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Games

Byte The App: Must See Apps Of The Week 3/17

The app stores are teeming with new releases, but who has time to go through them all? We do. Bringing you a selection of the most interesting, creative, and innovative apps each week.

The app stores are teeming with new releases, but who has time to go through them all? We do. Bringing you a selection of the most interesting, creative, and innovative apps each week. Submit your suggestions for next week in the comments below.

Kraftwerk – Kling Klang Machine No1 [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
Kraftwerk are robot kings of the electronic musicscape and now they've turned up to the app party (albeit, rather late) with this 24 hour music generator. The app lets you play around with ambient sounds using an interface that looks, from the video, like it's straight from a '70s sci-fi spaceship. Which is a good thing. Norman Fairbanks worked with the band to produce an interactive app that generates sounds based on real-time location data. At the moment, you can manipulate the sounds and save your creations, but he says that future updates will bring greater functionality.

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The Lake [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]

Lots of us kill time on the daily commute by plugging in our headphones and shutting off the outside world, choosing to instead immerse ourselves in sounds, usually music. Well here's an app, from

Maybe It’s The Lighting

, that takes the immersive experience of headphones but uses it to take you on a sonic journey rather than simply listening to the shuffle function. Much like Papa Sangre and the Inception app, it uses sound as a signifier to take you in different directions within the story. Using nothing more than a simple playing card you flip it over to begin your journey, turning it as many times as you wish to take you further and further on your aural adventure.

AR Magic Mirror [iPad 2]
The iPad 2's been out barely a week and it's already got its first AR app. The app hasn't been released just yet, but it looks like a lot of fun. Developed by Total Immersion, it uses the forward facing camera and facial recognition to allow you to adapt and accessorize your face. Adding sunglasses, hats, stupid haircuts, Iron Man masks—a whole range of virtual 3D enhancements that can be applied in real-time. Now who doesn't want that? It's good to know some frivolous applications are coming out with regards to AR.

PewPew [Android]
This game has a lot going for it. For starters, it's named PewPew. Plus, it has some arcade-style retro neon graphics and gameplay that allows you to shoot from multiple angles, taking down legions of evil shapes for the betterment of shape-kind. There's no storyline, but you don't really need a lot of context to start shooting glowing forms. It has four different types of gameplay: Pandemonium, Dodge This, Assault, and Chromatic Conflict, which all sound pretty intense. Whichever one you choose, you're sure to encounter a manic onslaught of color and enemy ships, with plenty of opportunity to kill, kill, kill, and watch the day's stress disappear with every pew pew.

Spine Sonnet [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
There are lots of music generator apps out there, but what about other lyrical forms, like poetry for instance? Poetry has an internal rhythm and cadence, so where are all the poem generators at? Well, they're here, courtesy of artist Jody Zellen. Taking titles from over 2,000 art theory and criticism books from her personal library, the app generates a random 14 line sonnet from their spines in the tradition of found poetry
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