Halloween’s just creeping around the corner, and what better way to celebrate it than with some spooky fun Halloween apps? Got to spruce up the season with a matching wallpaper.

Halloween cards or even better, a virtual jack-o-lantern! Besides, having a Halloween game or two installed will keep your children busy while you enjoy the event yourself.

So here’s 30 Halloween-themed apps for your iPhone and Android devices – have fun experimenting and playing around with them. Happy Halloween!

Read Also: 50+ Be-Bewitched Halloween Wallpapers

iPhone Apps

With so many iOS Halloween apps in the App Store, which ones are worth downloading? We have shortlisted some of the best Halloween apps here:

Halloween Card Creator

Halloween Card Creator lets you customize your own Halloween cards with widgets, touch gestures and more. Choose from the array of spooky but cute Halloween backgrounds, fonts and clip arts, or use photos from your own album as decor. You can easily save or share your designed card on Facebook or via email from the app itself. [Free]

Halloween!

If you’re looking for an all-in-one app, then Halloween! is a good pick for you. With a library of Halloween ringtones, wallpapers, costume ideas and trivia at your disposal, Halloween! is also packed with a built-in countdown and flashlight, perfect for when you go trick or treating! [Free]

Halloween City

Develop and rule your very own Halloween City: where the undead roam. Cross-breed the different Halloween characters: vampires, werewolves, mummies, zombies and witches to get unexpected results. Don’t forget to check out haunted houses and spooky lairs, and snap a shot or two to show your friends the city you reign over. [Free]

Shoot the Pumpkin

Play as Dracula displaying his bow and arrow skills as he takes aim at the pumpkin on Frankenstein’s head. You have an unlimited supply of arrows, but make sure that you don’t launch an epic Dracula-Frankenstein war by missing your aim and shooting Frankenstein instead. [$0.99]

Zombie Smash

Mash zombies up with survival-based castle defense, and you’ll get ZombieSmash, where you’re a lone survivor fighting to keep off stubborn zombies from eating your brains this Halloween. Flick and smash them until they can’t even return as the undead. Use special upgrades like rolling boulders, asteroids and other torture tools. Switch on Multiplayer Battle Mode and compete with your siblings and buddies to see who will be the last man standing. [$0.99]

The Very Hungry Pumpkin+

Halloween isn’t just about pumpkins and spooky things, it’s also about trick-or-treating and sweet things! Like the cute name suggests, this is a simple game even for young children, where they try to guide Pumpkin to as much candies as they can while avoid bumping into other trick-or-treaters. [Free]

Halloween Wallpaper HQ

Any season’s a reason to personalize your wallpaper. With this app, you can select and download beautiful Halloween-themed wallpapers, all in high quality. [Free]

Hell Puzzle

For puzzle lovers, Hell Puzzle features many Halloween HD images for your arranging delight. You’ll almost forget that you’re working on an iPad rather than a solid puzzle. The realistic images, with capacity for virtual movements around your work table will keep you engaged. The app comes with a timer to see how you fare, and best of all your end product can also be saved as your new iPad wallpaper. [$0.99]

House of Shadows

For you adventurous folks, House of Shadows is an addictive hide-and-sneak puzzle game. Play as a kid who is trying to help a sibling who has wandered into a haunted house. Lead them to safety by avoiding and outsmarting the restless ghosts and zombies. [$0.99]

LEGO Halloween Creationary

Guess what Halloween-themed creature, place, thing or costume Lego is building with its bricks as quickly as you can to get the most points. The game gets more challenging the more you play, so give it a try and see if you’re a Master Lego Creationary! [Free]

Make A Zombie

Why not raise your own pet zombie this Halloween? Create your own zombie by putting together unique hairstyles, heads, eyes, torso, clothes and other body parts. You can create more than one with this app, and unleash them on Twitter and Facebook, or even make cut-oto life. [Free]

Pumpkin Ninja

A ninja is everywhere, even during Halloween! Slash your way through evil falling pumpkins to gain points, and avoid shurikens that will cut down your life force. [$0.99]

Pumpkin Pal

Like Carve-a-Pumpkin, Pumpkin Pal turns your iPad into a ready-to-carve jack-o-lantern. Pick patterns, carve away, and even undo marks that don’t quite make the cut. The app even features a slider for you to dim the lights for the perfect spooky glowing Halloween pumpkin. [$0.99]

Restaurant Story

Restaurant Story is back with a new festive touch: Halloween Edition. Adorn your restaurant with cobwebs, cauldrons or spooky pianos and hire Zombie Waiters to serve your customers. You can even hold a Monster Bash for Halloween Guests and cook up special recipes like Graveyard Pudding and Bewitching Cupcakes to costumed guests who turn up for a little bit of trick-or-treat! [Free]

ZombieBooth: 3D Zombifier

Ever thought of how you’ll look like if you’re infected and turned into a zombie? Then try out this ZombieBooth, packed with 3D and animated features. Make your pet dog your zombie sidekick by recording videos of the zombie team together and send it to your terrified friends! [$0.99]

Carve-a-Pumpkin

Love to carve pumpkins but hate to clean up afterwards? Carve a virtual one instead where you can choose from different pumpkin styles, add in wacky eyes and mouths, or completely customize your own design? You can also add messages and share your art with your friends! [Free]

Halloween Soundlab

Halloween Soundlab is the handy companion for the prankster at heart. When all is silent and dark on Halloween night, flick this app on and play eerie sounds, ranging from ‘Creepy Organ’ to ‘Empty Rocking Chair’. Freak someone out! [$0.99]

Android Apps

For the Android army, here are some Halloween apps that will definitely make your Halloween more enjoyable!

Halloween Popper

Halloween Popper is a customizable wallpaper app where you can design your own wallpaper with bats, pumpkins, ghosts and many more. [$0.99]

Halloween Party Soundboard!

The Android counterpart to iPhone’s Soundlab, the Soundboard is pure fun. Select a delay (from 5 to 60 seconds), choose the scariest sound from Psycho to Scarecrow, keep your phone hidden, and give your friends the scare of their life as the sounds play by itself! [Free]

Pumpkins vs. Monsters

It’s an all-out battle between pumpkins and monsters! Flick pumpkins to inflict damage on monsters before they get to you. With the different attributes of pumpkins and many stage levels, this addictive game will keep you entertained for hours. [Free]

Connect ‘Em Halloween

Connect blobs together in Connect’Em Halloween. It may sound like a no-brainer, but it takes careful strategy to solve the puzzle as each blob can only connect for a set number of times. Your Halloween mission is to make sure they’re all connected to each other correctly. [Free]

Doctor Bubble Halloween

Another puzzle for your Halloween, Dr Bubble Halloween is a classic: shoot bubbles to form groups of three identical Microbes/Pumpkins before they drown you. Simplistic but be warned, it can be really addictive. [Free]

Halloween Ghosts

Halloween Ghosts is going to animate your Android’s wallpaper with roaming ghosts! Pick from the different backgrounds, and set the number of ghouls you would like to see, as well as if you would like to hear their spooky sounds. Comes with a countdown timer for the Halloween mood! [$0.99]

Spooky Hangman

Hangman with a Halloween twist! Try to guess the word before the man’s hanged! And don’t let yourself be distracted by realistic, creepy sounds like a witch’s cackle and eerie church bells. [Free]

Twisted Lands: Shadow Town

In this hidden object game riddled with unspeakable horrors, you play as Mark who is searching for his wife, Angel. Their boat was shipwrecked on the mystery island of Shadow Town and his wife dragged into the darkness. Solve mind-challenging puzzles and explore spine-chilling secrets as he attempts to stay alive in the shady town. [$1.99]

Chalk ball Halloween

You’re now a Spiderman (sort of)! Draw spider webs with your finger to keep a Pumpkin bouncing safely- of course, the webs don’t stay around forever. With the many different stages, it’s much more than just keeping the Pumpkin afloat as zombies, vampires and spiders make their appearance to thwart your mission. At the end of each stage you’ll get to have some good old fun Halloween Trivia. [Free]

Creepy Tales

If you’re not into trick-or-treating or wild Halloween parties, then you might want to curl yourself up with friends and families listening to horror stories. With Creepy Tales, choose from different short stories to entertain each other for the evening, and see who’s the bravest of all. [Free]

Trick or Tracker

Trick or Tracker is a very useful application which will give parents ease of mind when their children go trick-or-treating. This app lets your children send you their exact location according to the time interval you set. Also available for iPhone. [$4.99]

House of Horrors

With over one hundred full-length horror movies available for your viewing pleasure in House of Horrors, you can happily enjoy an all-night long horror flick marathon on Halloween. Just make sure you have that popcorn ready by your side. [$0.99]

Related posts:

1. 20 Essential Apps For Your Android Phone
2. 15 Android Apps Every Blogger Should Have
3. 10 Useful Apps to Recover a Lost or Stolen iPhone
4. Siri Alternative Apps for Android – Best Of

Editor’s note: This article is contributed by Muhammad Panji.

Google Apps provides basically all Google services that you currently have with your Google Account. Besides email, you will get contacts, calendar and other google services that you can use. But did you know that you can have the added privilege of using your own domain in your email address? Instead of having yourname@gmail.com, youcan use yourname@yourdomain.com to deal and collaborate with my clients.

Why use Google Apps?, I hear you ask. Well, if Google’s massive infrastructure across email, web and mobile platforms is not a convincing (enough) factor, then you may be happy to know that you get a 10 GB email quota with Google Apps and an extra 15 GB when you use Google Apps for Business. It’s perfect for small and medium businesses that don’t have an in-house team to manage their IT needs.

Best of all, Google Apps is free for up to 10 users, which is enough for a small organization to get things going. If you want to break that limit, you can always choose to upgrade to Google Apps for Business.

Setting up Google Apps

There are three offerings of Google Apps: Google Apps (free), Google Apps For Business, and Google Apps for Business with Vault. You can compare the three on the pricing page but in this article, we’ll just learn how to setup the free Google Apps edition.

Now, you will need a domain name, which is an address that indicates your presence on the Internet. To get a domain, you can register the domain with a domain registrar, such as namecheap, 1&1, GoDaddy, Name, and Gandi among others.

Most DNS registrars provide DNS Servers to its customers like namecheap does, but if yours don’t give one you can use any free service like Hurricane Electric or afraid.org. If you register your domain with your hosting provider, it’s most likely they will provide a DNS Server for you. You can also register a domain name via Google (Google partnering with GoDaddy and eNom). The DNS entry that you have to edit are MX records and CNAME Records.

MX Records is the record that defines which mail server is used by your domain whereas CNAME Records is an alias that we can use to access the webmail and other google apps service.

Registering Google Apps

In this tutorial I will use labs.kurungsiku.com as my domain name. I have already created a subdomain on my cPanel for this.

1. To start registering Google Apps for your domain, point your favorite browser to http://google.com/a/ or http://google.com/apps/, choose Pricing. Click the Start Now button below Google Apps.

   

2. As I mentioned earlier, if you don’t have a domain yet, you can register one via Google. When you enter the domain on the “Enter the domain name you would like to use with Google Apps” section, Google will check if the domain is still available or not. If it’s still available, Google will offer you the domain to register.

   

3. If the domain is already registered, you wil see the form below. Fill in the form. Make sure that the email address you enter on "Alternate email address" is correct and accessible. The username that you enter here will be the administrator’s username – it doesn’t have to be administrator or admin, you can just use your username as the administrator. After you finish, click “I accept! Create my account”.

   

4. If the form submission is successful, you’ll be redirected to the setup wizard page. If you were logged on to your gmail account, you will be asked to switch to your new admin account.

   

Setting Up Google Apps

After registration, you’ll be redirected to a setup wizard page to complete the setup process.

1. The first page of the wizard is just a welcome page, click Next.

   

2. The second page is about site verification. This step is really important since you cannot use Google Apps until you verify your domain ownership; click Next.

   

Verifying your domain ownership

There are four options to verify your domain ownership, you just have to choose one to verify. The first and most recommended method is to upload an HTML file that is prepared by Google to your server. Just download the file and upload it to your server using a file manager or FTP client.

The second method is adding a meta tag to your site. If you use WordPress, you can open the theme editor to open the file Header (header.php), find the </head> tag, and put the meta tag on top of that closing tag.

The third method is creating a TXT record on your DNS. With cPanel, you can choose Advanced DNS Zone Editor from the Domains pane. Choose the domain that you have, enter the domain name, choose TXT for Type, and for TXT Data paste the one provided by Google.

Check the bottom of the page to check the new DNS record.

The last method is using the Google Analytics code that support asynchronous snippets.

In this tutorial, I choose the DNS method to verify, after creating the record (or another verification method of your choice), click Verify.

If the verification process is successful, you will get a Congratulations message.

setting Up Gmail

1. After the "Users and Groups" setup and the ‘Apps’ setup, click Next or Do this later until you reach this screen (below). Click Next to proceed.

   

2. To set up Gmail for your domain, choose Google Servers and choose Next.

   

3. On Direct mailflow to Google servers, choose your domain host, choose Other if not applicable, and click Next.

   

4. This page contains information of the MX record that you have to create so that your domain can use google mail server. The Priority could be different but the order must be the same. For example, if you cannot create priorities 1 5 5 10 10, you can create priorities 10 15 15 20 20. The MX records info are available on support.google.com

   

5. Click Next. It will give error since we haven’t setup MX records yet. That’s OK, we’ll deal with this on the next step.

   

6. You can just click Next for the rest of the wizard. After finishing the wizard you will be redirected to Google Apps Dashboard. You can choose your email options. The options only apply to you as administrator.

   

Setting up MX

1. To setup MX records using cPanel, Choose MX Entry on "Mail”.

   

2. Choose your Domain, add MX entry one by one.

   

3. The final MX records for your domain will look like this.

   

4. Go back to Google Apps. If you already on the dashboard, you can choose Setup > Set up Gmail. Click Next.

   

5. Google will check MX entry for your domain, if you have already configured the MX entry right, it will be shown on the next page.

   

6. The Email service has also been activated. The email service is already activated when it shows your email with the address http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com.

Setup CNAME for Webmail

1. Choose "Settings", click “Email” on the left.

   

2. Choose the second radiobox; you can enter the subdomain that you want to use so long as it’s not used yet: mail, webmail or even if it’s just m. Click Next.

   

3. The next page contain instructions on what CNAME you should add on your DNS. Just click I’ve completed these steps.

   

4. Now time to create a CNAME record on your DNS. Open your cPanel, choose Advanced DNS Zone Editor. The name should be the same as you have entered in the previous step, TTL: 14400, Type: CNAME, and CNAME: ghs.google.com.

   

5. Check on the bottom that you have created the right entry.

   

Wrap Up

And there you have it, your email address with your organization’s domain name. We hope that this tutorial has been helpful to you. Now, give it a test run by sending it to another email address.

Related posts:

1. Setting Up POP3 Email With iPad [Quicktip]
2. Essential Guide to Managing Google Contacts
3. A Guide to: Goals and Funnels in Google Analytics
4. Guide to A/B Testing with Google Website Optimizer

In our previous posts, we’ve used SVG to create shapes. In this post, as the title said, we will look into creating Text with SVG. There are a lot of things we can do with text beyond what plain HTML text is capable of doing.

So, let’s check them out.

Recommended Reading: A Look into Scalable Vector Graphic

Basic Implementation

But, before we go further, let’s see how Text in SVG is formed at its very basic level:

  <svg>  <text x="0" y="15">This is Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) Text</text>  </svg>  

The text in SVG, as you can see from the above code snippet, is defined with a sufficiently logical tag, <text>. This element basically only requires x and y attributes to specify the baseline coordinates.

Image source: Wikipedia.org

And here is how the text will look like. For now it seems it has no difference with regular text in HTML.

Basic Text Styles

Text can also be styled with CSS properties such as font-weight, font-style, and text-decoration which can be implemented either through inline-style, internal-style or external-style like we have discussed in the previous post about Styling SVG with CSS. Here are some of the examples.

Bold

  <text style="font-weight: bold;">This is text in Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG)</text>  

Italic

  <text style="font-style: italic;">This is italic text in Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG)</text>  

Underline

  <text style="text-decoration: underline;">This is underlined text in Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG)</text>  

<tspan> Element

In some cases, when we only want to apply styles or attributes to particular portion of the Text, we can use <tspan>. This example below shows how we add bold, italic and underline to a single line of text.

  <text x="0" y="15"><tspan style="font-weight: bold;">This is bold</tspan>, <tspan style="font-style: italic;">this is italic</tspan> and <tspan style="text-decoration: underline;">this is underline</tspan></text>  

Writing Mode

Text is not only written from left-to-right. In other parts of the world, Japan for example, the text is written from top-to-bottom. In SVG, this can be done by using the writing-mode attribute.

  <text x="70" y="20" style="writing-mode: tb;" class="japanese">ぁぃぅぇぉかき</text>  </svg>  

In the example above, we have put several random Japanese characters (don’t ask me their meaning, I really have no idea) and change the orientation with this style declaration, writing-mode: tb, where tb is stand for top-to-bottom.

Text Outline

Text in SVG is basically a graphic, so we can also apply the stroke attribute to add a border line to the Text just like we did with the other shapes.

  <svg>  <text x="0" y="50px" font-size="50px" font-weight="bold" stroke="black" stroke-width="0.5" fill="none">This is SVG Text</text>  </svg>  

In the above code snippet, we have added the stroke attribute to the <text> element and remove the text color by specifying the fill attribute to none which will result in the following text presentation.

Text Path

In SVG, the Text is not only able to be displayed horizontally and vertically, but it can also follow a Path pattern. Here is how to do it.

First, we need to define the Path. However, creating a Path directly in HTML is not that intuitive, we need to understand coordinates and some commands which I’m sure most of us will try to avoid. So, to make this step simpler, I personally suggest to just open up a vector editor (Inkscape or Illustrator), create a path, and generate the SVG code.

Then, put the <path> element inside a <defs> element. defs here means definition.

  <defs>  <path id="textpath" fill="none" stroke="#000000" d="M0.057,0.024c0,0,10.99,51.603,102.248,51.603c91.259,0,136.172,53.992,136.172,53.992"/>  </defs>  

Notice that we have also added an id attribute to the <path>. Now, we only need to link the Path id to our text with <textPath> element, like so;

  <use xlink:href="#textpath"/>  <text x="10" y="100">  <textPath xlink:href="#textpath">  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur.  </textPath>  </text>  

Further reading: SVG Paths

Text Gradient

Adding a background to fill the Text is also possibile in SVG, and if you have succeeded in the Text Path section above, this would be much easier.

First, we need to define the gradient colors.

  <defs>  <linearGradient id="textgradient" x1="0%" x2="0%" y1="0%" y2="100%">      <stop stop-color="#999" offset="0%"/>      <stop stop-color="#111" offset="100%"/>  </linearGradient>  </defs>  

When all the necessary definitions are set up, now we only need to add the text and refer the fill attribute to the gradient’s id attribute, as follows;

  <text x="0" y="80" font-size="72" font-weight="bold" fill="url(#textgradient)" stroke="none">Gradient</text>  

And here it is, the text with gradient.

Further reading: SVG Gradient and Pattern

Further References

Text in SVG is undoubtedly powerful, there are actually many things we are able to do beyond what we can accomodate in this post. So, below we have put together a few more references to serve your interest in this subject.

• About Fonts in SVG – Divya Manian
• SVG Text Official Documentation – W3.org
• SVG Dovumentation at Mozilla Dev. Network with Examples and Tools – MDN
• SVG Writing Mode Attribute – MDN
• Write Japanase HTML Characters – Peer Wandel Hansen

• View Demo
• Download Source

Related posts:

1. A Look into: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
2. Styling Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) with CSS
3. Creating The Avengers Text Effect With Illustrator & Photoshop
4. Product Graphics: 6 Techniques to Make Images More Informative