Posts Tagged ‘iTunes App Store’

Live in Westchester and need to fill up that shiny new iPhone with useful apps?  Here are some  tools to help you cope with Westerchester life, and enjoy your down-time.  Many of these apps use your iPhone’s GPS location capability to make operation a snap (though most are also compatible with the iPod Touch, as well).  A few cost money, though lots are free!

Note: the links provided will open directly to each application’s page on the Apple iTunes AppStore

Let’s get started…

#10 Free Wi-Fi Finder

Gotta have a laptop hookup and now?!  And you find yourself in … Pound Ridge?!  Find free wi-fi hotspots all over the world using your iPhone.  Super handy when you’re not in your home area or in far-flung WestCo locales (not for iPod Touch).

#9 Offender Locator

Definitely not for everybody, but if you’ve got little kids you might consider this app.  Use it to see if registered sex offenders are living anywhere near any address you might visit or reside.  Even useful if you’ll be trick-or-treating in an unfamiliar neighborhood this year.

#8 City Transit (NYC Subways)

Exactly what you’d expect and exactly what you need, no matter if you’re a daily commuter or only an occasional visitor.  You want this foundation app in your pocket! Too bad Metro North doesn’t have something similar.

#7 Weatherbug

Whether you’re a weather “bug” or whether you’re a weatherphobe, this is the only weather app you need.  The elite version has true weatherbug features and costs only $.99!

#6 Lose it!

Look, sometimes we all need a little support in attaining our goals.  If you need to reduce, this easy and handle app helps you keep track of what you’re eating and how that fits with your weight loss needs.  The app’s home screen serves as a great little affirmation (or overlord!), too!

#5 New York Times

America’s newspaper of record and our own “local paper” (aren’t we lucky?) also has the best news-related iPhone app.  No, it’s not a mini web site – it’s the right sort of mobile filter, giving you what you need in an easy to scan format.  Easily the best way to get your daily Liberal Media Bias on the go!

#4 Hop Stop

Yeah, we all think we know the NYC subway lines.  But we all need a little help, still, getting from here to there when changing lines or (God forbid!) transfering to the bus. Hop Stop’s got you covered, and it’s totally discrete.

#3 McSweeney’s

Timothy McSweeney rocks! If you love the website you’ll love this app. A fantastic mix of humor, wit and excellent writing curated from the best of America’s literary community.  Expensive, but worth it for lit freaks!

#2 Bloom

Finally, an app for adult music lovers! Brian Eno’s incredible ‘generative music’ app for the iPhone.  Visually and spiritually soothing, and fun – how can you top that? At $3.99, an expensive app – but this much fun typically costs much more.

#1 Open Table

My personal all-time favorite iPhone app.  Always know where you can get a table, whether it’s your favorite haunt or a cozy little place around an unfamiliar corner. Perfect when your date is unexpectedly finicky, too.

And the one that got away…

Westchester-based PepsiCo had to apologize and de-list it’s “B4 U Score” pick-up app, designed as viral marketing for Pepsi’s AMP energy drink.  Women took offense at the stereotyping, cheesy pick-up lines and conquest logging feature. Ya think? Bummer, though – it was a great example of iPhone app design (from a purely academic perspective).

And, for the upcoming holiday…

Halloween Party-in-a-Box

Have no time to buy a bunch of goof tracks on iTunes?  Here’s the one-stop shop for all your Halloween fright sounds.  Mix your own, make it random, but any way you flip it you’ll have the local kids too scared to come to your door!

Enjoy!!!

David Oliver (@davidmoliver) writes mobile software, enjoys skiing and a good glass of wine, and sometimes snaps pictures here in Westchester County.

What with the modern day Gold Rush happening at Apple’s iTunes App Store, it’s spawning imitators.

Or, ‘enhancers’…

First you have apptism, hoping it provides a better way to search for and find iPhone applications. apptism provides all kinds of search and rating criteria to help you in your sojourn. Similarly, we have iphonexe. Both link potential buyers directly to the iTunes App Store (hear that sound coming from One Infinite Loop? It’s ‘Woot!”!).

Next we find device-specific (or ‘brand-specific’ or ‘platform-specific’) alternative marketplaces.

The most well-known of these is Google’s Android Market with content specific to devices running Google’s Android operating system (at the time of this writing, only the TMobile G1). However, Google has made known that it will give a slice of marketplace revenue to its carrier-partners. Some see this as even more egregious than Apple taking a cut of App Store revenues, so several non-splitting shops have set up storefronts – specifically, SlideME and AndAppStore. SlideME, in specific, looks to address what it seems to feel are inequities in the application revenue model.

Let’s not count Research In Motion out here. Makers of the once-top-of-the-heap Blackberry are going to create a Blackberry-specific store called, appropriately enough, BerryStore.

Where’s Howard Stern when you need him? His “Dead or Alive?” segment might be useful for this news: Palm is working with PocketGear on the IBMishly-named Palm Software Store.

Update 01.09.09: Palm just announced the new Pre phone, featuring an all-new (for Palm) development model.  And, with it, a re-named application store called the App Catalog.

And, in another late-to-the-party effort, Microsoft apparently wants a piece of the action for it drowning Windows Mobile platform

Some believe the path to success runs through a Walmart approach, addressing many phone types.
mobango, for instance, is a true alternative marketplace – relaunched in October 2008 with free content only (for now?) and an associated social network for content sharing.

Nor are the carriers being shy about getting their slice.

O2 is getting into the game. This wants to be a multi-platform store – including Java as well as OS-specific applications.

Same for TMobile.

My question is: Aren’t all these alternative markets competing for the same space Handango has been in for years…with only moderate success? It seems to me that Apple is finding lots of success with its ‘captive marketplace’ approach – a repeat of the iPod/iTunes model. With a fanbase like Apple’s, maybe that’s no surprise. Similarly Google, with its more open model but heavy impact of Google’s name value, will be serving apps into the space it created. When you remove the industry’s two thought-leadership devices from the field, you’re left with the old-school, way-too-disjoint-and-fragmented market where every buy-button has to have a caveat near it advising where the app will and (mostly) will not work. It might also be said that such marketplaces will highlight the abysmal state of mobile phone software and, indeed, drive users to Apple and Google (and thus to those marketplaces). Therefore, in my mind, these alternative marketplaces don’t have a bright future.

Incidently, and in a tip-of-the-hat to professional journalism, Wired Magazine has covered this topic, albeit less extensively, here.

Medialets has reported their results from monitoring Google’s Android Market (the official app store for smartphones based on the Android platform).

Granted, we’re early days with this marketplace, but frankly, it’s great to see applications other than games in the Top 10, though it’s depressing to see Pac-Man Mobile in the #1 slot. The leadership of gaming in this industry continues to point to immaturity, in my opinion.

Personally, I’m particularly pleased with The Weather Channel’s namesake application. ShopSavvy, also here on the Top 10 list, is also a great use for one’s mobile phone (though, it is sometimes difficult to get connectivity inside large shopping facilities).

By the way, if you’re a fan of QR codes (we are!) find the Barcode Scanner application in the Shopping section of the Market. It recognizes QRs and will “do the right thing” when you photograph one.

We should keep in mind that the Android Market is not accepting paid applications until 2009. So, unlike the Apple iTunes App Store, we’re only seeing that portion of the market willing to give their applications away (either as a means to increase traffic to existing services or simply as a means of testing the waters).

Speaking of the iTunes App Store, Ben Lorica over at O’Reilly has some good articles about what’s happening in that marketplace. Quite a contrast there, compared to here in the Android space – at least in this nascent early-adopter period. Strange to find the social networking applications low on the App Store list, though.