Anyone who’s ever played multiplayer online games enjoys them and this is no exception when it comes it iPhone and/or iPod Touch (and soon to be iPad) gaming. The following 5 free games are all internet-enabled multiplayer games that any serious iPhone gamer will enjoy.

Words With Friends Free is in a league of its own. As we’ve said previously, this is easily the absolute best word game available for the iPhone today and the online play earns it the top spot on this list. Don’t let the title deceive you, this should be installed even if you don’t have friends.

Chess With Friends Free comes from the same people who brought us Words With Friends, but instead of a Scrabble-esque game, you get to play chess with friends, random opponents, or I suppose even your enemies. If you’re looking to learn this classic strategy game or just practice your chess skills, this is the app to do it with.

Mancala FS5 Free is a hugely addictive version of Mancala for your iPhone. This classic game of who can get the most beads is hugely addictive and the online play is very competitive. If you liked playing this game as a kid, you’ll loving having it on your phone where you can play against AIM buddies, the computer, or just random players.

Live Poker is pretty self explanatory. Play poker, live, against other people. This ties in with the hugely popular version for Facebook, allowing you to play against your friends. It gives you 1000 free chips a day to play with, so don’t worry about going broke. The interface is clean, easy to use, and makes online free poker a fun time-waster.

Cube is one of the first and arguably the best first person shooter available today for the iPhone platform. It can be both single- or multiplayer and provides fast, fun gameplay. The controls take a bit to get accustomed to, but once you’ve got them down you’ll be fragging with the best of them.

For those that use virtually any type of online chat service, Adium is there to serve all of your online chatting needs. There are plenty of Mac applications out there to allow you to chat with your friends, but Adium stand tall above the rest as the best chat client available for Mac OS X. Based on the multi-platform open-source library Libpurple, Adium is a user-friendly chat application designed exclusively for Mac users. Adium supports all of the most common chat protocols, including AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and Facebook Chat, as well as at least a half dozen others.

Where the program really shines, however, is not the long list of protocols it can use but the visual interface; Just about everything about the way it works and looks can be customized. The look of the contact list can be tweaked to one’s liking in just about every way possible, making it easy to find your online buddies. Message windows can be individual or tabbed in a single window and they way they display the messages also has several options to suit ones needs from a very professional appearance to something more along the lines of iPhone text messages. Even the icon on the dock can be set to various different colors or you can easily import your own.

Did I mention it supports Growl notifications? For those unfamiliar with it, Growl integrates with many programs on your system to show you little pop-up notifications of what is happening in the background without making you Cmd-Tab back and forth. Adium integrates with Growl perfectly and allows you to see when your buddies come online or go offline, when you get a message, when a file transfer is completed, or just about anything else within the program that you might want a notification about.

Just about the only feature that I truly wish Adium had that it does not have integrated is video chat. Many of the chat protocols it has integrated can support this, but the program itself does not (yet?) support it.

Sounds like a great application, right? Well, I’ve got more good news. It’s free.

If you chat online via one of the various popular chat programs out there or even multiples, then this is the application for you. It blows just about any other chat program out of the water and will make your Windows-using friends jealous that they can’t get it.

Words With Friends
Category: Games
Last Updated: November 1st, 2009
Current Version: 3.0.4
Size: 2.7 MB
Price: Free ($2.99 For Ads-Free Version)

Words With Friends is quite possibly the most addicting and fun online game I have yet to play on the iPhone. Easily the hands-down best word game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Words is a must-have for any fan of word games. Although there is still room for improvement, as I will touch on later, this game takes the classic board game of Scrabble, of which I am also a huge fan, and mixes things up a bit to presumably avoid getting sued. Essentially, the rules are exactly the same as Scrabble, but the double and triple letter and word tiles are rearranged and some of the letters have different values. There is of course an offline mode allowing you to hand your phone back and forth and play with a friend, but where the application really shines is the online play. If you have friends with an iPhone you can send an invite to them through your contacts list (It searches your contacts’ emails to see if they have a matching email on record with a game account) or you can enter their Words username. If you don’t have friends who can play or are just looking for a challenge, you can also have the game automatically search for an opponent and assign you to someone random. Games can be played at a very quick pace or sometimes you only end up making a move every once in a while and the game can stretch over days. For those slower-paced games, it even uses push notifications to alert you when it’s your turn, if you so desire. Don’t worry, though, if an opponent takes too long to play they will automatically forfeit after several days of inactivity. If you’re as hooked as I am and get impatient waiting for an opponent to play, you can also play multiple games at once, up to 20 simultaneous games – a number which makes my brain hurt.

To be fair to an otherwise incredible game, I will be touching on the improvements that I briefly mentioned earlier. First and foremost would simply be an option to mute the game’s sounds without completely silencing your phone. Aside from that, any other improvements would simply make an already great game even better. For starters, some sort of statistic tracking would be fantastic. Even if it isn’t something along the lines of a global leaderboard, just seeing some local stats such as your own win/loss ratio, your best scoring word, and other similar stats would be fantastic. It would also be nice to have a published word list or for them to simply just use the TWL that is accepted by clubs and tournaments across the country. It would also be nice to see the potential score of your word as you are placing down the letters and maybe highlight the placed letters in red if they do not form a valid word. Last, but certainly not least, would be the ability to more easily rearrange your letters when it is your turn and allowing you to move them and test placement while you are waiting for the other player to make their move.

Aside from the improvements I just mentioned, some of which are hopefully already being worked on by the developers, this game is absolutely fantastic. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and are looking for a good time sink, install the Word With Friends. You will not be disappointed.

IMDb
Category: Entertainment
Last Updated: December 8th, 2009
Current Version: 1.0.0
Size: 0.5 MB
Price: Free

IMDb likely makes just about anyone’s list of the absolute best websites on the Internet, but for an extremely long time there was a void for users of smart phones or other mobile devices. Not only were there no decent applications that could access it’s formidable database of everything related to TV and Movies, but there was no officially supported mobile website. That era, however, is now at an end.

With the release of an official IMDb app for the iPhone, you can now easily and quickly access virtually any information from your phone that you would be able to access from your computer. You can quickly and easily access movie show times at a theater near you, see what’s on TV, read about upcoming movies, see the latest box office results and there’s even a fun little page called “Born Today” which will tell you which people in their database share a birthday on whichever day it happens to be. The real gem of the app, however, is the search box at the top of the first screen that allows you to search IMDb. This is where most users will likely spend their time, looking up actors, directors, movies, shows, or any other information you could possibly want to know in regards to just about any movie or TV show ever created and everyone who worked on them. This is exactly what makes IMDb the Internet gem that it is. There is no way for me to count the number of times I have used IMDb while watching TV or a movie (not in the theater, of course) to read about the actors, see what else they’ve been in, or just learn some fun trivia about them. Having this app available makes that habit much easier to do. Anyone who has an iPhone and is a fan of movies should be installing this right now, if they haven’t already.

Any avid mac user is familiar with the capabilities of the Menu bar. There are some great built-in icons in that upper right hand corner of your screen, such as the clock, spotligh search, wireless, and volume control, but here are a few third party options that will take the utility of your menu bar to the next level.

iStat Menus
This is the grand-daddy of menu bar stat tools, offering a pull-down calendar, CPU usage, disk usage, memory usage, network activity, and more. For the short period of time that this was not yet compatible with Snow Leopard, I was completely lost.

Butler
Butler’s goal is to make every day common tasks that you perform on your Mac easier. It’s functionality extends far beyond simply the menu bar, but the menu bar features in particular can make just about every aspect of using your Mac easier and quicker.

Caffeine
Caffeine for your Mac serves the same purpose as it does for your body. It prevents you from falling asleep. This tiny program sits innocently in your menu bar until you activate it before doing any task in which you don’t want your Mac to fall asleep, such as watching a movie.

FeedAnimal
If you have a few RSS/Atom feeds that you like to keep tabs on, then this little menu bar icon is perfect. It displays the unread count next to the icon and can even broadcast new items to Growl.

Spirited Away
Hate clutter on your screen? Spirited Away gets rid of it. It’ll just innocently sit on your menu bar and check to see how long your applications have been idle. If an application is idle for a set amount of time, it will get hidden.

Camouflage
If, like me, you have a desktop cluttered with icons, then you might want to clear that up sometimes and remind yourself of what your wallpaper is. Camouflage temporarily hides all desktop icons to do just that.

Coconut Wifi
Mac OS X has it’s built in wifi icon, but Coconut Wifi offers what it doesn’t. It displays you a small bubble on the menu bar which indicates whether you’re in range of a wireless network or not and gives info if you click it.

Know other free menu bar applications that you think deserve a place on this list? Leave a comment and let us know!

Urbanspoon
Category: Travel
Last Updated: October 14th, 2009
Current Version: 1.12
Size: 0.7 MB
Price: Free

Urbanspoon, for those of you unaware of this iconic iPhone app, is a tool to help you find, rate, and review the best restaurants. Be sure to check their website to make sure they have restaurants in your area, but don’t worry because they have listings it pretty much every major metropolitan area of the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

One of the main functions of the application is their restaurant wheel. Simply shake your phone and it will randomly give you a suggestion in your area. If you need to narrow it down a bit, lock in a neighborhood, type of food, or price range to be more specific about the choices it gives you. This is fun at first, but the novelty of the slot-machine search wears off pretty fast. Where the program truly excels is the “Browse” section. This allows you to look at a wide variety of restaurants, searching through neighborhoods, types of food, popular restaurants, and much more. Each section gives you a list of top-rated restaurants as well as more options to narrow it down further and find exactly what you want. Looking for something more close to wherever you are at that moment? Tap on over to the “Scope” section and a map will pop up with the GPS zeroing in on your current location and a few seconds later pins will be placed on every listed restaurant in your immediate area. Click on the pin to see what it is, where it is, get a phone number, and read any reviews. Perhaps you already know exactly what you’re looking for and just need to find the website or get a phone number to make reservations or place your order. If that is the case, then their search feature is perfect for you. Type in what you’re looking for and it’ll tell you what you need.

As with the some of the most successful iPhone apps, social networking is as popular as ever and Urbanspoon does not disappoint. In addition to all of the other features it offers, you can create an account with them (for free of course) and start rating the restaurants you’ve been to with a thumbs up or thumbs down, write reviews, leave comments, submit changes for a restaurant if something is wrong or missing, and even submit new restaurants that haven’t been listed yet. This, in my opinion, is what really pushes Urbanspoon over the top to be the truly fantastic App that it is.

Whether you are a self-described foodie or just looking for a great new place to eat, this application is a must-have on any iPhone or iPod touch.

Seeing as they are barely available, I do not have one of these yet, nor have I decided if I will get one, as I’m very fond of my blasphemous Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer. I have, however, had the opportunity to play around with it in my local Apple store. In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that I have never in the history of Apple-designed mice been a fan of them. For some reason, they have never been able to really nail down a design that both works well, feels comfortable, and does what I need it to do.

Here’s the breakdown of its features:

The Good

• Bluetooth – This means it is truly wireless. No USB receiver taking up a spot on the back of your computer and cluttering up your desk.
• Seamless Multi-Touch Surface – There’s never been a mouse like this before. The entire top surface is multi-touch, bringing a feature enjoyed on the trackpad of Mac laptop users everywhere to the desktop. From Apple’s website, “Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere.”
• Laser – It doesn’t get more precise than this, and is far more precise than the older optical tracking. It makes this mouse perfect for gaming, graphic design, or pretty much any other use.

The Bad

• Seamless Multi-Touch Surface – As awesome as this is, it’s got a learning curve and will take some getting used to. This probably isn’t for everyone, so unless you already know you’ll like it, swing by your local Apple store and play around before buying one.
• Form – I’m not entirely sold yet on how this feels in my hand. I’ve got relatively large hands, so I’m used to having a relatively large mouse.

The Ugly

• Apparently there is zero support for Dashboard and Exposé (yet?). This could be a deal-breaker for many Mac users.

There you have it! I hope you’ve enjoyed our very first new product review here at The Apple Vine. Please feel free to reply with any comments you might have about this review or about the Magic Mouse.