When Apple launched the iPhone, it made it very clear that it would not permit developers to write software that would work natively on the device. Instead, they would have to write web applications that could be accessed through the Safari browser. Despite a few grumbles, it did not take long for developers to start doing just that. Here is a run-down of the best iPhone applications posted online so far.
TYPE PAD (i.typepad.com) lets you blog on the move with a portable, iPhone-specific edition of its online diary-keeping software. It is not free to use, unfortunately, costing between S4.95 a month or S49.50 a year for the basic edition, and S29.95 a month or S299.50 a year for the Premium edition, which includes control over archive types and layout, multiple authors, unlimited blogs and extra bandwidth and storage. It is a quick and easy way to get your blog online, but with the Safari browser rendering pretty much any web page without a flaw, we find it hard to recommend this paid-for service over free alternatives such as Blogger or the domain-hosted WordPress.
DIGG (www.davidcann.com/digg) comes to the iPhone with a slick sideways-scrolling application that takes you through the most recent postings in a range of top-level tech-related Digg directories, starting with Apple and progressing through Microsoft, Gadgets, Hardware and Linux (right). It is a smart way to keep tabs on what the web is talking about when you are away from your RSS reader.
Use your iPhone as a glorified shopping list with ONETRIP (www.onetrip.org), which splits an average supermarket into common sections, such as food, fruit, frozen, drinks and household items. Tapping each one opens up a list of items (lemons and bananas in fruit, for example, and cheese and bread in deli). Tapping these adds them to a shopping list stored on your iPhone, that you can either email or text to yourself for use in the store. If you have unusual needs that are not covered in the standard list, you can, of coursc, add your own by typing them in. It is brilliant in its simplicity and perhaps the best iPhone application we have seen to date.
For a more generalised and freeform list-keeping service, TA-DA LIST (www.iphone.todalist.com) will neatly meet most users' needs. Once you have set up a free account with the service, you can create multiple lists to suit any need - whether that be tasks, upcoming meetings, birthdays,
shopping requirements or anything else (left). Once an item has been completed or is no longer needed, you simply tap to edit it and then press done. The best thing, though, is that while this version of Ta-da List is optimised for the iPhone's portrait-orientated screen, there is a desktop equivalent at wmv.tadalist.com, which lets you manage the very same lists on any regular computer and subscribe to changes in the list using RSS.
If you want to use your daily commute more productively, either to do some work or learn something, then check out iFLIPR (www.iflipr.com). This is flip-card system for the iPhone is a great place to start and it works on the principle of decks that arc fully search-able, so you can pick out those that you want. For example, if you want to learn French then it will find all the cards relating to French and ignore all the others. There arc hundreds of different subjects and by creating an account and logging in, you can track your progress. It works particularly well on the horizontal iPhone screen, as the simple design focuses your mind on the questions, which appear on one side of each card, and the answers that follow them when you tap the arrow to move on. Best of all, it is completely free.
iPHLICKR (www.chandlerkent.com/iphlickr) uses some clever interface design to really look like an iPhone application, complete with iPhone-style buttons and interface backgrounds. It is a simple idea that lets you search and browse your own and other members' Flickr photo galleries. Frankly, with Flickr being a Yahoo! property, and with Yahoo! providing push email services for the iPhone, it is surprising Apple did not provide this kind of functionality as a top-line application, just like it did with YouTube and Google Maps. Fortunately, this implementation more than plugs the gap, and we highly recommend you assign it to a bookmark.
Apple loses some house points for not including any games on the iPhone, so iCHESS (ichess.morfik.com) will come as a welcome addition for many a bored commuter. As the name would suggest, it is chess (right) played against the iPhone in a very clever manner where tapping in any piece shows you graphically which squares you can move it to. There is a choice of board designs, and while it is not the most intelligent chess player around (we were able to wipe out some of the iPhone's key pieces in a few moves), it is a welcome distraction on the commute to and from work.
If you have contacts in America with mobile phones, you can use your iPhone to send them text messages for free. Not using the built-in SMS application, of course, which will add the cost to your bill, but with TXTDROP (www.txtdrop.com/iphone), which will send messages to any valid US mobile phone and drop the responses into your email inbox. Of course, you will need to give a valid email address to use the service, but this is a small price to pay when you consider the alternative cost of sending text messages back and forth across the Atlantic.
For a spot of daily devotion, the iPHONE BIBLE (www.ibiblespace.org)
includes a range of translations of the Bible in an easy-to-navigate format. The breadth of the work is impressive, with extensive cross-referencing linking you to commentaries and allowing you to mark highlighted passages for easy future reference. Of course, if you want the Bible on your iPhone, you could just download a text-based version from PROJECT GUTENBERG (www.gutenberg.org/etext/8294) for example, but then you could just have Hat-form text rather than a fully-fledged iPhone application that wraps up the contents in an easily navigable interface.
The iPhone has an integrated bookmark management system and can synchronise bookmarks with a Mac or PC using iTunes, but unless you want to synchronise your iPhone with every computer you own, you can only ever have them in two places at once. Unless, of course, you use an online bookmarking service such as DELICIOUS (del.iCio.us).
Using iBOOKMARK (www.ibookmark.myiphone.pt), you can save bookmarks on your i Phone and then either export them to Delicious, or import bookmarks you have saved there already. It was still in development as we wrote this, but the developer promised to keep working on it as long as the very reasonable requested donation of $5 a head kept coming in.
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