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WeatherBug

Six word review: Local weather with radar, cams included

The weather app that is included on the iPhone is great, if you like to see the extended forecast. I worry more about what the weather is going to be like tonight or tomorrow, and I love looking at the radar images, probably due to a distrust of meteorologists. Weatherbug does that for me, with several local stations, providing not just the radar, but local webcams showing off the current conditions. The only downside is a limit of three saved “favorite” locations.

WeatherBug is free [iTunes link]

Datacase

Six word review: Use your iPhone as external drive

There are several “store files on your iPhone” apps, Files, FileMagnet, and there are probably more to come. Datacase is by far the slickest implementation so far. No client on the computer required, Mac and PC ready, with a great user interface. Datacase has a slick system of getting the files on the iPhone, using Bonjour on the Mac and FTP on a PC. When transferring my files from my Mac, I launch the app and it appears in the finder, I simply drag and drop, abra-ka-poof, the files are on the iPhone, viewable and everything. Simply sexy.

Datacase is $6.99 [iTunes link]

Feeds

Six word review: Well done, cheap, standalone feed reader

I am always looking for a good way to manage my feeds. I use NetNewsWire, but feed management is my Moby Dick. Feeds is cheap and offers a directory of feeds to choose from, which is a great bonus. The feed rendering is the same as Safari, with the options of opening in Safari. The nice thing about Feeds is that is has a “star” function, allowing me to save an entry for later reading. I would love if Feeds would sync with Google Reader, the star function indicates that is would be moving in that direction, but that could be reading in to things too much.

Feeds is $0.99 [iTunes link]

GuitarToolKit

Six word review: If you play guitar, buy this

As a guitar player, I am always looking up a chord that I don’t commonly use. I also need to have a tuner. GuitarToolKit is a gorgeous implementation of both of these, combined with a metronome and open neck tone representation. There are other tuners, and other chord libraries, but GuitarToolKit is the comprehensive package. If you play guitar and you own an iPhone, this is an app that should be on your phone.

GuitarToolKit is $9.99 [iTunes link]

Evernote

Six word review: Like elephant: never forget anything again.

I am a fan of the Evernote service. I can keep track of notes and to text recognition of photos on Macs, PCs, the web and now my iPhone. Evernote was available from the first day of the App Store, but I couldn’t recommend it until it had the ability to edit notes on the iPhone. Version 1.3 has given us this vital function. Keeping track of everything is important, not only random notes, but business cards that I need to search for later. That is the cool thing about Evernote, it does the text recognition on the photo of a business card, allowing me to pull it up at my desk later. The elephant logo is not a misnomer, it truly lets you never forget.

Evernote is free [iTunes link]

Instapaper

Six word review:Easy to use, read it later

I read a lot of things on the internet. A lot. There are somethings that I want to read, but don’t have time to. Instapaper is an online service that allow me to save items for reading later. Instapaper originally came to my attention as a purely web-based application that was iPhone friendly. It has a very simple look and functions well. That simplicity has been translated to Instapaper for the iPhone, which syncs with the web service and allows offline (read on an airplane) reading. It even converts webpages into text-only, so if the formatting on a website makes it difficult to read, you can read in peace.

Instapaper is free [iTunes link]

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Wednesday is now officially iPhone App-stravaganza. I will download some free, some paid applications for the iPhone and give them a short review. In this first Wednesday App-stravaganza, I am going to recap the first set of apps I have and use regularly and then review the applications I downloaded last night.

The Essentials

OmniFocus

Six word review: mobile GTD with location awareness goodness

I am a hard-core OmniFocus user. It keeps everything that I need to do organized. The only problem that I have had is that I can’t take my tasks with me. I had a convoluted sync that involved some AppleScript, some Automator actions, some FTPing, generally it wasn’t super reliable. But that only kept the home and work computers in sync. Now with OmniFocus version 1.1 and OmniFocus for the iPhone, I can keep my shopping lists, errands, and all of the other projects I have close at hand. The syncing features require either a WebDAV account or MobileMe’s iDisk, but the syncing itself is flawless after setup.

Reviews in the App Store are mixed. It has a high learning curve and it can be used independent of the desktop application but if you aren’t a full-time OmniFocus user, it may not be worth the investment of time. There are plenty of “to do” applications for much less, heck, Notes are free.

OmniFocus costs $19.99 [iTunes link]

Jott

Six word review: Simple voice powered reminders, transcribed automagically

jott.com is a free reminder / call transcription / email service. To reduce the head scratching let me walk you though how I use Jott. Things should be come clearer.

Jered is walking from his car to the grocery store and remembers that he needs to email a coworker about a project. Jered pulls out his phone, taps one of his favorites, is asked who he wants to jott. “Doug” *beep* “Doug, we need to meet tomorrow to talk about the signage project.” and then he hangs up. An email is sent to Doug and Jered with the message transcribed.

The iPhone app takes a slightly different tact focusing more on creating lists and to do items. I use it mainly to remember things that will evaporate before I have a chance to write them down. The jott service is great and I still use it to communicate with coworkers and friends, and it is a pity that the iPhone app doesn’t allow for messaging. Fingers crossed for the next revision.

Jott is free [iTunes link]

Zenbe Lists

Six word review: Sync capable, web editable, sharable lists

Zenbe lists is a list management program that syncs to the Zenbe web services. This allows for editing at any computer that has a browser, meaning data entry isn’t nearly a tedious for those of us with fat thumbs. I know you are thinking: Jered another list program? I use Zenbe as a checklist which is wholly different than a task list. These are things that reoccur, so when I check them, they stay on the list and I can uncheck them later. The thing that is great about Zenbe is the ability to share lists with other Zenbe (and non-Zenbe) users. My grocery lists is shared with Esther, so is a list of things to pack for the baby.

Zenbe Lists is free [iTunes link]

2 Across

Six word review:Slickly implemented crosswords without newsprint smudges

I have never been a fan of Sodoku, maybe it has to do with my semi-irrational fear of numbers, who knows. One thing I do love to keep the grey matter performing well is a good crossword puzzle. 2 Across is just that: a well done application on the iPhone that lets me spend countless hours trying to figure out 38 down. If I were a New York Time subscriber, I could do their puzzles using the premium subscription features, but the list of 11 news sources for available puzzles are fine for me. 2 Across is a well done implementation of something that I had written off as being purely paper and pen (yes, I’m that daring).

2 Across costs $5.99 [iTunes link]

NY Times

Six word review: Pocketable version of the Grey Lady

I used to read the newspaper everyday. My uncle says everyone should read two newspapers everyday. Unfortunately, time is scarce, newspapers are bulky and I prefer to skim to the articles that are of greater interest to me. The NYTimes app makes skimming through the entire paper easy as well as being easy on the eyes. Photos that expand to the page width, the text is well rendered, making reading the news of a dreary world a joy to read.

NYTime is free [iTunes link]

NetNewsWire

Six word review: My feeds synced across all computers

I use NetNewsWire for the Mac and NewsGator when on Windows (read about my feed journey here) and they sync very well, including a iPhone optimized web version, but with the release of NetNewsWire for the iPhone, I now have a nice option to sync my feeds with my iPhone. There are a few features that are missing from the current implementation, but I am sure they are coming in later releases. The most important of which is the ability to mark a story as new. It is nice to have a system that syncs all of my feeds so I don’t have to worry about leaving feeds on a device. Yes, I know there is an iPhone optimized Google Reader, but there is something desirable (I can’t really put my finger on what it is…) about having a client on my desktops.

NetNewsWire for the iPhone is free [iTunes link]

I posted about my wishes for the iPhone 2.0, and I didn’t think that wish list would come in handy so quickly. I have had issues with my Macbook, Merlin, recently, it would not recognize the battery at all. Even with the battery in, when it was plugged in, would restart. I assume this is because the battery was trying to take over. The Macbook operated as though the battery did not exist, even though I had a brand new battery.

I took Merlin to a Genius bar. The Genius said that I should send it in. Today, I finally had a chance to. Which means I am operating on my work laptop or my iPhone.

I was going to attempt to use just my iPhone for everything. Email, web surfing, even podcasts. It would be all possible if… the iPhone had copy and paste.

iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

To blog, I write and then copy and paste text to make it more coherent. Conducting some of the day to day business (web surfing), I need to have copy & paste. That and the ability to use the horizontal keyboard everywhere.

June is coming quickly, never more true as we wait for our baby. It has been rumored that Apple is releasing SDK built apps for public consumption. Oh yeah, and that iPhone 2.0 3G thing. While I am curious about the 3G availability and any price increases on the 3G data plan, the thing I am most excited about is the third-party applications.

Some of the applications I am most looking forward to are:

• OmniFocus Lite
  I need a way to take my OmniFocus with me. Syncing (not necessarily over-the-air) is critical and I would like the application to be a mobile version of the robust Getting Things Done application.
• Office Lite
  The mobile office suites are limited to viewing most document, that combined with the iPhone’s native view-only capability makes getting real “office” work impossible, unless you really like Marker Felt fonts. A iPhone native office suite would be very nice, I don’t need it full featured, but cut and paste would be very attractive for me to throw some dollars at.
• Call Screener
  Blackberry has a cool app that lets you whitelist calls you want to receive, but lets the rest go to voicemail. I love this idea. I would easily throw $20 - $30 at an app like this.