iPhone 3g: The Apps I'm Using
Yeah, I'm one of those early adopter assholes who stood in line to get an iPhone this weekend, but at least I waited until Saturday morning! That's eons in early-adopter land. The iPhone 3g was practically passé at that point. While I am not so keen on adding to the messy pile of iPhone articles the blog-o-net has turned into over the course of the weekend, I figured you guys might be interested in what applications I am running on the device, as the applications are really what make this smart phone shine. Most of these are free, too!
Twitteriffic: I'm a fan of Iconfactory's full-fledged version of Twitteriffic, and the mobile version is fairly similar. There's a free (ad-supported) and a paid (ad-free) version, the free version being the one I'm sporting. I like the interface but I really wish these things ran in the background. I'd love to get tweets growl-style while surfing Safari. Oh, and by the way my twitter name is "chrisfurniss". Obvious enough for you?
Save Benjis: Nifty little app for you to take along on shopping trips to do some price comparison. I imagine you could even use it to haggle with shopkeepers or do some price matching if you're clever. Enter the name of any product and it shows you a pricing rundown Froogle-style.
Yelp: I'm an avid Yelp-er and having an app that detects your location and brings up reviews of nearby restaurants and businesses is almost exactly like being in the future. My only complaints are that you can't submit a review from the app, and you can't click on a reviewer's name and see all their reviews. This is more for the location-specific features.
Paypal: Splitting the restaurant bill? Why not just send your half via Paypal and have your friend foot it on their card? Simple and straightforward app, though I am concerned about security. If someone steals my iPhone, couldn't they transfer a bunch of money from my Paypal account to their own?
Exposure: A good, workable (not to mention free) Flickr solution. View your photos and friends photos and such. I wish you could save photos viewed as wallpapers. Again, as with the Yelp app, Exposure has a location feature where it will show you images that have been geotagged near your GPS location. It won't, however, show you user profiles or anything helpful.
Enigmo: Classic "The Incredible Machine" style gameplay from Pangaea Software, and the only app so far I've spent money on. Great fun and the graphics are surprisingly decent. Satisfying sound effects, too.
T4Two Free: Really simple little Pong-style game with multi-touch. Jinny and I were playing this at the park by each holding an end of the phone and controlling a paddle with our thumbs. You can also tip the phone to influence the way the ball rolls. Real stripped-down but loads of potential here.
Midomi: Sing, hum or play a song directly into the speaker and Midomi claims to be able to detect what song it is. I have yet to have it work correctly. Maybe I don't *really* know how to sing Dani California after all.
Pandora Radio: Holy crap, this app is so good. Utilizes Pandora's online offerings and syncs any playlists you already have with the service onto your iPhone. Type in an artist or song title and it automatically generates a radio station based on your listening tastes. Sound quality is great, and you can bookmark songs or order them from iTunes directly from your phone. Handy!
Remote: The best app of the bunch. I can control iTunes on my Mac at home from anywhere in the house. I can also use Remote as I am walking home to queue up some tunes for when I walk through the door.
With all this device integration, I'm getting that great "Holy crap I am in the future" feeling from my iPhone whenever I use it. Personally, I love the little thing. It may not be as responsive as I'd like, and the apps not being able to run in the background is a pain in the ass but it is definitely a large step forward. I'll download a few more games and let you guys know how they are and be sure to listen to the podcast to hear about new apps we've tried, what we like and what we definitely didn't like.
Are there any you guys are using that you'd recommend?
What say you?!