This is a companion piece to an item I’ve written for the DBA on the top 10 Apps for the iPhone for designers and those in the business of design. Having squeezed into down to 10 I was left thinking that there were numerous Apps that missed the cut by a mere whisker and probably deserved a mention.
For those of you who’ve missed the piece for the DBA I’m going to include the original list in with those I’ve added subsequently. It’s by no means comprehensive or scientific, if you’ve got any suggestions then please let me know and I’ll be more than happy to add them to the roster.
Pulse News Mini (£1.19)
If you want to make the most of RSS news feeds then this is a great app for you. If you’re not sure that RSS is then learn about it here http://bit.ly/cDRr7S
The layout is similar to the BBC News App, it takes up to 20 news sources that you follow and presents them in a scrollable grid. What’s more you can take the news with you offline for when you’re not connected. http://bit.ly/baeXhb
App Box Lite (Free) / App Box Pro (£0.59)
A veritable swiss army knife of apps for your iPhone. Before you go and collect 10+ apps to help with daily tasks and productivity you’ll find them all here in one handy packages. Save money, save space. http://bit.ly/9Za45c
myPANTONE (£5.99 yes I know!)
While it’s one of the more expensive Apps available it does give you the ability to access the Pantone® colour libraries and build colour palettes that you can share on the fly.
Create schemes from photos as well as from scratch, while it will give you RGB and HEX, the only thing missing (and its a big omission) is no CMYK breakdowns. Fingers crossed for the next update. (are you listening PANTONE!) http://bit.ly/dayRbJ
If you don’t need the PANTONE element then have a look at cliqcliq Colors which does give you the CMYK for only £1.79, users of Adobe Kuler will be right at home with this. http://bit.ly/aN9tRG
The mobile companion to the smaller brother to FilemakerPro, Bento on the iPhone lets you take the functionality of your databases with you wherever you go. You need the desktop version to make it work and you’ll still probably use iCal and Contacts on the iPhone as before but if you’re using the project managements and other business effectiveness databases in Bento on your desktop then this can be invaluable on the road. http://bit.ly/cq1GyJ
Needless to say all of these time based apps are only as good as the person filling them in and we all know how much us creatives love paperwork already!
There are a few photo/phone apps about but this one does the basics really well. Essentially its tiny version of Photoshop that lets you tweak and improve your shots. Don’t expect much more than that and you’ll be very happy – if you want more functionality that this then you probably need to ask yourself why am I doing this on a tiny iPhone in the first place!? http://bit.ly/bjGJhi
Eternity Time Log (£5.99), Lite version (Free)
These are both time management Apps, with free (limited) versions to try before you buy. They capture your time and activities and export to familiar and useful formats for reports and billing. Very useful if you’re a freelancer or a consultant or just want an accurate record of your business days, weeks, months…
Pug http://bit.ly/dyFylv , Eternity http://bit.ly/cH8iGw
Does what it says on the tin, an easy V.A.T. or Sales Tax calculator. Simple is good.http://bit.ly/c81Ghe It gives you a range of rates 5%, 6%, 17.5% (use it while you can!) and 20%. The same people also do a UK Salary Tax Calculator, always good to know your earnings in advance.
Another congested area in the App Store, GoodReader lets you quickly read and manage your PDFs both through iTunes and over servers and google docs. http://bit.ly/at55JT You might not use all of its functions every day but worth having.
If you’ve not managed documents and iPhone items through iTunes before then its a useful thing to be able to do. You can also use the spare capacity on your device as a memory stick at a push! Since you can drive an external display from your iPhone (with the right cables) a nicely tooled PDF could serve as a creds presentation or a sampler at a push.
See also Twitterrific http://bit.ly/b8CAu8and HootSuite. http://bit.ly/9d2oGp
See Justin Stahl’s (the developer) other app The Font Game for more type related fun and find out how good your font knowledge really is… http://bit.ly/cPlRWr
On the newstand there are a handful that you might want to consider (from a UK perspective). BBC News, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Independent have great offerings with prices ranging from free to £2.39 for updated content. Assuming you have the bandwidth the BBC App also drops you into the live feed from the BBC News channel.
There are similar offerings from the USA including TIME Magazine. Most magazine versions are a best of, or a smattering of highlights at best.
On the games front and I include them only on the basis of completeness and that it pays to be sharp and active mentally . . . ahem…
If you want to spend some more money the probably the best realisation of a golden oldie is Scrabble, yes the dictionary is sometimes questionable but it feels pretty good and the multi-player option is well executed. If you have an iPad too then you can use all your individual iPhones as the tile racks and the iPad as the board in one big WiFi love in.
I’ll add more as and when I get the chance.