One of our readers commented on yesterday’s post about the recent update to the task app Things. The writer noted that while Things is “pretty” it is also…

“incomplete and development is painfully slow, adding minor features at a snail’s pace while we are still waiting on major ones, ones that are in the desktop app and not on iPhone yet or are simply missing.”

As frusterating as this might be, it is made even worse because…“Toodledo is improving rapidly”.

His comment concluded that as a result, Toodledo…

“….has replaced Things on my iPhone at a third of the price and without the need for a $50 Mac desktop application.”

The post could not have been any more timely.

As we posted last week, Pangea did a great job bringing their game Nanosaur 2 to the iPhone. It has proven to be more than a bit popular and for good reason. The game looks, sounds and plays fantasticaly well. (To get a peak you can check out our video overview HERE.)

In Nanosaur 2 you…

pilot a flying dinosaur from the future who is equipped with massive firepower! Your goal is to find and retrieve the missing dinosaur eggs, and to do that you’ll have to blow up a whole lotta stuff! You’ll battle other Nanosaurs and their defense systems, and collect powerups which give you a large array of weaponry ranging from heat seeking missiles to cluster bombs.

Flying dinosaurs and things that go BOOM! What could be better! At the release price of $3.99 it was a great deal! Well, that great deal just got "greater-er"!

There are some pretty nice options available for managing tasks right from the iPhone now.

Among the best if you want/need to backup and keep tasks in sync with a computer are OmniFocus, ToDo and Toodledo. (OmniFocus syncs with the OmniGroup’s own OmniFocus for Mac and the latter two sync OTA with the web-based Toodledo).

Early on after the App Store came on line I was intrigued by another task app- Things from Cultured Code. Both the desktop and iPhone versions of Things had a beautifully clean interface that was as straight forward and easy to use as you could possibly want. The Things desktop app was especially interesting because it used tags rather than set and/or complex structures the way the others do.

Things is

a beautifully focused and amazingly intuitive task manager. Other todo applications either oversimplify or are too difficult to use. Things instead offers the perfect balance between ease of use and powerful features. Effortlessly manage to-dos, notes, due dates, and projects. A smart today list and the scheduling feature allow you to work as effectively as possible – every day. With Things’ elegant user interface, procrastinating never looked less attractive.

Unfortunately, there were a few issues.

Do you remember back to the early iPhone 3G rumors?

Among the breakthroughs being suggested dreamed of was a second, front-facing camera for video conferencing. Sadly, when the 3G was actually introduced not only didn’t it have the second camera, but it still didn’t even have the ability to record video.

Seems kind of silly since pretty much every other smartphone (and many feature phones) can do video. Moreover, the iPhone’s hardware can certainly support it and, in fact, there ARE jailbreak apps that record video already.

Well, once again developers are filling in some of the iPhone’s remaining omissions. This time it is going to be thanks to…

It has been a while since Evernote received an update and while we are still waiting for the promised release of an iPhone app update that adds support for saving notes on the device itself, there is SOME good news today. 

According to a recent post on the Evernote Blog all of Evernote’s web-related clients (that means NOT the Mac and Windows resident apps) have been recoded and are now

This was initially going to be a post on the apparent bias found in some applications against left handed iPhone users. For instance, if the buttons that one needs to tap most frequently are found on the upper right side of the iPhone (as they are in Byline), the user is required to extend their thumb and reach across the iPhone in a way that can be very tiresome, if not painful, after a while.

As I was playing around with a number of different applications, however, I realized that it’s not so much an issue of left handed versus right handed but rather an issue of “application ergonomics”. That is… is the application’s interface designed in such a way that is easy and comfortable to use? Is the application comfortable to use, especially with something that requires repetitive movement?

Let’s face it, there is a whole lot of garbage coming in to the App Store every single day. Day after day, new applications appear and a large number of them are absolute garbage. Don’t get me wrong- there are a few stellar ones, but unfortunately, those are the exception, not the rule.

And if that’s not bad enough, there are certain developers who are responsible for an abundance of these crApp Apps.

A number of weeks ago I wrote about one of the biggest offenders, ZATZ Publishing. This developer had basically been releasing a number of apps every single week that do exactly the same thing- it tells you how many days there are until some upcoming event. Each ”new“ app had a different name, a different event to count down to, and a new image. Of course, the developer charged an additional $.99 too. At the time, there were just four such apps. That was bad. Since then… that number has grown to 31 different ”apps“.  ZATZ’s just wrong! 

I have a hard time believing that anyone is actually spending .99 on any one of their awful apps, but the degree of app-pollution this company ZATZ Publishing is spewing is a joke.

It gets better, however…

One of the great things about the iPhone now is that it offers the opportunity to add an additional 148 applications to the device.

While I don’t have quite that many applications, I do have seven different pages of icons sitting on my iPhone and eight on my iPod touch. No, I don’t use all of them. Many of them are applications that I downloaded for review purposes and I just haven’t bothered to remove. The end result, however, is that it has become increasingly difficult for me to find the application I want when I want it. Moreover, considering the large number of applications that are now on my iPhone, organizing them is no easy task.

So it got me thinking — what if I could only have one screen-worth of icons?  What if I only had spots for four applications in the dock and an additional 16 applications above it? 

What better way to determine which of the applications on the iPhone I actually use!

I spent some time this morning thinking about which applications I would want to have on my iPhone if only 20 spots were available. This is what I decided would earn those spots…

FlipSide5 have re-launched their iPhone lineup which includes Touch4, Tic-Tac-Touch and (the recently reviewed on whatsoniphone) Touch Hockey.  Which by the way, we tried earlier this week over the WiFi network and it worked like a charm.  Each iPhone connected seamlessly to the other and it added a whole new level of entertainment (especially hearing the sounds coming out simultaneously from 2 different iPhones).

As part of this re-launch, FlipSide5 has brought this same WiFi multi-player local networking support found in Touch Hockey to all of their iPhone games. Among the highlights of this are "one-tap play" technology, instant messaging and online gaming support. FlipSide5’s "One-tap play" technology is a simple way to enable two iPhones to instantly connect over a local network with a single button tap.

This as been a big week for FlipSide5 who also released Touch Hockey, their first arcade multi-player game this week.

According to Michael Sanford, President of FlipSide5, Inc., Touch Hockey is on pace to eclipse the one million download mark in just over one week.

"Our strategy has always been to be a top 10 iPhone game company by delivering best-of-breed social and online games.“ Sanford notes, ”Touch Hockey solidifies this strategy in a big way. The same engine that drives Touch Hockey is embedded in Touch4 and Tic-Tac-Touch. We have already licensed this technology and are extending our licensing efforts. We have exciting projects in our pipeline. The best is yet to come."
 

This is turning into a bit of a Pangea-fanboy week here at WOiP. A few days ago they released Nano 2 for the iPhone and it is amazing. Now one of their other iPhone games is a huge bargain.

Enigmo is yet another Pangea game that looks just as good on the iPhone as it does on the “big“ screen.

It is fun, challenging, visually stunning and currently available for a remarkably low $1.99. That is an amazing price in its own right, let alone since it was first released at a price of $9.99.

You can get it HERE in the App Store.