What’s on my iPhone? (Or: Appy new year)
(This is a lazier than usual post for a lazy New Year’s Day. Normal service will resume when the year is in full swing…)
I don’t know about you, but I can’t so much as glance at someone else’s iPhone without wanting to grab it and have a nose at what applications they’ve installed. So for any fellow members of Appaholics Anonymous who read this blog, here’s what’s cluttering up my iPhone* on the dawn of the new decade:
Social web apps
Tweetie 2 – the Twitter client to rule them all. Beats its major competitors (Tweetdeck, Twitterific) hands down on all fronts if you ask me. Only one tiny niggle: a bit too didactic on the etiquette of retweeting.- Boxcar – does the one thing Tweetie 2 doesn’t, and does it very well: sends you push notifications of Twitter replies and DMs. Alerts you about Facebook too if you want. (Nah)
- Facebook – of course, Facebook. Gotta have the Facebook. The app can be a bit clunky and hard to find your way around though (a good companion to the full site, then) …but it beats trying to use Safari.
- LinkedIn – I mostly use it to accept new connections and supplement my iPhone contacts, but you can do pretty much most things you can do with the full site.
- Touch BB – a PHPBB forum client for iPhone. I use this every day, hooked up to a private forum I run for some old uni friends.
- Wordpress – if you’ve got a WP blog, you need this app – it’s great for deleting spam comments while away from a computer, editing existing posts or drafts, or drafting (short) new ones.
- Huddle – to be honest, I’m yet to have much call to use this. But as a member of several Huddle communities, it’s bound to come in useful soon.
- Red Delicious – I use this app to access my Delicious bookmarks and a bookmarklet in Safari to add new ones. Am sure there are better ways of doing this, any recommendations?
- Skype – one of the first apps I installed and I’ve never used it. I’ve never been sure why I need Skype, but am prepared to be convinced and so I keep it installed in readiness for my VOiP epiphany.
- Audioboo - as per Skype, I’ve barely used this but can’t bring myself to delete it.
- Photoshop.com mobile – easy to use and elegant app, useful for cropping photos and applying basic effects.
- Flickr – for quick access to my own photos on Flickr and to search for others, e.g. to use on this blog.
- Shozu – a powerful media sharing app that works with Flickr, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and more – and which I have barely begun to use. Keeping it to give it more of a trial run sometime.
Productivity apps
Things – my ‘to do’ list app of choice. Much simpler than Omnifocus, mush better looking than ToDo. Syncs nicely with the desktop version over Wi-Fi. Only wish there was a cloud equivalent too.- Evernote – for more substantial list making and occasionally taking photos of phone numbers on tradesmen’s vans.
- Quick Office - MS Word, Excel and that in your pocket.
- SimplemindX - An intuitive mind mapping tool.
- Pingdom – for checking server status of your websites.
News/content apps
Newsie / Byline / Mobile RSS – I’m running these three clients for Google Reader and am yet to settle on any one which does it all (sharing, starring, offline reading, tweeting, emailing, unsubscribing, recategorising…) Your advice welcome.- Independent / Guardian / Sky news / Thomson Reuters News Pro - I dip into one or more of these virtual ‘papes on my commute most days.
- Mashable - geek news on the move. I prefer using this sort of dedicated app to just using the RSS feed, but don’t ask me why!
- Instapaper – where saved webpages go to die, if I’m honest.
Travel and location apps
Mini A-Z / Tube Deluxe / London Bus - aka the Knowledge.- Directgov travel news – good work, fellas. Well worth checking before any long journey.
- AddLee.com – the best taxi firm in the world, in your pocket.
- The Trainline / National Rail - train times, bookings and live departure boards.
- Around me / ATM Hunter / Urbanspoon – pretty reliable for finding nearby banks, hotels, cafés, restaurants etc
- Fix my street – MySociety’s tool for complaining to the council about graffiti and potholes. Never used it yet but you never know.
- Google Earth – mainly for impressing old people. (Hello, dad!)
Music
Last.fm – personal radio and streaming music; my music discovery engine of choice.- Shazam – for identifying songs and buying them, and impressing old folk some more.
- In the Mood – for tweeting about what’s playing. Probably a bit annoying.
Telly & film
Sky+ – lets me schedule my TV recordings from anywhere. Utterly awesome.- Radio Times – because, although I wish there were more choice in the TV mag market, and in spite of it being utterly obsessed with Dr f**king Who, ‘RT Choice’ is probably the most reliable filter of decent quality telly around.
- Flixster – handy for seeing trailers of upcoming movies and keeping lists of stuff you’d like to see.
- Movie Genie - an IMDB client.
- [LoveFilm - doesn't exist yet, but I'm told it's coming. I love LoveFilm's online DVD rental service but an iPhone app for managing my rental list would make it so much better.]
Shopping
Red Laser - another one for impressing people, this fun app lets you scan the barcodes of almost anything and get price comparison results for buying it online.- Amazon / eBay UK – making it dangerously easy to spend my money.
- Ocado – yet to use this Waitrose online grocery shopping app, but if there was a Tesco or Morrissons equivalent I’d use it in a flash.
Reference
Yell.com / Dictionary.com / Wikipanion / iTranslate / All recipes UK – these do what they sound like they do, and get you there in fewer steps than firing up Safari.- Musée de Louvre – because it’s free and maybe I’ll be bored enough on a plane one day to improve myself wiv a bit of culcha.
Games
These are the keepers at the moment:
Jewel Quest / iBlast Moki / Fling / Puzzle Bobble - Great puzzle games I never tire of and may never delete.- Ravensword / Spider / Rolando 1 and 2 - Adventure and role player games.
- I Dig It Explorations / Robocalypse / The Settlers / Worms - Simulation and strategy type games.
- Fantastic Contraption / Crazy Machine / Crayon – Highly addictive physics games.
- Star Defense / Sentinel 2 / Tower Madness – Tower defense games.
- Speed Forge / 3d Rollercoaster Madness – Racing games.
- Scrabble / Hold’em / Table tennis / Arkanoid / Smart Go – Classic games.
Toddlertainment
Tried and tested on my two year old:
Birds UK – bird calls and songs of all common British birds. Teaching daddy a thing or two in the process.- Dora saves the Crystal Kingdom – and rides on a rainbow slide while she’s at it. And shouts a lot.
- Bubblewrap – mindless popping.
- Preschool Adventure - six activity games for toddlers.
- Balloonimals lite – inflate and pop balloon animals, without hiring a clown.
- Little Red Hen – the classic story, with animal noises.
- Pocketphonic – alphabet games
- Peekaboo Barn – animal noises
- iTot cards – great set of digital flash cards
Hmm, that’s a much longer list than it seems just from flicking through the screens on my phone.
And yet… with over 100,000 apps in the app store and counting I’m bound to be missing some gems. Personal recommendation counts for a lot against those odds, so I hope you’ve found my list useful and would really love to hear your suggestions too.
(H)appy new year and here’s to the next ten years of jaw-dropping advances in web and mobile technology. I’m rubbish at predictions but feel pretty confident in saying all this stuff will probably just look like Pong in comparison to what we’ll be using in 2020. (And my son will be better at using it than me).
*other smart phones are available. Hold your tongues, Android fans, I’m not an Apple fanboy.
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Comments
Cheers for the post Neil. There ought to be a Cribs style show for flaunting your favourite apps!
Give Reeder a whirl on Google Reader front – nicer looking/ faster than Byline & co and you can Tweet from it.
Other apps floating my boat:
iTalk – bought it before Voice Memos was introduced and still use it, friendler interface that the nipper likes
Games – Sword of Fargoal, NOVA, C64, Driver, Vector Tanks, JetCarStunts, Pop
Content – RadioBox, The Guardian, Empire Movie Guide, iFooty
Utilities – British Gas (just lets you file meter readings – really simple and clear, puts other cos to shame), Tipulator
I’m also still really into ‘Star Walk’ – like Google Maps but for the cosmos. Never been into astronomy but it’s totally captivating.
I find Darkslide (free version available) better than the Flickr app.
I use Read it Later to get longer blog posts from Google reader for off-line reading.
TVGuide is a pretty good free app for listings, but doubt it would be better than the Radio Times one you have.
Just downloading the Settlers free version now – can recommend Civilisation Rev though from that genre.
Polyhedra is a fairly addictive game. Also enjoyed a bit of retro fun with Monopoly. Still have HarborMaster and FlightControl – although haven’t played either for a while.
Love Art is the Nat Gall equivalent of your Louvre one – was free when I got it, now £1.79 
Digging simplenote right now. Simple note taking, great search for GTD tagging chops if you so wish, syncs with the cloud and nice Mac desktop and dashboard apps to boot. Worth a look if you want a simpler note/to-do app anytime.
[...] partnerships, and social media. But what’s the essence? A neat little iphone mindmapping app (via Neill Williams) helped me distill three social reporting principles, as you can see here. Given the time of year [...]
Thanks for all those Neil … SimpleMindX helped with a post http://socialreporter.com/?p=695
I like Netnewswire for RSS – via Dave Briggs, and Remember the Milk via someone else (can’t remember:-)
Thanks Neil.
There’s such a bewildering number of apps now, it’s great to get personal recommendations. I’ll certainly try some of these.
Apps I can recommend are:
- Stanza for ebooks
- Say What for social media monitoring
- limited audience, but if you live in Edinburgh and use the buses, the Lothian Bus tracker app is very good
- astronomy apps…Sky Voyager is brilliant apparently (the boyfriend is a keen astronomer) but it’s not cheap
- don’t have time to play games (:-)) but I do very much like my Drummer drum kit!
Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
I’ll be trying out your mindmap app. Mostly I have v similar apps ( and over the moon to hear about lovefilm). For RSS I use Newsstand which synchs well with google reader.