If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ve probably played plenty of games with zombies, castles that need destroying or defending, or unhappy birds flinging themselves at pigs. The game I’m reviewing today has none of that. What it does have is bubbles that you have to pop, and it’s called Just Pop It from Zoltán Kovács.
Game Play
Unlike most games, this one is surprisingly simple. It starts with an empty grid and a set of four teal colored bubbles, each with the number 3 in them. You get a bubble on the grid by aiming and releasing your finger on the screen. The number inside a bubble indicates how many times you must hit it with another bubble of the same color before it pops. Each time you pop a bubble, you get another bubble to throw at the grid. When you run out of bubbles, the game is over. A bubble can be bounced off the virtual walls and top, but not the bottom. If a bubble touches the bottom, the game ends. It’s as simple as that.
The grid includes an overlay with the level, number of total bubbles popped, and number of bubbles to pop until the next level in large numbers, making it easy to read while playing.
Addiction Factor And Longevity
This game is addicting, and that caught me off guard. It doesn’t look very exciting, and frankly, it isn’t, but after I started playing I had a hard time putting it down. I attribute this partly to the fact that you just want to keep going until you beat your high score and partly to the fact that by time the game has ended, you’ve already put in a lot of work to get that far. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like this game will remain addictive to me for very long. I’ve been playing for a few days and it’s still fun, but it starts the same way every time and I don’t know if there’s enough variation to keep me interested. If this game follows the path of some other games and introduces updates with new ways to play, it will renew my excitement.
Everything Else
The graphics are done about as well as I might expect for a game this simple and I actually prefer that they’re not over the top. This is like playing pool, in a sense, so I’m happy to not be distracted with too much while I’m angling my shot. It starts and runs smoothly, but has a bug that prevents you from continuing an interrupted game. If you exit the game for any reason, it will crash right after you re-enter the game, forcing you to start it again from scratch.
All things considered, I like the simplicity of Just Pop It, but I think it needs some variations in levels to justify the cost for the full version. Grab the Lite version and generate your own conclusions.
I’m not much of a gamer, but it didn’t stop me from getting excited about reviewing the NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse. Part of my excitement was the anticipation of trying out lots of features I, a non-gamer, may never use again, but I was also excited because I love beautiful tech products.
OK. It’s a thing of beauty, and we’ll get back to that, but gaming mice don’t make it on looks, alone.
A Comfortable Power Mouse
I decided to use this mouse for a while for gaming and everything else I do on my computer. I wanted to put it to the test for a week. You know what they say about time and flying. I’ve been using the Avatar mouse for an average of 10 hours a day for much longer than a week and I’m loving almost everything about it. I say “almost” because I was annoyed at first. I dove in and started using it right out of the box, disregarding the install CD. Out of the box, the side buttons already perform various actions and are so conveniently situated for clicking that I found myself doing unexpected things with unintended side button clicks. Of course, for gaming, you’ll want to pop in the CD and program all seven buttons to your liking right after you plug it in. The other item of annoyance is the rubber grip on the sides, most specifically that it seems to collect dirt quickly. I’m thinking a simple wash cloth will remedy this.
The rubber grip was also one of the things I really liked about the Avatar mouse. Fast-paced gaming for any notable period of time generates palm sweat and even a little bit makes most mice slippery. Try dodging baddies when the mouse slips. The traction provided gets you to safety quickly. The ergonomic design makes it almost cuddle right up into your hand, so getting to feel right at home with it is a quick process. What I hadn’t planned on using longer than for the review quickly planted its flag on my desktop, even though I sometimes feel like I’m taking a Ferrari to grocery shop.
Features And Specs
When you pay about $60+ for a mouse, you want features. It’s priced well for a gaming mouse as long as it delivers and the Avatar’s features fully justify the price.
With seven programmable buttons, Avatar does all the work while you just have to remember which button does what. In addition, you can customize some of the more common mouse functions like the scroll wheel and the optical sensor. Let’s talk about that sensor for a second. I comes in at a crazy 2600 DPI for precision accuracy. Not only that, but the 4 Speed DPI switch enables you to go from slow sniper movement to quick attack movement in a matter of seconds and the LED lights on the side show you the current DPI. And you thought the lights were just to look cool.
For the fans of the numbers, here’s the specs: Max Speed
– 40 Inches/Second Max Acceleration
– 15g Max Frame Rate
– 6469 Frames/Second Resolution
– 650-2600 DPI Image Processing
– 5.8 Mega Pixels/Second USB Reports
– Up to 1000 Reports/Second Buttons
– 7 Buttons, 5 Million Clicks
Did I Say Beautiful?
I’ve mentioned it already, but I’ll say it again… This is one sexy piece of hardware, especially for something as normally mundane and boring as a mouse. The best part is that most of what makes it look better also makes it work better. From the sleek ergonomics to the Tron-like DPI LEDs, the Avatar mouse catches the attention of everyone who’s near my desk for more than a minute.
And just look at it in with the lights off. ‘Nuff said.
Should You Buy It?
I can go on and on about how neat a product may be, but it really comes down to weighing the value against the price and factoring in “neat” last. That said, this is not a mouse I would personally buy normally. Given how rarely I play any games that require this level of sophistication, its coolness alone doesn’t squeeze it into my budget (not that I would dare part with it now that it’s on my desk). Avid gamers, on the other hand, should take a second look as this is a smart mouse that would look great with any desktop setup and just might give your kill count a boost.
Once in a while I come across something that is not only worthy of a positive review, but also gentle on your wallet. At about $20 for a cool little electronic toy, this is one of those products.
What you’re looking at is the Skitterbot by Desk Pets. It’s a little remote controlled critter that is a lot of fun without being too complicated.
Skitterbot Features
The picture above makes Skitterbot look a little more sleek than it does in person. Up close, it just looks like a little plastic toy but what it lacks in style it makes up in fun. When activated, the Skitterbot moves it’s six tiny legs incredibly fast. This moves the little guy around at about a foot a second. The included five button remote gives you the control to move it in any direction. Plug the remote in to charge your Skitterbot for 30 minutes and you get about 15 minutes of play. The ratio of charging time to play time has room for improvement, but 15 minutes is probably fine for a toy of this nature. The four different color choices also have different frequencies so you can make them interact and create Bug Battle 2011.
How Skitterbot Works
Out of the box, the Skitterbot needs to be charged before the fun can begin. Unfortunately, it didn’t charge over a USB cable I had plugged into my computer, but if you plug it in directly it charges quickly. In fact, it seemed to charge much faster than the advertised 30 minutes. The USB connector pops out of the remote when you need to charge it up and retracts when you don’t. The remote also includes a cable to plug into the Skitterbot so it will charge up.
To move the Skitterbot around, you just press any of the five buttons on the remote. Four are for directions and the fifth is to make it stop. The controls have memory, so you can just hit a directional button once instead of holding it to keep it going in that direction. To get a better idea of it, take a look at the video below.
I took my green Skitterbot over to my nephew to play with and he and everyone else loved it.
Win A Skitterbot
If you want a Skitterbot of your own, you’re in luck. I have a red Skitterbot waiting for one lucky winner and it’s easy to enter. Any of the following will earn you an entry:
- Tweet “Retweet to win a @deskpets Skitterbot from @JoeTech : http://lnk.gd/skitterbots” (You must be following @joetech and post a link here to your tweet to win)
- Post “Win a DeskPets Skitterbot from JoeTech.com : http://lnk.gd/skitterbots” on Facebook (You must post a link here to your facebook update to win)
- Comment on this post, telling us what you will do with your Skitterbot if you win.
Entries will be accepted until 02.19.2011. Winner will be chosen at random and announced here. Contest is open to residents of U.S. and Canada only.
With my own iPad on its way to me soon, I’ve been looking at accessories I can pair it with for the perfect experience. The video capabilities present me with a need for a good stand to put the iPad on while watching a TV show or movie, but most of the stands on the Internet are pretty lifeless and they’re all pretty similar in features. Then a stand found me.
UPDATE: This stand now has a web site and will be taking pre-orders in the near future : Perfect iPad Stand
Yeah… The bottom part is a bowl meant to eat food from. I’ve posted a couple times about Quirky, a site that takes product ideas through a community-driven process that refines the idea into a product, logo and all. This is where a site member, Jeff Tromp entered his idea for the perfect iPad stand. Just watch the video to see how it works.
A Better iPad Stand
What will make this iPad stand better than everything currently on the market? The thing that stands out the most to me is the full range of motion it provides. Jeff makes some great points in his video, showing how Apple’s stand sticks you with portrait positioning and walks away. His racing game demonstration in the video above (and additional racing-specific demo) show his iPad stand going beyond portrait or landscape, turning the iPad, itself, into the steering wheel for the game. From what I’ve seen, it really seems to provide the freedom that all the existing stands are lacking.
The amazing part about this new (hopefully) soon-to-be-product is that people are already reviewing it and consumers are lining up to buy one. Across the globe, a site in Korea posted a favorable opinion (translated) and views on his YouTube demo just keep going up. A lot of his video traffic is viral and that says a lot.
Make it happen (and make some money)
The two best things about Quirky are that you can help guide the development of a product and that you can make money doing it. This is no exception. Jeff’s Perfect iPad Stand is in the running to be chosen as Quirky’s Product 46 and I think it will win, too. Just click that link and create a free account at Quirky to vote for Jeff’s idea. If it wins, your vote will earn you a little piece of every single sale. Seriously. Not only can you say you helped it become a product, but when it’s ready for sale, you can wake up in the morning and see earnings from its sales. I know this because I’m currently earning on 21 products at Quirky and the highest earner for me is their Cloak iPad case.
