Five Alternative Must-Have iPhone Apps

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 11 Nov 2008

If the five must have iPhone apps we talked about yesterday are quite useful, these alternative ones are, drum roll please, useful in other ways. Such as for example when you need to get out of a boring conversation, or you just need something to do and kill some time at the office.

The Conversation Buster: FakeCalls

Even very socially inclined people sometimes find themselves in a boring, awkward, or generally uncomfortable situation. This is the time when you are praying and wishing for your iPhone to ring so that you would have a reason to politely extract yourself from the conversation. That saving call will come if you are the kind of person that is incredibly lucky on a general basis, or if you use something like the FakeCalls app that can be purchased from the App Store for about one dollar. All you have do to is hit the app icon, and FakeCalls will perfectly emulate an actual phone call (caller name, number and photo). The fake call will be made after a preset amount of time after you hit that icon.

The Humming Bird: Midomi

This one is very much the same as Shazam, the iPhone app to be featured in the latest Apple commercials. They are similar because both apps can identify the tune that is blasting from the speakers (yours or the club owner’s), but Midomi comes with and added bonus – it can identify a song if you hum or sing a few lines into the iPhone. I can just imagine some office workers slacking off and playing “who can get the iPhone to correctly identify my hum”.

The Doodler: Trace and Writingpad

There is something very child like about doodling, but any feelings of inadequacy are left behind when you do your doodling on the iPhone’s screen. The Trace app from Bovinedragon Software is a simple but amusing game where you have to get your stick figure safely from point A to point B – the amusing part is that you have to draw the platforms on which the figure walks upon. The Writingpad app allows you to enter words into a notepad, just that instead of hitting the keypad you get to draw them on the 3.5inch screen.

The Wisecracker: iChuck

Nothing beats a good joke for those moments when you want to turn your frown upside down, and what better joke subject than Chuck Norris? The app provides several hundred Chuck Norris jokes, complete with animations, cool graphics and realistic sound effects.

The Private Eye: FreshApps

When you can’t be bothered to personally check out all the new apps that make it to the App Store, what do you do? You want to be informed, but there is so much information available out there, there are so many new incoming apps that you will soon feel overwhelmed. FreshApps is not an iPhone application, but it is a site that will track down and keep a close eye on all your favorite apps.


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