Tiny Tunes by 562Studios is a cute little music app for children. It includes cute little colorful keys and little cartoon characters that move when the notes are played. The current version of this $0.99 app includes three different sound “kits” which all sound outstanding. Tiny Tunes started off with just a grand piano sound, but the latest update include bell sounds (sounds like Mr. Sandman intro. melody) and a really fun drum kit. 562Studios promises to make frequent updates to this little music toy which will include synth sounds and funny “cartoony” type sounds such as whistles, zips, bubbles, etc.

Gallery

9/10

:: App Store Page :: $0.99
:: Web ::

If you are a guitar player or songwriter I think you will love the app MySongbook - Lyrics and Chords… I do. This little app helps you create, find, view and manage song chords and lyrics. It uses the ChordPro format to display chords. You can find free songs in ChordPro format all over the internet. Some of the best websites being Chordie.com and Ultimate-Guitar.com.

ChordPro format is a machine-readable songsheet syntax which is relatively easy on the eyes and fairly easy to edit when you get used to it. If you compare the first and second screencaps in the gallery below, you can get a feel for the syntax. I found this song on Chordie and many of the chords were wrong. For instance on the third love, _____ there was a G or G7, but to me the G13 sounds like the studio version of the song. MySongbook doesn’t necessarily know the fretboard shape of a G13. That’s because the ChordPro song file format comes with a large number of common chord grids, but not every chord is included… there are just too many chords! Good news is that, with a snippet of code, you can define custom chord grids to your songs so that when you click on a crazy chord like the G13, you can see the chord shape quickly and easily! Oh yeah, the code. Put this at the beginning of your song file:

{define: G13 base-fret 0 frets 3 5 3 4 5 3}

There are a few ways to use MySongbook. There are 3 tabs at the bottom of the screen. You can either create a new song from the “Artists” list or “Songs” list by pressing on the + button on the upper right part of the screen. The “Find New Chords” tab brings you to the search area. From here you can search the web for chord charts, quickly visit your bookmarks, and search Chordie.com and Google.com. Photo 7 in the gallery below shows the search page and photo 8 shows my bookmarks.

How To
I’ll do a search on Chordie.com from within MySongbook. First I type “The Beatles” in the search field because they are my favorite band of all time. The app finds different references to “Beatles” so we click the first link. The search results provide us with a long list of Beatles songs to browse through. I scroll down until I find “All You Need Is Love”. Now for my favorite part. If the song is ChordPro compatible you will see the little blue “Save Chords” button on the lower right go from being grayed out and to blue. Press the blue “Save Chords” button to save the song chord chart to your iPhone. Easy as that. One thing that you need to keep in mind is that MySongbook searches the web for these chord charts and virtually anyone with a text program can make a chord chart… so they are definitely not all accurate/professional. But some songs are perfect and all of them can be edited after they are downloaded to your iPhone. And for the songs that are not accurate… we’ll just have to fix the chords and lyrics where we see fit. That’s one of the great things about Mysongbook!

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While I was playing with FingerPiano to review it my girlfriend asked, “Is that a new piano music app?” and grabbed my iPhone out of my hand and finished my song. I then showed her the song list and she chose the “The Entertainer” and proceeded to play it all the way through. She was positively giddy and when she finished said, “I’ve never played the piano before. That was so fun. I want this app on my iPhone.” And she loaded up the app store on her iPhone and purchased it right away. This has only happened a few times before and I’ve downloaded hundreds of apps.

FingerPiano is a great little app that allows you to play classic famous pieces of music using just one finger at a time. This app uses scrolling guides above the keys to show you what note to play and how long to play each note. It’s a brilliant idea that is simple to grasp and pickup. FingerPiano comes with 88 pieces of famous music including: Fur Elise, Canon in D, Amazing Grace, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Arabesque and many more great pieces. If you aren’t familiar with the songs you can have a listen by pressing play. You may also jam along with the song if you’d like. This is a really neat feature as I wasn’t familiar with a few of the included songs. The only real problem I have is that the playback sound a bit stacatto, quantisized, or robotic. If a swing slide feature was include that would be neat… or another way to “humanize” the playback of the songs

The piano sound is ok and sounds a bit like a toy piano which is ok for this app… it doesn’t really bother me. If you are looking for an iPhone piano with the best sound I’d recommend Grand Pro.

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Time to bring out AppSniper and post price changes for great apps that maybe don’t get much press. For those of you who don’t have AppSniper there is AppSniper Lite for free. There are a lot of great app sales this weekend so be sure to get these discounted titles while they’re cheap!:

Free

• Math Alarm ($0.99 > Free) - solve a math problem to turn of alarm
• Mish Mash ($1.99 > Free) - generate puzzles with photos found on the internet
• eSolver - Equation Solver ($0.99 > Free) - solve difficult equations in a simple way

$0.99

• iMobsters ($2.99 > $0.99) - massively fun online multiplayer! Sale ends 3.31!
• Spheroids ($1.99 > $0.99) - Asteroids type game on a spherical game arena.

$1.99 and Up

• 3 Point Hoops® Basketball ($2.99 > $1.99) - How well can you shoot a basketball?
• iPeriod (Period Calendar) ($2.99 > $1.99) - View your menstrual cycles at a glance
• Chain3 ($3.99 > $2.99) - Not another Bejeweled clone.
• IMoleBuilder ($12.99 > $4.99) - Build 3D molecules!

I am about to be a father for the first time… my baby is due September 7th, 2009! I am very excited to see my new little bundle of joy… so excited in fact that I have already purchased a few baby apps.

I am anxious to teach my child everything that I can and am excited to use technology to help me do so. The first baby app I purchased is iTot Cards (in the App store it is called Toddler Flashcards), but my icon says iTot Cards. This little handy app by iTot Apps was designed by parents for kids between the ages of 1 - 4 years old. It is a digital flashcard app that has hundreds of colorful cards that will surely help your little one learn quickly.

After the app loads in literally one second, you are presented with 2 categories that include numerous sub categories. In the Easy category you will find, Animals, Food, Things, and a Mix It Up button. In the Advanced category there is Shapes, Colors, Alphabet and Numbers. Pretty much everything you will need for ages 1-4. As a pretty cool bonus, each flash card has a Spanish and French translation so you and your baby can get bi-lingual together.

Overall I’m happy with this app and I think my baby will be too. The included items are useful and appropriate for a child under 5 and the hundreds of high-resolution photos are sure to grab the attention of any young one. This app is very simple to use, in fact it was designed to be used by a baby or toddler. Also the developers say there are many more new flashcards on the way… and as always the updates will be free!

:: App Store Page :: Free
:: Web ::

I’m always happy when one of my favorite apps is updated. With the fifth release of i.TV, the world’s handiest, movie, DVD, and TV guide, we get some great improvements. In my opinion i.TV is a great app and almost perfect, but I have had a few problems with the app here and there.

It looks like 2 of the problems that I have been experiencing have been fixed. The first being that i.TV’s start-up time has been cut in half. Data retrieval is super-fast now and images load more quickly. Also, the update is supposed to fix the random crashing issue… time will tell. A few other new features for version 1.4 include: AT&T U-VERSE listings are now available for all coverage areas. Comcast customers now have access to Video on Demand (VoD) information. And lastly i.TV has introduced the first “shakable” advertisements. When you see a banner ad from the dance expressionist group, “Circle of Fire” shake your iPhone to make the character dance! The folks at i.TV say this is the first of many fun, interactive experiences iPhone users will have with their advertising partners. I don’t know how fun ads are, but i guess a free app this good has to make money somehow, so I don’t mind.

:: App Store Page :: Free
:: Web ::

The official New York Times Crossword puzzle game has finally been released. The New York Times Crosswords Daily 2009 is a port of the subscription based mobile version. Developed by Magmic Games, the original mobile version is a $2.99 a month while the iPhone version costs $9.99 until the end of 2009. This subscription based game, although not a true subscription like iPhone 3.0 will offer, gives you access to a new daily puzzle each day. You will also have access to the New York Times archive which includes over 4,000 classic puzzles

I haven’t downloaded this app yet so I won’t do a proper review, but I will probably download it soon and give it a go. If anyone from Magmic Games’ marketing department is reading this, feel free to send us a promo code.

Considering you get access to thousands of the best crossword puzzle around, I’d say this app is worth the $9.99. If you need more than 4000 crossword puzzles. And for people who only get the newspaper delivered for the crossword puzzle, save the trees and buy this app. It’ll be cheaper than a subscription and better for the planet. Go computers!

I’m just curious as to what happens to the app on January 1st, 2010?

Here’s more info. from the app page.

• Send messages and compare your solve times with friends online
• Compete against top players via the online leaderboards.
• Listen to the in-game soundtrack or your favorite tunes from your iPod.
• Write in ‘pen’ or ‘pencil’.
• Solve puzzles on the grid or directly from the clues list.
• Automatic highlighting of related clues.
• Check or reveal letters, words or the entire puzzle.
• Check out the front page of today’s paper.

:: App Store Page :: $9.99
:: Web ::