Spirits for iPad (and now for iPhone) is a quiet game. It’s also a beautiful game. It’s slow-paced. There’s no button-mashing. There is no 3D camera that you can’t control properly because you don’t have dual thumbsticks. It’s a one-finger puzzle game that looks as if it was created on the screen with a paintbrush. The music is gentle and sets a mood of eerie tranquility. It’s almost the perfect touch game.

Spiritual Beginnings

Spirits started its life as an iPad game. I played with the iPad game when it first came out, but the iPhone version is the same game only shrunk down to play on the iPhone 4’s retina display. I appreciate all the parts of Spirits. It has great music, the visuals are lovely and it works beautifully as a touch game. The goal of each level is to get your Kodama-esque (Princess Mononoke) guys from one part of the level to another. It’s similar to games like S.C.R.A.P.S. on iOS or Locoroco on PSP. There are wind currents you can ride on to help you get where you’re going. You get abilities as the game progresses that allow you to make vines sprout from the ground to help you cross chasms. You can sacrifice your guys to create bridge as well. And the game is set up in a way that you will have to make sacrifices from time to time. Some levels can’t be completed without a sacrifice or two. The ultimate goal (and measure of success) is: can you get the maximum number of guys to the finish line that is possible.

Tradition of Sacrifice

If you’ve played one of these types of games (i.e. Locoroco), you’ve played Spirits. Spirits is just a prettier and more aurally pleasing version of those games. I think the biggest problem facing Spirits for iPhone is that it’s on the iPhone. Spirits makes a much better iPad game than it does an iPhone game. This game is so methodically-paced and quiet that it’s best played when you have time to sit down and burn through a bunch of levels. The levels aren’t necessarily long. You could definitely play through a single level (or even a couple) in a short period of time, but when I’m waiting in line and I want to play a game on my iPhone, I want something a little faster. Faster-paced games seem to make my waiting times faster as well. Spirits for iPad, however, is a perfect match for long travel times. Be it a train commute or a plane ride, Spirits is better suited to a time when you can sit for a longer period with headphones on and a bigger canvas to enjoy the gorgeous levels.

Platform of Choice

It’s a shame that I feel I have to recommend one version of Spirits over the other, but since this game isn’t being offered as a universal app (I think it should be), if you have an iPad, I wholeheartedly recommend that you get the iPad version of the game. If you don’t have an iPad, the iPhone version isn’t bad at all, it actually has crisper graphics thanks to the retina display, so pick up the iPhone version if that’s the only iOS device you have. The iPad version is priced at $4.99 and the iPhone/iPod touch version is $2.99. If you like artsy games, games with great music, or relaxing puzzlers, Spirits is a great experience.

There are apps that are bundles of features, and then there are apps that try to figure out how to make life easier. They try to hide technology and UI chrome as far as possible, and instead focus on the information. CalendarBar is one of those apps.

Clean Cut Code, the guys who make DisplayPad and Cloud Calendar (and the original creators of Eventbox), are here with a splendid menubar utility for displaying upcoming events. Unlike other utilities which tie into a single service, CalendarBar merges iCal, Google Calendar, and Facebook events into one coherent organic list. My dad, who uses only iCal for his events, has been using CalendarBar and that’s the way he checks his events now. My one complaint, and I don’t know how they shipped the app like this: the icon for any iCal event is dated 17th (which the guys have assured me will be fixed soon). CalendarBar shouldn’t be mistaken for a event entry app however, as it can only display events, not manipulating them. And that’s fine for its intended purpose.

I should also point out that the screenshot below is actually its icon in full resolution (the app icon, not the menubar icon). It’s slightly different from the actual UI which has some buttons at the bottom and no digital noise, but I didn’t want to take the trouble creating fake events for a real screenshot; being the sole attendee at my facebook party will not bode well for my social status. One one hand it’s a ridiculous icon, but on the other it’s probably resources saved on something you’ll never see of this app. Still, people buy apps looking icons and this one looks like an afterthought.

CalendarBar costs just $1.99 on the Mac App Store, and is a great app for anyone who uses time based events to organise their schedule. And, we’re even giving away 5 promo codes for those who (a) retweet a link to this article, or (b) leave a comment suggesting a killer feature for this app. You have 24 hours. UPDATE: Contest over.

“Not another notes app!” was my first thought seeing the name. Little did I realise the app has almost nothing to do with notes. In fact, I’ve been dreaming of this app for a long time now; so glad someone finally decided to make it.

NoteTote is download manager like no other.

Very often you want to download a file, but you can’t do it on the computer you’re currently surfing on either because it’s at a friend’s place, office, or it’s not your fastest connection. Other times your device doesn’t allow you to download files or even if you have some app that can download a file, it’s not ideal. Fill in your ideal scenario where you need to download a file on a computer you’re not presently at.

NoteTote is a little utility that will monitor a text file on the Simplenote server for any download links you might add to it. It works on such a crude level, that you can’t go wrong with it. It’s just text!

After entering your simplenote credentials, NoteTote will create a new simplenote document ready to accept data. Just paste in a url to whatever file you want downloaded. NoteTote will intercept that url, and initiate a download on your Mac. Notetote suggests using the app in conjunction with Hazel, to automatically queue torrents, move files to your dropbox, or add files to iTunes. I’d rather have seen some simple text based tagging feature instead of having to depend on a third party utility, but that’s certainly a working solution.

NoteTote costs $4.99 at the Mac App Store. I can’t tell you enough; go buy this app. For those on the fence, you can even download a trial version good for ten runs, from the NoteTote site (glad to see a developer offering trials).

First, a little bit of history. I was personally involved with this application during its inception. The CEO of the company that makes this app, Caramel Cloud, was co-founder of this blog, also former editor. The CTO is Preshit, who also manages iXyr, the company that powers this blog. And, we’re good friends. So you can see that I have every reason to be biased in writing this review. I won’t. You’ll see why. The app is called Notificant.

So what is Notificant anyway? It’s an application-service that shuttles messages between your devices, and through time. And it’s freaky cool. From their blog:

Utilising a free Caramel Cloud account, Notificant can create notifications that can be fired at a scheduled time on your current Mac or on any of the others you own. It can even whisk them off to your email address. It lives in the menu bar and stays out of your way until you need it. The simple UI makes it a cinch to create a notification within seconds.

The real world applications for this service is only limited by your imagination (and the current lack of iOS clients). For instance, let’s see how it works as a todo list manager. Bring up the new notification dialog using the global hotkey. It’s a simple window with limited options. Enter your notification text (160 characters), schedule a time (it automatically sets it half an hour from the current time), and the devices you want to send it to.

Devices? The Caramel Cloud account will keep track of all your registered devices; all you have to do is install the app and log in. So if that task is office related, and you’re at home, you can assign it to only show on your office Mac. The workflow is really simple (I know they’ve broken their heads over this). “Print out project report” » “14/01/2011 10:00 AM” » “Office Mac Pro”. And it’s gone into the cloud. The next morning you’re just about catching up with the day’s work, totally forgotten about that print task, when in pops the notification. Coworker shows you a funny video that you don’t can’t watch during office hours: just make it fire during break time, or on your iMac at home, when you get home.

This simple workflow can be applied to anything that can be said in a sentence. You could remind yourself to check out a certain article. Or an appointment two weeks from now. You can even remind yourself to get up and stretch 25 minutes from now, because the notifications are unlimited and free. Also, one of the ‘devices’ is your email address, so you can get notified on your iOS device as well (I can neither confirm nor deny that iOS client apps are in the works).

Have you ever composed an email and sent it to yourself just to remind yourself of something? With Notificant at your beck and call, that is a thing of the past.

When you do want to take a moment and look at your days ahead, you can open the web app to create and edit your notifications in a beautiful web app. I should mention that the user interface designs for the application and web front-ends have been done by some of the best names in the industry. I love how the new notification window uses completely native UI, and the menubar icon doesn’t conflict by sporting a mix of colours (it glows a Tweetie style vibrant blue when there’s a new message pending). The web app on the other hand goes all out in pixel finesse (the fine work of Sebastian Nitu).

Things to complain about: first and foremost, the lack of iOS clients is sad; you can imagine how great that would be. The notification sounds, while quite vibrant and chirpy, are too long for notifications. I’d also have liked to send notifications to other users — like a quick and dirty messaging system — or at least email addresses other than my own.

For a version 1.0, this is a really mature service/application, and for just $4.99 at the Mac App Store, I’d highly recommend it (an absolute must if you have multiple Macs). It’s a notification system like no other.

I was a big fan — still am — of Ecoute. If all you needed was to play music, Ecoute was lighter, faster, and better looking than iTunes. I used it all the time, till this day. Unfortunately for me, version 2.0 takes a direction that I’m not all too pleased with.

But, some good stuff first. Ecoute maintains its general look, but adds some interesting navigation to its user interface. The list view now shows you album art, with the ability to play albums without drilling in. The playback controls are at the bottom, and you can bring them up or hide them anytime.

Where it’s all too cool for the first time you see it, a week later I found that having album art and a lot of metadata makes the lists quite tedious to sift through (take a look at the screenshot below). Moreover, rendering album artwork also takes a performance hit, where my CPU was gorging 80% CPU while rapidly scrolling through the list. Even iTunes doesn’t take that much. Not just that, the scrolling itself is choppy at best.

There’s another feature that Ecoute lacks — viewing a playlist by artist. With iTunes 9, you can bring up the browse artists pane to the left, which allowed me to view my entire library in a smart playlist (It doesn’t show music with less than two stars). I can’t do this in Ecoute because the entire playlist is sorted by tracks, so I have to use the main music playlist; one of the reason I was using Ecoute less and less of late. I was hoping Ecoute 2.0 would allow me to sort tracks by artist, but alas, it adds features I don’t need.

Ecoute 2.0 would have been a good upgrade — it brings some nice UI changes — but it has lost its minimal feel, and the performance issues are unforgivable. It’s a free update for 1.0 users, and still costs a rock bottom $10, but I won’t be upgrading my copy.

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