An app for this an app for that

Camera Bag

[cost $2.99] [developed by Never Center]

Camera Bag lets you apply fixed photography styles – such as Helga, Instant, Fisheye, 1974 and more – to photos you take with your iPhone camera. It is quite possibly my favorite app. At $2.99 it’s well worth it get great photos on your iPhone. If you are a shutterbug you’ll have a lot of fun applying these styles to the typically boring and flat images the iPhone camera tends to produce.

Zen Bound

[cost $4.99] [developed by Secret Exit]

It’s one bit zen, one bit game, and beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. $4.99 is dirt cheap for the amount blood, sweat, and inspiration that must have flowed from the team at Secret Exit in order to develop this app. As for the game, it’s puzzle style – use a rope to paint wood carvings in a multitude of different shapes, the more area your rope touches the more complete the puzzle becomes. Gameplay is perfectly designed to take advantage of the the gyroscope and gestures of iPhone. And the main menu has a great user interface!

Sportacular

[free] [developed by Citizen Sports]

Stats, scores, and standings for NBA, NFL, NCAA, MLB and a few other sports. An easy to use interface makes it simple and convenient to get the score and stats for my beloved Golden State Warriors. Yes, I know they stink, and I can’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel…..but I’ll always have the “We Believe” playoffs – [Dallas Mavericks playoff upset and Baron Davis dunk over AK47], Run TMC, and Eric “Sleepy” Floyd’s 51 point playoff game against the Magic-led Lakers.

Skype

[free] [developed by Skype]

Now I could stand up here and say, let’s get everybody together, let’s get unified the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, And everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect.

Last February Hillary Clinton sarcastically mocked Barack Obama during her campaign, but in my mind she was pontificating on the day we are free from the tyranny of cell phone companies. The rate plans are confusing, the contracts are unfairly restrictive, and there is always a new fee. While Skype on the iPhone currently only runs on a Wi-Fi network it is a glimmer of hope in breaking the cellular industry’s strangle hold on us. The interface is great; with texting and phone calls both delivering a clean and intuitive experience. The quality of phone calls seems to be as good as a normal cell connection. Once Apple releases push notification for the iPhone, this app will be one step closer to turning cell networks in dumps pipes….a position I’d be happy to see the cellular companies relegated to..

Check Please

[cost $0.99 or free] [developed by Catamount Software]

Dinner’s over, the check has arrived, and now you and your six closest friends have to break out those rusty long division skills to figure out how much everyone owes. Check Please is the perfect antidote for the mathematically challenged. Just put in the cost of the meal, the percent you’d like to tip and the number of people paying and it’ll give you each person’s portion of the bill. Simple, easy, and probably a friendship saver.

Stanza

[free] [developed by Lexcycle]

Reading a book on your iPhone is not for everyone but I’ve been enjoying my virtual copy of Siddhartha. Stanza is the poor man’s eReader, akin to Amazon’s Kindle. It allows you to download and read books and other periodicals from a variety of sources. The vast majority of titles are within the public domain and are free to download – other titles can be purchased. I had a great time exploring this digital library and picking out classic titles that I never would have come across otherwise.

NY Times

[free] [developed by The New York Times Company]

I often find myself with 10 minutes to kill – at the doctor’s office, waiting for the train, etc. The NY Times is the perfect app for those moments. All the articles and pictures from the day’s paper are easily browsable because it’s organized by category and popularity. When I first started using this app six months ago it would often crash on me but through a number of updates the developers seem to have stabilized everything and it’s ready for the prime time.

Frenzic

[cost $2.99] [developed by The Iconfactory]

I was addicted to this puzzle game for the first month I had it. By placing different colored pizza shaped wedges at various angles within a circle you score points and clear more room for additional pieces. The game gets progressive harder and faster the longer you play. All your scores get saved on you own personal high score chart, and you can compare how well you’re doing to everyone else, or just other local players. After a month or so I got a bit bored with the game, which may have been due to everyone else’s ridiculously high scores that I saw atop the leaderboard. At $2.99 you’ll certainly get your money’s worth.

Inquisitor

[free] [developed by Yahoo & David Watanabe]

Google’s got nothing on Inquisitor. The iPhone might as well have been made for trivia night at a bar so you’ll need a fast way to look up up facts, people, and other bits of knowledge you never learned or forgot. Inquisitor integrates a Google search, Wikipedia, and multipe other sources to give you lightening-fast results. The slick interface is easy to use and stores your previous queries. This is the only non standard app that I’ve put into the always present bottom row of apps.

Big StopWatch

[free] [developed by Yuki Yasoshim]

Some of the best apps are the simplist and that is certainly true with Big StopWatch. The beautiful interface, an update on the traditional stop watch, was designed by Japanese developer Yuki Yasoshim. The instructions are in Japanese but it’s so intuitive you won’t need ‘em. Just tap once to start, once to stop, and once on the reset button to start again. It’s perfect for cooking or the 100 meter dash.

Yelp

[free] [developed by Yelp]

The thing I love about my iPhone is how it’s freed me from having to carry around my laptop or looking up everything I need before I go out. Yelp is one of those apps that lets you freely roam the city streets without the worry that you won’t be able to find a good sushi restaurant nearby, or a supermarket with a decent fish monger. Just type in what you’re looking for and it’ll give you the answer you’re looking for; giving you the address with one touch mapping, and a phone number with one touch dialing.