Pageonce (Pageonce, Inc)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

I kind of like the idea behind this app – to aggregate all your online accounts into one viewer. It pulls the task off relatively well for a free app. Some nice features include the ability to search through a vast collection of account types and the option to add extra security by allowing you to restrict access to your Pageonce account to a single device. However, I feel that this app is still lacking quite a bit, at least for me.

My first issue is relatively minor…some of the buttons are too small and they don’t always give you a visible sign that they have been activated. I really like it when you tap a button and something very obvious happens, like a bright white halo flashes around the button, for example. In this app, many of the buttons either don’t respond at all, or they go from black to dark gray and I can’t tell if I’ve actually tapped them.

My second complaint isn’t really a problem with the app itself, and that is the fact that not all my online accouts are available. If I’m going to use something like this, I want it to do EVERYTHING or else it just isn’t really worth it.

Another issue I had was that it can take a really long time to set up accounts. I realize that a lot of this is for security purposes, so I should be happy about that. But even after going through the steps to set up an account, sometimes it just doesn’t work. I can’t get my CitiCard accounts to work even though I know I’m entering the correct information. That is frustrating.

Some people may also find that it would be more useful if this app let you aggregate information about various accounts into one summary a la Mint.com’s approach. It might also be nice to be able to interact with the accounts a bit more, like being able to pay bills or things like that.

If you are worried about the security of your data, it seems to me like they’ve done a good job at addressing those concerns. If you are okay with the level of security offered and you want a way to have access to simple account summary details and you don’t mind only having access to some of your accounts, then you might want to consider installing this app.

Pageonce Website

Here I Am (Arboretum Software)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

I love this app. It simply determines your location using the iPhone’s GPS and location services and then allows you to send those coordinates in an e-mail to someone. The email provides a link to your location shown using Google maps. This could be convenient if you are meeting up with someone but don’t know how best to describe your location.

One feature that I thought had been added to this app, but now I can’t find mention of it, is the option to set the maximum accuracy of your location. For example, you might want to show someone the general vicinity you are in but you don’t want them knowing EXACTLY where you are. Not sure what made me think this was an option, but maybe it’s a feature that could be added.

There is a section in the iPhone preferences where you can set up the default email details for this app. So if you’re always sending your location to the same person, you could enter their info as the default.

Something that would be nice to see what be some kind of notification when a certain acccuracy is reached. Also, it would be nice to have the option of viewing units in the English system (i.e. feet) rather than only meters.

Another option would be to embed a little Google-like map (or provide a link to the maps app) to show the iPhone user what the email recipient will see. I have no idea what the coordinates mean, nor can I tell if the listed accuracy is good enough for my purposes. If I could see a map of where it thinks I am, that would be great.

Arboretum Software Website

Hangman (JamSoft)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This is hangman. That’s about it. It isn’t all that sophisticated, but it does provide at least a little entertainment if you’re looking for something rather mindless to do. Most of the words I’ve had to spell have been pretty simple and some people I’ve talked to about the game have said that they get repeat questions pretty frequently. According to the developer, there are 230 words in the game, which isn’t that bad. Maybe there is a problem with the word selector or something.

This app is free, so you can’t complain too much about it. If you want a free app that will let you play hangman once in a while, this isn’t a bad choice. However, I would like to see some more difficult words and a nice feature would be the ability to have a 2-player game where one person sets the word and someone else guesses letters. I guess if you were going to do that, you could just use paper. Then again, who carries paper around when they have an iPhone??

Hangman Website

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

Seismometer (Johan Nordberg)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This app does one thing – it measures vibration using the iphone’s accelerometer and displays the results as one of those nifty seismograms. I’m sure you’ve seen them before in movies when an earthquake occurs. You can see the screen shots below to get an idea.

I’m not quite sure how truly useful this app is since it doesn’t look like you can save the results or anything, but it sure is fun to play with. I doubt anyone will actually use this during an earthquake because I don’t think your first response would be “Oh cool, let me pull out my iphone and use that seismometer app” (at least I HOPE that’s not your first thought). Still, it could be fun for measuring vibrations during a thunderstorm maybe. Or if you live near the traintracks. Or maybe during the aftershocks of a minor earthquake if it isn’t serious.

Although I won’t be using this app very often, I still think it’s pretty cool and I recommend testing it out.

Developer’s Website

AOL Radio (AOL)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

AOL Radio powered by CBS radio puts an Internet radio app on your iPhone. The application has a list of genres that provide a nice selection of music types that you can access for free. As a bonus, it allows you to connect to land based CBS radio stations as well. In my area, I listen to KYW a lot for news and traffic information, so it’s great to have access to this station on my iphone. Of course, for some people it would be nice to have access to more than just CBS stations, but for me this works just fine for now.

The app works well over EDGE in my experience (it just takes a minute or so to load a station) and is even better over a WiFi network. I didn’t experience skipping on either case. Some addition features that are nice include the ability to search for local land-based stations using the phone’s location services, the ability to save stations as “favorites” for quick access in the future, and access to your most recent stations. The interface is easy to use and it even has a volume slider and stop and play buttons while listening.

If you want access to land based CBS radio stations or you want to liasten to some free inernet radio stations (without having to specify artists or songs like in Pandora) then this app might be right for you.

AOL Radio Website

Mocha VNC Lite (MochaSoft)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

Remember my earlier post about the Remote app and how it let’s me be lazy? Well here’s another great laziness app (maybe I should make a new category for lazy …). This simple app let’s you remote control the desktop of your Mac or Windows computer.

So far I’ve only been able to get this working on a mac, but it works really well an was relatively easy to set up. As shown in the screenshots, you need to have the IP address or DNS name of your computer and you can set up a password to use. Theoretically you should be able to connect to your computer via the Internet even when not at home, but I don’t have the networking know-how to set that up. Right now I’m just using the app over my home WiFi network.

The app has a keyboard for text entry but it doesn’t have special keys such as the Command key. For that, you need to purchase the full version of the app for $5.99, but for my laziness purposes, the lite version is just fine.

One tip for mac users- if you have a firewall turned on in your System Preferences, you’ll need to open the appropriate port in order for this to work. If you don’t know how to do that, Google is your friend! If you can’t get this to work on Windows, try the sister Remote Desktop app from Mocha which works great with Windows for me.

Mocha VNC Website

Wikipanion (Robert Chin)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

As much as it bugs me when people quote Wikipedia as fact, it is still an incredibly useful tool. I am constantly amazed at the level of detail that some wiki authors go into. Putting Wikipedia on the iPhone seems so natural and this app definitely delivers.

Take your typical Wikipedia page that has a table of contents on the left, the article itself in the middle, and some useful quick facts on the right. For testing purposes I used Sarah Palin (apparently her article can’t be edited at the moment, although I can’t imagine why not) and Barack Obama. The iPhone app put the quick facts at the top, followed by the main site content. You might at first wonder where that useful table of contents is. Well, it’s conveniently located in a submenu that can be accessed by clicking the open book icon at the bottom of the screen.  (UPDATE: A recent update to the app changed this icon to look like a list of items, rather than an open book.)  There is also an icon in the bottom right corner that provides a list of other potentially related topics.

Although not a very fancy user interface, it is easy to use and works very well (and loads pretty quickly too). There aren’t any editing options, but that’s fine for me since I’m not the type to want to do much Wikipedia editing.

Some other nice features include autocompletion for searches and customizable font size.

Wikipanion Website

Pandora Radio (Pandora Media, Inc.)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This is really an awesome musical revolution. I first used Pandora on the Internet at their website, pandora.com. The premise is that you type in the name of a song or artist that you like and the algorithms behind the app will select other, similar music that you might enjoy (in addition to playing the music you entered). You can create a bunch of “stations” based on various music styles, or groups of artists. Each channel can have multiple artists or songs added manually so it can choose music similar to a variety of sources.

In addition to creating channels using specific songs or artists, you can also give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to each song that comes on while listening if you want to provide additional feedback to the algorithms behind the music selections. If you give a particular song a “thumbs down”, Pandora will never play it again on that “channel.”

One of the main drawbacks of Pandora online is that you have to stay connected to your computer and can’t really travel around with it very easily. Well, as you can probably guess, this is one of the main reasons I love this app for the iPhone. This app essentially puts a free, customizable radio in your pocket that you can use to listen to music from practically anywhere. Using Pandora can introduce you to all kinds of artists you would have never heard before and I really value that.

Bottom line… Pandora is a must have for all iPhone users who like music (who doesn’t?). Now if only Apple would allow us the option of running a couple apps in the background, this would be even more awesome!!! Oh yeah… If you already have a Pandora account online, you can log in on the iPhone and use your previously created channels.

Happy listening!!

Pandora Website

Speedtest (Xtreme Labs Inc)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This is another really simple, yet useful, free application for the iPhone. Wanna know how much faster 3g is than 2g? This app will tell you, although you’ll have to manually switch connections.

This app is similar to those bandwidth tester websites where you can check the speed of your internet connection. Just hit Start Sperdtest button and it will test both your download and upload speeds. If you’re on EDGE or in an area with low 3G signal, be prepared to wait a long time, especially during upload testing. I’m including images here of my results on my home WiFi (Verizon DSL) and on 2G. I don’t have 3G service at my house (why am I paying more?).

Xtreme Labs Website

Here are some results on my home WiFi:

Here are some results on EDGE at my house (poor reception):

And here are some results on 3G in Northeast Philadelphia: