App Reviews: Jetpack Joyride, Mindly

Jetpack Joyride

You don't need a lot of time to understand Jetpack Joyride. That doesn't mean that you won't spend a lot of time playing it. This infinite side-scroller is made by the same studio that brought us Fruit Ninja, and it carries the same feeling of joyful destruction. Players are put in the high-flying shoes of Barry, a dude storming the lair of a mad super-villain with the aid of a jetpack machine gun.

Really, the story is secondary; the fun lies in dodging missiles and other obstacles, collecting treasure and generally making a mess. Players largely control their flights by tapping on the screen to make Barry climb or leaving the screen alone to send him back to the ground. Various power-ups of varying ridiculousness give players some fun options, such as riding a dragon. As you might expect, Jetpack Joyride is not for the serious-minded, on-task workers of the world. For the rest of us, though, it's a whole lot of fun. Free, for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices.

Mindly

Digital notes are great for moving from device to device. But for doodlers, they can be a bit limiting. Mindly offers a simple tool that lets users lay out their thoughts in a more visual way, using a three-tiered map of circles. A complete Mindly document looks like a solar system, with the central idea in the middle. Users can add dozens of elements with a second tier of orbiting sub-points and even a third if you have some deeper thinking to do. Link any circle to a Web page, an image, an icon or even a simple note.

The result is a clean but complex diagram that could be great for complicated tasks. The free version lets you share your map using the Mindly format or as a PDF. Upgrading for $6.99 lets you export your maps into formats such as HTML and add an unlimited number of elements to each document. Free, for iOS devices.