App Smart: Playing in Ice and Snow, Without Ever Venturing Outdoors

Playing in Ice and Snow, Without Ever Venturing Outdoors

App Smart: Winter Games: Apps for iOS and Android let you enjoy winter-themed games, including skiing and snowboarding, from the comfort of the indoors.

Yes, it's cold outside. And yes, it's getting slushy and dark and snowy and wet.

Ski Challenge 14 is one of the winter-themed games available as apps for iOS and Android.

Crazy Snowboard places you in control of a snowboarder navigating a downhill terrain peppered with obstacles and jumps.

In Icycle: On Thin Ice, the player is a tiny, naked cartoon figure riding a bicycle.

Fear not, winter also means playing in the snow and skating, skiing and building snowmen. And if you really don't want to go outside, you can enjoy some of this fun with winter-themed games, played on your phone.

Fresh on iOS is the hilarious and highly addictive icycle: on Thin Ice. The app is a 2-D action game that blends traditional gaming genres like platforms and ladders with racing.

But this description does not do the game justice. What other game lets you play a tiny naked cartoon guy riding a tiny bicycle over difficult terrain? The graphics are fabulously cute, and as the gameplay changes from level to level it requires different skills. In some levels, you have to carefully time moves to dodge falling icicles. In others, you have to navigate through mazelike obstacles.

Icycle: On Thin Ice is great fun. But it's not easy, and you'll find yourself revisiting levels to complete challenges like finding hidden items. I can't find much to criticize in this game apart from how much time it may eat up. Also, be careful of the in-app purchases if you give it to your children to play, because those purchases can cost up to $20. The nudity in the game is definitely cartoonish and should be of the safe-for-work variety in most cases. The app costs $1.

For a more winter-sports-like game that may remind you of the fabulous snowboarding game SSX on gaming consoles, try out Crazy Snowboard, free on iOS or Android. This pseudosimulation game places you in control of a snowboarder navigating a downhill terrain peppered with obstacles and jumps. You steer your phone in the air to make turns and tap on the screen to spin or do tricks like grabbing your snowboard in any one of a number of impressive ways.

The game has 3-D graphics, engaging music and sounds and such extras as changeable boards and snowsuits. There are several playing modes, like free play or mission-based downhill runs, to keep your interest. And as you earn more points, you can buy more outfits or more impressive tricks.

But amusing as the game is, it lacks some of the compelling sizzle you might expect if you've played a console skiing or boarding game, partly because you travel the slopes alone with no other players to race (or crash) against. The full “pro” versions ($2 on iOS and $1.03 on Android) do have more content, including more outfits, tricks and missions, and this may account for why the game is so popular on both platforms.

An alternative game on iOS and Android is Ski & Snowboard 2013. This game also has 3-D graphics that simulate real winter sports environments, and has a number of gameplay styles. But it's less about pulling off tricks than cleverly negotiating courses like giant slaloms or proper ski jumps, and in some modes it pits you against other downhill racers so it feels more dynamic.

There's also the option of choosing between playing as a skier or snowboarder, and you can choose to have on-screen touch controls instead of waving your phone in the air to steer your character.

It is fun, and you can try the free edition before paying $2 for the “full” editions on iOS and $1 on Android, which have more tracks to complete and more options. But the paid versions also lack a certain addictive edge for me, and there's one strange flaw: While you can choose which character you want to be - each with slightly different skills - there are no female racers.

If it's a skiing game experience you're after, then Ski Challenge 14, free on Android and iOS, is definitely one to try. This game has perhaps the most impressive graphics of the apps mentioned here. Playing it by rotating your phone, you almost get the sensation of skis biting into the snow to make tight turns.

There are several courses to choose from, though you have to qualify and race on them to unlock the later ones. There's even a sense of competition, thanks to the online mode where your live race times are compared with other players. But the game requires you set up a (free) account, and it's designed to get you to buy in-app “coins” to upgrade your experience or repair your skis, which have limited on-snow time. This can quickly get annoying.

Finally, check out Ski on Neon, $1 on iOS, and Stickman Snowboarder, free on Android, for some simple 2-D casual gaming. Both are games you'll come back to again and again.

Oh, don't forget to go outside, too! Winter really isn't that bad.

Quick Call

The popular finance app Mint has hit Windows Phone 8 devices. It's integrated into Microsoft's Live Tiles system so a glance at your phone's home screen keeps you up to date on your spending. Mint is free.

A version of this article appears in print on December 12, 2013, on page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Playing in Ice and Snow, Without Ever Venturing Outdoors.

State of the Art: Keep an Eye on Children, or Other Valuables

Keep an Eye on Children, or Other Valuables

The Dropcam Pro can stream video to a computer or mobile device. The recorded feed from earlier in the week can be retrieved from a timeline.

I still remember the baby monitor my parents had - my friends and I used as a primitive walkie-talkie.

It was very basic: One boxy unit went in the baby's room near the crib. It had a microphone so if the baby made a sound you'd hear it on the other unit, at the end of a long wire. You could even send your voice back up the wire to lull the little one back to sleep.

Needless to say, our games were limited by that wire.

Technology has improved quite a bit since my childhood, of course, a point made ridiculously clear by the newly released Dropcam Pro.

Dropcam Pro is a $200 wireless webcam with two-way audio and night-vision capabilities. It's an upgrade over the previous model, simply named Dropcam. The size-imaging sensor in the new unit is twice as big, which means the camera captures much more light and can deliver a better picture with more zoom capability.

Plus, it has a 130-degree field of view, bigger than the previous 107 degrees. What does this mean? In my case, it means that after standing the camera on a shelf in my children's room it can see a lot of the floor, a bit of the ceiling, the window, the door and their beds from about six feet away. All in up to 1080p, HD video detail, even at night.

The camera unit itself is a sturdy, plain, hockey-puck-shaped device, and it clips into a similarly sturdy and plain metal stand. The stand can be placed on a flat surface, and you can turn it left and right and tilt the camera up and down. This stand can also be clipped into a plastic mount that can be screwed to a wall or ceiling for a more permanent installation.

The main limitation: you need to be within about 10 feet of a power socket, because that's the length of the cable that comes with it.

Over the years, my wife and I have tried a number of baby monitors, but they've either been unreliable or tricky to set up and maintain. This seems to be the situation the team at Dropcam has tried to avoid. Installing, then setting Dropcam up and using it via a web-based control from a computer or an app on an iOS or Android device couldn't be simpler.

To start, you hook the cam's cable to your computer's USB port and follow the on-screen instructions, either on a Mac or a PC. The menus appear in a web browser interface and are fuss-free. They guide you through the steps of setting up a free account with Dropcam's cloud services and connecting your camera to your home's wireless network. The whole process takes about two minutes.

Next, plug the camera in where you want it. The browser window you were using for the setup changes to the camera's view, and 12 or so pop-up instructions walk you through controls on the screen.

Through this webpage interface, you view the camera feed and can zoom and pan around the image. In my home, the impressive, eight-times digital zoom is enough to see if my children's eyes are open or shut from six feet away.

At night, the camera automatically switches to an infrared mode. The color video feed is then replaced with an eerie black-and-white view - the Dropcam unit includes its own infrared transmitters to “light up” the dark.

The camera has a microphone so you can listen through your PC and can transmit your voice through a small, built-in loudspeaker by tapping a control on the web page. You can also tell the system to be sensitive to movements or to loud noises and even send an alert to your phone.

Although I've introduced Dropcam Pro as a baby monitor, you can imagine it's capable of much more. The wide-screen camera, night vision and movement or sound alerts make it handy as a home or small business security monitor. But you're hardly going to be watching around the clock.

That's where Dropcam's secure, cloud-recording service comes in handy. It encrypts the video feed in the camera and constantly records it on the company's servers. Then it streams it back to your home using security like your bank's website.

Kit Eaton, a regular contributor to The Times, is a guest columnist for State of the Art.

A version of this article appears in print on December 12, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Keep an Eye On Children, Or Other Valuables.