Created by: OpenTable.

Out and about and wanting to make a reservation for dinner? OpenTable for the Palm Pre® will do what you need. There are over 10,000 fine dining restaurants available to view, see their menu, read reviews and make reservations, right on your phone. You also can plan ahead and book reservations in another city or country, view restaurants on a map, filter the results by cuisine, price and availability.

Once you launch the app, you can either choose your current location (allowing the app to narrow your choices to your current area) or select a metro area. The next step is to choose the date, time and party size for your meal. Tap ‘Find a Table’ and the next screen shows the results of all of the restaurants in your area or chosen metro area having tables available for your chosen day. Each restaurant listing has location, mileage from your current location, cuisine type, expense rating and available times. Clicking on the restaurant opens up a screen, where you can choose a time, read the menu, and/or read reviews and the description of the restaurant. Tapping a time then sends you to a login screen where you can login to OpenTable, if you’re a user, or skip it if you’re not. If you skip logging in, you are then prompted to enter your details (name, phone & email).

If you are unsatisfied with your first restaurant choice or the description doesn’t float your boat, simply go back and pick another. You can also refine your choice by cuisine and expense rating. There is also a world icon in the lower left hand corner, which allows you to choose a different area in which to find a restaurant.

OpenTable is a great app, especially when traveling and needing to find a place to eat. For those unfamiliar with OpenTable.com, the app is still easy to use because it contains the standard ratings and icons that all restaurant menu and rating sites use. Making a reservation is easy and your confirmation goes right to your email, in case there is a problem at the restaurant.

All in all, OpenTable for the Palm Pre is descriptive, user friendly, free and a great app to have on your phone.

Created by: Jamwam.

Ever struggle to figure out your tip at a restaurant, especially when there are many people to split it with? Then Tip Calc for the Palm Pre® is the app for you.

The interface is simple and user friendly. You type in the amount of the bill, choose how many to split the bill between, determine the tip percentage, and Tip Calc will give you the total tip and how much each person owes – just like that. You will see ads, but only at the bottom of the screen, and they aren’t too intrusive (see screenshot above for an example).

The tip percentage starts at 0 and goes up to 35%. The total number of persons with which Tip Calc will split the bill ends at 12, so parties larger than that will have to either be done in halves or on paper.

If you routinely eat out with friends and are sick of the hassle of splitting up the bill and giving the right tip, then Tip Calc is for you. I like that the app gives you each person’s total, especially when you are out with a big group of people and no one wants to do the math. The Tip Calc for the Palm Pre takes care of all of that, simply and cleanly.

Created by: MX Web.

If you are looking for a simple but addictive game involving little more than a flick of your finger, then Polar Bowling for the Palm Pre® is for you.

The game is simple. The goal is to fling the polar bear into the hole at the top of the screen. What makes it difficult is that there is a wind blowing, and it changes direction for almost every polar bear. The wind can slide your polar bear right off the screen, away from the hole, so you have to consider its direction and adjust your flick angle. The wind direction is indicated by a red arrow at the upper left hand corner of the screen.

Scoring is also simple. If you get the polar bear into the hole, your score will increase by one. It will keep going up until you miss, when your score will zero out. Once you miss, you will be prompted to enter your top score in the field provided. At the top of the screen, your top score and the #1 top score is displayed, so you always know what your aim needs to be.

The graphics of the Polar Bowling are simple. The polar bears do cheer you on, with pithy little statements, and they slide across the screen smoothly and without a hitch. There is also music for the game, which can be a little annoying and you might want to turn it off.

However, for a simple premise, Polar Bowling for the Palm Pre is surprisingly hard and addictive. You can definitely waste time at the airport or in a doctor’s office playing this game and even your kids will like it. You’ll like the free price tag too.

Created by: Jason Teplitz.

The Lemonade app for the Palm Pre® is a simple but fun game. The goal of the game is to profitably sell lemonade at a lemonade stand. Just like you would for any ‘real’ business, you do need to take into account the costs involved, the weather (and therefore the amount of time you can sell for the day), total sale days and how many cups you plan on selling in any given day.

You can either launch right into playing the game or you can watch/read the tutorial, which walks you through the game, the available preferences and it also gives you tips for how to be successful at the game. The available preferences are a choice of how difficult you want the game (easy, medium, hard) and how many days you want it to last.

The game is played by choosing how many cups you want to sell, how many lemon slices you are going to use, how many sugar pieces you plan on using, how much you want to charge, and how you plan to advertise your lemonade (with costs). All of this is decided on the screen for the day you are at (ie, you start at Day 1). After filling in all of the necessary information, you then tap ‘Continue’ and you get your daily report for how much you sold, what your profit was, how perfect your sugar choice was, etc. Gathering this information will allow you to tweak your totals for the next sale day, which will hopefully maximize your profit. Tap ‘Continue’ again and you move to Day 2 of your total days of selling, fill in the information, etc.

The interface for the game is simple, easy to understand and the daily report helps you keep track of all of your choices from the previous day. While it seems like a simple game, it is actually pretty tough and addictive as well, since who wants to admit you failed at selling lemonade (something 10 year olds can do in the ‘real’ world and be profitable)?

Lemonade for the Palm Pre is a very smart, but simple, game. And the best part—it’s free.

Created by: Fandango.

Looking to see what’s playing in your neighborhood movie theater, but out running errands? Well, the Fandango® app for the Palm Pre® is your answer.

The Fandango app is the mobile version of the Fandango.com website, which has all of the movies playing in local theaters as well as coming soon to a theater near you. The app presents movies in your area based on your location (which you allow the app to determine upon launching it). Fandango starts out with a list of movies opening in the current week. Click on a picture and you get a synopsis and where it is playing in a theater near you. There are three icons at the bottom of the screen. Tap the ‘Trailer’ icon, and you can watch the movie trailer, right on your phone. Tap the ‘Reviews’ icon, and you can read the latest reviews of the movie. Tap on the ‘Photos’ icon, and you can see photos from the movie. And the best part, you can buy tickets right on your phone, by choosing the location you want to see the movie at and tap ‘Buy’. Enter in your credit card information and the tickets will be ready for you at the movie theater.

Going back to the start screen gives you more movie viewing choices, by tapping the arrow next to ‘Opening this Week’ at the top of the screen, and a new list of movies pops up on the ‘Top Box Office’ list. Tap ‘Theaters’ at the very top of the screen and you can get a list of all of the movie theaters in your neighborhood. Then, pick a theater and it gives you a list of movies playing there, where you can choose to purchase a ticket for your show of choice.

Underneath the “Preferences and Choices” menu, you can choose your settings, such as saving purchases to the calendar, signing in to your Fandango account, editing your credit card information, or viewing your purchase history.

Fandango is a great app for your Palm Pre. It is user friendly, has all the current and upcoming movies and it makes purchasing movie tickets in advance very simple.

Created by: Inspiring Apps.

Ever need a flashlight but are only carrying your phone? Well, then the Flashlight app for the Palm Pre® is perfect for you.

Flashlight provides a light that fills your whole screen. You can change the color of the light from white to green to red to blue. You can also choose how your light appears – solid, blinking, blinking the SOS pattern, or only showing up when you tap the touch screen. All of these items can be modified on the Preferences menu for the app, located in the upper left hand corner.

I tested the light out in a dark room. It is not as intense as a flashlight and you do need to hold the light closer to the area you are searching. But, if you need to find your keys under the seat at the movie theater, this Flashlight app for the Palm Pre will do the trick. And it’s free.

Created by: Inspiring Apps.

Whether you’re looking to make sure the picture you are hanging is level or to figure out how many sugar packets to put under the rickety table leg at a restaurant, the Bubble Level app for the Palm Pre® is just the thing for you.

It functions just like a bubble level that contractors use and is also very easy to use. You have 2 level choices right on your screen – horizontal or vertical. Simply line up the bottom, top, or either side of your phone with the surface you want to check, and watch the bubbles slide into position. You know the surface is level when the bubble is between the two middle lines. There isn’t a lot more to it than that. You can change the color of the bubbles by clicking on the menu tab at the top left hand corner of the screen and choosing Preferences. You can also turn on or off the angle readouts that appear below the bubble.

The Bubble Level is easy to use and easy to read. It can be a bit tricky to line up your phone on the surface you are checking, especially since the Palm Pre has buttons on either side of the phone and has a curved shape. But, the developers of the app took that into account when calibrating the bubbles and you should still be able to cleanly and neatly hang or level whatever you wish.

For a handy way to check how level your pictures or tables are, the Bubble Level app for the Palm Pre is for you.

Created by: Handmark, Inc. (US app only)

If you are someone who checks your horoscope every day and wants to do so on the fly, then the Express Horoscopes app for the Palm Pre® is for you. Express Horoscopes provides daily horoscopes for all zodiacal sun signs as well as specific birthday readings, celebrity horoscopes, and daily ratings.

The app is fairly straightforward. The landing page lists all of the zodiac sun signs, with the daily rating of stars next to each sign. Simply tap the sign you wish to read a horoscope for and a new screen pops up with your horoscope. You can email your horoscope by clicking on the paper airplane icon in the lower left hand corner and filling in the email address of your friend. To switch to another sign without going back to the main page, you can easily just tap the left or right arrow icons in the lower right hand corner and slide through to the next sun sign for which you want to read a horoscope.

Changing the date to read your horoscope from yesterday, up to 4 days back, is done by tapping the black bar with the date information at the top of the screen and picking the date you wish to read.

To look at the Birthdays landing page, tap the ‘Birthdays’ portion of the bar at the bottom of the home page for the Express Horoscopes app. You are then given a list of celebrity birthdays for the day as well as a special birthday horoscope.

There are two downsides to this app. First, there are ads in the app, but they are mostly unobtrusive – appearing at the top of the screen. Second, you can’t get your horoscope for the next day, even though most horoscope sites allow you to do that. But, the interface is clean, easy to use and to navigate, and the horoscopes aren’t bad…if you believe in that stuff.

You can download the Express Horoscopes app for the Palm Pre at the App catalog on your phone and it’s free.

Created by: Associated Press.

AP Mobile for the Palm Pre® is the best way to get all of the top and current news stories, right on your phone. AP Mobile has more than a thousand local trusted sources, including photo galleries and videos, and is a great way to keep on top of what is going on in the world and locally, without having to buy a paper or turn on a TV.

The AP Mobile is set up to give you news stories from your region, which means you begin by allowing the phone to locate you. Once that is done, you can pick a region for your news. The choices are all countries, with several language choices for some of the multi-lingual countries (e.g., Canada English, Canada Francais). After picking your region, and tapping go, you end up on “My Frontpage,” which has all of the Top News Headlines on it. Tap an article to read about politics, or the war in Afghanistan, etc.

There are 3 icons at the bottom of the screen. The icon with the press hat in the lower left hand corner returns you back to your FrontPage, with all of the latest headlines, should you wander off in search of another story. The middle icon of folders takes you to a Categories page, with options of: Top News, Local, Sports, Showbiz, US News, World News, Wacky, Business, Technology, Travel, Health, Science, Lifestyle, Ask AP, Press Releases and Politics. The magnifying glass icon in the lower right hand corner is the search function, which allows you to search for keywords throughout all of AP’s news stories.

You can customize your FrontPage, by clicking on the menu at the top left corner of the screen and choosing ‘Customize your FrontPage.’ You are then given the option to add or remove categories of stories to appear on your FrontPage and you can also determine if you want to be notified of any new stories in a particular category. The notifications will appear on your Palm Pre desktop as an alert once the story posts to the AP website. The customize screen only has 7 choices, but you can add additional categories to your FrontPage by clicking on the plus icon on the lower left hand corner and choosing one from the menu that appears.

There is also a nice Preferences menu, which allows you to set your location for local news, set up notifications of stories falling in specific categories (which would then appear on your FrontPage), and change the region from which you are interested in receiving news.

The stories themselves include pictures and/or videos, and pop up on your screen in a very readable font. You can also choose to change the direction of the text by doing a sideways flick with your Palm Pre. You also have the option of rating the stories, by tapping the number of stars you would give it (located at the bottom of the story you wish to rate). There are a total of 5 possible stars. The stars will then appear underneath the headline on your FrontPage. You can also text or email a story to a friend, should you feel like it, by tapping the paper airplane icon in the bottom right corner and choosing your method of delivery.

AP Mobile is very easy to use, delivers all of the latest news in whatever categories interest you, and has a good interface to see it all on your phone. For someone needing to be on top of the latest headlines, or if you like to read the paper, but don’t want to drag it around with you, AP Mobile for the Palm Pre is perfect. And free.

Created by: Inspiring Apps. (US app only)

Have you ever flipped a coin to make a decision? Well, now you can flip a coin without having any change, with the CoinFlip app for the Palm Pre®.

CoinFlip is very simple. Once you launch the app, a coin appears on a black screen on your phone. Tap the coin and it flips up the screen, to land in either the Heads or Tails position.

You can change the coin, from either a Susan B. Anthony to a penny or a half dollar. The half dollar is the default coin. To pick another coin, simply tab the menu at the left hand corner of the screen and choose “Preferences” and then pick your coin of choice.

For a quick decisionmaking, CoinFlip for the Palm Pre is perfect, especially since it’s free.

Created by James Harris

Looking to learn a language, test your child on spelling or other educational subjects, or test your and your friends’ trivia knowledge? Well, FlashCards Lite for the Palm Pre® is the app for you. There are over 450 different editor’s picks flashcards available, along with user submitted flash cards, or just import them from popular sites like Flash Card Exchange, Quizlet or CSV.

The app launches with a list of ‘My Flash Card Sets’, with topics such as Childrens Alphabet, Periodic Table of Elements, and US State Capitals. Tap on a set and immediately the flash cards appear, with a helpful description and total number of cards. For example, choosing Childrens Alphabet shows a capital and lowercase ‘A’ along with a picture of an apple. You can edit the card by tapping the bubble and pencil icon on the top right corner of the card. To practice (go through all of the cards), you can tap the “Practice” icon on the bottom right corner of the screen and the cards appear one after the other (by tapping the arrow icons) or randomize what appears for more challenging testing. Adding a flash card to the set is easy. Simply tap the icon in the lower left hand corner (the paper with a plus), and add the question and answer you wish to include in the set, hit save and you’ve added a new question to the set.

For flash cards requiring actual answers, like US State Capitals, you simply tap on the question, e.g., What is the capital of Alabama?, a new screen appears where you can find out the answer or get a hint. The hints are elemental and a bit funny, such as asking the user to picture an enormous mountain of gum with an owl sitting on top, eating a banana, to find the capital of Alabama (owl + banana = Alabama; Mount + gum = Montgomery). I’m not sure I’d get it from that image, but maybe I need a more challenging set. Tap the question and the answer appears. You can keep track of your score by either tapping the green checkmark for a correct response or a red x for an incorrect response. You can also mark each question as learned, ask for a hint, edit the card, reverse mode (answer first, question second), or look at your practice stats, by either tapping on the icon at the top right hand corner of the blue bar across the screen or tapping a shortcut, like + H for Hint.

You can upload the set, reset all learned cards, and change your preferences and accounts information by tapping the menu tab at the top left corner of the screen. The interface is a little hard to understand at first and you definitely need to tap everything to figure out what each icon does. That being said, for someone looking to learn on the go, FlashCards Lite is good for that.

There is a paid version of the app, FlashCards Pro, which allows you an unlimited amount of flash cards in your set, which you can either create or install from online. The Lite version only allows you to add one set of cards. You can create or install them from online as well, but you will need to delete all existing sets first. Basically, FlashCards Lite is a trial version for a user as the selections of cards is very limited.

All in all, FlashCards Lite, while not exactly user friendly, is a good app on your Palm Pre to learn on the go for all members of the family.

Created by Janni Kovacs.

Ever been in a foreign country and wonder how much something will really cost you? Then the Currency Converter app for the Palm Pre® is for you. The app converts over 40 of the most used currencies from one to another by simply tapping a button. It even uses a respected financial service, Yahoo!®, to get the live exchange rates.

Using the app is easy. Simply choose the currency you wish to convert from – US Dollars, for example – and then choose the currency you wish to choose to – Euros, for example. Type in the amount in the box provided, tap the ‘Convert’ icon and immediately get the latest exchange rate right on your phone. You don’t even have to hold down the orange button on your phone, as the app is preset already to numbers. The currencies you have to choose from range from dollars – US, Australia, Canada – to Japanese Yen, the Euro, Swiss Franc, Chilean peso, Chinese Yuan, etc. There are many choices to choose from.

For the world traveler, the Currency Converter app for the Palm Pre is perfect. There are so many choices to choose from, that I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find the currency you are looking to check.

Created by Mark/Space. (US only)

Fliq Bookmarks for the Palm Pre® allows you to transfer all of your Safari bookmarks from your Mac computer (and only your Mac, the PC version is coming soon) right to your phone, so that you can visit your favorite sites wherever you happen to be.

You can view the bookmarks in Fliq and then transfer them straight to your Palm Pre web browser. Fliq Bookmarks works in tandem with The Missing Sync app for your Palm Pre. Transferring your bookmarks is as easy as syncing up your phone to the computer. If you don’t have The Missing Sync on your phone, don’t worry. The app immediately asks if you have it before it even goes to the main Fliq Bookmarks page. If you don’t, you can upload the program from a provided URL and even email the URL to yourself if you need to so that you don’t have to worry about retyping anything. The Missing Sync allows you to share videos, music, bookmarks, photos and ringtones between your computer and your phone. It does cost $39.95 for personal use, $69.95 for the family pack, or $89.95 for the Business version, but it is a very handy program to have on your computer if you plan on sharing anything in iTunes or iPhoto to your phone.

Once you have The Missing Sync on your computer, transferring the bookmarks is easy. Connect your Palm Pre with your USB cord, choosing ‘USB Drive’ on the phone when it asks what you want to do. Thereafter, enable the Bookmarks plugin on the Missing Sync menu for the Pre, double-click the Bookmarks plugin to select which ones you want to sync, click ok to save the settings and then click the synchronization button in the Missing Sync Toolbar on the computer. Voila! Your bookmarks are transferred.

For the person looking to visit your favorite sites without having to retype them all into your phone and you have a bunch of favorites, the Fliq Bookmarks app for the Palm Pre is for you. However, for those people looking to share one random photo or song on their phone, it is cheaper and easier to just transfer it directly, without the Missing Sync program, by choosing ‘Media’ on the phone when you connect your Palm Pre to your computer. And the best part – it doesn’t matter if you have a PC or a Mac.

Created by BlueSwitch. (US only)

Forbes.com for the Palm Pre® is your site for business news, financial analysis and stocks and index prices from Forbes.com. For the businessperson on the go, the Forbes.com app is perfect for you.

When Forbes.com launches on your phone, the first page you see is all of the latest news. Want to read about unemployment? Tap on the storyline and you are taken right to the article. You can share it, via email, Facebook®, Yahoo! Buzz, Delicious, Digg or Reddit. Want to read the next latest headline? Simply tap on either arrow icons at the bottom of the screen. If you want to switch to something else, simply tap on the down arrow next to “Latest News” on the blue bar at the top of the screen and a drop down menu appears. You can see stocks you are following (“My Stocks”), most emailed, most popular or stories in:

• Business
• Technology
• Markets
• Entreprenuers
• Leadership
• Personal Finance
• ForbesLife
• Opinions
• Intelligent Investing
• ForbesWomen
• CMO Network, or,
• All Sections

You can even prepare an article for offline reading, for those occasions when you want to read something but won’t have a connection on your Palm Pre, simply by tapping “Prepare for Offline”. While reading the latest article, if you need the font size to be bigger or smaller, simply tap on the Forbes.com menu at the top of the screen and change the font size to small, smaller, normal, bigger, or big.

The interface is simply, clean and very easy to read. Keeping track of all of your investments as well as all of the latest business news is easy with this app.

For anyone needing up to date information on the business world, the Forbes.com app for the Palm Pre is the best app available for that. And the best part – it’s free.

Created by BinaryIdiot (US only)

Wooter for the Palm Pre® combines multiple portals – woot, sellout, shirt, kids, and wine sites – in one easy to use application. What is woot, you ask? Well, woot.com is an online internet store that has cheap cool stuff. They online sell one new item a day, every single day that is posted at midnight, central time. When it is sold out, it’s sold out and you need to wait for the next day to see a new item.

The Wooter app launches a window that has options for what type of item you are looking to purchase – general goods, wine, shirts or kids stuff. You pick a portal (I picked wine.woot) and the item that is up for sale appears on your screen. There is a picture, a witty description and a cost, plus a shipping cost. If you want it, you simply tap the “I want one!” icon at the bottom of the screen, and a new web browser window opens up where you input all of your information.. If you want to see reviews for the product, you tap the “Discussion” icon, and a new window opens up in a web browser, showing you what everyone else has said. It’s that simple.

For anyone looking for a good deal on non-specific items, then the Wooter app for the Palm Pre is for you.

Created by MyAppCatalog.com. (US only)

Greeting Card Messages for the Palm Pre® is great for anyone looking to put a special message in a card – birthday, holiday or otherwise – but are at a loss for words. The app will help you create a special message for that special someone. There are over 2500 different card messages in more than 120 categories.

The Greeting Card Messages app opens with a category screen where you can select the category of message you are looking to write. At the very top are the your favorite messages, which you’ve saved in the past. Picking a category sends you to a subcategory menu, where you can narrow down your choices. For example, picking ‘Birthday’ gives you a submenu choice of belated, family, general, friends, holiday birthdays, for kids, love, milestone, pets, religious, and workplace. Tap a subcategory and your Palm Pre instantly has different messages that you can use. If you see one you like, tap on it for more options. You can save it as a favorite, send it via text or send an ecard via email.

Some of the messages are funny and some are sweet. There are many options to choose from in each category and, if you are planning on handwriting the message, you can take your top choice and alter it to fit your needs.

It is easy to use and easy to find that special message you are looking for. There is a paid version, Greeting Card Messages Pro, for $0.99, which expands the selections by over 500 and also allows you to save the message to a clipboard – to cut and paste it in anything, anywhere.

If you need to write something nice in a card but don’t know what to say, then this app is for you.

Created by Keen Studios. (US only)

Checkers for the Palm Pre® is the mobile version of the board game I enjoyed as a kid. The object of the game remains the same – clear your opponent’s pieces off of the board by jumping over them. You can only move diagonally and to an open space.

When Checkers launches, you are given the option of beginning play by choosing the number of players, seeing the top scores “Achievements”, determining the settings of the game or getting support for any issues you may be having. You either can play against the computer, with a choice of playing styles (Normal, Careful or Aggressive), or you can play against a friend, by switching the phone back and forth (Pass and Play). When you are on the Settings menu, you can change the board theme from Original to Classic or to Faces. You can choose to leave on or off the Haptic Feedback (not sure what this does – all it did was vibrate when I picked a piece and also drained my battery) and Sounds. You have additional choices as a one player game – you can turn on ‘Cheat Mode’ and also choose the playing style.

The “Sounds” for the game is merely a clacking sound that occurs when you move a piece. In the Classic game mode, you don’t get the option of being “Kinged”, which occurs when you reach the last row of your opponent and allows you to go back the other way to continue to remove your opponent’s pieces. In the Original game mode, you can be “Kinged”. In the Faces game mode, the pieces have eyes and a straight line for a mouth, and they smile when you tap them to move them, and you also have the option of being “Kinged”. Whatever game mode you choose, the gameplay is fun, challenging and just like the board game version.

The board is clean, the pieces are easy to move and you do need to be on your toes against the computer. For someone looking to play Checkers on the go on their Palm Pre, this game is perfect – and free!

Created by bytesequencing.com. (US only)

Bubbles for the Palm Pre® is a game consisting of popping connected bubbles of the same color, with the goal of clearing the board and racking up the most points. The more bubbles that are popped in one go, the more points you get.

The app starts off with the Last Game Score, which includes how many games played, average score, and high score. You can also choose the type of game you want to play – Normal, Continuous, Shifter, Super Shifter – as well as the bubble size. There are no real instructions to the game and it took me a while to realize that by tapping the bubbles twice, they popped off of the screen and the pieces shifted down. So, if you choose some bubbles and realized you didn’t want to pop them, tapping them once gives you the total points and grays them out, but tapping them twice pops them. The best way to play is to figure out what your best move is to shift the right color of bubbles down so that you can pop them all. It can be an addicting and frustrating game.

Selecting Normal play means that once you’ve made all the moves you can on the board, whether or not it is clear, the game is over and you are reverted back to the scoreboard. Continuous play means there are pieces in the bottom of the screen in a special window that are added to the gameboard when a row clears up, which means even more strategy to play the game. Shifter play means that the pieces shift over to the left or right, depending on where you popped the last bubbles, instead of staying in their own columns, as in the Normal game play. Super Shifter play means that there is more extreme shifting within the bubbles than in the Shifter game style.

It is unfortunate that the game does not come with instructions, but once you figure it out, it seems pretty simple. The free version does contain ads, but they appear at the bottom of the screen and are pretty unobtrusive. If you upgrade to the paid version of the game, version .9.9, you are given the option of undoing the last move you made, but it’s not a necessary option to play and enjoy the game.

Created by Uberu. (US only)

Blackout for the Palm Pre® is an easy yet addicting game to play on your phone. The goal of the game is to turn off all of the lights on the board. Clicking on a light switches it and its non-diagonal neighbors on or off.

The game is very simple, as is the interface on which you play. Once you launch the app, a game board appears with some lights on and some lights off. It is definitely a strategy game since you can turn on some of the lights that are already turned off if you tap the right or wrong button. It can be addicting and frustrating, especially if you get the board mostly clear and then tap the wrong light and have to start over again. The game keeps track of how many steps it takes you to turn off all of the lights and you can start a new game simply by pressing ‘New Game’ at the bottom of the screen.

There are no preferences or other options to the game. It is user friendly and would definitely be older kid friendly as well. For all of its simplicity, it actually is a challenging and fun game…and it’s free.

Created by AccuRadio LLC.

AccuRadio for the Palm Pre® is a new internet radio app that features hundreds of rock, pop, jazz, country, broadway, and classical music – and more. If you’re looking for an alternative to Pandora®, then this app is for you.

Upon launching the app, you have the choice to pick a genre, see your favorite channels or see a list of your recently heard channels. Picking ‘genre’ brings up a list of over 30 different music genres, with the usual selections as well as Cabaret, Brit Rock, Canadian, Comedy, French pop, Native American…you name it, it appears in the list. Picking one genre then brings up another screen of different radio channels under that category, with brief summaries of what the channel has on it. Once you pick a subgenre category, the music starts playing on your phone, just like that. The icons at the bottom of the screen allow you add the channel as your favorite (plus icon), see the artists on the channel (people icon), pause or fast-forward to the next song. The song that is playing comes up with album cover art, the title of the song, the artist, the album and the year it came out. If you tap on the black bar at the top, you get the summary of the channel you are listening to. If you want to see what else is available in the other genres, simply flick your finger from right to left in the back portion of the Palm Pre and you are returned to the subgenre, without disrupting the music. If you want to go back to what is playing, simply pick the ‘Now Playing’ icon at the bottom of the screen and you’re back to the art cover and song information.

AccuRadio is a very simple app to use and has a lot of choices not found on other internet radio apps. The only thing it doesn’t allow you to do is to pick an artist and listen to them. It is set up to only play genres, so if you know that you want to listen to Country and don’t care which artists play on your phone, then AccuRadio is for you. And on top of playing great music across all genres, it’s free as well.

Created by: Brandon VanBelle.

The Dot Game app for the Palm Pre® is the computerized version of a game I used to play in high school with a pad and paper. The game is simple, but challenging, and it can be very frustrating, especially if you really want to win.

The goal of the game is to be the person to create the most boxes. To create boxes, you simply connect the a grid of dots with lines – one line at a time allowed during each turn. The game sounds simple, but it is a strategy game that you can quickly lose if you don’t pay attention and carefully plan out each move.

The Dot Game is a one or two player game, with the option to play against the computer (one player) or a friend (two player). If you are playing a friend, then you simply hand the phone back and forth for each turn. If you are playing the computer, you can choose the level of difficulty you want. Don’t be fooled, Medium difficulty is still a challenging level to play.

The game interface is basic. To decide on who you are playing, you choose either Human for a friend or Easy, Medium, or Hard for the computer player. You can increase the board size from Normal to Large or Huge, and also you can change the theme to Crayon or Clockwork from the Default theme. Once the game board appears, you draw your line by tapping the spot between the dots where you want it to appear. If your line is the last and creates a box, the color you picked for the Human player (default is blue) is then filled in the box so that you know what boxes are yours and what boxes are not. There is also a tally of the total number of boxes at the top of the screen.

The Dot Game for the Palm Pre, while simple, is addictive and is a great way to kill some time while waiting at the doctor’s office. And the best part – it’s free.

Created by: Moblyng.

m:Mafia is the free version game app for the Palm Pre®, where you get to be a Mafia Don. You can case, fix and/or enforce your way to the top of the Mafia food chain. The cool thing about this app is that it is on Facebook as well, which means you can play on the go or on your computer. And, with Facebook Connect, you can invite your friends to your ‘Family’ and create a m:Mafia community, right on your phone.

When you launch the app, the first thing the game does is to ask you if you want to link your game account to your Facebook page. If you already have a character that you play on Facebook, the game will sync it up for you, or you can create a new character, starting by creating a character name and typing it in the appropriate box. One thing that is a bit weird is that the character name field isn’t character friendly, i.e., you have to tap the blank name field and a enter text box appears, where you type in your name choice. After typing in your game name and making sure no one else has it and that is under 18 characters long, you then get to pick your character’s class.

The classes are:

• Loan shark – Faster money regen
• Heavy – Faster stamina regen
• Operator – Faster strength regen
• Fixer – Faster health regen

I picked Fixer, since I like the idea of ‘fixing’ things, although you may want to be more strategic and pick stamina, since having stamina is a key part of the game. You are then prompted to pick an avatar, from a very limited group of 20 choices.

m:Mafia is played by leveling up and gaining XP, which is done through completing Jobs and Fights. As you level up, you have the ability to do more missions and fight different people. You can recruit people to your crew (which is where Facebook Connect comes in handy), which becomes necessary for more advanced Jobs and Fights (some jobs require a crew of 3, etc.). The Jobs are the best way to make money and to level up, as well as to find special loot items. The money is handy when you need to buy some equipment to, say, rob a bank or to buy some good weapons and armor. Some sample jobs are: purse snatching, mugging, holding up a store, etc. You can do many of the Jobs over and over again, to either find special loot, rack up some XP or bank some money. Your character has a set number of health, stamina, and strength points, although stamina is key to being able to do the jobs because each Job has specific minimum stamina points needed to do it. But don’t worry, if you really want to steal someone’s lunch money, your stamina points do regenerate fairly quickly. And, depending on the job, you can also lose health points (10 in total) or strength points (3 in total), both of which affect your ability to work and/or fight.

The interface for the game is pretty basic, but is easy to use. You pick from the menu button at the bottom left of the screen to get to the main menu, which then allows you to go do Jobs, Fights, Stash (buy stuff), or go to the Bank. You may want to stash your cash in the bank, even though the bank takes 10%, because all of your money can get stolen in a fight.

m:Mafia will keep you busy on your Palm Pre for a while. The interaction between the screens is a little clunky and the graphics are basic, but for a free game, it’s not bad. There are ads throughout, but they are relatively unobtrusive in the top of the screen.

The free version gives you 25 Free Favor points, which you can use to pay the Don for upgrades, health, refills and recharging your stamina or strength. You can also sell Favor points or buy them for $1000. The paid version, m:Mafia 40 Favor, gives you 40 Favor points. It costs $4.99, but for a casual gamer, the free version is enough, especially if you can play a lot on Facebook.

Created by: My Company.

The wikiHow app for the Palm Pre® gives you access to over 50,000+ how-to articles to search, browse or bookmark. The app also includes the ‘wikiHow Survival Kit,’ which is a collection of articles to help you through any situation you may find yourself in, and the best part—it is stored right on your phone, so you won’t need a connection to access it, which is great if you’re lost in the woods and are trying to access the ‘how to survive being stranded in the woods’ article.

The interface of the app is pretty straightforward. Immediately upon launch, the wikiHow Survival Kit pops up, with articles on avoiding rattlesnack attacks, building igloos, changing tires, etc. If you want to look for something a little less urgent, such as how-to make fairy wings for a Halloween costume, simply tap the right bubble on the top app bar and you can look at featured articles or do a search.

Featured articles are picked by wikiHow and are a great way to find out about random things you may want to learn, such as how to make peanut butter from scratch or 5 ways to cope with frustration. They change on a daily basis.

To find a specific how-to article, you simply type in what you want to learn and hit enter. Any article featuring your keywords will show up on the screen and you can then choose the one you want to read first. If it doesn’t answer your question, simply use the back gesture on your Palm Pre (slide right to left to the left of the home button at the bottom of the screen), and pick a different option. You can also share the article by text or email, by tapping the ‘Share’ button in the center at the bottom of the screen. And, you can open the article up in a web browser, which takes you right to the wikiHow page.

Each article features step-by-step instructions and a picture, and some even include a video showing each step. The videos are typically from youtube and will launch a separate browser window when chosen.

Whether you’re looking to do a new project or need to know how to change your tire, wikiHow has the step-by-step instructions for you. And, it’s free!

Created by: Janni Kovacs.

Translator for the Palm Pre® is a simple language translation program, which is great when you are traveling or in a restaurant with a non-translated menu.

After launching the app, you immediately can begin translating text. The top box allows you to type in the text you want translated and pick the original language. There are over 50 different original language choices available, with the usual suspects (German, French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) appearing along with some very interesting and not so popular choices, such as Galician, Lithuanian, Afrikaans, Filipino, Irish, Maltese and Swahili, to name but a few.

After typing in the phrase or word you wish to translate, you then pick the language you wish to translate the word or phrase into. So, for example, you’re looking to find the word in German for toilet. Typing in toilet at the top, picking English (default languge), and then choosing German in the second box, before tapping the ‘Translate’ button at the button. If you want to swap and instead have it translated from German to English, all you need to do is tap the ‘Swap’ button in the middle of the screen. You can also send, via email or text, the translated word or phrase.

Translator is pretty simple to use, although I did find that certain words did not get translated properly and should have, as they were simple and straightforward words (e.g., street). It did work properly when I translated it from the German version to English, however, so perhaps there are a few glitches to the app. Translator also works well with the symbol menu on the Palm Pre, especially if you are attempting to translate, for example, a German sign into English and there are umlauts in one of the words. Simply hit the ‘Sym’ key on your Palm Pre, pick the appropriate character to insert, and then hit translate.

All in all, it is a nice program for translation of short phrases, questions every traveler would ask, or a strange and unknown word on a menu. And it’s free.

Created by: Evernote.

The Evernote® app for the Palm Pre® is the mobile version of the Evernote program, where you can type notes, to-do lists and reminders, clip web pages and save them for later reading, snap photos, record audio clips and memos for later, and email or text notes right from your phone, which then can be saved to your online account and accessed by computer. It is the ultimate taskmaster for the person on the go.

The interface on the app is mostly user friendly. Once you launch the app, you then sign up for an account (or login), which allows you to sync up Evernote in all of your technology, be it your computer, phone or blackberry. After logging in, you can create a new text-based item or email a snapshot, simply by tapping on the plus icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen. You then are asked to select what type of new item you wish to create. If you tap ‘Text’, a new window opens up and you can write a title for your note, add keyword tags for easy searching within your Evernote account, and then write the substance of what you need to remember or do. The note saves to your online account, which means you can access it from anywhere, making marking off that to-do list item really simple.

Once you have several items saved to your Evernote account, they appear on the first screen of the app, in screenshot format. There is also a search function, which allows you to search either your recent notes or any nearby notes for a specific word, phrase or tag.

The free version of Evernote only allows you to write a note or send a picture. If you upgrade your account by paying for it, you can do some of the more advanced features of Evernote, like recording audio clips. However, for those times when you need to remember something or created a new to-do list, the free Evernote app for the Palm Pre is a great way to keep track of it all.

Created by: Yelp.

The Yelp® app for the Palm Pre® is the mobile phone version of the website Yelp.com, which is a review site for all things local to your neighborhood. The reviews are written by other people and cover anything from restaurants and bars, banks, spas to anything automotive (mechanics, detailing, part shops, etc.), doctors, shopping and nightlife. The good news is, the Yelp app for the Palm Pre is very similar to the website version.

Upon launching the app, you are asked to allow Yelp! to locate you in your current location (unless you have your Palm Pre set up to always allow all programs to locate you). Once the phone and the app knows where you are, you can either do a search or pick a category, which then may have subcategories. Picking, for example, auto repair brings up a list of different repair shops in the area, with addresses and rankings. Simply tap the item you want, and an expanded view of the shop appears, complete with reviews and sometimes pictures. You can then map it on Google® maps, share it (text or email) or save it to your contact list to pull it up later. You can also filter the search results, to narrow the options down by price and whether the business is currently open by tapping on the ‘filter’ button at the bottom of the screen.

It is very user friendly and will give you a good list of favorites in your area. There are two things that the website allows that the app does not. The first is that on the website, you can choose your location rather than having the app choose it for you. So, if you are looking for good restaurants for your trip to New York, you can put in New York in the location field on the website and only see results for New York. The Palm Pre app version does not allow you to do this and only gives you reviews near your physical location. The other thing that the app does not do is that you can’t create your own reviews. But, when you are on the fly, all you really want to know is where to get the best tacos anyway, right?

The Yelp! app for the Palm Pre is a great way to find new restaurants, a new hairdresser or a great mechanic and the best part – it’s free!

Created by: Cakefight.

Sudoku! is the mobile app version of Sudoku puzzles for the Palm Pre®, with over 1,000 puzzles for you to solve. Sudoku is a challenging game of logic and intellect, where you have 9 blocks with 9 squares each. Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces, making sure that each row, each column, and each block only has one of each digit. It can be a very frustrating game, but the Sudoku! app makes solving the puzzles fun and easy.

Playing the game itself is quite user friendly. Simply tap in the box you wish to enter a number, select the number you want to put in your selected box by tapping on the number in the boxes below the game piece. If you want to make some number notes within your selected box, tap on the pencil icon and once highlighted, you then can tap on the numbers below the game piece to create ‘notes’ for potential answers to that empty block. The pencil mode is a great asset to this app, especially if you find you have more than one choice available (and you will, frequently).

The Sudoku! app has a handy automatic game save, which allows you to quit and come back to your unsolved puzzle whenever you wish. And, you can also have the computer solve it for you, if you get stuck.

One of the great features of this app, besides the pencil mode, is that you can add new puzzles that you either create yourself or find in a newspaper or online somewhere. It’s as simple as tapping the Sudoku! menu tab at the top of the screen and choosing ‘Create a Custom Game’. In this way, you’ll have access to more than the 1,000 available puzzles in the game.

All in all, this is a great app for those looking for a free version of Sudoku!, especially with the pencil mode and the ability to add custom games.

Created by: LinkedIn.

The LinkedIn® app for the Palm Pre® is the mobile version of LinkedIn.com, a professional networking site that allows you to network with colleagues, join and participate in forums, and put yourself out there for new opportunities. The app is a decent representation of the website and you can access it right on your phone.

The interface for this app is basic, but functional. Once you launch the app and sign in with your email and LinkedIn password, the home page appears. On the home page is a list of all of your contacts, which you can easily access by tapping on the name you want. To add a new contact, you simply tap the plus icon in the lower left hand corner and a new window opens. There, you can type in a first name, last name and an email address and the standard invitation to LinkedIn text appears in the body of the email. Tap send and you’re on your way to adding a new contact (hopefully).

An icon of an envelope in the lower right hand corner on any of the pages indicates if you have any new LinkedIn emails. Access it by tapping the icon and your inbox appears right on your phone. You also can view your personal LinkedIn profile by tapping on “LinkedIn” at the very top left hand corner of the screen and choosing “View My Profile” from the dropdown menu.

If you want to check your LinkedIn email or maybe send someone an invite to your network while you are out and about, the LinkedIn app is perfect for that. If you want to edit your profile or see the groups and forum discussions of which you’re a member, the LinkedIn app is not even close to perfect. Neither of those two actions are available in the current version, so your best bet is to do those things on a computer.

All in all, for the basic functions of LinkedIn, the app is good…and free.

Created by: Pivotal Labs, Inc.

The Tweed app allows you to tweet and to access Twitter® right on your Palm Pre®. For those of you who like to either tweet throughout the day or check out fairly often what others are saying, then Tweed is a good app for you.

The app is fairly easy to use. When you first open the app, you put in your Twitter username and password. If you have more than one account, you can add them to Tweed and choose which one you wish to have as the default account, and also switch back and forth between them.

The home page for Tweed shows all of the tweets you’ve done or tweets that you follow, just like you’d see on Twitter. If you tap the Home icon on the top right hand corner, a dropdown menu appears with Home, Trending topics, Favorites, Direct Messages, @[username], My Tweets, Bookmarks, and an arrow that opens a location box, which if you allow it, gives you tweets that are nearby to your location from random users.

The app even has a decent navigation tool – tap the black bar at the top of the screen and you get a menu with two choices: Go to Top, Go to Bottom. This is convenient and the lazy way to scroll up or down without having to flick your finger.

To add a new tweet, you simply tap the plus icon on the bottom left hand corner and a new screen opens up, where you can type your 140 character message. Underneath the message box, you have the option of locating nearby tweets, adding a picture, or adding an URL, before putting your tweet out over the airwaves.

Tweed is currently available as Tweed Trial, which is a free trial version. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the documentation to let you know when the free trial version ends, but you’ll know when its over when you can no longer log in on your phone. The good news – you can continue to use it as your Palm Pre Twitter app by paying the $1.99 fee.

Created by: Pandora.

The Pandora® Radio app for the Palm Pre® is the mobile version of Pandora.com, a great internet radio website where you can choose to listen, mostly for free, to any artist you choose on a station. For the artists you choose, Pandora automatically adds artists similar to your chosen artist to the station. Pandora Radio for the Palm Pre works almost the same as the website.

When you first connect to Pandora on your phone, you have a choice of either signing in with your existing account and having access to all of your previously listened to stations, or creating a new user profile. Once you are signed in, you can choose a station, pick a new artist, album or song for a new station, and the music streams to your Palm Pre.

Picking a station or finding a new artist to listen to is very easy and the interface is user friendly. At the top of the screen is a bar with the total number of stations created by the user. Picking a station is as easy as tapping the one you want. Adding a new station is just as easy – just tap on the plus icon in the bottom left corner, type in the artist, song or composer and you’re off and running. You also have the choice of a ‘QuickMix’, which mixes all of your stations together and plays a random selection.

The app is a perfect way to listen to your stations on the go. Two detracting factors – it drains the battery, and since we all know that the battery on the Palm Pre isn’t the greatest, your best bet is to listen to Pandora Radio while the Pre is on the Touchstone or attached to a charger. Also, if you lose a network connection or move into an area where there is spotty coverage, you’ll lose the signal and the music.

All in all, it is a great free app for the Palm Pre and takes advantage of the decent sound capabilities of the phone.