The revamped 3G iPhone has everyone buzzing about the cool applications that you can have on your phone, and guess what, while they are great to show-off in front of friends, some of them are actually pretty useful too! Now that the iPhone platform is open to young developers, one can surely expect a wide range of fun games, cool apps, social-networking adaptations for iPhone, and of course, the more important tools for navigation, maps, browsing and search. But not all of them are free, and not all of them are worth it! So here’s a list of the 10 free iPhone applications that should start with on your new iPhone. Download them, use them, and tell us what you think! I’ve left out social networks, as I know you already have them there!

Google Mobile App
This is similar to Firefox 3’s “Awesome Bar” for the iPhone. Not only does this search-bar-on-steroids suggest popular query matches for you once you type in a few letters, but it’ll also search your phone for any contact names that start with the same few letters. Tapping a search result launches it in a browser window, and tapping a contact name lets you message or call them. The program’s Search with My Location feature taps into the iPhone’s ability to detect your location in order to help you find businesses near you. Easy to use, and backed by Google’s tried-and-tested search quality, this is definitely the first thing you need to have on your iPhone.

Evernote
This is the best application for taking, storing or reviewing notes. You can take notes either by typing them, taking a photo or recording your voice. The best thing about it is the web component which allows you to synchronize your notes and access them from where ever you happen to be. You can use Evernote for lists (to-do, shopping, etc), expense tracking, and more. Check more detials on their website.

Pandora’s Music App
Thanks to the iPhone version of Pandora’s free music Web site, you may never need to use the iTunes Music Store again…just as long as you like your music to play randomly. Just enter an artist’s name, press the Create button, and listen as your selected artist and similar-sounding acts play in no particular order. If you already have a Pandora account, the Pandora iPhone app lets you access your preexisting stations and even sends your listening data to your Facebook profile automatically. One fun use for this app: Put your iPhone on your bedside table and have it play your custom stations through the phone’s on-board speakers–it sounds like a clock radio playing all your favorite acts. Surprisingly, this music-streaming app works without a hitch even at EDGE speeds.

Truveo Video Search
Trying to find cool videos to watch on your iPhone? Truveo Video Search lets you find videos from a variety of sites. You can play highest ranked or most popular videos and you can customize the interface with your favorite categories. You can also share videos via email.

Loopt Mobile
This is a location-aware social network that will help you connect with your friends while on the go. You can also use Loopt to discover and explore nearby places and events recommended by your friends and other popular services like Yelp. its good to know that their service is entirely opt-in, and only approved users can track your whereabouts. More for young teenagers, but then, they are the biggest clientele for the new iPhone too, right?!

Remote App
The free Remote app lets you control your iTunes library or on-screen Apple TV action directly with your iPhone via a Wi-Fi connection. Once your iPhone establishes a Wi-Fi connection, you simply select your iPhone from iTunes’ ‘Devices’ list, enter the four-digit passcode on your iPhone’s screen, and use it as a touch-screen clicker. It worked seamlessly in my tests with iTunes.

NYTimes & Mobile News
If you are a news-junkie, and would love to remain in touch with what’s happening around the world, you need to get the NY Times and Mobile News ; between these two apps, all your daily dose of news fetching and sharing is covered! NY Times has content from the New York Times, classified into a number of sections, including Latest News, Business, Opinion, and a Photos section where clicking on an image will take you to a story associated with that image. Stories can be read in either portrait or landscape mode, and the summary page for each category shows headlines, a small portion of the article, and a photo. Mobile News gives you the ability to set up a number of locations for local news. By default, it will set up your current location as one of your locations, and you can easily add others, read saved stories later, or flip between multiple locations. At the bottom of each news story, there are four buttons—you can SMS or email the story to a friend, actually send in a report on a story if you have personal experience to add, and a button to save the story.

eReader
If you are an avid reader who likes reading on the phone-screen, this is a must have app for someone like you. Even if that’s not something you do often, you could read something while commuting in a public transportation or waiting in some queue. I often wonder why Apple did not pre-load a similar eReader app itself? maybe there’ room for iPhone-3!!:) Anyways, for the time being, the eReader app, courtesy of FictionWise, is going to be available for free at the iPhone app store.

SportsTap
If you are a sports-freak like my husband and need to be up-to-date with the latest buzz, SportsTap is totally for you. Be it MLB, NFL, NBA, international soccer, NHL, car racing, NCAA, PGA, tennis, or anything else, SportsTap covers them all–it’s a nice free app that will put these at your fingertips. The interface is clean and intuitive, and the scores load fast, even on EDGE. SportsTap doesn’t allow you to select a favorite team or teams to keep an eye on, but even so, the score you’re looking for is always a couple of taps away.

WeatherBug
This is not an absolute necessity, but these days, the Global Warming is making it very difficult to predict weather based on seasons! So the WeatherBug can help you get satellite weather maps, current radar, detailed forecasts, weather cameras, and severe weather alerts. You can get weather from 45,000 locations all over the world. A weather junkie’s dream, if not yours!

The iPhone is not longer a phone; its a device that replaces your mobile phone and your laptop. With hordes of free applications to choose from, it can be hard to decide what you wan the most. Hope this list helps you find a beginning, and do share with us more iPhone apps via your comments!

via http://ideasandgadgets.blogspot.com/2008/07/10-free-iphone-3g-applications-you-need.html

Posted on July 22nd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iphone applications | No Comments »

Just spotted this one via a post over at Gear Diary, and watched a video demo of this new iPhone ringtone making application called iRinger.

iRinger looks like a very good free option for ringtone creation - offering a very easy to use interface and a good, complete set of features - even down to letting you choose to export a newly created ringtone direct to iTunes or using SSH to directly transfer it to the iPhone.

This one is a Windows only application for now, so I’ve not given it a try as yet (too lazy just now to get iTunes setup on Fusion) - but it looks awfully good in the demo.  Here’s some of the highlights of its feature list:

• Three Steps: Import, Preview then Export. Done.
• Convert virtually any audio format into an iPhone ringtone
• Extracts audio out of video
• Choose which section of the audio you want to hear
• Adjust ringtone length, volume, fade in, fade out and loop gap
• Export to iPhone ringtone format and import right into iTunes
• Export to iPhone using SCP/SFTP and skip using iTunes
• Use audio effects: Delay, Flanger, Boost, Reverse, etc.

For more on iRinger, see its home page, or check out the demo video HERE …

via http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/07/20/iringer-free-full-featured-iphone-ringtone-maker/#more-4017

Posted on July 21st, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Ringtone, iphone applications, 3G iPhone | No Comments »

Some great news on iPhone App Store pricing today from Steve Jobs himself, talking to USA Today:

25% of apps will be free

90% of those for sale will cost $9.99 or less

Ever since the App Store was announced, there has been tons of guessing and speculation on how prices would pan out.  I think the zero - $10 range is well within most people’s most optimistic guesses - certainly within mine - and I’m very glad to see this news.

Read on for another good App Store number and some of Jobs’ thoughts on the importance of the launch of it …

Jobs also told USA Today that the App Store will launch with more than 500 applications available.  That seems a good number to me as well.  High enough to have more than enough shiny new things to discover in the first few days of the store being around, but not so many that it’s overwhelming.

The article also includes some money quotes from Jobs on just how big a deal the App Store launch is:

“This is the biggest launch of my career.”

“When IBM introduced the PC, it was good, but it didn’t take off until people started discovering the software … The breadth of the applications dramatically differentiates the iPhone”

Nice to see some more App Store excitement from Steve.  As many of us - certainly Dan and I - have been saying for quite a while, THIS is the really big thing happening - not just this week, but at any point so far in the iPhone’s history.  This is where the whole notion of iPhone as a platform really starts to take off.

And if this initial great news on pricing is an indicator of how prices will shake out in the long term for iPhone apps, then the platform will really just be flat-out exploding before our eyes I think …

Source: USA Today via Engadget

Posted on July 10th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iphone applications | No Comments »

If you’re planning to get yourself an iPhone 3G in just around five days, one of the first things you’ll probably be wanting to test out is just how fast your 3G speeds are.  I know I’ll be keen to test this out early and often with the new iPhone.

There are bound to be tons of sites around for this testing, but here are a few I’ve noticed that look good:

http://testmyiphone.com - the one shown above left - nicely iPhone optimized page

http://iphonespeedtest.com - shown above right - also well optimized for the iPhone screen

http://i.dslr.net/tinyspeedtest.html - iPhone section of the well-known Dslreports site - not very nicely done for the iPhone (requires a lot of pinching and zooming) but a well-established testing resource.

Posted on July 7th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iphone applications, 3G iPhone | No Comments »

Declining to announce any plans for a native chat client at this point, Google has announced a Web-based, iPhone-optimized version of Google Talk. A company blog posting reads:

“Our new version of Google Talk is designed specifically for the iPhone and runs in the iPhone’s browser, so you don’t need to download or install anything. Just visit www.google.com/talk on your iPhone, sign in, and start chatting. And because it is built for the browser, it will work on today’s iPhones as well as on tomorrow’s 3G iPhones.”

Posted on July 7th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iphone applications | No Comments »

eWallet is one of the apps I am most looking forward to in the upcoming iPhone App Store.  It’s an award-winning, leading password manager / digital wallet application from Ilium Software, and one that I’ve used for many years on the desktop and on Palm and Windows Mobile devices.

Today Ilium have provided us with a sneak peek of what the iPhone version of this stellar program is going to look like, as well as a little more information on how ready the iPhone version is. 

The screenshots look great, and the news on how close to ready to go eWallet is, is also very good …

Here’s part of what Marc Tassin, the Ilium Product Manager for eWallet, has to say in his Sneak Peak blog post today:

I am extremely excited about this application. It looks great, it’s easy to  use, and while we’ve captured the iPhone feel it is in every way the eWallet software you’ve come to know and love.

I think it’s safe to say a lot of past, current, and future eWallet for iPhone users are going to feel the same way.

Marc’s blog post also talk about when we can expect to see eWallet for iPhone appear in the App Store.  The bad news on that subject - Ilium are not sure yet.  Like all iPhone developers, they are waiting on Apple’s approvals and processes and there is not a whole lot of information or confirmations flowing out from Apple just yet on exactly which titles are making it into the App Store on its launch day.

There’s some very good news on this subject though:

What I can tell you is that we have a finished product (I’ve been using it on my own iPhone for some time now) and we’re ready to roll as soon as Apple gives us the go ahead!

Excellent to hear that.  Having used Ilium products - and eWallet in particular - for many years, I know that when they say a program is ready to go, it has been beta tested to the Nth degree and will be rock solid right out of the gate.

Here’s hoping Apple gets a move on and makes sure eWallet is in the App Store from Day 1.

For more details and lots more lovely screencaps, check out Ilium’s blog post at:

http://blog.iliumsoft.com/?p=388

via http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/07/01/ewallet-for-iphone-sneak-peek-screenshots/#more-3676

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iphone applications | No Comments »

So iPhone 3G is 3 weeks away and you are planning to make a super awesome iPhone app that you would like to sell in Apple stores, thanks to profit 70-30 profit sharing. Here are some of the ideas that would help my life if you do implement them. Also, make sure I get a free copy.

1. iPhone Remote Desktop Client - This little application lets me view my work/home desktop while i am having coffee with my friend.
2. iPhone Alert Service - I should be able to set up alerts based on my location as well as time. I recall an MIT study that came with this idea. Basically when I driving by my grocery store, the To-Do item I set up at home, should pop-up to remind me I am out of beer.
3. iP2PPhone - Once again, I am having coffee with my friend and he has this super hot picture of Megan Fox on his iPhone’s wallpaper. He should be able to transfer that to me without need to send an email.
4. iStream - If I want to treat my iPhone camera as a webcam like streaming device, possibly to my blog page, I should be able to do that. Obviously, my blog is configured to store the stream and archive them by location and/or time.
5. iQuickCall - Lets me send a quick voice message to multiple friends. Basically, open the app, record a message, select a bunch of contacts and send. How cool it would be send a group of friends “Movie at 7:30. Who’s up?”?

Ready to code? Go here - http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/

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