iPhone App Zealot

Rat on the Run delivers an amusing platform game that reminded me of Donkey Kong without the climbing.The object is to eat the cheese and avoid spiders, snot, buzz saws, and more as you move throughout your house. There are two modes. Challenge mode prompts you to get all the cheese on a given level to complete it. Arcade mode pushes you to get as much cheese as quickly as possible as the bonus timer counts down. The levels are quick and progress rapidly in difficulty. The graphics are simple and well drawn. Simple directional control and jumping make it easy to start and taunt you into the “OK, just one more time and I’ll get it” mode. Some of the recurrent themes in reviews elsewhere call Rat on the Run cute, simple, funny, and addicting.

Donut Games has Rat on the Run free for this weekend (Oct 23-25). For free, this game is worth a look. I like free. I wish I had more free time to play more games. Happy Friday!

OK, maybe Shazam does not use magic to figure out what song is playing, but I cannot tell the difference. Shazam Entertainment delivers a fantastic music discovery app. Launch Shazam, press “Tag Now” and your iPhone will listen for music around you. After collecting a sample, it calls home and analyzes the track. It reports back with Name, album, genre, album art, links to iTunes, YouTube, and more. Shazam failed to pick up very few songs. While I mostly use it for songs I want to know, I have tried to “trick” it with ones I thought would choke it. The most obscure I tried was Kids Bop #4 (from McDonald’s Happy Meal, “sung by kids for kids”), track 1 Life is a Highway? Nailed it. Who knew? I’ve used it to tag the theme song from True Blood (Bad Things by Jace Everett), figure out the name to a song on So You Think You Can Dance? (Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis; great song & great dance) as well as a large number of songs on the radio. Well, not that large a number since I rarely listen to the radio, but when I do, I have no idea what the song is called. Shazam comes through every time I need it. Did I mention it was free? Get it. Use it. Love it.

Not going to belabor it. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all wondered why it took so long. Go to The Unoffical Apple Weblog (TUAW) for some screen editing tips. They also have an a free app that is a feed from their Blog. Either click the icon to the left or this link to TUAW on iTunes.