My Top 10 iPhone Apps

My Top 10 iPhone Apps

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I bought an iPhone (unlocked UK model from eBay) back in April and unlike any other phone I’ve ever owned, I can honestly say that the novelty has yet to wear off. This is in no small part due to some of the brilliant applications available from Apple’s App Store. Here are my ten favourite [...]

Author :  Joe Lennon
Joe is a 25-year-old web applications developer and technical writer from Cork, Ireland. For his day job, Joe builds web applications in PL/SQL and JavaScript for Core International, a leading provider of enterprise HR software in Ireland and the UK. Joe is also a published author, having his debut book, "Beginning CouchDB" published in 2009 by Apress. In addition, Joe is a regular contributing author to IBM's developerWorks technical library website. Joe is also contributing to a forthcoming IBM Press book, "Getting Started with .NET and DB2". Aside from software, Joe enjoys gaming, TV, eating out, motoring and frequent holidays in Spain. He lives in Cork with his girlfriend, Jill and their dog, Toby.

I bought an iPhone (unlocked UK model from eBay) back in April and unlike any other phone I’ve ever owned, I can honestly say that the novelty has yet to wear off. This is in no small part due to some of the brilliant applications available from Apple’s App Store. Here are my ten favourite iPhone apps:

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Home Screen

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Home Screen

Sudoku

If I had to pick a favourite app, I would probably say the paid version of Sudoku from Mighty Good Games. With 400 different puzzles spread over 4 different levels, there’s enough Sudoku in this game to keep you going for a long time. My girlfriend complains about how long I take in the bathroom sometimes, and it’s usually because I’m playing this game! So far I’ve gotten through all the easy puzzles (with my record time at 1 minute and 55 seconds) and 19 of the Medium puzzles (my Medium record time is 5 minutes 17 seconds). I imagine I’ll be playing this one until my iPhone dies! I must admit I’m slow to upgrade my iPhone’s firmware as I don’t want to lose my Sudoku records!

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

TwitterFon

An essential app for any twitterer, TwitterFon has improved with each release and in my opinion is the best Twitter client for the iPhone. This app provides every feature I want from my mobile twitter client.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Remote

If you use iTunes to manage your music, TV shows and movies, and especially if you have an Apple TV, the Apple Remote iPhone app is absolutely essential. I have a Mac Mini and Apple TV in my house and I control both using this brilliant app. My home computer setup is centered around one monitor, keyboard and mouse that I switch between my Mac Mini and my Windows work laptop using a Belkin KVM switch. The great thing about the Remote app is that I can find and play the music on my Mac Mini while I’m working on my laptop.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Remote

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Remote

Trace

Other than Sudoku, Trace is my favourite iPhone game. The graphics are very simple but it’s such an addictive and playable game that will provide hours of fun. One night I stayed up until 3am to finish this game off! If you haven’t got this on your phone, I’d advise you get it!

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Trace

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Trace

Pool

Before I made Sudoku my bathroom game of choice, Pool was the king. I’ve been playing this game since the Installer.app days and while newer versions have brought some new features and improvements, I feel it has lost some of its original charm. Still a great game though! Some prefer the graphics intensive Virtual Pool and others, but the raw simplicity and playability makes this one the winner for me.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Pool

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Pool

Level

I bought a house last May and since then I’ve found myself needing to put up pictures, paintings, mirrors and so on up on my walls. Now I’m no DIY man so my toolbox doesn’t contain much other than the obligatory hammer and screwdrivers. One thing I don’t own is a spirit level. Why would I when I have this excellent little iPhone app?

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Level

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Level

iSSH

I sometimes find myself nattering on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and at the time of writing I have yet to find a good IRC app for the iPhone. My favourite client is irssi and I use the iSSH app to connect to my home Mac Mini and use irssi from there. It’s also great for checking that my VPS is up and running OK when I’m having issues there.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: iSSH

Top 10 iPhone Apps: iSSH

Top 10 iPhone Apps: iSSH

Top 10 iPhone Apps: iSSH

Clowdy

I’m not a photographer by any means and although I have a Flickr Pro account, I rarely find myself using it. The thing I like about Clowdy is the raw simplicity of it. You take a picture with your iPhone and it appears on the web instantly. You can then access your photos on your computer via the Clowdy website or via an RSS feed.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Clowdy

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Clowdy

Shazam

This neat little app is a definite crowdpleaser at parties – especially when some music comes on the telly and everyone is trying to name the artist. Open Shazam, let it listen to the track and in less than twenty seconds, you’ll have the answer. It has a very high accuracy rate and is great for those songs on adverts that you want to get hold of.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Shazam

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Shazam

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Shazam

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Shazam

LinkedIn

Last but not least for me is the LinkedIn app. A stunning example of how iPhone apps should be made, LinkedIn provides you with on demand access to your connections wherever you are in the world. I love the feature that allows you to add any of your connections as a contact on your phone, with LinkedIn prepopulating the photo and email address fields when possible.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: LinkedIn

Top 10 iPhone Apps: LinkedIn

As is usual with posts like these, people are bound to agree/disagree with me on the above apps, and I’m sure you all have your own favourites. Feel free to voice your opinion and leave a comment with your own favourites.

7 Comments on My Top 10 iPhone Apps

  1. Joe Scanlon says:

    GREAT post. Looking forward to trying out some of these apps. Thanks. As for the iPhone, well, I LOVE it.

  2. Juan Pablo Kaukian says:

    Hi Sir, i install the irssi on my iphone, and i try to connect to a public server, but its stay in Looking up x.x.x.x, do you know or did you get this stuck?

    Thx & Regards.

  3. Joe Lennon says:

    Juan,

    I assume you installed iSSH or some other SSH terminal app on your iPhone and are connecting to a PC/Mac with irssi installed? In order to help you I will need to know if you are having trouble connecting to a public server using your SSH client or actually connecting to an IRC server using irssi. Can you connect to the IRC server on the PC/Mac itself? If you’re having trouble connecting to the PC/Mac and this machine is connected to the Internet via a router, you may need to set up port forwarding on your in order to allow SSH traffic pass through your router and to the correct computer.

    If you can connect to your PC/Mac through SSH fine and are having trouble connecting to IRC, the problem is most likely on your PC/Mac itself. If you can connect to IRC using your PC/Mac and you can connect to your PC/Mac from your iPhone and run irssi then you should have no problems.

    Again, I’ll need you to give me much more information in order for me to be able to help you.

    Joe

  4. Brad Peyton says:

    Joe,

    How do you capture the iPhone screenshot like that? Are you using an iPhone SDK or some other tool from Apple to do that? It’s a neat trick.

  5. Joe Lennon says:

    Hi Brad,

    Long time! Thanks for your kind words on the weight loss post! Love the artwork on your site!

    As for taking screenshots, as long as you have version 2.0 or later of the iPhone firmware it’s easy and you don’t need any additional apps. Just go to the screen you want to take a screenshot of, hold down the home button and then press the Power/Sleep button at the top of your phone and the screen will flash. Now go into your camera roll in the Photos app and the screenshot will be there ready and waiting. If you have any trouble, let me know!

    Thanks again,
    Joe

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  7. Thiago says:

    Juan was asking about irssi running FROM iPhone/iPod and not from a PC/MAC through SSH connection, i’m almost sure (in this case, i see that he didn’t understood that your irssi client wasn’t running from the iPhone itself, and that’s why you also couldn’t understand his comment. I could see now that he actually talked about installing irssi, i guess you didn’t know that.

    irssi running on iPhone/iPod just can’t connect for much people. I was trying to find a solution for that when i got here… Not this time! cya

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