Flakwolf a Gamers Paradise?!

Flakwolf, A Gamers Paradise?

Okay so a friend of mine sent me an email this week letting me know that a friend of his was involved in putting up a new site for trading your old or no longer played video games to other people who want to still play them.

I thought this was an awesome idea, as we all know there are many forums and classified adds out there that people list their used videos games for sale or trade. SO a site that targets individuals who want to do this is a great idea, but is it truly going to work?

For give me if this ends up being a little longer than I wanted it to be I just want to be thorough, as I think you the viewer is entitled.

How It Works?

It’s very simple you goto Flakwolf.com make an account (of course as if I don’t have a ton of these already), which is free, and then start listing games you own and want to trade with others.

The System?

They have set up a system of “Tiers” numbered 1 – 5, tier 1 being the most popular or in demand games and 5 being the older games or less popular ones. When you list a game you search for what you want to list with the easy search bar at the top. Once you get your search result you can click the list if you have it, or the request if you want it.

Points!!

For every game you list you get points which you can spend on games of the same tier that you listed, for example; if you list a tier 2 game you can request a tier 2 or lower game. You cannot request a tier 1 game.

This is a good implementation to keep users of taking advantage of listing games nobody wants and getting games that are new! But I can see one drawback for this I would like to see you be able to save up points from lower tiers and if you get enough you can trade your old games in for 1 new one which I think is fair, cause you are contributing games that some people still want to play. The only stipulation might be that you have to actually complete the trade on those games then be awarded your points. So that way if no one really wants those games then oh well.

I no longer play PS2 but I have allot of my games and I hate to throw them away or trade them in for pennies at a gamestop so they can make buck! But I would also like to see them played by somebody.

Rewards!!!

Flakwolf rewards honest people… let me explain this, when you sign up they grant you with a 90% positive rating and allow you to immediately spend one point if you list one game on their site, even if you have not made a trade. You can keep this privilege by being honest and completing trades but if you try to rip people off then your rating goes down and you don’t get points until your games are traded and you have received positive feedback from that user. Not to mention that you also get bad feedback and it goes on games you list.

So you get user privileges stay honest and you are rewarded! Simple!

$$ Does it Cost Anythin?! $$

The answer to this is Yes! and No! Flakwolf is in it’s btea form right now and so they are waiving any fees, now before you turn off, as I know most of you do when money is involved, hear me out … It will only cost 1 dollar for each game request and you pay this upon completion of the trade.

But look at it this way, where can you get a game for a buck! Let alone a new one! Also there is the option to wither ship or pickup a game, which then you will have to pay to ship that game to that person or work something out with them. But it all works out in the end. You pay 4 bucks for shipping and then they pay 4 bucks to ship a game to you. So it’s all the same, but still a game for 5 bucks, that’s a steal and you are both getting games that you haven’t played yet.

Hopefully, and I can’t believe I’m saying this but, they will put adds along the top or side of the page. And I Know How Much You All hate those adds. But if they have adds on the site then they pay for it so you don’t have to and the site is then totally free!, Which I like. But in order for that to happen they will need an incredible amount of people sign up for the beta, numbers sell adds!

In Conclusion…

I have already signed up and made a successful trade with Flakwolf.com and am ready to list and trade more games soon.

Flakwolf has a very good search engine and it is well located and easy to use. The only thing is that their library is a bit thin at the moment especially on the PS3 side of things but that is due to their not being enough users and also the Flakwold team adding more games to the list, which will come over time.

In the one weak that I have been apart of Flakwolf’s site they have almost doubled their game list on the search. So as the site becomes more popular, which I believe it will the number of games on the list and the number available will increase exponentially.

I would like to see them add the multiple use of points eventually as well but they are in the beta at this time so it can be expected that much will change over the next few months as this site grows.

My Rating

Overall I am excited about this site it has been a long time coming!

I would say it has a few issues to work out but for the most part is a well thought out and well designed site and for the most part is quite excellent!
So I give it a rating 5 stars giving it the benefit of the doubt that it gave me, in the hopes for the future of this little gamers paradise.

You should definitely check it out and give this wonderful new site try at least

Movies.app iPhone / iPod touch app (Free)

Rating 5 out of 5 smilies

Well I know I said that the next review was going to be on the facebook apps but I was playing arround with this one last night and I must say its Awesome!

This is a review on a little app called movies for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Movies has to be one of the best apps I’ve reviewed so far, for people that are always on the go but decide that they want to stop and experience film at their local theater this is perfect and the best part about it, the same thing about all the apps I review is that it is absolutely Free!

When you launch movies from you iPhone you will see a very simple and self-explanatory interface. Just enter you zip code and select your day, you can only get information two days ahead. This is probably because that is the time frame that you can get the most accurate movie information any time further ahead and it may be incorrect information.

So you can view by movie or theater, so if you know the movie you want to see you can select it from a list of if you are just curious what is out you can see what’s playing at each theater in your area.

I am going to choose theater and press go, now it gives me the theaters in my area, there are only two so I will choose my favorite of the two and then it takes me to a list of movies playing at the theater.

So you select a movie and it gives you all the ionformation on that film; name, length, genre, viewer rating, the ctual movie rating like PG13 and then it gives you the option of watching the trailer or going to IMDb.

This is great you can see a preview of the movie right from your iPhone and you can goto IMDb Internet Movie Database and get even more information on the movie.

Next you have Theater information, which gives you the theater name, show times, a map to the theater using Google maps or your GPS program and you can even buy tickets for the showing. All of this, straight from your mobile device, I say Wow!

It uses Movietickets.com as the site for buying tickets and according to the developer he is adding more features to this app soon and again all for 0 dollars.

I would have to rate this app 5 out of 5 smilies

ShoZu iPhone / iPod touch app reviewed

Review of ShoZu iPhone and iPod touch app (Free App)

My Rating of this app

I will be giving my ratings at the top from now on so that if you don’t wish read the whole review you can know the rating first.

I have to admit I was a bit confused by how ShoZu worked at first, but once you understand the mechanics of this app it all makes sense. I have to say this is a beautifully written app for the iPhone and iPod touch.

What I didn’t realize at first was that I needed to get a ShoZu account on their website, which is free by the way, and then I could log in and add my site feeds. The great thing about this software is that I can send pictures and articles and maintain several sites all at once. I can write or post something one time and it automatically coppies it and makes it ready for all the other sites view and maintain giving me the option to upload the same content to multiple sites in the minimal amount of clicks.

How It Works

Log onto shozu.com and create an account with them its quick and easy and its easy to find on their home page. After you do this you will be taken to a page called My Shozu which gives you the opportunity to add the sites which you use and there are quite a few of them 30 or so.

When adding your sites you will need to log into your account either in another tab or another browser window, the reason for this is that ShoZu will ask to have access to your account, don’t worry it doesn’t do anything invasive or broadcast anything personal in your account. Now the reason I say log into it in another tab or window is because I have noticed that some of the sites do not work properly when you login using the ShoZu site. Just follow ShoZu’s instructions and your sites will be added in no time at all.

After you have added sites if you open the app on your iPhone or iPod touch you will see all your feeds appear there. I am personally using WordPress, Facebook, Picasa and Kodak Gallery. Picasa was the one that gave me the most trouble to activate and it was something on Google end and not a ShoZu issue.

From here all you have to do is select one of your feeds and it will take you into two options, “Send Photos” and “My Uploads”. Send photos is where you send content to your site when you press this it brings you to your photo library where you can select a photo or take one if you have an iPhone. I uploaded this one from prince of Persia that I had on my touch.

It now brings you the upload menu, here you can add a caption, which is your title, and a description. The description can be as long as you want so you can actually write a full article if you want like I am now I did not write this whole thing in the ipod as I did not feel like typing all this in fact I started and half way through I figured oh well forget it. The next part is adding your tags, which are your Meta tags to help people find your posts

When your done you press send and its off to your site in my case my blog. You now have the option of sending it to other sites as well. I you select a different site and instead press my uploads you will see everything you have uploaded and to where. You can also edit and delete them with the edit button at the top of the page.

Would I use This?

The answer is Absolutely Yes, and I do and will continue to. This app is great for people who are on the go and don’t necessarily have access to a computer all the time. It would be great for like a travel photographer that is in some new place and takes a picture a writes an article.

What would add?

If I were to add something to this it would be posting multiple pictures in the same article. For instace maybe when typing your description you can have access to a button that says picture which when pressed would put a little text saying like [picture] to notify that it will place the picture there in the text. Also the ability to select multiple pictures and inserting them at different points in the article or description.

Also I would like to see the ability to post text without images to the web. Another feature this does have but I have not yet used is email, not sure how the function works but I assume it will email the pic to whoever not sure but I don’t see much point in this cause I will just send it with my email client built into the device.

Is there anything I don’t like?

I really dont have anything bad to say about this app, for a free app they give allot to the user and really ask nothing in return except registration. you can operate the app completely from the device you are using and they offer it for other mobile devices as well so it has a wide range of audience. I was not able to configure every site that I wanted to use on my touch but for most part it works well and i would recommend it to anyone.

One last thing that I think is worth noting is that you can add more than one of the same site feed to the app for instance I have two blogs with wordpress so I added both of them also you can CC sites so that if you upload to your primary, your first site, then it loads the same content to your CC sites.

My Rating, this is the first app I am going to rate a full 5 out of 5 smilies

And I definitely think that anyone who is on the go or uses blogging or photo sites should get this app. Visit the developer’s website shozu.com and check out the available feeds and see if you use any of them if yes you may want to consider using ShoZu for your mobile device. you can also download and install it to your device and view the supported sites that way too.

~Last Massassi

My next review will be on AIM and the Facebook apps there are three free apps that I will go over for facebook

EasyTask iPhone / iPod touch App Reviewed

Review of EasyTask for iPone and iPod touch users (Free App)

My Rating of this app

So I have just played around with the new EasyTask app available on the iTunes app store for free. Well this one you can’t say is totally free but you have to admit their concept is smart make free app that kind of requires their app from their website which does cost money around 19.99 to be exact. But I will get to this later.

The app is very confusing at first look and still is a bit un-smooth I must add. It actually took me a trip to the developers website to figure out what the point was to some of this stuff and how it worked, I will save you the trouble of doing that.

Okay so when you first launch the app you will see a screen that looks very much like a email client window and you will see several categories Inbox, Tomorrow, Next Week, Past Due and Completed. At the very bottom under the word settings is Online Sync and at the very top is Add Task.

Below all that is a menu with three buttons Dashboard, which should be highlighted, projects and contexts. Okay so before you add any tasks you are going to have to set up these buttons below.

The first one “projects” if you press this it takes you to the projects menu where you can add ongoing project categories, like; Steve’s Website, Clean House and whatever else you want.

Now context is used for the type of project or where you may need to do this project, for instance; Home, work, school, misc and so on.

From the developers site the reason why they do this is because you have a searching feature where you can look up your tasks based on their context or project, but and where the money comes in, you will need to buy the computer program that works with your device which will put you out of pocket 20 dollars.

After you setup your projects and context which are all editable at any time you can go and start scheduling individual tasks, with the add task button on the dashboard menu.

When you add task it gives you the add task menu. The first thing you se is action, this is the individual task that you want to do for instance; “Call Steve About Web Site”. The next is “Project”, which we will select Steve’s Website. And then after that you have the context that the project is in, this case we will use “Work”.

Under that you can select the date of start and the due date or finish date that it needs to be done. When you reach the due date it will appear on your dashboard saying due today to remind you.

Aside from being a bit confusing at first it seems like it has allot of possibilities with it, especially if you are an event driven business person, because this really is a date book or event planner at heart and of all the free programs out there it has best capabilities for this so far. Also if you are using the program for business and find you need something of this type I would say that it probably would be worth buying the computer side software, which the designers says is compatible with both mac and pc and their most common email and calendar and event programs that you use. For those specific program functions you can visit their OrionBelt.com, as I will not be going over them.

As far as its free functions I feel that the average user of businessperson can utilize its functions for daily life and find this program quite useful and it actually works.

So I have not bought the computer software nor will I be anytime soon but if you find this useful and want to extend its capabilities then you can do so.

My rating I would rate this 4 out of 5 smilies I mark it down 1 for its less than easy to use understand functionality because I had to visit the site to figure out what some of the program intended for. It is definitely worth a free download from the app store.

~Last Massassi

iPhone / iPod touch Apps – 2.0 software upgrade

Well I have gotten the new iPhone / iPod touch 2.0 software upgrade which cost me 9.99 from the apple store and is required to install apps onto your iphone / ipod touch. I would have to say right off the bat it had some issues for some reason after first installing the 2.0 software it did not give me the option to select which apps to install and just installed everything I had downloaded from the app store.

A crash of my touch and several reboots later of my touch including one of iTunes as well it appeared an option when syncing the iphone / ipod touch to select which apps you wanted.

Frankly speaking the 2.0 software is a bit glitchy still and I recommend rebooting your iphone or touch after installing any new app onto your device before you use them. They seem to run better and have less problems if you do this.

Is it Worth the money.
The answer is, Yes I feel that it is worth the 9.99 to touch users to buy the upgrade if you want access to the apps, because there are allot of kool apps you can get some of which are free to use, which over the next weeks to come I will be reviewing some of these free apps that are available. Yes the software is a bit glitchy but I have no doubt they will work out the issues and I think that it’s it anyways.

I will be reviewing the following free apps over the next coming weeks
- Facebook
- Myspace
- AIM
- eBay Mobile
- Kyte
- ShoZu
- To Do
- Zenbe
- Easy Task Manager
- Movie.app
- iMaze
- Cube Runner
- NetNewsWire
- Whirl

So keep a look out and I will post some of these very soon

I am playing with my iPod touch so I decided to upload this cartoon wee pic of me.

This is what I look like… If I were a cartoon!

I used ShoZu to upload this to my blog. it’s an iphone/touch app from the new app store on iTunes and it costs a mere 0 dollars.

To Do – iPhone / iPod touch app reviewed

Review of To Do apple iPhone / iPod touch app (Free)

My Rating of this app

One of the new apps available to users of the iPhone and iPod Touch is an app called To Do designed Erika Sadun and is available to you absolutely free from iTunes app store.

Right off the bat I like To Do it looks great it actually works and is great for more than just making lists, I’ll explain that further later in this review.

What I Like

There quite a few things that I like about this app and I have to say that the person that designed this is definitely going in the right direction with it.

When you first launch the app you see a very clean and crisp program environment that looks like every other part of your iPhone or iPod touch. At the top of the program you’ll see a button called edit and at the bottom large + sign. To add a list item you press the + Pluss and it creates a new list item called “To Do”, as far as I can tell there is no limit the amount of list items you can create.

To change the name of the list item you have press on thenewly created To Do list item, when you do this two more buttons appear at the bottom of the screen a “123” and a square with a pencil icon. If you press the”123” button it brings up the “Priority Options” menu and you can change how important the list item is, from “high”, “normal”, and “completed” which changes the color from red, black or gray.

The second button, the pad and pen, allows you to change the name of your list item, which will bring up a window that you can type in. When you are done entering your name you press update and it changes the list item’s title.

What I like about this as apposed to apple’s notes program is that I can give these documents a actual title and not only that change their priority with a color option. I think this is a smart design and improves on the notes program by apple. The down side to this is the list structure I don’t like how new list items appear at the bottom rather than the top. If I create a new list I would anyway expect it to be at the top because I just created it so to me that seems as though it is the most important. But, and this is where the edit button at the top comes in, you can reorder and even delete them from the list menu at any time. I cannot stress how much I Love This about this app. It makes a great improvement over notes.

To go into your list item or note you created you click the blue arrow next to the list item you want to go into. I found that sometimes this does not always work right away and you have to press it twice sometimes, but I haven’t really noticed a real problem there in the most part.

Now when you enter the program you will see what appears as a blank page. This program is very much like word or note notepad really cause of simplicity. I almost like the plainness to it cause the notes application form apple I sometimes feel is too busy and font in notes is not always the clearest. The font in To Do is crisp and clear like a type font.

The Cons

At this point I was excited and ready to drop notes all together you tap the screen and the keyboard appears just like notes, everything is the same but then I try to do one of my favorite features of notes. Active scrolling… To my surprise it wasn’t there I could not scroll the page while typing in fact I realized I could not scroll it at all. To make matters it didn’t scroll the page for you when typed down the page. So when you got to the keyboard you would just start typing behind it and not be able to see what you were typing at all.

I also noticed another feature of this app which reminded me even more of word which is the page edge at the bottom. The only problem is… It doesn’t work you continue typing, what you can’t see, and it types behind the border so the two lines of text behind the border are not visible at all.

I really think this app has the potential of being way better than apple’s notes app but until the developer fixes these two glitches and possibly adds some other kool features to it well it just can’t beat notes for functionality. I will probably still use the app but I won’t be abandoning notes any time soon that’s for sure.

If this application worked like it should, would I pay money for it?

Well the quick answer would be No. I would continue using notes before I bought this program mainly because I already own notes and I don’t need to pay for a second app. But if it had some other kool features that notes didn’t and it just blew notes out of the water then the answer is yes! I would pay around 5 dollars for this app if it was amazing and it worked properly.

I rate this app a 3 out of 5 smileys

For its clean and easy to navigate menu along with it’s listing abilities and extra features I rate it on my list but unfortunately I deduct 1 for the paging issues and another for no active scrolling and not being able to see what you type below the keyboard.

All in all I would download this app but I will definitely be contacting the designer about these issues.

~The Las Massassi