Thursday 18 December 2014

CamScanner: It's all fun and games until...

Until you have to get to work. Or simply need a quick scan of a doc for serious, legitimate reasons.

That's when CamScanner steps in. Why not simply take a photo? Well, CamScanner has a few additional tricks up its sleeve. It will modify the image so the document appears centered and flat, with legible texts.

For a monthly fees, you even have access to a decent OCR software, that is, get your picture into a .txt document with easily modified text.

One recommendation though: photograph your document against a contrasting background to help CamScanner do its job!

While nothing revolutionary, this is a very useful app for iTunes and Android. you can even learn more on their website: https://www.camscanner.com/


Thursday 11 December 2014

Clash of Clans December 2014 Christmas Update


Supercell has given us another early Christmas present in the form of their now expected annual Christmas Clash of Clans update. There are a few changes, and of course the normal Christmas 2014 winterising of the Village ,with the usual snow and gem bearing gift trees.

What is in the 2014 Clash of Clans Christmas Update?
Most significantly the Giant has now been capped to level 7! I've been finding him underpowered for a while so we'll see how the new half gold armoured level 7 Clash giant fares. When I've got a spare 7 million elixer to upgrade him that is...
And what better way to get that elixir than by a new max gold and elixir collector level. That's right if your Clash of Clan's addiction has become costly now you'll be able to farm more quickly with a raised collector cap. And for a very cheap upgrade price too. A mere 336 thousand gold or elixir nets you a fully upgraded collector(if they were max level already of course). This part of the Holiday Clash of Clans update is most welcome and should grease the wheels of war at a much better rate. You can also look forward to updated archer towers which halve their damage but double their capacity allowing targetting of much bigger enemy swarms. Now while you're waiting around sharpenning your lap steel you can also admire your villages destruction while it happens!But also look forward to many more ways to plan your village with an enhanced draft village layout tool.Have a Clashtastic Christmas.


Tuesday 2 December 2014

Rescue Quest: an awkward interface ruins a pleasant game.

Rescue Quest has good, solid bases: a "match-3" system with adequate power-ups and limited turns. The gimmick of tracing a path for the hero uses a well-known mechanic: match jewels (or here, tokens) on top of certain parts of the play area to clear them of obstacles. The graphics are pretty, very colourful and generally unobtrusive. The music is decent. It is a fun, free game to play on iOS...

... except for the lay-out of the play area. To give more room for maze-like levels, which admittedly fits with the whole "clear a path" storyline, the player don't get a full-view of the level but has to swipe around to access other parts of the level. Which can lead to involuntary swipes of tokens and such of a lost turn. You can access a sort of mini-map, but that seems like too many superfluous actions for something we should be able to see right away.

Especially in a market saturated with good match-3 games, pass on Rescue Quest.