My 267 favourite iPhone/iPod touch apps (2008)

I’ve filled my iPhone with apps: time to prune. Let’s evaluate, starting with the apps I use most often:

Twitterrific ★★★★★ is an application for the Twitter messaging system. Twitter is useful for letting people know what you are doing or thinking more immediately than a weblog. As an example you can see my last three “tweets” on the sidebar of this weblog. I follow friends, newsfeeds and interesting people such as Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Jonathan Ross and Robert Llewellyn. Other such apps are available but this does all I need. Twitterrific caches messages so it’s useful to sync before going out of signal range, for your reading pleasure in the wilderness.

Twitterfon ★★★★ attractive Twitter client with small clear font. Twitterfon does everything from trends to nearby tweets in a logical way. I was using Twitterfon as my primary Twitter app now although now it has started showing adverts so I’m switching to Twitterrific. The adverts keep displaying even after clicking on the link which is annoying.

Nambu ★★★★★ is yet another Twitter client for the iPhone. This has a beautifully laid-out screen on which the last five tweets can be seen - more than most other Twitter apps. Favourite tweets can also be displayed and this screen includes direct messages. The search pane has advanced options, a history and trends. Optional panes are built-in for tr.im, pic.im, FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Laconica and identica. Tweets can be favourited or flagged privately. The only option I’d like to be added is to switch between real names and nicknames.

AirMe ★★★★★ takes pictures on the iPhone camera and uploads them to a Flickr stream. Your photo can be available globally in less than a minute! The iPhone’s camera has been criticized for having only two megapixels but I seem to have got some good pictures from it. The only caveat is that you have to set the title and tags — words used to search for images in Flickr — before taking a photo because AirMe will start to upload immediately.

MyRail lite ★★★★★ shows British Rail station departure and arrival boards, also station times for each train with a neat graphic. It can also search for the nearest stations based on map location. Absolutely superb. This is great when I’m travelling/commuting. Update National Rail have not renewed the licence for MyRail and it has stopped working. NR have brought out their own app which costs £4.99. This has upset a lot of people who have nonetheless bought the NR app because it is so useful for commuters, but then given it one star reviews on the Apple Store. Shameful situation.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary ★★★★★ is the world-famous English dictionary from the Oxford University Press, not as big as the Shorter two volume edition but still an awful lot of lexicographical goodness, and definitely not American English or some house style guide that would spell “authorize” wrongly. Probably worth £14.99 as the print version of the Concise edition costs £10.00 more. This 11th edition contains over 240,000 words, phrases and definitions. Many of the entries have a recording of the word being spoken. (NB Webster’s International Dictionary is also on iTunes, for £34.99. There is also the free WordWeb.)

Things ★★★★ is for “Getting Things Done”, a most simple-to-use (yet sophisticated behind the scenes) to-do list, or organizer, or notes application. It syncs over wi-fi with the same application on a local Mac. I’ve just bought this to replace the hundreds of bits of paper I have lying around the place.

Blue Defense! ★★★★★ is a superb shoot-em-up with waves of smoothly animated glowing things and bosses that split and flow towards the home planet. They must be destroyed using the constant firepower at the player’s command. The game is silent: no sounds to interrupt my music. Perfect. It may be worth buying an iPhone just to play this.

GeoDefense Lite ★★★★★ is a superb tower defence game. This means setting-up towers that blast away at creeps along a path with the intention of stopping them reaching and and overrunning the target. There are many types of sci-fi-themed tower in this game, it’s fast and the graphics are great. I’ve now got the full version.

Bloomberg. ★★★★ Maybe overlooked because it is for business, but this is a very well-designed application that can be configured to get the latest news reports about various regions albeit with an economic bias. ‘Muse’ news is often not about finance at all. And of course, Bloomberg does stocks, markets and commodities with beautiful graphs: it’s a very sexy way to watch the world go to hell in a hedge-manager’s handcart loaded with redundant bankers’ bonuses.

London Bus, Tube and Rail Journey Planner ★★★★★ includes a superb journey planner (linked to TfL) and details of routes, stations (incl. zones), 20,000 bus stops (with postcodes) and timetables, including first and last times. The app is focussed on busses but the planner includes all modes of transport including the river bus and walking! A nice touch is the Track me feature so you can see which stop you are at throughout a bus journey.

GeoDefense Swarm ★★★★★ Once you have conquered GeoDefense then Swarm is the next step. Swarm puts the same towers and creeps into an open arena without defined paths. The graphics and gameplay are superb.

Space.DeadBeef ★★★★★ is a great shoot-em-up with exemplary graphics, another proof that the iPod has really arrived as a gaming platform. A fast 2D aerial battle with only one life, but the game can be resumed from the last level. The first big boss, a metal snake, is really well done.

Alien Swarm ★★★★★ is a dream come true for me. A perfect clone of the arcade game Galaxian. It takes my mind back to a pub video game in Highgate. The money I wasted then… and the time I’m wasting now! One more go, hold on.

NetNewsWire ★★★★★ is an RSS reader application that I bought years ago for my Mac. Now it’s free and also works on the iPhone, very nicely. On a good day this will summarize many websites and let you home in on the latest news that interests you without having to spend hours on the web. It’s also great for grabbing lots of news and blogs when online and reading them offline later, on a train for example. Items can be clipped for later follow-up, and all the feeds synced through Newsgator or .Mac with your home computer. It’s essential to get into the settings and choose a unique name for your iPhone/iPod feed, and I would also recommend having rather less feeds on the phone than a Mac: my iPhone choked on 9,000 items, but is quite happy with 5,000. Web pages and YouTube videos are displayed from within the app. I love NetNewsWire.

Bix ★★★★★ is an excellent version of Qix, a classically simple arcade game in which the player has to draw lines to bound off over 75% of an area while avoiding bouncing balls - some of which give special powers when trapped. This works well on the iPod, with a simple flick to change direction. In this version there is no option to draw lines slowly for extra points nor are there fuses to chase the player: I expect these will come in a future version.

tvGuide ★★★★ is a cheap TV guide with an excellent layout, presenting a lot of information in a small space. Only flaw is that the schedules are split at 12:00 (AM and PM) with no overlap, like an atlas where the road you want is on the edge of the page. So frustrating! Maybe the programmers are early-to-bed types who go out for lunch.

TVGuide.co.uk TV Guide ★★★★★ shows a “now and next” listing for UK channels. Touching the channel links to a BBC iPlayer page in Safari. What’s great about this app is how easy it is to set-up the channels that you watch and exclude the ones you don’t, from a comprehensive list.

Centipede ★★★★★ is a great conversion of the arcade game and, as with Missile Command, Atari have added a version or two with modern graphics. After playing for a while, I can see spiders and fleas when i close my eyes.

OnBox.TV UK Lite ★★★ is a free configurable TV guide for the current day - pretty good but after midnight it will show tomorrow’s programmes. Update - not working and removed from iTunes. Lucky I got the free version. They may be back: OnBox.TV information.

Calc ★★★★ is an improvement on the built-in calculator: it has three sheets of functions and a tally-roll (paper tape). The ANS key inserts the result of the last calculation, literally a nice touch. But only eight significant digits? One of the smallest apps available: 96 KB.

Labyrinth LE ★★★★★ simulates a metal ball in a wooden maze. Perfect - so sensitive! Built in spirit levels.

PCalc Lite ★★★★★ is the best calculator: accurate, with 15 significant digits. Features RPN, degrees/radians, constants, unit conversions and “42” on the icon. Grab it while it’s free. The full version has more features such as hex and a paper tape.

Bloom ★★★★ is a superb generative music application from that nice Mr. Brian Eno, whose career I have been following since 1973. The app will make its own random music, or I can tap the screen to enter my own sequences, which then change gradually over time. Mesmerizing.

Sentry Alpha ★★★★ is a good space shooter with tilt control. I can’t get enough of games like this. This one scrolls down and has level bosses.

If you’ve been missing Inquisitor ★★★★★ since upgrading Safari to the new beta, then this is for you. Fast search with a built-in browser, great design, with news links supplied where available from Yahoo.

Tube Status ★★★★ displays the service level of the railway lines on the London Underground (aka the Tube), DLR, Overground and Rail. Touching a tube line displays the latest bulletins. Other Tube apps exist but this is simple and free. A paid version with a map is due soon: TubeDeluxe.

Weightbot ★★★★★ is for tracking bodyweight and it understands stones, the imperial measure in Britain! Everything about this app is polished and easy to use. Weightbot calculates BMI, draws lovely graphs and keeps a remote backup of weighings. Excellent.

Dr. Awesome ★★★★ is Qix for the iPod - move by tilting which works very well, being quicker than swiping the screen. The medical theme of viruses and mutagens works well in the game but I could do without my contact’s names as patients. Very playable.

Illuminations ★★★★★ is a great tilt-controlled arcade game with a fireworks theme - better than Asteroids! Quite fast and difficult with enemies often on an effective evasion course, so it is a relief to have smart bombs, like in Defender.

Antimatter ★★★★ is a great arcade game in which blue cotton buds - sorry, cosmic strings, must be hit with a stream of antimatter to change their colour to red. Progressively more difficult. Superb graphics.

iGo ★★★★ is the first Go game for the iPod to offer a computer opponent. iGo seems to play a strong game, maybe too strong for me as a beginner. A few games can be stored, but selecting them for play or deletion is very confusing due to bad interface design; however the board and game play is straightforward. (There are two other apps available that contain classic Go games for replay and analysis.)

Topple ★★★★ is a wonderful free game with differently-shaped cartoon blocks that must be turned and placed into an increasingly unstable tower - tilt might fix it enough to get a few more blocks on top to get the required height before it all collapses - great fun.

Azkend ★★★★ Lively, enjoyable match-3 game with some extra twists of its own. I like the theme of the game too: Tibetan Lovecraft.

Droidz ★★★★ The last time I played this, I used a keyboard and joystick. It’s uncanny how they have copied the sound effects and the gameplay of 1985 classic Paradroid in this arcade game, in which floors of a spaceship have to be cleared of robots. Starting as a lowly 001 droid, more powerful droids can be shot at or taken over in a separate mini game where each brain tries to turn relays to their own colour, and it’s here that cursor keys (or a joystick!) would be better than fiddly touch control. Still, a great recreation.

Whoa! This old post is far too long. If you want to read the rest of it, I’ve kept it online at my old Blogger hangout: Wibbly Weblog

Owning-Up

Owning-Up
Originally uploaded by jovike

Surrealist and jazzman George Melly’s uncompromising, witty autobiography. He also wrote two other memoirs of his earlier experiences of childhood and the navy: 'Scouse Mouse' and 'Rum, Bum and Concertina' and the trilogy is now a Penguin Classic.

His last biography, about his then approaching 80th birthday 'Slowing Down' is also published by Penguin.

Goodtime George. That's what they called him: Goodtime George. I've been reading his first book of autobiography on and off for a year or so. Great stuff. I nearly saw his last concert but forgot to go. He said it would be his last tour. Sigh.

Temperance Seven member and Jazz Record Restorer John R.T. Davies Dies. In this obituary is quoted a long description of his working methods.

Don Arden - Intimidating rock impresario. His methods were less pleasant.

Bad news from Manchester: Tony Wilson dies of cancer. He always impressed me by being quietly-spoken.

The Sea and Cake have made a 'rock album' - sounds like "krautrock loungecore" Sounds intriguing. Rock Cake I really hope they are as good as they are described.

Rip and Goodbye: "the complete dissolution of my library of compact discs". Many comments.

My All Time Favorite Prog Rock Recordings - chapter 39. Not mine, someone else's.

The shirt that Wreckless Eric wore on the cover of 'Reconnez Cherie' has turned up. His news section is better than most people's blogs.

Fake Steve Jobs on Robin Trower: Today's Music Depresses Me.

British rock fans of a certain age have copies of ZigZag magazine knocking about in their attic. Mine are in what I call our library. They smell great. Since 1996, rocklist.net has been putting old polls from ZigZag online. Essential Rock Albums.

Always sad when someone that everyone has heard of dies in obscurity. It happened to Mike Sammes but luckily Jonny Trunk was on hand to save some of his treasures: Music for Biscuits.

Trunk records are pretty good; also worthy for their excellent and lengthy sleevenotes are those other musical magpies RPM, for instance 'Magpie - 20 Junkshop Pop Ads & Themes' contains Andrew Bown's theme music to 'Ace of Wands'.

I've got some Joe Meek and Pet Clark compilations from RPM. Essential these days to get the dates and cover art for iTunes, so this Petula Clark discography comes in handy. Great graphics and some moody expressions from Pet.

Big Al Davies' Treemo channel.

Kevin Ayers' MySpace page:

This myspace site is presented by Kevin Ayers' management. Kevin is aware of myspace and thinks it is very cool, but he doesn't have a computer let alone an internet connection. He wishes people still sent telegrams. He is very touched by the kind messages left on his page and that there is still space in music collections for his efforts.

Also among my very few friends on MySpace are Foul House because my friend's daughter is the singer. They are great live and should make an album ASAP.

The loudness wars: Why is there so much variation in volume in my music collection?

jTunes "The Insanely Great Songs Apple Won't Let You Hear."

Pitchfork.

The label Repertoire are putting out some nice editions on CD. I just got a triple disc of all the Pretty Things singles.

Vinyl Vulture: Record shops in London. The Digger's Guide to London.

Desmond Briscoe, Radiophonic Workshop founder, 1925-2007. Musique concrète and diegetic sounds.

Making Flippy Floppy - what a silly name for a music blog. How about a sensible name like Wibbly, or monkeyfunk, or Bubblegum Machine, which posts two wacky mp3s each week. Adult material such as emotion can be found in The Lefsetz Letter. Lefsetz also points us to Jeff Beck's 'Led Boots' at http://music.msn.com/crossroads which got me right there.

I don't know why people call Revelations: a musical anthology for Glastonbury Fayre "legendary" because I've got a copy downstairs. It's out on CD now, which is handy but it won't sound as good or have such an elaborate cover and inserts.

In Quest of Absolute Fidelity: The Saga of the Black CD – Finding Black Gold!

Uh-oh - or, as it says here: WOW: CBS Acquires Last.fm for $280 Million which is a shame because I've been on last.fm since it started as Audioscrobbler. You can bet they are going to screw it up somehow, like Yahoo did with LaunchCast and mailing lists and now Flickr.

Suzi Quatro unzipped. I never knew '48 Crash' was about the male menopause.

Music blog by Pliable: On an Overgrown Path. Good for classical music and exposes the fools who think the BBC or the Proms are "brands".

Richard Godwin admits he can't follow opera plots. I like that.

A musical pantheon: The desert island challenge: 24 records.

Great mp3s! The Barry Gray Music Sampler.

Motorhead Blogger.

Back in the groove: young music fans ditch downloads and spark vinyl revival.

Vinyl Vulture.

literary links (revised)

A short story by Herman Melville: Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street - is it simply absurd? Wikipedia describes the plot, so better read the thing first: the story can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

Henry James: The Lesson of the Master. Short but massive.

Guardian Unlimited Books of the Year 2006 chosen by various critics and writers like Billy Bragg and Simon Callow.

Acquired: The London Collection. Packed with facts. Good fun. Keep in the loo to weigh down those old copies of Fortean Times and keep the splashes off your Schulz and Schott's.

Joanne Harris has written a childrens' book called Runemarks about "Norse gods at the end of the world".

Nigel Hamilton in his Biography: A Brief History calls Woolf's 'Orlando' "a spoof biography of Vita Sackville-West", which it is.

Still available: The Planet Suite by my old school chum Allen Ashley. Also don't miss his 'Urban Fantastic' and 'Somnambulists'. OhMyNews recently published an interview with Allen: Writing, Perseverance and Shaggy Dog Stories.

Mike Moorcock has a story in Kiss the Sky: Fiction & Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix edited by Richard Peabody. I think the story was in a Hawkwind tour programme thirty years ago.

The music of science is Michael Moorcock's review of graphic novel 'Horace Dorlan' which, unlike its two predecessors, has some text. It sounds remarkable. Watchman meets Kafka.

'Nova Swing' by M John Harrison; Gollancz, £16.99, reviewed by Brian McCluskey.

Design: Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte. 3D into 2D.

Vampires meet modern TV: Fangland by John Marks.

In the Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona suggests that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's new book Courage: Eight Portraits is a suitable "page-turner" for the beach on your holiday. Not me, I'm going to Iceland. He also says the book provides a ninth portrait of Gordon himself. Sounds interesting.

The Open Library aims to include every book "our planet’s cultural legacy" and make them all available on the interwebnet.

SciFaiku, er, science fiction haikus.

NPR: Under the Radar: Books Not to Miss.

The official blog of Penguin Books UK: The Penguin Blog.

At last! Leading from the front page - six feminist magazines launch in the UK.

...when they launched their first issue last summer she had become particularly aware of a "massive wave of crap women's magazines. We thought we probably had something more interesting to say." Although the magazine didn't start out as a feminist project, it quickly became one - a natural result of trying to create a publication for women that didn't follow the usual mould.

Geek to Live: Turn your blog into a book, part II.

Something for all bloggers to aspire to, ha ha The world's longest diary.

The Biggest Geek and the SF List is one reader's list of significant genre novels. I disagree with most of it but the comments below are interesting.

English lessons via podcast from the Grammar Girl "a quick and dirty success". Librarian chic.

Guardian Unlimited Books. Book blogs at The Guardian.

Free books! Digital ones. eBooks from Adobe. They seem to be quite legible on-screen.

Semantic Soup is a Flickr group devoted to recording misuse of the English language.

The London Underground

District Dave is a tube driver with an extensive web site.

Going Underground has a blog which is great, and much more up-to-date. Annie Mole is responsible for these, you may have seen her on the BBC's tube night (great links here!), in which we saw the caring folk of the Lost Property Office. If you did, you'll be pleased to know that the family who left the ashes of a relative on a train have been tracked down: Underground Urnie found.

Book: Roberts, M.J. (2005). Underground Maps after Beck. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport Publishing.

London Underground Railway Society.

Tubeprune is not updated any more, but has lots of information on the London Underground railway system.

Love is here

Love is here
Originally uploaded by jovike.

All you need is Love, the new Beatles album.

This can't wait. If you have a hi-fi you need Love. Love is all you need. If you have an intimate knowledge of their music you will especially enjoy the mashups and segues.

Rock'n'Reel magazine has been relaunched. As they are giving away 5 CDs with a subscription in Europe, I couldn't resist this as a Christmas present to myself.

And while I'm on the Subject of Music... is by a man with a lot of CDs. And speaking of albums, I've been collecting them since 1974, so it was a big shock for me when Virgin removed its range of vinyl records from the Oxford Street megastore in London. Suddenly I didn't know what was out there anymore, without the browser bins to riffle through. It is as if iTunes were to vanish now. In 1984 the music industry promised us all the titles would come out on CD eventually, but half of them never did. Ah yes, I remember music... in the interests of bringing it back, here is one solution: Lost in Music.

Brian Eno's Neroli album is on iTunes for only £1.49! More low prices like this please.

Arthur Chisnall, Eel Pie Island promoter, 1925-2006. A good read. He also promoted independent thought, shortly to be made illegal.

The Novelty Rock Emporium is one of many blogs who put MP3 files of old records online, often sourcing music from junk stores. I love them. Some other good ones are Boot Sale Sounds currently featuring Michael Bentine and Charlie Drake and mod-ified music from 60s pop Singapore! - both these sites often include the cover art too. The Torture Garden (love it) and Feed me Good Tunes are more contemporary.

Jason Freeman had a problem: "People often ask me what music I listen to, and I find it difficult to describe my enormous music collection in just a few sentences." Luckily he is a programmer. I've given his solution iTunes Signature Maker a spin. This samples and mixes a sound file from segments of your favourite music on your computer. What for?

Maybe it will help you gauge your compatibility with your next blind date: "She seems nice enough, but her iTunes signature is just so atonal! Should I go with my heart or with my ear?" Or maybe an iTunes signature will figure prominently into a political attack ad: "If you're mad at him for raising your taxes, polluting our environment, and cutting the education budget, just wait until you hear the music he listens to…"

Here's mine: short iTunes signature; long iTunes signature. Can you identify the twenty songs? It's the same songs in both samples. (Also in WAV format if you can't do MP4: short iTunes signature; long iTunes signature.)