( $1.99 )

A news app that covers nineteen different areas of the government

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There are many reasons why I like Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite and I’ll tell you about them in a moment. First, I have a confession to make.

I own a BlackBerry.  I have for a while now, long before anyone knew what an iPod Touch or iPhone was and probably long after as well.  Why?  Well, although I think my iPod Touch is great for lots of things, writing (something I engage in frequently) is still something I struggle to do on the dang thing.  I can type over 90 wpm (seriously) on a desktop or notebook keyboard, so speed and ease are critical factors.  Plus, I’m just a physical keyboard kinda guy.

Because I’ve owned various incarnations of BlackBerry smartphones (five different models in all), I’m fairly well acquainted with a few other mobile office suite products.  Some are good and some are not so good. Most are not so good at syncing without the umbilical cord (USB) or- in the case of the iPhone or iPod- require a wifi connection to a desktop application.  Many of the mobile computing packages out there are getting better, but many still have a ways to go.

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite is, of course, compatible with Microsoft Office.  More important to me, though, is the fact that this app enables me to access documents I have created and stored on multiple cloud services.  Not just Google Docs, but others such as Box.net, Dropbox, and MobileMe, most of which I have been using for some time now.  What this means is that I can finally let go of the umbilical since anything I’ve uploaded and stored with those services is easily accessible via Quickoffice.  And should I choose to make changes to a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet with my iPod Touch, those changes can quickly be updated.  If you are not yet a cloud services user, it is a snap to access and upload files via wifi transfer.

There are some perceived shortcomings to this app that are worth mentioning.  Quickoffice cannot yet create or edit PowerPoint presentations, though they can be viewed or emailed.  Also, several users have commented on the fact that they had to set up a Quickoffice Connect account before they could establish cloud service accounts with Google Docs or Box.net on their iDevice.  I don’t remember having to do that myself, but enough folks have mentioned it that I felt obligated to put that possibility out there.

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite is available in the AppStore for $9.99, a justifiable investment given what the app offers in return.  If you use your iDevice for writing and spreadsheets, viewing PDFs and documents in multiple formats or want the option to do so, Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite is worth your consideration.

And while I may not be giving up my BlackBerry anytime soon, it is no longer the first and only device I reach for when I want to get some writing done, either.

iTunes Link – Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite

Version 3.0.0

Tested on an iPod Touch 3.1.3

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Price: FREE (for 30 days)    Score: 8/10    By Steve Beaudry

Email is a wonderful thing. Just about all of your favorite web applications and social media sites can notify you of updates using email. Unfortunately, this often leads to a cluttered inbox (depending, of course, on how popular you are).

iPriortyMail by Ahlquist Software helps you out by not only notifying you of incoming email, but also filtering that email by sender and giving you options for a different type of notification per sender. What’s really great is that it comes with pre-set settings for popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you’ve been counting on email notifications to tell you when you’ve got something new, this is your app.

It’s important to note that this is not a fully functional email client. When it sends you the notification, you can read the email in the app, but when you press the reply button it takes you to the iPhone’s native email app. I haven’t decided whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, the iPhone’s Mail app is all one needs to compose an email and it works perfectly. On the other hand, it gives you one  more step, one more second of loading time. Before iPriorityMail, I used another app for notifications and it was able to show me the alert and, upon load, switch to the appropriate app. iPriorityMail’s system makes it faster to see the mail and decide to respond, but it also acts as an unnecessary middle-man. So, there are pros and cons to the system here and they seem to be about equal to me. If there’s something you prefer, I’m sure you can make that decision.

The big draw here, however, is its integration with social networking sites. If you have Facebook email you every time you get a new notification, or Twitter every time you get a new DM or Follower, iPriorityMail will automatically detect that email address and give you a whole new set of settings for those notifications.  There are dozens of different ringtones from which to choose including ones that simply have a female voice saying “Twitter” or “Facebook.” The ability to change the ringtone also extends beyond simple social networking sites to whatever contact you wish to differentiate from every other email. Choose whatever contact is in your address book and create a unique notification for him so you instantly know whether or not the email you’re getting is important just by the sound.

iPriorityMail is free to download and try out for a month, but after that you have to pay $0.99 for the privilege of push notifications. Use of Apple’s push servers isn’t free, so, like most developers without a major corporation behind them have decided, the cost gets pushed out to you. So, if it’s worth it to you, then it’s a pretty good deal. Personally, I’m a cheapskate and would rather stick with the native app with its little red number on the corner.

All in all, this is a solid app that does what it aims to quite well. You can tune out certain emails in favor of the most important ones and give those emails that you choose a specific alert that tells you exactly what’s coming in. Not a bad deal at all, I say.

iPriorityMail requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch.

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THQ’s dedicated iPhone development studio is no more, but one of the company’s last efforts, De Blob Revolution ($2.99), has made its way to the App Store despite Universomo’s recent and unfortunate closing.

Following up on one of THQ’s early App Store hits, De Blob Revolution scales down the town-painting action of the original title for an altogether different kind of gameplay experience.

De Blob Revolution is a puzzle game in which players must plot a straight path through as many graydians as possible before reaching each level’s exit. Cross your own color path, and the level restarts. Don’t do this.

De Blob Revolution features three gameplay modes and five difficulty levels, giving players the choice between laid-back puzzles and frantic reaction-based challenges.

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After playing Street Fighter IV for 30 minutes, I got enough of the game to offer the following.  This is about the best old school fighting game that is currently available on the iPhone/Touch system.

At first, I wasn’t really sure about the lack of using a real joystick to move the characters around and properly time and control the sequence for my attacks.  I spent a little time in the DoJo initially to go over some practice moves before moving onto Tournament mode.

If you’ve ever played S…Read More

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Microtransactions are still considered an emerging business model in the West, but EA Mobile’s Oliver Miao argued that in a couple years, microtransactions could be a necessity for the most successful iPhone games.

“Make microtransactions core to your game,” Miao said at GDC this week. “Going forward, I think most games are going to need to have them.”

Miao is speaking from his own personal experience. Miao and Centerscore’s mobile game, Surviving High School was a hit in 2007, which led EA to acquire the studio in 2008 from Vivendi following the Vivendi/Activision merger. By January 2009, EA wanted to bring Surviving High School to the iPhone’s App Store.

But the process of bringing the game to the iPhone was fraught with difficulties. EA wanted Miao’s team to create the game as fast as possible in order to beat the oncoming rush of competition on the platform. At the time, the App Store dominated by 99 cent-games, with a few bigger brands coming up the ranks.

“There was this fear that as all these larger brands started coming in, it’d be harder for a smaller game like Surviving High School would succeed,” said Miao.

The game-changer for Miao was when in March 2009, Apple said it was bringing microtransactions to the App Store. Exactly how the team would incorporate the model – while appeasing EA Mobile execs – would prove to be a challenge.

For one, the App Store only allows for 99 cent microtransactions. If EA sold Surviving High School for 99 cents or $1.99 as originally planned, it’d be difficult to justify a “microtransaction” that costs as much or almost as much as the game itself.

Eventually, the development team thought of offering free episodes of Surviving High School, then charge for exclusive content. “We were rejected” by EA execs, said Miao. His bosses thought that the dev team wanted to give away too much content for free.

On the other hand, EA execs wanted to sell each episode for 99 cents each – they were completely at odds. “We thought by giving this content away, we could sell so many units of our game, it will more than make up for it.”

But after that rejection, Miao thought that the dev team found a compromise with a TV-like model. The studio would release free weekly episodes of Surviving High School, but each episode would only be free for one week. If people wanted to download past episodes, they’d have to pay.

“We thought, this should be a really good compromise solution,” he said. “But again, we were rejected. … This is my opinion – EA Mobile makes mistakes too,” Miao said, tongue-in-cheek.

By May 2009, EA execs were planning to make a trip to visit the team’s studio – never a good sign, said Miao. The execs were not happy with the game’s progress, and gave the studio a few days to come up with a new design. “So our studio was in a panic,” Miao said. “People think that big companies don’t care about quality, but obviously [these] execs did.”

The Surviving High School team re-pitched the game in 2009 with another tweak. This time, EA would release episodes for free initially, and call it a “promotion.” Meanwhile, the publisher would look at the game’s progress over the first two months – if the TV model worked, then they’d continue with it. If not, then they’d sell episodes under a traditional model.

EA execs accepted the new pitch. The game eventually launched in November 2009, but it debuted at the bottom of the charts, and stayed there on the first day. But it gradually did move upward, and made it as high as number 16 on the top-grossing apps rankings. Since then, it’s been seeing peaks and valleys, driven by new microtransaction content.

“It’s pretty rare to see games that have been out on the marketplace for a while to have these up and down movements,” Miao said. “But if you have microtransactions built in, you can control the place on the charts.”

And just this week, the company released a “megapack” that added new content to the game, most of which was developed in response to fan feedback and reviews. In a day, the game went from 68 to 30 on the top-grossing ranks.

A final bit of advice from Miao: “Don’t go head to head with EA.” Going up against the mega-corporation is extremely difficult. “Instead find your own green pastures” on the iPhone.

[This news item was written by Kris Graft and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

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Here at GDC 2010 we had the chance to meet with Benjamin Zuckerer of CipSoft and have a look at the upcoming iPhone version of their popular TibiaME mobile MMO.

TibiaME is an exclusively mobile, top-down 2D MMO that made its debut on Nokia platform devices six years ago and has been growing its community ever since. At present there are approximately 50,000 active players in the game world, which consists of 67 islands, with 16 levels each. The islands exhibit a variety of different terrain types, such as forest, dungeons, ice, and "undead."

TibiaME places the player in the game world as either a warrior or a wizard. The islands of the world are peopled by other online players and a host of enemy characters that range from squirrels to demons — 56 types in all. There are magic-using boss monsters to contend with, as well. During the demonstration we were given of the pre-release iPhone client, there was no lack of activity in the world, as can be seen in our demo video.

While the iPhone version of the game client ties into the same game world that has been running these six years, it is a complete, ground-up rewrite that has been under development for a year and a half. The 20×20-pixel character graphics of previous versions of the game have been redrawn at a rather more detailed 50×50 pixels for the iPhone version, a new user interface has been implemented, and fight sequence animations have been added to the mix, as well.

The iPhone release will make its debut mid-year and follow the "freemium" price model. The base release can be downloaded free of charge and offers two (of the total 67) islands to explore. Characters playing in this mode are limited to a maximum of level 20 experience. Those wanting to experience the full game world can buy play time in blocks of one (5 euros) or 4 months (12 euros). Any character that has been built up in the pay model will retain all stats in the event an unrenewed block of time, but will be unable to level higher without the purchase of additional play time. The developer estimates that the base, free play experience delivers about one month of engaging play for the typical user.

To keep the game fresh, the developer has been in the practice of releasing a series of updates over the course of a year: 12 small that alter various game details, and 2 large, bringing new features and notable enhancements.

The only stand-out negative we saw about the title is its complete lack of any in-game music or sound effects. The iPhone version will allow the user to play tracks from their iTunes song library, however. And, of course, the main stand-out positive is the six years the game has been live and the sizable community that has grown within it, a most iPhone MMO's can't point to.

See our gameplay video for a look at the action in the pre-release client.

TibiaME for the iPhone is expected to debut mid-2010. Additional screenshots of the game can be seen at CipSoft's TibiaME Facebook page.

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