“Games and Guides to Turn Into Holiday Gifts - New York Times” plus 1 more |
| Games and Guides to Turn Into Holiday Gifts - New York Times Posted: 15 Dec 2010 10:07 AM PST Software has long been a popular holiday present, at least if video games count. But this year could signal the emergence of a new trend: apps as gifts. Many iPhone users stubbornly refuse to spend even a buck on an app — even those who routinely dropped $3 for ringtones on their old dumbphones — as if a sacred principle were at stake. (Sorry, folks, ringtones are just primitive apps, which means you vastly overpaid for them.) For these people, and for the many others who would love to load their phones with fun stuff but cannot afford it, apps make great gifts. In a moment, I'll run down some ideas, but before we get to that, a procedural tip: The equivalent of an iTunes gift card — which can buy apps as well as songs — does not exist for Android or BlackBerry users. The closest thing is a gift certificate to an online app store like Handango, which covers these two smartphone operating systems, among others. Apple does not allow companies to sell iTunes gift cards that are designated for specific apps. But, the iTunes App Store lets shoppers "Gift This App," wrapping the present in a not-so-lovely e-mail or a printed notification that includes the app's icon and a redemption code. (Next to the "Buy App" button is a downward-facing arrow. Click and hold that arrow, and you will find the "Gift This App" link.) It is not as fun as a bright and shiny iTunes card, but it's not terrible, especially if you choose the apps wisely. To that end, here are some ideas for friends with iPhones, iPads or iPod Touches. App prices for iPhones and iPod Touches below are the same. For the sports fan, Yahoo Sportacular Pro ($2) offers reminders and results for every major sport, without ads. Golfshot: Golf GPS ($30) is a nicely designed and generally accurate finder of golf ranges for the iPhone. If Major League Baseball offered a way to give its app for next year as a gift, it might well have been among the hottest items of the holiday giving season. Unfortunately, it doesn't. There is a workaround, of sorts. The MLB.com at Bat 2010 app is free, since the season is over. If you can live with some uncertainty, print that app's page and include a promise to buy your friend the 2011 version, which should fall in the same price range ($15) as last season's app. Standard in the 2010 version were in-game audio and video highlights, among many other features. An extra $100 or so will buy access to MLB.TV, which streams live game video to the app. (Again, tread carefully with your promise, since this was last year's price.) Almost all casual gamers already have Fruit Ninja ($1 for iPhone, $5 for iPad), Angry Birds ($1 for iPhone, $5 for iPad) and Osmos ($3 for iPhone, $5 for iPad). A more recent winner is Pictureka ($2 for iPhone), which is quickly scaling Apple's best-seller list (for good reason). Willing to splurge? Try Real Racing ($5 on iPhone, $10 on iPad), which recently added online multiplayer options, Madden NFL 11 ($5 on iPhone, $13 on iPad), or NOVA — Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance ($5 on iPhone, $7 on iPad), a great, futuristic first-person shooter. Chaos Rings ($13 for iPhone, $16 for iPad) and Infinity Blade ($6 across the Apple spectrum) are fantasy-warrior epics. For the science-minded, The Elements ($10 for iPhone, $14 for iPad) offers stunning graphics and entertaining — yes, entertaining — chemistry tutorials. Star Walk ($3 for iPhone, $5 for iPad) will awaken your inner astronomer. Weather watchers will like Weather Channel Max ($4 for iPhone). For music lovers, start with SoundHound ($5 for all Apple devices), which identifies songs it hears (or you hum). Next, choose between Pandora (which I use on my iPad) or Slacker (my preference for an iPhone). Both are free, but you can improve the gift with a subscription to the upgraded services, which feature no advertising and unlimited song skipping. For Pandora, the annual subscription is $36; for Slacker, it is $48. Fitness-minded iPhone users will appreciate Nike+ GPS ($2), which tracks — and aids — your running workouts. For yogis, All-in Yoga ($2) includes 200 poses and tutorials. Aspiring hard-bodies will like iFitness ($2 on iPhone, $5 on iPad), which helps users with a broad list of fitness goals. Cooks might enjoy one of the popular celebrity recipe guides, like Mario Batali Cooks ($5 on iPhone and iPad), Gordon Ramsay Cook With Me ($5 on iPhone, $8 on iPad), or How to Cook Everything from Mark Bittman of The New York Times ($5 for iPhone). Weber's On the Grill ($5 for iPhone and iPad) is another solid choice. For more serious cooks, a shoot-the-moon alternative is Cook's Illustrated. The app is free and includes 50 of the publication's best recipes, but for a $35 annual gift membership to CooksIllustrated.com, the app opens the magazine's entire trove of recipes. Aesthetes need Art Authority ($8 for iPhone, $10 for iPad), which is perhaps best described as a mobile art-history course, including high-resolution images of more than 50,000 works. Musicians, meanwhile, need NanoStudio ($15), a powerful but intuitive recording app. What about books? There must surely be a way to give an iPhone or iPad user a copy of the new best seller, to read with the free iBook, Kindle or Kobo apps, right? Wrong. Apple has no way to do this, at least not yet. The best alternative in the meantime is Shakespeare Pro ($10), which includes every known word written by the Bard and memorable quotes from his works, among many other features. By the time your friend is finished with that, Apple will have hopefully figured out how to give an e-book away — maybe even in time for the next holiday season. Quick Calls Plantronics InstantMeeting ($3 for Android and BlackBerry) scans a user's calendar for conference calls and, at the appointed time, dials the number (including meeting codes). Download at instantmeeting.plantronics.com. ... Vocoo, a new and free app for Android and iPhone, lets you record your voice over any song you own. Dial down the vocal level and insert yours. After the 10th song, each tune is a dollar. ... Smule, the maker of Ocarina and I Am T-Pain, has a new app, Magic Fiddle ($3), that turns an iPad into a violin. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| With Facebook Tie, Clicker Wants to Be Personal Web TV Guide - New York Times Blogs Posted: 15 Dec 2010 09:53 AM PST Clicker, a guide to television shows on the Internet, wants to be more personal. The well-financed start-up on Wednesday became one of only a few companies to embrace Facebook's "instant personalization," a service that allows users to bring their Facebook friends onto another site with them. With the Facebook integration, Clicker hopes to make its programming guide more personal by highlighting shows that a user's friends like. Other Web services like Pandora, the music site, and Yelp, the business recommendations guide, have embraced Facebook's instant personalization, allowing their users to see the songs or businesses that their Facebook friends like. But Clicker hopes to go further, blending Facebook's instant personalization with a technology it calls Clicker Predict, which aims to create a personalized viewing guide based on its own algorithms. "Our home page now changes into a feed of shows that what we predict are going to be things that you'll like," said Jim Lanzone, the chief executive of Clicker. "We're telling you what you should be watching. And it is not just about what your friends like, because you may not like the same things." Mr. Lanzone said that Clicker's predictive technology uses some 50 factors including the programs a user watches and rates, those he recommends or discusses, to determine what shows to suggest to a particular user. Clicker will blend those factors with the "Likes" that a user and his friends on Facebook to further personalize its suggestions. In a blog post, Facebook said: "The more TV shows you like on Facebook and other websites with the Like button, the better your recommendations will get on Clicker." Media and commerce Web sites ranging from Netflix to YouTube and Amazon and have long been trying to fine-tune recommendations for their users as a way to get consumers to stay on their sites or buy more items. The task is especially important for Clicker as the site, which doesn't own any programming, can only attract users if its search and recommendation service is effective. The sites that user Facebook's instant personalization are Bing, Yelp, Docs.com, Scribd, Rotten Tomatoes and Pandora. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Maps Guides - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment