Monthly Archives: July 2010
Daily App: HexaLex
HexaLex is a new title from developer Nathan Gray that offers up an interesting twist on the online Scrabble phenomenon. HexaLex has the same basic rules as most other word games (Words with Friends being probably the most popular iPhone title so far), with one big change: instead of squares, you use hexes to mark out the words.
That creates a few interesting gameplay effects, including that you get a “bye” of two nonsense words per turn. If you can use the hexes to spell out multiple words, though, you can build up your score that way, too.
Other than that, things aren’t too different; you have a number of tiles to choose from, you can shuffle or exchange them as needed, and there’s a full online complement to the game, complete with push notifications and nice options to brag or send messages back and forth.
Pair of App Store studies show Apple is the devs’ choice, for now
I wouldn’t have called July 4th weekend as a great time for releasing studies about in-depth App Store information, but it was certainly that, as quite a few studies came to light this weekend about how the Android and the Apple App Stores compare. First up, App Store HQ has released some information from their own database of developers indicating that
Is AT&T capping iPhone upload speeds? Inquiring minds want to know
The MacRumor forums are abuzz with users comparing their recent upload speeds. TUAW reader Becca Holmes tipped us that iPhone users are experiencing uploads that appear to be capped at 100 kbps rather than the 1.6mbps that was a previous norm. Users have been comparing rates captured with tools like Speedtest.net’s Speed Test to put concrete numbers on perceived performance drops — and it looks like that drop is huge, compared to the way things were just a week or two ago.
According to the thread, affected cities include: NYC, Central Jersey, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, South Jersey/Philly, Columbus, Cleveland, West Houston, Phoenix, Northern Colorado, St. Paul/Minnesota, Suffolk County/Long Island, Quad Cities, South Jersey, Denver, Detroit Metro, and Cincinnatti.
Daily App: Zombie Wonderland
Zombie Wonderland was a game I didn’t get to see at E3 a little while back when I met up with Chillingo, but I recently checked it out, and it’s an interesting little zombie fightin’ title.
The undead action is somewhat removed — instead of directly shooting the shambling brain-eaters, you’re simply directing a little dude named Chuck around, trying to defend all sides of a house being attacked. The gameplay can be busy but isn’t always compelling — you’re also tasked with cleaning up the floors in a pretty bizarre mechanic that seems meant to add a little excitement to the festivities, but even when Chuck is racing around, things never get to a real fever pitch.
App Store chicanery powered by iTunes account fraud
It’s a shame to have to point out such underhanded behavior on a holiday weekend, but we got a heads-up from developers Alexandru Brie and Patrick Thomson that something was seriously amiss in the Books category on the App Store.
As detailed on Alex’s blog and in this follow-up from The Next Web, it appears that at least one Vietnamese developer (mycompany/Thuat Nguyen) has gamed the category so that 40 of the top 50 entries are all apps from their stable. It’s possible that another two or three developers have tried the same thing, although to a less extraordinary degree.
As Alex points out, at least two of the reviews for these apps indicate that