Finish gaming company Rovio is hoping to replicate the success of the Angry Birds series with a new game called the Amazing Alex.

A Billion Angry Birds

Gaming companies know that you are only good as you last title (pretty much the general rule of thumb in business, no?). Even the most storied developers can make one ‘wrong’ move and have fans turn on them like a Roman mob. And although Rovio’s Angry Birds has been downloaded over a billion times, the Finish company is not putting all their Easter eggs in one basket.

Meet the Amazing Alex

Gamasutra reported last week that Rovio has acquired the rights to Casey’s Contraptions from developers Mystery Coconut and Snappy Touch. The first game based on this acquisition will be Amazing Alex. Even with just a cursory glance, you can see the similarities between Casey and Alex.

Rovio’s VP of Franchise Development, Ville Heijari, stated that the company had acquired all rights for the brand. “Working with Noel [Llopis, Snappy Touch founder] and Miguel [A. Friginal, Mystery Coconut founder] has been fantastic, and this is a game that we all fell in love with from the first play,” said Heijari. However, it is not clear if the two developers behind Casey’s Contraption will be staying on to work with Rovio on the new title.

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WhoSay is another social media website making a name for itself. But you will never get to use it — not unless you can win a daytime Emmy, hit a ball out of Fenway, or write a critically-acclaimed collection of short stories.

“It’s Not Easy Being Me”

Celebrities don’t have it easy. Anonymity is a luxury they do not have. Paparazzi follow them wherever they go. Their every indiscretion (real or fabricated) ends up in the tabloids. Sure, there are the perks — the accolades, the adoration, the hedonistic lifestyles — but being famous is no free ride (well, not always).

An area where a lot of celebrities are starting to venture into is the realm of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Mobli — celebs are all over the social Web. However, many are still a little camera shy when it comes to social media. Enter WhoSay.

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The Pixlr-o-matix or Pixlr app for the iOS is yet another photo-editing application at the App Store — but we guarantee that this one is definitely worth your while.

Pixlr

Like so many mobile applications, the Pixlr app began as an online application. Pixlr is an online photo-editing software that requires no downloads and gives you various methods to tweak your photos, including a seamless integration with image hosting and sharing site Photobucket.

Pixlr may not have secured a billion-dollar deal like Instagram did, but its partnership with design software mega-giants Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD, was definitely newsworthy.

Pixlr App for the iOS and Android

The Pixlr app went mobile in August of last year and has since been developing a steady following, although its numbers have dipped slightly over the last few weeks. The recent drop in popularity might of course be the result of Instagram’s mercurial success, but if you are interested in a broad range of editing tools, this app is a must.

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The 100 Floors app continues to tally up numbers at the App Store and is currently sitting at the top of the list of free apps.

100 Floors App

The 100 Floors app was released at the beginning of May, and it has already become the number one free app at the App Store. So what is all the fuss about?

The 100 Floors app is a puzzle game of sorts, but it is less mathematical as it is spatial and ‘intuitive’. For example, the first puzzle shows you a couple elevators doors with a green up arrow to the side. To open it, all you have to do is hit the green arrow.

The second level has another set of elevator doors, a red arrow, and a trash bin. Here you have to first move the trash bin to reveal the green up arrow, then move the arrow from the bottom row of squares and drag it to the greyed-out up position next to the elevators. Now you can press the green up button to open the doors. You get the idea.

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The Band of the Day app is a revelation — a daily one. In the great big sea of music apps, Band of the Day is rising to the surface.

Band of the Day App’s Simple Plan: A Daily Dose of Music

We have reviewed a number of interesting music apps, like Turntable.fm, the fantasy music application, Tastemaker X, and CBC Music, but not many music applications out there offer the sense of discovery that the Band of the Day app provides.

Music recommendations inside applications are nothing novel. The Genius feature within iTunes is a great way to discover new artists. The problem with Genius and features like it is that it often becomes dizzying sifting through the endless yet cyclical recommendations it offers.

The simplicity of the Band of the Day app is one of the applications best qualities: a new band or musician every day, 365 days a year. Of course, you can do searches to find particular artists or listen to some of the featured artists, but the idea is that every day you discover one band or musician and spend some time getting to know them. It is the iOS equivalent of when we used to go out and buy a CD and come back home to sit back, listen to the tracks, and flip through the booklet.

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Doodle.ly is yet another app that solves the riddle of how to get noticed in a sea of applications — and the answer is not simply to develop something for the iOS, though that cannot hurt. It is about being social.

Doodle.ly for the iOS — A Social Experiment

Now, this is not as apparent as one might think. Lots of apps have a social component to them. There are even drawing apps, like the very fine Paper app, that allow you to share your creations with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. But with Doodle.ly, the social component is as much the reason for downloading the app as are its drawing features.

Most people want to be noticed — not to be part of a clique, but to feel like you are making a contribution, no matter how small. Doodling may not seem like much of a contribution, but any artist or aspiring artist will tell you that sharing your work is as important in the creative process as the creation of the work itself.

Now, if you have a glance at the main page of the Doodle.ly website, you might think that calling these doodles works of art is a stretch, but then, I would just respond with just one name: Jean-Michel Basquiat. But I digress. In fact, if you venture further to the informative Doodle.ly blog, you will see that there are some pretty impressive ‘doodles’ being produced.

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The newly updated Triposo app may very well change the way you travel. Triposo has been around for about year, and we pick them as one of our top startups to keep an eye on.

The App Complex

The problem with existing websites and products going the app route is that for the sake of preserving the integrity of what their Web incarnation looked like, developers often get bogged down and do not fully allow the creative process to flow. We will not name names, but because of this, there are many app versions of websites and products that simply fall flat in their mobile form.

This is why often some of the best mobile applications come from startups who are building a product from the ground up. One such team is Triposo.

Triposo Travel App

The Trioposo app is a “self-starter,” which means that it does not wait for you to run a search before making a recommendation. The Triposo blog explains it like this:

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The upcoming Hiragana Pixel Party app promises fun and shenanigans along with second-language acquisition.

Come to the Hiragana Pixel Party

After stints with Lucasarts, SEGA, Namco, and Atari over the past 13 years, a developer — referred simply as “James” on his blog — has set up shop with his own gaming company, Springloaded Games, and is set to launch his first title, Hiragana Pixel Party. If the tone of his blog (and the trailer) is any indication, the game should be a hoot.

The gameplay will be a “rhythm-action, platforming, Japanese-learning, chiptune adventure! Listen, tap, and learn!” Add a little memorization, some old-school video game console melodies, and you have yourself a winner. The purpose of the game, of course, is to teach you the two forms of Japanese syllabary: hiragana and katakana.

On the Springloaded, James has this to say:

“I have been learning Japanese, and the dryness of the learning material has kind of got to me, so I decided to make a game to teach me how to read, rather than just memorizing the characters in a boring traditional study like way.”

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Most weather apps give you the straight facts, your basic meat and potatoes. Now, there is nothing wrong with a staple of weather facts, but there are two new apps that bring something a little different to the radar screen: Dark Sky and SF Climates.

Dark Sky

Dark Sky is another successful Kickstarter project. The project received nearly $40,000 from over 1,000 backers. What sets this app apart from other weather apps is its focus on short-term weather predictions. We often want to know what the weather will be like during the day, but often what affects us the most are short-term weather patterns (i.e., if you will step outside, will you be poured on 15 minutes later?).

The Dark Sky app is fully interactive, so you can scroll through a storm to see how it began or how it is progressing. In this way, you can explore many hours of storm data and you can also see what a storm or a weather pattern might look like up to an hour in time.

Because most weather apps only update every five or ten minutes, you end up with jittery satellite images, which makes it difficult to access in which direction a storm is moving. What the Dark Sky app does so ingeniously is use the same algorithm that predicts the weather for those 5-10 minute intervals and uses it to predict the weather in between. The result is a beautifully fluid animation that is unlike anything you have seen.

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The SideCar app is a new application that not only wants to ease the burden on travelers; it also wants to help create a community of environmentally- and socially-conscious commuters.

Carpooling — An Old Idea

The idea of carpooling is not a new one. As far back the Second World War, the U.S. Government advertised the virtues of sharing rides. A famous poster from the Office of Price Administration stated that to ride alone was akin to sharing your car with Hitler. The idea, of course, was not necessarily politic. It had to do with the real issues of supply shortages, which included metal for production and petrol for transportation.

Carpooling fell out of favor in the 70s and 80s, but with the rise of the Internet and environmental consciousness in the 90s, carpooling and ride-sharing services started to find supporters again. And now, with the popularity of smartphones and mobile applications, these types of services are popping up all over North America.

SideCar App

The SideCar app is not the only one of its kind. There are other ride-sharing applications available in different parts of the country, such as Carticipate and Avego. Based out of San Francisco, SideCar is aiming to provide a similar service in the city by the Bay.

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