Graham Ranson, the developer of the "Airsoft Helper" smartphone application that will help you check the power rating of your airsoft gun has released a new app for you to keep track of your hits in playing airsoft. "Kill Counter" is available at iTunes for 69p and there's an Android version but we can't seem to find it at the Android Market.

This is not a complicated app as it will help you tally your hits, both your "kills" and "deaths" to see how you are fairing in skirmishes. Apart from keeping your personal stats, sync your scores with other players and find a real time leaderboard. With the brightness control you can lessen the brightness of your smartphone so it won't give away your position, or make your expensive smartphone become an attractive target to other players.

With the live rankings table you get 4 columns:

• Ranking
• Player Name
• Kill/Death
• Average

If you're an FPS video gamer, this is a familiar leaderboard for you, with the exception that you have to manually enter your kills and deaths rather than have the system do it for you automatically in video games. If there's a website to which the mobile app can be synched to see an even bigger leader board of players who are using this app worldwide.

It's a neat and simple app but our take on this is about confirmations of kills and deaths. Since you yourself would have to enter the information, who can verify such as compared to video games where the game server itself would verify and track your progress? For now let us assume that anyone using this is 101% honest in keeping scores, just like airsoft players who call their hits in this honesty-based game.

Whilst in airsoft teams we always do some bragging about our kills and acknowledging our hits, we always keep them just like that, an oral account of our airsoft games. With this app, you can record your scores and show to everyone to backup your story. Though for other players, being modest about their skills in airsoft games would rather avoid this app as it would make them squeamish. At the end of the day, testimonials of other airsoft players about your conduct and skills in airsoft are more important than having an app.

This app needs a confirmation process or tool in order for it to be really effective and it's going to be a tall order. If someone can make a helmet cam that can communicate to your smartphone such as the Contour HD GPS can help record and confirm such score via bluetooth. Both the app for that helmet cam and the Kill Counter can be merged together to come up with an even more awesome app.

You can check more smartphone apps made by Graham at his website.