Free Apps

Just a quick post with some apps that are currently free. I just stumbled onto Car Tunes an I'm really enjoying it's interface (or lack thereof).

Car Tunes (was $2.99) - Great minimalist gesture based music player.

Rope'n'Fly 3 (was ($0.99) - Fun building swinging game.

cinemagram (was $0.99) - Allows you to create "cines" basically a combination between video and photo. Sort of like an animated .gif.

Steam Mobile - iOS (BETA)

About a week after I posted about imo, a multi-protocol chat client that lets you sign into Steam chat (amongst a plethora of other popular IM protocols), Vavle released news that Steam Mobile is coming out for iOS and Android. It is currently in Closed Beta. All you have to do is download the application and try to sign in with your Steam account to request an invite.

My account was activated a few days ago so I figured I might as well give everyone a look at Steam Mobile (BETA).

First of all, yes, this will let you sign into Steam chat, and it works quite well. To be honest, about the only thing you can't do is launch your games. You can browse the store, buy games, modify your wishlist, chat and just about anything else you do with Steams PC client.

The application will launch on your friends list by default. You can modify the default start section, but I think most people will be happy with having it show there friends list. I know that's the main feature for me anyway.

One of the first things I noticed when signing into the app on my iPhone was that I was still signed into the chat on my PC. That is extremely convenient. I can start chatting with someone on my PC and seamlessly pick up my iPhone and continue the chat. The only real caveat is that what I type will only show on either my PC or iPhone, however the replies will show up on both PC and iPhone.

There are two ways to get to a chat from the Friends interface. You can click on your friend and then click on Chat from the profile page, or you can simply tap the chat bubble to the right of the friend you want to chat with.

Loading a friends profile takes a few moments but once its loaded you have all the options and info you would expect: Chat, Remove Friend, About, Screenshots... you get the idea. Some of these features will come up as being a work in progress, and a few will display a 90s style animated "UNDER CONSTURCTION" GIF.

The other option you have form the main Friends list is the Menu in the top left hand corner (three horizontal lines).This allows you to access Community (Friends, Groups and Friend Activity), Store (Catalog, Wishlist, Cart, Search), News Feeds (Steam News, Syndicated News) and Finally -Settings.

Everything basically works the way you would expect them too. Catalog lets you browse Valve's always impressive library of games, you can view game information, screenshots and even add them to your cart. Wishlist, Cart, Search and Steam News and Syndicated News are all self explanatory and function about the same as they would from your PCs Steam client.

Settings will display your user information, it allows you to change Chat Sounds. You can either be alerted every time you receive a message, only on the first chat message or turn sounds off all together. As I mention earlier you can also change the start screen from here so you could have the app launch to either Friends (the default), Groups, Friend Activity, Catalog, Steam News or Syndicated News.

There is a Steam Preferences section but currently it just says that the feature is not available at this time, and finally About Steam.

Here are some screenshots:

*I covered my friends usernames 'cause I'm not a total ass hat.

Linkage:

My screenshots for Steam Mobile (iOS Beta) here.
Available via iTunes here.

Valves site here.

imo

imo is free a multi protocol instant messaging application. That's basically a fancy way of saying you can connect to multiple instant messaging services (including Steam) from this one app.

This is one of those apps that can save you some clutter. It supports all the major instant messaging protocols so if you're okay with using all in one applications you can potentially delete quite a few single use IM apps by switching over to this one.

There really isn't any way to argue with free either.

imo supports the following protocols:

• imo
• MSN
• Skype
• Yahoo!
• Google Talk
• Facebook
• AIM / ICQ
• Jabber
• VKontakte
• My Space
• Hyves
• Steam

And yes, once again, that last one was not a mistake. imo allows you to connect to Steam! That alone is a reason to have it on your device, providing of course you are an avid Steam gamer.

Now, this isn't a 100% perfect application. The interface is a bit clunky but you can adjust to it easy enough. It's also a cross platform IM client so you can use it on iPhone / iPad / Android / Blackberry / Nokia (Symbian).

Hopefully they will come out with a Windows Phone client at some point.

You can set it so that when you sign into one account, they all sign in. Something I like, but if you only want to sign into one specific network at a time you will want to leave that off.

Again, the things really like about this app is that it replaced my need to have MSN and Google Talk installed on my device. It also adds the ability to connect to Skype chat (sans video) but that again saves me from running Skype for no reason. Did I mention this works with Steam chat? Also, free.

Sreenshots:


Linkage:
My imo screenshots here.
imo website here.
imo iTunes link here.


Price: Free.