Tom’s Favorite iPhone Apps
Dec 7th, 2009 by Tom
I often get asked what applications I have on my iPhone. I have lots…and continue to explore new ones. For my lifestyle – work, family, life, faith – I have found the group below to be my regular apps. All apps listed below are free unless otherwise noted. I’ve grouped them by general categories.
I have left comments open on this page so I welcome your ideas for other apps.
Enjoy!
Tom
Personal Productivity
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Toodledo is a To-Do manager that integrates well with MS Exchange and Outlook. It automatically syncs between Exchange server and the iPhone application making for a nice integrated to-do on my PC and iPhone. $1.99 |
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Yammer is an app that integrates into the Yammer “enterprise microblogging” tool. Nice way to stay current with group discussion threads. |
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Palringo is a instant messaging client that support and integrates many IM clients including MS Messenger, AOL, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber, and others. The limited version is free. Works well when you need real-time instant messaging. |
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Google brings its online applications to the iPhone through this simple app. I particularly like the Reader program for reading my rss feeds, especially preferred blogs. The voice recognition search is nice as well. |
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Mint is the app from Mint.com, an online personal finance manager now owned by Intuit (makers of Quicken). Slick tool for finance account integration and tracking. Nice auto classification of transactions through social network analysis. Also has budgeting alerts and other push capabilities. Supports many US banks. |
Medical
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Epocrates has been my standard for market drug information for many years, dating back to an old Palm Pilot. The base information (Eprocrates Rx) is free and they also have additional fee-for-service such as disease state and treatment guides. |
| Medscape for the iPhone is similar to Epocrates, though it tends to do better for news and current clinical information. My first reflex on drug info is Epocrates, but often a secondary check in Medscape can yield a different and value perspective. |
Photo
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Pano |
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Genius Scan |
News
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The USA Today app for iphone is like a mini USA Today paper. It is a good quick read of US current events with even the interface feeling like the 4 section newspaper. |
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I think Sportacular is the best sporting news app for the iPhone. Great use of the iPhone screen. It even has customizable push notifications of your favorite teams. Simply the best. And it is free. |
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NPR News is a nice app into one’s favorite NPR programs, either live or on-demand. I like that I can bookmark my favorite stations, including KUT from Austin, TX. Of late I’ve been using the app to listen to favorite shows on long walks with our dog. A nice touch. |
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News Addict is an pseudo-aggregator of news content. When I’m looking for a particular news story angle, this app is nice as it provides access to many journals including CNN, Digg, Time, WSJ, Washing Post, BBC, ESPN, etc… $0.99 |
| The Huffington Post app is a basic little app into the popular Huffington Post blog site. It supports streaming videos. Huffington can be bit too media spin at times, but it surely is on top of US current events. | |
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Public Radio is live streaming of all public radio stations. This has come in handy multiple times on the road when driving across the country. The FM station starts to fade out just at the peak of the program. No problem, shift to internet stream of the same station. If you miss a favorite program, no problem, chances are it is on at another time on a different station. |
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I have come to love TED – Technology, Entertainment and Design. Think of the videos as 10 minutes innovation clips. This little app gets you access to all the TED online videos. Got 10 minutes to kill, catch the latest video and be inspired by Ideas Worth Spreading. |
Social Networking
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Facebook – a simple, gotta have free app if you are into social networking. Not much more to say. One of the nice features is the ease of taking pictures and uploading them to your account with a caption. |
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TweetDeck is a twitter client and twitter search tool in one. A nice simple column layout with nice tweet functionality of forwarding, replying, retweeting, etc… Sometimes a little unstable, but recent updates have still made it my Twitter client of choice. The desktop version is definitely worth a look if you monitor tweets. |
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LinkedIn is a a professional network tool. The iPhone app does a nice job of bringing your LinkedIn account to your phone. Nothing fancy, just nice to have when you need to look someone up. |
Music
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Ahhh, Pandora, where would I be without you. It is my mainstay of music provision, both on my desktop machines and the iPhone as well. Works best over 3G, but 2G service or EDGE on the AT&T network sound reasonably good too. Nice option for those long drives when you don’t have XM or Sirius as an option. |
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Shazam is a cool app for when you listen to songs on the radio and want to know the song title and artist. Just click tag and Shazam listens for about 15 seconds, then sends a digital sound file to its server and comes back with the name, artist and lots of info on the song/album. Very slick, and free. Business model is links to purchase the songs. |
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Apple’s own Remote software turns your iPhone into an iTunes controller. Very slick around the house when you have iTunes playing music through your home system (I use an Apple TV, but AirTunes will work too). It is great around the house when you are taking requests. Nice integration. |
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LastFM is a Pandora-like music streaming service. I don’t use it much on the iPhone (I use Pandora mostly), but our XBOX 360 supports Last FM. My main purpose on the iPhone is to setup channel for our 360 in the basement. I do know folks who really like LastFM, so check it out. |
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Slacker is another streaming service. Because of Pandora, I don’t use it to stream music, mainly because Slacker doesn’t allow you to select a channel by an artist or song style. Slacker just has generic genre. What I do like of Slacker is that it has non-music channels, including stand up comedians. Another nice treat on those walks with our dog… |
Misc
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Stanza is a ebook or document reader. What I like of Stanza is the ability to send it any type of file (Word, PDF, text) and have it autocovert and sync to my iPhone. There are also many online options through the Lexcycle catalog. |
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GPS Motion Drive brings a full featured turn-by-turn GPS to your iPhone. The cost of the app is $0.99, with turn-by-turn instructions running $3/month. They give you a 30 day trial. I used it around town and on a trip to Florida and it worked great. Impressive set of features. |
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SmugWallet is an offline SmugMug photo sync and viewer. As a heavy user of SmugMug, it is great to have an offline viewer that copies down my photo galleries. Syncing works well and on a manual trigger, will update my iPhone of all new photos. You can also chose not to sync certain libraries. $2.99 |
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Pano is a photo utility for creating panoramic pictures. It does a surprisingly good job and guides you as you take the next picture so that the stitching across photos is as seamless as possible. Photos are saved to your photo directory for use in any app. Worked great on a recent trip to San Francisco. $1.99 |
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Golfshot GPS is a premium app for a golfer. Loaded with features, it provides a rich satellite view of the course your playing, where your ball is and many options on distance. @$29 it is a bit expensive, but it brings all the features of the $250 GPS with it. |
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Geocaching is a great app for some fun outside. Linked into the online database of more than a million geocaches, the app does a great job of showing where available caches are including GPS walking navigation to the cache location. We love to do it as a family when out for a walk. It costs $9.99 but has already been worth it. |
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Gorillacam brings a number of camera features to your iphone: Self-timer, burst shots, grid overlay, anti-shake, bubble level and more. When I take photos, I use this little free app. |
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Boxee is an app to remote control a Boxee application. I have applied a third party hack on my Apple TV and installed Boxee on it giving it new capabilities including Pandora and many online media (video) RSS feeds. If you don’t use Boxee, it isn’t helpful. But if you, get this little app to put full control on your iPhone. |
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EyeTV is my latest cool multimedia app. I run EyeTV, a HDTV tuner and PVR system, on my Macintosh. With the EyeTV app, I can watch live TV on my iPhone over my local Wifi. EyeTV on the iPhone also allows you to trigger a recording, both of live TV or of a future show. |
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PCalc Lite is a solid calculator I like to use instead of the standard app. It has optional RPN mode like my old HP units. There are some features that are turned off in the Lite version, but it works well for me. The Lite version is free, and the full version is $9.99 |
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The YouVersion Bible is a very nice online Bible. It has 40 different translations available include foreign languages and 15 common English versions like NIV, RSV and even the Message. It has a Daily Reading plan, a good search feature, ability to bookmark verses and directly email verses to others. |
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PhoneFlicks is a Netflix queue manager. It works well with my Netflix account allowing searching and placement in my delivery or instant queues. I find this app most helpful when discussing a movie over lunch with friends and then being able to add it to my queue on the fly. Love Netflix! |
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Photoshop for iPhone is a nice simple photo editor for improving those pics taken with the iPhone camera. Simple to use, it allow basic editing such as cropping, contrast and exposure. It also has some presets – though I tend not to use these. |
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eBay for iPhone is a very well written app. Every time I use it to look for something, I am impressed with the quality of this app. Think of the eBay experience of searching, watching, bidding, etc. all wrapped up in a clean little iPhone app. I’m not a big eBay user, but when I’m looking for market price or a specific item, this little app comes through. |
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My Utmost For His Highest is Oswald Chamber’s classic and still very relevant daily devotional. A favorite devotional of mine since 1989 in my early days in Madagascar. Not a complicated app – it is the daily text and reflections that count. |
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ConvertBot is a conversion utility for all kids of units. It is a slick little interface. Handy when you need it. They are now charging $0.99, but I got it for free as an early adopter. |
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iTranslate is a good little translator. 42 languages are supported. Nice to have when you need to get from one language to another. |
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WootWatch is a simple viewer of Woot.com’s special of the day. Woot.com is a liquidation online site that tends to have very low prices. Selection is a bit hodge-podge, but we’ve picked up a few things there including our Dyson vacuum cleaner. |
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Discovery Channel brings the channel’s video’s to your iPod. Shows like Storm Chasers, Myth Busters and Cash Cab are now at your finger tips. Works well even over 3G. |
Games
| LineUp is similar to Tetris and a fun little game. | |
| Word Scramble is a great little game that is well designed. Similar to Boggle, it presents a grid of random letters and you then try to find words. My kids love it. Very good online community playing…if you want a real challenge…man they are good! | |
| Peggle is a kid favorite in our house. The popular desktop computer game has been near seamlessly ported over to the iPhone OS. It is a bit addicting, but a good game should be. It will also burn up your battery fairly quickly as it takes full advantage of the 3D graphics. $4.99 A splurge at our house on this one. | |
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Paper Toss is a fun simple game for a distraction. |
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Unblock Me Free is a fun game of moving blocks around to free the red block. Makes one thing strategically and 3-4 steps ahead. Fun to watch our kids of different ages try to solve the puzzles. |
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Omar Sharif Bridge is the classic game ported to iPhone. If you like Bridge, this is a very nice little app. I learn to like bridge while in Madagascar, playing with many international friends. My favorite moment was bidding a weak 1 NT in a tournament with a buddy (non standard bidding scheme between us as partners) and running the hand against le Directeur de l’Institut Pasteur. The Prime Minister – Guy Razanamasy himself – came over to our table and encouraged the young Americans to follow standard bidding protocol. Désolé, Monsieur! $4.99 |
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Leaf Trombone by Smule is an innovative app for making music with a leaf slider. It is hard to describe, so take a look. You can practice, then perform on the “World Stage” with an online community of judges. Don’t care to play on the stage? Try being a judge of others. Innovative fun. |
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Tap Tap is a classic iPhone app that brings kinetics and interactivity to music on the iPhone. Fun to play especially on the classic songs. Tapulous continues to innovate on the Tap Tap theme so check out their other apps. $0.99 |
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Downhill Bowling is a simple fun app. Even the smallest kids can play it and have fun. |
Hey, great list. WootWatch is a great app but I wanted more so I created iDealyzer. It also tracks woot! and many other daily deal sites. The Pro version also has customizable push notifications.
Great list. Love the YouVersion Bible app! Another Exchange sync set of apps I found is from http://web.me.com/rerlsoft/Rerlsoft/Index.html. Seems to work well with hosted Exchange. The iMLite app is a free viewer of Exchange Tasks, Notes, and Contacts (less useful). The other apps are paid versions but let you do updates.