Dave’s iPhone Must-Haves
by codemonkey on Sep.19, 2009, under Dave's Must Haves
I’m constantly being asked what applications I like best, as friends and family buy iPhones. And, I sometimes download a few too many apps and need to clean house. So, I’m using this to both rate my favorite applications, and to help me keep track of things I need.
First up: Games
While some may consider gaming to be a complete waste of the iphone’s usefulness, I beg to differ. What better way to relax your head than a little sudoku. Plus, I’m a bit of a gamer . . .
Instead of going into all the games I have installed in detail (I have quite a few), I thought I’d start with the ones I play at least once a month, and then lists the rest that I have installed.Sorry — I’m too lazy to look up links, but all are searchable on the apps store.
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Solebon | The best solitaire. Bar none. Reminds me of the old “pysol” on linux. |
| Tap Defense | This is the only tower defense I’ve seen on iphone. It’s fun, but, some modes are easily winnable. |
| Sudoku | By Mighty Mighty good games. My normal sudoku when I need a fix. |
| Sudoku Daily | One daily game of sudoku. |
| Enigmo | A very fun water dripping game. |
| Cross Light | Crosswords. I’m not very good, so this is hard enough for me. |
| Ocarina | This is a very cool toy. It turns your phone into a musical instrument. |
| Topple | Try to balance shapes. Nice for a quick fix |
| Frenzic | Who thought inserting pie pieces could be fun |
| iShoot Lite | Think “Worms”. One of those games where you pick a direction for your canon, and the amount of energy to use. |
| Aurora Feint II Lite | A block matching game, with an iphone twist. |
| Blizzard Authenticator | I use this to log into World of Warcraft. |
| Blizzard Armory | I can check out my characters’ equipment, and decide on upgrades, while away from my computer. |
| WoW Talent | Similar to the armory, I can look at new talent builds for my World of Warcraft Characters |
Utilities
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Shazam | Can listen to a song, and tell you title and artist. Way fun for playing “Who’s this” with friends and family. |
| Google Maps | A mini GPS for your phone. A must have. |
| CardStar | This cool app stores all of your little fob cards with bar codes. Then, the machines can scan them right off of the screen. This app is beautiful — when it works. Unfortunately, the machines can rarely scan the phone. |
| NetNewsWire | Best RSS reader for the iPhone I’ve found. They are currently moving away from NewsGator, and over to Google Reader. I can’t wait till they’re finished transitioning. |
| Netflix Instant Q+ | This allows you to add movies to your netflix instant queue. That way, we can add a movie while in our chair, then go to netflix on the tivo, and watch it. |
| i.TV | Besides just being an awesome TV Guide, this app lets us schedule recordings on our Tivo’s, even when away from our house. Also, it has a Tivo remote control for when we are at home! |
| WeatherBug | Better than the stock weather application. Has detailed reports, and live radar screens. Unfortunately, it does crash a lot. |
| iDisk | Instant access to your files on mobile.me — roxxors! |
| Guitar Toolkit | Guitar tuner and chord chart. All kinds of win. |
| Urban Spoon | This app is highlighted in commercials all the time. Great place for instant restaurant reviews. |
| Trailguru | A great idea — log your gps while walking. However, there are many problems with it. It cuts out, often, dies when the phone turns off, and gets really confused if you get a call. But, it’s sometimes accurate. |
| Stanza | E-book reader. You need the app on your computer too, to generate the files, and send them to the phone. |
| Kindle | Best interface for an e-book reader I’ve seen. Unfortunately, it only works with books purchased from amazon. I wish they’d read books you already know, like the actual kindle does, via flash. |
| Flixter | Movie times and ratings for movies in the theater. |
| DailyBurn | I use the website dailyburn.com to track my weight loss, exercise, and maintain a food log. This allows me to enter those items easily. |
Social Networking
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| The new facebook app is awesome. You can do everything you can do on facebook, except for play the flash games & quizzes. Very nice. | |
| Nambu | I use this to publish to twitter and facebook at the same time. |
Jailbreak Must Haves
Yes, I jailbroke my phone. Why? Mostly because I could. But, the reason I kept jailbreaking my phone was for the following Apps.
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Calendar on my lock screen | I’m not sure which app gives me this — probably winterboard. But, while my phone is locked, I can still scroll through my calendar. Tres cool. |
| Pdanet | Tethering. Now that 3.1 broke tethering, PDANet is back to being a must-have! And, yes, I paid for this one. |
| sbsettings | Swipe a finger across the signal bar at the top of the screen, and you can instantly turn many toggles on and off: Wifi, Airplane Mode, 3g, location, bluetooth, ssh, etc. Plus you can customize it as a quick launcher for your other applications. |
| winterboard | Themes for your phone — why have the same-old? |
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