The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

The App: Guns and Glory: Heroes

The Device: iPhone 4 (or five bucks for an ad-free version)

The Price: Free

The Basics: What draws you to an app? I try to stay on top of the new releases and listen to the buzz about what’s worth my time, energy and valuable hard drive space. When I select an app for an App Spotlight column, it’s usually an app that’s been building buzz, has been recommended to me or specifically appeals to my occasionally niche tastes. In the case of Guns and Glory: Heroes, I simply wandered the iTunes Featured Page until I saw some art that appealed to me, noticed it was free and gave it a shot. Yes, I was committing the grievous sin of judging a book by its cover.

The Review: But hey, at least the game is pretty good.

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Smartphones have come a long way since 2008. Just compare what’s in your pocket to what was in your pocket five years ago. But after going so far, we only have one remaining question: what’s next?

Android OEMs seem to have embraced NFC (Google Wallet, Android Beam, etc), while Apple decided to leave that up to the carriers (Isis). There have been market experiments with built-in Pico Projectors, HDMI integration and super high screen resolutions. However, the new focus for all products seems to be on speed.

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The past few years have seen tensions between Apple and Google heat to such a boil that I’m surprised they haven’t hired mercenaries and gone to war yet. Soon, nations all over the world are going to play host to the Great Mobile Wars and the only thing we can do is take cover in our basements and hope the shells don’t land near us. Anyway, the only thing easing the tension between the two companies seems to be money. Lots and lots of money.

And it looks like Apple is going to make Google pay through the nose if they want to remain the default search engine on iOS.

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Apple is the favorite pet for many news journalists. Go to Google News (or you can bingiton for a side by side comparison), search for “Apple,” and you’ll see what I’m talking about: Apple stock price, Apple supply constraints, Apple law suits, Apple Televisions, Apple Cars, Apple activist shareholders—here an Apple, there an Apple, everywhere an Apple, Apple.

The latest news confirms rumors, which I seemed to have missed, that Apple is developing its very own iWatch (or whatever it’ll be called). Some pundits speculate that this is Apple’s early attempt to start developing mass-market, wearable computers; a pipe dream that futurists have heralded for some time now. While an Apple Watch could be very cool, I think this is a desperate attempt for Apple to continue to boldly innovate where no innovator has gone before (even if they have). How about we stop playing version games and come out with a Retina iPad Mini already? See, Has Apple Finished Disrupting Markets?

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With SXSW fast approaching (and by “fast approaching, I mean “Oh-No-It’s-Too-Fast-Will-We-Be-Ready-Oh-No”), we don’t have time for a traditional Q & Answers column this week simply because there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. Instead, how about a video interview with Q from last year’s SXSW? Q was interviewed as part of a Tech Zulu series and he spends his fifteen minutes talking about anything and everything, including the lastest in mobile tech, his favorite blogs and his experiences at SXSW. Watch it below!

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The hugely popular Infinity Blade series was set to continue this year with Infinity Blade: Dungeons, but it looks like fans are going to have to wait a while longer. The game was being developed by Impossible Studios, a new studio mostly made up of staff from Big Huge Games (you might know them as the studio that shut down last year when Curt Shilling couldn’t keep his 38 Studios afloat in a really tragic tale). The developers managed to hook up with Epic Games to found the new studio and work on a prequel to Epic’s Infinity Blade series. Things took off with a bang, with footage from the new game being demoed at Apple’s media event for the iPad 3. But now, just a few months after a delay was announced in order that the studio add their “great ideas to the game”, Infinity Blade: Dungeons is being put on hold and the 6-month old studio is being shut down.

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There has been a lot of discussion lately on the subject of remote workers versus on site workers, spurred on by this Stack Overflow blog post supporting their remote workers. As an employee of Rocksauce Studios, some people wonder why I work remotely instead of packing my bags and moving to Austin, Texas. The answer is simple, really: while Austin is truly one of my favorite cities in the world, sometimes you just can’t leave your “home.” Before starting at Rocksauce, I worked in a corporate office, so there were lots of questions regarding my sudden change in daily scenery and a big adjustment for me as a worker. So far, I’ve found working remotely to be quite wonderful as long as you have a good team and the right tools at your disposal.

Here are some of the most effective tools for any remote employee:

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(Welcome to Tapsauce’s new series, where Rocksauce Studios team members will share what they’ve learned and observed during the previous week. Today, we have sales expert David Blakeslee.)

1. Set expectations correctly the first time. This is vitally important when you work with clients in the app development market. And it’s not just important to set expectations the first time — you’ve got to keep setting expectations. Many times, clients have million dollar ideas, but only have a $100,000 budget. In order to keep the team happy and in order to keep the clients happy, I always try to set expectations about what can and cannot be delivered.

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If you tried to get on the internet last night, there’s a chance that something went horribly wrong. For a brief window of time (it’s either ten minutes or 25, depending on who you talk to), your favorite websites would redirect you to an error message when you tried to visit them. But here’s the important part: it wasn’t just any ‘ol error message, it was a Facebook error message. The jokes were immediate and rampant (particularly on Twitter, which was unaffected). Facebook had gained sentience and had shut down the internet, Mark Zuckerberg had finally made his big move, and so on and so forth.

Over one million sites went dark and somehow, Facebook was to blame.

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The Apps: Treasure Kai and the Lost Gold of Shark Island & Treasure Kai and the Seven Cities of Gold

The Device: iPad

Price: $3.99 and $4.99

We had a blast with the Treasure Bound Books! There’s a reason why they’re award winning and top rated apps on the iTunes store. They’re imaginative, interactive and entertaining!

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