if connected

Stanza – An ebook reader that’s fast, free, and offers over the air download of out of copyright books. Recently, they’ve added compatibility with eReader copy protected paid books (but I’ve not tried that aspect). Terrific. The iPhone screen and pocketable size makes for a great reading device for novels: anything that has pictures or is more than a single column of text needs a larger screen.

NYTimes – I have something of a love-hate relationship with apps that mimic websites. This one, despite a buggy early life, is a keeper for its offline abilities. It downloads a version of the paper that I can read underground on London’s tube where there’s no mobile network. Still could do with work: there’s no way to tell the app which parts of the paper to download first, whether or not to bother with photos, and what proportion of the content is ready for offline reading. It’s good but could be great.

Evernote – What I really love about Evernote isn’t the iPhone version itself, which is only OK, but the overall Evernote experience. Add photos, files, text, whatever and it’s all available via phone, web, Windows or Mac application. There’s no need to remember to sync or save something, it’s all just there. Start typing a note on the PC and crash mid-way, and the partial note is still preserved for access on all the others. There’s character recognition for text in pictures. It’s just tremendous. So, why is the iPhone app not amazing? Limited local sync and editing. Evernote is improving its software all the time so this will improve. Evernote is deservedly one of the rising stars of the last year.

WordPress – I’ve tried the free blogging apps for Livejournal, Typepad and WordPress but the latter’s the best. None of the them are perfect but the killer feature for an app over the website itself is offline mode and here WordPress seems to work the best (but it still needs improvements). The app has support for pictures, categories, holding a local archive of posts, and for saving drafts. In my experience, the save drafts locally feature doesn’t work, but saving drafts online is fine.

Units – which is a free converter for most things such as weight, volume, speed etc. etc.

SplashID – Stores passwords securely. What I love is that SplashID runs on virtually every smartphone plus there are both PC and Mac versions and it all syncs. I’ve switched from Palm to Symbian to Windows Mobile and now iPhone over the last few years: SplashID has worked for me on all of them without me needing to re-enter my data.

Twittelator – My favourite twitter client (*). It’s not popular for some reason, but it has a strong UI, location-awareness, and offers a rich featureset. (* – I’ve tried too many others to remember them all).

Remote – Apple’s iTunes-controlling application means I have my complete music collection playable in any room I have an Airport Express and connected speakers. This combination of kit is one of those rare set of products that Apple has underhyped and undermarketed over the years.

Last.fm – Offers a large part of the experience in reasonable but not great sound quality. The UI is adequate but despite mimicing the iPod controls manages to be a little idiosyncratic. Works well on WiFi. I’ve love to see a similar smooth 3G experience.

There are a few new ones I’m testing now, that may be keepers, but for which it’s too early to say:
- Truphone – watch for some great feature additions very soon (I’ve seen a preview of the next version).
- WiFinder – monitors for open access points and advises if they are really providing an Internet connection.
- Orb – Slingbox-style placeshifting for PC files.
- Joost and Babelgum – A couple of years ago these were poster childs of online TV. They’re now niche audience-focused, but there’s some good content hidden behind all the swimsuits and music videos.

That’s it for now. I’m saving games for a future post. What’s your list of best mobile apps for iPhone or for another mobile?