Mini Reviews: Alpine Crawler, Learn and Master Guitar, Horoscope and Tarot

Have you ever picked up your iPhone wishing you could drive up a mountain side, learn how to play guitar, or see what your career had in store for you in the next week?

Alpine Crawler

One thing that has been consistent in the world of videogames
is that in an effort to package relatively similar racing or simulator games
people will create a title around the most random vehicles they possibly
can.  Alpine Crawler does follow this in
that you are given a strange mountain climbing truck and told to go side
scrolling, in pure Excite Bike fashion. You are given a life meter that goes
down if you hit too hard on your shock or accelerate in an unflattering manor.  Then you have to try to get to the end of a
track in a reasonable period of time as your clock will tell you how successful
you have been.  You can easily flip over or
wreck your chances of success, mainly if you do not exactly measure your
velocity up and down those hills with your Alpine Crawler.  The controls for Alpine Crawler are pretty
neat and clear with gas and breaks on each side and the option to switch from
gas Forward to Backward.  This does not
really add to the simplistic levels that don't really get much more advanced or
capture your interest longer than a few minutes.  To top this off Alpine Crawler is in most
ways just a preview for Alpine Crawler World, and there is even a trailer right
at the start menu.  If you have to go
with one of the two, go with the free iPhone game version of Alpine Crawler.

Gison Learn and Master Guitar

At this point it seems like a bad business move to not initiate
your brand into an iPhone application. 
To do this you have try and identify the brand personality that you hold
and then give away a free iPhone application that will simply extend this brand
image.  For Gibson this is relatively
simple.  For the Learn and Master Guitar
Gibson free iPhone application this actually works very well and ends up
creating a great piece of software.  The
Gibson free iPhone application is broken up into a few useful tools.  The first one is a tuner that will listen in
open air to the sound that is coming in and given you a reading.  This can actually come in a variety of
settings such as Type or Tunings, such as Standard: EADGBE, Open G: DGDGBD, or
All Fourths: EADGCF.  There are a large
number of options for Tuning in this section of the Learn and Master Guitar
from Gibson, which would be a good free iPhone application with just this.  Next over in the Gibson app you have a Metronome
that you can set to the appropriate temp. 
After this you have a full Chords list where you can select the chord
you want and see the physical tabs for it. 
This may be the most practical way to learn new chords from any mobile device.   The following tab is for Lessons and is the
video portion of the Gibson free iPhone application, and just the perfect
addition.  It would be best if the
lessons in Learn and Master Guitar from Gibson utilized the chord visuals, but
this is just being picky.  Over all this free
iPhone application is the best of its kind and should be owned by any avid
guitar enthusiast.

Horoscope and Tarot

Distractive internet browsing has not re-popularized casual
Horoscope viewing, it made it essential. 
Online Horoscope iPhone applications have become a legitimate function,
and any free iPhone application that does this well deserves a little bit of a
look.  The Horoscope.com free iPhone application,
simply called Horoscope and Tarot at the iTunes' App Store, has a nice
presentation and series of options for those who give up their fate to the
stars.  From the base menu you can select
Horoscope and then pick your sign from a wheel of different astrological
symbols.  Once you find it you select it
to go to that unique page, which is a bit of a process since the application is
strangely reactive and you can easily select the wrong options.  Once here you will get a strangely vague
assessment of your future either daily, weekly, monthly, or in a general
overview.  Of course since Horoscope.com is
a free iPhone application you are given annoying banner ads throughout.  Beyond the simple Horoscope you can select
Lovescope, which is pretty much as the name suggests.  Here you learn about your love life in a
format that is identical to the original Horoscope area, except the red tint
and the romantically inspired reading.  What the Horoscope.com free iPhone application
really does add is the Tarot reading that gives you a three card Tarot card
reading.  You first enter your name and
then you will see three cards below, one for love, mood, and career respectively.  You turn over each card individually to see
the graphical representation and then hit 'Show my Reading' to see what's really up.  These readings are again concise and vague, but
it's not like you are really turning to a psychic iPhone application to give
you direction in life.  The last option
is the strangest in the Horoscope.com free iPhone application in that you have
a way to connect with 'real psychics.' 
This gives you the ability to ask a question for free, meet with their
advisors, or connect through the website or '1-800' number.  I would just stick with the iPhone app.