Become Superman to save the city of metropolis in an all-new adventure for iPhone and iPad. As the man of Steel, use your incredible powers to protect the people of Earth in this stylish, arcade game featuring original artwork, panels and soundtrack.

Developer: DC, Tiger Games
Price 69p, £1.99 (HD)

Extraction: Project Outbreak
Experience this explosive top-down, 3D shooter inspired by retro classics. Clandestine government experiments on military personnel and POW’s have gone wrong, unleashing an outbreak of infected soldiers on the area surrounding the secret facility. Use intuitive one-touch controls, a variety of weapons, and some hi-tech gadgetry to defeat the hordes.

Developer: Shortround Games
Price: 69p (Launch Sale)

About Chillingo
Chillingo is a subsidiary of Electronic Arts and publishes innovative games and software for various platforms. Other hit iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad™ titles include Cut the Rope™, Angry Birds™, Feed Me Oil, Helsing’s Fire, Predators™, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs™, Minigore, iDracula, and Modern Conflict.

For more information visit www.chillingo.com.

Combat Arms: Zombies is based on the zombie infested cooperative Fireteam Mode found in Combat Arms, one of NEXON’s most popular online FPS that has millions of players across North America and Europe.

NEXON Mobile has combined the gameplay of the original Combat Arms with diverse attack patterns of the 3D zombie mode, top-notch visuals and a variety of weapons systems. NEXON Mobile expects to provide users with regular content updates with the intent of delivering massive game content approaching that of the original online game.

“Using Epic Games’ cutting edge Unreal Engine technologies, Combat Arms: Zombies will set a new standard for graphics and quality gameplay on mobile devices,” said NEXON Mobile’s CEO, Albert Rim. “Combat Arms: Zombies has been a major effort for us and it will help establish NEXON Mobile as a top developer of multi-platform games.”

Prior to its launch later in November, Combat Arms: Zombies will be unveiled for the first time at G-Star 2011 on 10th November at Busan BEXCO. Visitors to South Korea’s top games expo, will have hands-on access to the game via iPads and iPhones at the NEXON Mobile exhibit.

The Freestyle Application

The Freestyle Application for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch is calling songwriters, MC’s worldwide to enter the new Freestyle App Online Battle for a chance to become the next big recording artist.

MC’s and songwriters are invited to battle it out online for song supremacy in a six week online freestyle competition powered by SoundCloud. Competitors should submit a track created with Freestyle App for a chance to win a professional recording and a commercial release from My Major Company.

The competition sponsored by Freestyle App and My Major Company gives contestants the opportunity to submit their own lyrics recorded over the beats included in the app to win a professional studio track recording, a commercial release, and an opportunity to be signed to the My Major Company record label.

The competition runner up will win a $100 iTunes gift certificate and a Pro Account with SoundCloud.

To enter the Freestyle App Online Battle contestants simply download or update to the latest version of Freestyle app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

The Freestyle App is now available for free for the first 2 weeks of the competition. Get it now.

Each track uploaded to the Freestyle App Online Battle platform will be open to a public voting process for the first four weeks of the competition. The top 10 finalists from this voting process will then be judged by a panel of A&R and industry experts during the final two weeks to reveal the winner and runner up.

About The Freestyle App
The Freestyle App is an industry standard in the Hip Hop community and is used and supported by aspiring and established MCs worldwide.

Designed for songwriters, MCs and poets on the move, the Freestyle App serves as a mobile recording studio, combining a digital notepad, instrumental beat library, rhyming dictionary, and vocal recorder in one application, allowing App users to capture their creativity whenever inspiration strikes. Users can then seamlessly email or upload their recordings to Facebook, Twitter, or SoundCloud directly from the convenience of their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

The updated 2.1 version of Freestyle was launched last year to rave reviews, the App’s original release quickly garnered over 100,000 downloads, becoming a top 5 selling music App in the iTunes App Store in less than 2 months. Heavy new beat bundles are now available for download.

My Major Company is a brand new record label which gives music fans a voice. It allows you to choose which artist to launch, supporting them financially and artistically from the very start. MMC is an online platform which gives Internet users and music fans the ability to invest in the career of the label’s artists, get involved at every stage of their development and retain a share of the profit generated by the release campaign following the bands launch.

Charlie In Trouble - Returning Home

Rapid Turtle Games have released Charlie In Trouble – Returning Home, the final chapter in the Charlie In Trouble series is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store.

The game features 8 huge levels divided into 21 stages, with many new puzzles and arcade platform jumping.

Help Charlie once more to find his way back to home in the final chapter of this adventure game. He has defied the King’s orders, and traveled through a magical portal only to become trapped on the other side. In order to return home, Charlie must make it through 8 levels in this strange new realm filled with puzzles and enemies.

Charlie In Trouble - Returning Home Screenshot

The player must avoid enemies, obstacles and traps while hitting switches and solving puzzles that will allow him or she to move to the next level. The order of puzzles are such that players must travel back and forth between different stages of each level in order to complete them all. Each level can be up to 4 stages in size.

Charlie In Trouble – Returning Home Main Features:

• 8 huge levels divided into 21 stages
• 7 hours of adventure fun
• More than 120 items (tools, toys…) and other objects to interact with
• Cute and lovable main character, levels and enemies
• Plenty of arcade platform jumping, puzzle solving and adventure fun
• Many different kind of enemies (18 in total)
• High variety of traps and other objects like: triggers, lifts, doors, teleports, pillows, lava, water, bounce pads & transporters
• Achievements through Game Center or Open Feint
• A game for the whole family

You can download Charlie In Trouble – Returning Home from the App Store.

For more information about this and other mobile games, visit the Rapid Turtle Games website.

The UnityRemote app is designed to turn the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad into a universal remote control and the latest 1.6 version focuses on further enhancing the applications unique features as well as delivering a whole new range of innovative elements that make this ultimate home accessory slicker and sharper than ever before.

The app’s ‘favourites’ function  which allows users to list their most watched TV channels under a ‘favourite’ icon on their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad screen has been updated to save users even more time. TV addicts can now add an unlimited amount of favourites, instead of the previous nine. With just one single tap of an icon on their Apple device, users can seamlessly flick between channels.

GEAR4’s engineering team have been busy ensuring that UnityRemote works as effectively as possible with all home electronic devices, both new and old. Having heavily optimised the app, memory usage has been minimised to make reaction times faster overall. Changing between the TV and CD player, or other devices, is both quicker and easier.

Thanks to a new and improved user interface on the app, customising key icons with images from personal digital photo collections couldn’t be simpler.

royal wedding app

ITN Productions has launched a Royal Wedding app exclusively with Getjar the world’s largest independent app store, where visitors will be able to download the highly anticipated software a week ahead of it’s general release.

Royal family enthusiasts can now follow William and Kate’s wedding preparations every step of the way by downloading the Royal Wedding app for Android and iPhone – completely free on GetJar for the next seven days.

The app, developed to support ITN’s Royal Wedding Channel on YouTube, delivers up to date news and entertaining video content on all things royal in the run up to the big day on April 29th. With hours of video content packed into the app and more being added each day, the app provides a quick and entertaining way to keep up to date with the nation’s favourite couple.

Miguel Tatay, Head of Mobile at ITN Productions, said: “We wanted to reach the largest possible audience and make the app open and available to everyone. As the world’s largest open app store, GetJar was the obvious choice to launch and distribute The Royal Wedding app.”

Patrick Mork, CMO of GetJar commented: “We’re thrilled to be able to offer The Royal Wedding app exclusively on GetJar. The Royal wedding is the talk of the town and downloading this app will allow everyone to feel part of it. We expect this is going to be extremely popular and are delighted to be able to make this app free to consumers on GetJar”.

Interestingly the survey revealed that only 18% of respondents now aspire to replace their current handset with the Apple based iPhone, the market leader in the field for the last few years.

While this is hardly likely to be the death knell of the iPhone, the vast range of manufacturers offering the Android based product means that customers have an enormous choice when it comes to replacing their current device, both in price and application.

Apple have also cornered the market for mobile apps during their current reign, but that is all about to change too according to Getjar, who predict that Android apps will outnumber Apple by 2 to 1 in the near future.

Patrick Mork CMO of Getjar says;

“The survey results make it clear that all eyes are on Android, as well as the importance of brand equity in the increasingly competitive mobile app space. In addition, the data also reveals that brand marketers and advertisers also have a reason to be hopeful about consumer’s appetite for in-app advertisement.”

App usage is clearly on the rise with the survey results showing almost 34 percent of consumers spending one hour or more using apps per day, compared to 49 percent who spend the same amount of time watching television.  Fifty-eight percent of respondents use mobile apps more than once a day.

The importance of brand equity was pushed to the forefront, as almost 80 percent said that the quality of the brand’s app makes the brand more trustworthy.  Furthermore, 72 percent of those surveyed said they were more likely to engage with a brand if they had a good app.

Advertisers have reason to be hopeful.  Seventy-three percent of respondents said they have downloaded an app with advertising in it, and almost 60 percent said they’d do it again. Almost one in four made a purchase after having clicked on a mobile ad.

Discovery continues to plague app publishers.  Only 25% discovered the apps they were looking for using actual app stores.  Nearly 50% had actually discovered apps while browsing online and nearly 17% had discovered apps through friends or social media.

Other survey results include:

• Gaming apps are the most popular, followed closely by social networking apps
• The amount of free apps and the ease of search topped the list of things users look for in an app store
• The cost of an app was the biggest deciding factor in whether to download an app or not

Christmas sales at Tesco Mobile were firmly in favour of the market leading Apple device, outselling the Google based Android handsets by two to one, but in January sales of both devices were like for like.

Sales of Android phones eclipsed that of iPhones for the first time in February on the Tesco Mobile Network and there is good reason to believe that this trend will continue throughout 2011.

It is fair to say that the deals offered on new Android phones by Tesco are more competitive than they are able to offer on the Apple device, but as the battle for supremacy in smartphone operating systems continues to make the news, Google’s Android platform appears to be gaining a strong foothold in the market.

In this fast paced and constantly changing market, recent announcements have seen PlayStation herald the imminent launch of its Xperia Play smartphone and Nokia announce that it will be teaming up with Microsoft.

How that will effect the marketplace remains to be seen but as we wait for developments to unfold Android is the clear early winner.

Graham Harris, Chief Executive Officer of Tesco Telecoms and Tesco Mobile comments:
“As one of the UK’s leading operators, these sales are a useful barometer for smartphone trends. There is a lot of choice in the market and as a result consumers are driving healthy competition between rival operating systems.
Tesco Mobile prides itself on customer service and offering customers what they want, through a wide range of competitive deals on all platforms. In addition to competitive Android smartphone deals, we also offer iPhone on a variety of fantastic 12 month contracts.
However, we commend this healthy competition between operating systems as we see this as helping to drive consumer choice and flexibility.”

Today you can choose between several different Blackberry models, Nokia, HTC and Samsung to name a few.  Not forgetting the latest Apple iPhone 4.  But what does a Smartphone allow you to do over a plain old mobile phone, and what should you be looking out for when making your choice?

A Smartphone allows you to do much more than simply send and receive phone calls and text messages.  It is rather like having a mini computer in your pocket.  Whether you need a phone for business or personal use smartphones offer advanced functionality including internet services and can run software programs known as Apps.

For the busy business person who is always on call and available 24/7, the Smartphone has become an essential ever handy tool that gives you email on the move, to view files such as spreadsheets, presentations and PDF files; while for the personal user it allows you to stream films, store and play music files; and with the growth of free or cheap Apps business and personal users can find a use for Apps covering the London Underground Tube Map, train timetables and keeping up to date with the latest news from around the world.

There’s no doubt that the introduction of the Apple iPhone was as responsible for the growth in smartphones for personal use as the Blackberry was for business users.  But now, more so than before it seems there is less of a distinction between which market smartphones are aimed at, as companies  look to grow in a busy marketplace.  But one of the most important things to consider when choosing a Smartphone is which platform or operating system it uses.

There are six operating systems to choose from for UK mobile phones.  You need to consider not only how good is the platform and how efficient it runs, but how popular it is among software developers who will migrate to new operating systems if there is a market to do so.

Android OS
Android OS is Google’s Operating System, and not surprisingly comes with an excellent web browser as well as integrating online tools effectively.

The Android software is regularly updated and as it becomes more popular is becoming a serious alternative to the iPhone OS as far as software developers are concerned.  The Android OS is ‘open source’ which gives developers free range over application building, unlike the restrictive practises of Apple Apps.  The Android platform can handle a vast array of different programs, including some comprehensive media bundles.

Windows Phone OS
No prizes for guessing the Windows Phone Operating System is owned by Microsoft.  In the past it has been called Windows Mobile & WinMo.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS is designed to mirror the desktop version of Windows in both design and functionality. As you’d expect, it is simple to sync your mobile Smartphone to your PC computer and share contacts and emails with the Exchange server.  Microsoft Office programs and the Windows Media player also come as part of the Windows Phone OS.

The Microsoft application store is aptly named Windows Marketplace where users can update and download an assortment of application software.  Microsoft has strict control over which Apps are available in the Windows Marketplace.

iPhone OS
The iPhone Operating System was developed by Apple for their own Smartphone.  The iPhone has taken the world by storm and as a late entry into the Smartphone arena, has been able to capitalise on incorporating the best of previous mobile phone technology. The iPhone range has regular software updates; and though Apple has a strict control over licensing Apps it is by far the most popular operating system for developers.  The result is the Apple App Store is currently blessed with the largest selection of Apps of all operating systems.

Blackberry OS
The BlackBerry Operating System has been developed by mobile phone manufacturer Research in Motion for its own BlackBerry Smartphones. The original bias of the Blackberry was towards business users with its stylish looks and excellent office applications, internet and email functionality.

The email management software allows you to simply sync your phone with your PC with the BlackBerry Desktop Manager software. Blackberry’s work well with business Apps such as Microsoft Office and the BlackBerry App World has a wide range of applications. Some models now come with a touch screen which has coincided with a growth in personal user popularity.

Symbian OS
The Symbian Operating System is Nokia’s own software, though it is used by other mobile phone manufacturers, too. The Symbian user interface is regularly updated and improved, making it a very easy system to navigate.

A number of different email servers are supported from Microsoft Exchange to BlackBerry Enterprise which makes using the Symbian operation system easy to use when syncing your mobile phone to your desktop email client.  Like Android, Symbian OS is open source making it easier for developers to create and share applications.  Nokia’s own App Store is called the Ovi Store but there are also other websites that offer Apps for the Symbian OS.

Bada OS
The Bada Operating System is owned by Samsung who are promoting their Smartphone range to all users.  Samsung are a relatively late-comer to the Smartphone party but appear to be gaining ground with their latest range of Smartphone models.  Applications and Apps for the Bada OS can be downloaded from the Samsung Apps store.

So, if you are looking for a Smartphone we recommend three steps:

1.    Make a prioritised list of the functionality you are looking for and whether it is for business, personal use or both
2.   Find out which operating system it uses
3.    Look online & in magazines at independent reviews

Do all three steps before you enter a shop or call a mobile phone company to find out about the best mobile phone deals.

Chic app

Value Retail, operators of the Chic Outlet Shopping® Villages, have announced the launch of the official Chic Outlet Shopping app, which will enable users to discover Europe’s leading luxury outlet destinations through an easy-to-navigate, interactive digital experience.

The Collection of Chic Outlet Shopping Villages are the latest word in smart shopping and welcome 25 million visitors to the nine luxury outlet destinations every year.

The Collection is home to 900 luxury outlet boutiques of renowned international and niche European brands offering reductions of up to 60% on the recommended retail price, all year round, in addition to the tax free savings (up to 15%) available to non-EU residents.

Coveted names include Agent Provocateur, Anya Hindmarch, Belstaff, Bimba & Lola, Calvin Klein, Desigual, Diane von Furstenberg, Missoni, Mulberry, Matthew Williamson, Smythson, Tumi, Temperley London and Vivienne Westwood, with some 50 brands currently selecting the Collection as home to their only outlet boutique worldwide.

The Chic Outlet Shopping app allows users to experience exclusive content and innovative features which include:

• Plan Your Visit to any one of the nine Chic Outlet Shopping® Villages from any location – worldwide.
• The online booking service for the Shopping Express coach service operating from the local city centre with direct transfer to each Village.
• Access to comprehensive interactive maps of each of the nine Chic Outlet Shopping® Villages: simply touch, pan and zoom maps to view the Villages in detail.
• Search facility and filters in the Brand Directory to locate any of the 900 luxury outlet boutiques by name or by category.
• View exclusive content developed by Chic Outlet Shopping® including video highlights on Chic TV and Editor’s Corner featuring celebrity interviews and insider shopping tips.
• Purchase pre- charged Gift Cards, redeemable at all of the nine Chic Outlet Shopping® Villages.

The iPhone, Ipod Touch and iPad compatible Chic Outlet Shopping app is available for free download from the iTunes and Apple app store.