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Software

iPhone App Review Marathon Liveblog

Posted by Jason Chen at 3:45 AM on July 11, 2008

There are a total of 552 different apps in the iPhone App Store right now. We're going to do live impressions of the best ones (and some really, really lousy ones if they're interesting enough). Post requests in the comments and check back frequently cause we're updating as we go review more apps.

 

Twitterific: Works just like the desktop version of Twitterific (it gives you access to Twitter), and also uses the iPhone's location-aware features to geotag your tweets. What it doesn't do, like Twinkle, is give you a feed of Twitter users from around you. It does, however, let you attach photos to pics and let you know if your friends Tweet from a nearby location. Overall, pretty good. Ad-supported version is Free; Ad-free version is $10.

PhoneSaber: Lightsaber application similar to the one on Installer.app. Five choices of iPhone colours and slightly better accelerometer detection for better lightsaber sounds. Free.

Midomi: Song Recognition App that actually works well enough to know when it's being Rickrolled. Free

iTunes Remote: Remote control your iTunes and iTV. It's very, very good, and can even rate songs directly from the phone. Pretty much the perfect iTunes remote. Free.

NetNewsWire: Similar to the RSS Reader on the desktop, which we use daily, NNW on the iPhone lets you read RSS feeds. It doesn't scale images like the web-based Mac RSS reader, so you're going to have to do a bit of panning and scrolling. Other than that, no real complaints. It even syncs with your NNW online account so you can keep your desktop feeds and iPhone feeds the same (in terms of knowing what you already read). Free.

Google Mobile: Location aware searching with auto-suggest, contacts searching as well as local business search (typing in pizza gives you an option to search for pizza near you). Unfortunately, as Lifehacker pointed out, it only searches your contacts, not your calendar or email. One step at a time. Free.

Yelp: Pretty much exactly the same features as the online yelp.com portal, but in a readable format for your iPhone. Search for pizza places, coffee shops, bars or gas stations and you'll be able to check out its hours, the location, the phone number and read reviews. You can drill down from the home screen to Restaurants, Bars, Coffee & Tea, Banks, Gas & Service Stations or Drugstores, or just type in whatever you want. Everyone should download it just to have. Free.

Facebook: Just like the iPhone-customised Facebook webpage, except crashier (crashed when I tried to view the friends list the first time). You can search your friends, do Facebook chat (nice), view your messages and do everything else you could do on the web-based portal. It just crashed when I tried to view my profile too. Free.

Pandora: Your standard internet radio--you pick an artist you like, it recommends similar songs which you then rate to hone its selections. Like always it's better for well-known artists, but its explanation for why certain tracks were picked ("intricate melodic phrasing, a clear focus on recoding studio production, heartbreaking lyrics") are priceless. Pandora claims CD-quality but several tracks sounded compressed. A plus is that streaming works well with very little lag even over EDGE. Album art comes in with that nice page effect; good thing, because that's all you'll be seeing since the app can't play in the background. Free. - John Mahoney

IGN Reviews: Easily get IGN game reviews on the go, either by searching for the game title or browsing a list of recent reviews. If you don't trust IGN for reviews, it's not a huge help, but it does give you a decent idea of what's good and what's not if you're at the game section of Best Buy looking for something to take home. Free.

Save Benjis: Think Pricegrabber or Google Products for the iPhone. Search for a particular product you want and it will throw up a list of prices from various retailers. Useful for going shopping and not knowing whether the TV you're buying will be cheaper online (it usually will be).

Mixmeister: Allows users to perform scratches over the music in their playlist using one of ten available vinyl scratch sounds. I'm not a DJ, but it was easy to pick up and get a decent scratch going right away. Bottom line: it's fun. Free. - Sean Fallon

MotionX-Poker: An addictive dice and poker game that shakes virtual dice by actually sampling your shake of the iPhone and simulating the roll. It's the best original game for the iPhone yet. $5 - Brian Lam

Weight Track A weight log of how much you weigh every day that syncs w/ the website, but also gives you a history of your weight loss. Pretty much just a fancy alternative for a pen and pencil, but not bad if you're trying to lose some weight. Comes with sluggish graphics and animations. Free.

AIM: It's as solid as you'd expect, supporting away statuses, marking contacts as favourites so you can easily find them, groups, away messages and saved messages while you're away from the app. Because background IM notifications won't be here until September, you'll have to go into the app to check whether or not you have new messages. Still, it's good that you don't lose any. Oh, and that really annoying traditional AIM sound is still here and is still super freaking annoying. Don't see a way to turn that off. But there is a system option to sign off when you exit. Free.

MySpace Mobile: I have never used MySpace Mobile on another platform, but I can say that the version for the iPhone is very solid. It ran smooth and provided easy access to every option you could find on the regular site. It sure as hell won't make me want to use MySpace again, but addicts who have an iPhone will undoubtedly be thrilled. Free. - Sean Fallon

Whrrl: Think Yelp, but more-map based and social networking-like. Go to your current location and you can see markers signifying places of restaurants or stores. Click on them to see reviews, write reviews, or place markers saying that you've been there, wanted to go there or that you're there now. This could be cool if you have enough friends using it, but otherwise you're playing around with strangers. Free.

Tiny Violin: A virtual "world's smallest violin" to play to whiners. It plays two tunes which get old fast. Much like the idea itself. $1. - Brian Lam

Bejeweled 2:If you're a fan of the Bejeweled game, you will love this iPhone version. There are two different game modes, Classic and Action. The only difference in between the two is Action mode has a time limit. Game play works as it should, you touch a jewel you want to move then touch the surrounding spot you want it to move to. There's a Hint feature that will advise you to the best jewel to move. The game uses full use of the iPhone's accelerometer, allowing play at any angle. The graphics and sound FX are great, and overall gameplay is smooth without any problems. $10. -Chris Mascari

Box Office: Very simple, incredibly useful--gives you a full list of movie showtimes sorted by name, your location (manual zipcode entry or GPS/celltower reading) or Rotten Tomato rating and kicks you to Fandango to buy tickets. So much better than hitting Google for showtimes in Safari. Free. -John Mahoney

Dial 0: A directory of service 800 numbers with instructions on how to reach a real person for each one, all of them I tried being some variation on "press 0 over and over again." Kind of handy to have all the numbers you might need in one place, but not fantastic. Free. -John Mahoney

Band: Holy Crap this app is fun. There are five different instruments that all play in landscape mode: Rock Kit, Funky Drummer, Bassist, Grand Piano, and 12 Bar Blues. It's able to record every instrument one track at a time, and each time a new instrument is recorded it replays what's already been recorded. Basically you can make a complete musical masterpiece one instrument at a time. There's even audience sounds for added ambiance. While it has the ability to save all your recordings, sadly there is no way to get those recordings off the iPhone. $10. -Chris Mascari

World 9: Start the app and put it in your pocket. As you run and jump it makes Super Mario brothers noises. Free and awesome. -Brian Lam

Shazam: Will also identify songs through the iPhone's mic--doesn't handle humming and singing as well as Midomi, but is tops at picking up ambient background music. -John Mahoney

AOL Radio: Features over 200 stations spanning more than 25 genres of music and over 150 local radio stations from across the US. You can bookmark favourite stations, artists and even link up to iTunes or AOL music when you find a song you like. All-in-all it works well. The sound quality is good, its easy to navigate and you can control the volume right in the app. It also stops playing when you remove your headphones. You can't run it in the background, however. Free. -Sean Fallon

Sketches: The best drawing and photo mockery tool for the iPhone. You can choose different photo or solid or map backgrounds and drop various icons or draw on images and export them out. No text tool. A little slow but worth $8.-Brian Lam>

Comic Touch: Overlay text bubbles on images, and warp faces. Unlike the Sketches app, it has a text tool, but that's it. $5.-Brian Lam>

All reviews written by Jason Chen, unless otherwise noted.

Tags: apps | gadgets | iphone | iphone apps | reviews | software

 

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