Games you should be playing: Flood-It!
Filed under: Awesomeness, Free Stuff, Free on iTunes, Games, iPhone
I just downloaded Flood-It! for the iPhone, and you should too. Why? Because it’s a pretty sweet puzzle game, AND it’s free. Flood-It! is a unique strategy game (at least to me, although I suppose everything is based off something these days). Flood-It!’s developers describe the gameplay thusly:
“Flood It! is a simple yet addictive strategy game in which you have to flood the whole game board with one color in less than the allowed steps. You start from the top left corner and progress by selecting one of the colored balls on the left. When you change your current area color, every adjacent square with the same color also changes, that way you can flood other areas on the board. Select from 3 sizes of the board and try to flood-it in the least amount of steps! Highly Addictive and Fun!”
The game is just a little confusing at first, so maybe I better show you how you play. Read more
Attention Parents: FlashMath is free - go get it
Filed under: Awesomeness, Free Stuff, Free on iTunes, Games, iPhone, iPod Touch
Ever since I first got my iPhone, my kids have wanted to play games on it. Eventually I grew tired of the constant fighting over daddy’s iPhone (plus I wanted to play games too!) so I broke down and bought each of my kids an iPod touch for their birthday. Of course, as a parent once you see the vacant vegetative stares the kids get while playing the games, you begin to feel a bit guilty over rotting their brains. Luckily for me (and my kids’ brains), I found palaware’s FlashMath, a simple yet powerful Math flash card app that I’ve been using to trick my kids into learning, and it is free today on the app store.
Here’s how I use FlashMath:
In order to use her iPod, my daughter (who is 6) must first get at least 90% right from 50 questions before she can play any game. Her 4 year-old brother needs to answer 20 questions (the cool thing about Math is a 4 year-old who can’t read can still do the math). With that type of carrot-on-a-stick prompting, they breeze through the questions with minimal complaining, and actually view getting a perfect score like a game in itself (she gets an extra prize if she can answer 100 questions with a perfect score).
FlashMath provides complete control over the types of math questions it asks, and the difficulty is also fully customizable. For instance, for a 4 year-old, you might set FlashMath to only ask 10 Addition questions where no number in any problem would be higher than 8, where for an older child, you can set the numbers in the problems as high as 1000, allow random questions covering Addition, Subtraction, Division and Multiplication, allow negative answers, and add in a progressive timer to make it more challenging. The only thing that would make the app better would be if it could be set to open on boot so the touch could not be played until a certain score was reached. 
So here’s some unsolicited parenting advice for anyone else who feels a little guilty about buying their young child an iPod touch to play games on and kill brain cells. Pick up FlashMath today, and you will not only embiggen your kids brains, but you’ll have some “holier than though” parenting to throw at the parents of your kids’ stupider Nitendo DS owning friends.
Oh, and while you’re at it, palaware’s FlashGram (a grammar flash card app) is also free today, why not go for parent of the year and download that too.
WTF? Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is the number 1 music video download on iTunes?!
OK, granted, I don’t understand why anyone would want to buy any of the current top 10 music video singles, but how can Michael Jackson’s 1982 music video for “Thriller” be number 1?
It appears in order to stave off bankruptcy (and because he hasn’t been able to write a hit in 17 years) Michael Jackson has put out some sort of 25th anniversary edition of Thriller, and glommed off the fame of currently hot acts like Akon, Kanye West, Fergie, and others to get some heat behind it. But honestly, to PAY for this video… I mean, I remember watching the full 13:41 version on MTV all those years ago, and at the time I thought it was a cool video. But unlike Thundercats, this bit of 80’s nostalgia really doesn’t hold up. Plus it’s free on Youtube! and Plus, the Indian parody is better! (here it is, although odds are you’ve seen it by now).
So this brings me to the question of the day… “How many purchases does it take to make a video #1 on iTunes?“. It can’t be much. I refuse to allow that possibility. I realize Thriller was a huge record-selling album 25 years ago, but… that was 25 years ago! This video is more dated that Paris Hilton! (ba dum bum bum!) I thought Jackson was pretty much only popular in Croatia and the left side of South America these days. How is this video #1 on the US iTunes store?!
C’Mon people, I realize at the time this video redefined the way music videos were looked at and has a place in history, but I somehow I doubt when Citizen Kane hits iTunes it will earn as much respect.
If $1.99 means that little to you, I’ll set up a Paypal “Donate here” button and you can send me all your 1980’s video singles money. I promise I can find a better use for it.
Free on iTunes: Comedy Central Stand-Up Hot Picks
Filed under: Free Stuff, Free on iTunes, iPhone, iPod, video
If you’re a fan of Comedy Central’s Comedy Central Stand-Up, as am I, odds are you’ve seen most of the clips assembled here in this free Stand-Up Hot Picks special, but there is some funny shiznit here to be sure. Comedians such as Lewis Black, Wanda Sykes, Jeff Dunham, Dave Attell, Jim Gaffigan, Brian Regan and many others are showcased in this free 24-minute, TV-14 (read, “bleeped”) laugh-fest.
I actually find stand-up works extremely well on the iPod/iPhone’s pocket-sized screen, as most comedians’ faces do not benefit from close-up shots on large screens.
You can pick up Stand-Up Hot Picks here (I assume US-only, so let’s keep the UK bitching to a minimum on this one, OK?
Professors Jobs and Gore rock the iTunes U
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Free Stuff, Free on iTunes, iTunes, video
Yet another inevitable sign of a 2012 Al Gore/Steve Jobs presidential bid can be found on Apple’s iTunes U, where Steve and Al hold the number 1 and 2 spots respectively. Steve’s 2005 Commencement Speech at Stanford landed him the top spot, while
Yes, truly these two Apple chiefs are striking a chord with today’s youth, and no doubt they will be able to ride their wave of iTunes momentum straight to the White House.
But the REAL question is… where is Secretary of State Dr. Eric Schmidt’s speech?
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