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Looking at the Apple iPhone App Store, if I spend 30 seconds reading about each App to decide whether I wanted it or not, it would take me 150,000 minutes, or 2,500 hours or 104.17 days to go through them all.  

I wrote that in December 2010. At that time the Apple Store had 300,000 iPhone apps. Today the Apple App store has a total of 650,000 apps, if you combine both iPhone and iPad apps. That is really too many apps for anyone to actually browse through. The main Android App store, Google Play had 600,000 apps and there are also thousands of other Android apps available from other sources. 

Adeven has free analytic service Apptrace which collects iOS app data in the 155 countries that support the App Store. A study conducted by Adeven shows that 60% of the apps on the Apple App store, around 400,000, have never been downloaded. I would think the situation is similar on Google Play.

Anyone browsing the Apple App Store or Google Play knows that there are too many me-too apps. But the Adeven study reveals that in some cases there are just way to many me too apps. An iPhone user looking for a flashlight app has a staggering 1,899 choices for a really simple app where one really does not provide functionality different from the others.

App Store number are pretty much hype. It really is the number of useful apps which should be the metric.

Google had named its ten best apps of the year. You will find the list at this link (will take you to Google Play). There is one app I think should be on the list, Tasks by Team Tasks. 

Ironically, Android does not have a native app for its tasks list which is part of Google Calendar. I use tasks a lot, and when I got an Android the first thing I tried to do was find a great tasks app, which synced with Google Tasks. After over a year of jumping from one app to another, most of which I found too busy, I found Tasks by Team Tasks. It is a well designed app that does not overcomplicate the function of maintaining a task lists and really feels like a native Android app.  It brings 100% of the functionality of Google Tasks to your phone with a a nice Holo themed user interface. It even has a option for a tablet optimized interface. I think Google should have placed this on their best ten apps list.

Anyway, give it a look yourself. Tasks by Team Task has a ten day demo, and the full version costs just a bit more than a dollar. Task users have give this app a 4.7 out of 5 rating.

Square Enix is offering its three of its games at up to 70% off until January 3, 2013.

Chaos Rings - From US$12.99 to US$3.99

Chaos Rings Q - From US$12.99 to US$3.99

Chrono Trigger - US$9.99 to US$6.99

Crystal Defenders - US$7.63 to US$3.99

Final Fantasy - US$6.99 to US$4.99

At these prices Chaos Rings and Chaos Rings are must buys for the RPG gamer. 

Unfortunately, Final Fantasy III is not being offered as part of the Square Enix sale.

A bit late posting this with all that was going on yesterday, but Google Maps is now available for iOS. Google Maps used to be a native service on iOS, until Apple removed it and launched their own maps application, which was a unmitigated disaster. 

You can put the Apple Maps nightmare behind you and download Google Maps from the app store. The App works with iOS 5.1 or better.

It has been a long time since I played computer games. After almost a decade of  I did some gaming again when I got my first Android Phone. Still in two years, I have downloaded all of 11 games, 7 of which were purchases. Of these 11, I only played one this year. 

 Most games I have installed have seen less than five hours of use. Only Angry Birds, Robo Defense and Symphony of Eternity have seen countless hours of use. Symphony of Eternity was the last game I bought, and I have been contemplating buying another title from KEMCO GAMES.

But there is one game, even a long time retired gamer like me is looking forward too: Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. I played Baldurs Gate, Icewind and Neverwinters Nights a decade ago. Neverwinter Nights, and its expansion packs, being the last PC Game I played. 

Baldurs Gate was awesome. It is the best Dungeons & Dragons franchise translation to the PC, and if I could have one PC Game brought back today, it would be the one. Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition contains the original Baldur's Gate campaign and the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. 

The game now available for iPad now, with an Android version promised but no updated ETA announced. The game costs a reasonable US$9.99 and is a 1.7 GB download.

It does not look like the it will ported to phones. Given the UI design on the iPad, it would seem to be a tablet only game. Might make the purchase of an iPad mini really worthwhile.

You can buy Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition at iTunes.