#tapscape

[eui799-blog]

Tapscape – attracting over 100 thousand monthly readers – a leading source for iPhone, iPad, Android App Reviews, and Technology News.

Tapscape

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The most charming part of Weesh is the couple’s photo timeline. This begins as a stream of couple photos, pulled from Facebook, and then grows as the couple snaps cute pictures at events. Again… a perfect stream to have on your smartphone for trips out of town (Or boring meetings. Or boring lectures. I’m just saying.), and you can view it without subjecting all your Facebook friends to mushy pictures every day.

Try Weesh, A New iOs Relationship App - Tapscape

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Campaign Story is a casual, election game from new studio 519 Games. In this campaign sim for Facebook, players decide to run as a Liberal, Conservative, or Moderate, and start hiring a staff and running a political campaign. Starting out by running for mayor, players win elections and earn money to be spent on staff, upgrades, strategy, and finally winning the whole country. As the game progresses, player-candidates are presented with choices along the campaign trail, deciding whether to run a clean campaign or pursue victory at all costs. With election night rushing towards us, and endless news and editorials predicting the outcome, there are interesting real-world applications to Campaign Story’s player analytics. Seeing how casual gamers interact with this Facebook game revealings interesting stats about how players are running their campaigns.

Can an Election Game Predict The American Election?

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PopUp is an upcoming location-based social app for iOs, presented at last week’s Triangle Start-up Factory’s pitch day. PopUp promises to deliver users relevant social information based on their location, and allow connections to existing social and checkin apps. Users will connect to PopUp to share a note, checkin or photo tied to their physical location, and follow friends to see their notes. The dream usage of PopUp is walking into a new restaurant, and getting a recommendation from my foodie friend on a special dish to try ordering. Or maybe being the foodie friend, sharing a culinary find and leaving clever suggestions for future visitors to that eatery! There’s a lot of potential here for cute, asynchronous social fun with this app. It would be great fun to see that a friend took a goofy Instagram at this landmark, and take my own picture doing the same thing at the same spot.

PopUp, An Upcoming Location-based Social App - Tapscape

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In G5 and National Geographic’s new iOS game Doomsday Preppers, players take on the role of a prepper, ready to build an underground bunker that’s surprisingly adorable. Players can’t directly customize their avatar besides gender, but after randomizing a few times, I got a purple-haired avatar in a demin skirt and surgical mask for contaminated air, probably close enough to what I would have made anyway. Players then begin building their adorable underground bunker, beginning with housing for five prepper friends. Arriving preppers are then assigned work preparing for the apocalypse in different capacities. My first preppers grew algae in a hydroponic garden and produced duct tape in a workshop, making my doomsday bunker kind of, well, cute. The basic mechanics of Doomsday Preppers are resource management, as your preppers work in assigned stations to make products, prepare for doom, and earn gold, which is then spend on expanding your bunker deeper into the earth, providing more housing and more production for more preppers.

Game Review: Doomsday Preppers - Tapscape

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  Want a free drink? Want to be seated first? Use ReviewerCard to have a random dude on the internet accredit you as a reviewer, and start demanding perks! 

The business model behind Brad Newman’s ReviewerCard startup is quite simple. For a hundred dollars, shoppers can receive a wallet-size card titling them a reviewer, and can present that card to hint heavily for upgrades, free extra and discounts in exchange for more favorable reviews. It’s a win-win for anyone with a Yelp account who likes dining or travelling  and for Newman, who makes $100 to accredit each carded reviewer. Of course, it’s a lose-lose for local establishments shaken down by the threat of negative press and for folks trusting the information from user-generated reviews.

Hearing the inspiration behind startups might be one of favorite parts of covering new startups, but ReviewerCard’s site describes, with no sense of irony, Newman’s experience trying to get coffee swapped for tea as part of a breakfast combo. Most of us might shrug and accept that fast, discount meal combinations might not come with no substitutions, but when Newman discovered he was going to be charged extra for substituting, he threatened to write a negative review of the restaurant. The restaurant gave him a free breakfast, and he got the business idea for ReviewerCard.

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BitMonster’s first game, Lili, a sweet story-based indie adventure, was quite a departure from the developers’ previous work, since the dev team are Epic Games alums, with credits on the AAA Gears of War franchise. And now BitMonster’s second title, THRED, is a departure again. After an all-indie project with Lili, THRED is a collaboration with Coke and (RED), a complete reversal from an independent game.

Bitmonster’s new game, THRED, is a fundraising and awareness game. The game is tied to The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, although the gameplay is not tied to health or disease. Instead, THRED is an abstract and artistic game, creatively inspired by games like Rez, Osmos, and Flow. The game is free to download and play, with optional in-app purchases. Any money players spend in this game is donated to charity, providing essential anti-viral medications for HIV patients, and continuing The Global Fund’s goal of fighting infectious diseases. Each in-app purchase can also be shared on the social networks Twitter and Facebook, to spread awareness of the issue and the game.

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Facebook’s new “feature” creates relationship pages for coupled-up Facebook users. This relationship page features common interests, tagged updates and photos, and shared events, and reminds anyone who’s forgotten about it of Facebook’s origins as a college hookup site. While it doesn’t seem like much of an improvement for Facebook users, it might be a benefit for advertisers. If you’re publicly in a relationship, you can check out your adorable — or awkward — couple’s page, by signing into Facebook and visiting facebook.com/us, for Facebook’s archive of your relationship. If you’re single (or perhaps involved with a social-media hater), the default page here just reminds you that you’re doomed to die alone by redirecting you back to your own information. Thanks for that, Zuckerburg.