April 2009 – Vinko’s Thoughts On…

April 28, 2009

Review: Sticky Licky on iPhone

From the folks at Vision Wise Inc. comes a game called Sticky Licky.

It is as addictive as any of the old arcade genre games you spent hundreds of quarters playing at the arcade parlor in the 80’s.

What it reminds me of is the old “Space Invaders” game. Of course, with much better looking graphics, even though Sticky chose to adapt the hand drawn simplicity style graphics.

Sticky is simple enough to play, even if you do not want to drill into its, built in multi pages, instructions. All you need is to arm yourself with the knowledge that clicking on the toad will extend its long tongue to draw insets into its mouth. Eating different types of bugs will score different points, and the goal is to get as high of a score as possible to reach the next level in the game.
Continue reading “Review: Sticky Licky on iPhone”

April 27, 2009

Movie Review: Defiance

Poster

My Rating:

This evening I saw the movie Defiance at AMC Theater, Pacific Place, Admiralty, Hong Kong. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

The movie is a true story of “Tuvia Bielski“, played by Daniel Craig, in Poland during World War II. Tuvia the eldest of four brothers was forced to take care of each other after their village was attacked and their parents killed by Polish police who were rounding up Jews for the German army.

Determine for revenge the second eldest of the brothers, Zus, was determined to fight the Germans and decided to lead a faction to join the Russian partisans after his wife and kid was murdered by the Germans.

I did not really like Craig as James Bond in Quantum of Solace last year, but in this movie he delivered a believable performance portraying Tuvia. There were the right amount of fighting for a war movie, while there were characters and stories to the plot for the audiences to focus on and become immerse into the movie. It passed my forget-where-I-was test, which usually means that the performance and plot of the movie successfully took me away to the setting of the movie.

If you are a fan of Craig, this is a must see. If you are a World War II history buff you will be reasonably entertained.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it on iTunes
	Waste your time elsewhere

April 26, 2009

Reveiw: TweetStack on iPhone

Ever since I started using TweetDeck this past January, as my desktop Twitter client, it had been my client of choice and I wished there is a similar client on my iPhone.

Just a quick description of why TweetDeck is not a normal Twitter client. It has the standard functions to allow users to see @Replies and DMs (Direct Message), perform operations to Follow and Unfollow people. The additional function that TweetDeck has, which most other clients don’t (except for the recently introduced desktop client Seesmic Desktop), is it ability to allow users to create Groups to manage the 100s or 1000s of messages (tweets) from the people you’re following. This problem is worsten when you are following 100s or more people (peeps). On average, as of this writing, there are over 2 million tweets a day posted onto the Twitter network. Without the use of clients like TweetDeck it is not practical to follow more than a 100 peeps.

Continue reading “Reveiw: TweetStack on iPhone”

April 18, 2009

Movie Review: Knowing

Poster

My Rating:

This afternoon I saw the movie Knowing at AMC Theater, Pacific Place, Admiralty, Hong Kong. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

After watching the poor performance of Dwayne Johnson in Race to Witch Mountain last week, I was glad to watch a seasoned actor, Nicolas Cage, delivering a great performance. Although Cage’s performance is only great when compared to Johnson, here Cage was playing his “Ben Gates” character from National Treasure.

The thing that earned this movie an extra penguin in my rating was the story and the twists in the plot. It did not have as complicated of a plot as National Treasure, but contains enough suspense for the audience to want more. Without breaking my rule of no spoilers, there is really not much more I can say about the movie.

I can leave you with the following detail, as with I Am Legend the ending of this movie is a bit unexpected.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it on iTunes
	Waste your time elsewhere

April 6, 2009

Why Skype for iPhone May Not Be Used?

Last week Skype iPhone application was approved by Apple and made available through the iTunes App Store.

This was one of the most anticipated application for the iPhone after Qik for the iPhone and cut/copy & paste.

For those who do not know what Skype is, please allow me to quickly explain. Skype is classified as a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service. It was created in 2003 by the trio, Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn who also created Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing application.

The client application is also called, “Skype”, and it is a free download, you can install onto your mobile phone or computer, enabling you to make station to station calls free of charge over the IP network (ie. Internet).

Continue reading “Why Skype for iPhone May Not Be Used?”

April 5, 2009

Movie Review: Race to Witch Mountain

Poster

My Rating:

This afternoon I saw the movie Race to Witch Mountain at UA Cinema, Time Square, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

I went into the movie without much expectation, since it was staring Dwayne Johnson, famous for his WWE character “The Rock” and his motion picture debut in The Mummy Returns, as “Mathayus the Scorpion King“.

The movie had two child actors, AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig, and they were just as bad as Johnson. The only excuse Robb and Ludwig has is that they were playing aliens who are new to human speak, in this case English, but Johnson does not have this excuse, as he was playing an English speaking American.

I guess the blame cannot complete go to Johnson, Robb and Ludwig. The play writes, Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback should take some of the blame these bad dialogs. This would not have been a total surprise if I had known Bomback was the one who wrote the screenplay for Live Free or Die Hard. Next time I will look at the “play writes” in additional to leading actors and director in a movie before deciding on whether to include it in my” Must See Movies list.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it on iTunes
	Waste your time elsewhere