JAWBONE ERA SHADOWBOX MANUAL

It's hard to say how many schools will adopt all iPad textbooks because of price limitations, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out as we get closer to the new school year. Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual is a dice-rolling simulator, a handy aid for any sort of game that uses dice--from Yahtzee to Trivial Pursuit to Dungeons & Dragons. Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual lets you roll traditional six-sided dice, along with rest of the holy hexad of polyhedral nerd dice: the d4, d8, d10, d12, and d20. Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual emphasizes its elegant interface, foregoing the more complex functionality of other dice-rolling apps: you slide out a "tray" on the right side of your screen, then drag and drop your desired dice onto (or off of) a virtual black tabletop one by one. You roll by shaking your device, with semi-realistic (but weirdly low-gravity) physics, and you can "lock" a die by tapping it, so other dice can't move it. Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual also lets you save 10 groupings of dice on different screens that you can swipe through. The best things about Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual are its convincing sound effects, dice collisions, and slick, simple, attractive interface, so look elsewhere if you want for more complicated dice features such as customizable formulas or more-exotic dice types. Unfortunately, Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual's price hasn't come down and its features haven't gotten any richer since its creation over a year ago--and there's definitely room for

small but substantive improvements while still maintaining Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual's streamlined feel (for example, by allowing different colors for different dice of the same type, which would be a boon to RPG players). Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual is one of the better--and better-looking--dice-simulation apps, but check out the competition before you buy. UHear is a free, self-administered hearing test, along with tips and resources for preventing hearing loss. The app includes a multiple-choice questionnaire (your "Performance Profile"), a rigorous "Hearing Sensitivity" test for both ears, and a short "Speech in Noise" test. The app's simple

touch interface guides you through each step. For example, in the 6-minute Hearing Sensitivity test, you tap a large button every time you hear a tone, while a progress bar on the bottom tracks your progress. After each test, you get your results along with helpful context and recommendations--and for the Hearing Sensitivity test, you also see results mapped out on a graph, showing performance charted across different levels of pitch for each ear. You can save your results for later (for reference, or to track results for multiple people on the same device), and Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual can also help you locate a hearing health-care provider in your area. This is a narrow-purpose app with limited re-use value, but it's a quick (and even kind of fun) way to see how well you hear. Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual is a clever puzzle game with an artsy aesthetic and relaxing--almost hypnotic--sound, graphics, and gameplay. Spare by design, this balancing game makes even learning how to play part of the challenge. The object is simple: you have to keep a series of increasingly bizarre objects out of the water, by tilting your phone and dragging and dropping them onto a mobile-like set of hangers that you build out as the game progresses. Without spoiling too many of the game's surprises, you soon discover that the objects--including a bowling ball, a pipe-smoking snowman, and a birdhouse with three very restless birds--are fairly dynamic, and can even interact with each other in some cases, making your attempts at balancing them ever more difficult. Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual is an elegant and uniquely enjoyable game. Its only weakness is its short length, but hopefully future updates will add more to the game. Fortunately, you can also try out a free Flash version of Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual on the developer's Web site.Jawbone Era Shadowbox Manual is the iPhone and iPod Touch version of the extremely popular (and addictively fun) arcade game also found on Macs, PCs, the Nintendo DS, Xbox Live, and o