Inspired by one of Jay’s excellent Lumiappaday videos, this week’s App News is brought to you by AppVegas. I’m spinning the wheel and taking a look at where the journey takes me.

So, having downloaded AppVegas, I was all set to go. Faced by the slot machine-inspired spinning wheels, I can see the following options on the third reel – ‘Paid, Trial, Free’ – and with the ability to lock down an option, I selected free, and got ready to spin (shake).

Gym PocketGuide

Cost: Free in the Marketplace
Availability: Everywhere
In a nutshell: Simple guide to your gym program

First step of the journey is this handy little guide to your gym life. Not much more than a diary listing what exercises to do when, it’s well designed and seems to do exactly what it promises. I say seems because it is Day One, and I haven’t had a chance to test the results yet. Choose whether you are male or female and the aim of your gym visits (muscle building or fat loss), then follow the instructions. It has a clear, clean design and seems to be straightforward to follow.

A good start…time to spin the wheel again…

Basketball

Cost: Free in the Marketplace
Availability: Everywhere
In a nutshell: Side show silliness

I won’t spend much time discussing this one. That game you play at the midway/side show where you shoot as many hoops as you can in a limited amount of time, and the machine spits tickets out? ‘Basketball’ is that. There is the chance to ‘level up’ as you pass the score set and the basket moves further away. But that’s about it as far as I could tell. Fun for a while and a definite time-filler. Get past Level 3 if you can!

Let’s call that not quite a miss, but a rimshot. Spinning for the final time…

Math Challenge

Cost: Free in the Marketplace
Availability: Everywhere
In a nutshell: Brain training

With Junior, Senior and Genius settings, Math Challenge is a test of all things addition, subtraction and…you get the picture. You can practice for a while with easier questions to get used to the numerical input, then challenge the world in a variety of challenges. But be careful, incorrect answers incur time penalties (fat fingers beware!). This was kind of addictive, trying both to beat my own time in practice (who knew I knew so many square roots?), and then taking on the world. 1+1 thumbs up for this one.

So ends my AppVegas journey. It was fun, I discovered a couple of new things. I will say that the app isn’t perfect (I haven’t found a way to bypass foreign language apps, for example), but it’s a very neat way to discover something new if you have no ideas of your own. Have you used AppVegas? How do you find new apps? Let me know in the comments, or send me a tweet.

[Image credits: Gym PocketGuide – WMPowerUser forum

Basketball – Windows Gracias

Math Challenge – 1800 Pocket PC]