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.Finger Battle [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]Remember as a kid you’d “declare a thumb war” on one of your friends and battle until one of you had pinned the other’s thumb? It was a simple but engaging childhood pastime that, like “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, we sometimes revisit in adulthood out of whimsy or nostalgia. Well now, like most things, there’s an app for that. Admittedly, this Finger Battle app isn’t exactly the same, but offers a touchscreen variation of that playtime favourite fromRafael RozendaalandD. van Oosterbosch. In a game that seems to mix aspects of thumb wars and tug-of-wars, this playful app has two players do battle by tapping one side of the phone’s screen as frantically as possible, trying to overgrow their opponent’s side. The fastest tapper one wins. Now all they need is a catchy sing-song anthem and it’ll surely be a hit at schoolyards and playgrounds the world over.Vimeo [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]Everyone’s favourite high-def video content site finally gets its own app. The awesome thing about it, in addition to being a portal for watching all those high quality short films, is you can also shoot, upload, and edit your own stuff using their video editor. It’s a basic set-up but lets you tweak and polish footage by adding titles, effects, music, recordings, and transitions. So hopefully, along with all the lovely videos, generative films, and experimental animations we typically find on Vimeo, we’ll start to see the iPhone movie come into its own as people increasingly shoot and edit footage on the move. Or if you’re not a filmmaker, you can just edit event footage into something more watchable. Weirdly, considering the abundance of videos on the site, there’s no search function yet and users have to rely on Vimeo’s curated channels.
How we’ve managed to live our lives meaningfully before this app came out is anyone’s guess. Take pictures of your friends, work colleagues, family, pets, anybody and everybody and edit video of your mouth over theirs using the front facing camera. Say something dumb or idiotic in a ridiculous accent—think Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau or Cartman from South Park—and then put it over the mouth of loved ones or famous people. The result is endless, childish hilarity. It’s apps like this that make it all worthwhile.Aporkalypse – Pigs of Doom [Android]
What is it with pigs and video games? First they’re being all nasty and stealing eggs that aren’t theirs and now their entire universe is in danger. In this latest boar of a game, four pigs must stop the world from the…Aporkalypse. At first we thought that maybe the entire game was simply based around a pun on apocalypse and that somewhere some developer was feeling very self-satisfied and chuckling to himself. But after playing, we have to admit that it’s a breezy, fun, and entertaining experience as you collect coins and solve puzzles. And it has a Nintendo vibe going on. And it’s free. And swine flu is but a distant memory.Angry Birds Rio [Android]
And here’s the pigs getting back to how we know them best, evil and green. The latest installment of this phenomenally popular game gets its Android release with the furious fowl getting shipped to Rio, which apparently just makes them even more angry, what with being all caged up and everything. So if you’ve completed every level on the original and Angry Birds Seasons with three stars, then here’s your next challenge. It’s well designed, will feature new levels via updates throughout the year, and has boss battles, too. Will the world ever tire of this series? Maybe after the 50th release. Maybe.
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Jibber [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
How we’ve managed to live our lives meaningfully before this app came out is anyone’s guess. Take pictures of your friends, work colleagues, family, pets, anybody and everybody and edit video of your mouth over theirs using the front facing camera. Say something dumb or idiotic in a ridiculous accent—think Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau or Cartman from South Park—and then put it over the mouth of loved ones or famous people. The result is endless, childish hilarity. It’s apps like this that make it all worthwhile.Aporkalypse – Pigs of Doom [Android]
What is it with pigs and video games? First they’re being all nasty and stealing eggs that aren’t theirs and now their entire universe is in danger. In this latest boar of a game, four pigs must stop the world from the…Aporkalypse. At first we thought that maybe the entire game was simply based around a pun on apocalypse and that somewhere some developer was feeling very self-satisfied and chuckling to himself. But after playing, we have to admit that it’s a breezy, fun, and entertaining experience as you collect coins and solve puzzles. And it has a Nintendo vibe going on. And it’s free. And swine flu is but a distant memory.Angry Birds Rio [Android]
And here’s the pigs getting back to how we know them best, evil and green. The latest installment of this phenomenally popular game gets its Android release with the furious fowl getting shipped to Rio, which apparently just makes them even more angry, what with being all caged up and everything. So if you’ve completed every level on the original and Angry Birds Seasons with three stars, then here’s your next challenge. It’s well designed, will feature new levels via updates throughout the year, and has boss battles, too. Will the world ever tire of this series? Maybe after the 50th release. Maybe.