Tuesday March 17
 
13:51
 
My Pick Of The Best Free iPhone Apps

There are some damn good free apps on the App Store. Hear a song and don’t know what it is? There’s an app which will recognize it. Bored and want a game? There are loads to download free. The AppStore is one of the most powerful features of the iPhone.

Here’s my pick – the apps that I use frequently:

Last.fm: One of the problems with an iPod is that you’re limited to the music and video you copy to it. YouTube for the iPhone breaks those limits for video; Last.fm does it for music. “Based on what you listen to, Last.fm recommends you new music” and let’s you listen to it all free. This app really is fantastic. Eg, I entered Belle and Sebastian and Last.fm played me Voxtrot (a sound so close to B&S that I’m wondering whether it’s actually the same people) and Acid House Kings. My new #1 iPhone App.

Mocha VNC Lite: Full access to your home PC from your iPhone. To get the VNC Server running under Vista, you need to run VNC server in user mode rather than server mode. You can click here for full details, but basically you need to unregister the VNC service if it’s running (there’s an option to do this in the VNC program group in the start menu, or just uncheck the box when installing) then start VNC in user mode (copy a link to your Startup folder to get this to happen automatically on reboot). You’ll need to know your IP address to connect, or use a service like DynDNS with a Windows client.

Kotoba: Free Japanese-English-Japanese dictionary. In Japan all JEJ electronic dictionaries (the ones you pay $200-400 for) are aimed at Japanese natives – if you search for an English word it will return Kanji with no indication of how to pronounce it – and are useless for foreigners. With Kotoba I no longer need to use my Korean-Japanese-Korean electronic dictionary. The only think that Kotoba is missing is Kanji recognition – ie, if I see Kanji somewhere, I can draw it or photograph it and Kotoba will tell me what it means. There are probably other dictionaries which will do that but I stopped looking when I found Kotoba for free.

NetNewsWire: RSS reader. Required free registration at Newsgator.com. My ex-#1 most used downloaded app.

ITN News: British news. Unlike other news readers, this one downloads full articles when you fire it up, so it can be used on the subway. I’ve never been impressed with ITN’s TV news coverage – which tends to be very shallow and sensationalist – but I am impressed with the quality of their iPhone offering.

Facebook: Makes updating facebook painless. Love the integration with the camera. Open facebook, click the camera button, take or choose a photo, add a comment/tag it, and then it uploads direct to your facebook.

Flixster: Trailers for the latest movies.

Bloomberg: Excellent news service.

Sol Free and CardShark: The two best free card games I’ve found. I’m currently addicted to Klondike 1 on Sol Free (I’m sure they deliberately throw in unsolvable games).

Labyrinth LE: Along with Super Monkey Ball Lite (which isn’t available on the Japan AppStore), this is a great demo of the iPhone’s tilt sensor. (I don’t play this often but I keep it on my phone to demo to people the iPhone’s capabilities.)

SnapTell: Take a photo of a book (eg, in a bookstore) and SnapTell will work out what the book is and link you to reviews on Google, Amazon. It really works. Amazing “wow” use of technology – how long before I can take a photo of someone’s face and it will tell me who they are? ;)

Some apps which I’ve downloaded but not used much yet:

Fring, Truphone, ShoZu: VOIP when connected with Wifi; integrate into Skype, Google Chat, etc. I’ll find these useful when travelling, I’m sure.

Ziibii: Blends flickr, facebook, twitter, youtube, and RSS together. This has just been recommended to me; I’ve yet to try it but I’m hoping it’s better than the other flickr apps I’m using – Klick and Darkslide – which leave a lot to be desired.

Darkroom: Uses the iPhone tilt sensor to ensure the photos you take are straight.

Shazam: SnapTell for songs. Hear a song and don’t know what it is? Play Shazam a few seconds of it and it will recognize it. I’ve yet to actually try this out.

My paid apps? I only have three, all bought when accessing the AppStore drunk – dangerous! But they were only $0.99 each (or 59p since I’m connected to the UK AppStore).

The only one worth mentioning is the Korean – English – Korean dictionary. It’s not as good as my $300 electronic dictionary but for $0.99 it does the business, especially since I don’t live in Korea anymore. Should I find myself back there, I might invest in the $3-4 dictionary which includes Korean-Korean.

It’s worth noting that for those of us living abroad, the inclusion of good electronic dictonaries saves shelling out several hundred dollars on dedicated equivalents.