Flashlight (John Haney Software)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

When I saw that this app was in the top 20 on iTunes, I was a little shocked.  I wasn’t quite sure the the appeal of the app was, but I felt I owed it to all of you out there to download it and give it a shot.

As I expected, I’m not a huge fan of this app.  I should caveat that by saying that this is by no fault of the developer or the app itself, it’s just not something that I see myself using.  When I think of a flashlight, I think of something with a pretty significant beam of light that I can shine on something.  Due to the nature of the iPhone screen, this app can really only be used to illuminate a relatively small area relatively near the phone.  That having been said, there is quite a lot that has been built into this app.

The main feature of the app is to display one solid color on the iPhone screen (pretty much any color is possible since you can create your own custom color) including white and black (not sure why you would want black since you would save battery power by simply locking the phone instead).  In addition to this simple solid color feature, the more interesting part of the app is its “strobe” effects.  You can select from several different strobe types (such as emergency, S.O.S. and trippy).  You can then customize the strobe effect with the frequency and brightness (I assume that’s what “Light on” means).  I suppose these could be pretty useful if you were in a very dark situation and needed to alert someone to your presence.  I wonder how far away you could see this if set to the brightest setting (of course, you’re giving up longevity for brightness since the battery will drain faster).

All-in-all, I think the app is well-executed with quite a few customization options, but I don’t see myself using it very often.

Flashlight Website

General Notes

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Whitepages Mobile (Whitepages.com)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

Whenever an app like this is released, I am immediately reminded of why I wanted an iPhone so badly and why I’m willing to cough up so much of my hard-earned cash to own one. I love using the Whitepages.com website. It is a great way to look up a person’s or business’ phone number and/or address. But in addition to that, it is also a great way to find out who called you when you don’t recognize the phone number on your caller ID. You can use the “Reverse Phone” lookup option that lets you enter a phone number and, if the number is listed, it will provide the owner of that phone line.

The application put together by Whitepages.com works really well on the iPhone in my experience and it has a nice GUI (GUI stands for graphical user interface for those who don’t know). Besides looking nice and working quickly to get you what you want (e.g. a business phone number), it has some other really nice features. For example, when typing in the name of the city in which the business or person is located, it will give you a list along the bottom of possible locations you are trying to type. You can enter the town so much more quickly with this feature. Also, as you might expect, it will display maps and directions to the location in an entry you find using the iPhone’s map feature and it will also add it to your contacts if you want.

I would say that this is one of those vital apps for the iPhone that everyone should have. Why bother looking up phone numbers and addresses on a website when you can use this app instead? Of course, the maps app will let you search Google’s database of businesses, but it doesn’t have residential listings or reverse phone number lookup service.

Whitepages.com

Back in Business!

Okay, so I bit the bullet and decided to try a semi-drastic approach to restore my iPhone apps functionality.  I read somewhere (on the Apple support forums, maybe) that the problem is with content downloaded via the iPhone as opposed to via iTunes on a computer.  So, I deleted all my apps from both the computer and the iPhone and then re-downloaded them and re-synced (I’ve only redownloaded a few so far but they are all working fine).  The process was kind of strange because when I tried to delete apps, sometimes they didn’t completely delete.  I had to manually go into my iTunes folder on my computer and delete the apps from there because iTunes didn’t seem to want to move them to the trash even when I told it to.  Also, the first time I tried, it had trouble deleting some apps from the iPhone.  When I connected the iPhone, I told it NOT to transfer purchased content from the phone.  After a couple iterations, it seemed to be working fine.  The only app I didn’t get rid of was Tris because you can no longer download it and it still works fine!  Yay!

I’ll be putting up a brief review shortly.

No More Apps for Now

Okay, so this really really really really really sucks, I can’t even tell you how much. I have just run across the dreaded bug where you can’t run any iTunes Store apps on your phone and you lose all access to your music. Apparently the only way to fix this is to start completely from scratch unless you want to wait for Apple to put out a fix in September. So I can no longer review any apps because I refuse to start from a clean slate after spending so much time setting up my phone. See this site for information on the workaround that I refuse to do … for now.  I can’t even explain to you how pissed off I am right now.

Let’s Give This A Try

I just recently got an iPhone (best thing EVER) and so of course I now feel the need to be creative with it and to be constantly connected.  My other half chose to start an iPhone Photo-A-Day blog where he will take a photo with the iPhone and post it to the blog all through the iPhone.  Pretty neat idea, I think.  Check it out over at http://pagg.wordpress.com/ (pagg stands for photo-a-go-go).

Anywho, not to be outdone, I’ve decided to start my own iPhone-related, daily blog.  This blog is going to focus on one App from the iTunes App Store each day.  I will try to give a detailed review, but sometimes I just won’t have time so it might be just some quick impressions.  Also, just a warning, I have no training in doing reviews or any kind of journalistic writing, so I plan to be completely biased, and I intend to not check all my facts.  I have no plan for how I will rate them (probably not even a consistent rating system).  That having been said, hopefully you’ll get a feel for some of the cool apps that are coming out (I’ve already found several) and also which ones might be a waste of time.

My plan is to begin this Friday when I will have lots of time in the car traveling with my family up to Penn Yan, New York.  The first App I’ll be reviewing is “Labyrinth Lite.”  If anyone out there likes this idea and wants to help me out, I would be happy to have guest writers so I don’t have to post every day by myself.  Also, if you are a developer and want me to review your app, just let me know!  I’ll be starting with free Apps because I’m too cheap to buy any, but I may move into paid-for Apps if I find ones I really want to try, or if someone wants to buy them for me!!

Please leave comments if you feel so inclined.