It doesn’t take an esteemed leader in alternative medicine to convince people that Yoga is helpful for many things, such as weight loss, relaxation, general fitness and health. But, it’s not always easy to fit a yoga class into your schedule, and unless you have a Yoga for the People studio nearby, there’s usually a hefty fee to pay before embarking on your physical and mental wellbeing (try upwards of $13 per class in the Bay Area).  To assist you in those times when you’d like a studio session, but cannot, for one reason or another, be present in one, Authentic Yoga acts like a personalized collection of yoga videos. It can serve as both an introduction to yoga for the beginner or as a convenient tool to help the busy person enjoy something resembling a class, without actually having to attend one. Those who travel frequently will appreciate the flexibility and professionalism of this app, and I definitely consider it my go-to yoga app from now on.

Dr. Chopra is featured in several videos in the Understand Yoga section. In these, Deepak briefly mentions other types of yoga before explaining that Authentic Yoga focuses primarily on Raja yoga, a branch of yoga that focuses heavily, if not entirely, on meditation (this app is a combination of Hatha/Raja styles). Other main sections of Authentic Yoga include Learn to Practice, Yoga Routines, and Review Poses. The best part about the Learn to Practice section is not only does it teach basic yoga poses and positions, but it identifies poses for specific ailments like tight hamstrings, tight hips, or for building balance, decreasing stress, and more. Yoga Routines are divided between beginner, intermediate, and advanced and include routines for balance, flexibility, strength, body awareness, and even Deepak’s personal awareness routine. You can rate each routine on both difficulty and your personal enjoyment to keep track of which routines you use frequently and which ones you use only intermittently. You can also follow routines in their entirety or select specific poses. Each routine includes pictures and a video of Tara performing the poses to music, with Deepak offering instruction in the background, along with an explanation for the sequence. In addition, you can become a part of the Authentic Yoga community and send questions to Deepak and Tara directly from the app.

Can you believe the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, in a time when having an ecological mindset was correlated more with wearing birkenstocks and eating – the horror – foods not provided in a colorfully designed cardboard box? The environmentalists of this era are often dramatized as hemp-wearing hippies who tied themselves to trees, rioted against fur, and adopted a neo-Native American lifestyle of rediscovering simpler living, away from the granite confines of city interiors. Forty years later, environmentalism has changed into the yuppie mainstream, for the better: our entire lexicon is rife with words like biodegradable, ecosphere, carbon footprint, community supported agriculture and more, colleges around the country are building LEED certified buildings, the new wave of electric cars are emerging this coming year, and corporate America is taking a more sustainable approach to business (well, some, not all). Recycling has long been accessible on our curbs and eating locally grown food – or growing your own food – has become trendier, even, than the Prius, itself.

The problem with living an eco-intelligent lifestyle, however, is there’s so much to consider and remember. Thanks to green iPhone apps, all this information and much, much, much more is now available at your fingertips. Green apps are sprouting up faster than, well, sprouts. In honor of Earth Day’s big birthday, we at Appstruck combed through many different eco-friendly apps for shopping, travel, transportation, eating out and more, so you have them ready at your green thumbs.

1. Animal-Free – FREE
Animal-Free is a pocket reference guide for many common and hidden animal ingredients. Whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, part-time veg or simply trying to shop veg-friendly, this app by Symbiotic Software will help you make conscientious shopping decisions. New vegans will appreciate the list of commonly misunderstood or unfamiliar vegan ingredients that will help expand your dietary horizons.

2. Gorgeously Green Survival Guide – 99 cents
The Gorgeously Green Survival Guide is a quick reference for busy women. Developed by bestselling author Sophie Uliano, Gorgeously Green guides you through the confusion of shopping for eco-friendly choices. One of the best features is the ability to create convenient and helpful shopping lists for everything from lip sticks to light bulbs.

3. Greenpeace Tissue Guide – FREE
The Greenpeace Tissue Guide allows you to make informed decision when shopping for recycled tissue and toilet paper. Experts have rated more than 100 brands as “recommended,” “could do better” and “avoid!”

4. Harvest – Select the Best Produce – $1.99
Harvest helps you skip packaged and processed foods with information on selecting the freshest, ripest, healthiest and best-tasting produce. Now you can knock on watermelons, smell pineapples and squeeze avocados with knowledgeable élan. (read review here)

5. Locavore – $2.99
Eat foods grown and raised locally without spending hours Googling data for tonight’s meal. Locavore provides government and NGO data by state. Click on the food item for Wikipedia info and Epicurious recipes. There’s no market-finder feature for in-season foods, but it sure beats printing lengthy lists of locally grown foods. (read review here)

6. TheGoodGuide – FREE
GoodGuide helps you find safe, healthy and sustainable products while you shop. Simply scan the product’s barcode to view detailed ratings for the health, environment and social responsibility of more than 65,000 products and companies.

7. CarCare – $4.99
CarCare automatically calculates your gas mileage at the pump and reminds you when it’s time to change the oil, rotate tires, get a wax or any other service you desire.

8. Green Gas Saver – FREE
Green Gas Saver tells you when you’re accelerating or taking a turn too fast, which can hinder your gas mileage. The idea behind the app is to keep the ball in the center of the screen. When you accelerate too quickly, the diameter of the ball increases and an alarm will sound, indicating you’re accelerating too quickly. Green Gas also keeps a running score so you can see how well you’re driving in real time. A few weeks with this app and driving efficiently will become ingrained.

9. Greenmeter – $5.99
Greenmeter by Cleantechnica tracks your car’s carbon footprint and fuel efficiency while calculating weather conditions, cost of fuel and vehicle weight. You also can measure drag coefficient, vehicle pitch and rolling resistance with estimates available at CleanTechnica.com.

10. Twavel – $1.99
Twavel isn’t just for wascally wabbits. It calculates the CO2 emissions associated with your travel choices and allows friends to compare their travel footprints.

11. Green Sushi Selector – 99 cents
Green Sushi Selector allows you to research whether the sushi fish you’re about to buy comes from threatened species or has been caught or farmed in ways harmful to the environment. Fish are listed both by their Japanese and common-market names. Additional features include health alerts for mercury and PCBs, as well as dietary recommendations.

12. VegOut – $2.99
Vegetarian offerings in many restaurants are often limited and boring. VegOut makes life a bit easier with the world’s largest international listing of vegan, vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. Search listings by your exact location or a customized location when on the road.

13. Geocaching Toolkit – FREE
Geocaching, the green outdoors game of hiding and seeking treasures, has caught on throughout the world. Geocaching Toolkit guides players between locations with clues involving puzzles, calculations and projecting a new waypoint using distances and bearings. Sometimes the calculations are easy, but this toolkit can help when calculations become tedious .

14. Lonely Planet Travel Guides – Prices begin at 99 cents
Lonely Planet Travel Guides are the guide of choice for many frugal and green travelers. Various apps provide paperless guides for both U.S. and international destinations. Some of the guides are buggy and need work, but Lonely Planet is working on updated versions. Tip: Read the reviews before buying.

15. BraveNewFilms – FREE
Find and access the latest, hard-hitting videos on social and economic issues. From exposing abusive health insurance companies to combating unregulated Wall Street greed, the videos on BraveNewFilms inform, challenge and recommend opportunities to take action.

16. Get Green – 99 cents
Get Green, from Candied Apple, provides you with daily ammunition in the battle against climate change.You’ll receive daily updates about how you can make a difference. Tips cover everything from green workplaces to green Halloween celebrations. It even has tips on how to reduce the carbon footprint of your wedding.

17. Green Charging – 99 cents
Green Changing reduces your energy consumption when you charge your phone. Launch the app when you start charging and it’ll notify you with sound and vibration when your battery is fully charged. Some of the best things are so simple.

18. Green Wars – $1.99
Based on the classic Drug Wars game, Green Wars requires players purchase environmental products for cheap and resell them for a profit. Manage your inventory to make the biggest profit on buying and selling recycled paper, LED light bulbs, reusable shopping bags, recycled paper and fixed-gear bicycles. Once you’ve earned some street cred by making deals, you can buy and sell high-end goods like solar items, geothermal pumps, carbon credits and hybrid cars.

19. iGreen – 99 cents
Stay current on the latest solar, hybrid, green and green tech news. Aggregated new sites on iGreen include About My Planet, Azo CleanTech, VentureBeat, Green Biz, Green Computing, Hybrid Car Blog and more.

20. MeterRead – $2.99
Read your meter with ease using your iPhone. Check it again later and MeterRead provides you with data to better control your power bill. This app from Zerogate displays the total kilowatt hours used since the last reading and calculates your total usage for the next 30 days.

French Women Don’t Get Fat, The Okinawa Diet, The China Study, Dr. Atkin’s New Diet Revolution, and The Best Life Diet are but a few of the the most notable diet books from the last decade, each one acclaimed in its own right, each one later lambasted, and each heavily featured on various bestseller lists. Anyone can argue that one such diet will make you lose weight rapidly, but that another is better for your heart, that this other diet will give you the clearest complexion, but no one can truly say that one diet is better, overall, than another – or, at least, not any one of the modernized diets we see lining our bookshelves today. Many physicians today agree that some generalized form of a Mediterranean diet is the healthiest one to subsist on, if we define healthy in terms of a localized population with a low incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and a host of other modern conditions. The principal aspects of this diet include a high consumption of olive oil, legumes, grains, fruits, and vegetables; a moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), wine and fish; and a low consumption of meat and meat products. Of course, dietary jargon like moderate consumption often fall on deaf ears – how do we define moderate? Everything, after all, both diet and people, is relative to one’s own health and experience. Dietary factors, really, are only part of the reason for the health benefits enjoyed by these cultures – genetics, lifestyle (notably heavy physical labor), and environment are also involved. The putative benefits of the Mediterranean diet for cardiovascular health are primarily correlative in nature: while they reflect a very real disparity in the geographic incidence of heart disease, identifying the causal determinant of this disparity has proven difficult. Here is where my dad would pump a fist in the air and exclaim, with all the enthusiasm of a closet theorist, the correlation between cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, and Vitamin D.

One diet book bestseller that has been captivating people around the country doesn’t so much advocate a diet, in the traditional sense, as it advocates a simple substitution method when eating out. Their motto? Eat This, Not That! Rather than require readers to plow through literature on why certain foods are better than others, or vaguely telling readers to eat only moderate amounts of something, Eat This Not That instead takes a visual approach, inundating readers with pictures of food commonly eaten at fast food establishments, or during holidays, common snacks, breakfasts and more. The idea of the book, and its recently released app by Men’s Health Magazine, is to familiarize people with the concept of which foods are healthier – mind you, on a modest scale – than others of seemingly equal caloric value. If anything, the idea is pared down to the simple, but everlastingly true dogma of “calories in, calories out” – if you eat less, you will weigh less. Obviously, this isn’t a diet book that focuses on health, per se; if it were, then it wouldn’t advocate eating at fast food establishments. The meal substitution principle is a good one, though, because many people do dine at these establishment on a frequent basis, and if you can’t deter them from eating there, you may as well steer them toward the better choices.

The Eat This Not That app takes the visual principle a step further by plugging it into a game – a transportable one, at that. I’ve often lamented at how little people read, but the fact of the matter is people are highly visual creatures – when it comes to diet books, or recognizing portions and alternate food options, images are key. There won’t always be nutritional information available for everything you eat, and even with the caloric information now required by law for many places, there’s still no solid verification that people will always be interested, or patient enough to read this information and make better choices. With the Eat This Not That game, users will slowly become adept at recognizing which foods offer them the best bang for their health; they’ll learn, along the way, that mashed potatoes, while heavy in their own right with cream and butter, still make a more well-rounded choice than a slice of sweet potato pie. A shortbread cookie, while smaller in size, and seemingly innocuous and unassuming, has nearly three times the saturated fat of a chocolate raspberry brownie, which clocks in a modest 5 grams with 370 calories. The game presents you with two images, and you must decide, based on appearances alone, which is the better choice based on potential levels of saturated fat, sodium, and calories. As the clock ticks down, nutritional info starts popping up, to help you make a more informed choice, but you’re only docked points if you play in the speed round.

Yikes, the calories.

Many of the foods contained within this game are establishment-specific, like a Wendy’s Frosty or a Double Whopper with Cheese and Fries from Burger King. The game is particularly exceptional in this regard, for sorting out the caloric, sodium, and saturated fat values for these foods because I, personally, find it very difficult to weigh my options at these places. A burger is a burger, to me, so how do I know which one actually has four times the amount of already catastrophic sodium… and why? It never ceases to amaze me the disparity in calories and fat between two, seemingly identical entrees. Other foods featured in the game, however, are a bit more vague in origin, labeled simply as “slice of pumpkin pie” or a “blueberry cheesecake.” A blueberry cheesecake from Lindy’s in New York may very well be a heart attack on a plate, but not all cheesecakes are made in the same ilk. Portion sizes, too, remain vague in the slice arena. A quarter of a pie slice of pumpkin pie could very well rival a small slice of cheesecake; of course, this is making the argument against standard pie slice sizes, which frankly, I’m sure most people are unaware. Some choices make me scratch my head, it being completely obvious to anyone which is the healthier choice, but then I have to remember the general state of the nation: we’re obese, on a cattle scale, and most people probably will choose that deep-fried crab cake with 19 grams of fat and 300 calories over the 12 shrimp cocktail with sauce, averaging around 165 calories and zero fat. Sometimes, you just want that turducken.

Regardless of personal choices, Eat This Not That is a host of information on things we really don’t want to know about. The true success of this game, and book, lies in the scare tactic when users realize, with horror, that a salad from Wendy’s, with all its innocent iceburg lettuce, can range up to 700 calories, making a burger the unforeseen better choice. It may not be a revolutionary diet plan, and it may not be the most accurate in its representation, but it does fascinate you (albeit in a somewhat horrific and masochistic way) into making wiser decisions… and for a nation that scares itself silly over trite, inconsequential things, that isn’t a bad thing at all.

There once was a girl named Jackie, who watered her plants til they were tacky. She stayed up all night, feeling something wasn’t right, and thought to herself, “I wonder if they get too much light?” It wasn’t very clear, no, not at all, why her plants shed such a tear, and Jackie was blubbery, amiss, giving those dear plants a kiss, knowing all too well, her plants were in certain hell. Even with oxygen and water, her plants simply fought her, and indeed came her fright, when her plants died that very night.

Point of the story? I’m a terrible gardener, and, apparently, a terrible poet. I received my first potted plant as a gift from my boyfriend in High School, who felt a beautiful white orchid with lovely, purple stamens could soothe my post-wisdom teeth agony, and I suppose, appeal to my womanly sentiments  – he always did have good taste. More formally known as a Phalaenopsis, it was planted in a green ceramic pot with pretty lattice patterns, and held the most wondrous bloom: wide open, like a billowy cloud but with a ghostly expanse to its every tendril. I still have the pot – it rests in companionship with other pots on my front porch – but unfortunately, no plant has taken residence in its pretty seat since the day that orchid died. Maybe I’m sentimental, and felt that no other plant deserved the place of that flower, but it’s also a matter of my green thumb – I do not have one. Plenty of pink ones, ones that hold pens and can cook, bake amazing desserts, but none that bear even the remotest ability to plant something, and not have it wither and die. Orchids, in particular, are a fussy species, often blooming but once a year, and require stringent limitations on the amount of water and light, even dryness to the air (they love humidity). The reason why my blooms never returned? Nitrogen deficiency, a common reason why plants fail to bloom year after year despite, otherwise, remaining green and healthy. Time after time, I’ve purchased plants, only to see a jungle of green appear around me, with no other color in sight.

uFlowers by NIX Solutions may just be the answer. Obviously, for anyone with an innate talent for gardening, or for someone who actively seeks knowledge on plants, maintaining healthy plants and flowers may be an an easy task – frivolous even. But, for someone like me, who enjoys pretty flowers, for aesthetic and scent purposes, but who has absolutely no concrete knowledge in plants and doesn’t have the patience to research it on her own, uFlowers is an excellent resource for the iPhone. The app contains a catalogue of plants, each plant listing bearing such pertinent information as the Latin name, its origin, a brief but complete description, and excellent details on how to properly care for the plant, including timetables for watering, proper temperature, optimal light, what soil to use and when to fertilize. It’s very thorough, but still a bit incomplete: the whole app only lists about 70 plants, but these cover the most widely used and loved plants in this country, so perhaps it’s not that limiting at all.

Using uFlowers, I was finally able to decipher what plants I have in my conservatory. The place I moved into recently has a good-sized conservatory, with red brick planters running the entire perimeter like a massive baseboard, all bearing these monstrous, almost Jurassic-looking plants with giant, rubbery leaves, and stems the size of my arm. The plants, apparently, are called the Swiss Cheese Plant (Latin name, appropriately, Monstera deliciosa), and hail from Mexico. They can reach upwards of 10 feet in height (wow), and their leaves, it seems, can cause such severe skin irritation that uFlower recommends using gloves to handle them. This is extremely good to know because when my skin comes in contact with poison oak, the ensuing outbreak resembles second degree burns – I’m definitely wary of any plant with potential irritants.

I’m glad, though, that I now have a handy reference on how to take care of this beastly plant. It requires bright light, but no direct sun; a temperature between 65 and 85 degrees; peat moss soil mixed with sand or perlite for good drainage (drainage is important since it’s a drought-tolerant species); watering may be done sporadically, allowing the top one inch of soil to dry in between waterings; spraying of the leaves may be done every two days for normal room humidity; and fertilizing may be done every two weeks, spring through fall, and monthly in the winter. To better plan my plant healthcare schedule, uFlower allows you to save plants under “My Flowers” and then organizes the watering, fertilizing, and other schedules into a calendar. Small thumbnails of your plants are shown beneath the Calendar, and markers show up on each calendar day to represent however many tasks you have for that day – plant-related, of course. To ascertain more specifically what you have to do on a specific day, tap the To-Do tab at the bottom of the screen, and all your tasks will be laid out neatly for you – for today, 4/14/2010, I must water, spray and fertilize my Swiss Cheese Plant. Thankfully, after today’s run, I won’t have to do anything until 4/18, when I must spray its leaves. You can sync this information with your email and desktop calendar (for the extra fastidious), and you even have the option of sound notifications, and further customizations in the form of adding your own plants or flowers to the catalogue. I wish it was a little easier on the eyes sometimes, and maybe a bit more intuitive on the controls, but for what it does, I’m not complaining much. Though, I have to admit – it does seem like an awful lot of watering for the Swiss Cheese Plant when I know it’s done very well, all its own, without anyone watering it, for a good two months.

Before uFlowers, I definitely swayed toward the minimalist approach to plants: buy cacti. It does make sense in California, though, without being too much of a cop-out, lackadaisical approach to gardening – we are a drought state, and drought-friendly plants not only help the environment by being more indigenous, but help out the green thumbless in the garden department. But, now that I have an excellent guide to preen my feathers, stroke my self-confidence, I can tell you, with the utmost assurance, that I will begin foraying into the more treacherous tendrils of orchids, azaleas, roses, tulips and more.

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I grew up with a strong fascination for books, largely because my parents truly encouraged and insisted on fostering a love for reading. Well, that, and we were a disciplined bunch, with many rules and restrictions, and when such things tide over a young person’s rambunctious mind, I quickly learned the best outlet is through a book. Almost a year ago I reviewed a stellar app by the name of The Little Red Hen, one that I absolutely raved about and upheld as an example for all kids apps to follow. Back then, The Little Red Hen and its brand, Kidztory (a brand of Stepworks), where unheard of, just a diamond in the rock waiting to be discovered. Appstruck was just starting up then, so, needless to say, my adoration and rave review was largely unheard until more people discovered the app, and came to the same conclusion as me. I was surprised, actually, to find that if you type in The Little Red Hen app, our site is the second link shown. Fancy that. Since the inception of The Little Red Hen, Stepworks has been on an app-making spree with other classic tale releases like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Tortoise and the Hare, The Three Little Pigs, The Lion and the Mouse, and now, their most recent, Duck in the Truck, made in collaboration with HarperCollins Children’s Books.

The beautiful thing about this most recent collaboration is it takes the brand Kidztory and merges it with contemporary children’s literature, preserving all the original artwork from the books, themselves. I truly enjoy the digital artwork seen in the other Kidzstory conceptions, but it’s good to see modern tales upheld in their original light – and now, with the aid of the iPhone, they are given a voice and a bit of interactivity. HarperCollins truly picked a perfect brand with the now well-regarded Kidzstory brand, and after releasing Duck in the Truck, they plan on releasing more books by Jez Alborough, including Captain Duck and Fix-It Duck. Not too long ago I reviewed a storybook app called The Boy Giant by author Allan Penderleith, which I found emotional and entertaining – but, he doesn’t have quite the household name that Jez Alborough has. With Alborough’s  iPhone storybook app releases, I hope more people will become aware of, and embrace, the storybook idea for the iPhone.

As a book, Duck in the Truck is, without further explanation, an excellent read for the young mind. The characters are well-sketched, with individual quirks and looks, and this book, in particular, exhibits the moral of being a good Samaritan.The artwork is vivid and lush, with an almost old world look to it – old world in the sense of having that highly detailed drawing style usually not seen in more modern children’s books, which I feel mostly favor the scant and pared down look, a minimalist world. On the iPhone, Duck in the Truck bears that same fecundity, with bright colors jumping out at you from the screen, and slow animations that let you explore the world one mindful blink at a time. It’s amazing what designers can do with static images, taking a truck and just doing a simple clip clip on the computer, and then pasting that image onto the background, so it appears that when Duck’s truck gets stuck, it bucks back and then forth. To make the story even better for the young listener, who but Harry Enfield, comedian extraordinaire, should be the in-app narrator. The app is mechanized like the other intuitive storybook apps from Kidzstory, utilizing the flipping mechanism that mimes actual page flipping, with the page animation to boot. It’s overall, just a joy to behold, a joy to read, and a joy to listen to. If I were a child, who wanted to foster his own interest in reading, Duck in the Truck, and other apps by Kidzstory, are the best ways to develop that reading autonomy, in the guise of a modern, digital toy.

Soho may be one of the premiere, chic shopping destinations of New York, rife with what I deem a hoity-toity air, a slowly wavering art scene, and a street-walking population of girls is the latest Citizens of Humanity skinny jeans, bug-eyed Prada glasses, oversized leather bags, and cone-shaped, red-lacquered Christian Louboutin heels – or, now that it’s spring, sky high

Plenty of categories to rifle through...

wedge platform that turn someone of my stature, 5’9, to right around 6’1. Soho definitely has its own flair, as does any neighborhood of Manhattan, and Midtown is no exception. Midtown isn’t a neighborhood, per se, but more a collection of neighborhoods, like Chelsea, Gramercy and Hell’s Kitchen, to name a few of the more familiar ones, and it encompasses a vast area, ranging from between 14th Street and 59th Street, from the Hudson River to the East River, at about five square miles or 12 km total. The core of Midtown Manhattan is from about 31st Street to 59th Street between Third and Ninth avenues, about two square miles – this is the area most commonly referred to as “Midtown” and is where the famous Times Square is located.  All in all, midtown denotes any area not labeled as “uptown” or “downtown,” and it carries a very symbolic New York essence to it, representing – if you will – the very heart of New York with iconic places like the Empire State Building, the Museum of Modern Art, Madison Square Garden, the New York Public Library, Penn Station, Carnegie Hall, the Plaza Hotel, Madison Avenue, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and much, much more. The New York you see heralded in film was most likely shot in some area of Midtown.

... and 3D maps to boot.

What MIDTOWNinmypocket does is assist you with finding your way around the giant epicenter that is Midtown, by carefully recording every single worthwhile place to see, shop, eat, sleep, lounge, or otherwise engage in mundane tasks (banks, churches), all in painstakingly organized categories and mapped locations. The app is designed in exactly the same manner as SOHOinmypocket – right down to the chic, Parisian-looking girl with giant, white framed spectacles -  with the option to either sort through categories to find something specific, or by browsing the map for your current location to see what’s nearby. Any mapped location may be tapped to view further information, and pertinent things like address, telephone, hours, and such are given for each place. When viewing a mapped location, you may also tap the “go” button, for your ease, so the app can navigate you there from your current location.

It’s astonishing, actually, the precision of MIDTOWNinmypocket (as well as SOHOinmypocket). The only downside to this app is the map loading time can be slow, but it’s noticeably faster on the 3GS model – it’s not that big of a deal, anyway. It turns out the developer will be releasing a SANFRANCISCOinmypocket soon, which I absolutely cannot wait for – San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general is where Appstruck is based, and I’m always looking for excellent guides to the area. Even if you’re a native, or at least, a long-term resident, there’s always the chance you’ll be surprised at what a guide can tell you.

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iTouchiLearn Words consists of three parts: two word games and a series of animations based on the same pool of words to reinforce learning. Simply touch, play, learn and enjoy. Unlike static flash cards, iTouchiLearn Words provides a fun, interactive way to learn, while keeping the sessions short to keep the child’s mind engaged and attentive. The app is simply, but effectively designed – some of the illustrations and animations aren’t the greatest, but I’m sure most young children won’t mind, so long as the adult can get past whatever preconceived biases they may have against less fastidious-looking artwork.

The main menu shows three tabs in the form of torn out sheets of notepad paper, one with ABC, one with a magnifying glass, and one with a film slide showing a baby crawling. The first tab, ABC, is a word game where a picture is shown, along with four possible word choices. The narrator, for example, says, “Touch the dog,” and your child has to figure out which word represents dog. When a wrong word is selected – let’s

Positive reinforcement in action

say cat – the narrator reads the word aloud, but then a buzzer noise is heard, and the narrator repeats the command, “Touch the dog.” This process of elimination continues until your child selects the right word, dog, and applause is heard, a WOOHOO! and a ringing bell. The game is all about positive reinforcement, indicated all the more by the smiling, happy star that appears when a right answer is selected. Over time, the idea is that your child will begin to associate the visual imagery with the word, itself.

The next game, indicated by the magnifying glass, is nearly the opposite of the aforementioned game: this time around, a word is given – i.e. balloon – and three possible images are shown. The process is the same as the last game – your child gradually eliminates choices until the correct one is chosen, with negative and positive reinforcement along the way. The last game, though, is where iTouchiLearn Words truly shines. The last game takes the cognitive skills up a notch by introducing animation in tandem with words, so your child may recognize different words that may be used with the same image, depending on the situation at hand. I really like the egg animation, in particular. First, an egg is shown, with the word “egg” spoken aloud. Next, the egg breaks open and lands in a skillet, where the phrase “fried egg” is heard, along with a sizzling sound. A chicken is then shown, it lays an egg, then egg hatches open and reveals a chick, with the narrator using words the entire time. The chick then goes through a quick growth metamorphisis back into a chicken. It’s actually quite brilliant, and I’m sure, fascinating for a child to behold.

A few of the animations may be a bit difficult to conceive – the animation where the boy is playing catch with a small, rubber ball comes to mind – but given the expansive, cognitive abilities of a growing child, I’m sure everything contained within this app is completely fathomable, and able to be deciphered, tucked away into knowledge. Sure, the illustrations aren’t the greatest, but the app performs well, the narrator is loud and clear, and the app definitely has more potential than other, more static flashcard type apps in the App Store.

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

Being a writer, myself, or at least, an aspiring one, I can attest to the difficulty inherent in the creative process. Sometimes, it’s an absolute breeze – words, characters, and premises are not so much grasped as fully grabbed, easily plucked from the clutches of your right cerebral cortex to be laid out, resplendent on paper. And, other times, it’s a sad practice in futile desperation, gasping for air when there is no air at all, and mustering what little of your confused sensibilities you have to jigsaw a ragged piece – this is where cliches, and refurbished ideas come into play, the Thomas Kincaid of the writing artform. At the risk of sounding hackneyed and cliched, writing is all too similar to running. There is a state of zen achieved when everything glides smoothly, with hardly any thinking at all, a rhythmic, perfectly sustainable motion. It, plain and simple, just is. Runners, when at their finest, feel a surge of energy they reign in, their endorphins racing, and their concentration wanes in favor of relaxation, dreaminess, an enjoyment of being privy to that state of perfect, almost accidental balance. In that perfectly honed moment of writing, ideas are strangely orderly, and decoded too quickly for the fingers to type, the writer finding himself in a sustained state of mental clarity, alertness, of keeping up, a transcriber to his very lucid thoughts.

Of course, I wouldn’t be a writer if I claimed that all good writing is born from those moments of sheer clarity – which, frankly, aren’t that rare at all for the good writers (the Imaginagicians, as I call them). Writing, like any artform, is also a craft, and whatever skills or talents you bring to the table must be carefully honed and winnowed, cut to a precise, sharp edge. Writing, and its close cohort, reading, are nurtured from a very early age, so in many ways any one person’s talent in writing is set in stone based on these early practices. Well, maybe not stone, but certainly a thick, drying mud, or quicksand – writing can certainly be malleable. Of course, being able to weave a good sentence is far different from being able to create an original idea, of being able to create characters and bring them to life. And yet, the two ideas are inextricably entwined.

What I Need A Muse fails to realize is that the creative process cannot be undone from the act of writing, itself. I Need A Muse may be able to create an interesting, even unique character name for you, and attach it to a slightly eccentric job title, but since you took no part in that process, you miss out on that vital link of emotional resonance. You did not create this character. You did not conduct research or search your local environment for inspiration, from cafes, markets, or from that frumpy woman who rocks in her porch chair every morning, but is seen no where else.  You did not write this character, or decide that he was “surly.” Creative Writing classes will often give its students writing prompts, perhaps even of brief, character sketches, to incite students to nurture that creative spark. But, what I Need A Muse presents is a stark, robotic character, pumped out by a digital machine. Sure, a name here or there might be useful, but what would you write about for Aaron Cruz, a quiet Cashier working in Douglas Memorial Park?

I don’t know, either.

Plenty 'o' apps.

I actually thought Appzilla was going to be a collection of games, much like another app I reviewed that reminded me of those old Atari game packages you could buy. I was a little disappointed when I realized it wasn’t 50 games in one, but I got over that pretty quickly when I saw the apps Appzilla has to offer. In the past I’ve reviewed a currency converter, a price calculator (which deal is the better one), a password app, a tip calculator, and various others, all of which are contained within Appzilla. These apps are the kind that are useful to have on hand, but not necessarily the kind of app you would actively seek out, much less buy – if you have it, great, if you don’t, well, then you’re plumb out of luck. There have been a few occasions where I needed a level and thought of the level app for the iPhone (my boyfriend has it on his iPhone – as it turns out, it’s off by nearly a whole degree), but it’s never spurred me enough to actually download the app. With Appzilla, however, people may be more prompted to download it because it offers three whole pages of apps that you can hide away in one icon, without painstakingly downloading each one as the occasion calls for it. The

Protractor

flashlight, dictionary, level, password creator, price calculator, sale price finder, ruler, tip calculator, unit calculator, and translator are the most useful apps in Appzilla, and the ones I think, most people could reap the most benefit. Sure, some of them have their problems: the ruler isn’t anywhere near long enough, and scrolling to see more inches seems theoretically suitable, but in reality, doesn’t work that well, and the translator isn’t top-notch – but then again, what free translator is? The others work just fine – I get the most use out of the unit calculator, with all the baking I do. I would include the cook timer in this list, but it doesn’t work if you exit the app, so what’s the point? The grill time, too, is silly, because it’s an exact clone of the cook timer.

For every useful app, though, there is a completely useless one, almost thrown in there for kicks, or to round out the number to 50. A buzzer app shows just a red and green buzzer for those times when you want to hold a round of Jeopardy in your living room. It’s quirky and enough to crack a quick smirk, but the novelty dies within seconds (it doesn’t help that the buzzer sounds latently). The Booklamp may as well be the

Dictionary

Flashlight, the Grill Timer and the Cook Timer are the same, a coin flip provides momentary amusement for those times when, curiously enough, you don’t have a coin on you, and a clock app really takes the cake by, gasp, giving you the time. I was rather tickled by a few of the apps that were clever enough to strike my interest, but I would never find the opportunity to use them, apps like the Clinometer, Decibels reader (I suppose I could use this when arguing with someone, showing her that she’s way beyond raising her voice and is now just yelling), the Metronome, Plumb Bob, Protractor, and Tally. Seriously, who uses a Protractor? The Strobe app just flashes blinding white light at you, enough to incite seizures, and the Lighter just shows a burning flame. Really? A lighter? The Massager app turns on annoying beats of vibration, the Trip Wire registers sounds and then sounds an alarm, and I can’t even figure out what the Teslameter is supposed to do, other than the

Buzzer

disclaimer that notes, “This device does not have the ability to measure magnetic fields.” And I thought the iPhone could do everything.

The Auto Camera, at first, seemed like it offered something useful for the iPhone’s much neglected camera, but then I realized a timer wasn’t included in the iPhone for a reason. Unless you prop your iPhone against something carefully, or sandwich it in between two books, you’ll be taking a lot of pictures of your ceiling, 10 seconds after scheduling the camera to shoot. Not exactly the greatest idea. I was really miffed, however, at seeing a Homeland Security app – do I really need to be reminded of this preposterous labeling system? Oh, and are we still on yellow, meaning Elevated risk of terrorist attacks? This is an app I could do without.

Appzilla could be better presented, and have more worthwhile apps, or, heck, even just a reduction to 30, because there are certainly 20 apps in there I could do without. But, I’ll continue to make the argument that having a package deal on a dozen or so apps that you would find useful should the situation arise, makes Appzilla a good app to invest in. Besides, it’s only $0.99 and takes one meager slot on your iPhone page. Who can argue with that?

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

The app is presented in the most basic of aesthetics. A teal blue background is beset with three, white tiles at the top, each with its own letter in black boldface that, when combined, form a word; a yellow square centered below, bearing a definition for the word presented above; and two tabs at the bottom indicating Next and Random. Prior to this screen, the developer includes a short blurb on how to use Short Word Maker, mentioning that aside from the Next and Random tabs, you may tap any one of the three letter tiles above to change that letter to another. This mechanism is what truly makes the app. The Random button, obviously, finds a random word and defines it for you – the three letter tiles jumble, a flurry of letters whizzing around the tiles’ borders, until three letters are chosen to form a word. The Next button works under purely alphabetical principles – if the word mud is showing, tapping the Next button will produce mug, then mum, then nab, and so on, covering only the basic and ordinary words children of a young age could become familiar with. Working alphabetically is great for burgeoning readers who want to go through a list of vocabulary words. but if children want to take more initiative in forming words, then they may tap any one of the letter tiles to change that letter into the next letter that could form a coherent word in tandem with the two, remaining letters. Touching the B in nab, for example, would change the B to G, resulting in nag. There is no nac, nad, nae, or naf in the English language – at least, not for the purposes of a young reader – so nag is presented as the next viable option for a static na- and a malleable ending letter of -b. I was actually curious what would happen if I tapped the middle letter A, in nag, because I couldn’t think of the next likely word that would pop up – or, at least, one recognizable to a degree by youngsters. As it turns out, I was right – the app presented me with an error message, saying No new word found, try a different letter or selecting Random. I suppose this limitation was a given, but I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. After all, a young reader’s mind is so vast, so exponential, that learning all different kinds of words is possible – if a child learns what arrhythmia means, who is to dispute that such a word is too advanced?

The word creation ability, though, is still a useful tool for kids expanding their vocabulary, and any imposed word limitations are minor and of little consequence. The one aspect of Short Word Maker that I found to be inexcusable, though, was the choice in definitions. The way some of them are worded is misleading, and some even, bear an unnecessary bias. Rat is defined as “similar to a large ugly mouse.” It’s true, a mouse bears some physiological resemblance to a rat, and for the purposes of a young reader, this may be enough preliminary introduction to what a rat is. The use of the definer “ugly,” though, bears no contextual significance; a rat may be seen as ugly to some people, but it is not universally ugly – nor is any animal. Ugly is a purely arbitrary concept that doesn’t belong in a definition for rat, and certainly doesn’t belong in a definition meant for kids, who may learn to view rats with such a slanted perspective. Some words are defined in really simple terms, such as sap, defined as “sticky stuff that comes from trees,” whereas others, like hah, are defined with more complex words: an interjection indicating surprise. Some words aren’t defined at all, but are given a context: for means “a homonym of four.” If the developer is going to use the word homonym – a grammar concept, let’s face it, hardly anyone in this country understands – then why not just use the word preposition, as well? Why not just define the word as “in regarding to” or something just as vague to a young reader. Or, here’s my favorite: lew, defined as “short for Lewis.” Wait, what? Why even put that word in, if you could consider it a word. I wasn’t under the impression that names were the same as words, and I hardly believe lew is actually short for Lewis. Stick with Bob and Rob, heck, even the random Gus inserted in there.

Short Word Maker does have its flaws, but it has good intentions. The quibbles I have with the app are easily overcome with proper editing and better definitions – with a few changes here and there I’m sure more mothers would consider Short Word Maker to be an appropriate word-learning tool for their kids. As of now, though, it remains a little biased, a little vague, to properly point kids in the right direction.

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.