iPhone Daily News Digest

If you missed out on yesterday’s app giveaway, which one user called “epic”, I still have a few apps leftover and Lingopal is one of them! I just reviewed Lingopal a few days ago and it’s pretty great as phrasebooks go… 42 languages, spoken translations, and it’s all local. Impressive!

If you miss out on these codes but are planning to be in a foreign country sometime in the foreseeable future, just buy the app – it’ll come in handy.

iTunes Link – Lingopal – Fun Multilingual Phrasebook
Lingopal website

As an old man was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang. Answering, he heard his wife’s voice urgently warning him, “Herman, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on Route 280. Please be careful!”

“It’s not just one car,” said Herman, “it’s hundreds of them!”

18,000 Cool Jokes is full of jokes like this one… corny, slightly amusing jokes. Some of them vaguely qualify as “mature”, but the vast majority are are pretty mild.

So are there really 18,000 jokes in Cramzy’s app? I have no idea! But I will say that there are a lot of them… I’ve paged through a lot of jokes with this thing and I’ve only seen a few appear more than once. Some of them, though, aren’t necessarily “jokes” in the traditional sense. The “Dumb” category, for example, seems to be a compilation of true acts of stupidity, some of which are still kind of  funny but not in joke-punchline format. Here’s an example:

Guns for Hire, and Arizona company specializing in staged gunfights for Western movies, got a call from a 47-year-old woman who wanted to have her husband shot. She was sentenced to four years in jail.

18,000 Cool Jokes is divided into 48 categories ranging from Animals to Dirty to Lawyers to Yo Mama. If jumping directly into a category ain’t your style, the app will serve a random joke when you first launch the app and you can either hit the forward arrow or just shake your iPhone to get another… and another… and another.

The only real bummer about browsing jokes in this app is that you can’t go backwards. Sure, you can bookmark jokes in a “Fav’s” list, but going back to the previous joke can’t be done for some reason. Search would also be a nice function, especially if this app has as many jokes as it claims to.

In the iTunes app description it states that you can filter jokes by length and this is true, but you have to go to your iPhone Settings screen to do it. I kind of wish this function was in-app, but eh I suppose this other way is fine just as long as it’s there.

As a joke book, 18,000 Cool Jokes is actually pretty good if you’re looking for jokes that are generally clean and unoffensive and quite often cheesy. I’d like to be able to go back to the previous joke, but other than that this seems like a pretty safe buy for just a dollar.

And now, in true Welcome Back, Kotter fashion, I opened with a joke so now I have to close with one:

A policeman spots a woman driving and knitting at the same time. Driving up beside her, he shouts out the window, “Pull over!”

“No,” she shouts back, “a pair of socks!”

iTunes Link – 18,000 Cool Jokes
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.0

This week in the App Store it may as well’ve been 1991: We’ve got Lollapalooza! Monkey Island! Novel self-help strategies! Glittery-clothed strippers! And last but not nearly least, everyone’s favorite defunct supermarket tabloid! The Golden Age of culture, people.

Weekly World News: Now is neither the time nor place to get into my deep appreciation of the WWN, and I feel their blurb says enough:

For over 30 years, the Weekly World News has been the World’s ONLY Reliable News Source. The Weekly World News bares the TRUTH about UFOs, aliens, monsters, Elvis’ whereabouts, cryptids, popular celebrities, and the mutant freaks that live among us.

Considering you can get the entire archives of the paper for free on Google Books, it seems dumb that this $1 app only gives you access to covers, though the add-your-own-face feature is pretty neat. Granted, this could have been a content ratings thing, because half of the dead magazine’s columnists were basically insane, or sexist, or some other terrible kind of “ist.” It’s part of the charm! [via Gawker]

Pocket Dancer: A 3D lady will dance a sad little dance while you spin her around with your finger and occasionally change the floor lighting. Fact: There is absolutely no way to use this without looking and feeling like a creep. One dollar!

Booyah Society : Pulling ourselves out of the slime, here’s the high concept app for the week: Booyah Society assigns arbitrary point values to day-to-day achievements, creatings a sort of WoW-ish self-help game, integrates with Twitter and Facebook. Despite how it sounds, it’s not at all pathetic or annoying; I can easily see how someone who already broadcasts their every action on social networks could get hooked on this. Free.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition: Diehard fans see Monkey Island titles as the zenith of 2D adventure gaming, while most people who grew up in the early 90s just remember them as being pretty fun. I’m guessing only one of those two groups will be willing to drop the full $8 on this, but to be fair to LucasArts, the game translates well to the iPhone and it’s truly massive.

Lollapalooza: Sharing its concept and design with the excellent Coachella app from last year, this free download helps you find your way around the only legendary music festival ever to be ruined by the advent of txt speak.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

• TheXchange: Will This Porn iPhone App Survive the Apple Banhammer?

• iDisk iPhone App Lightning Review: Halfway There

• Soon We’ll Be Able to Search the App Store For More Than Exact Product Names

• Apple’s Chickenshit Approval Process Has Gone Too Far

• EA Bringing Madden, FIFA Franchises to the iPhone

• iPhone Owners Score Free MobileMe iDisk App

• Offender Locator Tracks Sex Offenders on Your iPhone

• iWet T-Shirts: Yet Another iPhone App That Makes Me Shake My Head in Shame

• GV Mobile Google Voice App Available For Free On The iPhone via Cydia

• Nissan Developing iPhone App to Monitor Electric Cars

• Apple Rejects Official Google Voice iPhone App

• Multiplayer Chess iPhone App Is Very Cool, But Probably Won’t Be a Bestseller

• GV Mobile Google Voice iPhone App Getting Booted From App Store for Usual Ridiculous Reasons

• Spotify iPhone App Kills Pandora, Last.FM, Slacker and iTunes in One Shot

• Weirdest Use of Spreadsheets I’ve Ever Heard

• Man, Don’t Choices Suck?

• Passion iPhone App Will Let You ‘See How Good You Are at Sex’

• Resident Evil 4 Brings More Re-Killing Zombies to the iPhone

• Top Three iPhone Apps: Weed, Booze, and Partial Nudity

• Apple Will Let iPhone Apps Augment Our Sad Little Realities in September With OS 3.1

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

Push notifications are great and all, but sometimes the decision to implement the feature into certain apps just leaves me completely baffled.  Now, I understand that some people get a kick out of certain things while others don’t, but this has to be one of the most unproductive uses of push notifications that I have seen.

Developer TightApps released Wooo! Button way back in August 2008.  Wooo! Button is a simple sound app that literally screams “Wooo!” when you hit the giant button in the middle.  That’s it, that’s all it does.  These types of apps are fairly common in the App Store, but thanks to iPhone OS 3.0 and push notifications, the Wooo! Button just got a bit more ridiculous.

TightApps recently released their new Wooo! Button companion app, Wooo! You.  Wooo! You allows you to make another person’s phone scream “Wooo!” via push notifications, but the other user must also have a version of the app installed.  All three of TightApps sound apps are able to receive these push notifications, but only Wooo! You and Booty Gong can do the pushing. Both Wooo! You and Booty Gong are priced at $.99, while Wooo! Button is available for free.

So, if you are looking for a way to annoy your friends or family members remotely, you may just want to check out Wooo! You.  I personally don’t see the appeal, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying yourself.  To each their own.

I know the concept isn’t that difficult to grasp, but I have included the demonstration video below just in case.

Have any of you discovered other apps that use push notifications in ridiculous ways?

Related Posts

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Normally when we do sale posts, we like to make sure you know what you are getting yourself  into just by reading the title.  Well, that just isn’t going to happen today since there are tons of great games on sale and they simply would not fit into the title.  It’s not a bad thing, however, it just requires a little more reading on your part.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour - In honor of the Buick Open, EA has placed Tiger Woods PGA Tour on sale for a limited time.  The game is regularly priced at $9.99, but it is now available for $4.99.

F.A.S.T. - Fleet Air Superiority Training! - SGN’s amazingly addictive flight combat game allows you to play against AI opponents or against other pilots from around the world via Wi-Fi.  The game was originally launched at $9.99, but it has now officially hit the lowest possible price of $.99.

UniWar - This is another great online game.  UniWar features tons of great content, and it is one of the best turn-based strategy games available in the App Store.  It has fluctuated in price ever since it was launched in the App Store, with it’s highest price being $4.99, but you can pick it up today for only $1.99.

HydroTilt XL - A ball rolling physics-based puzzle game that allows you to create your own levels and upload them to a server, or you can download other players’ creations for nearly unlimited replayability.  The game was originally available for $4.99, but it is now available for $.99.

iDodge: Space Ninja - A fairly challenging accelerometer-based space shooter where you don’t shoot at all but you can utilize power-ups and a time-slowdown mechanic.  iDodge: Space Ninja originally launched at the price of $3.99 way back in January, but it is available for free for “less than a day.”  Get it immediately.

Moto X Mayhem - This one only launched a few days ago, but it sports some very solid accelerometer-based controls and goofy ragdoll physics.  Simply complete the tracks in the fastest time possible.  Early user reviews have stated that although the game is solid, it lacks content.  It is fairly new, so there shouldn’t be any doubt the developer will release new content through updates.  It launched at the price of $1.99, but is available for $.99.

That should be enough to get you through the weekend.  Feel free to leave a comment below recommending any other games that are on sale that you believe are worthy.  Enjoy!

Related Posts

• Bike Or Die 2 On Sale For $.99, A Whopping $6 Off The Regular Price
• Wide Variety Of Games On Sale For $.99: Star Hogs, SlotZ Racer, And Radial 50
• Three Great $.99 Games Updated: ShapeShape, The Battle Of Pirate Bay, And Mummy’s Revenge
• Baseball Slugger 3D On Sale For One Day Only!
• Tradewinds 2 And WarShip On Sale For Limited Time

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