Earlier this week, I got an email from out friends at Backflip Studios.  For me, emails like this are like Christmas in July…or Channukkah in August.  Backflip Studios are one of my favorite iOS game developers, and I am rarely disappointed when I get an email announcing a new game from them.   They have already had a busy summer, nearly doubling their catalogue with titles like Tunnel Shoot, Graffiti Ball, and Strike Knight, which were all released in the past months. 

Backflip’s latest offering, NinJump, turns the action on its side…literally.  This game resembles horizontal running games, with a twist.  Instead of running across the screen, the object is to climb two up the space between two buildings.  To put it another way, here is how Julian, the CEO of Backflip describes his latest creation:

I think it would best be described as a fast paced Ninja climbing game meets a twisted cousin of match three.  The object is to climb as high as you can while avoiding enemy birds, rabid squirrels and other crazed ninja’s.  However, enormous animated bonuses are given whenever you hit any three of these, in a row, in the air.

Let’s go ahead and look at this one element at a time.  First, you are a ninja, and everyone knows ninjas can climb effortlessly up a solid wall.  Here, you have two walls side by side, so climbing is no problem.  In fact, you do not need to do anything in order to climb.  As soon as the game begins, your ninja will automatically start running up the wall.

Before long, you will begin to encounter obstacles and enemies.  Birds fly at you, squirrels race across the screen, even enemy ninjas will attack you.  To evade these attacks and obstacles, just tap the screen in order to jump from one wall to the other.  While you are flying thru the air, your sword will fly with you, deflecting any attacks which may threaten you.  Hack three consecutive matching attacks (ie: three birds, three squirrels, or three throwing stars) in order to activate the bonus attack.

Other than activating the bonus attacks, however, there is really no need to attack the enemies.  The goal is to climb as high as possible, and that is all you need to do to earn points.  The result is the same whether you attack or simply dodge…though sometimes attacking can just be an awful lot more fun.

Of course, when you do reach unprecedented heights, you are going to want to share your progress with your friends.  For that, at the end of each game, you are given the option of posting your score to Twitter, Facebook, or even emailing it to your friends.  Like other Backflip games, this one will also connect with the Open feint network, allowing you to post your scores to the global leaderboard and compare your progress with players from around the world.  That being said, there are perplexingly no Open Feint achievements to be earned here, which was a bit of a disappointment.

NinJump was developed by BackFlip Studios, and is available for free from the iTunes App Store as an ad-based download.  A $0.99 in-app purchase will remove those pesky ads, though I did not find them to be a significant intrusion.  The game is currently available for iPhone and iPod Touch, but I found it played perfectly well on my iPad as well.

Finally, don’t think Backflip Studios is going to just sit back and rest on their laurels or enjoy their success.  They have big plans for the rest of the year, including:

• DYNAMITE SURFING
• DR. SHOCKER
• a soon-to-be announced game based on a cult film
• RAGDOLL BLASTER 2 (one of my favorites on the iPhone) for iPad

It’s Free App Friday at Handango today, and if you have a Windows Mobile device I suggest you to grab the free Resco Photo Manager for Windows Mobile before the deal is over!

Visit Handango online store, and you will add to your software collection one of the best photo management tool available. Using the code FAF813 you will be able to download Resco Photo Manager for Windows Mobile for 100% off its prize.

Here is what Resco Photo Manager allows you to do:

Touch optimized with gestures

3 interfaces to choose from: Browser, Viewer and Slideshow. Zoom, rotation and move gestures make image handling very comfortable.

Upload to the social networks: Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Twitter

Users can choose among four popular social networks to upload their photos.

Quick image access

Home screen offers 4 main image databases: My Documents, Camera Roll, Favorites and My Albums.

Add GPS position

Add GPS position to any of the images and make diary of a trip. Afterwards locate the image on a map (using Google Maps).

Editing tools

Resize, crop, set image as Home Screen, color corrections, attach drawings and much more.

Slideshow

Impress your clients, colleagues or friends with a slide-show presentation!

Link: Handango

I admit I was skeptical about using Google services different from GMail. I could not understand using GCalendar when I already have a smartphone with a calendar app, and a dedicated sync app on the PC. Things changed when I abandoned my Palm OS device and I started a different job, obliging me to use different PCs.

With the new usage scenario I couldn’t install my sync software on every PC I use, and having a 27/7 connection both on PCs and on my smartphone, a cloud based way to manage my personal information was making sense.

Luckily enough the email, contact and calendar applications on my Windows Mobile 6.5 device are well integrated with Google services, thanks to the Microsoft Direct Push feature of WM 6.5 and Google support for Microsoft Exchange.

However, the task application is not supported by Google and I was starting to abandon my task-centric way of organizing things, until I recently found GogTasks.

Introduction

The app started as a commercial software, but due to restrictions from Microsoft on allowing Marketplace apps to use unsupported third-party APIs, i.e. Goggle’s ones, the developer decided to release it for free.

While the newest version is “GogTasks for Windows Mobile 2.2″, I will consider here a previous version, i.e. “GogTasks for Windows Mobile 1.1″, as the higher version seems to suffer of a redirection problem preventing it to work in some cases. In any case, you can download both versions from here.

As always, before going through the steps detailed below, remember to make a backup of your data before proceeding, just in case.

Once accepted the license agreement you will have a new icon in your program list with the classical checked task graphics.

Configuring GogTasks

At the first launch of GogTasks you will have to configure it to access your Google account selecting the “Authenticate” button.

GogTasks Settings

Configure your Google account 

Checking the “Autosync on startup” option you will have the tasks synced between GTasks and your Windows Mobile device when you launch the app. Regrettably there is no option to sync tasks automatically and you have to make this manually. The “Wipe tasks on device” button will delete all tasks on your smartphone, to allow you to import your existing Google tasks on a clean device, so be careful.

The “Check boxes to the…” option will allow you to choose where to put the tasks check boxes. Actually GogTasks also provides a user interface for administrating the tasks with a UI is designed to allow finger control instead of the use of a stylus.

Touch friendly tasks management

Thus, once finished the configuration, you will be able to use the clean and touch friendly interface provided by GogTasks to view and manage your tasks.

In the upper part you will find a pop up menu with the list of the tasks categories (the same you would find on your GTasks, of course), while the tasks will be shown in the center of the window.

At the bottom you will find, from left to right:

• a pencil or asterisk icon to edit an existing or to insert a new task, respectively;
• a set of arrows to indent and move your tasks;
• a button to show the menu.

The main window shows the tasks (left) and has a pop up menu with categories (right)

GogTasks menu

The menu will allow you to:

• exit the program;
• sync the tasks and exit the app;
• sync tasks without closing GogTasks;
• open the settings window (the one where you configure your Google account);
• add a new task;
• delete an existing task.

To edit an existing task is enough to highlight it and select the pencil button at the bottom left.

The fields you can enter are the task object, its due date (if any) and some notes. These are quite basic settings for a task, but together with the option to indent and order them, are the only things allowed in GTasks.

One month experience

In the last month I have been using GogTasks regularly with PCs and HTC Touch Pro2, and things have worked smoothly, with no problems due to duplicate or disappeared tasks.

I am regularly using Pocket Informant and I use tasks alarms, something which is not allowed by GTasks and GogTasks, but I have had no conflicts or problems between the two programs. For your information the tasks managed by GogTasks have never been more than 50.

You can set or edit the task object, its due date and some notes

Conclusion

Apart for some sync failures on startup, which oblige me to sync manually twice, and some ghosts tasks appearing in the list (this is due by the way GTasks allows you to enter new tasks, though) I have no real complain with GogTasks.

We are talking about a free app, which allows you to bless your Windows Mobile device with Google tasks syncing and a simple, touch friendly tasks management interface. Sure, autosync would be very welcome, but this is not a deal breaker, in my opinion. I prefer to have to push the “Sync” menu item twice a day rather than to copy and paste all new or modified tasks.

You can follow the official GogTasks thread at XDA, and visit the developer site. Remember we reviewed version 1.1, but a newer version is already available and could fit you better.

Pros

• Free
• Does what it says
• Simple
• Touch friendly interface to manage tasks is really handy if you don’t have a dedicated app

Cons

• Sometime you have to sync twice
• No autosync feature
• Google could change things and render this software useless

Link: GogTasks

XDA Thread: GogTasks at XDA

PC Magazine has just released The top 100 Free Apps for Phones for 2010.  Breaking it down by platform, it is not surprising to see iPhone apps at the very top.  Google’s Android platform seems to be right on the heels of Apple.  From the way things look, it actually seems to represent the state of a platform.  Support for apps is key to the survival of a platform as it extends a device’s usefulness.  Just like Microsoft’s KIN platform got swept under the rug because of the lack of ability for apps, we see iPhone and Android growing in market share for their support and growing amount of apps.

Now, on to the apps!

The Top 40 Free iPhone Apps
The Top 30 Free Google Android Apps
The Top 10 Free BlackBerry Apps
The Top 10 Free Palm webOS Apps
The Top 5 Free Symbian Apps
The Top 5 Free Windows Phone Apps

SPB TV has got a major update and now a new version SPB TV 2.0 is available for all Windows Mobile and iPhone users. The app goes free-of-charge and subscription-free and offers live TV streams along with video-on-demand channels.

• Live TV and video-on-demand channels
• Channels from more than 17 countries
• Integrated TV guide
• Picture-in-picture mode

Get SPB TV for Windows Mobile for FREE

Get SPB TV for iPhone for FREE

Free is awfully nice.