'Appily swinging our way through the mobile jungle…

The native weather app that comes on with your iPhone does it’s job as a basic tool to give you a general idea of the upcoming weather in your area over the next few days. If, however, you’re looking for something a bit more accurate, with loads of functions and a great interface then WeatherPro from MeteoGroup, a German app maker, is an essential addition to your app arsenal.

This nifty app finds the closest weather forecasting centre to you via GPS, and uploads a ton of information about what you can expect weather-wise over the next 14 days. I’ve been using this app for about 6 months now and it’s been spot-on every time… Although it could be argued that in the UK that’s not too difficult, and too be fair I think 99% of the predictions have been for clouds with potentially bright periods… But as I say this has been a completely accurate forecast! Good old not-so-sunny Blighty.

The amount of detail that WeatherPro goes into is pretty spectacular, so if you get excited about wind directions or humidity levels, then you’ll love this app. I imagine that for those of you who take part in outdoor activities like golf or sailing will find this of particular interest.

Apart from the day-to-day usefulness of this app I’ve found it really useful for holiday planning as I can get weather reports, that I trust, for anywhere in the world, that give me more info than just the temperature alone.

Another nice piece of functionality in WeatherPro is you can get animated radar and satellite images of local weather patterns (although this only works in certain countries).

WeatherPro - Best Weather App for iPhone

If you’ve had the Google search app for a while, I seriously suspect that you’ve not used it very much. Apart from the fact that you could search by voice, it really wasn’t that good. The good news is that they’ve redesigned it completely and with it’s new features and a well designed UI it’s definitely improved.

In their blog, Google have said “If you need to do a Google search on your iPhone or iPod touch it’s now faster and easier when you use our redesigned Google Search app, formerly Google Mobile App,”

So let’s take a look at this completely redesigned app, which is available for both the iPhone and the iPad. Google have changed the controls to feature a new swipe-down and swipe-right function which takes you to a settings screen and an apps button, or to the more search tools area that you get on the non-app versions of Google e.g. image search or news, etc…

Image search

This means that you can swipe-down to see the search bar and make changes to your settings whilst looking through search result, or even on the webpage your viewing through the application itself. Pretty cool. Also, by hitting the Apps button which appears at the bottom of the display you can rapidly access the various mobile search apps that Google have developed.

Swipe Action controls

One of the most significant effects of all these changes is that you can browse through the web for hours without having to leave the app itself… no need for Safari, although currently there’s no where near the functionality of the iPhone’s native browser.

The fact that you can now change the settings for the app is interesting and allows you to set your own preferences as to which Google apps you want to appear.

All in all a decent upgrade and I’m sure not the last. This is definitely a big move for Google and the start of what I think will be a much more aggressive strategy to get more involved with what we’re doing on our mobiles.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert whilst an enjoyable game is flawed in some major ways.

The controls and graphics are pretty good, but actual game play and lack of a multiplayer option gives you the feeling that this is just a test rather than a mature product.

I’ve always loved the PC C&C series and had high hopes for this game, and whilst all the elements exist in the game to make this a hot new iteration – great controls, including fairly easy unit selection and grouping, and smart screen options to maximise the small iPhone screen, there are still flaws that are highly annoying.

The most annoying problem is that units have a habit of bunching up and making it impossible to distinguish one from the other. It’s also very confusing if you’re trying to manage more than 2 groups of units at a time as the whole map feels quite squashed.

It is possible to create tabbed groups which helps keeps the game playable, but you can only create 3 of these at a time which is a serious disability when being attacked from all angles on multiple fronts! The units also are always getting stuck behind buildings and trees which means that you always have to be keeping an eye on them and can’t just make them attack and then go back to defending your base.

One of the features I really like is the diversity of units available, and once you’ve worked out what they all do and how to best use them the game gets a lot better. There is a lack of naval units however, and little chance to really get into base building.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert has very few maps unfortunately, and the only way to extend the game is to purchase them from within the app, and without multiplayer I get bored pretty quickly and would like a new challenge.

One of my main gripes is that of the few missions that there is, most of them are not what I would call strategy, the challenge being little more than building as many units as possible and full frontal assault. A little more sophistication wouldn’t go amiss.

I think that Red Alert’s flaws are serious, but definitely remediable, and to be honest I haven’t played a better old school strategy game on the iPhone.

Don’t shake hands… Bump your Iphones!

This free app from Bump Technologies is pretty darn good… if only I could find other people who’ve got it!

Basically it makes it easier for iPhone users to exchange their contact details by bumping their phones together.

Imagine you’re running for the train and meet someone you haven’t seen for years but really want to get back in touch with… instead of having to stand there, telling them your new details this app allows you to bump your long lost friend’s phone and like magic your details are exchanged!

The whole process is very quick, only taking a couple of seconds, but it does need a decent signal, wifi or 3G, as the contact details are stored on the Bump servers… I wonder why they didn’t just use the phone’s address book? This does raise security concerns for some users, but Bump say that everything is totally secure and encrypted.

Bump can also be used to share photos and other stuff so when I finally find someone else with it installed on their iPhone it’ll be pretty cool, I’m sure!

This is the list on Apps The Chimp is using right now on the 16th August 2010…

LinkedIn
Facebook
Toodledo
BeejiveIM
Tube Deluxe
Guardian
Crosswords
Spotify
Last.fm
technoBox
Remote
Twitter
IMDb
foursquare
Shazam
Dropbox
FastConnect
iThoughts
Salesforce
Meetup
face2face – not for long though unless it starts working!
Qype
Link Juice
Delicious
MetrO
TripIt
TripAdvisor
traveline s&e
RedLaser
iMobsters
Hector ep1
Bowmaster
Flare Elite… damn this game is hard!!
Fruit Ninja
Worms
Fall Down
Physics
Final Fantasy
Vampires
Ninjas
TrenchesVS
BrokenSword
DoodleJump
SpaceStation
iQ booster
Moron Test
Foto Msgr
Red Alert
PoolStar
Doodle God
Virtuoso
Time Out
100 Pushups
200 Situps
iFitness
WeeMee
Air Mouse
Bump
Dark Nebula2
WeatherPro
isaytakeaway
Streetmuseum
iBooks
Yell.com
20 min Meals
BBC News
Skype
Google
Art of War
Factbook
Google Earth
Tube Exits
eBay
AmazonUK
PayPal
Box.net
iDisk
NHS Smokefree
Print
PhotoBox2go
Palringo
Success
Melodica
2Do
Instapaper

The second Dark Nebula game by 1337 Game Design is out!… This is a wildly better game app than the first one, as while the original looked great and played pretty well there were some major short-comings in regards to the length, and the fact that you couldn’t recalibrate the controls meaning you had to play this app on the horizontal which ain’t always comfortable. The sequel however is brilliant. I give it a 8/10, but this could potentially go up with more game play. Calibration is cool, and the game lasts much longer. This game’s graphics are scrumptious! Best of any game app I’ve seen so far… it’s a top view, 2D, but layered to give a 3D paralax effect which is amazing.

One of the many improvements on the original Dark Nebula app is that you can now get a kick as plasma weapon which swings round you and mashes up giant spider robots and door locks right, left and centre! It’s great!! Well done 1337!!

By no means are all app providers equal although it’s true that they’re all growing pretty fast. With more than 225,000 apps, Apple, The Chimps favourite by a mile, is the titan in this market. By integrating their payment model with your iTunes account, paying Apple for your precious apps is scarily easy! Beware of ‘in-App’ purchases however! If you’re looking after the pennies, I don’t recommend playing any of the Storm8 games late at night after a few banana beers… when it’s only a couple of taps, it’s far too easy to convince yourself that £28 for 100 honour points in order to get that special weapon is a good idea!!

A number of the bigger apps require wi-fi to download. One of the best things about these iPhone apps is that Apples’s rigorous quality control ensures that the technical side of the app will be of a high standard. We think that they should really have more quality control on the actual content side as there are some really really bad apps out there… As I said, we love our iPhones, here at Mobile Monkey and we love our App Store, so all in all, you’ve done a great job Jobs.

Android is second place, but the gap is huge… with only 100,000 or so apps, and from what we hear the good ones are rarer than blue bananas.  What we do like however is that you can share favourites with your mates using the HTC App Sharing widget. We don’t like however that bigger apps have to be saved on memory sticks!! You also have to go through Google checkout which is a pain and can take ages. The best thing about Android is that if you decide you don’t like an app within 24 ours of purchase you get your dosh back! I wish Apple would implement this as it would get rid of all the games that look amazing but end up being completable in an hour.

The Ovi Store from Nokia is next with a few good in-house apps like Ovi Maps, which has people chatting at the moment. The fact that Nokia has such a huge audience around the world should have led to Nokia rapidly advancing in the app market but while their own apps are pretty good, the 3rd party apps are not up to scratch.

In the final places in this race are Palm and Microsoft. Palms hardware is excellent, but hardly has any apps, although the ones it does have are top names. As for Windows Marketplace? Well we’re all waiting to see what happens here. I think we may be in for a surprise with the new Windows Phone coming out soon. It’s never a good idea to assume that Microsoft are out of the race.

Where’s BlackBerry you say?? Pah… who cares!

I aM The ChiMp!!!

And this be my NEW site!! If you’ve swung by before you’ll see a HUGE difference…

One thing remains the same however, I’m still guiding all you app apes and mobile monkeys through the mobile application jungle!