Breaking Nasty Habits

Title: CoffeeNut
Category: Lifestyle

CoffeeNutIcon Similar to wine buffs, coffee aficionados are fanatics about the roasted bean. These folks are extremely passionate (read borderline freaks) about their coffee … and since coffee fanatics typically spend in the $4 range for a grande Starbucks (or other coffeehouse), this passion can get EXPENSIVE.CoffeeNutScreen

And that’s where CoffeeNut comes in … this nifty little app conveniently tracks your coffee  intake throughout the year … so not only will you be reminded of your massive caffeine intake, but at a glance you will see the excessive amount of money you spend on coffee. Let’s see … 250 work days a year, $4 per grand Starbucks … $1,000 per year … hmmm, how about we take that $1,000 per year, invest in a financial instrument that yields 4% … in 10 years our ending balance would be nearly $12,000. Great CoffeeNut, you’ve managed to depress the KRAPPS out of me and I haven’t even installed your app yet. I’m not exactly sure of the purpose of this app … to inform? – to calculate? – to encourage? – to depress? – to piss you off?

Coffee-Icon-v1 Better idea … why not re-launch CoffeeNut and re-position it as a “Cost Of Drinking Coffee” calculator, with the goal of encouraging individuals to break their coffee drinking habit. Makes cents (pun intended). There are plenty of quit smoking calculators … American Cancer Society and American Heart Association to name a few. The whole caffeine thing is not exactly healthy. Call it “CoffeeBreak” … your handy little app to help you beak that nasty coffee addiction. 

February 23, 2009 | Filed Under Lifestyle | Leave a Comment 

WordsWorth App

By popular demand, KRAPPS will periodically review “legit” apps through a network of guest authors. Carolynn is our first guest author at KRAPPS. Her work can also be found at Andy’s Review Of iPhone Games And More and followed on Twitter @carolynn7.

Title: WordsWorth
Category: Games
Guest Author: Carolynn

Judging by it’s title, you would probably guess that WordsWorth is a word game. Now I’m a puzzle game freak, but my word game collection is minimal. WordsWorth will change your mind about word games. It’s brought to you by the fine folks at 99 Games Inc.

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Game play is simple … trace the letters that make a word or touch each letter individually and press submit. The screen will show you as you trace if you have created a word or not (that’s great for finding those obscure words you didn’t think existed). When you’ve reached a certain score, you go to the next level. There are various helper tiles that appear during the game. There is also a red tile that is a timer. If you don’t use it before time runs out, it’s game over. Now there are two game modes, Classic and Timed. In Classic Mode, your game ends when a timer tile’s clock runs out. In Timed Mode, you have a certain amount of time to finish the level. If time runs out, well, you know what happens.

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What’s great about this game is that you can customize it in many ways. You can make the board bigger, change dictionaries (they use TWL, SOWPODS, and ENABLE), adjust the minimum word size or change the background and sound effect settings. There are lots of extras – Wild tiles, Bonus Point tiles, Shuffle tiles and additional shuffles in the game to help you when you are hopelessly stuck. It also saves your current game for those times when you need to do something more important. All these features make this game very replayable. You can make it as easy or as hard as you want. I find the music very relaxing. The graphics are highly polished and you can tell a lot of work has been put into this game.

What’s not so great: of course I’d like to see a global scoreboard, because who doesn’t like to compete for the best score in the game? I’d also like to see a word list added so you can see what words you played or a best word page on the scoreboard listing highest scoring words, etc. The music is nice, but a bit repetitive. I’d like to see a variety of music added.

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All in all, I rate this game 5 of 5 stars. It’s addictive, has endless replayability and will change your mind about word games. The developers are always working on updates and listen to suggestions to make WordWorth even better. If you don’t have it yet, what are you waiting for? It’s currently available in the App Store for $1.99.

February 21, 2009 | Filed Under Games, Guest Authors | 6 Comments 

Battle Of The Boobs

 Title: Wobble & iJiggles
Category: Entertainment

update:  all download codes have been claimed – thank you

<yawn> Farts continue to make headlines in iPhone World. This time it’s a lawsuit –
Air-o-Matic is seeking $50,000 in damages from the former #1 app, iFart Mobile. </yawn> Rather than bore you with details (we’ll let TUAW or CNN do that – yeah, CNN, big news you know!), we’ll focus on real entertainment … BOOBIE-STYLE.

catfight01 So there’s trouble in Boobieland … mudslinging, trash talking, accusations flying. It’s Boob vs Boob … specifically Wobble vs iJiggles in some hysterical back-and-forth bantering. We previously covered both Wobble and iJiggles … but this time we present the “Battle Of The Boobs”. And since we live in a glass house – no judgments will be made – no stones will be thrown – no right, no wrong – no “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”. Just the facts – you determine the verdict.

Wobble vs iJiggles – the “Just The Facts” edition 

Jan 15: iJiggles hits the App Store
Jan 17: Wobble hits the App Store

Jan 18: Wobble (jonau65) leaves the following comment on eugene4023’s iJiggles YouTube video:

boobies-youtube-comment

Jan 30: Wobble changes name to Wobble-3D-Jiggles
Jan 30: iJiggles changes name to iJiggles-3D-Wobble (their response below)

ijiggles-3d-wobble

Jan 31: Wobble-3D-Jiggles changes name back to Wobble

Jan 31: Wobble emails iJiggles the following cease and desist request:

Remove Wobble from the “name” you are using for your application. You are infringing our trademark.
It would seem by your statement that “You have nothing to lose” that you are attempting to benefit from our large sales and marketing effort. Might I suggest that you do have something to lose?
As your name stands you are deliberately using our name to try to increase sales of your own and you will be liable for damages, to minimize such damage you must CEASE AND DESIST using the Wobble name immediately.
My IP lawyers will be writing to Apple, in addition please supply an address for service for your company to the email address above.

Jan 31: iJiggles emails Wobble the following response:

1. It is doubtful that you have already applied and received a Trademark for the name Wobble. Also, Wobble is a generic term and is probably not trademarkable. If I am wrong, send me a trademark number or an application number and I will be happy to change it.

2. At the time of the name change, your app is called “Wobble-3D-Jiggle” and not “Wobble”. Quite a bit different

3. By using the term “jiggle”, you are obviously attempting to benefit from our large sales and marketing effort.

4. I’ll leave it up to Apple to decide. Get my address from them.
Have a good day.

Jan 31: Wobble emails iJiggles the following response:

1. Have it your way.
2. If I was using the term iJiggle rather than just plain jiggle it might explain trying to confuse the market, we were merely experimenting with a longer name to catch the eye more in the appstore.
3. Bad experiment, for a number of reasons – it exposed us to other developers moving on the name “wobble” which is precisely what you have done changing your name – I wonder who would be tempted to take your “iJiggle” name? Maybe some reader of your blog???
4. OK, will do.
And yep, I feel like a dick for even bothering to engage with you, it’s not like your app is competitive really… It looks like a software guy did the graphics and it works like a graphics guy did the software. Did the UI guy come up with your company name?? 🙂

EDITORS NOTE – for clarification, the email exchanges were posted on the iJiggles blog, thus the following response from Wobble

Feb 1: Wobble emails iJiggles the following:

Heh, I don’t believe that you just published a comment from me that:
a. Points out the shortcomings of your application
b. Points out to anybody reading that there exists an opportunity to take your application name! I simply meant that as a warning to you against the problem with changing your software name… hence the reason I changed ours back! (oh and sales went down when I mentioned Jiggle)!
But I guess you are just a bit too slow to pick that up, and you insist on republishing my PM’s to your imaginary readers???
Let’s see if you are foolish enough to publish this too:
Dear search engine and readers of this blog, please index this link: Wobble is the best boob jiggling software available for the iPhone – follow this link to buy WOBBLE http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301166113

Or maybe you’ll realise that you are giving me the opportunity to publish stuff on YOUR blog and take all of it down!! 😀 I even took the time to format your link. You are welcome.

Currently:
Wobble changes name to Wobble Her Bits 3D and again to Wobble-Bikini-Fun
iJiggles changes name to iJiggles Your Mom

And since Wobble is the #6 paid app and iJiggles is the #1 free app … well I guess all this “foreplay” has a happy ending. Now isn’t that nice!

wooble6ijiggles1

Free iJiggles and Wobble to KRAPPS viewers!
Originally, iJiggles was positioned as a limited time free app. However, since iJiggles has exploded to the #1 free app position, the developer has decided to forego a price increase, generate revenue with ads and leave iJiggles free indefinitely. YAHOO – download iJiggles!

Wobble was kind enough to provide codes which will allow KRAPPS viewers to download Wobble for FREE. Simply tweet the following message on Twitter and we’ll direct message you the download code while supplies last:

got iPhone? visit & follow @KRAPPS for giveaways & hilarious reviews of the krappiest of apps http://KRAPPS.com

February 19, 2009 | Filed Under Entertainment, News | 12 Comments 

Blind Ump

Title: Strikeout and Indicator
Category: Sports

Watch these two 8-second clips real quick:

Now ask yourself … why in the world would a baseball umpire use their $200+ iPhone as a ball/strike indicator? Why in the world would an app developer think this is a good idea?

Ball-Strike-Screens

Being a plate ump is brutal. You get heckled: “flip over the plate and read the directions”,  “wake up, you’re missing a great game”, “you  couldn’t call a cab”, etc. … and getting nailed wheelchair by a rock hard baseball traveling in excess of  100mph in the nuts, face, shoulder, chest, shin, foot, etc. is not exactly pleasant. Yeah they wear padding, still hurts like a mother! And why add insult to injury, shattering your sexy cool iPhone?

But for some reason, two genius developers thought they could change America’s Favorite Pastime by releasing the Strikeout and Indicator app. Uhh, bad idea! Memo to umps, leave the iPhone in the car and keep using your $9 plastic indicator … however, equating the lack of App Store user reviews (one between the two apps) to low/no sales … well … umps may be blind, but they aren’t stupid.

February 18, 2009 | Filed Under Sports | 2 Comments 

iBarf

This one is right up our alley … Barf Bag iPhone Holder … GENIUS! … check out the complete story at Engadget. Hope they replace those things for the next flight in case of a real iBarf emergency – YUCK!

Barf Bag iPhone Holder

February 16, 2009 | Filed Under General | 9 Comments 

Recap: Week Of Feb 9

Krapps-Avatar-80-GIF Obviously there are a lot of KRAPPS in the App Store keeping us busy. So naturally, a ton of articles here at KRAPPS. Hard to keep pace with this information highway? We hear ya! For your convenience, quick links to the previous week’s articles. Click here for week of Feb 2 recap.

Feb 9: Simply Disturbing – bouncing Oprah and Steve Jobs heads are cool
Feb 9: BurnBall Contest Results – see all the winning images, first place is a classic
Feb 10: I Want It All – the swiss army knife of bodily function sounds app
Feb 11: Good App Gone Bad – when geeks try marketing
Feb 11: Videos We Digg – a couple of not to be missed videos, hysterical
Feb 12: Section 3.3.12 – developers know this immoral code, do you?
Feb 13: Quick KRAPPS volume 3 – some really freaky and disturbing apps

February 16, 2009 | Filed Under Recap | Leave a Comment 

Section 3.3.12

Title: iStrip
Category: Entertainment

update: all download codes have been claimed – thank you

banging-head2 The developers are Rock Cottage Industries have bumps, cuts and bruises on their heads. Why? … because for months they’ve been banging their heads against the hard walls of their rock cottage. Why? … because sometimes the app approval process is painfully long, frustrating and simply unfair.

The Rock Cottage boys specialize in iPhone clock apps – Tokyo Time, Crazy Clock, Black Clocks and White Clock are their products. And like many, they noticed a distinct “shift” in Apple’s approval standards … think farts, vomit, pee, boobies and other KRAPPS. So with Apple opening this “Approval Door”, the boys attempted to jam their way into the App Store based on nostalgia … a vintage strip pen.

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But not so fast … Apple slammed the door on the Rock boys and thus the head banging therapy. But can you blame them? Farts and Jiggling Boobies are approved – but not a vintage bathing suit model strip pen? Come on … iStrip provides significant historical and educational value – I think? But Apple didn’t see it that way … boobies can jiggle, but iStrip was rejected based on Section 3.3.12 of the iPhone SDK Agreement:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Ok … slow down sparky and your Section 3.3.12! You mean to tell me the approved Bikini Blast app with their girls gone wild models is not objectionable but the iStrip app with their vintage 60’s bathing suit model is offensive content? What a bunch of KRAPPS!

Bikini Blast      iStrip Rejected

Well this Section 3.3.12 nonsense does have a happy ending. It seems all that head banging was worth it as a light bulb went off inside the Rock boys’ bruised up heads: more clothes, make it a game (not an entertainment app), classify the game as age 9+ and change the title to “iStrip – Novelty App”. Guess what? … It worked!

iStrip-1     iStrip-2

Congrats to Rock Cottage Industries for their perseverance and “Never Say Die” attitude. The App Store is a better place now with iStrip – Novelty App in it. (hint, hint: iStrip allows the user to load custom clothing from the camera roll … the possibilities are endless)

Free iStrip to KRAPPS viewers!
Rock Cottage Industries was kind enough to provide KRAPPS with codes which will allow our viewers to download iStrip for FREE. Simply tweet the following message on Twitter:

Visit the new @KRAPPS Facebook Page. Become a fan for exclusive giveaways & more >> http://is.gd/iSzi

We will then direct message you the download code while supplies last. Make sure you follow us on Twitter – @KRAPPS – so we can direct message you the code.

February 12, 2009 | Filed Under Games | 1 Comment 

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