10 iPhone apps that really ARE useful

Fortune Magazine just named the “Top 10 must-have iPhone apps,” and pretty much proved why business magazines shouldn’t try to talk geek. If you want a 2-inch rotating disco ball or a screen depicting simulated beer, cowbells, staplers (STAPLERS?) and cigarette lighters, this is the list for you.

If you want anything useful, look elsewhere.

The iPhone, as I’ve said, is a lousy phone. Once the coolfactor dies, the reason you’ll still own it is because it’s actually a quite useful pocket computer and entertainment center. You can download impressive apps that add to the already-impressive bunch on the phone, most for less than $10 (or free). Here are my favorite ten so far, in no particular order (and here’s another 10, with games):

If you’re an iPhone user, you can download any of these by tapping your “Apps” icon and searching for them by name. Some will probably also turn up in the Top 25/Featured listings.

Units (Free, The MacBox). This very simple (and just about indispensable) tool converts almost any modern unit of measure to another, and also turns the iPhone screen into a ruler that can measure in inches or centimeters. Convert units of area, volume, speed, temperature, currency, energy, time, length, weight, pressure, data storage and volumetric flow.

Color Expert ($9.99, Code Line). Use the iPhone camera to capture a color you particularly like and turn it into a full color palette, complete with Pantone swatches. You can find Adobe equivalents or email swatches and palettes to others (or yourself). One caveat: The accuracy of the Color Expert palette depends on the quality of the image you use, and if the lighting’s bad, you probably won’t like the results.

Clinometer (99 cents, Peter Breitling). Forget iPhone-as-beerstein. This app uses the same sensors to turn the iPhone into a clinometer (a device that can read levels and slopes). Lay the iPhone on a flat surface, and it becomes a bubble level. Hold it vertically, and it can give you the slope in degrees or percentages off vertical/horizontal.

WordPress (Free, Automattic). Got a WordPress blog? (such as the one you’re reading right this minute…) The folks that make WordPress, which IMHO is now the best blogging and content management system out there, let you manage your blog from the iPhone, too. You can write or edit posts, upload photos, preview your posts, publish or unpublish, password-protect private posts and similar stuff. It’s only in its first iterations, which in opensourcespeak means it’s not all that functional yet. Since it is opensource, though, it will be soon. I’ve so far suggested adding a comment tracker, fixing the inability to get past the –More– tag when editing, and adding a podcast feature. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to run a talkative blog like mine from an iPhone, but it’s awfully nice to have in an emergency.

AirMouse ($5.99, RPA Tech). OK, now this one is just freakin’ cool even if I have to kinda gulp over the usefulness part. AirMouse turns your iPhone into a Mac or Windows mouse. It does everything a mouse does and offers multiple ways to control the computer via WiFi connection. There’s a trackpad and shortcut buttons to do specific tasks, as well as the ability to control broad movements by tilting the iPhone itself. It also lets you use the iPhone keyboard to enter information (although, again, the lousy keyboard may make that torture for more than a couple of words). It’s perfect when you need to control a PC from across the room–although I’ve yet to find a reason to want to do that.

Stanza (Free, Lexcycle). It’s not exactly a Kindle, but it doesn’t cost $359, either. Stanza turns your iPhone into an electronic book, letting you download books, newspapers and magazines for offline reading. A number of sites, including The Gutenberg Project, FeedBooks, O’Reilly, and Munsey, offer thousands and thousands of Stanza titles. I still think nothing beats a real book, and the inability to include more than one picture with a Stanza book certainly limits its usefulness…but I wouldn’t be without it.

Wikiamo (Free, Satoshi Nakagawa). The iPhone’s Web browser certainly gives you full access to Wikipedia, but Wikiamo does it faster, formatted especially for the iPhone. You can bookmark favorite entries and cache pages for offline reading (to save your precious battery time). My only gripe with Wikiamo is its very inelegant way of handling no-result searches: It just sits there. (The real Wikipedia gives “no results” feedback with suggestions for other searches).

Ambiance (99 cents, Matt Coneybeare). Heaven knows there are times when you want quiet, as when you’re stuck in an airplane beside a couple of chatterboxes, or when the guy in the next cubicle over insists on crunching celery during lunch). You don’t want music, you just want to combat noise pollution, and that’s what Ambiance does. It’s a continuous recording of soothing noises such as rain against a car window, crickets, white/pink/violet/brown/blue noise, etc. I thought I was wasting 99 cents when I downloaded it, but I usually turn it on four or five times a week.

Google Earth (Free, Google). I’ve been a Google Earth fan ever since I first downloaded it from Google Labs a gazillion years ago. Google’s already permeated the iPhone (the mapping app makes great use of Google Maps, for example), and Google Earth gives you the schwoopy gliding tours that you get on your computer, but on the iPhone. It also hooks into the Panoramia geocoded photo system and Wikipedia, making it a very useful way to absorb local color.

Free Translator (Free, Codesign). Another Googlish tool, this one provides an iPhone interface for the Google language translators. It so far supports the Romance Languages plus stuff like Arabic, Chinese, Finnish and Latvian. It’s an online tool, which eats battery and might be a pain if you’re traveling to places that don’t support your phone, but you can buy offline language dictionaries for $4.99 each.

That’s my list-of-the-moment, and you’ll notice it doesn’t include games; I figured I’d stick with just tools because this post is long enough. However…the list is going to keep growing I suspect. And sure enough, here’s part II.

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