Posts Tagged ‘software’
September 9, 2009
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:
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Posted in Blogging, iPhone Apps, Moving Images, New York, Social Media | 10 Comments »
Tags: 1Password, AIM, Amazon, AOL Radio, Bento, Books, computers, dictionaries, Facebook, games, Gizmodo, Google, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iPods, iTunes, Kindle, Last.FM, macs, Midomi, music, newspapers, NPR, NYC, NYT, O.E.D., Pandora, Posterous, radio, Readdle, remotes, Shakespeare, Shazam, SMS, software, Stanza, Techcrunch, technology, texting, Tweetie, Twitter, Twitterfon, UpNext, Urbanspoon, Wall Street Journal, webcams, WikiHow, Wikipanion, Wikipedia, Yelp
December 13, 2008
{Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.]
I’ve added some new updates to the post “third-party iPhone apps I actually use,” including MightyDocs, which displays Google docs offline (now with spreadsheet support); SayWho, a free voice-activated dialer; Amazon, which lets you shop and compare prices and even experiment with looking up products via iPhone photographs (it worked for me with a pretty bad photo of an obscure book); and Twitterific, which even in ad-supported free mode is overtaking my earlier favorite Twitter client, Twinkle.
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Tags: Amazon, iPhones, iPods, MightyDocs, SayWho, software, technology, Twinkle, Twitter, Twitterific, voice activation
November 22, 2008
{Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.]
For 99 cents I downloaded Ocarina, an app from Smule that turns an iPhone into a version of that ancient flute-like instrument. You press glowing “finger holes” on the touchscreen and blow into the microphone to play [Video].
That’s fun, but Ocarina does more than that. The app also uses the location software and a Google-Earth style globe to let you rotate the earth and listen to others play on their phones around the world. As they play one by one, visual images of the notes stream upward, as you watch from space. Around the globe, patches of glowing white show what are apparently concentrations of signals, particularly on the coasts of the United States and in Europe. One soloist sent a lonely tune up from an island of Hawaii.
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Posted in iPhone Apps | 2 Comments »
Tags: Apple, computers, GPS, iphone, iPhone Apps, iPods, macs, music, musicians, Ocarina, Smart Playlists, Smule, software, technology
November 22, 2008
{Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.]
I’ve updated the post on “third-party iPhone apps I actually use,” which is inexplicably the most popular post on the blog. The much-improved Google mobile app, with voice-activated search, has moved to the top of the list. (To get it, you have to manually force an update at the iTunes store; it wasn’t happening automatically.) I download new free and cheap apps often, so if any of the new ones catch on, I will add them there.
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Tags: Apple, Google Maps, Google Mobile App, Google Streetview, iphone 2.2 firmware, iPhone Apps, iPhones, software, technology, voice activation
October 14, 2008
Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009. The old list is below.
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.
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Posted in iPhone Apps | 5 Comments »
Tags: AIM, Amazon, Apple, apps, Bejeweled, computers, Facebook, Google, iphone, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iTunes, macs, music, NYT, software, technology, Twinkle, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp
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.
