi or 3G connection for updates. It is possible to check over information that’s been previously downloaded, while there isn’t a connection available. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it helps if you’re on the run and just need a quick update to check out later. The problem is that Sponge also continues to pop up network error messages when there is no connection available. Not a terrible problem for those with some semblance of patience, but a terror for those lacking this quality.
Sponge only updates on status, news, etc. You won’t be cycling through your friend’s list, changing settings on your accounts, or in my case, checking out the most recent web-comic strip from Ctrl-Alt-Del. You will however, find out what’s going on in your friend’s lives, exchange Twitter messages, and find out what Tim Buckley (Ctrl-Alt-Del’s writer) has been up to as of late through is news feed.
Sponge provides an excellent compact vehicle to collect all of a person’s important information into. For those people who like the convenience of having information available to them quickly and efficiently, Sponge is a solid app to achieve just that. This is a perfect app for those of you looking to speed up your surfing and sharing of content. At $2.99, it’s a cheap and easy way to stay updated.
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Enter Jet Ball, an Arkanoid clone that takes all the past successes and failures of the “brick-breaking” genre and establishes a new standard. Prior to “Jet Ball’s” emergence, most “brick-breaking” games/clones suffered from a lack of innovation/creativity, etc., i.e. instead of re-defining an 80’s genre, most developers, in the name of all things nostalgia, chose to simply “mimic” it, resulting in bland, frustrating games suffering from such things as lack of creativity, poor/bad control/movement, lack of responsiveness and consistent proportion issues, e.g. no/few/lame “power-ups” and paddles, blocks and balls that were disproportionate to each other, to name a few. The developers at CODEFREEZE obviously share my sentiment and developed a quality “brick-breaking” game that shatters the bricks of it’s predecessors.
Jet Ball’s premise is the same as other “brick-breakers” in its genre: Move the paddle, using your finger, thumb or other appendage to bounce the “ball” against all bricks/obstacles to destroy them and, thus, win the level. That said, Jet Ball boasts a very well-designed, responsive control scheme: Simply touch the pulsating circle under the paddle and move left or right to control it. Unlike other games in this genre, the area between the paddle and the bottom of the screen provide perfect space for appendage placement and the controls are both very smooth and responsive.
Fly, Kiwi, Fly! is a light-hearted go-the-distance game featuring a flightless bird, lots of upgrades, and a trip around the world. You play a stubborn kiwi who’s hell-bent on learning to fly. As you add more upgrades to your kiwi’s arsenal, the game soon becomes a challenge to earn as many wacky achievements and fly as far as possible. It’s a great pick-up-and-play game, and the cheery humor is enough to keep me coming back.
The result is a vicious cycle of one-more-time: “I’ll just do one more flight so I can buy that catapult…ooh, shiny, just let me test the catapult once before I put this down…oh, but I was so close to reaching Italy!…” Yeah. It gets addicting pretty quickly.
Bella Boo won’t be winning any beauty contests. But she will keep you entertained with a pretty fun and addicting game.
Pounce takes the solitary out of Solitaire, according to its developer,