Monday, January 3, 2011

Angry Birds












I never thought I'd say this, but flinging birds with a slingshot to destroy pigs that are stealing your eggs is crazy fun and highly addictive!

Chances are, if you purchased a new phone in the last year or so, you know what Angry Birds is. If not, I think you need to stop what you're doing and get a new Droid or iPhone. And by all means, if you have a capable phone and do not have it, hit up your designated app store immediately! It is by far one of the best games I've ever played on a phone. Here's an in-game trailer to give you an idea of what you might be missing, but really you have to play it for yourself. Two minutes playing it in the store while waiting for the salesperson and Marla and I were hooked.

On the Android Market the full version is free and there is also a free holiday edition, which contains Halloween and Christmas themed levels and is equally as fun and quite a bit more difficult. The iPhone has a lite version, which is free and the full version is 99 cents. I wouldn't go as far as to say it will enrich your life, but it certainly is entertaining!

But I digress, let me begin again and say...My name is Chris and I'm addicted to my Droid X.














My wife Marla and I got them a few weeks ago as part of the BOGO offer Verizon had going on and we don't know how we lived without them. We both had Palm Centro phones previously and while they were cool in their own right, bringing back memories from the old Palm Pilot days, they were certainly not like the phones available today.

We were holding off on upgrading, waiting for a Verizon iPhone to arrive to compare with the latest Droid phones out there, but couldn't pass up the BOGO deal. Coming from a Linux/Open Source background, I really liked the idea of the Open Source Google Android Operating System. I felt that with the huge number of different phones and vendors all using the same OS, that the future would bring a lot more innovative and free apps over time. In addition we wanted to be able to easily upgrade things like the storage via SD card, be able to easily upgrade the battery, etc. We're very glad we made the switch and I already upgraded to the extended capacity battery over the weekend.

I'm definitely not anti-iPhone however. Many friends and family members have them and aside from the shoddy ATT coverage here at times, they love them. So far we've noticed the iPhone is much better at camera shots taken in low light situations and none of the existing Verizon Droids have front facing cameras, both things I knew about ahead of time.

Right now I'm slightly obsessed with scouring the internet and sites like AppBrain, Android Forums and a few others for the latest popular apps, utilities, games and other useless but highly entertaining programs and plan to post a good deal about them here. Whenever possible, I will detail both Android and iPhone versions and if I hear about an app that is iPhone only that just plain rocks, I'll discuss that too.

I'll close today with one super cool, must have app for anyone that grew up during the late 70s/early 80s and/or was a big fan of the movie ET. It's Speak and Spell! for Android.














That was one of my favorite toys growing up and was quite surprised when I came across that one. It is a fully functioning exact replica of the original as far as I can tell. It doesn't look like the iPhone has a functional version of the original, however, I did find a free app called Remix DJ: Speak EZ that has all the sounds/phrases from the original.

Breaking News: I just found out that Run Keeper Pro is free for both Android and iPhone for the month of January! I confirmed this is in fact true and installed the Pro version for free. It's a great program that allows you to keep track of your exercise activity and will map out your route for you as well. Very cool.

What apps do you have that you just can't live without? Let us know by posting in the comments section below.

 
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