Phase is the first music based game on the iPod (unless you consider iQuiz music based) and takes advantage of your existing iTunes library. No paying for overpriced downloadable content like on the consoles. With Phase, a playlist in iTunes is created to upload the songs you want to play during the game. Uploading takes a little bit longer because more song information is needed, presumably to align the game play with the music. Phase does come with music (including a song by Freezepop for the GHII fans), but picking your own music makes it so much more fun.

Game play is simple. The left, center, and right buttons are for matching the green circles and the scroll wheel is used to follow dotted blue trails. The mixture of the two controls make this game challenging, but enjoyable. There are the usual difficulty levels and the harder the difficulty the better the game plays with the music you’ve uploaded. There are two game types, “Quick Spin” and “Marathon.” Quick Spin is for playing quick games and the Marathon game type is for playing songs that increase in difficulty. I tend to play Quick Spin the most, Marathon takes much longer to finish.

Phase plays beautifully on my 5.5 generation iPod and will also play on the new iPod Classic and Nano. Apple has still left out games on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but I don’t think this game would be the same on a touch screen. Phase’s ability to play any song proves that custom songs can be done on the iPods, so it’s just a matter of time.

Harmonix’s Phase is in the iTunes Store now and well worth $5. This music game is perfect for Guitar Hero fans or someone who wants more out of their music library.

The MacBook’s keyboard has been a controversial subject among the Mac community, some love it and some hate it. At first, I hated the Macbook keyboard; I felt the keystrokes were too short and the keys were too far apart, but within about a week, I really liked and prefer the keyboard to others. The new Apple keyboard has been an instant must-have after using (and loving) the Macbook keyboard.

At first glance the Apple keyboard looks like something out of the future. It’s incredibly thin design and brushed metal top make it one of the best looking usb keyboards I have ever seen. Keys are firm and much higher quality than the ones on the MacBook. The two keyboard ports on each side are also a great addition to the $49 keyboard.

Apple has also changed the function keys at the top. F3 activates expose, F4 opens the dashboard, F7 through F10 controls music/video, and F10 through F12 are the new home of the volume keys. Can’t remember all of the function keys? Apple nicely labeled many of them with a corresponding icon.

Using the keyboard for writing posts or longer portions of text is very different. Keystrokes are shorter and keys are spaced farther apart than tradition keyboards. I constantly found myself losing my place on the keyboard and end up having to look down to find my place again. Resting your fingers on the keys like tradition keyboards will leave you with unwarranted button pressing. The Apple keyboard is in no way a keyboard for people who do large amounts of writing, but for the casual blogger/Internet user you’ll be happy with the keyboard.

Unlike most keyboards the Apple keyboard is very quiet, even quieter than the MacBook’s. The biggest problem with the keyboard, like the previous incarnation, will be keeping it clean. Having white keys looks great, but after a few months of use and a couple of people using it, the keyboard will pick up unwanted grime.

Apple also offers an even smaller bluetooth keyboard, sans numeric keypad and dual usb ports. If bluetooth wasn’t such a hassle I would have considered purchasing the $79 dollar keyboard. Apple states the (bluetooth) keyboard uses “intelligent power management” to slow the draining of three triple A batteries it takes to run. I have yet to find if the Apple wireless keyboard is any better than other bluetooth keyboards, but I’m not expecting it to be too much better.

The new Apple keyboard is revolutionary in looks and feel. The metal makes it look more like a giant blade than a keyboard and trying to get through airport security might be difficult. If you’re a MacBook user, you will like this keyboard; if you’ve never used the “chiclet” style keyboard, it will take some time to get used to. Don’t buy this keyboard if you will be doing a large volume of typing because you won’t be nearly as efficient and your hands will get tired quicker.

The Apple wired keyboard is $49 and the smaller bluetooth unit goes for $79. They both can be bought from the Apple online store,or wherever Macs are sold.

[Photos courtesy of Chris Thomson]

From it’s release Flock has gotten flack (and lots of it) for being buggy, but recent updates have effectively resolved and silenced those problems. Unlike Firefox, Flock comes full of tools for bloggers and social networking users, from the start.

The newest release (0.9) comes with significant tweaks to the interface and finally promotes its social side without having to dig through menus and sidebars. All of the social features have been grouped on the left side of the screen in three sections. The first section focuses on aggregated items, with the new iGoogle competitor, “My World” and the media bar.

The media bar allows you to search popular picture and video site like YouTube and Flickr without having to actually visit the site. Flock fans who can still remember the old look will notice that the bar has been given a visual refresh. The results also loads within seconds, which is nice given the short length of our attention spans.

The next section focuses on social networks by allowing you to enter your account information into Flock for an integrated experience. Finally, the last section is specifically for blogging; the two buttons create a blog post and upload files respectively.

For bloggers, you’ll be happy to know that the blog editor has been significantly overhauled and now offers better features like tagging and more editing options. It is still compatible with the popular blogging platforms in use today.

The biggest difference from the update is stability. The occasional spinning beach ball or the “unexpectedly quit” window have taken a step down. Frustrated Firefox 2 users might find the Flock browser as the perfect alternative because it offers most of the features in Firefox, as well as being more stable and responsive.

Flock has always been a social browser, and with the newest update they are finally promoting it. The new interface puts the social aspect of the browser on top priority. The Flock browser is free to download from the newly redesigned Flock website.

Never heard of Wakoopa? Think of Wakoopa as Last.fm, but based on applications instead of music. To use Wakoopa, sign up and download the Wakoopa Tracker and every application you use from now on is sent to your profile. This is where Wakoopa shines.

The data is used for finding friends and recommending new applications. It’s how I learned about Transmit, my new favorite FTP client. Applications that you’ve used can also be reviewed and if an update is available, Wakoopa will tell you about it.

The ability to create “teams” works like Facebook groups; it puts all the team members’ stats together. The front page of every team shows recently used apps, how long each application has been used for, people in the team, and a tag cloud. The most popular application on Wakoopa is unsurprisingly Firefox, followed by Internet Explorer.

The site is nimble and well organized, but could certainly use some color. The scrolling software bar is cool and would make a great embeddable widget on a blog (like MacApper) or profile page. A Facebook application is available as well as badges, but the badges aren’t very special.

With more traffic, Wakoopa will easily be acquired. The stats they have would be an asset to software makers and large Internet companies (ie Google). I wouldn’t be surprised if Wakoopa is already selling the statistics, there isn’t a single advertisement on the site. Privacy might become an issue, but Wakoopa is completely voluntary, unlike spyware (found on Windows machines). You can easily uninstall it if needed.

Wakoopa is a niche social network that, at the moment, is lacking on its features. However, it’s becoming a very innovative social network. Wakoopa is the perfect social network for lazy, application loving people because the Wakoopa Tracker does it for you. The Wakoopa tracker software is Mac/Windows compatible and is free to use.

Join the MacApper Wakoopa team here.

The upcoming Leopard release introduces a new feature called Stacks. Stacks holds files and applications for easy access without having to navigate the much loved Finder. To create a Stack in Leopard you select the items you want and then drag them to your dock. Will Apple’s Stacks feature take the place of Overflow?

I wanted to see what Stunt Software thought of the new competition. Here is a relating entry I found on the Stunt Software blog:

There is a lot of stuff that Overflow does that Stacks doesn't, and I think there is a lot that Overflow can do in the future to continue to innovate (to continue with the general overuse of that term). I get the impression that Stacks are meant to be used as more of a temporary holding place, whereas Overflow is much more configurable, accessible via a hot-key, and not something that you'll likely want to change the contents of every day. -Dan Messing, Stunt Software

After watching the Leopard videos it’s apparent that Stacks can be used for either applications or documents, but Apple never states that it is a “temporary holding place”. I think Apple is leaving it up to the users for what it will be used for. To be honest, if Stacks works like it says, I wouldn’t have a reason to use (or purchase) Overflow. Before making any concrete decisions, I will have to personally use Stacks to decide if it’s a threat to Overflow. If it is a threat to Overflow, Stunt Software will need to find ways to innovate the simple app to make it something worth purchasing.

Oh and I nearly forgot – recently in our Overflow review here at MacApper we offered up 3 free licenses to our readers. I am told to watch for the winner’s announcement tomorrow.

SMARTreporter is a small application that runs in the menu bar and warns you before a hard disk failure. If you hard drive is working problem-free the icon will show green, but if a rough time’s ahead the icon will turn red. Fortunatley, I haven’t been blessed with another failure, but many Mac users swear by it.

If a failure is about to occur SMARTreporter can “pop-up an alert”, send an email, and even can run an application (backups, hard drive diagnostic). The best part is the application is unobtrusive and barely uses any of you computer’s much needed resources.

Once you download SMARTreporter you’ll forget about it, but it will be there if/when a problem occurs. SMARTreporter is free to download and is a must for anyone with important information on their hard drive.