When MrsG-T gave me an iPhone 3G as a birthday present back in late 2008 I didn’t realise the worlds it would open up to me. Leaving aside facilities that have become fairly commonplace in mobiles now (camera, sat nav, music player, telephone calls) here are ten things that I discovered in 2009 and which I use regularly.
Note: as this site is approved by Apple Inc, I get a small commission if you buy any of the apps below through this site (unless they’re free!). All links open in iTunes. Click the logos!
Communicating with friends old and new
Surprise! The first use is communicating. With a phone! Who would have thought…
It’s clear from the general media view that many people don’t ‘get’ Twitter. Personally I’ve come into contact with people from different countries, different denominations and different interests, and made some fascinating friends. Twittelator Pro is only one of many Twitter apps available in the App Store, but it’s the one I keep coming back to as it has some great features.
Tuning your guitar
This is the most useful music app that I’ve come across. If you play guitar (or bass, or mandolin, or ukelele!) then you need this app. It turns your iPhone into a guitar tuner, allowing you to choose from a variety of different types of guitar and has different tunings available too. In addition it has selectable chord charts which show you fingering patterns as well as allowing you to hear what the chord should sound like. You can even place virtual fingers on a fretboard and find out what the name of a chord you discovered is. Relatively expensive, but brilliant.
Checking your speed
In these days of speed cameras, especially the newer average speed versions that seem to be all over the motorways, keeping an eye on your velocity has never been more critical if you want to retain a driving licence (and money!) There are a couple of speed apps available but I like this one best. Ignore the 1-star reviews as they appear to be written by people who don’t know how to work the GPS function on an iPhone.
The app shows your speed in big numbers, white on black, along with the compass direction you’re travelling. It can also show your average speed.
Identifying That Piece Of Music
You’re sitting in a bar and a piece of music comes onto the sound system which you like but have no idea what it is. Simply fire up Shazam and hit the ‘tag’ button. 20 seconds later (if you have network coverage) you should know the song, the artist, the label, when it was published and have a link to download it from iTunes. I tried this on the pre-show music at a live show and it told me about an album called Test-card Favourites!
Creating and Storing Passwords
If you’re going to try and have any kind of secure strategy for passwords, you’ll quickly discover that it’s impossible to remember them all. Writing them down defeats the purpose of having them, so try 1Password. It allows you to store all your passwords in one app, sync them with a Mac (sorry PC users!), and fill in user IDs on stored websites without having them stored in your web browser.
It’ll also generate random passcodes using Alphanumeric, numbers and special characters if you choose them, and store them against a web URL.
The latest version also has an area where you can store software licence codes, which is a god-send for all those shareware apps!
Blogging
Obviously I have a blog (clue: you’re reading it now), but one of the annoying things about it is having to be near a computer to post to it. In the past I’ve tried other ways of blogging remotely but they’ve never been as effective as iBlogger. With this you can post formatted articles with pictures, hyperlinks, tag them and add categories (which you’ve already set up in your master blog).
Setting up with WordPress was a little tricky until I found out about the atom/xml enabling that you had to do, but if you choose to read the instructions you’ll probably find it easier than I did!
Monitoring Sleep Patterns
This app is amazing – genuinely something that surprised me. I read about it on Chris Hinton’s Geek Speak blog, tried it and have found it to revoluionise my waking up each morning. It monitors your sleep patterns and if it recognises that you’re waking up within 30 minutes of your alarm time it’ll gently bring you out of your slumber. I checked the graph patterns with various child visits during the night and the peaks and troughs appear to be bang on.
Checking The Weather
I ride a motorcycle, and I much prefer to ride on nice sunny days without too much wind and with a very low probability of rain. The iPhone has a weather app built in, but Fizz Weather tells you a lot more about what’s going on near you. It can store multiple locations, give graphs of rainfall, humidity, temperature and windspeed up to seven days in arrears and forecasts up to seven days ahead. Obviously these are only as accurate as the guestimates made by all weather forecasts!
Keeping Notes
Evernote is a superb app for keeping notes. It syncs with desktop clients on Mac or PC, and can be accessed via a website if you run a linux computer. You can save webpages, shoot photos, write notes on your iPhone or even record something. It’s a free service although a paid-for Pro version is also available.
Playing Percussion
One day I thought it might be fun to play percussion along with a CD I was listening to. A few seconds surfing the App Store and I had Cowbell Plus installed and running. Accompanying the cowbell are a range of percussion instruments like egg shakers, tambourine, claves, sleigh bells and many more. It needs a very precise shake tempo if you’re shaking the iPhone but tapping it rhythmically is pretty easy.
Bonus! Number 11…
This one will save you enough money to pay for all the rest…
Finding cheaper products
RedLaser is amazing! Fire it up and use the iPhone camera to scan the barcode on a product you’d like. It’ll go online, identify the product and then search for cheaper products.
I used it recently to save almost 50% on a book I wanted. Awesome!
So, those are ten eleven apps that I’ve found useful and never expected to use a mobile phone for. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch what apps have you found which surprised you? Please feel free to post in the comments section so that we can discover more new stuff in 2010.
