iPhone Applications
iPhone applications are programs that you can download from Apple’s App Store to your iPhone. Here are instructions to help you download applications to your iPhone. I have also put together lists of suggestions of the best iPhone applications.
To browse the App Store to find applications that you want, then find the ‘App Store’ application on your iPhone’s home screen and open that up.
Then find a game, productivity tool, utility or other application that interests you and tap on it.
To download it, press ‘free’ or the price that the application costs.
Then confirm that you are willing to pay that price by tapping ‘install’.
A prompt will appear for your iTunes account password. Enter that and the program will start downloading.
It may take a few minutes to download and install the application to your iPhone.
When the application has been downloaded and installed it will appear on your home screen.
If you have more applications than fit on one screen, then you will see a few dots on the bottom of the screen. Swipe the screen from side to side to switch the set of applications that are visible on your home screen.
Tap on the application you downloaded to launch it and have fun!
Now that the App Store is available there are many great downloadable iPhone applications, however, there are still many sites that are only accessible through the web browser. Here’s a list of websites that have great iPhone interfaces:
- www.amazon.com - This easy interface allows you to always check amazon for prices before you buy something in the real world.
- m.google.com - A simple way to get access to most of your Google services.
- www.fandango.com - Check movie times when you’re on the go. Combine this with the Tomatoes downloadable application for movie reviews and you won’t go wrong.
- forums - There isn’t an application to view forums on your iPhone, so you have to use the browser. My favorite forum: Supertopo
- craigslist.org - Possibly the only website out there that doesn’t need an iPhone specific interface for it to be extremely usable.
- www.digg.com/iphone/ - A nice Digg interface.
- iphone.ebay.com - eBay for your iPhone. Never get sniped again!
- www.getleaflets.com/ - A nice collection of iPhone formatted content, from RSS feeds to sports, weather and more.
- iphone.facebook.com - The iPhone browser optimized version of Facebook. Now that you can download their application, this is less useful, but still good if you need to do things that the application doesn’t allow you to.
- m.yahoo.com - Yahoo has a good set of mobile services available here. Most notable is their oneSearch, which brings you search results optimized for your mobile phone.
Here’s a list of my top 10 free iPhone applications. Also, make sure to check out other great iPhone applications.
- Remote - this app is at the top of everyone’s list. In short, it allows you to control your iTunes from your iPhone over your wireless network. It gets fun when multiple people fight for control of the music
- Wordpress - mobile blogging at its best. This application makes it easy to post to your Wordpress blog and allows you to post images from your phone too.
- Shazam - this application can amazingly identify what song is playing on the radio. It is impressively accurate and only had trouble with mashups in my tests. Great for road trips.
- Facebook - Slick interface to Facebook that gives you access to your messages, status, chat and contacts. A very promising start from the top social network.
- Twitterific - A nice Twitter application for the iPhone. It allows you to easily post links to photos you’ve taken on your phone via twitpic.com.
- eReader - This eBook reader allows you to download eBooks from its site as well as any other site. Try manybooks.net for a good selection of free books.
- Yelp - a simple mobile interface to Yelp. It allows you to search for businesses around you and is very useful.
- Pandora - stream music to your phone. It works great on all iPhones and is a great radio replacement if you hook it up to your car’s stereo.
- AIM - good old instant messaging on your iPhone. There are also ways to use this to avoid text messaging charges.
- Tomatoes - This Rotten Tomatoes application lets you look up movie ratings in a quick and easy user interface so you don’t have to go to the web. Handy when you’re at the theater and trying to decide what to see.
