The app stores are teeming with new releases, but who has time to go through them all? We do. Bringing you a selection of the most interesting, creative, and innovative apps each week. Submit your suggestions for next week in the comments below.Planetary [iPad]What do your music collection and a solar system have in common? Well, unless you own English composer Gustav Holst’s workThe Planetsor maybe some early Hawkwind, probably not much. But with this app, you can turn your treasured music collection into a veritable planetarium, with different albums/artists visualized as astral bodies, transforming your collection from a mundane list into an explorable virtual solar system. It’s an amazingly inventive, well thought out, and stunning way to navigate your music library—artists are stars (of course they are), albums are planets that orbit the star, and tracks are moons, orbiting at a speed based on the track’s length. Data visualization as practical smartphone app? We’re sold, especially as it’s free. One thing though, it’s missing a Carl Sagan voiceover.Pulsus [iPad]Another beautiful app for the iPad, this time in the form of a game. This mobile version of the online Flash gamePulsushas you manipulating floating particles by placing objects in different parts of the screen, disrupting and directing the flow into the flagged goals. Just watching the video and listening to the slow trickle of the particles gliding around is a soothing experience, so it won’t be the sort of game you play to vent spleen by destroying malignant zombie hordes (for that, see below), but rather one where the ambient experience will nurse your mind back to a happy place—or, at least, a mellow place—without the aid of illegal substances. Thankfully, it’ll be out on the iPhone and iPod touch later in the year.Stupid Zombies [Android]
The world will always need, and never tire, of zombie games. That’s just a fact of life, so we’d all better get used to it. But this title is different from your average gory shoot ‘em up zombie game, because it’s a puzzle-based gory shoot ‘em up zombie game. And the zombies don’t shuffle towards you, or even run—as they seemed to have learned to do since the Dawn of the Dead remake—instead they just stand there, which makes them extra stupid, while you fire a shotgun with strategically placed shots (you have limited ammo) to blow their heads clean off.Dance Writer [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]Typography is usually quite static. Sure, it can imply movement, but the only way that those letters are going to jiggle about the page is if you’ve been drinking heavily. With this app, the inherent motion in the flows and curves of letters is translated into choreographed dance movements, so you can watch words become bodily motion or type an email and then send it as an animated message. Then sit back and see if they can work out just what the hell it is you’re trying to say, because like predictive text, this has the potential to be misinterpreted, but unlike predictive text, it looks incredibly graceful and has less potential to offend.Crowdstory [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
An app that lets you create location-based audio stories, leaving 30 second snippets like reviews or recommendations dotted about all over the place for other people to find and listen to. Just like the oral traditions that saw Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad pass down through generations, you too can leave your own story, like how much you enjoyed that tuna wrap at lunchtime. Then, someone will come along and listen to it, and maybe even buy one themselves. But beyond the obvious frivolous uses, it also has the potential for more serious applications, like creating an oral history of your city, or even more serious, stringing together a bar crawl.
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The world will always need, and never tire, of zombie games. That’s just a fact of life, so we’d all better get used to it. But this title is different from your average gory shoot ‘em up zombie game, because it’s a puzzle-based gory shoot ‘em up zombie game. And the zombies don’t shuffle towards you, or even run—as they seemed to have learned to do since the Dawn of the Dead remake—instead they just stand there, which makes them extra stupid, while you fire a shotgun with strategically placed shots (you have limited ammo) to blow their heads clean off.Dance Writer [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]Typography is usually quite static. Sure, it can imply movement, but the only way that those letters are going to jiggle about the page is if you’ve been drinking heavily. With this app, the inherent motion in the flows and curves of letters is translated into choreographed dance movements, so you can watch words become bodily motion or type an email and then send it as an animated message. Then sit back and see if they can work out just what the hell it is you’re trying to say, because like predictive text, this has the potential to be misinterpreted, but unlike predictive text, it looks incredibly graceful and has less potential to offend.Crowdstory [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
An app that lets you create location-based audio stories, leaving 30 second snippets like reviews or recommendations dotted about all over the place for other people to find and listen to. Just like the oral traditions that saw Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad pass down through generations, you too can leave your own story, like how much you enjoyed that tuna wrap at lunchtime. Then, someone will come along and listen to it, and maybe even buy one themselves. But beyond the obvious frivolous uses, it also has the potential for more serious applications, like creating an oral history of your city, or even more serious, stringing together a bar crawl.