When the App Store for the iPhone was launched about half a year ago, us Geocachers have been waiting to see how the technologies in the iPhone can be use for Geocaching and enhance that experience. After a lengthy wait with a few third party apps, finally Groundspeak, the people behind Geocaching.com, launched their official Geocaching App. This popped up in the store for a small price of $13.99 NZD ($9.99 USD). I didn’t hesitate to buy it because I thought it would be a worthwhile investment. After a few updates with bug fixes and a couple of extra features slotted in, here is where the Geocaching App currently stands.

When you launch the app for the first time, you are greeted with a terms notice which you have to accept. After this, everytime you will launch the app, it will search for your current location. For a lot of people, this is where your first issues with this app will show up. If you don’t have location services enabled, you will have 3 different popups get thrown at you to “okay” to. This happens everytime you launch the app, unless you enable location services. Otherwise, it will find your location and give you a search page where you can either manually enter a Postal Code, Address or GC code. This will show you the caches that meet the criteria, same as the results on the Geocaching.com website. You can also select search for nearby Geocaches. This takes your GPS co-ordinates and shows you the caches around where you are. If you don’t have an iPhone 3G, this feature is pretty useless to iPhone 2G and iPod Touch users. In the first version of the app, there was an issue with the search coming up with caches you’ve already found. They managed to get it to not show them in an update by entering your Geocaching.com login details into the app. The search is pretty solid and works great when looking for caches. The location services stuff is pretty useless on a non-iPhone 3G device, which is expected.

When you search for a cache, you are given a list of the caches that it finds (unless you enter the GC code.) In this page, it shows you the type of cache it is (traditional, multi etc.) and the direction and distance it is. It also shows the difficulty and terrain info as well as the cache size. When you select a cache, it shows all the same info as on the search results page along with the co-ordinates to the location. From here you can choose to save the cache info into a database, navigate to the place using the built in GPS of the iPhone 3G, or map it which launches Maps.app to pinpoint the location on Google Maps. On this page, you can get the description of the cache, 5 most recent logs, any travel bugs with the cache and the hint. This is all the information you would get from the Geocaching website for the cache, all accessible on the iPhone. If you do choose to save them, you see all the same information but without having to have a connection to the internet. This is very handy if you are going to a place without good mobile reception or you want to store all the cache information so you can access it easily.

Do I think it is worth the $13.99 I payed for it? To be honest, not really. The app isn’t very stable and crashes at random times and when trying to load some saved caches. This can be very frustrating when you are in the middle of nowhere and relying on the Geocaching app to give you all the information on the cache you are trying to acquire. Also if you don’t have an iPhone 3G, a lot of the features of this app are lost. The only useful feature for non-iPhone 3G devices is the ability to save caches onto the device, even then, this isn’t the most reliable app. Only get this app if you are a Geocacher with an iPhone 3G and willing to lay down $13.99 NZD (or $9.99 USD) on this app. It will definitely be a much better experience for you as the 3G was the device this app was mainly developed for. Maybe one day I will get to take this app out for a run with an iPhone 3G and the whole experience with this app will be much much better. Until then, I’d say this app is average at best.

Last week, Apple released iPhone Software 2.2. This update had many new features including Google street view, emoji’s for Japan, improved performance and podcast downloading. Podcast downloading has been on the list of features people want on the iPhone ever since Apple rejected the Podcaster app. Fortunately I was able to get it onto my jailbroken iPhone and had been using it up until IPSW 2.2. Since I have now had a good chance of playing with them both, I can have give my opinion on these two different ways of getting podcasts into your device.

Podcaster is an application available on Cydia and it does pretty much what you expect, lets you download podcasts right on your iPhone. When you open the app for the first time, you will want to subscribe to podcasts. This is a very simple thing to do where you enter the address of the RSS feed and it will look for podcasts. Then you can select the episode you want, go into it and press the download button, and it goes into the download queue. At anytime, you can press the refresh button and it will look for any new podcasts in any of the feeds you’re subscribed to, and shows you that there is a new podcast available to download.

Unfortunately this app isn’t at well built as I’d like. The program crashes randomly or when you try and give it something to do. This is especially bad when it is downloading a podcast, because you lose what you have downloaded up until the last time you paused or quit the application. Another issue I had was when download, it didn’t hold the Wifi connection. Whenever the iPhone turned the screen off, the Wifi connection would drop shortly after, which would cause the program to crash when you woke the device back up again. To get around this, you ould have to stop your iPhone from going to sleep, which would reduce battery life significantly. The last little grip with it that I had was the slow and somewhat unresponsive playback of podcasts. When you push the play button to continue playing a podcast, you would have to wait a while for it to start playing. Sometimes you would have to tap some of the icons multiple times to get it to respond. These gripes are frustrating!!!

One the other side, we have the new Podcast downloading support that iPhone Software 2.2 brought to the device. For iPhone podcast downloading, you go into the iTunes Store, search for the podcast you want and then tap the download button beside the episode or episodes you want. You do this for all the podcasts you want. This puts them in the download queue and they go and download in the background and go to the iPod app when they are done for you to play. The podcasts pretty much behave in the same way as they do if you synced them over from iTunes. From each of the podcast pages in the iPod app, there is a button which takes you to their page in the iTunes Store so you can download any new episodes when they come.

There are limitations to this app, all of which Podcaster doesn’t have. These include the lack of any RSS feed downloads. You are limited to the selection of Podcasts they have in the iTunes Store. Although they have the majority of podcasts and for most people, have all the ones they would want, but it would be nice if that restriction wasn’t there. Another issue is that you can’t subscribe to podcasts. If you want to download podcasts, you have to manually navigate through the iTunes store to their page and tap the download button. There is no notification of new episodes, no notification of podcasts currently on your device, nothing. It is all manual, no automated downloading or anything. This is something they really missed the ball on because it would make it close to perfect. The last problem I had was with iTunes syncing. In the iTunes application, I have it set that it won’t sync podcasts. You would expect this to mean leave podcasts on iTunes and the iPhone alone, do not do anything. Well what it turns out to mean it sync all the downloaded podcasts on the iPhone and delete them from the device. This is not what I want. I want to keep them separate and I want them to stay on my iPhone and out of my iTunes library. This is by far the most frustrating feature/bug with the podcast downloading and hope it is fixed in the next iTunes/iPhone update.

Both of these app have their ups and downs. For Podcaster, I like having my podcasts separate from iTunes and my music library. I also like being able to subscribe to podcasts and check for updates. For iPhone podcast downloading, I like having the experience the same as when I listen to music and the better integration with the iPhone features and functions. I also like the stability of the whole process and the background downloading. What I dislike about Podcaster is the crashing, instability and unresponsiveness of the app at times. I also wish it could hold the Wifi connection and make the downloading process smoother. It would be nice to also have better integration with the media player already on the iPhone. What I dislike about the iPhone podcast downloading is the whole manual process of downloading podcasts and the lack of subscription and automatic downloading. I also hope they fix the iTunes syncing issues I have because they are just a huge pain in the arse.

As you can see, I am very torn between the two apps. They both have very strong good points, but they also are weak in others. If only each of them could take the strengths of each of the applications and fix all the problems, we would be left with two amazing apps. For someone who manages their podcasts in iTunes and only wants to be able to download podcasts on the road, the podcast downloading in 2.2 is perfect. For someone who keeps their podcasts separate from their music and enjoys a less messy way of getting their media, Podcaster is a great app for that. I hope that they can both sort things out so they can both be used by any podcast consumer.

Sometimes, not even the best apps can stay on my iPhone. This could be for many reason such as I never use the app, maybe because I am not connected 24/7, unlike most iPhones. Here is a list of applications for iPhone and iPhone Touch that I have used, but no longer have on my iPhone. They are great apps and worthy of mention, some free, some paid, some for jailbroken devices. This is the cut list.

Evernote - This app is great for taking notes. It can also take picture note or images from your photo albums are use them too. All of this syncs with the Evernote web service which also syncs to the desktop app. This tool is very powerful for making notes, much more than the default note application. Since your note sync back and forward with the cloud, you will be able to access your note from anywhere.

Instapaper Free - What makes this app really useful is the ability to read webpages offline. What you do is mark a link using the Instapaper bookmarklet either from your computer or iPhone and then you sync the iPhone app with your web account and it downloads the webpage onto your iPhone for reading offline. You can read the page in web format or text format for faster loading an no added rubbish. There is also a Pro version which ads a couple of extra features but nothing you will really miss. Definitely look at this app if you are interested!

NetNewsWire -This is the best RSS reader app in my opinion. It syncs with Newsgator Online which syncs with the the Newsgator desktop clients. This allows you to get the latest news that you haven’t read and read it online or offline and then later sync back up where it marks what you have read. This is a great product as it makes all your feeds synchronised across the board. This app performs great!

Talking German Phrasebook - If you are ever going to go to Germany and don’t really know the language, then this is the app to take on your travels. It has a load of phrases and words a tourist in the country may need to use. It has the English and German for the phrase and even has an audio recording for the spoken phrase. There are even some interesting phrases you can use to pick up some those hot German chicks Its also a great application if you find the German language interesting or would like to pick up some words for your general knowledge. So worth the money, do get this!

Tumble - Want to quickly post something on your Tumblr tumblelog while you are out and about? Well this app makes that easy. Just launch it, select the type of post you want to make and go for it. You can do most of the usual methods. You can even use it to take a picture and upload directly to Tumblr, caption and all. Great app that saves time by not making you log in and use Safari.

Wordpress - This app allows you to write full length posts for your Wordpress blog, right on your iPhone. You can type away your blog post, save it, and post it online right from the app. It does exactly what you would expect it to do. The unfortunate thing is that typing for an extended period of time on the iPhone virtual keyboard isn’t ideal so I doubt you will be writing massive essay post to your blog, but maybe shorter posts. If you need to blog away from your computer on your iPhone, this is definitely the way to go about it.

Air Sharing ($6.99/$9.99) - I managed to snap up this app while they were giving it away from free. This app allows you to transfer files onto the iPhone using your computer. You attach your iPhone as a networked drive and you can paste files in there. The iPhone can even open and view most well know file formats such as word, excel, pdf, html etcetera. You can also access the contents of the drive via a web browser. I did find the transferring of files and accessing the drive a little bit slow, but that would be anything, not necessarily related to the app. If you need this type of functionality from your device, this has to be the app you go for.

PocketMoney ($9.99/$13.99) - This app give your the ability to manage your money on multiple accounts and cards. You can add different types of accounts and manually manage and keep an eye on money going in and out of the accounts and the spending on your cards. It’s password protected so your financial information is hidden from any suspecting people using your device. I personally use it to keep track of the money I am spending on my credit card so I don’t spend more than I have and know how much more I need to purchase something. It is really good for that.

Spore Origins ($9.99/$13.99) - The objective of this game is to get your unicellular Spore organism through the levels and eat guppy things which increase your DNA bar. The controls are basic, using the accelerometer steer and move forwards and backwards. Most of the levels consist of collecting DNA, except they start including unique creatures for you to attack or defend against to make the game more interesting. There are also special levels where you have to traverse a maze-like setting and your goal here is to get to the end without being killed by other creatures. This is a challenging and fun game to play.

Buzzer (Cydia) - This is a fun game which is similar to Buzz! The Music Quiz on the PlayStation 2. There are multiple rounds of the game where they give you a snippet of one of the songs in your library and you have to guess either on of the following, song title, artist, or association depending on the round. They also show you a zoomed in version of the album art and you have to guess it as it zooms out. Lastly, they have a round where the music is garbled and you have to guess what it is. This game was intended to be for 2 players but it is fun to try it yourself. If only they had a proper 1 player mode and scoreboard.

Unfortunately, the official App Store can be restrictive and limited for some developers. With jailbreaking and Installer.app and Cydia, this allows them to create and distribute applications that can do things that the restrictive SDK wouldn’t allow them to, or Apple. I’ve used quite a number of these jailbroken apps on my iPhone and here is a wide selection of ones I have on my iPhone. These are my top Cydia applications for iPhone and iPod Touch.

BossPrefs - This is a very powerful tool and I don’t even know exactly what this app can do. I use this app to turn off data and SSH when I don’t need it. This is so it doesn’t suck up my money, and no one can hack into my device. It is also good for respringing, restarting and shutting down your iPhone, if you needed to do that for some reason. There is plenty this thing can do.

Poof - I also like Poof, which I can access through BossPrefs. It it can be a stand alone application or come with BossPrefs if you would rather it. This allows you to hide icons from the home screen. This is very handy if you want to make those pesky icons you never use or are sick of seeing disappear. You can always easily put them in view again if you need to, its not permanent, it’s just a toggle of a switch.

Cycorder - One thing the iPhone is missing, a video recording application. It can a decent enough camera for taking pictures, so why can’t it be used for video? Well with this app it can. The quality of the video is decent enough, especially for YouTube. It does on the fly compression of video and they can be played back through the app. The annoying thing is that this app doesn’t have built in export tools. You have to get into your iPhones filesystem, navigate through the directories to find all your videos. I’m sure exporting is on the list of things coming soon to the app but it is still worth giving a go.

MxTube - The YouTube app that comes with the device is great, don’t get me wrong, but most of the time I am without an internet connection. This is where MxTube comes to the rescue. It allows you to download videos and save them onto your device for offline viewing later. I use it to save some of my favourite YouTube clips in high quality so I can show people later on, without the need for any connection. It can also save on time and bandwidth too, because you will no longer have to reload that video you’re always watching or showing.

Pushr - If you take pictures regularly with the built in camera on the iPhone and you use Flickr, this is the perfect app for you. When you launch the app, it will show you the pictures you’ve taken since the last push and allow you to name and tag them and upload them to Flickr. It does it easily and the images are full resolution with all their various tags in tacked.

Qik - Use Qik or would like to stream live to the internet? If so then this app is for you. It allows you to stream using the camera on the iPhone and sends it up to Qik for everyone to see, over Wifi and 3G. This allows people to see exactly what you see, live! It is also saved on the site for further viewing after you’ve finished streaming.

WifiToggle - This adds a button on the home screen for fast connecting to Wifi. No longer do you have to go into Setting and navigate through to the Wifi menu just to get connected to the internet. With one push of a button, and a 3 second wait, you will be connected to your Wifi. It’s as simple as that. If only it had a nicer looking icon.

Five Icon Dock - The dock only lets you have 4 icons on it at a time, although there is room to squeeze one more. That is what this app does, it allows you to drag one extra icon onto the dock if you so desire. If you already have 4 apps you want down there, and lets say you just got WifiToggle, it would be handy down in the dock, but you don’t want to give up one of your other apps from down there too. This is the prefect solution to that. It may look a little strange at first, but you will get use to it, fast.

OpenSSH - This app allows you to SSH into your iPhone so you can hack it, transfer files to and from the device, or whatever you desire. If you’re going to modify system files, change the theme, install some apps then this is a must. It is also needed for some apps like Cycorder for getting videos off the device. It can also be used to backup some of the files on your iPhone. There are many reason why you could want to get into your device, and this app is a must for any of those.

Scrobbled - If you use Last.Fm, this is the app you’re looking for. This allows you to scrobble straight from the iPhone or iPod Touch. No longer will you have to sync and hope that the desktop software scrobbles your plays. This app scrobbles to the site live if you’re connected to the internet, but if you’re not don’t worry, it will scrobble all those offline plays the next time you are connected.

Veency - There are many apps, official and unofficial, that allow you to VNC into another system, but this does the opposite. This app lets you VNC into the device. From here you can control your iPhone or iPod Touch right from a computer screen. You could use this to type things on the device with a real keyboard, or to access apps when it’s away from you. This is a fun little tool to play around with.

Note: These apps are for jailbroken iPhone and iPod Touch only. All are available through Cydia.

The app store provides developers with a great marketplace to sell their iPhone and iPod Touch software. Developers put a lot of time into crafting these applications and most of these, especially the expensive ones, are to a very high quality. I have used bought a number of apps and games on my iPhone and here is a wide selection of ones I have on my iPhone. These are my top paid applications and games for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Countdown ($0.99/$1.29) -The title of the app pretty much tells you what it does, it counts down to a certain date and time. You may be thinking that the iPhone already has this functionality built into its clock app, but this has a few more features. You can have multiple countdown clocks, each with its own title and icon which you can get from your photo albums. I used it for counting down to the releases of my favourite TV shows and it worked great. I always knew when Heroes was coming out, down to the second.

Rooms ($2.99/$4.19) - One of the thing previous jailbroken devices could offer was an IRC client. After a long time waiting after the App Store was up, finally a client came. It is called rooms and is a decent IRC client. It allows you to connect to multiple servers and room and acts like a normal client would. It doesn’t look as appealing or work as good as the previous unofficial clients did but it is a start. If you need IRC on your device, unfortunately this is your only choice.

Twitterrific ($9.99/$13.99) - Twitter Addict? This is one option for you to tweet and read other tweets from your iPhone, without using the mobile site in Safari. This app does exactly what you would expect a twitter app to do. It also allows you to post pictures, either from the camera or camera roll. It can also to a couple of other things you may like. There is a free version of this app, the major difference is the advertising. If ads don’t worry you and you’re not willing to pay this premium price, get the free version.

Aqua Forest ($7.99/$10.99) -This is an amazing game! It uses both the touch screen and accelerometer to its advantage in unique and interesting puzzles. Each one is different and requires a different set of skill set. Out of all the games in the App Store, this is definitely the one to buy! It offers so much, and everyone will enjoy it, no matter what!

Battle At Sea ($4.99/$6.49) - I use to enjoy playing Battleships at school, and this app is a digital version of that game. You put your 5 ships down anywhere on the field and then each of your ships get a chance to shoot. Kill a ship, it can no longer be used. This game is quite fun, and if you’re connected to the same network as someone else with this app, you can do a multiplayer battle. The only problem with this game is that after you get the hang of it and get a strategy going, the computer seems a bit dumb and only beats you on a fluke.

Bejeweled 2 ($7.99/$-) -Everyone know what Bejeweled is, and this is the iPhone version of that popular PopCap game. You use you fingers to move the pieces to form a small row and then it disappears and more blocks fall into the level. This keeps on going till you run out of moves. This game feels a bit limited and after playing it for a while, you feel like you haven’t accomplished much. This could be easily fixed with a high scores list of some description so you can keep track of your top games.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Cart 3D ($5.99/$8.29) - My old favourite PlayStation character is the star of yet another racing game, but this time for the iPhone and iPod Touch. You control the car in this game by using tilting and you can also jump by tapping the screen and get weapons that you can you to your advantage in the race by taping the icon. I did have a problem with the turning controls since they are bit difficult to use and aren’t as good as with a controller with a proper D-Pad or Analogue Stick.

Enigmo ($4.99/$6.49) -This is a really interesting physics game where the objective is to get droplets of water into a bucket thing. To do this, you have to use objects you are provided to direct the water to move or bounce through the level and into the bucket. It is very challenging and offers many hours of playtime. To extend it even further, it even allows you to download user created levels, so there is so many levels to accomplish in this game.

Lumen ($3.99/$5.29) - The objective of this game is to guide a laser beam through all the checkpoints. You do this by using mirrors to direct the way the light turns. Also the checkpoints have different colours so you have to use gems to change the colour of the beam so it can pass through the checkpoint. This is a really cool puzzle game and you should at least check out the free version, Lumen Lite. The main version has many more levels as well as the ability to access the custom user made levels database for even more challenges.

Super Monkey Ball ($9.99/$13.99) -This game was one of the ones demoed at the announcement of the App Store. This game developed by Sega is really well done and shows what these devices are capable of in terms of gaming. The graphics of this game are stunning. In this game, you are in a ball and you roll around the level using the accelerometer. Make sure you don’t roll off the edge or else you die. Unfortunately the controls can be a bit difficult and don’t respond that well which makes it difficult not to go over the edge.

Note: Prices listed are in USD and NZD. Prices of the apps in your store will be different from the ones speficifed in this article.

Not all the applications in the app store are serious. There are a wide variety of games in the store, even good free ones. The iPhone and iPod Touch is an amazing device for games with its large widescreen, accelerometer controls and touch screen, these all put together can be put to good use in interesting games. The iPhone and iPod Touch is very powerful and can support games that are on par with a lot of the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable games. I have played quite a few different games on my iPhone. Here are my top free games for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Aurora Feint -This game is pretty similar to Bejeweled, where you have to line up 3 cubes to make them disappear. The only difference is that the blocks are getting pushed up, so you must not let them get to the roof of the level. You can tilt the device to allow you to move the blocks vertically or horizontally, in relation to the game board. The unusual thing about this game is that you are collecting to blocks so you can get abilities and things for your character. I assume that there is going to be more to this game, because this game is Aurora Feint: The Beginning.

BubbleWrap - This is an interesting game to show off the touch screen. You have a sheet of bubble wrap, and you have to pop them. Pop as many as you can in the allocated time and you may get a high score. The bubbles come back up so you can pop them again. Its fun for 5 minutes, but it is a really good app to show off what the touch screen on this device can do.

Cube Runner - Most of the people that want to play on my iPhone want to play this game. Its a very simple looking game, where you control the turning of a little ship thing and you go through the level dodging cubes and as you progress, you get faster and faster and then weird things start happening to try and put you off. This simple game is quite challenging and fun. Do check this one out. It’s a great demo of what this thing can do.

Lightsaber Unleashed -Who doesn’t want a lightsaber? Well here you can have one, a virtual one, with built in lights and sounds. You can have different coloured one that can fill up the whole screen with saber glow and as you move it around, it makes battle sounds. Its a really cool app to show people, especially geeks. Other than that, it is useless, but cool to have there.

Sol Free Solitaire -As the name suggests, this is free solitaire. This app has a large selection of card games, including solitaire. Its the exact same game you are familiar with, just on the iPhone or iPod touch and using the touch screen. There is not much more to say. If you like card games, get this app!

Spinner Prologue - You are a button thing, and your goal is to traverse through the maze to the finish. Instead of directly controlling the object, it moves forward and you move your device around, from a vertical position to make it turn. It starts off easy and straight forward, but it gets really difficult further on and the levels get more complex and you need to be able to traverse awkward parts of the maze, and fast.

Tilt Me Lite - This is a fun little game for demoing the accelerometer on this device. You have to get a little ball, onto a small circle and hold it there for a few seconds. As you roll over the tiles on the level, it makes a sound. It provides really interesting sounds as you play along. It gets a little more difficult when you have to get 2 balls onto 2 different circles at the same time, and hold them there for a few seconds. Fun little game and great demo.

Tris - Unfortunately, this app is no longer in the app store because the developer was forced to remove it by the people who own Tetris. This app is Tetris. The controls could be a bit better but that is the only gripe about this game. There is not much you can do to Tetris. Tetris is Tetris, and this is a well made version of it. I like the high scores list, except for the fact that it is filled completely with my name. If this app ever returns, snap it up while you still can.

One of the great things about the App store is the wide variety of free apps. A lot of these are pretty well done, some even being higher quality to some paid apps. These applications do a number of things including storing and displaying different kinds of information and performing various tasks. I have used quite a number of apps on my iPhone and here is a wide selection of ones I have on my iPhone. These are my top free applications for iPhone and iPod Touch.

1Password - This application is great for storing your passwords onto your iPhone. It is PIN and password protected so you don’t have to worry about someone finding out your passwords. It can be time consuming to type in a password using the iPhone and this app makes its a piece of cake to login. Also, if you have heaps of different passwords for sites, this will make it easy to manage them on this device.

Balance - I use this application to keep track of the money that I have stored in one of my bank accounts. This is not a very feature full app but it does what I want it to do, keep track of deposits, and any odd withdrawals, on my account. I can access and see the balance of my account anywhere. I’m sure there are many other applications this can be used for too.

DoBot ToDos - This is a free to do list application. What makes this one great, is that you can have multiple categories of list, and inside them have your todo’s for that. You can write notes with them and set due dates, like you can do with most other todo applications. I use this for keeping track of personal tasks as well as school tasks. These are kept in separately, which is how I like them.

Fring - This app is pretty new but I can see it being a really useful app. What this does it allow for VoIP calls over wifi. You can use this to talk over Skype or SIP or lots of other common voice chat messaging clients. The quality is really good as well. There are still features that could be added, but this is a really nice, and promising app. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do VoIP over 3G, which is what a lot of iPhone users want.

Light - The Light app I use has been removed from the app store for some reason. Still, you should definitely find a good light app from the store. You may not use it for a while and it will just be sitting there on your home screen but one day, it will come in handy, and you can thank me then. My one has a bunch of customizations, you can change the colour of the light, and there were even some flashing ones. My personal favourite is the police light, a blue and red flashing light. In saying that, the white is the best, because it is practical to use so I can see in the dark.

MiGhtyDocs - If you use Google Docs, this application is great! No, this doesn’t allow you to edit your documents or spreadsheets, but it does let you view them on the iPhone. But there is an added bonus, you can view any cached documents for offline viewing when you don’t have an internet connection. It’s really good for storing files you may want to look at offline, and on our iPhone.

Pocketpedia - Got any of the Pedia software on your Mac? If so, then this is definitely a must have app. This allows you to access your media collections right on your device. Even if you don’t have this software, it allows you to create collections right on the device. You just search for the Movie, Album, Game, or Book, and it finds on Amazon and you can add it to your list. You can also use it to make wishlists, so if you find an item you want, you can add it to your list to get at a later date.

Remote - This has to be the first application that you download! It does wonders. It allows you to control your iTunes via your iPhone or iPod Touch. It has a similar interface to the iPod tools on the device, so you should already be familiar with how to use it. It looks exactly as if you were controlling the music on your device, except you are really controlling music on an external iTunes library on your network. I found it to work really well when using a full screen application, such as a game, and didn’t want to minimise to exit to control my music. Remote allowed me to do this easily.

Shazam - I’m sure you’ve been either listening to the radio or in a shop playing music and wonder what is the name of the song playing. Well this app helps you with answering that question. You launch the app and get it to listen to a few seconds of a song and it will return you back the name of the song, the artist and the album and save it in a list, and even provide you with links to purchase it in the iTunes store. With this app, never again will you be wishing you knew what the name of the song playing.

WeDict - This is a pocket dictionary, on your iPhone! It comes with word lists and allows you to easily find the definition of a word in a few seconds. No longer do you have to find a dictionary, and then spend time searching for the word. This take 10 seconds to get you the definition of the word you are looking for. Not everyone needs a dictionary, but if you do, why not get this app?