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There's a small spate of people around me obtaining the iPhone. A few pointers for those people:
Google
Google is an excellent cloud replacement for MobileMe. Google Sync Help has calendar sync tips. GMail Mobile Help has how to access GMail in a variety of ways (I recommend IMAP in the iPhone Mail client). Set yourself up a gmail account and google calendar, and that will work fine and dandy. Don't sync with Google Contacts, it does suck. Keep syncing to Address Book on your mac (not sure what the Windows equivalent is), or use MobileMe.
Cloud Services
MobileMe
I do actually like MobileMe - in particular the Find My iPhone feature is excellent, and the Push email for my me.com address I do find useful on occasion. (Push notifies you that you have mail immediately, whereas normal email relies on your device to contact the server every so often.)Physical Accessories
- Contour Hardskin - you need this, or some equivalent. This is nice and grippy, and the raised edge on the screen front is well worth it. I literally dropkicked my iPhone under a car on the street, sliding it face down, and there is zero damage.
Free Apps
These are not linked to - just search for them in the app store.Geographic
- Pkt Weather (Australian Bureau of Meteorology backed, includes radar views)
- AroundMe (many categories of stuff)
- Urbanspoon (specifically restaurants)
- Take Me To My Car (parking location rememberer)
- tramTracker (dingding!)
- Metlink (a bit of a monolithic application, but comprehensive Melbourne Public Transport timetables)
- Here I Am (quickly send a pre-configured email with google map link)
- Google (everything google here)
- Free Wi-Fi Finder (list of free wi-fi spots)
- Wi-Fi Finder (list of non-free wi-fi spots)
- Layar (3GS only - "augmented reality" nearby stuff overlay)
Social/Chat
- Twitterrific
- Fring (variety of chat clients, including Skype and VoIP)
- AIM Lite
- Skype
- Livejournal
Informative
- Whole Foods (recipe database - US based)
- Allrecipes.com.au (Australian recipe database)
- ShopShop (very simple and easy to use shopping list utility)
- NetNewsWire (backed onto Google Reader)
- Chronolite (configurable multiple timer utility)
- Wikiamo (Wikipedia browser with cache)
- AusPostcode
- Stanza (ebook reader)
- Shakespeare (the complete works)
Utilities
- Dropbox (if you are not already using http://getdropbox.com/ then you should be)
- Darkroom (take the shot once your hands are steady, there is a Premium version with more features)
- Zen Piano (1 octave piano with loudness controlled by tap strength)
- Tuner440 (instrument tuner, including "free mode" with different notes)
- inTune A440 (strobe tuner for A440 specifically - only)
- A Free Level (a bubble level)
- Metronome (tick tock)
- Units (conversion calculator, includes currency fu)
- Convertbot (conversion calculator, includes currency fu)
- Blizzard Mobile Authenticator (for World of Warcraft nerds)
- Scan (in case you're curious what's running under the hood, or want to check your phone's RAM usage)
Silly Things
- iStethoscope (badoump)
- Banner Free (big scrolly banner)
- Labyrinth Lite (rolling ball maze puzzle)
- Lightsaber (vrwoomp)
- Zippo Lighter (fsshwwomp)
- iNeko (meow, purr, zzzZZZ)
Netgeeks
- PwGen (Password Generator, useful for normal users, not just techies)
- TouchTerm (SSH client)
- Net Utility (bunch of net utilities rolled into one)
- Ping Lite (includes a handy ping-whole-subnet display)
- RDP Lite (Windows Remote Desktop)
- VNC Lite (VNC client - mac, linux, etc)
- Speed Test (bandwidth speed tester)
Computer/Math Nerd Utilities
- UNIX Epoch (you too can know the number of seconds since 1970-01-05T00:00Z)
- cmpxRPN (complex number and reverse polish notation calculator)
- GraphCalc (Polynomial Graphs Curve OK)
- PCalc Lite (alternative calculator)
Non Free Apps (unsorted)
- Darkroom Premium (take the shot once your hands are steady, guide lines, etc, good camera app replacement)
- OzWeather (Another australian weather app)
- BOMRadar (Just the BoM Radar)
- WiFiFoFum (awesome WiFi scanner app - includes 2D radar view)
- Fantastic Contraption (the game of website fame)
- Flight Control (finger trace land the planes - quick and fun)
- Cluck It! (chicken crossing road - very hilarious and fun, Frogger style but much better)
- Sally's Spa (surprisingly fun "time management" genre game - there is a Lite)
- Underworlds (basic Diablo type game - melee only)
- Paper Toss (surprisingly fun game)
- Strategery (hex based conquest game - there is a Strategery Lite)
- Ocarina (an ocarina!)
- Koi Pond (splash!)
- Civilisation Revolutions (basic, but recognisable and still fun)
- Catan (The basic Settlers of Catan game, no expansions)
- Midomi (what's that song that's playing?)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:06 (UTC)want. iphone.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 05:14 (UTC)Units is invaluable - even has currency conversion.
For fun I like Lilt line and Labyrinth lite - the latter really shows off the very fine accelerometer hardware.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 05:19 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-06-30 05:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 14:28 (UTC)What annoys me is the insistence on Internet Explorer for bookmark sync, completely ignoring Firefox, and also the fact that camera photos don't sync at all..!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 15:45 (UTC)As for Photos...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3603
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 16:08 (UTC)As for that Apple document, it's misleading. Yes, when the backup is done each sync, the Camera Roll is backed up with it all. However, that it not in a user-readable format. Camera Roll photos are not synced at all. The only way to easily get them over to the PC is to open the iPhone Camera device that appears in Windows and grab them that way.
It's a serious omission that'll likely see people losing photos they presumed would have made the trip to iTunes along with everything else.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-02 02:38 (UTC)On a Mac, plug your iPhone in, and iPhoto fires up (as well as iTunes) and you import your Camera Roll within iPhoto.
On your Windows box, you have to do that step manually (fire up the appropriate windows camera program).
If you don't do that, you don't risk photo loss - if your phone dies, you just restore your phone from iTunes, and your Camera Roll with all the photos goes back onto your phone.
And if you really want to, you can unpack your Camera Roll, provided you're not using encrypted backups. The iPhone app data storage files are SQLite databases. :-) That's getting well into the too-much-work zone though. Much easier to just fire up your camera app.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:00 (UTC)Other favourtite apps - Stanza is a must if you want to read books as it has auto links and downloads to a lot of free booksites (including Project Gutenberg) as well as some paid ones.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:02 (UTC)And yes re WiFinder and Darkroom. :-/
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:23 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 08:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 08:19 (UTC)I've heard reports of using the built in voice synth to turn text into audio files as an alternative ... :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 08:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 08:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:48 (UTC)Wonder how much it'd cost to up my contract. Hrm.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 15:42 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-06-30 08:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 15:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 16:51 (UTC)BTW, another free app for your list Live Happy (http://www.signalpatterns.com/iphone/livehappy.html). A good idea that I'd like to extend.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 12:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 14:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 15:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-21 05:12 (UTC)I sync my Google contacts with Thunderbird seamlessly using gContactSync, and with my iPhone, and I have no problems to speak of. I had to clean them up a bit at the start.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-21 05:35 (UTC)If it works for you, awesome. :-) I just had bad experiences trying to set it up, and the documentation is quite non-obvious.
I think my wife is using Google Contacts sync using BusySync as a conduit... So via a third party app seems to mostly be good, it's just the Google implemented direct sync that seems to be non-bulletproof. Surprising, but there it is. :-/