Talkler By Talkler Labs iPhone Review

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Talkler is an iPhone app using your voice to scroll through your emails, read your emails aloud, as well as reply by speaking. I'll make it real simple for you, if the fact that Siri can not read your emails bothers you, then you'll love this app. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what a frequent traveler on the road needs to safely manage their email, and Talkler Labs has put those needs into their iPhone app.

When you first begin, it's easy to add an email account like gmail and yahoo, but I'm sure it's up to your employer if you can access their email server. Once you are set up, take a quick walk through, and you are ready to go. You should see a magnified list of your emails to scroll through like your normal iPhone email inbox, and I suggest you start by clicking the Talkler Tips light bulb. Scroll through the numerous things you can ask Talkler to do with your emails, as well as some very useful touch features. I guess you'd like to start reading emails now, so go ahead and hold your home button like Siri. Just kidding! I wouldn't review an app that boring, instead put your hands behind your back and say "HEY TALKLER!" Without touch, you can now ask Talkler to do whatever it is you need to do.

The best feature is once Talkler starts reading your email. In a large font teleprompter format, you'll hear your email read in a better than Siri voice, that follows whatever is on your screen. What that means for you is you can simply scroll forward or backward to whatever you would like read again, or see if your friend really just wrote "badunkadunk". No more triple click VoiceOver or highlight to speak, just tell Talkler what to do, and chances are it'll do it!

Here are just a few of the one's I like to ask following "HEY TALKLER!": "check for new mail", "read unread messages", "trash this one", "record a reply", "speak slower", "what was that?", and my favorite, "Help Me!" We all speak in different ways, so you can change any of the above commands to something else like, instead of "what was that?", you can say "could you repeat that?", or "I didn't get that." Without having to list every phrase, you get the picture that the command list is plentiful. With "record a reply", you can record a voice response that sends an mp3 file to open. That way, if you need to respond quickly, you don't have to worry about grammar or inflection. Like any voice activation, I've repeated some commands that must think I'm saying something else, but maybe I just need to try and say it another way.

The touch features are very useful, and you shouldn't have to look at your phone to use them. On top of easily going back or forward, you can touch your email to pause/resume, pinch your fingers to delete an email, swipe left to see your next email, or right to see the previous. Talkler is free to use, but they do have a monthly or yearly fee if you want to remove ads, but that's completely up to you. Whether you are blind, can't see like you used to, or are constantly checking your email while driving, Talkler is a must try!

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!

The Reality Of Gunsanity

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I ask that you take a short break from reading our iPhone app reviews, to think about the extremely important issue of gun control.

There are so many debates and articles flooding the web on those who support stronger gun laws, and those who want their 2nd Amendment gun freedom. You don't know who makes a valid point, or if what you are reading is even the truth. So to take a little different perspective, I thought we could just relax for a minute, and imagine these tragic situations with armed citizens.

The most recent murder of 20 children and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary has hit us all so hard. The fact that a human being could gun down so many helpless children, none of us will ever comprehend. As I read and expressed my own sorrow on Facebook, I quickly learned how naive I was. What started as a few thumbs up, ended with a comparison to 22 Chinese children being stabbed, BUT STILL ALIVE! Then I read other posts about us "gun control liberals" and how if teachers were armed, the children may have been saved. Those statements are why I want you as the readers to forget about who's right or wrong, and imagine what really happens in real life situations that could someday impact you.

Let's pretend a law was put in place last year to arm teachers if they take a course and are cleared mentally. For those who think we'll just arm the young body building teachers, something like 76% of them are women, and 56% are over 40. Fifty-five year old Mrs. Pegi Jones decided she would take the course, and the school would install a combination safe compartment to keep her gun. December 17, 2012 comes around, and it's a normal morning at school. Suddenly there are loud popping noises, and Mrs. Jones class jumps up and asks what is happening. All of a sudden one of the children yells out, "there's someone in the hall with a gun!" Never expecting she would ever need to flip that combination, Mrs. Jones quickly gets her gun, and tells the children to get down as she runs out of the room. Not knowing what to expect, she see's children frantically running in the hallway, and the gunman trying to break into another classroom. She starts to panic and fires 3 shots at the gunman. One of the shots whizzes by the shooter hitting a student in the leg, one hits the shooter in the thigh, and the other hits him in his bullet proof vest. The shooter screams out with rage, shoots Mrs. Jones, and unloads his weapons through the classroom window and hallway. The shooter is bleeding from his leg, but his adrenaline and anger easily takes him over to Mrs. Jones, and fires a bullet into her head. The shooter hears Mrs. Jones students screaming, and walks into her classroom. Without saying a word, he fires at the crying children, and shoots himself. When it was all over, 8 adults died, and 32 children.

Some of you are saying, "all you did was just make up a lame fictional short story and kill off some more people!" I won't disagree with you, but tell me how this story could possibly end up with a happier ending? Tell me a story about how if five movie watchers were packing the night of the Aurora Movie Shooting, they would have changed the outcome? Are you going to tell me how one of these men is a dark room sharp shooter, and with one bullet hits James Holmes right through his mask? Again, my guess is that short story ends up with James Holmes killing 50, and movie goers with guns killing 4.

So why is an iPhone App blogger diving into this topic? It's very simple, the belief that more guns is the answer is only going to lead to someone close to me ending up a statistic. I am not interested in going backwards in time to be a cowboy, or overtaking our government. People like John Lott are only going to cause more gun deaths in the United States. People like Piers Morgan are only trying to stop people from being slaughtered with assault rifles, and he's twitter slaughtered for it. I am not an expert on guns, and have never fired one. I understand the reasoning, and I have no problem keeping a gun in your home to protect your beautiful family. I won't even disagree that some murders wouldn't have happened, if the killer knew there were guns where they were going. If we could have security guards at every school like Wayne LaPierre VP for the NRA is proposing, that would be awesome! If you can get that done sir somehow, I am all for it, but that addresses nothing with gun control. It was clear after hearing LaPierre speak, and then again on Meet The Press, that the NRA will not budge on reducing clip size, or anything having to do with their precious guns. Lets be honest people, we are all crazy in our own ways, and any one of us has the potential to make a split second mistake during rush hour traffic. You have got to understand, for those of us who don't own guns, it's hard for us to just sit back and say,"evil people do evil things, and guns are not the problem." Would Adam Lanza have killed those children if his mother didn't take him to the shooting range and have three guns in her house, we'll probably never know. What we do know is that the United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, and 60% of homicides in the U.S. come from guns. I'm pretty sure with all the gun control talk, we just went from 1st, to 1st with a commanding lead! We can toss gun violence graphs in other countries back and forth, but none of that will change people like me. We fought over the Presidential Election with our different views, but even if you lost, your family moved on and lived. There is only one view in my mind regarding guns, and that is to make sure I never have to feel the pain we have all watched and felt through these tragedies.

The worst part of this debate, is I can't get these friggin NRA ads off my post! Thanks for reading, and god bless!!!

Twiddler By EM Games iPhone Review

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There are game genres we all choose to stay away from, for me some are endless runner games, mazes, and growing crap! Twiddler fits in the labyrinth/maze category, but it was intriguing enough to keep me playing. Imagine you have a glass lens in your hand you can rotate with ease, and you're looking into a maze filled world. Twiddler feels very realistic almost as if you forget it's just a screen, well, until you're rudely interrupted by someone calling. You begin each level rolling and balancing your ball rotating clockwise or counterclockwise, and grab as many stars as you can on the way to the end portal. Your heart will be thumping, so be sure to take a break in crevices to avoid enemies and obstacles like barbed wire and ugly creatures.

All that hard work squashed after grabbing a bunch of stars? You could take the easy way out skipping most of the stars, but that's not going to unlock the next level for you, so man up! Twiddler does work through the Game Center, so you will be able to challenge your friends scores and achievements if you so choose. Lets be honest here, that's about all I can tell you because this game is tough, for patient people, and I haven't unlocked many levels yet! Hopefully you'll have better luck than me, because Twiddler currently has a rust, nature, and space world, with 5 levels each(15 total). If you're into the labyrinth category, I think you'll love Twiddler, if not, I still think you'll appreciate the realistic feel to this game.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!

Panic Flight By Bulkypix iPhone Review

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I have to admit, I've been in an iPhone app coma the past few months, and the negative election just made things worse. Now things are picking up, and Panic Flight has come my way to wake me up. Flawlessly draw your finger around the screen to direct your plane in this side scrolling flying game. You ever play a game where you say, "this game would be awesome if they would just add this or that feature?" As you play Panic Flight, you quickly see it's not lacking features like everyone's favorite grabbing coins, turbo boosts, cloud exploding shock waves, and even turn into a mini plane to navigate easier. Sounds fun except there are plenty of obstacles while flying your passengers to safety.

Fly freely around the skies, but you must find fuel for your plane, and dive around dark clouds and tornadoes, or pay the price of getting stuck and losing fuel. Speaking of clouds, a neat trick if you graze past them, is you'll speed up if you want to risk it, or grab a shockwave and explode the clouds. What keeps Panic Flight filled with office bathroom stall excitement, is the online game-center achievements and score challenges. Not enough? Reach goals that pop up like flying a certain distance, or grabbing a certain number of coins to keep you playing. Like many other games, you can buy coins or tally enough coins to purchase/unlock 21 missions, 10 planes, as well as multiple plane upgrades. The bad is it's a bit buggy and slow at times, but with a few updates it should be fine. Bulkypix has a slew of games in the App Store, and Panic Flight is a great one to add to the list.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!

MarleeSigns By MEDL Mobile iPhone Review

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Everyone loves the beautiful and talented Marlee Matlin, so who better to begin learning Sign Language (ASL) from? MarleeSigns is a beginners app to learn to spell and memorize useful words in Sign Language. You'll be able to easily navigate through smooth, crystal clear video of Marlee showing you how to spell from A to Z, and learn to sign words and phrases like "thank you", "how are you", and "have a nice day"!

My favorite tool in MarleeSigns is the spell feature, which enables you to spell any word you want twelve letters or less. Just simply type a word into the search, and you'll see Marlee's hand sign your word back to you, with a karaoke letter by letter feature. Missed a sign? No problem, just swipe to see the previous letter signed. You can even switch hands in the picture if you're left handed, or hide your word and show a full screen sign. Okay maybe I lied, the true best feature of MarleeSigns is the fact it's free! So many iPhone apps are free these days, and I think it's pretty amazing to have the ability to learn a very important language, from the most famous deaf woman since Helen Keller for no charge. The last feature of Marlee Signs does involve money, but that is completely up to you if you so choose. There are currently five different lesson packs from Marlee, if you want to take your Sign Language skills to the next level for a $1.99 each. Overall, you really can't ask for more from a beautifully created app. If you're looking to learn Sign Language (ASL), there's no reason why you shouldn't give MarleeSigns a try.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!

5 Free Presidential Election iPhone Apps

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Being that it's election time and our lives are engulfed with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama news, I thought it was time for a list of 5 Presidential Election 2012 iPhone apps for free. I've included one serious news app, and the rest are for fun and entertainment.

Presidents Run

Endless runner side scrolling game, where you play as characters like Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Collect votes and jump over goats and protesters. As you run, you need to reach goals like go a certain distance, jump over 5 protesters, or collect a certain number of electroboots. Spend your votes on dressing up your president, or buy a head start or speed boost.

iMorph US Presidents

Take pictures of yourself or your friends faces, and watch it morph into presidents past and present. The app lets you line up your eyes, nose, and mouth for accuracy, and the game is guessing the president before the picture fully morphs. Play against your friends to see who can guess the fastest, or maybe you need to use the hint option.

Vote!!!

You've probably all ready heard of Vote!!! by the makers of Infinity Blade. If not, you fight as 3D Romney or Obama, and beat your opponent with weapons like a microphone or a hot dog on a stick. Choose from different locations like The White House Lawn or Oval Office, and dress your nominee up with some funny accessories. The graphics are great, the touch controls work as you'd want, and Obama and Romney even yap campaign slogans.

Angry Politicians

I really didn't want to add this one to my list because it's a knock off and very basic. The fact is, it kept me entertained for a bit, so maybe it'll do the same for you. If you're an Angry Birds fan and don't mind knockoffs, then have some fun slinging Romney, Santorum, and other Republicans to knock down towers of Obama, Biden, and other Democrats. As you knock down Harry Reid, he'll turn Republican red. If you haven't picked up on it yet, this is a Republican tailored app. No worries Democrats, you still get to sling Michele Bachmann up in the air, and who doesn't want to do that?

Election 2012

Figured as my last presidential app choice, I'd pick a serious one. Election 2012 is an up to date app with news and videos, so you can stay up to date on what Romney and Obama are up to. It's important that we don't fall for negative campaign ads by the Democrats and Republicans, and this crisp app makes it easy for you to know what information you need before casting your vote for the next President.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the apps and what you thought of them, leave us a comment below!

Prince of Balls By IKKI Arts iPhone Review

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This is a critical time to stay occupied while we listen to crazy talk during the Obama vs. Romney Presidential Race. So as you're watching the news wanting to pull your hair out and the moron speaking, just relax and slide open your iPhone. Prince of Balls is a new side scrolling game, where the object is to jump the least amount of times grabbing stars, coins, and other hidden treasures on your way to the finish line to find your princess. Your character is an orange ball prince with a crown, that can only jump left or right based on where you touch the screen. Your strategy through each level is to jump the correct height and angle depending on touch, to collect all the stars, coins, and hidden gifts, without wasting a jump. Jump wrong and you'll hit one of the obstacles or enemies and die. On the topic of dying, be sure to grab fruit, and cross the checkpoints before you run out of energy.

I chose to review Prince of Balls because there's a lot of iPhone games out with the same sort of features, but it's the golf score lowest amount of jumps, that gives it the WuzAPPenin originality thumbs up! Some neat features are gravity potions to float and magnetize to everything in your way, spring off of mushrooms, or even watch out for the slippery mud. You can download Prince of Balls Free, pay for 50 more levels, or even pay more for Prince of Balls HD, which in my opinion is pushing it. Whichever version you choose is up to you, but either way you're sure to have a new fun game at your fingertips.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!

Mole Kart 2 Evolution By Taomee Entertainment iPhone Review

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Well, I reviewed Mole Kart 1 awhile back, and I'm much more excited about Mole Kart 2 Evolution! It's real simple, if you sit on your couch with friends and play Mario Kart Wii, you're going to love how great Mole Kart 2 is on your little iPhone to get your fix. Let's not quote me people, it is just a phone, so I'm not saying it's like playing with a Wii steering wheel. I said it last time, in my opinion the kart needs to be bigger in proportion to the size of your screen. This time around in Mole Kart 2 Evolution, the characters and karts are bigger, and they've even added a drift button to slide around turns.

As you race past fiery dragons, slide through arrowed speed boosts and jumps, be sure to grab coins and question marks. Oh yeah, sometimes I forget not everyone has played Mario Kart. You grab question marks in the road which gives you the ability to speed boost, toss bombs, and even the Mario Kart shrinking lighting. You can shake the iPhone when you are flying over jumps to go faster, and grab coins to spend on characters, tracks, and tune ups. There's a story mode with 58 stages where you'll need to beat certain times, grab a certain amount of coins to earn stars and tracks, or just play in Quick Race mode. I said in my first review, "Mole Kart will be a really fun iPhone game with a few good updates", and Mole Kart 2 Evolution has done that.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!

FatMole By RoomLabDev iPhone Review

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WARNING! When you are done playing this game, your body may feel like it's trying to gravitate towards objects around you. In FatMole, you tilt as deep as you can into the underground caves, by grabbing diamonds, power ups, and avoiding creatures spread around the screen. If you don't grab a diamond in time, you'll bungee back up the hole, and you won't find your stolen lunch from Tonny the evil mole! The graphics are worthy, and you can fall through levels like volcanoes, icebergs, and oceans filled with dragons and aliens.

You can spend your earned diamonds in the store on things like putting on a Mariachi suit, or put on wings to help you while you play. Struggling a bit?Spend diamonds on weights to help you drop quicker, or put on some
gloves to grab everything around you. The best part of FatMole is that you can challenge your friends on Facebook and set your own rules! You can do things like set the depth, and race to that point, play with creatures and boosts or without them, and even grab the diamonds before your buddy. RoomLabDev clearly understands, if people are going to keep their app, you have to have multiple ways to play, and you get that with FatMole FREE, or FatMole without ads or having to buy levels with diamonds.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!

Vote!!! By Chair Entertainment Group iPhone Review

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Vote!!! iPhone is really one of those iPhone games that doesn't need a review. I didn't say stop reading! What I meant was, you are cartoon Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, and you fight each other with different goofy weapons you can buy. That's the game. I decided to review Vote!!! iPhone because the real point of the app is to get people to vote. Even though this is an educational app for the 2012 Presidential Election, the game is actually pretty entertaining. Some of the features you'll like are, Obama and Romney are constantly yapping catch phrases, you can fight on the the Whitehouse Lawn, Oval Office, or Debate Stage, and buy goofy costumes to dress the next president in.

You could get bored pretty quick fighting the same fight with the same two people. What keeps Vote!!! iPhone entertaining is the funny disguises and goofy weapons, like a hot dog on a stick, ice cream, or whack 'em with the Constitution. Whether you like beating up the candidates or not, again the whole purpose of the app is to get people to Vote!!!, and provides you with some information and links. Millions will be playing without a doubt, and so far you can clearly see Barack Obama is destroying Mitt Romney in percentage points. What do you expect when you have people like Todd Akin, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity on your side. We'll see what happens come November, but for now, in game world Obama seems to be the winner in Vote!!!.

We would love to hear if you downloaded the app and what you thought of it, leave us a comment below!