iPhone Alley - Reviews

Postage is an app that allows you to create amazing looking electronic postcards to e-mail to your loved ones. The app is gorgeous to the smallest detail and feels completely natural to use. It literally takes seconds to master and you can count on the outcome of your design always looking super swanky!

Remember Rock'em Sock'em Robots, the old game where a couple of robots try to knock each other's heads off? SmackBOTS is that, on the iPhone. The concept is still just as simple and the amount of frustration is just as high, but the game's been given some shiny graphics, a little story, and taken out of the old plastic boxing locale.  

Grocery Gadget is yet another grocery list maker to hit the App Store. Like other apps of its kind, it lets you create shopping lists and then check off the items as you place them in your cart. Unlike other apps of its kind, it also allows you to take a picture of the item you want. This comes in really handy if you're sending someone else to the store and want to make sure they get the right scent of fabric softener. Another unique feature is that you can import lists from Grocery IQ (another popular grocery app)!

Circuit Strike (a.k.a. cs.one) is the old school computer game Asteroids given new attitude and hopped up on energy drinks.  Featuring hypnotic graphics, a driving techno beat, and incredible difficulty, Cirucuit Strike will appeal to twitch-fast action gamers looking for a quick challenge. Hack your way through computer main frames and destroy as many data cores as possible before death inevitably takes you. If nostalgia for a pleasant game of Asteroids has you interested in cs.one, you should probably look elsewhere.

TweetMic is an app that makes it possible to post audio messages to your Twitter account from your iPhone. The app is basic and does no more than expected of it, but this is executed relatively well and is an easier (and safer) alternative to tweeting while driving. Voicetal LLC just might have something here....

Defender Chronicles: Legend of the Desert King is a new fantasy-themed tower defense game with a few great twists that set it apart from the crowd. You are the kingdom’s greatest general, leading your knights, archers, and mages against the evil hordes. You must place your troop guilds in strategic positions along the enemies’ path and destroy them before they reach your gate. Units can be upgraded 5 times as you gain funds, and some units can then change classes to become even more powerful. The final obstacle between the hordes and the gate is you, the Hero General of the empire.

Stick It is a great list/memo app that's easy to use and more importantly, super fast to access. When your arms are full, the last thing you want to have to do is unlock your phone, scroll through your apps, and wait for your to-do list to load. While those things really don't take THAT long to accomplish, it can be a real hassle while trying to juggle a baby and a shopping basket. Developer Mark Peterson has created an app that can completely replaced the iPhone's default, Notes. All you have to do is make your note and then post it as your device's wallpaper.

Sly-Q is yet another one of those simple, yet entertaining puzzle games that frequently show up in the app store. Despite this fact, the developers did a pretty decent job making this particular app especially sleek and one-of-a-kind. The idea is to slide around the tiles that lie within a main shape to achieve a certain pattern in as little time and moves as possible. The tiles move in groups, horizontally and vertically, and your job is to make the overall shape look like the "goal" image.

Monster Pinball is a gorgeous and fantastically executed game for the iPhone. I would even go so far as to say it's possibly the best pinball app out there to date! Matmi sure hit the nail on the head with this one. The controls are fantastic, the animations are smooth as butter, and the overall look is polished and not quite like anything I've ever seen before.

Beejive IM (pronounced "bee-hive") is an instant messaging application that supports nearly every chat system known to the Internet, including AIM, Yahoo!, Facebook, Google Talk, and MSN. You can log in to multiple accounts at once, chat with as many buddies as you like, and even send them photos and voice memos. In an upcoming update, you'll even be able to send videos from your iPhone 3GS. And of course, version 3.0 (which this review is about) comes with support for push notifications!