I love my iPhone. I really do. Chances are, if you have one, you love it as well. If you're anything like me, you're always looking for a great new app to check out. And hey, maybe sometimes there are older apps that you hadn't heard about that are great as well, but you somehow missed the boat along the way. Maybe you're new to the iPhone? Whatever the reason, everyone could use a suggestion or two when it comes to good apps for the iPhone.
So, I've decided to tell you what's good, in no particular order. Pay attention, there will be a quiz. (this is not true) There are some obvious apps that are essential that I'm not going to even list because you should probably have them already, like Angry Birds, Facebook, Words with Friends, Instagram, things like that. These are the "other" apps that I use just about every day and I think you should check out.
Okay? Okay, let's get to it.
1. What's On TV? -
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| What's On TV? |
This app is pretty good for seeing what's on TV, obviously, judging by the title of it. I don't have cable or satelite at home, I only get my TV from over the air, DTV. This is perfect since I really have no other TV guide to go off of. I think they still put a guide in the Sunday paper, or something, but might as well get this app instead because it's convenient and it's free. You can personalize it to you're area and it'll tell you what's on locally. Pretty good. I use it often. You can set your favorites and set alerts when your favorite shows and episodes of shows are coming on. If you like TV, you'll like this, I think.
2. Tiny Review
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| Tiny Review |
This is a picture based app, like Instagram, but instead of putting filters on the pictures, you put a caption over the picture. You can follow people or just look at what's "trending", which just seems to be a mix of some of the most recent pictures taken from all over the world. I think the original idea was to have people leave short, three line reviews for business and things like that. But people started using it as a general picture posting place, with captions, not necessarily reviewing things. Anyway, it's a fun little app. I like it.
3. Flipboard
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| Flipboard |
Do you like to read the news? Me neither. But with Flipboard, I do a little bit more now. If nothing else, it's fun to just make the pages flip up and down. Not many apps on my phone do I just open and play around with it aimlessly just because I like the way it looks. Flipboard is one of those apps, though. You can also hook up your Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts to look at those in a completely unique fashion. You know how your friends post boring stuff you don't feel like clicking on? Well this makes those boring links look more appealing, and you will probably actually click on them and find what was so interesting. There are several different sites you can hook up to it, from major news outlets like USA Today, BBC news and ESPN, ABC news, stuff like that, to tons of others that are perhaps lesser known like, oh I don't know, "I Love Dogs". Anyway, there are a lot of choices to personalize it, and I just think it's the best. I'm pretty sure this is a fantastic iPad app, as well. Not sure, I don't have one of those. (yet)
4. Swackett
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| Swackett |
You know, there are a lot of weather apps out there, but few are as snazzy to look at as Swackett. Swackett tells you what sort of layering you should be wearing when going out of the house, like if you should be wearing a warm jacket, or if just a hoodie will do, based on the current weather. Why just look at the weather, when you can look at the weather in style? It also tell you if you need to put sunglasses on your cat. It's got extended forecasts and hourly forecasts, just with the 90 degree rotation of the phone. It's got radar to see if that storm is coming right at you or not. I don't know, I tell everyone to get this app. It's the first app that pops into my head whenever someone asks what apps they should get. It's pretty much the inspiration for this blog post, really.
5.
Sportacular
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| Sportacular |
For the sports fan, or really anyone who want's to know who's playing when, and against whom, this is a must have. I've noticed a lot of people use ESPN's Scorecenter. Okay, that ones alright, I have it too, but I rarely ever use it. I think this Sportacular app is better. It's cleaner and faster. Personally, I like to pick the winners of games in Football and Hockey with this app, just to see how I stack up in predictions. You can set your favorite teams and it'll tell you the next game each of them has coming up. You can set score alerts, for when the game starts, when there's a score change or when a period/quarter/half ends. It updates very quickly when you need to monitor a game on the go and can't watch it. It's my personal favorite sports app.
6. Project365
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| Project365 |
Any regular reader of this blog knows that I've written at least two, maybe three different posts about how much I love the Project365 app. Briefly, it's an app where you post a picture to it everyday, with the idea that you'll never forget a day for the rest of you're life. If you want to know what happend on, say, October 4th, you can pull open the app, go back and see what you did that day, because you took a picture and wrote a description. Personally, let me see what I did on October 4th, 2011... Ah yes! The guy from the carpet cleaning company came and cleaned the carpets in our apartment and I walked around with wet feet all day. I apparently also watched some baseball. Thank you, Project365. I remember that day now!
(Note: with this app, I have the paid version. There is a free version, but it doesn't overlap into the next year. Once you've filled up one year, it's done. The paid version offers multiple years and also, you can upload your pictures to a website where you can look at it and it's saved there forever, too. If you want it, it's probably worth the 99 cents for the pro version, but the free version works just fine, too.)
7. Paper Toss or Paper Toss World Tour
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| Paper Toss World Tour |
The best iPhone games are the ones that are the simplest. This game is exactly that. It's simple enough that you can be good at the beginner stages right away, and yet difficult enough to make you keep on playing it, whether it's trying to get a huge streak on one of the easy stages, or to make at least one shot on the ridiculously hard stages. Seriously, I have wasted a lot of time playing this damn game. It's so addictive. It's so simple, I don't even need to talk about it anymore.
8.
Taco Bell Locator
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| Taco Bell Locator |
Ever find yourself in an unfamiliar place, yet have a crazy craving for some delicious Taco Bell goodness? The Taco Bell Locator app is the perfect app for you. It'll take your location, then show you on a map the nearest Taco Bell locations, within a given radius. Perfect if you're traveling or if you've recently moved. It goes all the way up to 10 miles out, so if you know you're going to a particular area, you can see where a Taco Bell is.
9. Wikipanion
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| Wikipanion |
If you're like me, you like to read up on stuff from Wikipedia, even with all the warnings from people about how it's not necessarily always the best place to get some facts. Well, I've found it to be extremely useful, and Wikipanion is your gateway to Wikipedia. Yes, there is an actual Wikipedia app you can get, but Wikipanion is faster and easier to use.
10. Echofon
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| Echofon |
Why I waited until the tenth spot to mention the very best twitter app? To save the very best for last. I like to tweet (follow @BradPerala or for you sports fans out there, follow @BPsportsTweets) and I've tried NUMEROUS Twitter apps. Pretty much all of them, actually. There are some decent things about some of them. Some have features that you can't do on Echofon (like being able to set pending tweets with Hootsuite. In fact, if you don't want Echofon, get Hootsuite. It's a solid runner-up) but no other Twitter app is as easy to use and as easy to read as Echofon. What it does, and most other apps don't do, is in your Twitter feed, it highlights the links, usernames, hashtags, pictures, and everything else that isn't regular typing, in blue. It makes in infinitely easier to read. It picks up where you left off when you open it, it refreshes fast. It sends you push notifications on mentions and new followers. Trust me, I've used them all, and this is the best. Twitter is a rather simple concept, and it's pretty amazing how many apps screw up that mindset. Echofon keeps is simple. With Twitter, that's the point, in my opinion.
That's the skinny, people. These are some of my most heavily used apps, so I say they must be good. I think you'll like them and find them to be very useful. I hope you've found this helpful in some way. Let me know what you're favorite apps that I should try out are in the comments. Also, let me know if I've helped you out with these suggestions. Your feedback is very important to me.
Have a fantastic day!
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