AppAdvice has teamed up with Punflay in order to offer you a chance to win one of five promo codes for Word Wall HD ($1.99) for iPad.

Recommended for ages 5 and 6, Word Wall HD is an effective edutainment app to learn and practice early reading skills, words, and letters. Children learn by seeing, hearing, and constructing within lesson and practice areas for both letters and word families, plus four mini-games.

When learning letters and words, children drag the letter or word family entry to the bottom of the screen to begin. The letter(s) and word are spoken for your child to repeat, then a simple sentence and image is shown to reinforce. For word families, children lean the two letter word family first, then move onto creating and learning a handful of three letter words.

Each of the four games utilize different methods to creatively teach the same content. See and Find is a card game where children tap on cards to turn them over and must match the word on one card to the associated image on another. In Hide a Word, the child moves around a spotlight to locate a word. When found, the word and an image are displayed. Bubble Words is even more interactive, requiring children to drag floating letters to name what’s pictured, such as a sheep. Jigsaw Words is a simple jigsaw puzzle game similar to Bubble Words, except the letters contain parts of the image.

The overall features of Word Wall HD include:

• Repetition through seeing, hearing, speaking, and doing
• Positive reinforcement
• Colorful graphics and optional background music choices
• Two general learning and practice areas for letters and words
• Four fun games
• 75 sight words
• 12 word families
• 65 word family words
• SmarTots integration

 
To have a chance at winning one of three Word Wall HD promo codes, just hit that tweet button near the bottom of this page or retweet this post from your favorite Twitter app before May 18 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. We will then search the Twitterverse for all of the retweets and randomly choose our lucky winners. The winners will be notified via Twitter, so please be sure to follow us so we can send you your promo code via a direct message.

Non-Twitter users and those of you who want to increase your odds of winning can leave a relevant comment below before 11:59 p.m. PDT tonight to have a chance at winning one of the other two Word Wall HD promo codes.

Feel free to participate in the giveaway via either or both methods. Only one entry per person per method is allowed, totaling up to two entries per person if using both.

• Word Wall HD

Little 3 Kingdoms ($1.99) by AsNet Co.,Ltd is an iPad only 2-D side-scrolling castle defense game where the goal is to create an army to destroy the enemy outpost while defending your own.

The graphics are the first thing you will notice after firing up Little 3 Kingdoms, especially if you’re playing on a third generation iPad. The colors are vivid, the characters are well designed, and the backgrounds are all gorgeous.

Visually, this is an impressive game, and I’d rank it as some of the best defense game graphics that I’ve seen so far in the App Store, but I wish that the gameplay lived up to the game’s fantastic exterior.

This is a typical castle defense game, where you tap icons to build minions that will walk forward to attack the enemy base. This is a single lane game, so there’s little else to do besides build up an army and then watch it attack. It gets repetitive.

There are a variety of standard minion types, from sword and spear users to archers and ballistas. Enemy minions are the same, so you will need to match your own army to the enemy troops. I wish that I could say minion type mattered, but winning seems to hinge more on amassing food (your unit building currency) to create a large army and the judicious use of troop upgrades.

In some games, you’re forced to mine or farm for currency to build up your army, but in Little 3 Kingdoms, food is generated automatically, so all you need to do is spam tap those unit building buttons.

The game does have heroes, which have special abilities to enhance your minion’s performance, and each minion also has its own set of powers that you can activate. To use these, tap on a minion and then tap on the power (generally a leap attack and a motivating shout). Hero powers work in the same way, with a simple tap.

You can earn three stars on each level, and to get them all, you will need to devise a strategy that results in a quick win. The longer you take, the less stars you get.

Winning more stars will result in more gold at the end of each level, and the gold is used in the shop to purchase new unit types, new heroes, and to upgrade your existing units. Each unit can be upgraded five times, which gets expensive.

The game gives a decent amount of coins, but gameplay definitely gets tough if you’re not earning enough gold to upgrade regularly. If that’s the case, you can buy more gold within the app, because you can’t go back and replay earlier levels to earn more coins. This is a major disappointment because you’re almost forced into purchasing gold if you haven’t been keeping up.

Little 3 Kingdoms has decent castle defense gameplay and great graphics, but the inability to earn coins to progress will likely be frustrating to casual players. If you’re a fan of defense games, you might want to check this out, but make sure you earn enough coins while playing to keep up with increase in difficulty.

• Little 3 Kingdoms

Details on Epic Games‘ upcoming title, Infinity Blade: Dungeons, have been nonexistent since its reveal at the new iPad announcement in March. However, Joystiq has posted this video showing some gameplay from the yet to be released title:

As you can see, this is nothing like the Infinity Blade we’re familiar with. Infinity Blade: Dungeons offers free player movement from a top-down perspective instead of the fixed battles and cutscene-only movement from the original titles. Like its name implies, this game is a dungeon crawler (Diablo III, anyone?). Attacks will probably be gesture based, as there are no on-screen controls. Aside from the new enemies, it appears as though upgrading your weapons will be done through a tap-based mini-game.

While this is definitely different that what we’re used to, I’m very excited about Infinity Blade: Dungeons. The game already looks amazing, and should actually look even better on the new iPad. If the controls work as well as they do on the original Infinity Blade titles, this game will have an immediate rise to the top of the App Store.

Unfortunately, there is still no word on a release date. As always, we’ll keep you posted. Until then, you’ll have this video to drool over. Will you be able to wait?

[Source: Joystiq]

Scotland Yard ($4.99) by Ravensburger Digital GmbH is a complex board game that lets your roam the streets of London as the criminally minded Mister X, or try your hand at detective work as one of Scotland Yard’s finest. Take your pick and see what mysteries unravel in this digital version of the 1980s board game of the same name.

Players get to pick whether they want to be Mister X or one of the detectives. Mister X works alone, but has the advantage of knowing where his enemies are and has more means to move about on the board. The detectives can be as many as five on the board, but they don’t know where Mister X is hiding and they have a limited number of times they can move around to find him.

Players who choose Mister X get to move around on the board in secret. The detectives only have clues as to how he is getting around town. For example, after a few turns, his whereabouts are revealed to the detectives, but if they are not close by, Mister X can slip away, undetected. Mister X can travel along secret paths that the detectives don’t get to use. He can also hid his transportation choices at times with special black tickets that help him escape. As an added bonus, Mister X can sometimes move twice in a single turn as a “fast getaway.”

Players who choose to try their hand at detective work are tasked with finding the elusive Mister X. They don’t know where he is at, but they do know what form of transportation he is using to get around. All players can use three forms of transportation; taxi, bus and train. Mister X can also travel by boat to secret locations. Whenever he moves, an icon appears on his movement track so that detectives know how he is getting around. This is helpful when his location is temporarily revealed. Every four turns, Mister X’s location becomes visible to the detectives. If he has four possible routes to take on his next move, but only one is a train and that is what he takes, the detectives can hone in on his whereabouts.

Detectives work best when they are teamed up. That is really the only way to find Mister X. The least amount of detective on the board should be three. This game is multiplayer compatible by letting users link up through local Wi-Fi, or through Game Center. If you don’t have any real life friends to play this game with, you can always select computer-generated players to fill the void.

This is a well-designed transfer from physical to digital board game. The graphics are smooth and the intricate map can be zoomed in or out for better viewing. The game tokens also hover above the board so that no portion is blocked from view. The only problem with this game is that the computer-generated players take up a lot of unnecessary time. If they were real life friends, I wouldn’t mind waiting around for them to take their turn, but there should be an option to skip past the computer-generated player’s turns.

Overall, this is a fantastic addition to the board game genre. Fans of the original will love every aspect of this game. Players who enjoy percentage-based calculation movement games will really enjoy the complexity of Scotland Yard. If you’ve never played this game before and are new to the genre, you may want to have a seasoned vet show you how to play. It is not easy to wrap your head around.

• Scotland Yard

It looks like FaceTime over a 3G cellular data connection might be moving closer to reality. As first noticed by Romanian website iDevice, version 5.1.1 of iOS presents a unique warning message.

When on a FaceTime call while Wi-Fi is active, toggling the Enable 3G button in the Settings menu presents the error message:

“Disabling 3G may end FaceTime. Are you sure you want to disable 3G?”

Even when a user disables 3G, the FaceTime call is unaffected, which is definitely interesting.

The video chat service was first introduced with the rollout of the iPhone 4 in 2010. While FaceTime has grown to the iPad and Macs, it still hasn’t garnered the wide interest Apple has hoped for.

There was some belief that with the introduction of the LTE-enabled iPad that FaceTime would be allowed on the faster data network, but that has yet to happen.

While this is definitely good news for fans of FaceTime, don’t get your hopes up just yet. As seen previously, just because Apple allows a feature doesn’t mean carriers will enable it. Most famously, AT&T didn’t allow tethering on the iPhone for more than a year after Apple introduced the feature with iOS 3.

And currently, on the LTE versions of the iPad, Verizon’s flavor allows tethering while AT&T has yet to enable the feature.

Would you like to use FaceTime over your cellular data connection? In the new era of metered data plans, I can’t really imagine why AT&T or Verizon could object. If someone uses up their monthly data allotment video chatting, it would only lead to more profit for the carriers.

Source: iDevice/Gizmodo
Via: AppleInsider

One of the few complaints I have about the iPad is its speaker. It does its job during my late night Netflix sessions, but more often than not, I find myself cupping my hand behind its speaker to enhance the sound. At first, I thought it was clever, but now it’s just a hassle. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I’m not the only one with this problem, and Matthew McLachlan has a solution: the SoundJaw Unlimited.

This Kickstarter project is McLachlan’s successor to the SoundJaw, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter last June. The SoundJaw Unlimited has a modified design that provides a bigger sound in an even smaller package than before.

You can see it in action here:

The design of the SoundJaw Unlimited allows it to be used with several devices, including the iPad, iPhone, and the Kindle Fire. For iPad users, the SoundJaw Unlimited should work with most cases, including Apple’s Smart Cover.

A minimum pledge of $10 will get you a SoundJaw Unlimited. With a month left, the project has already surpassed its goal and is expected to deliver its first shipments this June. This isn’t the only accessory out there that aims to enhance the iPad’s built-in speaker, but its simplicity and low price put it ahead of its competition.

Would you like for Apple to upgrade the iPad’s speaker in the future?

Fotor – CameraBag ($1.99) by Everimaging Ltd is an app that will turn your ordinary photos into amazing works of art. You might be an average photographer now, but with this handy app, you’ll feel like a professional. So, go ahead and walk with your head high.

Snap your camera! Do it fast! You can do it all by yourself!

This photography app has everything you need in one little package. Want to create an exciting collage with an array of different photos? You can do it. Want to have an enhanced camera with burst shots, a timer, HDR, gridlines, and a stabilizer? You got it. Not only is this camera more enhanced than the native one, but it also includes better photo editing tools to complete your masterpiece.

With over 75 different effects and filters that can be applied to a photo, you will never run out of creative ideas. No two pictures will ever be alike. You can make a picture black and white, sepia, vintage, cartoon, analog, and more!

Color splash is another exciting editing tool to use. Make a photo black and white, but keep the color of a certain part of the picture always looks awesome. One thing that I didn’t like when editing with color splash was that there didn’t seem to be an undo option. So, you’ll have to pull out the eraser to get rid of mistakes. It’s a slight nuisance.

Now, readers will say that this sounds like many other apps in the App Store and they are correct. The difference is that I prefer this interface over the other alternatives.

When you’re done editing your photo, you can share it with one touch to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and email. You can send it to your native camera roll as well, in case you’d like to send it via text message.

If you want a simple, yet powerful photography app, then you’ll want to try this one out. It’s similar to other photo apps, but the interface is what sets it apart.

What’s your favorite photography app?

• Fotor – CameraBag

This year’s iTunes Music Festival is scheduled to begin September 1 in London and run 30 nights. The festival is a celebration of iTunes and since the tickets are free, a way for Apple to give back to its customers.

First held in 2007, the iTunes Festival is sponsored by Apple and held at London’s historic The Roundhouse in North London. Past performers have included Adele, Paul Simon, and Amy Winehouse.

For 2012, Apple expects to include 60 artists including One Direction, Usher, and Norah Jones. Plus, as in past years, for those that can’t attend the event live, each show will be presented live for a limited time on your computer with iTunes, or on your iPhone/iPod touch and iPad with the iTunes Festival app.

Typically held earlier each summer, the 2012 iTunes Music Festival is being delayed this year due to the Summer Olympic Games, which London is hosting in July.

Tickets to the event will be distributed by lottery for fans in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, and The Netherlands.

Note: The iTunes Festival app is currently unavailable in the United States. However, we expect it to go live soon.

How you ever attended the event? Who was your favorite act?

On today’s AppAdvice Daily we’ve rounded up the hottest apps of the week. Bejeweled HD, 5by5 Radio, US Weekly, and Inkflow are all here! Check out video demos, and get our feedback on all of them.

New Apps:

5by5 Radio

Bejeweled HD

US Weekly

App Of The Week:

Inkflow

• 5by5 Radio
• Inkflow
• US Weekly Magazine
• Bejeweled HD

Every week, our staff will handpick an app from the past seven days that we believe is a must-download for your iPhone or iPad. These apps will always be from various categories, but they are chosen because our own staff members love it and have been using them daily. So here are this week’s picks! Enjoy!

Inkflow

Our App of the Week will allow you to visually capture your thoughts.

Our app pick this week is great for those with iPads and appreciate sketching or handwriting notes. Inkflow is a “word-processor for visual thinkers.”

With Inkflow, you can create notebooks with 20 pages or unlimited with the Pro version. The app uses a smooth and fluid ink engine so that it feels realistic to a real pen and paper, so you can naturally capture your ideas.

What makes it different from other apps is the ability to select a portion of ink on the page and freely resize it to your liking. There are even tips in the app’s Quickstart notebook, suggesting that you can stretch out a selection for thinner text, or even making it appear bolder. Selections can be deleted as well, and there is always the undo button.

If you decide to upgrade to the Pro version (only on the iPad), you will get a full color palette, other tools (pencil, erasure, brush), cut, copy, and paste management, unlimited pages in your notebooks, and other bonuses. This upgrade is better for sketching, but it’s nice to have if other apps haven’t met your requirements.

I recommend checking out this app on the iPad rather than the iPhone, even though it’s universal. The iPhone version doesn’t have the undo button for some reason, has less space and the Pro upgrade only applies to the iPad.

The app isn’t as intuitive as I’d like it to be, but it’s still worth checking out to see if it will work for you. It’s free in the App Store, so give it a spin.

Honorable Mention

5by5 Radio

Make sure to catch the live streams of your favorite 5by5 podcasts.

If you’re a fan of fine audio programming, then 5by5 Radio is a must-have app. The app is pretty simple, but you are able to catch the live broadcasts of all of the podcasts on the 5by5 network.

Set up push notifications for your favorite shows, and you’ll be alerted the second the live stream for that podcast is about to start. The app will open to the main screen, which is audio playback. By default, the app doesn’t start playing immediately — you’ll have to tap on the Play button.

If there is no live stream, the app will play rebroadcasts from “Best of 5by5.” You’ll be able to see how many people are listening to the stream, and playback can be paused or refreshed at any time.

The audio quality of the stream is exceptional, and we’d expect no less from Dan Benjamin and his great podcast network.

If you’re a fan of the 5by5 network of podcasts, or are looking for some great programming to tune into, then go download 5by5 Radio for $2.99 in the App Store.

Check out my original review here.

For video coverage of these apps in action, make sure to check out Robin’s AppAdvice Daily below!

• Inkflow
• 5by5 Radio