ON SOME COOL, LESSER KNOWN iPHONE APPS

NEEDLES IN HAYSTACKS

Well, I've had a couple of days now to play with the new iPhone 3G and the flood of third-party applications now available for it in the Apple App Store, both free and for a fee. 

And the good news is that there are some pretty cool applications, especially games that take advantage of the iPhone various features and sensors.  Look no further than the leading paid application that shows up at the top of the App Store list, Monkey Ball from Sega, as a good example.  Apps like Monkey Ball have been long anticipated by users, given the opportunity they had to show-case themselves at Steve Jobs' 3G iPhone Keynote a while ago.  There are already good reviews of some of the best applications by folks like Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and others.

Having downloaded over 60 free and paid applications and them for a bit, I thought I'd highlight five, lesser heralded applications that merit a closer look, at least from my point of view.  In no particular order, let me start with:

1.  vSnax Videos by Rhythm NewMedia, is a free App that offers bite-sized aggregation of entertainment videos.  Although videos have long been available on the iPhone and iTouch through the YouTube application bundled by Apple on the home screen, vSnax's approach is more proactive in that it serves up a series of short videos in various categories that a mainstream consumer may find of interest.  It's an approach I think most purveyors of videos on the web will adopt over time, given that consumers are already close to a point of being overwhelmed by the choice of stuff to watch, and the effort required to find the good stuff.

2."The Battle for Waterloo" by Touchtomes is a fascinating little game for $3.99, especially for those geeks who have fond memories of the classic text-based early computer games of Zork fame by Infocom, over two decades ago.  We've made some progress from text here, where the story and game play are advanced by beautiful illustrations of that famous battle.  Here's a flavor of the game from Touchtomes:

"“Battle of Waterloo”
It is 1815; Napoleon has escaped captivity, become Emperor of France, and has raised an enormous army of 125,000 men. With it, he plans to conquer all of Europe.

You are the youngest officer in the British Army, serving under the Duke of Wellington. You have just returned from a dangerous scouting mission near the French and Belgian border. “Sir,” you inform Wellington, “Yesterday I saw French troops invading!”

Pretty cool stuff, that sometimes reminds you that you don't need the latest tech features to provide a cool gaming experience.

3. OneTap Movies by Avantar is another application, available for $1.99, that's a good example of a new class of services that make it easier to quickly get lots of information on a subject, widely available on the web, in a convenient and graphically pleasing manner.  In this case, the App does the following:

"OneTap Movies recognizes where you are and displays the nearest movie theaters, along with the movies that are being played, as well as the showtimes, critic ratings, basic info, posters, etc. All with a single tap of your finger. You can also watch the trailers or simply enjoy your time searching for details of any movie with a link to the International Movie Data Base (IMDB)."

Again, nothing one can't do with the excellent 3G browsing already possible on the new iPhone, but very convenient to get it all with "one tap" as it were.

4. Trism by Demiforce is a cool $4.99 App for those who already love classic games like Tetris and Bejeweled. 

Trism stands for triangular prisms, which you move around and match by color to progress in the game.  The game has a lot of polish and is fun to play using the iPhone touch interface.

There are various types of challenges available, so the game doesn't get old too fast.  The developers have managed to cram in a good tutorial which is so far unusual for a lot of iPhone applications.

5.  OmniFocus for iPhone is by the Omni Group, a developer well known for a number of great productivity applications on Apple's Mac platform.  With a price point of $19.99, this is not an inexpensive iPhone App, but does provide pretty useful on-the-go productivity enhancing features.  Here's how their site describes the application:

"OmniFocus for the iPhone brings task management to your fingertips. Keep track of actions by project, place, person, or date. Bring up a shopping list, agenda items to discuss at work, tasks for home, and any other lists you need.

Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list.

Capture tasks anywhere, anytime with OmniFocus: you can enter text, take a picture, or even make a quick voice recording."

There's a fair bit of power under the hood, especially if used with a beta version OmniFocus for the Mac, a separately sold desktop application, which will soon officially support the iPhone version of the App.

This list of five cool, lesser-known Apps is by no means comprehensive, and the above is but a tiny sampling of the good stuff that's available in rapidly growing piles of haystacks.  To be continued.