Hello fellow app enthusiasts. This week was a good one for smartphone app stores across the board. An automation juggernaut makes putting your digital life on autopilot even easier. Sending short video messages is now as easy as texting. Sending email is as easy as texting. Sending texts is as easy as texting! Just kidding on that last one.
Red Baron: War of Planes takes to the skies
If you are a fan of flight sims and air combat games, you will want to have a look at a new game app that has launched on Google Play. The game is called Red Baron: War of Planes and it is set in the WWI era. Players will fly in five different warplanes to battle the enemy.
In addition to airplanes, there are balloons and zeppelins. The planes virtual pilots get to try out include the Halberstadt, AGO, Pfalz, Albatros CIII, Fokker Dr.I. There are five different weather conditions that players get to fly in.
The game has 20 different missions and two game modes. The game modes include arcade and simulator. The missions will have gamers protecting allies, chasing enemy targets and trying to survive the war. The free version of the game has ads.
A paid version with no ads is available for $1.64. It appears that ads are the only difference between the two versions of the game. Red Baron: War of Planes is 45MB in size and requires Android 2.3 or higher to play. The developer is VRI Phantom and the game looks to have very good graphics.
SOURCE: Red Baron: War of Planes (Free), (Paid)
Kill the monster with kindness (we mean sheep) in new Android game
What do you do when a large monster from the sea suddenly attacks your coastal city and it's up to you to save the trapped citizens? Probably one of the last things you'll do is to fling sheep at it, but that's exactly what you need to do to beat this monster in a brand new Android game called, what else, Monster vs Sheep. And if you enjoy flicking things on your smartphone or tablet, then this should be a fun ride for you.
If you're a sheep's right activist, then you better turn your eyes away now. The sheep have no back story or purpose, other than to defeat the monster with their fluffiness. It's up to you to fill up the enemy with their fluffy little bodies, and you even get a combo bonus if you get multiple sheep down its throat. You get to finish each level with several stars, depending on how well you've tried to defeat the monster on a rampage.
The game has up to 32 levels, with each becoming harder (or as hard as flicking sheep can get). The 3D graphics are cool and smooth enough, the music makes the game more fun, but of course, after a while, it might get a bit repetitive already. But if you're just looking for a fun way to wile away your time, then this maybe one of those you will enjoy.
If you're feeling competitive, you can see how you stack up against other players from all over the world in their global leaderboard. You can get Monster vs Sheep from the Google Play Store for just $0.99, with no in-app purchases anymore.
iA Writer finally arrives on Android devices
There are a lot of note-taking and writing apps out there in the market, but there are times when you have a writing deadline or a very important article or report to write, where you don't need any distractions from the app's other features. Our iOS friends have been enjoying one such minimalist app for the past years, but now it has finally arrived for Android devices, and a blog post from the developer might also signal a new appreciation of Android for those who have been on the "other side".
iA Writer has been available for Apple devices since 2010, and it's only now years later that the developers have thought of coming on to the Android platform. The features are basically the same, with no complicated formatting settings or interactions, with a custom typeface that will get you writing and a Markdown feature that you can use if in case you need some simple formatting options. It even has a Focus Mode that will let you focus on the current sentence or paragraph you're writing. Of course all documents can be seamlessly synced to Dropbox.
Aside from the fact that it's finally on Android, another great thing to come out of this is that the developers, Information Architects, which has always been associated with Apple Devs, has said that the "horror stories" about Android are in the past. The core tools are now "very stable", and they even found to their surprise a "friendly" dev culture in the Android community. This might convince some of the purely iOS developers to also bring their apps to the "other side", giving users even more options and choices.
So if you'd like to see what the fuss is all about this minimalist writing app, you can get iA Writer from the Google Play Store. It has a bit of a "steep" price of $4.99, but people are saying it's worth it, so maybe you wouldn't mind spending that much.
Google Calendar for Android gets updated
As usual, Google has been busy working on its native Android apps, improving them with Android 5.0 Lollipop and Material Design elements in mind. Next to be updated is the Google Calendar app with more improvements and new features like viewing more events at a glance, pinch-to-zoom, 7-day week view, and adding of Google Drive files to events. There's also a new calendar option to show week numbers in settings.
With the updated Google Calendar app, Google Drive integration is possible. Add files from your Google Drive to events easily if you want. Google Drive will check the privacy setting of the file as well. To be updated with your Google+ contacts' birthdays, you need to control the setting to make sure they show up on your calendar.
For those who receive .ics files in Gmail and other apps, you can also import them to Google Calendar as needed. Also added were new Schedule View, Events from Gmail, and more ways to view calendar. With the Schedule View, you can see your schedule at a single glance complete with maps and photos of the place you are going. No need to search on Google for image because the app will show you exactly what you need to see.
If you've saved events on Gmail like a concert, hotel, flight, or restaurant reservations, these information can be added automatically to your calendar. And if you have more than one calendar on your phone like Exchange, Google Calendar can still work with them so you can see all your calendars right in one place.
Download Google Calendar from the Google Play Store
SOURCE: Google
Android Developer Story: GinLemon - Breaking through with Google Play
Meet Vincenzo Colucci, developer and founder of GinLemon, which started as a summer holiday joke and has now become a successful global app business on Google Play based in Manfredonia, ... | From: Android Developers Views: 7456 253 ratings | |
| Time: 03:09 | More in Science & Technology |
UAMP portable headphone amp promises hi-fi sound for all
The problem with listening to audio such as music or movies via your smartphone or even your laptop is that often the sound systems in your devices lack the power to product ideal audio. A new headphone amplifier called UAMP has debuted that promises to improve the sound you hear with any headphones in a portable package.
The UAMP is small enough to be carried in a pocket and connects between your device and your headphones. The people behind the UAMP product claim that it will give you the same sort of sound quality that you expect to get from high-end audio gear.
The UAMP measures 43 x 43 x 9mm and weighs in at 26 grams. It's small enough to go into that previously useless coin pocket on your jeans. It can connect to any device that has a 3.5mm headphone output.
The device has an integrated EQ to allow you to tune the music to your tastes. Power comes from a battery good for ten hours of use per charge. The project was seeking $15,000 AUD and raised over $23,000 AUD so far with 42 days to go on Kickstarter. A pledge of $65 or more will get you a UAMP with delivery expected in July.
SOURCE: Kickstarter
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