Apps for Tom's iPhone

Despite Tom’s complaints in the last post about his iPhone’s limitations, he loves himself some apps. If you’re an iPhone owner who’s done more than just make your Phone flatulent*, write Tom and let him know what apps you’ve found useful. Here are his favorite apps so far—and how they could be improved:

Maps: The maps feature that came with the phone has the great advantage of being tied to the GPS system. It has the great disadvantage of being tied to Google Maps instead of the superior MapQuest. Google Maps has a history of sending people on odd routes: Tom was told to travel down a one-way service road the other day.

Weather: The Yahoo weather app that comes with the Phone allows Tom to store one-page forecasts for various cities. He has created weather pages for Waco, Houston, Zambia, and the Cayman Islands. However, Tom has added the mobile version of the Weather Underground website to his iPhone home page, which is more accurate and detailed than the native iPhone app.

Social Networking: Tom prefers the iPhone Facebook app to the desktop version, though he wishes it would announce upcoming birthdays like the desktop version. Tom has missed sending a few greetings to people on their birthday because he accesses Facebook through the iPhone app.

Netflix: PhoneFlix is Tom’s choice for reviewing his Netflix account. He wishes the app would let him rate movies and watch movie previews like he can on the desktop version of Netflix.

Games, Tunes, and Fluff: The iPhone shines when it comes to games and tunes (as one would expect from a beautiful toy). The Sudoku game put out by Mighty Mighty Good Games is Tom’s game of choice. Tom would like his Sudoku game to give him the option of working from a blank screen so he could enter on the screen games he finds in print. He had a game like that on his Treo. Pandora lets Tom set his own radio stations, just like the desktop online version. Tom paid 99 cents for Koi Pond, a silly little app that simply replicates a serene koi pond. There’s nothing better to show off the beauty of the iPhone device. Also, Tom downloaded a free app called “Ambiance” that sets ambient noise to drown out the surrounding noise to allow concentration or rest.

Location Apps: Urbanspoon is a clever device, but AroundMe is better. Showtimes is a cool app for telling you what’s playing in the theaters around you, and when. The app has links to movie reviews at Rotten Tomatoes and movie previews at YouTube.

Knowledge Apps: QuickPedia accesses Wikipedia articles. Shazam is an amazing little app that identifies whatever song is playing around you. Craigsphone lets you review Craigslist on your iPhone. Sportacular helps Tom keep up with his favorite teams. Tom is using the Bible Reader app from Olive Tree and, while he’s currently using the New Living Translation because it’s free, he’s thinking he’ll download the ESV Study Bible onto his iPhone. Though the study bible ain’t cheap, it’s certainly a lot lighter way to carry around the ESV Study Bible than the massive dead tree edition.

Mobile Web Pages: More and more websites are creating versions of their web pages friendly to mobile phones. Tom has added to his iPhone screen icons from Bible Gateway, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Google. To add these to your iPhone, go to the mobile version of the website on Safari, click the plus sign at the bottom of the screen, click “Add to Home Screen” and an icon designed for the iPhone will be added to your screen.

Outlook Interface: As Tom has mentioned before, he was annoyed to discover that his iPhone only syncs with half the productivity power of his desktop Outlook program. The iPhone pulls in Tom’s Outlook Calendar and Outlook Contacts, but the boys at Apple decided Tom didn’t need his many, many Outlook Tasks and Outlook Notes—and they didn’t give him any comparable alternative on the iPhone. So Tom spent the month of January looking among 10,000 offerings in the App Store to find a solution. A new $10 app called iMExchange is the best solution for now. The biggest downside is when setting a due date. If Tom wants to set a task due date for, say, next Thursday, Tom has to remember which date in February next Thursday falls. On his Treo, when Tom clicked the due date, a drop-down menu would appear with the next 7 days listed by day and date, or he clicked on “Choose Date” at the bottom of the drop-down menu and a calendar page would appear so he could click a date. The iPhone date-and-time chooser is done by this image of spinning reels like a Vegas slot machine. This means Tom has to already know the date that a particular day of the week falls, then scroll, scroll, scroll until the dial lands on that number.

If you’ve found some useful apps, let Tom know. The comments feature is turned off on this new version of Get Anchored, so e-mail him.

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* One of the top-rated programs in the App Store is iFart. I kid you not. The cool dude in the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” commercials? Think about it: statistically, he probably has iFart loaded on his iPhone. Classy.