No Clean Feed - Stop Internet Censorship in Australia
Home

Essential iPhone Apps

Submitted by Duncan Bayne on Wed, 2009-07-08 08:01

With the new iPhone 3.0 firmware, I'm finding that I'm using my iPhone for more and more serious purposes.

First up: if you're using Google Mail, Contacts and Calendar (and who isn't these days? :-)) you can easily synch all of the above with your iPhone. This has been available since iPhone 2.0, and if you're not taking advantage of it already, you should be. The ability to make an appointment or edit a contact online and have it show up on your phone automagically is wonderful.

Once you've set that up, have a look at these apps, all of which I use myself and wholeheartedly recommend:

iSSH

iSSH SSH iSSH VNC iSSH is a fantastically useful tool for a software developer like me, and I imagine it'd be equally handy for anyone responsible for maintaining servers, test machines, etc. It allows me to easily control all my Windows and Linux boxes, from my desktop PC using VNC (show in one screenshot) to my web host using SSH (the other screenshot).

iSSH isn't free; it costs a mere AUD$5.99 at time of writing, and is worth every cent.

FileAid

FileAid List FileAid Share
FileAid PDF		 This very useful application allows you to transfer files to your iPhone, either using proprietary software and a USB connection, or any FTP client and WiFi. Once on your iPhone you can manage and view the files.

I find this especially handy, as it means I can upload PDF eBooks and course material, and read them at my leisure on the iPhone. In the past, the only way to do this was to email the PDFs and view them using the Email app on the iPhone, which was an ugly hack.

Skype

Skype Most of the people I call on a regular basis use Skype. The Skype client for the iPhone allows you to make Skype calls using the iPhone as a handset.

I'm surprised Apple hasn't been petitioned by telcos to remove this app from their store, as it allows you to make free calls to any other Skype client, just like Skype for your desktop PC.

Stanza

Stanza Stanza is a handy ebook reader that allows you to buy and read O'Reilly titles, as well as titles from a wide range of other publishers, and a great range of free out-of-copyright books from Project Gutenberg.

I'm envisaging building a library of O'Reilly and other tech books on my iPhone; I love the idea of having my tech book library everywhere my phone is.

Google Mobile

Google Mobile The iPhone 3.0 firmware allows easy searching across the device, but Google Mobile takes that one step further and integrates web, wiki and phone searches. In the screenshot, I'm searching for "rap" and getting "Rapid Tune" from my phone's contact list, along with web results from Google.

Frotz

Frotz It's hard to beat good old-fashioned text adventure games - now known as interactive fiction - for entertainment. Frotz brings the Inform engine to the iPhone, and thus all the old classics including Zork are playable along with countless others.

There is still a very active interactive fiction community, and should you choose to write your own (like I've been doing), there's even (of course!) an Emacs mode for Inform :-)
»