Nearing 40,000 apps, the App Store has become a repository of useful applications that may serve only a few purposes but do them well. inTouch is a good example of a small utility, something that could easily be a feature of the native contact application, but is a very handy $.99 app. The basic premise of inTouch is simple, as you flick through your contact list inside of inTouch a little Red/Yellow/Green indicator will tell you whether now is a good time to call or not, based on their time zone
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Review: inTouch for iPhone

May 15th 2009 by

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Nearing 40,000 apps, the App Store has become a repository of useful applications that may serve only a few purposes but do them well. inTouch is a good example of a small utility, something that could easily be a feature of the native contact application, but is a very handy $.99 app.

The basic premise of inTouch is simple, as you flick through your contact list inside of inTouch a little Red/Yellow/Green indicator will tell you whether now is a good time to call or not, based on their time zone. Of course, even when the indicator is red you can still call, but it makes you think twice before doing so.

inTouch uses the contact’s phone number to find the time zone they live in. When you open the app for the first time it pulls in all of your contacts, no need to enter in all of your contacts again. There is a default availability range that is applied to every contact, but you can easily adjust the times for individual contacts.

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inTouch keeps a favorites list for you so you can see at a glance all the contacts you call regularly. It is a little disappointing that you have to build the favorites list again rather than use the one you may have built inside the phone app. I talked to the inTouch team about this limitation and they said they are working on it, but the APIs haven’t been exposed to them by Apple.

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inTouch has the potential to become a pocket-sized CRM. I can see them adding in the ability to take notes on a call or set reminders to call someone at a later point.

I talked to Robert from inTouch and he explained some of the features they have in the pipeline. The team is working on a feature that can automatically route outbound international calls through a high-end VOIP provider dropping calling rates down to $.10-12/min.

If you make calls to contacts all over the country and internationally inTouch is a very handy way to see when your contacts may be available for a call.

inTouch is $.99 and is available here.

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