iPhone tips, tricks and apps

Most of these tips are iPhone/iPod Touch-specific, but some (like Google or iCal calendar sharing) work without either device.

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Remote control for iTunes (free)

Control iTunes on any computer remotely.

Available on Remote.

Real-time weather maps (free)

I always check the weather map before heading home. I've tried both the Weather Underground and the Weather Channel apps, and the Weather Channel one is easier to use:

Available on The Weather Channel®.

Real-time personal finances (free)

The PageOnce service aims to be a universal home page. It can access and aggregate the data from just about any kind of account out there: bank accounts, cell phone companies, social networks, etc. Their iPhone app can keep track of bank balances and credit balances in real time, which provides nearly surgical precision over personal finances.

Avaialable on A Personal Assistant.

Dictionary: WeDict (free)

I was surprised the iPhone didn't include a dictionary when it launched. There are now about 30 dictionary programs out there, but WeDict is simple to use, and it has a large word database.

Available on WeDict.

Manage your grocery list ($1.99)

This app has a database of 130,000+ grocery items, which means you can rapidly enter and mantain your grocery list.
The best feature, which I have been wanting for years, is the sort-by-aisle feature. This feature alone probably cuts my in-store shopping time by a quarter.

Available on Grocery iQ.

Google earth (free)

Browse the earth and landmarks in 3D.

Available on Google Earth.

iPhone as wireless hard drive ($6.99)

Air share turns your iPhone into a wireless hard drive, and you can view stored files on the iPhone. No more carrying around a keychain USB drive.
Available for download on Air Sharing.

Best flight sim ever: X-Plane ($9.99)

X-Plane has long since set the standard for realism and detailed, accurate physics in flight simulators. (Note: This is not a combat simulator.)

Back in grad school, my aerospace engineering friends used to rave about X-Plane. Be forewarned: the realism brings a steep learning curve.

Available on X-Plane 9.

Play Risk (free)

Lux Touch is a clone of the board game Risk well-tailored to the iPhone. The interface is so well designed that you can play through an entire game in about 15 min. Great on plane rides.
If you like this version, there are also desktop versions.

Available for download on Sillysoft Games.

Tap Defense (free)

Tap Defense is an easy-to-play instantiation of the popular Tower Defense genre for the iPhone. (If you really like this game, then it's definitely worth getting Field Runners .)

The objective is to kill monsters marching from hell to heaven by defensive placing towers near their path. You earn gold for each monster you kill, and at the end of each round, you earn interest on the total amount of gold in your stockpile.

The basic strategy is to minimize the cost of the towers necessary to kill the monsters. By staying close to the minimum, you let the compound interest add up.

Hints specific to this game:

  • It is far more cost effective to build a second tower of the same type than to upgrade an existing one. (This rule does not apply to ice towers, which essentially "upgrade" all of the towers following them.)
  • Upgraded ice towers are effective force multipliers because they expose enemies to the same tower for much longer. These are essential to beating the game on higher difficulty settings when the path is short.

Available on TapDefense.

Sync and share contacts over multiple computers/phones

My wife and I like to keep a shared address book (synced through Google) on our computers and our phones. Keeping them all synced is straightforward:

  1. Create a shared gmail account.
  2. For each iPhone, set it to sync contacts with that gmail account. [You have to do this through iTunes while the iPhone is plugged in.]

Each time each iPhone connects to iTunes, it syncs changes between GMail contacts, the local address book and the iPhone.

If you don't plug your phone in frequently enough, the iPhone app ZYB Sync enables contact sharing in real-time.

Synchronize email across multiple devices

If you want your email to stay in sync on multiple devices, use the IMAP protocol (instead of POP). Most providers (including gmail) support IMAP. With IMAP, your iPhone and your local mail client (and any online email service you use) will remain in sync.

To enable IMAP in gmail, log in, choose "Settings" and then use the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.

Sync and share calendars across multiple computers/phones

My wife and I depend heavily on our iPhones and our shared Google calendars to keep the family organized and synchronized. It's been a life-saver having instant access to each other's schedules. (To share a Google calender with another person, click the arrow next to the calendar's name, and then select "Share this calendar.")

If you're an iCal user, Google Calendar supports CalDAV for two-way syncing. This doesn't do over-the-air syncing for the iPhone, but it allows iCal calendar sharing, and you can use iCal's very clean, slick interface for calendar management.

For over a year, I searched for a solution that would let me sync my Google calendars to my iPhone without plugging it into my computer. MobileMe was not an option, because it doesn't seem to allow for different users to share calendars. (Besides, MobileMe costs money.)

NuevaSync enables real-time, over-the-air syncing between your iPhone calendar and your Google calendar(s), and it's completely free. Now, when people ask if I can do something, I can tell them my availability on the spot.