I’ve heard plenty of people gripe about the iPhone’s virtual keyboard. Adjusting to the lack of tactile feedback is tough, and the keyboard can feel cramped at first. Hot Typer is meant to resolve the “cramped keyboard” issue by using six keys instead of a full QWERTY keyboard. There are enough combinations possible to provide a full range of letters, and shortcuts (”sae” becomes “same”, for example) make typing easier still. The intention, of course, is to help the clumsy-fingered among us to type faster on the iPhone. Unfortunately, I found that I was spending a lot of time learning an entirely new typing scheme, and to little effect. You’re probably better off learning the ordinary iPhone keyboard.

It’s worth noting that I actually type, whether I’m on a laptop or an iPod…no glancing at the keyboard for me, at least when my iPod’s in landscape mode. This is largely because I have the QWERTY layout beaten into my head (thank you, keyboarding class). Plus, I’ve had my iPod for over a year now. As a result, I consider my typing skills pretty solid, even on my tiny iPod.

But, regardless, let’s take a look at how Hot Typer works. As I said, all typing is done using six keys, which are arranged into three columns with two rows each. The middle column is slightly raised. Tapping a single key will cue a letter, but there’s more to it than that. For example, “e” is located on the top-left key…but if you tap the “e” and “t” keys simultaneously, an “r” appears. There are a dizzying number of combinations to remember, and it takes a lot of practice to get them all.

An included “game” is intended to teach you to type, but it’s still a frustrating process that must often be accomplished by brute-force memorization. New letters are introduced slowly. After each new batch, the game has you hit the right combinations when prompted, starting with single letters and moving up to a handful of complete words. A 90% accuracy mark is needed to progress to the next stage. Unfortunately, It doesn’t help that typing with six keys is just plain awkward. “U” gave me a particular amount of trouble. The game recommends using three fingers to type, one for each column, but I found that layout to be far too rigid for practical use. And then I couldn’t find certain functions, such as how to delete letters. I certainly couldn’t figure out a way to use more complex symbols.

Once you’ve mastered the typing scheme, you can actually use it. In the normal mode, you simply type into a blank field using the methods you learned in the lessons. From there you can either copy the text to the clipboard or send it in an email. The idea is to use this “faster” scheme while typing long blocks of text. There’s also a To-Do list included, though for reasons I can’t fathom…I prefer to use a dedicated app for something like that.

There’s a reason why the QWERTY keyboard is so widely used: we all know it, and it works. Hot Typer tries to introduce a new typing scheme, and while it’s certainly innovative, it’s just not worth investing the time to learn to type quickly. The interface is somewhat clunky, too, and basic things (like deleting letters!) are pointlessly frustrating.

It’s still an interesting concept, and it did intrigue me. But ultimately, Hot Typer is a novelty app with a lot of originality and very little functionality.

2Do is a to-do app that boasts clean graphics, a great interface, and a hefty share of nifty features like adding “actions” to your tasks. Of course, any to-do app won’t serve everyone’s purposes; there are a few quirks to the app that I found annoying. Still, there are a lot of features packed into this pretty package. While I can’t vouch for the iCal syncing, the ability to add “actions” to a To-Do, Push notifications, and a great calendar setup make this one a solid to-do app with a lovely wrapper.

Creating a to-do item is easy and requires the touch of a button. On the surface, it’s a simple process: type a name, choose a calender, and then add optional settings like priority or a note. You can also include “actions”: remind yourself to call, email, text, or visit someone and then launch the corresponding iPhone app later. These settings all covers the basics of a to-do app, but many more are hidden by the “more options” button. This allows you to set alarms (push, email, or iPhone-alarms), make the to-do a recurring one (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly, or on “every given period” or on some days of the week), and attach a picture or URL to the to-do. Creating a to-do is fast…just as it should be. You don’t even have to edit the options (for example, “none” is the default due-date), so if you just want to create a simple to-do, you can. I love the balance of complex features with minimal user input necessary.

The push notifications are especially useful, though iPod Touch users should note that they only work if you have an internet connection. Once you confirm your email address, email alerts are also available. As for the recurring-note feature, this is one that many, many to-do apps struggle with. While it isn’t perfect and more flexibility would be great, at least 2Do offers this much-requested feature.

All of your to-do’s are collected in (surprise!) the To-Do panel. You can either view them all at once, or view one “calender” at time. Like I said earlier, your to-do’s are sorted into calenders, and each has its own tab. 2Do certainly doesn’t disappoint when it comes to viewing your to-do items. Tip the iPhone sideways, and you can view your tasks as a true calender in landscape mode. In portrait mode, you can sort by almost any criteria, move between calenders, and even toggle a “Focus” mode that hides all but your most pressing to-do’s. That’s not to say that the viewing methods are perfect; the calender, for example, insists on beginning each week with a Monday, which can lead to confusion.

Eye candy is everywhere. A lot of thought has been put into the user interface, and the graphics are bright, crisp, and clear…just like you’d expect from a native app. 2Do is one of the prettier 2Do apps you’ll see, and better still, it’s all extraordinarily functional.

And functionality is the most important thing of all, right? Thankfully, 2Do more than satisfies. Notifications, ease of entering tasks, and the ability to create and delete entire calenders (as well as drag and drop tasks between calenders) make it a breeze to use for a variety of tasks. You can even share to-do’s via email—though the email will contain a link that’s meant to be opened in 2Do, the core data is also transcribed in plain text. The feature list is nothing short of huge.

There are still some additions I’d like to see. I haven’t been able to test syncing, as 2Do currently supports Mac-only iCal. Complaints from the App Store about disastrous sync bugs are worrisome, though unconfirmed. I would love to have a Windows- or web-based option (Google Calender, anyone?). 2Do also needs a calender that starts on Sunday every week, landscape-based text entry and note creation, and the ability to use tags—current calenders function like folders, not tags, so each item can only be placed in one calender. The good news? The developers continue to update 2Do, and the next update promises tags, projects & checklists, and Outlook sync.

Even with my minor complaints, 2Do is still an excellent to-do app. It’s clean, functional, and packed with more features than you probably need. One quick thing worth noting: this is definitely a to-do app, and not a note-taking app; everything is optimized for to-do’s and it’s just not cut out for storing notes. (If you want a hybrid app, I recommend Awesome Note.) But for a pure to-do app, 2Do is great, and it’s a worthy competitor to other popular apps on the store.

Before I get into reviewing this app, I just want to take a minute and say that I’ve seen a lot of controversy surrounding Dragon Dictation. Why I hear you ask? Well, its all because of that rather long end user agreement which you must accept and agree to, in order to use the company’s application. In my opinion it’s never a good choice to stick a EULA in front of a user especially when launching an app – that’s what the website is for. If anything, you’ll just achieve putting them completely off the using your app, because of the amount of text they have to read through before they can play. Nevertheless, Dragon Dictation does just that.

The problem people had with this was with one section of the agreement which stated that Nuance Communications, also the developer of Dragon Natural Speaking for Mac, would store details from your iPhone contacts on their servers. Now I don’t know about you, but I can now see why this application got the bad press it did. If we’re to believe an app store reviewer though, he received a reply from Nuance Communications which says that they only store names, for better recognition. In their words:

“Dragon Dictation transcribes voice to text with fully automated speech recognition software and only uploads users’ contact names – no email, phone or any other personally identifying information – to optimize name recognition when a user dictates. From there, speech recognition requests and contact names are processed in data centers based here in the US that meet Nuance’s stringent security and privacy standards – the same standards that we use for processing private information in other areas of our business. We keep the contact names for the life of the service in order to keep synchronized with the user’s address book.

For additional details, feel free to review our corporate privacy policy at http://www.nuance.com/company/privacy/.

– Rebecca Paquette, Nuance”

Okay, now that that’s sorted, on with the review! .. A simple app, Dragon Dictation is voice recognition app for iPhone. The idea? You speak into your device like you normally would, and the app recognizes exactly what you say, chunk by chunk. The result? You get speech to text in minutes. Now, in my testing the app was fairly accurate accurate, although sometimes I found (like almost all recognition software I’ve encountered so far) it to have its off moments. Using the app is pretty simple. Tapping the record button center screen will start that recording session. From there, you take center stage. Just speak what you wish to write, hit done, and the rest is done for you. If your voice was recognized correctly, the sentence you just spoke will appear on-screen. If not, the app will display an error: “No speech detected. Please try again.”

Not what you wanted? In the bottom left you’ll find the call key for the iPhone OS keyboard, allowing you to edit the message to reflect what you originally wanted it to say. What’s great about this application though, is the export methods available. Hitting the right button located on the bottom toolbar will pop up a context menu. In total, you can share your message in one of three ways, including: send your message as an e-mail, send as a text message and finally copy the text recognized to iPhone OS’s clipboard.

A handy app which in the long run is sure to make communication on devices like the iPhone faster. Don’t forget, this is only a version 1.0.0, and so far during my use its voice recognition is pretty darn good. While it does have its crazy moments which will have you saying to yourself; “Did I really just say that?” .. and of course, you didn’t – being a free app, it’s definitely worth a punt for the general user looking to add a bit of creativity to writing a text or e-mail on the iPhone.

Make sure you checkout Jeff’s “First Look” of Dragon Dictation. Here!

Files² is a file viewer that allows you to import files from MobileMe iDisk, Google Docs, or from your computer (by using it as a WiFi thumb drive). Unfortunately, using Files was a bit of a bumpy ride for me, but despite the app’s rough edges I suppose it could be useful in a pinch.

One of this app’s best strengths is the wide array of file types it can take. It has support for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, image, PDF, and text files, including the Mac formats of .pages, .keynote, and .numbers. It can also play video files using the iPod’s built-in player, but sadly this means that it can only take .mp4’s and .mov’s.

You can move files onto your device from any combination of three sources: MobileMe iDisk, Google Docs, and your computer, using a WiFi network. (As is typical with these apps, files can’t be transfered via USB cable.) For the first two, you’ll need to hand over your login info; for the third, you have to set up your iPod/iPhone as a drive on your computer. Instructions for doing so can be found on the Files website, and it works for both PCs and Macs.

There are a few annoying things about grabbing documents from Google and iDisk, however. First, iPod Touch users will be disappointed to see that the app doesn’t download any files, so if you’re in a place without WiFi…well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it? Furthermore, documents are sorted alphabetically, and you can’t change it. I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in seeing long-forgotten files from three years ago, and it’s a pain to scroll through the giant list. If anything, most recently modified files should be shown

There are some other design quirks that hamper Files’ usefulness. For example, if you’re viewing a folder full of pictures, there’s no “next” button to tap; you’ll need to backtrack to the folder, select the next picture, and wait for it to load. This simple omission makes it hard to flip through an entire album, and similar quirks are present elsewhere. There’s also an additional scrollbar in addition to the Apple-standard one that’s meant to speed of scrolling, but instead often causes confusion.

Those ease-of-use issues aside, Files does do its job. If for some reason you really, really need to carry a bunch of files in your pocket, fine. This will do the job. It displays files with minimal lag and renders them well, and it fulfills all of its promised features. But personally, I believe that more elegant apps exist for this same purpose (think Air Sharing). For now? I’ll stick with the mobile version of Google Docs, which at least shows my newest files first, and the free app, Discover.

Awesome Note packs an impressive array of features. There’s no denying that it’s gorgeous, and a lot of the features are really neat: importing notes from Google Docs, for example, is a really great idea. I wish that the implementation was a bit better, and Push notifications would be a godsend, but it’s still an elegant replacement for the Notes app that should more than satisfy the average user.

First, a quick run-through of some of Awesome Note’s “awesome” features. Your basic organizational features are present: custom folders can be created, and notes can be moved easily between categories; folders can be password protected. (There’s also an “all notes” view.) Notes and to-do items are identical; the only difference is that to-do items have due dates attached. Notes can be viewed in a standard list mode, or you can use the nifty Post-it view.

A “Quick Memo” button on the main screen takes you to four persistent Post-it style notes, where you can quickly scribble memos down for future reference. There’s a global search feature, landscape mode, the ability to email your notes—you name it, this app has tried to incorporate it.

Everything about Awesome Note is simple and elegantly done, and it manages to cram all of these features in well, considering. The purpose of some icons isn’t immediately apparent—take the “edit folders” button, which is a folder with a down arrow on it, for instance. Still, a bit of fiddling reveals all of the features. Creating new notes is simple and fast, especially with the “quick note” function, which lets you type in straight text and save: no title, no due date, no frills. My favorite part of the app is that it’s just so simple to use. Isn’t that what you want, at the end of the day?

One of the features that intrigued me the most in Awesome Note was the ability to import, export, and backup notes to Google Docs. This function is accessed from the settings menu. You can chose individual files to import and export, or you can perform a mass backup of your notes, which is a great feature to have. Unfortunately, the process isn’t seamless. There’s no way to sync your notes; it’s a one-way transfer, so you’ll have to remember which version is newer. Also, formatting, such as lists, is lost once you transfer files into Awesome Note. Still, it can save you a lot of typing in the right situation.

Despite Awesome Note’s already-huge feature list, I still want more. At the top of my list? Push notifications. Currently, the app adds a numbered badge, but this only happens after things are due, and there’s no way to set a reminder. The coming update, which is in Apple’s approval queue, is said to address many concerns: Version 2.5 should add Google sync, hyperlinks in notes, photo attachments, and a master password (as opposed to one per folder). But I’d still like a calendar view, and a better way to set themes for notes…as it is, you have to tap one button and cycle through the themes one by one. Ugh! Plus, the default theme appears to be random.

I’ve saved perhaps the best part of Awesome Notes for last: this app just looks awesome. You can’t beat the visuals here. There are plenty of themes to chose from (though the actual choosing can be difficult) and the app as a whole is gorgeous. The graphics are perhaps the biggest draw, and rightly so; Awesome Notes oozes class. You can customize it a bit, too, between themes, folder colors, and icons.

It’s the classy interface that’s meant to draw users in, but I love Awesome Notes because of its feature set. I’ll be eagerly anticipating the promised Google Sync with the next update, but even now, it’s a great app and worth the price.

By far the most fascinating application I’ve reviewed in a while, QuickReader is designed to improve your reading speed. I was cautiously skeptical at first, but after a few sessions with the app, I can actually feel myself improving. Anyone willing to invest the time in developing their speed-reading skills should grab this app immediately.

As one iTunes store reviewer put it, QuickReader is like a metronome for reading. By default, the app is set to 3 “stops” per line and 300 words per minute. A “stop” is essentially a highlighted portion of the text; it’s the digital equivalent to traditional methods like using a pen to track your progress. The highlight steadily moves across the page according to the pace you set, and you’re supposed to follow along with it. It’s supposed to allow you to focus on groups of words and to read properly from side to side, because your eye focuses naturally on movement.

If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. I can’t explain the science behind it myself, but after using it for just a few days, I can see a marked improvement in my speed. There’s a speed test included with the application, and I was reading around 325 words per minute at the beginning; now, I’m hovering between 585 and 608. I have to put forth a conscious effort to read quickly, but it feels comfortable. What shocked me most was that I was able to retain what I had read, at nearly double the speed—and I haven’t even been using QuickReader for a week! Granted, that speed hasn’t quite translated into the offscreen world, but if I focus, I can approach similar speeds.

There are three modes within the application: Guided Reading, Normal Reading, and Speed Test. I recommend taking a Speed Test prior to starting with the app, so that you can nudge the words per minute rate just a little higher than your current speed. Normal Reading is good if you just want to read the bundled classics. Thankfully, you can switch freely through the modes mid-read without having to navigate back to the menu. You can also fully customize font and color schemes, which makes QuickReader a solid eBook reader as well as a reading-improvement device. Both landscape and portrait reading modes are supported.

The application comes with 21 classic eBooks for you to practice with. I’m working with Sherlock Holmes, which might account for my speed; though a classic, it’s hardly as dense as, say, a textbook. The developers apparently have plans to incorporate an eBook store in the future, but I’d love to be able to upload my own eBooks into the reader—I have quite a few sitting around on my hard drive.

I suspect that your mileage may vary with QuickReader. I was already a relatively fast reader (a little over a page per minute with a real book?), and I adapted to the methods used here quickly. Others may struggle. Still, for me, it’s an incredibly useful tool, and I’m glad that I downloaded it. If you’re a frequent reader, you should definitely give this application a try; even if the price makes you hesitate, you need to check out the lite version. The effects are nothing short of magical.

There are some apps that just make you think, “Gee, why on earth isn’t this part of the native OS?” SayAgain is one of those.

SayAgain is an audio bookmarking tool that makes so much sense it’s ridiculous. Whether you’re listening to an audiobook, a lecture, a podcast, or just a longish song, sometimes you want to be able to return to certain sections, and there’s no way to easily skip back to where you were using the built-in Music app. With SayAgain, audio files are suddenly much more useful.

Creating audio bookmarks in SayAgain is a piece of cake. It requires OS 3.0 or higher because it integrates with Apple’s Music app. So, if you’ve got a file playing when you open the app, SayAgain will show that file under “now playing” and give you the option of editing the file’s bookmarks right there. Or, you can hit the “+” sign and use files from your music library. You can pause the song and tap the star icon to add a bookmark, or use the handy rewind-by-10-seconds or fast-forward-by-ten-seconds buttons to skip around.

Notes can also be added to your bookmarks, which are handy if you’re, say, trying to isolate quotes in a long audiobook or something.

I do wish that we could use this app for video files. Imagine: an index of the funniest moments from your favorite comedy, all in a handy, organized fashion. But that’s really my only wish. If you’ve ever wanted the ability to skip back to an exact part of an audio file–be it a podcast, song, audiobook, or anything else–you’ll want to get SayAgain.

WritePad Pro bills itself as “the ultimate organizer for Notes, Events, Affairs, and Voice Notes for iPhone and iPod Touch,” and as that headline suggests, it covers—or tries to cover—a lot of ground. Unfortunately, the lack of certain features is nothing short of criminal in an app with a $9.99 pricetag.

The main screen is organized into category-based folders (Notes, Events, Affairs, and Voice Notes) and within each folder are all of your items, which can be re-ordered by name, date edited, and so on, as you choose. Once you select an item, it opens for editing.

Notes
Let’s admit it: the main functionality here is the Notes section. In an app named “WritePad,” being able to write quickly and accurately is a must—as is the ability to sort through your notes.

In WritePad, you have two input options: handwriting, or keyboard. The handwriting is selected by default, and works much as you’d expect. “Writing” on the screen leaves a trail of colored ink, and you pause after finishing a word or two, at which point the software converts it to text. The recognition works fairly well…as well as I would have expected from handwriting recognition software, anyway. You can see the image to the left for a test run, but suffice to say that it sure isn’t perfect. Gestures are used for things like the enter key or scrolling up and down. However, I found that having to learn a host of gestures just to be able to use the shaky handwriting system to be an annoying idea at best. Plus, the fact that you have to wait for the program to convert your writing to text means that it’s impossible to write as quickly as you could on paper. Unless you truly struggle with the iPhone’s keyboard, I’d skip this input option.

Unfortunately, the keyboard isn’t any better. It’s the standard iPhone OS keyboard, sure, but…well, it’s missing some key features. Like auto-correct. That’s right: there’s no auto-correct. In fact, you can’t even use the double-space period shortcut. For me, that’s inexcusable. Having to use the punctuation menu each time you end a sentence is an absolute pain, as is having to manually capitalize your I’s and punctuate your contractions. There is an auto-complete menu that offers options once you begin a word, and it works well enough…unless you’re in landscape mode. The landscape view displays barely any text, and trying to select an auto-complete option often led me to accidentally click on some other button.

Oh, there are some redeeming features. WritePad Pro features note searchability, spell check, auto-suggest, note exchange with other iPhones over WiFi, and email sharing. And, of course, there are a slew of organization features, including color-coding and categories. But the Notes app as a whole was much worse than Documents to Go, which happens to sell for half the price…mostly because it’s impossible to type quickly in WritePad. Hmm…

Events
Events can be imported from Outlook Journal, or can be created in-app. For each event, you designate a subject, start time, duration, priority, and a color. You can also add other elements: billing information, visited companies, mileage, involved contacts, and a picture. Many of the fields won’t always be applicable, but they’re nice to have, I suppose. Again, WritePad’s organization features are fairly robust. You can sort Events by category, duration, color, start time, location…and so on. However, there’s no calendar view

Affairs
The Affairs folder is designed for organizing, well, one’s affairs: tasks, jobs, contracts, or whatever else fits the format. Affairs require a title, a status (”not yet started,” “deferred,” “in progress,” etc), a priority, a start date, and a due date. You can also add notes, reminders, categories, or associated contacts, as well as keep track of completeness in terms of percent and works hours.

Voice Notes
Voice Notes are straightforward, too. Not much to explain here. There’s no audio-editing software, and “category” and “priority” are the main elements of a voice note.

All Together, Now!
A few things ought to be noted before I sum up the review. First, WritePad Pro offers the useful feature of exporting your data in a standard CSV format. I haven’t tested it myself, however. You can also use the built-in HTTP file server to exchange data with your computer, using the lite desktop software available on the website.

After experimenting with WritePad Pro for a while, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s trying too hard to be a jack of all trades…only to be the master of none. The Notes section, the bread and butter of the program, seems determined to conspire against the user. Writing on the screen, while…decent…still takes too long even under the best of conditions. Typing, meanwhile, is a royal pain thanks to the lack of basic features like the iPhone OS’s built-in auto-correct and period-shortcut. The other features seem like they’d be better off as standalone apps. Plus, the $9.99 price tag simply isn’t worth it given apps like Documents to Go or various to-do apps like Appigo’s ToDo or Things.

Have you ever been typing e-mails into your phone, gotten to the word hello and felt like you were wasting too much time by typing all 5 letters. So you shorten it to Hi for time’s sake…but then throughout the whole message it’s eating away at you because you really did want to be more formal with hello. If this is you, I understand and Short Hand is here to help.

If you’ve ever used text expander on a Mac then you’ll feel right at home with Short Hand. What it does is it takes any word, sentance, math problem, or really anything you can type and adds a shortcut keystroke of your choosing to it. So for me now anytime I type “HL” it automatically populates with “hello” instead.

However, by no fault of the devloper this app is unlike similar programs on the computer as these shortcuts can only work from within Short Hand itself. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful though as the devloper has found at least one nice work around by adding the Send menu which will copy and paste all of the typed text directly into one of several other programs, currently these only consist of Mail, Twitterrific, Tweetie, Appigo Notebook, and Appigio Todo. I admit the first time I looked at this app was pre 3.0 and it was severly limited and less then truley useful but now with Copy & Paste supported across the board it’s a way different story. I will gladly use it now for typing anything more than a couple of words but I would still like to see direct support for some other apps like SMS if possible, if it is Short Hand would quickly become my favorite go-to app.

Another thing I tested is just how long of a statement I could save a shortcut for. After typing several paragraphs into it I’ve come to the conclusion that it is virtually limitless. Knowing this led me to my next test, using Short Hand for making e-mail templates. It worked great! You can create a message, add a shortcut, send it and then go back and type the short cut, change a few key items like Name and Date and BOOM 2nd e-mail is already sent. This would be great for the business man on the go who has to write a birthday e-mail to a client or a press release of a new product on a fairly consistent basis. A note on this though, I would like to see a larger text box for typing the output field into. Right now typing anything more than a word or two pushes other words off the screen which might cause some spelling or grammar errors to slip by. Fortunately though at least the landscape keyboard view was included for these longer messages and an easy work around is to type out the full paragraph first and then Copy & Paste it into the shortcut’s box.

On top of all these there is another really nice feature, the drafts section, this prevents you from losing all of your work in the event of an app crash. In addition it saves all ’sent’ (transferred to other apps) messages for later retrieval and editing in this section as well. A fun little note too is that for this review I wrote almost the entire thing using Short Hand without running into any glitches or flaws which can definetly point to it’s stablility.

In the end this is one of the few truley useful apps I’ve found on the iPhone, especially since Copy & Paste has rolled out. For a dollar I highly recommend it to anyone who types a lot of similar statements and needs to save some time. At the same time though it does feel to be missing something, I’m not exactly sure what it is but I’m hoping in future updates the developer finds that little extra umph to push this guy over the edge.

There was a great deal of curiosity and anxiety in the upcoming days to the release of NotifyMe. It would be one of the maiden voyage applications to embark on the road of push notifications, through APNS – Apple’s Push Notification Service. In essence, this is a substitute for background applications – where information is “pushed” to your phone through external servers and ready for you to take action. We’ve already seen its power with applications such as BeejiveIM (instant messaging) and AP Mobile (latest news). Whilst push was creased to begin with, everything seems to be ironed out and what has been left is something that the iPhone begs to take advantage of (and what sets it above the competition).

PoweryBase was quick to action, and NotifyMe was duly released onto the App Store on 17 June 2009. This seemingly simple application has progressed rapidly to number six in the top paid productivity – not bad for an app less than a month old. Its hype is justified – this application is one that every iPhone and iPod Touch user should consider installing.

So, what is it exactly? NotifyMe is an application that lets users create reminders, alerts and to-do events – and once they’re in you can forget about them (APNS and PoweryBase servers take care of the rest). Be it recurring or once-off, a to-do or a TV show, you won’t forget it. Your data is safe in the hands of PoweryBase and Apple. There are seven main categories for your notification, covering a wide range of activities. These are: ToDo; Personal; Work; School; Birthday; TV Show; and Shopping.

Even in the event of the NotifyMe being uninstalled – your reminders are safe. Upon opening the app for the first time, there is a “create user account” page – this is where all of your data is stored. By signing in to your account, all your information is there. No hassle. Creating a reminder is also hassle-free, as NotifyMe have taken on an Apple-style approach – there’s nothing to distract you, and nothing to get in your way of creating a reminder quickly and efficiently. Just enter in its title, choose the category (of which ToDo is the default) and state whether or not it is a recurring event. You can be in and out of the application within 20 seconds, and that’s including start-up time on an iPhone 3G. This is a tap-and-forget app.

If you do keep the application open – you have four further options. Firstly, one can view upcoming reminders (which can be edited); secondly, passed reminders (those which have already happened); thirdly, an overview of all categories (a counter which shows how many reminders are in each); and lastly a settings menu filled with a vast array of options and even the ability to see if the PoweryBase servers are online.

The real piece-de-resistance of NotifyMe is time zone change support. As PoweryBase state themselves, “Fly from San Francisco to New York, set your new time zone in iPhone Settings and add your reminder in NotifyMe. The reminder is pushed to you according to NY time!” This is rejoicing news for frequent flyers who find themselves crossing time zones more often than not, as it means your reminders will not end up clashing – or worse – being entered in the wrong time zone.

There is one major competitor – and you’ll already have the application on your iPhone. Calendar. You can create alerts within calendar and have the iPhone message you at a specified time before the event is due to take place. Whilst this will always be something that I’ll use for events, birthdays and meetings – calendar is not something that I’d like to have shrouded with TV shows and the like. It’s here that NotifyMe comes in to play – it handles it all, and leaves me in both the knowledge that I won’t forget about the event; and also that my calendar remains clean and crisp for events that I may have to go out of my way to do.

No excuse to forget!

PoweryBase have clearly invested time and money into allowing each user to create their own account. With this, I’d love to see the ability to check your reminders and events from the web – and possibly update them too. Whilst PoweryBase have stated that they do not envisage NotifyMe to be a direct competitor to other To-Do events applications, this is a feature that I know would be put to good use. Among other things, the ability to create custom categories and custom event-recurrences would be a well received update. Thankfully – these are relatively easy features that can be implemented subtly. However, this app’s unique selling point is its minimalism – and nothing should be put forward at the expense of it.

With a minimalist approach, NotifyMe integrates excellently into the iPhone. It’s an application that every iPhone and iPod Touch user should consider installing. And if you’re a little hesitant, there’s a free lite version too.

]]> http://www.148apps.com/reviews/notifyme/feed/ 1 http://www.148apps.com/reviews/evernote/ http://www.148apps.com/reviews/evernote/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:41:25 +0000 Dave Spatholt http://www.148apps.com/?p=13999

The beauty of Evernote has always been its simple presentation and organization of my notes. Images, websites, text, video, etc. everything was collected and categorized into a tag so that I could easily recall my research later. Evernote’s usefulness was limited by its mobility, however. Not only did it limit my access but also my ability to recall my research on the go. By producing a mobile application Evernote has given me both access to my notes as well as additional possibilities for my trusty little research organizer.

Using the application is as easy as clicking around through the different parts of the interface. A handy info screen gives you details about your account, upload limits, etc. Adding a new note is intuitive and makes great use of the iPhone’s inbuilt voice recording, location awareness, and camera. It is because of this that Evernote can be extended via this app to become a field research book, a cache for various documents you might need on the go, and recording the location of any notes taken. I began using evernote to bring my club discount cards, photo ID, car’s registration, proof of insurance, etc. with me without fear of damaging these documents or forgetting where I put them. Ironically shortly after I did this I was pulled over and had to make use of this little functionality.

As you can tell from my screen shots I’ve primarily used evernote for research functionality, but its true purpose is organizing your notes and data. Evernote does an excellent job of this both on and off of the iPhone. Lag between upload and download of notes from phone to desk or visa versa was quick when network conditions were optimal. This was great because I could take field notes on a piece or property, geotag the note, and then recall the note on my desktop to work on it with a full keyboard.

I anticipate using Evernote quite frequently now that I’ve downloaded and used the application for a variety of different function. The interface is clean and simple and delivers all the features that Evernote promises while also including all the functions one would expect given the iPhone’s technological capabilities (like landscape mode). I see no use for push notifications in this app but would expect some sort of video upload to be included in a future application to support the video functionality of the 3GS.

What you can accomplish with Evernote will vary depending on your needs. Because the application is so flexible the application can do more than you can initially anticipate. As this is the case you will feel as if you’re not getting 100% out of the application until you’ve used it for a while.

If you’re looking for an application that is a robust utility for organizing your data on the go or giving you access to your notes on the go you’ll find nothing as easy to use or as well designed as Evernote. Literally my only complaint about Evernote is that I find myself using it so frequently that I would like to get a premium account.

Use
When you open Things for the first time you’re presented with a list showing where everything is kept. Inbox is where every new task goes by default. Today is for tasks that are happening or due today. Next is for items that are due. Scheduled is for tasks that have been scheduled. Someday is your stuff that’s not urgent, but you just want to keep it handy. Projects is a folder for batches of tasks that pertain to well… your projects. Finally Logbook is where completed tasks live for your review until deletion.

Things for iPhone works best with its Mac app counterpart. Wireless syncing is easy to set up and offers a huge advantage when it comes to managing several tasks. But even if you don’t have a Mac or don’t want to shell out the $49.95 for the main app, you’ll still have a lot of power and flexibility available in the iPhone version alone.

Features
There are lots of nice little touches Cultured Code has added to Things to make it handy for everyday use. There are little buttons you can push in the list views which induce new functionality and sorting power. These allow you to organize new tasks quickly and sort by due dates, key words, and importance. It’s also really easy to move tasks between lists and projects.

The instructions for using Things are on Cultured Code’s website. You should also watch the QT video and you’ll see how easy this app is to use. As I reviewed the webpage and video while writing this, I realized how painfully inept I am at using Things to its full capacity. Yet the simplicity of use is what makes it so good. I’m not forced to use it a certain way. Though I’ll get a lot more out of it by using all of its features, it’s working just the way I want it to, and this makes me very happy. It’s a friendly little app.

Day-to-Day Use
It’s really easy to tap something in quickly and not having to worry about forgetting it anymore. I’m no stranger to the library, and one of my favorite uses for the Things is having a Project labeled Library where I can enter all the books I have checked out and their due dates. I have each book with a due date and a reminder to come up one day before then so that I’ll either take back the book or check it out for another three weeks from my library’s website.

Things is a really stable app. I’ve never had any problems with it and I’ve been using it for a long time. Cultured Code has also been quite regular about updating it with increased functionality. This is especially true when it comes to bug fixes—I’m certain it takes longer for Apple to approve the updates than it does for CC to write the code and submit it.

Finally, there’s a lot of attention to detail that I like here. The flexibility of managing your tasks is astounding. I also really enjoy being able to customize my tags without using the desktop app. I don’t know why this appeals to me so much as I’ve only used this a couple of times, but it’s just kind of soothing to me knowing I have this much control. Muuaahh haaa haaa. If you sync with the desktop app, the syncing screen is really well done too, but this is purely aesthetic, and there’s no practical value to this… other than the fact that nice aesthetics are pretty to look at.

Negatives
I would like to see the email function built into the app so that when you send the email you don’t have to restart Things. I recently downloaded another iPhone app that has this feature, and think it is something available to developers under the 3.0 OS (though I reserve the right to be wrong on this). (Updated 7/8/09: As of Things 1.3.7 the built-in email sheet is built in as part of the iPhone 3.0 software.) Other than that, if you’re looking for just a simple task manager, Things might be a bit of overkill for you at $10. Otherwise, the worst case scenario I can think of is a slight case of buyer’s remorse, or getting in trouble with your spouse for spending $10 on an iPhone app. (Man, I hope my wife doesn’t read this.)

Conclusion
As I said above, I’ve been using Things for a long time and am well satisfied with it. Even when I hit times that I don’t use it often, it has earned a permanent spot on my iPod Touch. Simple users (like me) won’t be disappointed and power users will be able to do whatever they want to organize their personal and business lives. Things is a great product and I’m certain will only continue to get better. Go buy it. Now.

How many times have you forgotten to send an attachment to someone, start a download queue or sign out of your computer whenever you’ve left the house or office? If you’ve answered “at least once” to one of those, great. If you haven’t, think of something – anything – that you’ve forgotten to do that you can only do from your mac or PC. It’s a real nuisance. And it almost always ends up sticking to the top of your mind. It’s here that you’ll remember why you bought LogMeIn Ignition for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The idea of Ignition is simple – connect remotely to your mac or PC and control it just like you would if you were in front of it. And the best thing about Ignition is – it works just the way it should do. Seamlessly. Simply.

LogMeIn was formed in 2003 and is now a global giant for remote computing. LMI claim that “over 70 million devices [are] connected worldwide” – an impressive number by any means. Consumer or business, it’s available for everyone to use at every time of the day. All that you need to do to ensure access to a computer is make sure that you have the (free) software installed on it, and the computer is running. Once it is attached to your LMI account (also free – there is a premium version too) you’re ready to go.

Upon downloading LogMeIn Ignition, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was amazed at the technological advancement of our times (being able to remotely control a computer from a phone sounds like something that only James Bond could ever pull off), but on the other I was concerned that the iPhone might just not be powerful enough – even though it is one of the most powerful mobile devices out there to the consumer market at an affordable price.

Once logged in to my account, my MacBook showed up and I was ready to connect. More security checks later (this time – the computer’s credentials), and I was brought to a “Hints” screen – telling me exactly how to control the computer from the iPhone. This was a nice touch – and will certainly put to rest most questions. Once passed the hints screen, there was my MacBook – updating in live time – ready for me to control. “Hang on,” you might be thinking, “how do you remotely control a computer if your thumb is bigger than the mouse?” It is here where you see how the LMI developers thought outside the box. The mouse is static in the centre of the screen. By moving your thumb, your screen moves but your mouse stays still – meaning that you can always see where your mouse is pointing. At first this seemed a bit confusing, but the more its used the more I realize that this is a superior alternative to the standard “move finger to move mouse” method (which – by the way – there is an option to turn on). To click you tap, to double click you double tap. Simple. To zoom in and out – you pinch just like you do in every other application.

You also have a keyboard at your fingertips, so that you can type and execute commands remotely. Everything from F keys to arrow keys – the integration is well-thought and impressively built. Among other features, you can change which monitor you are viewing if you have more than one; you can blank the screen; lock the computer’s keyboard; and even change the colour quality for faster loading. Some advanced features, including the ability to change the screen resolution, add to the application’s appeal.

However, the application is not flawless. Ignition has tried to implement a new keyboard interface which, in its own right is fine, but switching between two types of keyboard interfaces adds confusion. For instance, whenever switching to “.?123″ mode – Apple’s keyboard allows you to tap one digit and then you are reverted back to ABC. Ignition keeps you on the 123 mode. On top of this, the shift key has gone all caps lock – you have to manually turn it off. Whilst these features may sound smarter than Apple’s integration, a standardized keyboard on the iPhone is something most will prefer.

The main drawback of this application is its price. At $29.99 (£18.99), it weighs in at one of the most expensive applications to buy for your device. Can it be justified? That’s down to each and every user of it. To those who have used the desktop service and have become LogMeIn users, it may well be an app that you can afford not to buy. To those who haven’t – I’d recommend that you check out the desktop service (www.logmein.com) before the purchase and get a feel for LogMeIn as a whole.

What Ignition has set out to do was fill the gap between accessing computers. You can do it between any desktop computer – and now from your mobile device. They’ve done it, and have made it with one idea in mind: simplicity. Their motto “Simply Connected” holds true to this application. Which is exactly what it should do.

VIN Hunter is a tool to help people keep potential car purchases organized when they’re shopping. It’s an easy app to use, but won’t have a lot of reuse potential from most people. For $4.99 this is a great way to keep all of your car shopping info in one place.

Overview
VIN Hunter’s interface is straight forward and easy to use. I had no problems entering my vehicle information and taking advantage of the note and photo capabilities. There are no surprises or tricks up this app’s sleeves. It does one thing and it does it very well.

Pros
This is a great way to keep everything together in one place, and probably the main selling point of this app. If you’re in the business of buying cars you’re definitely getting a great utility and bargain for this app. If you’re only shopping for yourself or your family you may not need this, unless you look at a lot of cars and take your time (as you should anyway, young man!). That said, even a one-time use still presents a great value because you’re going to have quick easy access to all of the cars you looked at with notes and pictures. As an added convenience, there’s a built-in link for buying a CARFAX report.

There are organizational functions as well. You can reorder, delete, and email car records from within the app. Also included is a page providing links to other car buying services that will help you compare pricing and ensure you’re getting a good deal on your purchase.

Cons
The only thing I have to say could be a con for this app is its reuse value. Unless you’re in the business of buying cars you’re only going to use it once every couple of years.

Conclusion
If your job is to be buying cars you need this and you will not be disappointed with your purchase. It’s a powerful tool that will keep your car shopping records tightly organized. If you’re just a regular dude (or dudette) looking for a car, it may be overkill, but is still plenty useful.

The problem with bookmarks is that, while you usually use then for your most-visited sites, sometimes you just want to tag a page for future reading. Maybe it’s an article, maybe it’s a particular FAQ—but whatever the case, once you add it to your bookmarks, you’re not likely to delete it. The end result is a confused jumble of links instead of a functional “bookmarks” panel. Case in point: on my parents’ computer, Internet Explorer plays host to hundreds of once-clicked, forlorn bookmarks that wreck the usefulness of the bookmarks feature.

Read It Later attempts to solve those issues by creating a separate “bookmarking” functionality for pages that you’re unlikely to return to. I’ve been using the popular browser-based version on my laptop for a while (it just passed 1 million users), and was thrilled to discover the corresponding iPhone app. Not only does it let you add and view bookmarked pages, but it also lets you download them for offline viewing. If you’ve used Instapaper, it’s much the same—only with much more functionality. Read It Later for the iPhone is a combination of bookmarking, offline reading, page-sharing, and more.

First, you’ll need an account. If you already have a Read It Later account, you can sign in; otherwise, it’s a painless process. From there, you need to create the bookmarklet—essentially a bookmark with an extra function. Users of Instapaper will recognize both this step and some of Read It Later’s functions. Installing the bookmarklet is a bit difficult, but the site guides you through the process; it involves creating and editing a bookmark in Mobile Safari. It’s not an ideal setup, but it’s one of necessity; Safari doesn’t support bookmarklets as easily as full-fledged browsers do. I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say that it’s an annoying, one-time process.

After adding the bookmarklet, adding pages to the Read It Later app is easy. When on the page you want to “read later” in Safari, you open your regular bookmarks and click on “Read It Later.” A new tab opens, announces that the page has been successfully saved, and closes itself. Once you open the Read It Later app, the page will download. It’s not quite ideal, as you’ll need to use Safari to save the pages and switch apps, but it works. There are other way to add pages, too; you can set up Twitter and email functionality, and you can sync with accounts on other platforms (more about sync later).

The app itself is elegant and highly functional; even the icon has a glossy look! It opens to a splash page with a few links: your Reading List; pages that you’re Currently Reading; Recently Read pages; a quick guide to adding pages; the Options menu; and the Help file. Your list of saved pages is the main page of the app, with the titles and favicons from each page presented in list format; clicking on an entry opens it for reading. You can “share” items from your Reading List via a huge host of services: Twitter, Digg, Email, Facebook, Google Reader, and even a few specific applications like Tweetie or Twittelator Pro as well as some obscure ones (what’s Yigg?). There’s also a “sort” function included for your reading list, as well as a search feature; both are thoughtful additions.

Unfortunately, I found a few weird bugs in the search feature—I have an article titled “Obama Urges Justices to Avoid Cablevision Copyright Case.” Obama, as you might imagine, is mentioned multiple times in the article…but typing “Obama” in the search box yields no results. Other times, it works perfectly. I can’t quite figure it out, but it’s annoying and renders the search functionality near-useless.

Syncing works seamlessly between any number of devices, which is a huge boon. I imported my reading list from Firefox without much difficulty, and I’ve been in sync since. Nice!

Read It Later isn’t quite perfect; there a few annoying flaws. For one, the help documentation is all hosted online, meaning that clicking on “Help” opens Safari. Also, if your question isn’t covered in the FAQ page that pops up, the support section deals with Read It Later for all platforms. The whole process of adding pages isn’t exactly convenient, either, and you’ll have to make sure to download them before you lose your internet connection. (That’s more of a problem for iPod Touch users like me than for iPhone users, but it’s still a small annoyance.) Also, while it’s meant to be a simple system to complement your usual bookmarks, Read It Later would really benefit from some organizational tools, like tags.

All in all, though, Read It Later is a robust app with quite a few features. Whether you need it for reading pages offline (I’ve used it for storing Wikinotes in the past!), for syncing your bookmarks, or simply for its regular old bookmarking features, it’s a very useful utility. I’d recommend trying the Firefox add-on or the generic bookmarklet (good for any browser) before buying the app, but I know that this is one app that I’ll be keeping for quite some time.

Note: I’ve got a pre-release copy of 1.3 for Read It Later. It was submitted to Apple on 6/5/09, so it should show up in the App Store soon.

After using Things for a few weeks (review coming soon), Put Things Off was a huge look in another direction. Instead of a lot of different features, notes, choice of lists, and other things you might find in a To Do app, Put Things Off offers you a stripped down To Do app for the sake of speed and simplicity. As a result, this review will be quite speedy and simple.

Immediately I realized that this app would be great for someone who doesn’t want to spend time creating an organized list – it’s for people who want to quickly write notes to themselves and then forget about them until they open up the app again. Need to call Tom when you get home? Just hit the plus sign, type “Call Tom”, press “due date” and today will already be preselected, and click save. That’s it. You can forget about it until you get home later and check your “Today” box. Get home and decide you want to call Tom tomorrow? Go to the note in the Today box, click the “Put Off” symbol, and forget about it again – you can set the amount of days you “Put Things Off” in settings (easily accessible by tapping the gear in the top right corner). If at any point you’d like to move a note from the Inbox or Put Off box to the Today box, click the star. Finished with a task? Click the check mark – yep thats it. You can view your completely tasks in the “Done” box and if you’d like to get rid of some clutter in that box double tap the trash can for a note you’d like to delete. This app is by far the simplest and quickest way to create notes and lists. It boots up in about 1.5 seconds, switching between boxes is almost instant as well as creating notes.

Problems, Wishes, and Misses

Problems. The only problem I encountered was fixed before the app was even released. So I give a round of applause for no problems.

Wishes. I honestly hate the wooden background. It just isn’t aesthetically pleasing. I would suggest either changing the theme to something not brown and wooden or to give a choice of themes. That’s the only reason I gave the Visuals rating a 4, I like everything else about the way it looks.

Misses. Nothing. This app has no features that are useless or “missed” in my opinion.

I would suggest this app for anyone who is looking for a To Do app. If you need something with some more organization and options then go for something else, but according to an email conversation I had with the developer – tags or something like it is on it’s way. Also as a note, Put Things Off has a responsive and dedicated developer. I realized a bug shortly after downloading his pre-release of the app that his beta testers missed. I informed him of the problem, he immediately attempted to diagnose my problem, fixed the problem and submitted an update to Apple. He postponed the release of this app by a few days so that the new version with the bug fix would be the first version presented to his buyers. Expect quick bug fixes and great content in later updates with this application.

Let’s face it—with the iPhone’s limited 148 application capacity and lack of the ability to hide the icons of native apps you aren’t using (on a non-jail broken device), adding speed dial icons may not be your top priority. But if you value the opportunity to add truly customizable speed dial icons, then One Tap Dial is the app for you.

Whether you want to create speed dial icons for the few people you call or text the most, or an entire page of icons for work groups, One Tap Dial allows customization and functionality that I have not found with other similar applications. I really wanted the ability both to use custom photos for the icons and to personally name them, which One Tap Dial allows. The application basically uses Safari to run a local script that triggers the call or text when the created icon is tapped. The developer notes that your contact information is not sent to the One Tap Dial server or anywhere else, a concern users had voiced after using the app.

Setup is very intuitive, allowing you to create a custom icon from your contacts list or de novo. There is a built in list of generic icons included with the app, but the great part about One Tap Dial is that you can use photos from your Contacts or Photo Library to personalize your icons. When creating each icon, you choose what function will be triggered by tapping it, namely ‘call’, ‘text’ or ‘ask’. You can name each icon whatever you want as well. Once created, you cannot edit an icon but rather have to make a new one and delete the old. Also, the actual One Tap Dial application needs to stay on your phone for it to work—I put it out of sight on my last page of apps since there’s no way to hide it.

You can use One Tap Dial to create an unlimited number of personalized call or text icons for your iPhone. It definitely does lag a little over the native phone or contacts apps when placing a call, but it’s not interminable and I don’t find it bothersome. I have always found the app to be stable as well. One Tap Dial hasn’t been updated in months, so what you see is probably all you’ll get (despite the website’s claims). Well worth $0.99 in my opinion.

MyWebClip fills a niche I never knew existed… and is one of those apps that made me say, “Eureka!!!” when I figured out what it was for. Simply, it’s used for managing Internet bookmarks that have icons just for the iPhone. It’s app management system is extremely well executed… so well in fact that I think Apple could possibly use it as an intuitive way to institute app management in future OS versions.

Once I opened MyWebClip and started poking around its interface, it made sense. Typically, I am a person who reluctantly puts apps on my iPhone and always rearranges them… painstakingly I might add. I have just found no good way to keep a lot of apps on the iPhone. As challenging as it can be with regular apps, the last thing I want to do is have a web app taking up screen real estate and have something else to sort through.

Thankfully, MyWebClip fills this app management void while also doubling as an alternative to using Safari. By allowing you to place bookmarks inside of itself, It acts as a super handy one-stop-shop to check your favorite sites and browse the web. My personal favorite touch is the ability to customize the background screen. You can choose one of the included pictures, go blank like the iPhone (boring), and choose pictures from your iPhone’s photo library. For instance, check out how wonderfully this piece from Explodingdog ties into the overall atmosphere of this app.

This app is so iPhone-like it is really amazing. Besides the settings button, the interface is so familiar that it is very natural to use and requires little time to get used to. To move or delete web apps you do the exact same thing as you would for an app on the home screen, just hold the icon for a few seconds. They start wiggling and have an ‘X’ in the corner to delete them.

Cons
When a page loads the menu bars fade out. To get this menu bar on screen again you tap the screen. If there’s not a lot of blank space on the screen you may perform an action on the webpage you did not intend. But this is probably just because of my Homer Simpson hands and I can’t really blame the developer for that.

Conclusion
This is a well thought out app. It fills a need for people like me who like to minimize the clutter on their home screens. It also shows a few new ways Apple could think about using managing the iPhone’s UI when it comes to managing apps. The developer has a great sense of design (maybe too good in this case) because MyWebClip blends so well into the iPhone’s interface that you will forget it is even there. This is an amazing feat to accomplish, and for that it deserves a permanent place on your iPhone… at least until Apple adds its own similar feature.

Summary
Daylite Touch, from Marketcircle, is an incredible tool for people who need serious task management on the iPhone. The app ties in with Daylite and requires Daylite Server to enable syncing over a LAN or a true server environment.

Overview
Daylite Touch is the iPhone counterpart to Marketcircle’s Daylite desktop app. Daylite is many things; to some it is a CRM tool and to others it is a project manager. From Marketcircle’s site,

Daylite is a business productivity manager designed to help you manage your business and your team. With features such as project collaboration, shared calendars, task delegation, and sales tracking, Daylite helps you move your business forward.

Features & Benefits
Daylite Touch is a very straightforward business tool. There are no surprises, it compliments the desktop version, is very easy to setup, and integrates easily into an everyday routine. For those who want to connect to a server, setup is pretty easy if you’re not afraid to change some router settings and poke around in the Network Preference panel. Detailed instructions are available on Marketcircle’s website and there’s even a video if you prefer to watch how it is done.

If you’re already familiar with Daylite you’re going to settle in quickly to the Touch app. The power feature of Daylite and its iPhone counterpart is the ability to link events, to dos, contacts, companies, emails, and the list goes on with any other piece of information you want to connect. This enables you to keep all of a project’s or contact’s relevant data in a ninja-like grip. I especially enjoy being able to keep emails synced with a contact so I can refer to important information quickly and easily.

Another amazing feature is the Tasks page. If you’ve used Things by Cultured Code for personal productivity, you’re going to get swept off of your feet by Tasks when it comes to managing your business’s tasks. It’s like Things on steroids because of the way it links information. It’s really quite overpowering when you consider all of the organizational productivity that can be completed with this one application.

In the Settings section of the home screen are a couple of cool options too. You can turn on a shake to sync function that’s not really necessary, but fun. You can control how your contacts are listed and shown as in Address Book. You can also determine how overdue tasks are handled by having them show up in the Today section.

Drawbacks
My complaints about Daylite Touch are minimal. It’s not possible to link and an email from within the app like you can with the desktop version. A workaround for this is to create a note in Daylite Touch linking it with the contact to whom it will be sent, then when you are back at the desktop application, sending that note in an email using Apple’s Mail and the Daylite Mail Integration plugin.

If you choose to sync your Daylite desktop app with iCal and Address Book (maybe even with MobileMe), you’re going to be in for a ride. Anytime you bring a third-party database in bed with Address Book and iCal you’re going to see some sparks somewhere—guaranteed. I don’t sync just for this reason. This does serve a specific function too as it helps me separate business from pleasure and gives me a better working environment on my Mac.

The next drawback isn’t my complaint, but is common. To use Daylite Touch and Daylite Server you must purchase a $50 annual license. Some have made a complaint about it, but I look at it this way… for $50 a year you can get the same service that MobileMe provides for $100. This $50 helps you make money… not send pictures to Grandma from your iPhone.

Summary
Daylite Touch is not designed for personal use. You’ll miss out on too many great features. As a business tool, it is indispensable. With recently starting my own business it has been a great way to keep my business life and priorities organized. Right now it’s just me using it, but I enjoy the syncing and it’s tie-in with Apple Mail through the DMI plugin. I sum it up as all the power (and then some) of Entourage minus the suckiness.

After reading all of the features of this app I was really excited to check it out. It turned out to be one of the biggest letdown non-game apps I’ve tried so far. It’s important to know that I’m reviewing the paid version of the app, not the free one. The free version is rather effective as a shopping list (though extremely dull looking and featureless).

The basic feature of mShopping includes the ability to make a list with as much detail as you’d like to add to it. Obviously aimed at shopping (groceries, etc), the fields you can enter information in when adding a new item are: name, maker, model, note, price, quantity, web, and date. All are self-explanatory except for “web” – when clicking on this field the name of the item is automatically entered into Amazon, Google, or Yahoo (your choice via the bookmark symbol in the bottom right of the browser). The self-entering text and the choice of the different websites are great features but not enough. First of all, you cannot enter a website manually. This means that if you know exactly where your item is on the internet, you’ll have to go through Google or Yahoo until you find it – this is completely unacceptable to me, why not just give the option? Other features include showing/not showing checked off items and deleting checked off or all items on a list.

The previous paragraph basically exhausts the free edition. That’s all it does. Enter the item information and it appears on the list. Now to the differences between the paid version and the free version (in other words, the reasons not to buy the app):

The paid version allows the addition of categories and tags to you’re “shopping list.” Some preloaded (and not customizable I might add) categories include: DVD, Books, Music, Grocery, Electronics, etc. Seeing things like DVD, Books, and Music might give you the idea that you can catalog your media with this app – exactly the reason why I decided to review it.

Categories and Tags
You can catalog your media, but you wont be happy with it. Let’s start with Books. I decided to attempt to catalog some of my novels. The first thing that I encountered was that there is no “author” field, nor is there any customizable field where I can create the name of the field. Therefore, the only way to add the author’s name to the new item and still have the author’s name show up on the list is to write it in the “note” field. This would be fine but it doesn’t give me an ability to search books by author since it’s a note, and in this app, you can’t search by anything other than category and tag. I thought about making the tag the author’s name but this would leave me with two problems: the author’s name wouldn’t show up on the list and if I put the author’s name in tags I would have over 100 tags (which I don’t want to do since the application doesn’t give a “genre” field and that’s would I would have to use the tags for). mShopping works alright with DVDs but it still isn’t enough for me. You can add a picture, but it doesn’t show up on this list, so visually mShopping just looks bad cataloging media. All you see is the name of the DVD, BORING!

mShopping also added a dock at the bottom of the paid version to sort items by Tag, Category, and Date added. But then again, this shouldn’t be looked upon as a great development – if this wasn’t added there would barely be any use for adding tags, categories, or dates. Also, you can change the tag or category of an entire list at the same time. Go to the tag or category button at the bottom, select the list you’d like to change, and press the small, tag-looking button. The problem I encountered here was that you cannot change the tag to all items listed under “No Tags”, which is the only reason I would want to change the tags for multiple items. If you’re only able to change the tag or category of items already possessing a tag or category, then it isn’t really changing the tags of multiple items, but just renaming the tag or category – big deal…

At first a seemingly great feature, turned useless – photos. mShopping gives you the option to add up to three photos to each item, great idea iPhone Studio, but you ruined it. The picture doesn’t show up on the list as a thumbnail (which to me would be the only reason to add a photo), so the only way to view these pictures are to press the item and scroll down. Why can’t I see the photo on the list, mShopping? Or better yet, give me a photo-only view of the list option. iPhone Studio focused too much on the wrong aspects of this photo feature. The useful feature of adding the photo from the registered website is included. I like this a lot, it saves me from having to take pictures of all of my DVDs, Books, and CDs. Photos

The problem with mShopping is that the app isn’t visually pleasing or useful enough for me to want to catalog all my media with it in the first place. Maybe the photo idea wasn’t for the media cataloging purpose but the shopping list, but why do that? When you’re going grocery shopping do you need a picture of a loaf of bread to know to buy some bread? Or when you’re going to buy some CDs, do you really need the cover art to effectively find your CD or even want the picture of an item you’re going to delete from the database after purchased?

Series of items. I’ll give a slight tip of my hat to this feature, great idea. It’s very simple – press the button with multiple plus signs instead of just one and mShopping will bring up the New Item screen again but with all of the information you inputed into the last item already filled in. This works great when adding multiple items with some of the same information – tag, category, maker, etc. I have no problems or suggestions for this feature, except maybe to change the title at the top from “New Item” to “Series Item” – I didn’t realize what the multiple plus sign did at first because I couldn’t tell the difference between the “New Item” screen and the series screen (probably because I hit the series button before I added any items to the app).

As I said above, if you need an app as a shopping list, go for it and grab the free version… but under no circumstances should anyone waste the $2.99 on the paid version. If you’re in dire need to buy an app to catalog your media (as I am), look elsewhere. I am currently on the lookout for one and will post a review as soon as possible.

Maybe contact organizing isn’t as exciting as Pocket God, but I’m about as excited as I can get about contacts with Groups. This app will allow you to organize your iPhone’s contacts into groups, place single contacts into multiple groups, search contacts by a variety of different fields including the phone numbers themselves, and send mass emails.

I have screen shots below of basically every feature included in Groups because, if you’re anything like me, if you’re going to spend any money on a Productivity app you want DETAILS. So let’s get started with the details:

Groups

one of the "smart groups" - "No Email", lists all contacts without an email address

The groups can be separated into two categories: “smart groups” and user-created groups. “Smart groups”, colored purple and consisting of all of the groups when you download the app, are groups that filter out specific attributes of a contact, all of which are completely self-explanatory – All (duh!), Singles (contacts that haven’t been placed into a user-created group yet), No Name, No Phone, No Email, No Image, No Map, Business, Birthdays, and Photos. Personally, I have no use for any of these other than “Singles” and “All” but I can see how any of them could be useful.

The user-created groups are rather self-explanatory, they’re the groups you create yourself. For my groups, I created a Favorites, 148apps, Work, YSU (that’s my college), and my Book List. I created the Favorites in an attempt to take over the Favorites portion of “Phone”, but it is just so much quicker to make a call using the Favorites on “Phone” than in Groups. It’s still useful for sending group emails to the people I talk to the most as well as getting Google Maps directions to them quickly. 148apps, Work, and YSU is obvious, but my Book List I plan to use as a tool to mass email people interested in the fantasy novel that I’m writing. This is where I discovered that Groups is perfect for keeping groups of people updated. If for any reason you find yourself contacting the same group of people frequently, Groups will keep it quick and organized for you.

Groups can be organized with seven different colors – come on you can do better than that, give me more options! Aesthetically the app looks great, but I want more options. If I’m going to pay money for an app that organizes my contacts, it better look amazing. Give me themes, give me more colors, give me updates!

press and hold a contact to move it...

Drag & Drop 

The drag and drop feature is exactly what it claims to be, moving contacts into groups is fast and easy. Simply press a contact, hold for a second, and drag it into the group you want. Also included is a feature that allows you to move multiple contacts at the same time. Press two fingers to the screen and it allows you to toggle a check or an “x” on each contact, then simply press and hold any of the checked contacts and drag it to the desired group. After playing around with so many iPhone apps where it’s obvious that the developers just don’t test their products much, it’s refreshing to encounter that Guided Ways Technologies actually thought a few things through – you can add the same contact to multiple groups (that was the first thing I expected it to be lacking, I was wrong).

Contacts

Adding a new contact from the Groups app instead of the Contacts app works well. Instead of Groups just closing and bringing up the “New Contact” screen for Contacts, “New Contact” overlaps Groups so that when you are finished you don’t have to reopen Groups. This probably isn’t a big deal to most people, but I’m going to be picky when I’m spending money on a utility app that basically replaces an app the iPhone already comes with.

When you click on a contact a Groups-created contact screen comes up, NOT the iPhone’s “Contact” view (Good! I wanted something new and refreshing to look at). The screen is simple and pleasing to look at, just a grid with the available options of contacting that person, the group editor, Google Maps link, an option to email the contact information (COOL!), and edit the contact (this uses iPhone’s “Contacts” again). I like the pop-up but I want a different color, the black is just too generic for me.

Searching

Groups has two searching options: the search bar at the top and searching by phone number. The search bar at the top will filter the contacts in the current group (so make sure you’re in the All group if you want to search all contacts) based on what you type. When you touch the search bar two buttons come out to the left: Names and All. Having “Names” highlighted will obviously only search by name but don’t let the “All” button fool you – it does not search all contacts, you need to be in the All group’s tab to do that. What the “All” search looks for is customizable in the information screen under “Search All Preferences”: names, numbers, email, websites, addresses, companies, titles, and notes. I leave all of these “ON”, just in case, but some people might not have a use for some of them and turn them off to increase search speed.

You can search for contacts by phone numbers in the regular search bar but you can also do this in the Quick Dial screen. Click the 3×3 grid on the top and it takes you to a screen where you can place a call, dial a number and create a contact with that number, or search contacts by phone number by typing any part of the number that you remember. The search wasn’t needed considering you can do basically the same thing with the regular search bar, but it could be convenient in some situations.

Group Email

select/deselect members of a group to email to

Press and hold any of the groups and the group menu pops up. This gives you the option of emailing the group, emailing the Group information (COOL again!), renaming or deleting, and removing all members. As a quick note, “Send Group Info” doesn’t just email the group name and the name of its contacts, it provides ALL of the information for each contact in the group (there’s Guided Ways thinking stuff through again).

Touch “Mail Group”, select whether you would like to send to, cc, or bcc the group, and move on to the next screen. At this screen you can choose which of the contacts in the group you want to send the email, all contacts in the group start off as selected. If a contact has multiple emails, the first email for the contact will be selected and the other will not. This can easily be changed by tapping either of them to toggle them on or off. Also, if you press and hold after the “To ‘email’” area that email address will pop up (in case you aren’t sure which address you were sending the email to). This is also the place where you can change to, cc, or bcc again, which is great if you want each contact to have a different option selected.

Problems, Wishes, and Misses

Problems According to the Guided Ways Technologies website, this problem wasn’t a mistake on their part, simply the SDK currently doesn’t allow it, but I will mention it anyway. Groups doesn’t seem to recognize any ringtones other than the preloaded ones on the iPhone, this isn’t a big deal considering you can just go to the “Contacts” app to change it. But my goal was to completely replace “Contacts” with this app.

Wishes I want themes and more group colors. The brown is a boring major color for the app and I want colors for each of my groups – what if I have more than seven groups? Give me some cool and customizable options for the way the app looks and my visual score would change from three to five. Also, if the 3.0’s update gives the SDK the ability to mess with the ringtones, give me the option to change the ringtone for an entire group. And, I definitely want to be able to replace my “Phone” button with this app. I would have but it doesn’t have the ability to let me check my voicemail or missed calls. This might be impossible with the current SDK as well, but if the update allows it – I WANT IT!

Misses The “Trash” tab is almost useless. What it does is allow you to move contacts into the “Trash” which is more like a storage area for contacts you no longer want but maybe one day will start using again. I personally can’t find much of a use for this but maybe someone else will – for now: fail!

I have high hopes for this app if it grants my wish list, but even without that it has taken a place with “Phone”, “Text”, and “Mail” in my dock. I wouldn’t suggest this app for EVERYONE with an iPhone to replace “Contacts”, but anyone (like myself) that has the wish for some extra organization and features for their contacts – this is the app to grab.

First, some disclaimers. I have not used Pocket Informant (PI) on other platforms and therefore cannot offer feature comparisons with, say, the WinMobile version; not that these are totally fair, given the version numbers—8 vs 1—and the stepwise feature implementation that WebIS is taking with their iPhone app. It has been noted that Contacts and Notes functions are currently in development for the iPhone PI. Also, I moved to the iPhone after years of personal information management (PIM) on the Palm platform with Datebk 6 and found the iPhone calendar, absence of task management and integration inadequate. Finally, I consider any PIM application for the iPhone incomplete (i.e. requiring workarounds) until OS 3.0-anticipated push notification arrives and Apple permits developer access to the calendar database as they do for Contacts. And now, on with the show.

Calendar
In a nutshell, Pocket Informant’s calendar function allows you to have multiple views of multiple calendars with plenty of customizable features in between. For example, I manage separate calendars for my work schedule, family schedule, birthdays and holidays—each with a different calendar color. Calendars can be viewed in a Today, List, Week or Month view. The Today view combines the day’s calendar and tasks on one screen. The List view displays only days with appointments, in a list. The Week view shows you the current week, which can start on any day of your choosing. I prefer that each week start on Sunday whereas some may prefer it to start on the current day which, by default, is allocated more screen real estate in the Week view. Month view gives you an overview of your calendar, with scheduled time displayed as colored bars corresponding to each individual calendar’s color. I find this to be the least useful of the views, whereas in the past I enjoyed seeing my month overview in one screen; a planned icon month view (instead of the colored bars) would be most welcome. Expanded detail of any day is shown by touching on that day from within any view. Swiping the screen in each of these view modes moves to the subsequent day, week or month, which makes nice use of the iPhone’s unique features. Adding calendar items is as simple as pressing the + sign in the upper right corner of any screen. And if you have emoji enabled on your device, you can add an icon to any item and PI will display it in the List, Day, and Week views.

Additional calendar functions include the ability to invite attendees to events, customize the displayed hours of the day, show week numbers and set alarms. PI’s calendar syncs with Google calendar, either automatically on start-up or manually from within the Today screen; it would be more intuitive to be able to invoke a manual sync from within any calendar view. PI also offers users a full search of contacts, todos and calendar items.

week view

I’d like to take space here to comment on PI’s alarm and sync functions, both of which may not be ideal situations for some users. Alarms are sent through Google calendar via SMS, email, or web alert; in other words there is no native alarm notification through PI because of limits placed on PI’s developers by Apple, although push notification in iPhone OS 3.0 may change this. Also, at this time PI syncs over the air with Google calendar only, including support for shared Google calendars. This is likely a problem, albeit one with workarounds, if you currently use iCal, Outlook or just about anything other than Google calendar. Google can, however, provide a direct sync from its calendar to iCal and Outlook via Google sync or any number of other 3rd party sync solutions (some free) which work well. There is more information about this on the WebIS website here. Personally, I really enjoy MobileMe and plan to continue using it; I have everything working flawlessly with PI syncing to Google and Google syncing to iCal (and MobileMe) using Spanning Sync. Also it should be noted that WebIS plans to release a desktop client for direct sync with Outlook later this year.

ToDos
Your tasks on PI are organized and managed using either the Franklin Covey (FC) or Getting Things Done (GTD) method. If you have not used either of these schemes before, they do require some learning. Each method provides a theoretical framework for time management, translated into software templates for managing tasks and projects. Briefly, GTD is an action management method created by David Allen; it promotes models for achieving control and perspective of your projects through workflow process, 6 levels of focus and natural planning. Key elements in the GTD method include organizing your projects by their context (e.g. home, work, errands) and determining single-step ‘next actions’ for them. Franklin Covey is more of an ABC 1-2-3 method of prioritizing items into those that must be done today (A), should be done today (B), could be done today (C). The theory makes use of life needs, values and long term objectives to make your personal organizing process easier.
There are books written on these theories and I’m only skimming the surface here so that you have some idea of how you can incorporate your projects and tasks within PI. You can be as detailed and complex as anyone might want. And if you’re like me, and want a simple list to check off, your PI To Do list can be that too. Pocket Informant’s To Dos sync online to ToodleDo, which I have not personally used.

I have been using Pocket Informant for the iPhone for the better part of two weeks now. It provides so much more functionality than the built in calendar and has generally been a joy to use. It still has some performance issues, namely lagging when swiping screens and the more than occasional crash; Google sync however, has been perfect. I would love direct sync with iCal (along with everyone else) and eagerly await implementation of an icon month view and the addition of contacts integration. The ability to link names, emails and/or phone numbers with todos and calendar items is an essential part of any PIM application. I’m pretty sure WebIS already has these items on its own todo list. If you are wondering what a PIM can do for you, consider that PI acts as a single, integrated platform from which to manage the many activities of your life, including tasks, appointments, and the soon to be incorporated notes and contacts functions. At $12.99, Pocket Informant is in a higher price echelon of iPhone applications. As such it will not likely be an impulsive purchase for most users; however, it is well implemented and actively developed software worthy of consideration.

Birdhouse is a Twitter client. It’s not a client which allows you to see your friends updates, you can’t even use it to retweet your friends tweets. No, Birdhouse is something quite a bit different to any Twitter cilent currently available on the store – and I’m not sure yet if that’s a good thing.

The guys over at Sandwich Dynamics have brought pre-tweeting to iPhone and iPod touch. What’s pre-tweeting? Pre-tweeting is the process of storing tweets you have every intention of publishing, without actually publishing them. Think of it as storing and editing that tweet about what you had for breakfast this morning, until it’s just right.

Birdhouse is (in the simplest of terms) – a notepad for your currently ‘unpublished’ tweets on Twitter. So where did this idea originally come from? After all, Twitter is known for generating spontaneous content, right? It’s not really seen as a social platform for posting meticulously ‘planned out’ content; or is it? Granted some people do use it in this way, and this is exactly the kind of people Sandwich Dynamics are targeting with this.

The idea Birdhouse sits on is a simple one. Store all of the ‘tweetable’ moments or thoughts you have during the day, allow you to edit them, and then (when your ready) publish them to your stream. It’s an app with little visuals, but I think because it’s so simple and easy to use, it seems to appeal.

Using Birdhouse
Opening the app for the first time, you’ll be required to login to your Twitter account (i.e. @razorianfly). This is a one time setup. Once Birdhouse has verified it can access and publish to your account, the app will display the notepad UI. On the main screen you’ll be able to see a list of currently composed tweets, including the one’s you’ve saved, are about to edit and the previously published.

See it in Action:

This list is filterable via two categories which you’ll find at the top of the screen. These include; Drafts and History. Pretty self-explanatory, drafts will show everything you’ve drafted, while History will only show the tweets which were lucky and good enough to make your live stream.

At the bottom of the screen you’ll find a few more buttons These include; Settings, Filter by time modified, Filter by Rating and Export to E-mail. Hitting the Setting button will throw up the accounts tab. You’ll probably be glad to know this is where Birdhouse incorporates ‘Account Switching’ – from one account to another.

You’ll also have the option to set your ‘default’ e-mail address. This will be used to send back-ups of your bird-housed tweets, which we’ll get into a little later.

The ‘Sort by Time Modified’ button is just as it sounds. The app records the time each tweet was composed, and the time it was last modified. Viewing the list in this mode will ensure the tweet which was last modified, is shown at the top. Likewise, using the ‘Sort by rating’ button will ensure your tweets of awesomeness are shown above your slightly less awesome ones.

Composing a Tweet
To compose a tweet in Birdhouse simply hit the ‘Compose’ button (top right). The compose screen consists of a few little elements, including; The text field, account name, and remaining character count – Nothing new there then. Lets compose a tweet:

“This is where the comic wit happens .. before it hits Twitland. Thankfully, this tweet will probably never see the light of Day. 1 Star.”

Ok, we’re done. So now we’re going to hit up the ‘Done’ button (top right). When the keyboard disappears, you’ll now notice a few extra options and buttons. Directly below the text field is the ratings meter. This works just like ratings do on the mobile App Store. Simply slide your finger over the amount of stars you wish to give that tweet.

Then you have three further views, including; Rating, Modified, and Account. They’re all pretty self-explanatory, and each display different information for the composed tweet. Below this you have the account name your currently signed in under, and your remaining character count. Finally, below this you have the Trash and Publish buttons. When you feel your tweet is ready for publishing to your stream, simply double tap the Publish button. Tapping the Publish button once will turn the bottom bar blue, and ask ‘Publish?’ – Basically asking you if you are sure you want do this.

Summary
That is basically Birdhouse in a nutshell, and I’m still unsure of what to really think about it. On one hand it’s a revolutionary way to tweet. Think, and edit before you tweet. It’s a tool to jot down ideas and save hundreds of tweets for possible publishing in the future, but really – couldn’t Notes.app which comes bundled with the current software do this? I mean, really Birdhouse is simply Notepad, with direct Twitter functionality.

As one App Store reviewer commented; What if other Twitter apps like Tweetie and Twitterfon catch on? They could include the ability to save tweets in a bird-house type way, and Birdhouse would then become simply redundant.

There’s also the issue of the app stretching the very fabric Twitter has built itself on. Twitter is about dynamic, off-the-cuff tweets. Ok, you think about what you tweet, you have to – your following depends on it – but do we really need a way to edit our tweets to perfection? I’m not so sure. Either way, Birdhouse is a well designed app, and it’s unique. It’s unique in the sense that it currently hasn’t been done before, and I like that.

I will admit up front that I am somewhat of a couponaholic. I make extensive use of internet coupons, the Sunday paper and even Clipper Magazine! And despite all of the hype surrounding the launch of Yowza!!, owing largely to the fame of one of its developer’s Heroes/Felicity fame (Greg Grunberg), it left me wanting…a lot…more.

The concept of Yowza!! is great—coupons for the digital age. After all, clipping coupons and carrying them around with you is so 2008. Basically, what the developers have purportedly done is negotiate shopping and dining deals, making them available to users via their iPhone application After tapping in some basic demographic information, Yowza!! makes use of your device’s location finder to present you with a list of coupons which can be scanned straight from your device. Other features include the ability to track your favorite deals and merchants as well as your total savings. Yowza!! presents you only with deals from merchants who have negotiated exclusive offers for Yowza!! users. In this aspect it is uniquely different from other services that ‘aggregate’ internet coupons for you.

Sounds great, right? The main issue with Yowza!! is a distinct lack of content. I live in Miami, Florida. Not Miami, OH or some other underpopulated homestead in this vast country of ours. And Yowza!! returned a grand total of five (5) results, two of which seemed to be store ads or ‘news’ items and not coupons at all. Now I realize that this is a new service and some would say I’m being a bit harsh, but the developers put this app out there for public consumption and it doesn’t seem ready for prime time. My hope is that retailers will see the concept’s potential for growth and sign on now that Yowza!! is up and running; there are a lot of iPhone and iPod Touch users out there after all.

About two years ago, when someone hacked my ebay account and posted fifty designer sunglass auctions, I got a lot more serious about the strength of my passwords. I had always used strong passwords for work, but formed some bad habits with my personal accounts. There are a lot of tools and methodologies out there that promise to help, but none really worked for me until I tried 1Password on my Mac.

1Password is a identity and password management system. It is nicely customized to handle addresses, credit cards, logins/passwords, notes, other cards or memberships you keep in your wallet, and any other little things that you might want to keep available on your computer. The data is easy to export, so you don’t have to worry about being locked into the application forever. 1Password for the iPhone extends most of this functionality into the mobile arena. This review begins with the caveat that even the developer states that 1Password is much more powerful when used with its desktop counterpart.

1Password for the iPhone syncs with the desktop client via a short setup process. Once this is done, the user may access most info on the client with the exception of identities (e.g. work and home addresses). The user may then use 1Password’s built in browser to surf to the sites they wish to access. In most cases the app will populate username and password fields immediately. If there is a site that’s more difficult (such as banks with multiple authentication pages) 1Password will display the login information in a semi-transparent drop-down for easy entry. The user can also access secured notes, wallet items like credit cards or gym membership numbers when they need them. Users may enter secure notes, logins or generate passwords from the app and sync them back to the desktop.

There’s a lot to like about 1Password for the iPhone. It provides quick access to most any site I might need on the go. That ease of use assures that I’ll actually use the product. At the same time, security is not sacrificed to provide this. If you use a passcode lock on your iPhone, 1Password provides 3 layers of security by adding a second passcode and a primary password. The password may be disabled for quick access to less sensitive data like gym membership numbers. The interface is simple, clean and doesn’t really need any eyecandy. The best part of this app is simply knowing that you have the information with you anywhere that you go.

For some, the need to buy the desktop application may be a deal breaker (though there’s a free trial). The fact that it’s Mac only will also frustrate some. For the application itself, there are few shortcomings. The occasional site with strange authentication pages will slow you down by making you type your information on the iPhone keyboard. This and any other lack should be resolved when Apple releases the 3.0 update allowing cut and paste. At that point 1Password will become significantly more powerful.

If you’re on the Mac and perform lots of online financial transactions or manage websites with secure data, I believe 1Password can simplify your life while enhancing your security. Grab the free iPhone app, the free desktop trial, and give it a try.