iPhone Hill

Are you a moron?  No?  What about your friends?  Your brothers or sisters?  Boyfriend or girlfriend?  Kids?  Are you sure?  There is one way you can find out: Moronoid.

Bogdan Andresyuk’s Moronoid is part of the wave of games that tell you whether or not you’re stupid.  Or a moron.  Or not as smart as a fifth grader. 

This one, Moronoid, has a series of questions that test your ability to follow instructions, keep your wits about you, and think fast. If you miss one question- any one question- you fail and the game tells you that you’re a moron.  You must then start over from the very beginning.  If you answer all the questions without making a single mistake, you’ll be able to safely say you’re not a moron.

But I’m willing to bet you won’t be able to answer every single question correctly the first time around. I sure wasn’t.

Moronoid requires a knowledge of geography, counting, memory, spelling, and various other skills you’ve been using all your life.  As far as gameplay goes, it’s not bad at all; it’s fun, a great diversion, and highly addictive.  Once you get started, you’ll probably want to keep going until you’re able to get every single question right.  Be forewarned, though: it might take a little while.

And after you’ve mastered the game, have someone you know play it.  Feel free to give them a hard time while they’re playing.  Taunt them, tease them, laugh at them.  It’s fun that way, too. 

If I were to recommend any improvements to Moronoid, I would say that the game could use more questions.  A lot more.  And a randomizer so that questions aren’t always presented in the same order.  That would definitely keep players on their toes.

I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking: I can beat Moronoid.  I know I can.  There hasn’t been a game created yet that can beat me. 

Good luck.

Moronoid

Version 1.0

Tested on iPod Touch 3.1.2

According to the NYT’s Bits blog, Amazon has pulled Macmillan e-books due to a dispute over pricing, with Amazon wanting to hold the line at $9.99 and Macmillan wanting to raise it to an Apple iPad iBooks-like $14.99.

Eerily similar to Apple and iTunes Music, where Steve Jobs resisted the music industries desire to raise prices from $0.99 a song, and finally came to an agreement for flexible pricing up to $1.29 in exchange for DRM-free 3G downloads in January 2009. Previous to the change, Amazon was able to use music industry dissatisfaction to offer DRM-free Amazon MP3 music at $0.89. The industry was willing to take the loss in an attempt to break Apple’s control, and now it looks like their hoping similar pressure and competition from Apple’s iBooks will break down Amazon.

Ironic, poetic? Here’s where it stands:

Macmillan offered Amazon the opportunity to buy Kindle editions on the same “agency” model as it will sell e-books to Apple for the iPad. Under this model, the publisher sets the consumer book price and takes 70 percent of each sale, leaving 30 percent to the retailer. Macmillan said Amazon could continue to buy e-books under its current wholesale model, paying the publisher 50 percent of the hardcover list price while pricing the e-book at any level Amazon chooses, but that Macmillan would delay those e-book editions by seven months after hardcover release. Amazon’s removal of Macmillan titles on Friday appears to be a direct reaction to that.

And here we thought when there was competition, prices were supposed to go down…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple vs. Amazon vs. Macmillian — Begun These e-Book Wars Have?

In the days before Pandora, Sirius, and Napster, radio ruled the world.  If you didn’t own the album, CD, or cassette, the only way to hear your favorite tunes was the radio.  Your yearning for the latest from Michael Jackson, Nirvana, Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers or U2 could only be satisfied by a radio DJ.    

Sometimes you might flip on the radio and catch your favorite song halfway through.  That wasn’t so bad.  Sometimes you only caught the last few seconds of it.  That was bad.

Every now and then, if you were lucky- really lucky- you’d enter a kind of musical zone.  In the zone, you could flip on the radio, catch your favorite song as it was starting and listen to it all the way through.  If you were really in the zone, you could change stations after the song had ended and catch it again, right at the very beginning.

Good times.  I don’t miss them one bit.

Gianluca Falasca’s MyTtuner- The Ultimate Radio operates under the principle that somewhere on the world’s wide web, an internet station is playing a song or an artist you like.  With MyTtuner, you tell it who or what you want to hear (you can enter up to 6 choices) and when the app finds that song or artist, it will let you know (as long as you’re still in the app, of course).  Then, just tap your screen and enjoy on-demand music old school style, minus those pesky subscription fees.  If you really like a station, you can select it as a favorite and listen to it whenever you want.  Do you have favorite artists or groups?  Great!   Save them and the next time the app is opened, you can quickly search for their music.

MyTtuner will also generate a listing of every artist being played at the moment and  update every 60 seconds. 

Sweet, right?  Unfortunately, MyTtuner initially had some serious issues with stability; it crashed every time I used it, even after an update designed to eliminate them.  Each crash would erase my saved searches, my saved webcast stations, and music history.  As you can imagine, that was a pretty big disappointment, especially for an app with a $2.99 sale price. 

These past couple days though, it seems to be running better.  When it works, it’s great.  When it works, I start to think about terminating my Rhapsody subscription.  But when it doesn’t, it’s quite frustrating.

My only suggestion for improvement- beyond stability- would be MyTtuner’s appearance.  It’s a little dull and could benefit from a colorful makeover.

With a couple more updates and a bigger pool of internet stations to find the music and artists I like, I might just stop feeding my money to Rhapsody and use those monthly fees to buy more apps…

myTtuner

Version 1.1.1

Reviewed on iPod Touch 3.1.2