The world’s most comprehensive list of iPad apps for tweens (and their parents)

It used to be easy to pick out appropriate iPad fare for my son and I to enjoy together. What amuses a toddler or young child, however, doesn’t necessarily engage a tween.
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RT @romainguy: RT @romainguy: Google Calendar is now on the Play Store: https://t.co/BpJ3urJKby gkilleen (gk)


Musical tower defense game Bad Hotel flips genre conventions on their heads

What I love about the App Store is just how often truly original and creative games come out. Granted, the vast majority of them are derivative clones. This is especially true of the tower defense genre. But with so many games being released every day, there is always something worthwhile. This week, that something is Bad Hotel from Lucky Frame. It’s a game that asks, “What if tower defense games were actually about defending towers?” Then it throws in unique visuals, a big Texan bad guy, and music-making mechanics before calling it a day.
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RT @UN: #SouthAfrica: #humanrights expert said this week that safety conditions at mines have room for improvement http://t.co/vtd3HAhrby wanimo9 (Waithira Macharia)


The Diablo III Beta: IGN’s Readers Have Their Say

A few weeks ago, we put the word out for anyone playing the Diablo III beta to tell us what they think of it. We received hundreds of responses, via IGN comments, Facebook and email. A huge thank you to everyone who constructively contributed! Unfortunately, we obviously can’t have everyone represen…


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John Mayer covers Lana Del Rey’s Videogames http://t.co/tkILWxPw (cc @soodcito ) – by betotoro (B. ✌)


Drafts Is A Must-Have For Anyone Looking To Quickly Get Thoughts Down On Their iPhone

Drafts Is A Must-Have For Anyone Looking To Quickly Get Thoughts Down On Their iPhone

Drafts by Agile Tortoise icon

Drafts ($ 0.99) by Agile Tortoise is a fast and easy way to jot down ideas with your iPhone.

It seems that Launch Center (our original review) has launched a new trend of “shortcut” apps, but who says this is a bad thing? Personally, I love Launch Center (it’s in my dock), and I appreciate any app that can make life easier. So as a writer, I really appreciated seeing an app like Drafts come out.

I was lucky enough to test out Drafts for the past week — it was originally scheduled to come out on Monday, April 9, but sometimes impatience can get the best of us. I have to say that this is one of the most versatile apps I’ve had the pleasure of using.

Drafts by Agile Tortoise screenshot

When you launch the app, you get a blank screen where you can start composing your draft. This draft can be anything – a thought, an idea, the beginning of a blog post, or even a [humorous] tweet. Just start writing; when you are writing, you will see a word and character count appear at the bottom of the compose screen. This is good for those that need to keep track of how word counts, but I found it useful for making sure that my thoughts are short enough for Twitter (with the 140 character limit).

If you have the amazing Terminology Ph app installed on your iPhone as well, then good news! Drafts has full integration with the app for looking up words and even getting replacements, all without having to cut and paste from one app to the other.

Additionally, Markdown is supported, which is wonderful. I write in Markdown every single day; knowing that I can also use Markdown in Drafts makes my life a whole lot easier. Oh, and TextExpander is supported too – a writer’s dream come true.

Once you’re done with a draft, you can take action with it. Actions allow you to tweet the draft through native iOS 5 Twitter support, Tweetbot, or the official Twitter app. Don’t want to tweet it? Then you can email the text or copy it to the device clipboard. If you’re like me, and use Markdown, you can even do a Markdown preview, send a Markdown email, or copy the Markdown syntax text to the clipboard and dump it into the writing app of your choice (here’s my fine comparison on some of my personal favorite writing apps).

Of course, since this is an app for drafts, you don’t even have to take action on any of your drafts, if you don’t want to (perfection takes time!). Tapping on the paper icon will allow you to see all of your available drafts. If any of them have had actions applied to them, you will be able to see what the action was and when it occurred. If you want to add a new one, just tap on the + button.

You can search through your drafts as well. Drafts features real-time search, so results will appear while you type, which is definitely nice to have. Having search may not be as useful when you only have a few drafts to go through, but as you start amassing a lot of writings, you will be glad it’s there.

While Drafts may not feature app settings, there is the option to change the appearance under the Action menu. The appearance settings include four different themes (I personally went with Grayscale, but there are the Default, Night, and Sepia themes as well) and 13 fonts (American Typewriter, Baskerville, Cochin, Courier, Georgia, Gill Sans, Helvetica Neueu, Hoefler Text, Marker Felt, Palatino, Times New Roman, Thonburi, and Verdana). The fonts can be adjusted to small, medium, or large size as well.

Drafts by Agile Tortoise screenshot

Simply put, Drafts is a new favorite app of mine and deserves a spot on my home screen. The interface is simple, elegant, and looks great. However, that isn’t to say that there isn’t any room for improvement. Currently, the app does not have landscape support, though the developers seem to have that in store for the future. There also isn’t any way to readjust the order that actions appear in – if you don’t want to tweet any of your drafts, you will have to always scroll down the list to get what you want.

Currently, Drafts is iPhone only, and lacks iCloud (or even Dropbox) sync. I hope it’s not too far when we will be able to see an iPad app with syncing capability so that all of our work is with us everywhere we go.

Despite these minor issues, I am loving Drafts. It serves as a great place to draft your witty tweets now, especially since Birdhouse seems to be defunct (no update since August 2010). It also doesn’t hurt that it has many more features besides housing your finely-crafted tweets.

Make sure to check out Drafts in the App Store for $ 0.99.


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Facebook gathering private info: A WALL Street Journal report has found handing over sensitive information to Fa… http://t.co/u1nX6kS0by GameFaceWise (FaceGameWise)


Readdle Streamlines The User Interface Of Their Google Calendar Client App In v3.0

Readdle Streamlines The User Interface Of Their Google Calendar Client App In v3.0

The Consumer Electronics Show was a nice change but now it’s time to jump back into app news, that is, until iWorld shakes things up again. One of the pieces of news overshadowed by last week’s excitement was Readdle’s release of Calendars v3.0, an update that refined the user interface and included performance enhancements.

Calendars 3 UI improvements begin with a cleaner look. The most obvious, i think, is the streamlined upper navigation bar. Rearrangement of the view mode buttons and header label help create more visibility of the actual calendar and otherwise focus on using the space more efficiently. Another reorganization is strictly iPhone and iPod touch: a new portrait week view. The new mode allows you to see an entire week of events with very little to no scrolling required.

Calendars version 3.0 (iPhone 4) - Custom Keyboard and Week View

Custom keyboards make data entry quicker and portrait Week view is an even better overview

Just as important as being able to view events quickly and easily is the ability to add them with the least amount of hassle. The previous, and very typical of calendar apps, method wasn’t troublesome, however, Readdle has implemented custom keyboards to make the entry process of dates, times, reminders, and alerts even simpler by providing only relevant buttons. For example, time entry is broken down to hours and five minute intervals grouped into morning and afternoon sections, all without a need to scroll lengthy lists.

Further enhancements made via Calendars 3 include a reduced data exchange, making synchronization with the Google Calendar service faster and less costly when on cellular connections, and a change from a basic tap to tap and hold to add a new entry to help prevent unwanted “new event” prompts, plus the addition of small arrows to let you know that there are events off screen and events designated as “all-day” are constantly visible in day view.

Calendars is a universal app compatible with iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch running iOS 4.0 or later, and available in the App Store for $ 6.99.

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Highly Addictive Word Association Game, iAssociate 2, Celebrates One Million Downloads of their iPhone Application


Turku, Finland (PRWEB) December 19, 2011

Finnish gaming company, TicBits Ltd., announced today that their widely popular word association iPhone app has been downloaded over one million times from Apples App Store. iAssociate 2, is a highly addictive word association game where players have to figure out words or phrases that are related to one another. The free app comes with over 10 hours of levels to sharpen your mind with additional levels to purchase.

The 1 millionth milestone is the highlight of a very successful year for iAssociate 2. This summer, ABC’s Good Morning America featured the game in their report on how to keep your kids’ brains sharp. And celebrity talk show host, Ricki Lake, named it one of her new favorite apps on a live interview via uStream. Popular gaming site, SlidetoPlay.com, gave it a 4/4 stating the app was “way more fun than word association has any right to be. A Must Have!”.

“We’re really excited to reach the million downloads milestone for iAssociate 2. This is a testament to how well the formula for the game works and we’ll continue improving it even further and add even more great levels to the game, says TicBits CEO, Fredrik Wahrman.

TicBits is also seeing tremendous growth in activity within the application with thousands of new players added daily and over 100,000 active players. This is thanks to the number and variety of themed levels within the app. iAssociate 2 was just recently updated with new levels for purchase. Among the available levels is the timely Winter Wonderland, a holiday themed level full of winter associations from snowball fights to Santa Claus.

iAssociate 2 is also available for the iPad as iAssociate 2 HD and is an extremely successful application on Facebook. Additional platform support is something currently in the works.

iAssociate 2 is a free application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Download it today from the App Store: http://bit.ly/vLxHAu.

TicBits Ltd. is a Finnish game development company that was founded in April 2010. TicBits main focus is developing social and casual games for the iPhone, Android and Facebook platforms including iAssociate2, Sudoku, Minesweeper, Solitaire and Mahjong. To date TicBits games have been enjoyed by millions of gamers worldwide. Follow TicBits on Twitter at @TicBits.

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