Third-Party iPhone Apps I Actually Still Use

Update: New list for October 2014 is here.

More often than I care to recall, I have impulsively downloaded a fancy new iPhone application, only to have it languish on my phone. That was the inspiration for the first "list of iPhone apps I actually use" last year, after the iTunes store started selling third-party applications. Since then, the number of new applications has grown rapidly. Now there's a cottage industry of lists, blogs and podcasts devoted to reviewing applications. Here's a recent Techcrunch list of the "best" apps, which notes the store had 300 new apps rolling out every day. Here's a similar post at Gizmodo, which put the total number of apps at more than 74,000. Many of the lists that try to sort out the best applications seem to focus more on flash than substance.

In August, I finally renewed my AT&T contract and upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. It seemed like the right time to reconsider the programs I had loaded onto my phone. Did I actually use them?

Here's my revised list:

Bento This has quickly become one of my favorites. For the Mac, the $49 Bento 2 is a quick and easy database program that works with spreadsheets and other data sets, like staff lists, to-do lists, project tracking, and so on. The iPhone Bento software syncs beautifully with it, so you have all your important data on your phone. Too bad it's not free with the computer software, but I didn't mind paying $4.99. This could work as a standalone iPhone application (if you live in a Windows PC world, say) but a warning: There are a number of bad reviews on the iTunes store from people who tried building databases directly on the iPhone. I haven't tried; as a way to sync and render Bento 2 files on an iPhone, this app is great.

Google Mobile App I still use this application quite a bit to search the Web, bypassing Safari. It used to be the only way to search the contents of the phone (now the iPhone OS can do that, too). Voice search is cool, but it's still something of a party trick. The word recognition is getting better all the time, though it has trouble in loud places like the sidewalks of New York. I hope they keep tweaking it. I also enjoy Google Earth, another nifty iPhone toy.

MightyDocs If you use Google Documents, this gives you fast access to them over the phone. And if you are going to be away from easy Internet access, you can cache them all on your phone. It now has basic spreadsheet support, which was missing in the original. And it's still free.

ReaddleDocs But you may have documents you don't want to keep in the cloud. This $4.99 app offers a drag-and-drop solution from your computer over a WiFi network to the phone for a range of documents, including Word docs, spreadsheets, PDFs and more. A lot of people seem to use the similar Airsharing tool, but ReaddleDocs has been a smoother experience for me, with more features and flexibility. It comes with 512mb of online storage, syncs with MobileMe and iDisk, and a variety of other Web cloud solutions. It even has a built-in browser that lets you save Web content, making it a possible replacement for bookmark/clipping applications like Evernote, which I still have on my phone and computers but don't use much.

Echofon Pro (formerly called Twitterfon) is my main choice for a Twitter phone client. It handles retweeting seamlessly (without giving you attitude, like its competitor Tweetie). It can show tweets and replies in a conversation format, among other cool features. The free, advertising-supported version is just as good.

Facebook Newly updated, this application is nicely put together, attractive, with intuitive navigation of the Facebook site. Some reviewers say the iPhone version is better than the Web site, and perhaps that is a hint about the mobile future to come, when computers go the way of typewriters and most of us carry the Internet in our pockets.

PicPosterous One-click picture and video posting to a Posterous photo blog page (here's mine), for quick sharing with friends. It will also autopost to other social media sites like Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter. This app is a snap. Here's an auto-slideshow I posted of the aftermath of a taxi fire near my apartment.

Textplus AT&T used to include 200 free SMS text messages a month with the iPhone data plan. Now it wants you to pony up a monthly fee or pay by the message, making those bits some of the most expensive on the Internet. I don't use enough text messages to warrant paying for a plan, so I'm a la carte. One way to keep costs down is with this free ad-supported application. It gets around the cost by setting up a Web-based group chat with you and your correspondents. Once you text their phone numbers they can reply at no cost to you, even if they don't have TextPlus themselves. With push notification, it behaves like the native SMS client.

AIM Another free alternative to SMS is instant messaging via mobile. I have a lot of work contacts on AIM, gChat and similar networks. This application loads those contacts and lets me chat by phone (again, without per-message charges).

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary At $49.99, this is the most expensive application on my list, and possibly one of the most expensive in the iTunes store. It has more than 600,000 words and definitions, a distillation of the 20-volume O.E.D. into just two volumes. It includes all words in current English from 1700 to the present, and includes a word-of-the-day feature and a randomizing feature for browsing. The best resource for learning the derivations of obscure words.

Shakespeare The complete works of William Shakespeare in a well-designed reader. Follow along at Shakespeare in the Park. Free, from Readdle.

Kindle for iPhone Many people don't agree, but I think that the e-book reading experience on this application is better than the actual Kindle, especially if you like to curl up with your reading material at night without bothering with a booklight. And now I don't have much choice, since my Kindle 1 exploded, and I'm not ready to commit to a new one. At least I still have access to the books I bought with this free app. Kindle newspaper and magazine subscriptions don't work, nor can you read documents you have sent to yourself or ebooks from sources other than Amazon. The coolest feature is the Whisper Sync: It takes you to the most recent page you read, whether on the phone or the Kindle.

Stanza This is an even better e-book reader, a competitor that Amazon bought out. Alas, it doesn't connect to the Amazon store or read the Kindle format (yet). The library connects to Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks and other services that offer free public-domain texts of many classics. You can also buy books from certain indie operations. The page-turning, fonts and other features are superior to the Kindle for iPhone application. You can even put your own documents and ebooks into Stanza, a feature supported by the Kindle but not its iPhone cousin.

iWant For when you just want to quickly find a nearby restaurant, bar or gas station, without gee-whiz graphics to impress your friends. It's free.

Yelp The user-rating restaurant/bar/etc site powers many other location-based restaurant apps, so you might as well use Yelp's app, which works well and is attractive. Just be sure apply a grain of salt to the reviews by the site's notoriously cranky and vengeful users.

UpNext 3D NYC If you want to show off gee-whiz graphics while out on the town, this $2.99 mapping application is a great option, so long as the town is Manhattan (sorry, rest of New York City and the U.S.). The map is rendered in 3-D with each building's contents inventoried, and listings features will zip you around the map to newly opened restaurants, bars and so forth.

Urbanspoon Some people swear by this random restaurant finder, an early application in the store. I think it's gimmicky and annoying, but I do resort to its roulette wheel charms when I'm in a large group and we can't agree on a cuisine or a price range. It's also a good app for showing off the phone to newbies.

NYTimes The first version of my employer's fre reader was too slow for some, but the latest update is pretty snappy. The articles download faster, you can bookmark them and share them via e-mail. Since my Kindle had its meltdown, this is my main portable way to read the paper. If I know I have a long subway ride, I download the news before heading underground to the land of no Internet. There is a menu that shows all the photos from the paper, and it's pretty easy to customize the sections you want to see when you first open the application.

WSJ Why pay for online news from The Wall Street Journal when you can get it free with this nicely done mobile reader? But note the warning: "Access to subscriber-only content available without charge for a limited time only."

NPR News My wife can't bear to be separated from National Public Radio, and I am a sometimes addict myself. But when we travel, we sometimes find ourselves out of range of a good public radio station. This audio player is great for listening to any NPR shows at any time, either recorded versions or live streaming from NPR stations. The unrelated Public Radio Player is pretty good, too, and lets you listen to streaming content from a long list of local public radio stations (not just NPR).

AOL Radio, Last.FM and Pandora. Another way to turn the iPhone into a radio is with one or all of these free players. Lilsten to Internet radio, create streaming customized channels, and even buy music.

Remote This was one of the earliest and coolest free iPhone tools. Turn the phone into a full-featured iTunes remote for your computer or Apple TV. Browse your media library in the palm of your hand.

i.TV Television listings on your phone, with push notifications to remind you of upcoming programs and user reviews. The new version will eventually allow the phone to be used as a remote for Tivo HD (but not my 10-year-old TiVo Series 2, alas). It also has movie reviews and Netflix integration.

Amazon So you see a product of interest somewhere -- on a train, at a friend's house, in a brick-and-mortar store. No more scribbled notes or typing. Launch this application, and take a picture for the "You asked us to remember" function. In a few minutes, Amazon will find a similar item in its store. It worked the first time for me with a fairly poor quality picture of an obscure book's cover; no bar code required. It worked with a picture I took of a review on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. And it's not just for books. It worked for a demitasse. And with a picture of a cordless phone handset wanted to replace (alas, that model is no longer manufactured, but Amazon had a product page). It recognized a plush dinosaur toy someone bought for my daughter. You may be obsessed with finding objects it can't identify. Or you may find yourself taking pictures of every object of desire. If you're doing this in a real store, you may have to confront ethical questions. That's your business. Just watch out for the Amazon one-click -- the path from looking something up to an immediate impulse buy is nearly frictionless.

1Password The day you lose your phone, you'll be happy the person who found it doesn't have access to all your sites, accounts and passwords. This secures and encrypts them, and it syncs with the passwords on your computer. (This app was free, but you do have to pay for 1Password software for your Mac itself).

Wikipanion Look it up on Wikipedia with a few touches. But please don't cite it in your term papers if you are one of my wife's students. I tried a few Wikipedia apps and settled on this one for its easy lookup functions. I'm testing the official Wikipedia application, as well as Wapedia, and will revise this post if I come to like one of them more.

WikiHow A free version of the popular how-to Wiki. It includes a bonus survival guide stored on your phone, for emergencies how-to situations (My favorite: "How to Escape From the Trunk of a Car.")

Mixologist I'm mostly a wine-and-beer guy, but every now and then I find myself at a beach house with an odd assortment of liquor and mixers. This 99-cent application lets you search for the drink you can make with the ingredients at hand, using a nice interface. There are many other cocktail recipes for the amateur bartender. There's also a liquor store finder built into it. If this application sounds more appealing than it should, you might consider this one.

Brushes This simple finger-painting program is a favorite of artists and was famously used to create a New Yorker cover. Now it has layers and photo-importing, and even the most artistically challenged painter can create beautiful images.

I Dig It, Waterslide, Parapanic, Jelly Car, Tapword, Bejeweled, Toy Bot Diaries, de Blob, Stone of Destiny, Scrabble, Enigmo, Tetris, Super Monkey Ball, DizzyBeeFree, BattleAtSea, Bubblewrap, Morocco The iPhone is a great gaming platform. Games tend to a few dollars or more on iTunes, so you have to choose carefully. These are among the best, based on extensive kid-testing with my 9-year-old daughter and her friends (I helped). Several take great advantage of the touchscreen, accelerometer and other functions in clever ways.

Shazam and Midomi Fun with music. Amuse your friends. Hold Shazam up to a playing music source, and it identifies the song. Midomi is similar, but you can also say lyrics or hum to get a list of possible song titles. One day at work we were all standing around singing songs into it. Karaoke without background music, a terrifying spectacle. The link shows a Shazam-Midomi face-off on YouTube; Shazam won for reliability and usefulness. Both are free and worth having, although the novelty of these party tricks wears off eventually. Another fun music application is the Ocarina, which turns the phone into a musical instrument broadcasting on the Internet, but I don't use it that much.

Live Cams Another useless stunt app. Browse public Webcams, and view your own private cams if you know the address. Pretty much a waste of time, but interesting. The marketing suggests you can use it to watch semiclad people on beaches, but, uh, there might be easier ways to find that on the Internet. I like to look at Times Square to make sure it's still there. New parents might want to use it to set up a babycam in the nursery.

iHandy Level Sometimes you just want to know if that table is level. This is a sometimes-useful tool that will impress old timers who think the iPhone is a useless tool. Free (for now). Is there a great or useful application I've missed and should try? Tell me in the comments.

Caught an IM Coho and Threw It Back

For several months, I had been getting mysterious instant messages from strangers. Somebody with an unfamiliar username ending in -coho would IM me "hey" or "who's this" or some bit of nonsense. I would typically answer "Do I know you?" or "Who's this?" Then the other person would answer: "What are you talking about? You IM'd me!" They turned out to be as equally baffled and suspicious as I was. It took me a while to conclude these people were not scammers or pranksters but victims of the prank too. Eventually, I searched for "coho" and "IM" and found the answer: It's an annoying but apparently harmless Web bot. It seems to be a social experiment, or a prank. Sometimes the IM-bot goes by names that are variations on -trout and -salmon. Mine have been strictly cohoe.

As best anyone can tell, the bot was created by something called Project Upstream, although its first victims on LiveJournal traced it to something called TheGreatHatsby. They typically cite a Wikipedia entry that has since been deleted. There's a fresh take at Mahalo Answers.

It appears that the prank first targeted IM handles harvested from LiveJournal blogs and other sites, before targetingTwitter users. Some people have been frightened that they were being stalked online, while others suspected a virus, spammers or hackers. Complaints to AOL proved fruitless.

Project Upstream describes itself this way:

Project Upstream is an organization dedicated to promoting social ideals through the use of exciting new technology. Our most well-known service is our swarm of robotic fish, which connects AIM users to each other. Robotic fish connections occur spontaneously, and also by request. If you would like to partake in the robotic fish experience, you are encouragd to enter your AIM name below. Your request will be filled as soon as possible.

So, first of all, coho can't spell. And second, there's no verification system. Presumably people can prank unsuspecting people. And what if you don't want to be part of the robotic fish experience? You won't find the answer on that page. But several of the coho-bloggers linked above described a procedure for opting out using a simple command -- $optout.

Once I found out the cause of the IMs, they seemed less alarming. I imagine there are even people who use these pings as an opportunity to goof on random strangers <a href="">with wacky nonsense. (You show up to the other user as something-coho.)

I hadn't decided whether I would opt out the next time I got a bite. And then I didn't hear from one for weeks and weeks and nearly forgot about it, until Monday. HotHeadedCoho interrupted a critical task, and I decided I'd had enough. Plus, I was curious to see if the $optout command actually worked:

3:33 hotheadedcoho I hope your day is wonderfully amazing, just like you! 3:34 [ME] $optout 3:34 hotheadedcoho is now known as HotHeadedCoho. 3:34 HotHeadedCoho OPERATOR: Are you sure you want to opt-out? If you do, you will *never* be contacted again on the account "[ME]". There is *no way* to opt back in and undo this. If you are sure, type "$optout F38A". Remember, this is permanent and irreversible! 3:34 [ME] $optout F38A 3:34 HotHeadedCoho OPERATOR: You have opted out. The accout "[ME]" will *never* be contacted again. Good bye! Feel free to email projectupstream@gmail.com with feedback, comments, complaints, etc.

Now we'll see if this actually works.

Third-Party iPhone Apps I Actually Use

Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iOS 8 apps I use in 2014 on my iPhone and iPad. 

Last updated April 11, 2009 I am surprised by how well this list held up. The updated NYTimes application is a great improvement over the first version, which I had stopped using, because it was slow and crashed so frequently. I have also added the Amazon Kindle for iPhone application. I still use these apps with some frequency: Google Mobile App, Twitterific, Facebook, Zenbe lists, Remote, Evernote, Amazon and Wikipanion. For restaurant, bar and services information, I still prefer the simpler IWant and Yelp to the flashy Urbanspoon roulette. The upcoming iPhone 3.0 software will eliminate my need for Writeroom, which allows e-mail messaging in landscape mode. As for games, my daughter swears by one new addition, JellyCar, and her favorites, Toybot and de Blob. My fascination with the time-wasting Bejeweled has ebbed, and nothing has really replaced it, unless you count Twitter.

The List Most of the third-party applications on my iPhone were free; none cost more than $9.99. I went a little crazy downloading apps when the store opened on iTunes. Some of them, like the Urbanspoon restaurant roulette app, proved more gimmicky than useful. And they started to drag down the performance. So I have been winnowing the list. Here are the third-party apps I actually open on a regular basis (some of them daily, all of them at least once every couple of weeks), roughly in the order they appear on the phone.

• Google Mobile App Search your phone, search the Web. This app moves to the top of the list with voice-activated search and other improvements. It not only searches the Web, but also your contacts and other data on your phone (the new iPhone operating system now does this as well). The word recognition is about 60 percent accurate, which can be frustrating, but I have hopes they'll keep tweaking it, because, hey, it's Google. That's what Google does. I also have the mind-blowing toy Google Earth app. Updated 8/17/09.
• MightyDocs A simple concept: Free offline access to your text Google docs. I downloaded this app a while ago but have been using it a lot more, because people at the office have started sharing a lot live memos through Google. The latest version has basic spreadsheet support, which was missing in the original. And it's still free.
• Twitterfon pro is my new choice for a Twitter client. The free version is fine, too. The interface is superior to the versions of Twitterific and Twinkle, which I had included in earlier versions of this list. Updated 8/17/09.
• Kindle for iPhone In many ways, the e-book reading experience is better than the actual Kindle. The application is free, but of course you need to own an Amazon Kindle and download some books. Kindle newspaper and magazine subscriptions don't work, nor can you read documents you have sent to yourself or ebooks from other sources than Amazon. The page turning is easier than the Kindle 1, and of course the phone has a backlight. The coolest feature is the Whisper Sync: It takes you to the most recent page you read, whether on the phone or the Kindle.New.
• iWant For when you just want to quickly find a nearby restaurant, bar or gas station, without gee-whiz graphics to impress your friends.
• NYTimes The 2.0 version of this application is much improved. The articles download faster, you can bookmark them and share them via e-mail. In general, it seems a lot less buggy and no longer hangs or crashes. I love to open this app and download the day's paper before heading into the subway. There is a menu that shows all the photos from the paper -- click one to pick a story. It can store up to five days' worth of news. And unlike the Amazon Kindle, which I also use to read the paper, it includes NYT blog posts. Updated review.
• Facebook Nicely put together, attractive, with intuitive navigation of the Facebook site. On a phone, in a line, it's a way to catch up with people. One bonus: It still resembles the old Facebook interface, which is a relief compared to the updated and overloaded Facebook Web site.Updated review.
• Writeroom A document creator that can be used to easily write emails with the keyboard in a horizontal position, not something that mail currently allows. (It will have that feature when the iPhone 3.0 firmware is released later this year).Updated review.
• Amazon So you go into the bookstore and you see a book you want and you type the name into this app's search box and probably find it cheaper, with free delivery if you have Amazon Prime. Maybe you just snap a picture for the "You asked us to remember" experimental function. Amazon will try to find a similar item in its store. It worked the first time for me with a fairly poor quality picture of an obscure book's cover; no bar code required. Do you feel guilty? Do you hide what you are doing from Barnes & Noble employees? That's your business. Great app. Just watch out for the one-click -- the journey from looking something up to an immediate impulse buy is nearly frictionless. New.
• Airsharing Drag and drop Word, Excel, PDF and many other files via WiFi to the phone, where you can read them pretty well and transfer them to other computers. (Need to download software for the computer.) I don't use it that much, but it is handy. MightyDocs has supplanted it; most of the documents I need I keep in Google Docs.Updated review.
• Zenbe Lists Of the hundreds of to-do lists, this one is pretty good. You don't have to bother to sign up for Zenbe's Web services and tools to use the free iPhone app.
• Last.fm, Pandora, AOL Radio In that order. All great versions music solutions using Internet radio. Customize music to your tastes. I have removed Simplify, an iTunes library syncing application, because I couldn't get it to work reliably. Maybe I need a 3G phone. Updated review.
• Remote Turn the phone into a full-featured iTunes remote for your computer/stereo or Apple TV. Browse your media library in the palm of your hand. Still one of the greatest applications if you have an Apple TV.
• Ocarina Turn your iPhone into a musical instrument and connect with phone-musicians around the globe. A fun app to show friends, though the novelty wears off. Updated review.
• Yelp The user-rating restaurant/bar/etc site powers many other location-based restaurant apps, so you might as well use Yelp's app, which works well and is attractive.
• AIM Why pay for SMS when you can send an instant message at no charge? Granted, texting is an Apple standard app, and thus better integrated than IM. You can't use AIM with other apps running, so you have to disconnect this if you want to take a phone call, open up Safari or e-mail. But sometimes you need to locate an IM contact online and chat, and this app is handy for that. It may work better with the iPhone 3.0 firmware, which may allow apps to run in the background.Updated review.
• 1Password The day you lose your phone, you'll be happy the person who found it doesn't have access to all your sites, accounts and passwords. This secures and encrypts them, and it syncs with the passwords on your computer. (This app was free, but you do have to pay for 1Password software for your Mac itself).
• Evernote Save sites, Web clips and docs on the Web, look at them on your phone and computer; sync them. I may start using this more often, now that it has been integrated with Twitter. Updated.
• Wikipanion Look it up on Wikipedia with one touch. But please don't cite it in your term papers if you are one of my wife's students. I tried a few Wikipedia apps and settled on this one for its easy lookup functions.
• SayWho A simple voice dialer. Press the screen while saying the name of the person you want to call, and a list comes up in contacts. Works pretty well, even for a mumbler like me. Free. I seem to have stopped using it lately; I don't make enough phone calls to make it worth my while.
• Bejeweled, Hero of Sparta, Toy Bot Diaries, de Blob, Stone, Scrabble, Metasquares, Enigmo, Tetris, Super Monkey Ball, DizzyBeeFree, BattleAtSea, Bubblewrap, Morocco, Cannon Game, FootballLite, The Stone of Destiny, Jelly Car, Labyrinth These are among the better iPhone games, all of them taking advantage of the touchscreen and/or accelerometer in clever ways. Good for distracting 8-year-olds and yourself on long car, train or plane rides.
• Shazam and Midomi Amuse your friends. Hold Shazam up to a playing music source, and it identifies the song. Midomi is similar, but you can also say lyrics or hum to get a list of possible song titles. The link shows a Shazam-Midomi face-off; Shazam won for reliability and usefulness. Both are free and worth having, although the novelty of these party tricks wears off eventually.
• doyoufeed.com A Web site, not a downloaded app. It will iPhonify any blog or site (or several feeds) and give you a tinyurl address for it. (Here is Palafo.) Then you can bookmark a Webclip on your iPhone iphone home screen. Maybe one day the owners will fix the spelling of "Thursday" in the timestamp code. New URL, fixed.
• Note: I no longer have a jailbroken iPhone, which allows you to run software not available through iTunes. I do miss some of those pirate apps, but I just can't be bothered with it anymore. I'd rather not risk downloading some wonky or malicious app that hasn't been blessed by Apple.