6 Great Apps for Your iPhone
- Image via CrunchBase
Today I bring you a guest post from Gavin Nachbar. Gavin is a freelance writer who cannot be found anywhere in the world without his iPhone. As a writer, he has written for a couple of magazines including Hyphen Magazine and The Escapist Magazine.
Gavin doesn’t have a site of his own right now, but says you can feel free to email him with any questions about the iPhone!
Back in 2007, Apple.’s iPhone was released to a crowd of cheering fans who couldn’t wait to have their phone and iPod together in one. They were excited to be able to get their email and go online in places where WiFi had previously said “no”. In two short years, though, the iPhone has turned into so much more.
The iPhone has not gone without criticism, though, and many people will swear by their Blackberries. Throughout the election, we heard about Barack Obama’s obsession with his Blackberry, and many of us couldn’t help but think “Maybe I should get one of those?” Both iPhones and Blackberries are great in their own right, and either would be a great choice for a writer.
Then what sets these two phones apart? The iPhone has over 25,000 third party applications ready for download, and that number is only growing. Different applications serve different purposes, and they do all kinds of things. Some of them can identify a song on the radio while others can give you directions back to where you parked your car. Of all of these applications, here are 6 of the best for writers to use.
[Note from Dustin: For more info or to download these apps, please visit the iPhone apps store either on your phone or in iTunes.]
1. Text Editor
One of the major knocks on the iPhone, since day one, has been that it is much harder to type on than other phones, particularly the Blackberry. Anybody with fingers larger than a 12-year old’s will run into problems typing on the small touchscreen keys. The way that the iPhone makes up for the difficultly typing is by having a great spelling corrector. Text Editor is one of the many applications that works to fix the “small keys” problem. With Text Editor, each key is two times as large as the typical iPhone’s keys making it much easier for us as writers to type longer notes, essays, or even books. Cost: $0.99
2. Voice Notes
You know that time you were sitting at work or cooking dinner and you have a “light bulb above the head” moment, but when you’re sitting at your computer later that night you can’t for the life of you remember what that idea was? Enter Voice Notes. All it takes it two taps and you can talk as if you are making a phone call. Just hit the play button when you have a brain cramp later, and you’re good to go. Price: Free
3.Photonote
Just like when you have an idea in your head, most writers know that feeling of seeing the inspiration for an article. Photonote uses the iPhone’s 2 Megapixel camera and combines it with a program similar to Text Editor. This application allows you to snap a picture easily, and then write a caption to remind you of why it is you took that picture in the first place.
4. Dictionary with Spell Check
This app has made the impossible…possible! You can now bring that 5 lb. dictionary on the road with you without being weighed down by a giant book. Easy look up makes it possible for writers to just search a word, or one close, and this app gives you the definition and even more important, the correct spelling! Price: $2.99 (Larger dictionaries can be bought for as much as $29.99)
5. Worklog
This app was made for freelancers. Period. As freelancers, we’re always looking for ways to track how long we’ve worked on a certain project, to know how much to charge, etc. Enter Worklog. With an extremely simple interface, Worklog was made with the freelancer in mind. With that said, it is not perfect. One of te major knocks on the app is that is it not designed to track your work for more than a handful of projects. If you are working on a dozen articles at a given time, the app will have some trouble tracking your work on each individual project. Price: Worklog Lite: Free, Worklog Full: $7.99
6. Pandora Radio
There is only one thing better than music, and that is…free music! We listen to music as we write, we listen to it in the car, and everywhere else we can! With the iPhone making it possible to listen to music in more and more places, Pandora Radio is an application that streams free Internet radio stations directly into your phone. One can choose their songs, sorting by genre, or by searching for a favorite artist or song. With that, the application will sort through it’s database and find the song you are looking for, as well as ones similar to it. Price: Free
All in all, for many writers the iPhone is a dream. Personally, after buying mine half a year a go, I can’t imagine what life was like before it. With that said, the number of WiFi hot spots around the county are increasing every day, and as a writer you often don’t even need the internet, just a computer. The iPhone does not, and will not, replace your home computer or laptop, but it will while you’re on the road.
One great “app” built into the iPhone (and most other phones) is the camera. I found it great to simply to a picture of an historical marker or other informative sign that to try to take notes either on my iPhone or on paper.
Great post. I love my iPhone. I use MileBug to keep track of trips to the post office and other business uses for my car.
Does anyone know if this will work well on the Storm?
One app that’s missing from your list is ShapeWriter. It’s a note writing app (that you can also send emails out of), it has an on-screen keyboard that lets you trace from letter-to-letter to type. It guesses (very accurately) what you’re trying to type and also offers other suggestions. The Lite version is free. Makes writing notes super fast. It’s an app that should be part of the iPod/iPhone OS.