Little Chef (Kevin Donnelly)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This simple little app does one thing for you. It converts between several English and metric units of volume. It includes the most common units you would be using for cooking, such as cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, and liters.

The interface is simple and easy to use, although I’m not sure what the significance is of all the horizontal lines. Maybe it’s supposed to resemble the gradations on a measuring cup or something?

Well, anyway, this app is certainly useful if you need to convert units while cooking.

Kevin Donnelly Products Website

Hanoi (Ian Marsh)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This game is awesome! You have a stack of different sized discs that you have to move from the far left side of the screen all the way over to the far right of the screen by moving only one at a time. It’s kind of hard to explain but you’ll see what I mean when you play it once. The first few rounds are very easy, but then it gets hard very quickly!

The background scenery is really fun too. I definitely recommend this game of you like a mental challenge once in a while.

Hanoi Website

Voice Notes (GarSoft)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This application adds one of those features that should have been included as standard with the iPhone but wasn’t. Basically, this app lets you make short voice recordings onto the phone. It also has a feature where you can sync these voice recordings back onto a computer on your home network, which is a great bonus. Unfortunately, I can’t get syncing to work with my MacBook.

After recording a note you can easily modify its title or delete it using the edit button. You can also use the “Quick Voice Note” button to have it immediately begin recording a new note, rather than requiring you to first create a new note then tap record.

One problem I found (besides not being able to sync my notes) was that if you hold the phone up to your ear while recording, your cheek might accidentally tap the “Stop” button and it will cut your note short without you knowing it. So be careful with that.

If you need a simple app for recording quick voice notes, this could be a good option for you. Let me know if anyone else out there is having trouble with syncing their Voice Notes.

(UPDATE:  I tried syncing my notes again today and it worked fine.  I’m not sure what the problem was before, but it might have been related to some issues I was having on my phone.  Hopefully for most of you syncing will work just fine.)

VoiceNotes Website

Simplify Media (Simplify Media)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

When I saw this app on the App Store, I downloaded it immediately. At the time it said the first 100,000 download would be free, but last I checked it’s still free and I’m betting they’ve passed that number of downloads.

Simplify Media lets you stream music from a computer to your iPhone. It can access either iTunes libraries or folders on your computer. You have to set up an account and then you can invite other users to share with you. On the iPhone, the application allows you to browse by artist, album, genre or song name. Once you start playing a song, it first buffers for a short (or sometimes LONG) time and then begins playing. You can view artist info as well as lyrics (if available).

Whenthis app works it is pretty darn awesome. Of course, that’s only when it works. It might not be the app’s fault that sometimes it doesn’t work – it’s probably due to network issues. Over my home WiFi it works fine … which isn’t that useful since I have other ways of streaming over my home network. When I’ve used this over Edge, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It tends to skip a lot and sometimes get hung up. 3G isn’t much better in my experience so far.

In addition, although it’s nice to have the artist info and lyrics, there is no way to scroll down if the text goes past the bottom of the screen. This just seems like an oversight by the developer, but maybe I’m missing something. Please let me know if it’s just me!

Overall I definitely like the concept, I just wish it was more reliable (again, it may be more of a network limitation).

Simplify Media Website

A Free Level (Marketwall.com)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This is another really simple app that could come in handy. Apparently the majority of the code for this app was included in the iPhone SDK. This app uses the iPhone accelerometer to calculate the angle at which the phone is being tilted and it shows an air bubble in liquid moving according to the angle, similar to a carpenter’s level that most of us are familiar with.

In addition to the level, it also has inches and centimeters along the sides. I wouldn’t use this for super accurate measurements, but it could be nice if you need a quick estimate.

Now, the one significant complaint I have with this app is that it makes sounds. Yes, that’s right, a level that makes sounds. It beeps at different pitches to let you know when you are nearing, and when you reach, the level position. While I can see the usefulness of this, I would like to be able to turn it off if I don’t need it, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do that. If you find a way, please let me know. I do like that the app displays the angle so if you need to measure an angle for some reason, you can use this app.

MiGhtyDocs (V1ru8)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

I love my Google documents. It’s awesome being able to access them from anywhere via the web. The only thing better is being able to access them when offline too. This application let’s you do that. Sort of.

For what the application does, it does well. That is, it will cache your text documents (speadsheets and presentations are not supported) onto your iPhone so that even when you have no connection, you can still view your text documents. Key word here is VIEW. Yes, this is only a viewing utility, no option for editing. This feature would be great to have, but it IS a free app after all, so I can’t complain too much about that. My only other complaint is that it only caches documents after you open them the first time. I would LOVE to see an option (a button?) to CACHE ALL, or something like that. This way if I’m going on a trip and I want to download all the docs, I can just hit that one button.

If you’re looking for a free and relatively easy way to get your text-only Google docs onto your iPhone, this is a good option.

MiGhty Docs Website

Tris (Noah Witherspoon)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

Get it while it’s hot, folks, because tomorrow this application is being pulled from the app store. This app is a variation (almost identical though) to the popular Tetris game that has been around forever. Apparently the developer, Noah, received a request from Apple to remove the game due to a copyright complaint (lame). Fortunately I already downloaded it and so should you!!!

Game play is pretty much the same as any Tetris-like game. You change blocks by tapping and then you can move the piece faster down the screen my sliding your finger downwards. One twist here is that you can actually slide the piece upwards as well if you need a little more time to position it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this feature before, so that’s pretty cool. As you achieve higher scores, you transition from level to level and the pieces start falling more quickly, just as you would expect. My only complaint is that it is difficult to control pieces at the edge of the screen for some reason.

The game keeps track of your hi-scores and it also lets you view scores from people from around the world (Noah’s scores server is down so this isn’t working currently). This game is just how you would expect it to be so if you like Tetris, go download Tris before it’s too late!!

Noah’s iPhone Games Blog

Newton’s Cradle (Enabled Solutions)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This application is currently in the top 25 free apps so I decided to check it out. Pretty much all this program does is simulate that popular desktop gadget that has hanging metal balls that knock into each other and keep swinging back and forth. Okay, that was a really horrible explanation but if you don’t already know what it is from the images below, then you’ll just need to download it to try it out.

While the app does function pretty much the same as the traditional desktop version, I doubt this is an app I will use very much. It just can’t compare to the feeling of those metal balls in between your fingers … Wait that didn’t come out right … What I mean is that the whole joy of this toy is seeing it in action in real life. Plus, although they’ve done a pretty good job with the physics, the sounds aren’t quite right yet, at least in my opinion.

This app is worth a download for nostalgia purposes, or if you’ve never seen one of these in action. However, this will never replace the real thing.

newton’s cradle Website

iChoose (Talee Talee)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This application is another really simple one that could come in handy sometimes. If you are really indecisive, you could use this app to make simple yes or no or “either or” choices. There is a coin toss feature as well as a yes/no option. Of course, I rarely have no coins with me, and flipping a real coin is just so much more satisfying. In addition, when I’m being indecisive it’s usually because I know what I really want I just don’t want to admit it and I’m hoping someone else will choose the same thing so I don’t have to. 😉

In addition to helping with binary choices it also has a dice feature so you can roll virtual dice. The last option it has is a card chooser. It will randomly select any card from a 52 card deck. These last two could maybe be fun for drinking games, but what would make this app really cool would be the option of “playing” against someone else so whoever gets the lower card or lower dice roll is the one that has to drink. I suppose you can do this by taking turns, but if you could network two or more iPhones simultaneously, that would be fun. Of course, I don’t play many (i.e. none) drinking games myself, but … I can imagine how this could be fun.

Talee Talee Website

iVote (InfoMedia, Inc.)

Cost as reviewed: FREE

This is a pretty simple app but I like the implementation. I’m guessing it is something like the voting channel on the Wii, but since I don’t have one, I wouldn’t know.

The basic premise for this app is that it has a bunch of questions that you can answer (multiple choice) and it aggregates the responses in real time. People can post comments in the question, which is not that important for me because there are some annoying people out there on the web. I ignore the comments and I switch immediately to the “Location” section where it shows you responses by location (it uses the location services in the iPhone to determine where you are). It’s really fun to look at the varying responses from around the world. The interface is simple and easy to use, which I really like.

There are tons of questions to answer so it can be quite addicting and time consuming. In addition, they have an online form for submitting additional questions so it will just continue to grow.

This is a very fun way to spend a few minutes when you’re sitting around with nothing to do.

iVote Website