New iPhone for Xmas? – Some Great Apps To Check Out

If you just landed yourself a gorgeous new iPhone for Christmas, first off congratulations!  You’ve got *the* great mobile device, no question about it.  I hope your activation and initial setup have gone smoothly, and if you’ve chosen to jailbreak or unlock your iPhone, hope that has gone well for you too.

Once you’re through with those initial bits, and you’ve played around with the iPhone’s excellent built-in programs, you’re probably on the lookout for more, for some more great applications to use on your awesome new mobile companion. 

So, here’s a little list of some great apps – both web-based applications and native (locally installed apps) – and some handy places to go to look for and discover new apps. 

This is not a comprehensive list by any means.  Just a quick rundown of some very useful and exciting programs, sites, and resources we’ve found for the iPhone.  Hope this will help some of you to get a head-start on getting the absolute max out of your iPhone …

iPhone Web Portals, Start Pages, & Web Application Lists

• appSafari – probably the best listing of web-based apps for the iPhone – as it is very frequently updated and is very easy to navigate and use.
• iPhone Plaza – very handy iPhone start page / portal – with bold, easy graphics and buttons to jump between its main sections , covering iPhone apps, games, ebooks, music, info about your iPhone, and even a cocktails recipe guide!
• Apple’s Web Apps Directory – Apple’s very own listing of web apps for their creation.  Updated pretty often, not optimized for the iPhone very well, ironically.
• Mippin.com – another great mobile start page site – easily customizable, access to a broad range of popular sites in a range of categories, and all optimized nicely for the iPhone.
• Applists – large directory of web-based apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch – you can create an account and customize your own favorite apps listing, that it will remember next time you sign in, and share favorites with friends.
• Appleopolis – another directory of web apps – with Top 20, Featured, and New Apps lists – a decent directory, but not updated as often as some of the others listed here.

iPhone Web Apps

• vTap – an awesome way to search for and view all sorts of videos on the web – supports more formats than the built-in YouTube program, and uses a super-fast and super-intelligent search-as-you type mechanism to help you find vids faster than via any other method!
• Earthcomber – a great way to find places of interest wherever you are – restaurants, nightlife, businesses etc., and see photos and reviews for most of them – and a slick mobile interface to work with.
• iPhone Typing Test – this one is a lot of fun for measuring how quickly your iPhone typing skills improve – you do a quick one-sentence typing test and it’ll tell you your words per minute – mine climbed dramatically over my first month of use.
• Webot – lets you stream music and photos to your iPhone from your home PC, or PCs.
• MovieTickets.com – quickly find movie times, info on new releases, and find theaters near you.
• Sports Tap – great site for coverage of latest US major sports scores plus some stats and standings information.
• The Wall Street Journal – the most elegant and slickly designed iPhone news site.
• The Weather Channel – very nice iPhone optimized weather info site, with a greater range of information and views than the iPhone’s built-in Weather program.
• PogoNotes – a handy little online note-taking app, with an iPhone optimized site – so your notes stay in sync between iPhone and desktop browser.
• Google’s Mobile Apps Page – not a single app, but Google’s recently redesigned and great looking mobile start page for all its mobile apps – Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader, Picasa, and more.
• MyNumo Games – home to several good iPhone games, including 501 Darts, Golf Driving Range, ion Bowling, and a Blackjack game.
• iPodia – a Wikipedia viewer for the iPhone and iPod Touch – view articles in an optimized layout.
• ESPN Pod Center – listen to all the latest hit ESPN shows’ podcasts – PTI, Best of Mike & Mike, Around The Horn, and more.
• Toodledo – very powerful on-line to-do list application, with an excellent iPhone optimized site.
• Meebo – web-based instant messaging app – supports IM on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Meebo itself, GTalk, ICQ, and Jabber
• Remember The Milk – another very feature-rich online to-do applic ation, with a superb iPhone interface. My current favorite for managing tasks on the iPhone.
• BBC Podcasts – browse and listen to all the BBC’s podcasts by radio station, genre, or in alphabetical list.
• Stitcher – an audio news aggregator – with ‘channels’ that represent groupings of news podcasts under a specific topic heading – very nice idea, not that broad a range of channels just yet – right now, there are channels for business news, Silicon Valley news, celebs and entertainment, and a couple others.
• infospace Find It! – quick locator for businesses, services, and people, very nicely formatted for iPhone with big, colorful buttons to go to each section, and sections covering things like: dining out, shops, people, travel, health, and more.
• iFootie – good scores and standings site for European football (soccer) leagues.

Native iPhone Applications

These are apps that run locally on your iPhone (if you have jailbroken it) – almost all of these applications are available to install easily if you have used one of the popular jailbreak methods, and have the Installer.app program on your iPhone:

• MobileFinder – allows you to browse and work with files stored on your iPhone.
• Summerboard – the hugely popular app that lets you apply and manage custom themes for your iPhone.
• Customize – suite of customization tools for the iPhone – to do things like replace the carrier logo with a custom image, set custom sounds, and lots more.
• iPhoneHome – fantastic little app for customizing what happens when you double-tap the Home button – set it to launch any app installed on your iPhone, open a new email, or dial a frequently used ph one number.
• VNotes – record and save voice notes, play them back and email them.
• Sketches – fun drawing program – you can draw on a blank page, or draw on top of photos from your photo albums, export your drawings to a photo album, and email them as well.
• SysInfo – maybe the best ‘utility’ app released so far for the iPhone – provides system information, and a listing of all processes running on the iPhone, and an ability to terminate a process when needed.
• Chess – the first native chess game for iPhone – you can choose from several different styles of board and levels of difficulty.
• MobileRSS – the only native RSS reader for the iPhone, allowing you to keep up with your feeds even when you don’t have fast (or any) web connectivity.
• Photoboard – wild and fun app that lets you rotate and scale photos a la the ‘Minority Report’ movie.
• Websearch – very handy app for speeding up your web searches on the iPhone.
• Screenshot – capture your iPhone screen, view you screencpas, and email them
• iBlackjack – gorgeous looking and smooth playing Blackjack game for the iPhone.
• TapTap Revolution – the fast-tapping iPhone music game.
• NES – massively popular NES emulator for the iPhone.
• psx4iPhone – Playstation emulator for the iPhone
• Services – another great utility app – allows you to toggle On / Off some of your iPhone’s key network services – like Bluetooth, WiFi, and SSH.
• Search – very useful program that lets you search and call contacts, and search

I’m sure we’ve left out lots of great apps here – so feel free to let us know some of your favorites in the comments …

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