Movies by Flixster Main Screen Screenshot

Movies, a rather plain name for an iPhone application, Flixster prefers it.  Movies app provides a portal for viewing information about movies. Sounds simple right? This app is comprehensive in spite of its name.

Movies divides movie information up into sections: Box Office, Theaters, Upcoming, DVD, My Movies.

Box office is what it sounds like, movies currently at the box office.  Movies are organized by Opening and Top Box Office.  These can be sorted by popularity, rating, or title.  This section, as all sections and screens, is searchable.

Box office is also the default screen.  It has the standard set of movie options you’ll see on the other choices, Theater, Upcoming, etc.

Those choices include viewing the trailer, if available, and viewing more information about the movie.

Movies by Flixster Movie Information Screenshot

The next image shows what you get when a movie s selected.  Flixster users’ rating, critics’ rating, and what your friends think.  Typically run time and rating are also show at the top.

The trailer option is listed her if available as well as showtimes, your rating and photos from the movie.  This is only the top portion of this long scrolling screen though.

Movies by Flixster Movie Information Screen 2 Screenshot

The next section of the Movie information screen, scrolled down to, is a synopsis (hit and miss here), a small selection of photos, and then the cast. The cast listings are clickable.

Beyond this section are reviews by your friends, and by other Flixster users in general.  Movie reviews include the beginning of each comment with the ability to select a specific comment to see in full detail.

Again, you get to this Movie information screen from any of the options: Box Office, Theater, etc..

Movies by Flixster Movie Information Screen 3 Screenshot

The bottom of the Movie information screen rounds up the reviews from Flixster users but also gives you some other movie website links.

Special bonus here is that these don’t leave the Movies application. They open up a special in-line browser window to the site selected. This allows you to jump to say IMDb (my personal favorite) and not have to restart the Movies app.  You simply click the DONE button and poof, back to Movies.

That’s a feature more applications should be taking advantage of.

Movies by Flixster Theaters Screen Screenshot

The Theaters screen is the last one I’d like to share.  Theaters are shown by favorites then by distance by default. Users can mark any theater a favorite.

Selecting a theater provides the showtimes of course, but there’s more. Phone number, address (which jumps out to Google Maps and allows you to come back), Yelp connection (which goes to the Yelp app with a search for nearby restaurants), and a selector for showtimes date.

It’s a load of features for a movies information application. There are a few other applications going after the same market but in my opinion, this is not only a well rounded application for movies but it’s one of the best built iPhone Touch apps I’ve used so far.

For the record, there is a Flixster website.

Movies app link.

Have you used this app or another in the same vein? Please comment below and tell me what’s better or best.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Flixster to Acquire Rotten Tomatoes (mashable.com)

Words With Friends

Words with friends isn’t you, me, and a dictionary; it’s a take on Scrabble(TM) developed just for the iPhone and Touch. The play is the same but the board layout is unique.  You’ll find double word and triple letter scoring just not in the same spots.

WWF is entirely touch play, beginning with game selection.

Words with friends screenshot game selection

Games where it’s your move are displayed in time sequence from most recent opponent move to oldest. In the shot above you’ll notice the eyes. Those indicate your opponent is watching the game. Additionally, if a number is displayed on the line, it means you have chat messages waiting for you in the game.

Tap on any Words with line and the game is highlighted. The screen then slides to the left displaying the board.

Words with friends screenshot playing board

The game board has two views. Zoomed out if the default. Zoomed in allows you to move it around.

Words with friends screenshot zoomed game board

Playing is easy; just tap the letter and drag it onto the board. If it ends up on the wrong square, just tap and drag it again.  There are buttons to Play (submit), Recall (clear placed letters), swap (allows swapping letters, don’t preselect, select after hitting swap), and Resign.

Topping up the screen are the Games and Chat buttons. Games goes back to the sorted list. Chat takes you to chat just for that specific game.

Play isn’t instant or demanding. Each player takes their turn and then the game waits for the opponent to make their move. There is no game timer, nor nudge option.

The game uses built in spell check, preventing players from making illegal moves. As in Scrabble, words formed cross-wise also must work..

Locating other players is a bit odd. You can invite someone from your contact list, a random person, search for another player by name, or choose Pass and Play.

Pass and Play means you and your opponent play on the same iPhone versus each other. You just take a turn and pass the iPhone over.  I’ve not tried this mode out yet.

The game is crash free, plays with wireless, and has push notifications. Being so easy to pick up and play makes this a great value and an equally great time sink.

Words With Friends on iTunes Store

Apple’s iPhone and Touch app, Brushes, is coming to the iPad.  The video above demonstrates how this tiny app can turn out true art work.

The buzz around the app on the iPad is the social networking built in. Images can be saved to Photos as before but can now be emailed, posted to Flickr, sent to Twitter, and sent to Facebook. The iPhone Users Guide has screenshots.

The Apple Event provided a Brushes iPad demo, please check out this video:

Based on these demos, I’ll be purchasing the Brushes app for the iPhone.

Is this an app you’ll be using? Would it be a killer app for the iPad for you?

Receiving the iPod Touch as a gift is going to be life changing. It’s not just the plethora of applications nor their diversity.  The key is the interface rethinking; applications are no longer designed around a full size screen and a keyboard.  Flickr has given us an app that has adapted well to the platform.

See the screenshot of the Flickr application for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Starting the app places you on a screen where a stream of your contacts recent uploads fades in and out.

Along the bottom Recent, You and Contacts are just a click away. Each takes you a viewing screen designed around those specific items.

In the upper right corner you’ll notice a camera. That’s the ‘just a click away’ uploader function of the app., Just click, pick and upload. Optionally the title, description and tags can be edited before upload.

The application allows favoriting, commenting and forwarding. Forwarding can only be done via email and requires email already be set up for the device.

Viewing on the iPhone or Touch is done in groups of 40 photos. Viewing one’s own photos, the app selects the 40 most recent. The same is true when Recent and Contacts are chosen.

Within a group of photos, sliding works well but there are no ‘pinch’ and ’swipe’ gestures that work.

The overall layout is usable but is slightly finger unfriendly. Some of the links are quite close together and not buttons but direct links.

Quality:  4/5

Usability: 4/5

Continued use/re-use: 5/5

Value/cost: 5/5

If you use Flickr and have an iPhone or iPod Touch I’d rate this as a must have app. The link at the beginning of the article should take you straight there.

Find me on Flickr.

Future apps I’ll be reviewing: Sudoku apps, News apps, other games. Suggestions welcome.

Facebook holds few attractions for some. But for others, it’s a replacement for Excite and Yahoo games. The bonus being your opponents are taken from your contacts. That aside, there are hundreds of games now available on Facebook.

Few games though are in the category of both challenging and of high replay value. zynga has taken a stab at bringing us some word games that meet both those criteria. Those games are Word Twist, Pathwords, and Scramble.

All three games present time based challenges where word construction is the key. In each case, minimum word length is always three characters. The tiles in each case are randomly arranged and your task is to discover all of the words.

Word Twist presents the player with six letters. The player types or clicks the letters to form words. Score is based on the number of words found, with a bonus for ‘bingo’ words. That’s words of six characters. Here’s a screenshot.

Word Twist allows the players to complete all of their turns without waiting. There is no direct competition between the players. The number of terms and time is set at game creation.

Pathwords presents an entirely different challenge. Where Word Twist gives the player six characters to work with, Pathwords gives a whole field. A picture will help explain.

The players selects the words by clicking on the initial letter of the word and then clicking on the rest of the letters. To enter a word, a double click is required on the last letter. An alternate method is clicking on the first letter and holding the mouse button. The player can then drag over the rest of the letters in the word. When the mouse button is released the word is entered. Wrong words do not score, and clear the letter selection.

Once a word is accepted, the letters in the word are removed from the board. Each column’s letters then slide down and new letters are added at the top. An added feature allows the player to scramble the letters on the board at a penalty of points.

Scramble is my favorite of the three games. Scramble plays like the home game, Boggle(tm). The players take turns finding words in the 4 by 4 array of letters. With the classic tile look, it feels a lot like Boggle.

Players alternate turns finding words. Score is based on word length. There are no bingos or such. Typical games are 5 rounds of 3 minutes each. A word hit feature exits that requires 2 credits each use. Credits are earned on the first visit to Scramble during a day.

Quote:

Ironically, it has managed to spawn more innovations and hype—clients, web applications, memes, contests, meetups—than any of the big, bloated social networks. This is interesting because Twitter is not just a “web application”, which, literally, is an application that exists on and uses the Web. It’s an activity taking on many different forms in scattered locations, whose very nature seems viral, and whose openness seems almost unprecedented.

     That was taken from this fun and informative read, The Inspiration that is Twitter at Wisdump. The article doesn’t just mention what Twitter has inspired but shows ton of great links with snapshots of a good deal of them.

     Links to Twitter inspired services, mashups, and even t-shirts abound in the article. Want to poll your friends? Find the hottest links shared on Twitter? See the latest memes? Find the top followers and followed folks?  Then the links are here in this post.

     All this goodness is well organized into groups, with pictures to highlight quite a few of the services.  My favorite stuff is the Twitter related t-shirts.  Now I’ve got to go buy some.  Do you sell any?!  Give us some links.

     Give this great article a perusal and learn more about Twitter and all the things it’s spawned.

So you’ve been playing PackRat a little while and realized you can’t seem to get those higher point cards, and your friends keep dumping the low spots on you.  Well don’t fret.  You don’t have to wait until you can buy a high point card to steal the ones you want.  You can steal your way to the top.

Let me show you the progression I made in just minutes.

I purchased this.

And stole this:

Which I then swapped up for this:

Within a couple of minutes, I stole this with the pooch:

And to take it up just a notch, I stole this:

And last, but hardly least…

The whole of all of those thefts was under 10 mins.  It took longer to find something up the next point range.  This seems obvious, but it’s the quickest way to get those higher number cards that don’t show up in the markets.

Doing the steal upgrade path works because of the small gaps in value.  Yes, you can get lucky with larger gaps in value, but the smaller differences make swaps less risky.  This is important when you have lots of swaps to make. You don’t want to lock out a ‘friend’ with lots of good cards for swapping.

The best thing about this is that the value of the card to you is meaningless.  It doesn’t have to fit a set, and doesn’t have to be one anyone would steal back.  Additionally, because you keep stealing up, and lots of folks steal using a higher or equal point card for safety, the risk factor of heading backwords is minimal.

So if you’re stuck, just buy the cheapest card you find and the market and get stealing!

I and several hundred contacts love Twitter. Here my Twitter page. We love it so much in fact, that we really wish there were more things you could do with it.

To be fair, there are already a ton of good Twitter tools out there. Here’s a link to the Twitter wiki. Of all of those, the one folks seem to be using the most is the linkage with iwantsandy.

Yes, things exist, but could there be more? The rest of us think so. Here’s 10 ideas.

1. Order takeout – my favorite choice – this idea is copyright Todd Jordan @2008.

2. Send tweets of support to the  troops of your choice – idea from @Dayngr

3. Dictionary lookup – perhaps via @dict? Syntax such as @dict en renegade with the 1st def returned in 140 chars or less?

4. Make phone calls – perhaps through special Twitter application?

5. Distribution of tweets to email or blog via tags or key words – very useful potential here – perhaps tweet to @postit?

What are your ideas? Are you a startup with a great Twitter mashup? Comment, leave me an email – tojosan/gmail, or DM me on Twitter, @tojosan.

Obsession has a new name, PackRat. Someone on my contact list introduced me to PackRat and now I’m addicted.

PackRat is a Facebook application that’s part card collection game, and part thievery. The rules are simple.

1. Form a set and put them away in your vault.

2. Buy cards to complete sets.

3. Steal cards from your friends to complete sets.

There are very few wrinkles beyond that.

You gain levels by putting sets in your vault and by stealing cards from your contacts. Each card belongs to a master set, and there are numerous sets. Sets are made up of common and uncommon cards, some of which must be combined to form other cards in the collection.

To keep you from losing friends, PackRat provides some built in rat friends for you to steal from. That, combined with being able to purchase cards, allows friends to play without becoming fierce competitors.

All of the cards are family safe as far as I’ve seen, and not a few are great for a laugh. The Primary Colors 2008 set contains various modern day political figures, with some surprisingly good likenesses.

The game is simple enough to learn that teens and adults can play along side.

Overall, this game is sure to be a hit for those that love card collection games of the not so virtual variety. Adding the family safe factor makes it one I recommend giving a try.

See you in the game. (clicking the image will take you to the Facebook application page)

** UPDATE: click here to read about the wiki site.

—

I’m competing to attend a blogging conference for free. SOBCon08 is held May 2, 3, 4 and they are giving away attendance cost and the hotel cost to the blogger that sends the most folks to check out the conference website. All of you have to do to help out is click any link here in this section of the post. Thanks.

Mashable tells us about how Mars UK is setting up a Facebook application to send your contacts real chocolate.

From the article, here’s the gooey goodness:

“And even if you did know the address of the person you wanted to send a bar to, there are a bunch of friends out there whose address you may not have, but you’d love to send them a chocolate bar anyway. So what Mars does is send along points, which the recipient can redeem at a participating PayPoint store.”

Man, I’m in for that, and I know several of my contacts would be as well.  When will other companies do the same.  I’d support companies like Apple for example if they’d do the same thing.

Please click through and read the entire article.

Help me go to SOBCon08 for free, click here.