Smart Phones of today

After finally getting my iPhone 3G yesterday I spent most of my time playing with the Apps and App Store.

It?s early days but there already some amazing Apps available for the iPhone. This list features a wide range including task management, social networking, file transferring, location aware fun and even games.

1. FileMagnet (5$)

File MagnetFileMagnet is the app that Apple forgot. I?ve no idea why Apple does not allow access to transfer files too and from the iPhone. What?s the point in carrying around a 16gb hard drive with us everyday if we can?t use it for anything but music, video and photos?
Portable Storage Device

File MagnetOnce you have installed FileMagnet on both your iPhone and your Mac you can drag and drop any files into it to sync between the devices. Making your iPhone a 16gb portable storage device.
Open & View Files Too!

It then goes one step better and not only allows you to transfer and store files but also lets you open and view them on your iPhone!! It supports PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, images, movies and even complete folders!

Rating: 10/10 (The best iPhone app so far. It has no faults and is a bargain)

2. Shazam (FREE)

This app really blew my mind when I first tried it!
File Magnet

You hold your iPhone to any source of music, be it TV, radio or whatever. Shazam ?listens to it? and identifies it for you in seconds!! That is it?s most obvious feature but it actually does so much more.

It works with tags and comparing the tags you make to it?s databases. You can then buy the music you hear. Imagine you are in a pub playing a track you like but don?t know. Hold up your iPhone, let Shazam identify it and then purchase it automatically! Amazing!

Additional features include viewing related videos on YouTube, personalising Tags with photos and emailing Tags to contacts.

Rating: 10/10 (Another perfect app. Technology ahead of it?s time!)

3. Vicinity (3$)

File MagnetVicinity is another app which takes advantage of the iPhones GPS and location awareness.

Using your current location it quickly provides lists of nearby services such as banks, pubs, restaurants, taxis and takeaways, giving their distance from you as well!

Not amazingly useful when your in your home town but could be invaluable when traveling to new places.

Another interesting feature is bringing up Flickr photographs taken in the vicinity and also Wikipedia pages of local interests.

Rating: 7/10 (Works well and a good insight into how GPS is more useful than just maps.)

4. Things (10$)

File MagnetThings is one of my most used programs on all of my Macs. It?s a task management system which can implement David Allen?s GTD system. I really would be lost without it. The idea of having my To-Do lists with me on my iPhone at all times is very exciting.
Coming Soon?

Unfortunately there is one major downside at the moment. The App does not yet support syncing which makes it almost useless as I won?t write my lists out twice. However, the creators insist that it?s their top priority and it will be implemented soon. The introductory price of just $9.99/?5.99 makes it worth an early investment.

Rating: 8/10 (Rating assumes syncing is implemented. A stunning app and a bargain too)

5. OmniFocus (19$)

Before Things came along OmniFocus was my task management app of choice. I?m still not 100% converted to Things and there are bits of OmniFocus which appeals to me also.
Amazing Location Awareness

The iPhone App of OmniFocus is streets ahead at the moment with one amazing feature. The location awareness of the iPhone is implemented so well in this app.

For example using your location OmniFocus can create custom lists to show you tasks you need to complete nearby. Maybe you have a separate list for at the office? Or a shopping list which can be shows as you approach the store!

It?s not cheap though, it?s twice the price of Things and the OSX desktop app is also expensive.

Rating: 9/10 (I prefer Things to OmniFocus overall but the location awareness features really give it the edge)

6. Twitterific (FREE)

File MagnetTwitter is the marmite of social networking. You either love it or hate it. Personally I love it.

I also love Twitterific for OSX, the iPhone version is every bit as good! If you use OSX and Twitter you probably already use Twitterific. If you use Windows now is your chance to see what you?ve been missing!

Rating: 7/10 (If you Twitter you will love it.)

7. NetNewsWire (FREE)

File MagnetNetNewsWire is my RSS reader of choice for the Mac. I like Google Reader NNW is just so much more polished and has some nice features such as posting to del.icio.us.

I use quite a few different Macs and read my RSS feeds on all of them. NNWs built in syncing works great and i?m so happy that I can read the same feeds on my iPhone now and keep them all in sync.

Rating: 8/10 (Every bit as good as the desktop app)

8. Remote (FREE)

Remote is a very simple but quite useful app. It allows you to control the music on your computer or Apple TV with your iPhone over a Wi-Fi network.

You can play, pause, skip, shuffle music from your whole iTunes library as well as viewing album artwork and searching.

Rating: 6/10 (Not as exciting as most of the other apps but it?s free and useful)

9. Super Monkeyball (10$)

Super Monkey BallApparnatly Super Monkeyball is quite a famous game. Personally I have never played it before though. It?s by SEGA and is obviously a quality game.

The object of the game is to navigate through a variety of obstacle courses against the clock. Of course they get progressively harder and there are 5 worlds and 110 stages!
PSP Rival?

I was very impressed by how good it looked and sounded. It really does give the iPhone the potential to be a rival for the PSP and NintendoDS if more game manufactures take it seriously.

Of course the iPhone would be limited by it?s lack of buttons but DS style games would work well with the touch screen and others including Super MonkeyBall utilise the accelerometer amazingly effectively. (You tilt and turn the iPhone and the ball on the screen moves accordingly)

Rating Me: 8/10 (A seriously impressive game, wouldn?t be out of place on a PSP)

10. Cube Runner (FREE)

Cube Runner is another game which using the iPhones built-in accelerometer. It?s not as pollished and professional as Super MonkeyBall but it is every bit as addictive and it?s also free!

You basically tilt the iPhone to control a spaceship which you fly across Star Wars type landscapes avoiding cubes which get in your way.

Rating: 7/10 (Less impressive than Super MonkeyBall but is addictive, fun and free!)

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TxtDrop.com allows you to send free SMS messages from your iPhone 3G web to any Cellphone phone located in USA or Canada.

Replies simply go straight to your e-mail. Cool way to save a few bucks if you text a lot…

Simply point your iPhone web browser here:

http://www.txtdrop.com/iphone-app.php

Alternatively you can as well send messages freely via your computer directly from their home page:

http://www.txtdrop.com/

So far this is the ONLY place that really offer free txt messages. For those having installer app on your phones you could alternatively try:

SKYSMS MOBILE

.You can send them worldwide a number of txt messages using a few different accounts that permit up to 5 a day. There are also very cheap options like:

SMSLISTO

that offer unbeatable prices. For examble I pay 1.2 cents instead of 10 and so far it works flawlessly… Great to have 833 worth of text messages for 15$ instead of 150. Does require 3G/EDGE/GPRS.

ENJOY!

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Being a big Fan of poker I’ve been waiting for this for a while…

Griffin Technology today announced the availability of its first game for iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod touch. The Vegas-style video poker game is called ?5 Card Touch?, and will be available exclusively on the Apple Store site App.

The 5 Card Touch is the first in a series of applications that will be Griffin rotation for the App Store. Griffin applications available for download directly onto iPhone, giving users the convenience of access to the game at any time, even when iPhone is in flight mode.

?We are delighted to deploy an even wider range of offerings for iPhone and iPod owners,? said Paul Griffin, founder of Griffin Technology. ?Now, Apple fans can get everything they need for their iPhone and iPod Griffin collection, including cases and accessories, interactive games and more. ?

The rapid evolution of video app stakes poker player in 1000 to $ virtual money, and keep track of earnings, hands played and won, and so forth. The soft works the way you expect a game of poker at work: To play, bet between one and five credits, then click on Deal to start a new hand. On your touch screen, touch cards to be discarded, and press call to obtain new cards. The amount is determined by the quantity released and the last poker hand dealt with a Royal Flush earn the most points and Jacks or Better winning the minimum price.

Griffin?s Touch 5 Card is at a price of $ 1.99 and is now available for download from the Apple Store App.

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In the world of the PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) we’ve bought over the past ten years, from having-no-other-choice-back-then-but-endured three Palms, then one horrific nightmare of a Sony version of the Palm and then one superb HP PDA, we turned to the Blackberry and have been relatively unhappy with it, like 55% ok, 45% not ok.

We’re now thrilled and amazed at the ease of the Apple iPhone 2’s real-time synchronization through MobileMe? and the app certainly kicks all current Blackberries (have not yet tried the Bold) out of contention for business enterprise users.

Imagine this, my friends. You suddenly have to enter an appointment or a task or remember to do something at a date and time certain. No matter what computer you’re on at the moment, you log on to your MobileMe web-based site, enter your new data and bam, it automatically adds it to your iPhone in real time – or vice versa, which also means that if you’re out in the field and have only your iPhone, you enter your new data on that device and bam, it’s automatically transferred to your desktop application, again, in real time.

No more docking and synching, no more trying to figure out which direction to choose for your update (the old Palm) or trying to remember whether you synched or when.

Boom, bam, it’s all done for you through and thanks to Apple’s MobileMe.

On the darker side, should your Blackberry need repair, for example, and last I checked a couple of months ago, Research in Motion (the Blackberry mfr) has not authorized anyone in the United States to repair a Blackberry, so you can’t just drop it off somewhere close by and then pick it up later, fully repaired.

So what do you have to do?

For those of you unfamiliar with Blackberry repair, get this, kids, you have to mail your broken Blackberry to RIM in Canada.

But today I heard that AT&T now sends you a replacement until it’s repaired, which was never shared with us back when one of our Blackberry Pearls needed a repair last year. AT&T clearly told us it was between us and Blackberry.

Hey, bottom line is that asking your customers to mail you their valuable telephone for any reason is an inefficient (and stupid) business model that only invites problems, promises to give nothing more than either inept Customer Service or falls intolerably short of reasonable and where no amount of internal corporate reasoning is sufficient to justify the inconvenience and potential risk to/for your customers.

Most importantly, the Blackberry certainly cannot be considered a reasonable business enterprise solution to keep customers like us especially after dealing with Apple.

With the Apple iPhone, you find your nearest Apple retailer, log-online for an appointment at the Genius Bar or do it in-store and then just show up or wait your turn. If it’s under warranty, they take it in, fix it and you’re on your way. If it’s not, they tell you your charges and you make your decision.

Apple’s sales, retail and Customer Service paradigms are nonpareil, fancy French for something that has no equal, as in the best.

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We?ve all heard the hype of this product for months now. How does it stack up to everyone?s expectations? Is it really worth the price? Well, lets find out.

I have had the phone for 2 days now and went through every menu, downloaded over 20 applications, used the GPS, Bluetooth, EDGE, wifi and of course 3G. First I?ll talk about the networks.

The iPhone 3G uses A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning Satellite)

This is a huge benefit to have in a cell phone. The ?Assisted? means when you are indoors or out of range for the GPS satellite to kick in, it will find your position via triangulating signal through nearby cell towers or wifi. This works really well. It has always found my position no matter where I am or how much signal strength I have.

Wifi.

Another way to connect to the internet is via wifi. So far I have connected it to a handful of wifi hotspots and the speeds feel akin to browsing on a laptop. This is great if you are at home and want to surf the web on the couch or do any heavy internet browsing. It finds access points almost instantly when detected and if the access point is protected it will prompt you for the password. The signal strength is average. I find for optimal speed you must be at least 30 feet or closer to the wireless router.

3G vs EDGE?

As many f you know 3G is AT&T?s ?high-speed? cellular internet and EDGE speed is their older and much slower (feels like an old 56k dial up modem) speed. The iPhone was behind in their first version by not having 3G to begin with. 3G isn?t even a new technology! Now it has it and the world is good again. I have been doing some heavy browsing, Youtube videos and downloading applications using 3G and I can honestly say that the speed is about 70% of what you would expect from a DSL line. I never find myself waiting too long for webpages to load or a video. I am very impressed that I could have that speed almost anywhere in the greater Sacramento area. So far. I?ve only been 2 places where it wasn?t available.

Applications?

Yes! This can finally be classified as a ?Smart phone?. Apple currently has about 4,000 iPhone developers making cool apps. Right now, the majority of them are free. The user has the option to download them either directly on the phone (limit 10MB in size) or via the iTunes App store available in iTunes version 7.7. Some of these apps are hit and miss, just depends on what you like. So far my most used apps are the Myspace Mobile, Facebook, AIM and Where. ?Where? finds your position on a map, then you can choose what you want to see around you, for example, ?Show all Starbucks?, then all these coffee cups appear near you, you can click on one and gives you directions to the nearest Starbucks, you can even? click on their phone number and it will call them. It also shows the cheapest gas prices and a handful of other useful things.

How well does all this work with the computer? One word, ?perfect?. Say you download a song from iTunes on the iPhone and maybe 3 applications from the App store, then, you download some songs in iTunes on your computer at home and maybe even some more applications. All you have to do is plug in the iPhone and it syncs everything all together, the song purchased on your iPhone is now in your purchased folder in iTunes on your computer and so on. It will even sync all your contacts in your address book, calendars, and bookmarks from your browser. And of course all your music, TV shows, movies and podcasts. Simply amazing.

?Is it worth it??

In my opinion it is. I?ve been waiting a long time to have a device that meets all my mobile needs, from having a full web browser (not those crippled browsers that show the pages all deformed and everything out of alignment). For me, all the features outweigh the price paid for them. When you break it down,

16GB iPod ($399)

Internet browser and multiple email account accessibility with POP, IMAP and Exchange

GPS device ($100)

Mobile gaming platform (games are up to $10 on the app store)

Cell phone with 3G and wifi ($79)

All those things can easily come out to a realistic $578. The iPhone has all of that in one device where everything works together flawlessly for either $299 (for new AT&T subscribers or eligible upgrade current customers) or $499 for existing customers. People have been saying that even though it may sound inexpensive up front and they get you by making you sign a 2-year contract with a unlimited data plan for $30 a month.

I agree that the 2 year plan is a bit stiff after paying $499 for a phone, but it is what it is. The $30 data plan isn?t that bad. That?s how much it is for any AT&T data plan no matter what phone you put it on. This is nothing new.

I have yet to see many cons to owning an iPhone. With all the new applications out now and more to come, it just keeps giving me new uses and fun functions that it can do. Sure, I wish it could copy and paste and I wish it did video recording, but at least that?s something a software update could fix in the future.? It is a fingerprint magnet, so I recommend some kind of case to prevent that and give it some protection, especially if you are hard on phones. I am always out and about and love being connected to the world at all times, so this purchase was a ?no brainer? for me. I give it a 10 out of 10.

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