Best Applications For The iPod Touch and iPhone:Gaming

Action Bowling ($2.99 USD) is a fun bowling game. The ssound effects are awesome, you can design your own ball, and you can throw the ball like you do bowling at your local alley. Just be careful when throwing that strike that you don’t throw your device across the room. You can download it here.

Best Applications For The iPod Touch and iPhone:Social Networking and Reference Apps

This post is the second of the series (part one here, part two here) on the best iPhone/iPod Touch applications by categories of apps. All applications I’m review are currently running on my 2 generation iPod Touch. Today I review social networking applications and reference apps.

Social Networking

Facebook (free) I’m sure this is a great app for iPhone users, but for Touch users I find the user interface a bit clunky. I prefer using the Blackberry application on my phone. The only time I’ve used this application is when showing my friends at work pictures of my son. You can download the app here.

Best Applications For The iPod Touch and iPhone:Time Management and Productivity

I’m sure that many people who received either an iPod Touch or iPhone for Christmas this year are looking for good applications for their device. This post is the second of the series (part one here) on the best applications by categories of apps. All applications I’m review are currently running on my 2 generation iPod Touch. Today I tackle ways to use your device to make your life easier and more productive.

Offline RSS reader
Byline ($3.99 USD) is one of my top five used applications. This is a great app. For a long time Google Reader had become an exercise in frustration for me. Leo Laporte has said that RSS is dead, and before this app I agreed with him. If I didn’t read my feed in a few days it would be come downright unmanageable. I’d end up missing a lot of content because I got frustrated and marked massive amounts of my feeds as read when I hadn’t viewed them. If I tried to, I’d be tied to the desktop for hours. This application basically mirrors your Google Reader feed and allows you to cache them locally on your iPod. Now when I’m standing in line at the grocery, or any other place I have to “hurry up and wait”, I’ve got content to keep me occupied. There are many other options to Byline of which you can see in the review below. You can download Byline here.

Best Applications For The iPod Touch and iPhone:Communications

I’m sure that many people who received either an iPod Touch or iPhone for Christmas this year are looking for good applications for their device. I’m going to do a series of posts on the best applications by categories of apps. All applications I’m review are currently running on my 2 generation iPod Touch.

As I’ve written before, I love the iPhone, but I don’t like AT&T. The iPod Touch is perfect for people like me that love their Blackberry phones and Verizon service, but still want the utility of the iPhone.

Communications
Skype (free) is a voip app that allows you to chat free to other skype users and allows you to make voip calls. I’ve used this app to make short calls and it worked fine. I don’t believe it’s of such a high quality it should replace your phone, but it’s very useful if you want to chat with users for free. If you have an iPod, you’ll need headphones with a microphone (standard iPhone headphones work perfectly with the Touch.  You can download Skype here.

Updated: Another Reason To Love My Blackberry

My best friend having an iPhone has solidified my thoughts in my previous post about owning a Blackberry over the iPhone. Here are two reasons why

1. The iPhone has no expandable memory. I can buy multiple 16GB cards and smoke the iPhone’s memory into the ground. With the iPhone you’re stuck with 16GB for the life of your phone.
2. Probably the biggest problem I have with the iPhone is that without jailbreaking the phone you can’t run multiple apps.

A new application I’ve found that I’m loving on my Pearl is the Pandora like  Slacker Radio. With Slacker’s station caching on my phone there’s no reason for me to fill my phone with music from my library.

Thinking about Slacker is what made write this post. I like the fact that I can listen to music, read and receive email, and update twitter from my phone and never have to stop any of them to run the other.

The biggest hit I’ve heard about comparing the Storm to iPhone is that the Storm doesn’t have Wi-fi. I’m sorry, but isn’t that a tad redundant? If I have 3G, why do I need wi-fi?

For my lifestyle my Blackberry fits me perfectly.

My Top BlackBerry Pearl Applications

I’m kind of defensive of my Blackberry Pearl 8130. Listening to the most recent episode of TWIT, they bashed the Blackberry, saying that they aren’t really “smartphones” and that there aren’t a lot of good apps for Blackberry phones.

Maybe it’s a Ford (APPLE) vs. Chevy (Blackberry) kind of debate, but I love my Blackberry Pearl more than any phone I’ve ever owned. I wouldn’t own an iPhone because of its screen size. I had a T-mobile Wing (HTC 4350) and I ended up breaking the screen. I’m hard on phones (I end up dropping them a lot) and I don’t need that much visual real estate. With a wide screen portable device like the Wing there isn’t really a good way to protect the device and it still be usable. Besides, I have a MacBook that I can use if I want to watch movies or visit sites while I’m out (I have Verizon Broadband Internet through my Blackberry).

Really the only downside of owning a Blackberry is that there isn’t really a viable Blackberry apps store. But the suggestion that there aren’t good Blackberry apps is just bullshit. Here are my favorites:

Blackberry Media Sync – This is one of the most important applications for me. I listen to a lot of podcasts and music on the go. You can use up to an 8 GB microSD card which will hold 117 hours of music (at 128 Kbps)! That’s more than enough space for me.

Media Sync is a part of the newest update to Blackberry’s Desktop Manager. You simply make a playlist in iTunes and then open up the desktop manager and sync the playlist and the music on it to your phone. It’s just that easy!

Remember The Milk- Remember the milk is a task manager that is adaptable in many ways. You can add it to Gmail, Google Calendar or you can put MilkSync right on your Blackberry.

VZ Navigator- I’ve thought about buying a separate device for my car… but WHY? One less device is a good thing. Some might argue that the cost, $10 dollars a month, is a bit extreme. But I’ve not seen a good GPS system under 150 dollars. That’s 15 months worth of service of VZ Navigator. In 15 months the software will be better and I’ll have a newer phone (my two year contract will be up then). I see it like a lease vs. buy option with cars.  The cost of a new device (if I bought a GPS device I’d most likely buy a new one every 2-3 years to keep up with technology) would be close to what I’m paying for having the service and doing it with one device.

Google Suite- Where do I start? Google Suite takes all the good Blackberry products they have and roll them into one. Recently upgraded, Gmail runs fast and light. While I use VZ navigator for trips, I use Google Maps for finding stores or restaurants around me. The voice search function is very useful while on the road. A caveat though, when I tried using it like a GPS, I would get lost. It’s great on showing you the way if you know the area, but otherwise forget it.

Facebook- I LOVE this application! I can keep up with my friends anywhere I go! This is especially good when I’m in line at the store, at the doctor’s office, or any other place where I’m alone and have time to fill. It’s a lot more interesting than reading 20 month old Good Housekeeping articles! I can update my status (although I use twitter and the facebook/Twitter application to post my tweets to facebook as status updates), post pictures to my facebook albums, write on my friends walls, and more. If you like MySpace better, there’s an application for that too.

Twitter(berry)- This is the application I use to post my updates to twitter/facebook. It’s pretty minimilistic, but it does exactly what I need it to do… post tweets.

Opera- If you don’t like Blackberry’s web browser, Opera’s web mobile web browser rocks the house.

My Alarm Blackberry’s default alarm clock is lacking, but this free app does the trick with 6 different alarms, multiple snooze settings, and it supports multiple alarm rings (including midi and mp3s).

Wikipedia this application brings Wikipedia easily to your Blackberry.  Any time you are just dying to know about Peaches and Herb, it’s right at your fingertips (hey don’t laugh, there was a debate at work if it was Peaches and Cream or Peaches and Herb).

StopWatch – this application is good if you’re a runner. I use it to time my 2 mile runs. I set it, put on music, and let the road stretch out before me. You can read a full review of it here. Like the Twitterberry application, it simply does one thing and it does it well without a heavy memory footprint.

Orb – You can use Orb to remotely serve content to your phone. A good use for this is steaming content from Sirius (Usirius)  or XM (Uxm) with the directions for Sirius here and XM here. You can stream just about any kind of media stored on your home PC. For a full review of what Orb can do, read this review.

These are just a few examples of the useful applications that are out there. Granted you can’t play too many games on a Blackberry, but that’s what an Xbox is for.
The last but most important reason that I prefer my Blackberry phone over an iPhone is the cellular service. I’ve NEVER had a cell phone that would keep a call on an elevator, but my Blackberry on the Verizon network does just that. In fact, I’ve probably could count on one hand the number of dropped calls (in the last year) I’ve had with Verizon.

So to Leo Laporte and crew, you go ahead and pay a shitload of cash to AT&T and Apple. I’ll be rocking the road with my inexpensive but efficient and durable Blackberry Pearl (8130).  While you’re upping your nose at Blackberry, I’ll be over here counting my cash.