Check out our latest recommendations after the jump.
Anita Paling - Currency Converter (Free)
I'm
not sure about you folks, but I prefer to shop online. I'm
also not bothered about buying overseas, though I'd rather New Zealand had a
better selection of the items I tend to purchase, as I prefer to help our
own economy - but I
digress.
So I
shop online, I shop overseas, and like most, I want to know what it will cost
in my currency.
Enter
Currency Converter. This
app does just what its name says: It converts currency.
It
does more than that, however. You can read articles about changes in the currency
selecting which currency you want news about, and select a date range to view the fluctuations, which shows graphically.
Another
nice touch is the ease with which you can switch between the two currencies you
are converting. See that little graphic between your chosen currencies? Simply
tap it to swap which way you are converting. There's
a really extensive list of currencies too.
My
use is pretty basic. I'm only after an understanding of what the item is going
to convert to in New Zealand Dollars (NZD), and
this app does the job really well. The cost will almost definitely be different
from what appears on my credit card bill, due to the date the purchase is billed and the bank's commission fee, which they'll call a 'conversion fee'.
If
you're looking for a fairly accurate guide, then this app will certainly do
a good job - And the real conversion when the purchase hits your credit
card is not a failing on the part of the application.
Gianpy Belaunde - Iris (Free)
Today I wanted to bring you guys a
novelty app, which I use for fun and a good laugh rather than to get some real
work done. As you all should know, one of the iPhone's most prolific features
is the voice assistant Siri, which lets you set alarms, meetings and reminders
all through voice chat.
The folks over at Dexetra did not
want to leave us Android users in the dark, so they decided to make their own
version of the assistant, sarcastically named "iris". The app is
currently in alpha, so I wasn't expecting much of it. I even heard the
developer wrote it all in a period of 8 hours!
The app can be useful at times, but
also extremely humorous every once in a while. Through my testing I've found
that you can ask it for information on geography, people and also have it call
a friend. These work well most of the time, however there are still some voice
recognition issues, so the app sometimes has difficulty recognizing what you
say, which can be frustrating.
The overall interface of the app is
simple but clean, a large circular button is located near the bottom of the
screen, holding down the button initiates the 'ask'. From here you simply ask
her what you need, but you can also start a general conversation with her,
which usually leads to some giggles. The dialogue will appear on screen, with
her response to follow after a bit of searching.
The main voice actions stated by the
developer are that you can call someone, text someone, search for something and
look up a contact - calling and searching work pretty well for me, but texting
and looking up a contact is different affair, usually proving to be fruitless.
For an alpha release, iris is
definitely an app you'll want to try out - it's free on the Android Market and
the developers promise to update the app until it is fully functional, which is
something I'd really love to see!
Nick Monrad - Meteor Blitz ($1.99USD on Android Market, $0.99USD on Amazon Appstore)
While released in 2009 for iOS, Meteor Blitz has only been
available for Android since the beginning of 2011. Despite not being new or
particularly cutting edge, Meteor Blitz is a pretty sweet space shooter. While
the graphics in the screenshot don’t look impressive, the game actually looks
pretty slick in motion. You control a small ship with only the protection of a one
hit force field and some serious firepower to protect yourself from hundreds of
asteroids and other enemies. This game is clearly inspired by the classic Asteroids game
from the late 70s, but definitely brings some modern ideas to the mix.
First off; the onscreen controls are excellent with the left
thumb stick controlling your ship, while the right fires and controls the
direction of your weapons. You can also switch between 3 different types of
weapon (ice, fire and a green cannon) depending on the type of enemy you are
facing. You get a couple of oh sh*t tools; the self-recharging boost which acts
somewhat like a teleport to move you out of bad situations, and the bomb, which
basically destroys everything on screen and comes in very limited supply.
Another cool weapon in your arsenal is the gravity gun, which you can use to
pick up asteroids and fling them at other asteroids or enemies.
As you play through the game you will earn rings that you
can redeem to upgrade your ship. These upgrades come in a number of forms:
- Upgrade your Fire,Ice or Cannon weapons
- Speed up the normal thrust of your ship
- Reduce the cooldown on your boost
- Improve your gravity gun so it can pick up larger pieces of asteroids
On the audio side, the sound effects are acceptable with
deep booming noises when you blow things up, but it is a little strange not
having sound when firing your guns. The music soundtrack is pretty frantic and
goes along nicely with the style of gameplay where you are constantly under
attack.
One last kind of cool feature of this game is that when you
stop touching your screen, the game automatically pauses. This is really handy
for those times when you have a few minutes to kill but may need to suddenly
stop playing.
Anyhow, I’d better stop rambling and give you a chance to go
buy this neat little space shooter!
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| Android Market link |
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| Amazon Appstore link |
Nik Turner - Speed Test.Net Mobile (Free)
Continuing my trend of utilities, I thought I’d devote a
moment this week to the Ookla SpeedTest.Net application. It’s useful to know
the latency, download, and upload speeds of your connection for a number of
reasons, and this app does so in a hassle-free manner with a rather nice UI.
Just like its parent site, the app will select the most
appropriate server to test based on your current location, although you can
choose one manually if you fancy going a little more in-depth. There are
options of displaying speeds in kbps, Mbps, and kB/s, as well as a slider to
increase the animation quality at the cost of performance on lower-end devices.
Most usefully, the app keeps a handy history of your speed test results – these
are separated into tests over WiFi vs. tests over mobile data, and can be
ordered by date, upstream, or downstream performance.
It’s a simple app, yet one I keep on hand. Being a
flash-a-holic, I tend to update my Galaxy S II as soon as new ROMs
and radio firmware become available, and find it very helpful to know which revision gives the best network performance (KI3 is pretty good). It's handy being able to check and compare
mobile network performance in various different locations, too, especially important if you’re considering switching carriers - Not that I am, as the screenshot demonstrates. I also use it to
test the speeds of my home broadband connection, just in case something’s gone
awry - and to make sure I'm getting what I pay for.
Of course, I can’t lie, apps like these do have a certain element
of bragging rights inherently built into them, but that’s just part of the fun.
Complaining that your provider’s speeds are terrible? Want proof that that
missed headshot was due to lag? Showing off how much faster you can upload those dreadfully important photos to Facebook? If, for any reason whatsoever, you
need to test your network speeds, I see no reason to look beyond Speed Test,
and that’s why it’s my app of the week.
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