With Apple now marketing the iPhone and iPod touch as portable gaming devices, the App Store is becoming more and more saturated with games. Some are good, some are average, and some a plain woeful. Along with fuel calculators and to-do list managers, games must be the main category of applications available.

So, what makes a good iPhone game? There’s all-sorts available, ranging from card games to racing games to flight simulators, all with varying degrees of success. Personally, what I want from an iPhone game is something I can pick up and play for a couple of minutes while waiting for the car to be washed, or while sat waiting for a bus. Something that doesn’t involve you waving your iPhone around like a loon like most of the racing games out there !

This is where Tap ‘n’ Slide comes in. Creators Mobile Pie describe the game play as

… simple - the player must complete a sequence of moves against the clock by tapping, sliding, or spinning their finger on the touch screen. As the timer speeds up the play gets more and more frantic!

And that’s basically it. If this game wasn’t on the iPhone I’m sure it would find a home on the Nintendo DS. It’s one of those games that, although you don’t seem to be doing much, you find yourself wanting ‘just one more go’ on. In fact, my girlfriend found it more interesting than talking to me on a recent visit to the local drinking hold !

To keep you coming back there’s a high-score leader board too, which just means I’ll be sat there trying to beat my own score constantly. It would be nice if these scores were pulled from the internet though.

Tap ‘n’ Slide is exactly what an iPhone game should be, and I congratulate the guys over at Mobile Pie.

Tap ‘n’ Slide is available from the iTunes app store right here for £0.59

After reading this I’m now sat looking at my MacBook and considering buying a fire extinguisher !

This thread over on the Macrumors forum explains how one unlucky owner had the battery in his MacBook Pro EXPLODE ! Now that’s never a good thing !

I’ve never actually seen one go bad to that extent. It’s quite scary really. Imagine if that was on your knees when it happened !

According to the thread starter, the Apple Store staff were very quick to get the thing sorted out. That’s nice of them.

Yet more good to come from reading Paul Stamatiou’s blog is this handy little tip to make your MacBook go into standby mode quickly.

If like me you’re an impatient so-and-so, you’ll no doubt be bored of closing the lid on your machine and waiting for the standby light to start flashing. Only then is the HDD all spun down and ready to be lugged around. The reason for this is thus: be default, OS X writes everything from RAM to the HDD in case the batter fails while in standby. This is basically a hybrid standby/hibernation and has its uses. The problem with this is if you’ve got a lot of RAM or are just impatient, it can take a good 20 to 20 seconds for that to happen. Paul’s got a way to stop the OS from writing to the HDD, which then makes the whole thing much quicker. Obviously should your battery then die you’ll lose any unsaved data so be aware of that possibility.

Anyway, to make this magic happen, you’ll need to fire up Terminal and enter the following command line:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

Enter your password and you’re done.

Paul’s got a video of his nice fast standby over here, in case you want to see the goods before jumping in.

One of the things I’m finding myself really liking about the new MacBook is the gestures used for things such as Safari navigation and image resizing. The new larger trackpads make it a pleasure to use, and even better than using a mouse.

On one of my recent internetz trawls I found a video over on Macworld showing how to use the various gestures. There might even be a couple you didn’t know about !

Head on over here for a look-see !

I’ve had a read around the interwebs and it seems this is a common thing with the new Aluminium MacBooks and MacBook Pros, mine included. It’s not something that bothers me too much, but I know a lot of people don’t like it.

Basically, the keyboard’s keys are slanted to the left along the top. It’s not a huge slant, but once you’ve noticed it it jumps out a bit.

Anyways, here’s a video I found over on Youtube that shows a very simple fix. All you need to do is get a nice strong piece of paper and push the keys back up. So simple it’s scary, and I cant help but wonder why these things are leaving the factory like this !

Let us know if you try this and whether it works or not.

I still find it slightly funny that two years after its original release, we’re still looking for an iPhone killer. It seems that every new smartphone from one of the major manufacturers is touted as the phone we’ll all be selling our iPhones for. So far, it’s not happened.

Enter the Nokia E71, Nokia latest entry into the aggressive smartphone market.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Nokia, stretching back to my 8210 days (nearly 10 years ago now!). That soft spot started to firm up a little once they started making their bigger, more chunky handsets though. The N95 for example is a phone I could never use. This E71 however might just be a return to form for the Finnish giant.

I’ve not had a play with one myself, but Jim Louderback of Revision3 has, and he seems rather taken by it !

Have a read of his thoughts over on his blog, and if you’ve either got one or used one be sure to drop me a message. I’m really interested in how people are getting on with this.

Maybe the question should be, is the Android G1 the Nokia E71 killer?

So I admit it, I’m a Twitter addict. I’m not ashamed of it either.

I’ve also got a spare photo keychain knocking around, new and still boxed. Can you see where this is going yet?

Yup, you guess it. Following in the footsteps of @kevinrose and @alexalbrecht I’m offering free goodies in exchange for Twitter followers ! Admittedly I’m not in the same league as the afore mentioned gents, but I’m still quietly confident it’ll have the desired affect.

Basically, I’m wanting to hit 200 followers on Twitter. At the time of writing this I’m at 162 followers, so not too far to go. Once I hit the magic 200 barrier I’ll pick someone at random and they’ll be the proud owner of a brand spanking new keychain to show off their photos of whatever they choose. Simple eh ?

Spread the word, and head on over to my twitter page to get the ball rolling !