My Essential iPhone Apps

With all the fuss over the iPhone 3.0 announcement, I thought it was a good time to review the apps I couldn’t live without on my iPhone. Some are for business, some are for pleasure, but all are essential in my eyes. And, oddly for a miser like me, they’re all apps that I had to fork out some cash for…
  1. Easy TimeSheet
    Easy TimeSheet – I use Easy TimeSheet for tracking hours worked on various projects. Whenever you start work on something simply start the timer… when you finish, stop it again. It’s that simple. There’s the option to assign hourly rates to projects if you plan to bill someone for your work. The data can also be e-mailed to you so that you can compile reports/bills on your computer rather than trying to fiddle about with your phone.

  2. Tweetie
    Tweetie – I used Twittelator Pro for mobile twittering for quite some time, and recently made the switch to Tweetie. When I changed, Tweetie seemed much “cleaner” and simpler… it just did its job and did it well. It allows you to send a link to your current location, and integrates with TwitPic. I’ve also found it to be very solid… I don’t remember it crashing on me yet. Since switching, Twittelator Pro has had an update which adds a load of new features, but having had a look at it I think it felt a bit too cluttered. For the simplicity of tweeting on the move, it’s Tweetie on my iPhone.
  3. Milog
    Milog – This is one I use every single day, and couldn’t do without. I have to track my business mileage in the car, and kept forgetting to fill in the log book. Rather than having to try and reconstruct my mileage a month after the event I downloaded this great little app that allows me to input the mileage for every trip, and then allows me to e-mail myself a report at the end of the month. The good thing is that this app is paying for itself, as I’m more likely to remember to claim small trips than if I were doing it all in one go.
  4. Things
    Things – I’m notoriously bad at remembering to do things… but I’m also terrible at keeping lists. They get misplaced, or (believe it or not) I forget to write things on them. Because I always have my phone with me, though, and because I can have the icon on the first page of the start screen, an iPhone-based solution works better for me. I’m also impressed with the GTDmethod of task management, so decided to go for something that loosely followed that. Things is the solution, with an inbox where you just dump tasks as they come up, and “today”, “next”, “scheduled”, and “someday” lists to help break that huge list of jobs into manageable chunks. So far I’m definitely remembering to do more than I used to!
  5. Pole Position: Remix
    Pole Position: Remix – a bit of fun to finish with, and a remake of an old game! Pole Position was good on ye olde computers, but steering by tilting the iPhone has added a nice new dimension to the game. Not to mention that I’m a bit of a Formula 1 freak so it’s nice to imagine that I’m racing round the circuit ahead of next week’s season-opening race in Melbourne. Shame none of the actual F1 circuits are in the game (only fairly simple layouts) but it’s still fun.

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