App Preview: External Keyboard for iPad with iPhone

Ever wanted to have an external keyboard for your iPad? Now it's possible to use your iPhone as an external keyboard to your iPad. The app is called External Keyboard.

App develop by Gp Imports Inc, Software Development
Price: $0.99









As the iPad has a limited language in the preset, with this app, you will be able to take the advantage of the languages that are in your iPhone. It pairs with either WiFi or Bluetooth.
It's also an universal app which means you only need to pay once and download it on both your iPhone and iPad.

Update: It's only working with the web browser that comes with the app. Other than that, none of the application will work. For example, if you would like to use it to type on your mail, safari or notes, this app will not work.
I understand why it does not work on other applications. Reason simply being that this is just an app. It's not a tweak or a updated functions on the iOS.
This is just to give a note to others that they fully understand the function of the app before purchasing.

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iPhone Apps Review: Naked Touch

I would like to introduce you to a great Photography app call Naked Touch.
It's almost as powerful as editing from your PC. You could edit, crop, adjust and share your photos directly from your iPhone. No need of expensive picture editor in your PC or Mac.

It is now $6.99 and it's available for both iPhone and iPad.
You can also check out the official website here



Upon launching the app, this is what you will see..
This will be your working space to begin with. You can create new album and so on. To begin, you can either take a new photo or you could import them from the gallery or from your camera roll.

I will try to demo a picture with this app. Firstly I will import the photo from my Gallery since I had already taken this photo sometime ago.

I know, you can't tell what picture this is.. yet..













Once the picture you selected is loaded, you automatically see several editing options on the right panel. Those features are stated below in full:

• Focus
• Noise Reduction
• Shadows + Highlights
• Levels
• Curves
• Contrast + Brightness
• White Balance
• Color Balance
• Intensity
• Saturation
• Color Tune

The above are more that sufficient from amateur people like me.
I will demo the "Curves" feature with this picture. Observe the picture on the left. The picture adjust "live" while you adjust the curve on the right panel. This is cool as you can see how much adjustment is actually needed to avoid over or under-saturation of the picture you intending to edit.
I suppose now you can tell what picture this is right?

There are several other options to adjust as well. The next one that I'll demo is the Levels. You notice that there is "Auto Levels" at the bottom. This is the recommended auto-adjustment based on the picture you have selected. Sometimes it helps like the one below but sometimes it makes the picture look bad. So, you have to make your own judgement at times.

Noise adjustment is also possible. Especially useful when you are taking pictures at night. Normally the camera sensor will try to boost internal ISO to capture pictures with more light exposure. With such high ISO, the noise starts to come in.

Once all the editing are done, you can tap on the "Send" button on the top right to send the picture either to facebook, flickr, tumblr, Mail or to your phone gallery (iPhone).

Okay, there are plenty more editing possible with this app but I couldn't cover all of them with only 1 picture example. I will just show you the simple outcome of the curve adjustment that we have done earlier. Take a look at the comparison picture below..

Before

After

Pls feel free to leave comments.

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iPhone Apps Review: Whatsapp

This app would fall into my hall of must-get-app for the year 2010.
It's simply amazing. It will replace your native SMS and MMS. The best part is, it is now available on iPhone, Blackberry, Android and even on Symbian. This would practically cover all major popular smartphones in the world. That is cross-platform enabled which in layman term would simply mean you can send messages from your iPhone to a Blackberry/Android/Symbian phones.

Current price in AppStore: $0.99
You can get this app from this link








To send and receive messages, WhatsApp utilizes your existing smartphone internet data plan, 3G/EDGE (or Wi-Fi when available) - that is definitely cheaper than sending SMS/MMS
On top of that, you can also send pictures, audio notes and videos.

Pictures extract below are taken from Whatsapp official website.

The big advantage in Whats app iss that you do not have to enter the username of the contact person individually unlike PingChat. In PingChat, you have to create an ID in which will be used for future communication with your other PingChat buddy (which he/she has to create a new ID as well).

In Whatsapp, it will request for your permission to scan your phonebook. What it does is that it scans your phonebook for numbers which has Whatsapp installed as well. This way, you will have a list of favourites contacts that already have Whatsapp installed. You can start communication straight away. No hassle of creating ID, adding contacts and sort of like that. How cool is that?

Obviously everything has it's negative side. This app depends on the Whatsapp server conditions. If the server is down, this app will be as good as useless. As the app is getting more and more popular, the server condition has much improved since it first launched.

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iPhone Apps Reviews: Chop Chop Ninja

It's a game by the developer Gamerizon. It had been getting a very good customer rating. Up to now, there are 519 users which think it's worth 5 stars in the iTunes.
The name of today's app is Chop Chop Ninja.

Indeed sounded like something to do with food but trust me on this, it is far from anything that you could put into your mouth =P

At the moment, this app is free but only for a very very limited time only!
Don't wait any longer, go to iTunes and start downloading!
The story of the game is that the emperor's daughter is in danger and you as the ninja is supposed to help save the princess. There are several ninja abilities that you will learn while on the journey to save her. You will have to evade some traps, destroy enemies and others to get pass each stage.

This is where it all begins..
The bottom left is your life bar while the bottom right shows the number of remaining lives.

This is where you learn the additional ninja moves as the game goes..

Going through the tutorial will guide you on the action keys of the game.
I'll just give a brief introduction to the gesture required to play the game.

Touch and hold the right of the screen will enable the ninja to move forward while holding the left of the screen will move in the other direction.
Tapping on the screen at the top side will make the ninja jump. Upon coming towards an opponent, tap behind the opponent in order to attack. Keep tapping the screen until the opponent is defeated. You will get a hang of the movements after several tries during the game.
Overall, the movements and actions during the game is superb. Everything is well responding and very easy to navigate as well..

Notice that there is a rocket at the back of the ninja. This enable the ninja to "fly" higher in order to obtain the golds but then obviously it will run out after a certain time.

There are several areas where you will have to enter during the game via a small door. Tapping on the door will open it and guide the ninja towards the door.
The Japanese gong on the right as you can see in orange colour is where the checkpoint is. You don't have to start from the beginning if you are dead halfway during the fight!

There are several types of creatures in this game, namely scorpion, snakes, ninjas and others. Remember tapping directly on the back of the opponent to terminate it..
Notice a green potion at the top of the scorpion picture? This is where you recharge your life after all the beatings..

Other potions are also available. The picture below actually shows the ninja with the "invisible" potion. I think you know what that means..

Upon completing the game, you will be brought back to the emperor. With the stuff that you have collected, the emperor will try to revive the daughter which is currently under some spell..

The 1st time, it doesn't work and that's how the game moves on. The emperor will once again give you instruction to go collect another sets of items to revive his daughter and off you go again in another journey to the next stage. There are several more stages before you eventually get to revive the daughter successfully.

More actions..

Verdict: I will give an overall rating of 10/10 for this one. One of the major reason is that the game is currently FREE!
Quick grab it before the free period is over!

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iPhone Apps Reviews: Hottest Apps

This time around, it's not a game apps review but instead a small and useful app that could help you locate the hottest or top apps in the app store.
The name of this app is called "Hottest Apps".

 This is currently priced at $1.99

This app works in the sense that it checks the App Store every hour to find apps moving up the ranks or apps which have gone on sale (this is the best part which I like the most).

Obviously the highest ranking is at the top with the "Hottest" icon on the right.

It also has the possibility of selecting Free or Paid categories.

Notice that there is the "iTunes" icon. Tapping on this will bring you straight to the app store where you could immediately begin downloading the app.

Searching function is also possible in this app.

 A few other interesting categories are all possible via the menu:

The rankings are taken from the top 10 stores which includes US, UK, Spain, Mexico, Korea, Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.
In the option menu, you can select which store you would like to get the ranking from.

Also, from the Option menu, you could actually switch ON the notification which is actually quite cool.. Sharing of apps via Facebook is also an option.

Verdict: Overall rating would be 9/10. Final missing point is actually due to the fact that there is a small advert by google at the bottom of the screen in this app. It would be great if this app is ad free since you actually pay for this app.

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iPhone Apps Reviews: Street Fighter IV

This would be a preview of the much talked about game from CAPCOM.
It's the Street Fighter IV. This really brings us back to the old good days of Nintendo..

To start off, this game costs $9.99 and yes it's a little costly for an iPhone game.
Upon executing the game, you will see a nice video scene of Ken vs Ryu.
 After that, you will be brought to a screen which looks exactly like below.

By selecting the "Solo Play", you will be introduced to all the fighters. Unfortunately there are only 8 fighters to choose from. This is really bad..

The players are:

• Abel
• Blanka
• Chun Li
• Ryu
• Bison
• Dhalsim
• Guile
• Ken

Now, let's get to the fighting part. As you know, iPhone based game are all multitouch and without hard buttons. The controls look like below but surprisingly I find it not very difficult to control the movements of the fighters. This is thanks to the Apple's technology of superb multitouch and the high responsiveness of the capacitive touch screen.

Some actions.. 

Some special moves of Ken.. 

Towards the end of the fight (the last opponent is always Bison), it will show the time you took to complete the entire tournament.

Okay.. My verdict on this game would be a 8/10. 

The missing 2 points are due to the lack of fighting characters and the hefty price tag!

I think anyone who have endured the time when you were kids with the famous Street Fighter saga would love this game.

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