Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review
Five (really useful) Apps for everyone
Flicktunes, $0.99
Remember our chat about driving and using your iPhone? Flicktunes makes controlling the iPod in your iPhone (or touch) much easier when you have to focus on other things -- like driving. Flick your finger left or right to navigate your playlist, up or down to start or stop the music. The album art is all you see, plus a speaker icon indicating playback. It's super easy, a simple app, but very useful if you're driving or otherwise occupied while jamming out.
Army Knife, $1.99
If you need to measure something in a jiffy, Army Knife is a 9-in-1 tool with several measuring tools. There's a protractor, a caliper and a tape measure, plus a level and a "heart monitor" (you tap as your heart beats). There's a unit converter with distance, volume, weight and temperature conversions, and a flashlight and whistle. The flashlight, yes, is just a screen of white, but the whistle is kind of fun and will irritate your pets (please note: I do not condone irritating your pets, please do not flame me for hating animals).
Todo, $9.99
If you use Remember the Milk or Toodledoo, you should know that Todo syncs with them. There's also a free sync app for your desktop, which is essentially a backup... except there's a way to sync Todo with The Hit List via iCal. Is it optimal? No, but until THL has an iPhone app (not criticizing the developer as I'd rather it be done right than fast) this does the trick to an extent. Todo even without sync is a beautiful thing to behold and full of flexibility. In fact, the flexibility of the app is a little shocking, given the lowly status of the "to do" genre of apps. If you need a listmaker/to do/checklist app with or without sync capabilities, this is one of the best out there. Worth the $9.99 for what you get.
CardStar, free
If you're tired of carrying around a dozen membership or discount cards, CardStar will help you out. There are templates for many retailers and discount systems (air miles and so forth), and you can choose from a variety of barcode types. I was able to experiment with the codes a bit and test things at each of my errand stops (Blockbuster, Kroger, etc.), eventually winnowing my keychain down to just 2 keys and a door opener.
BigOven, free
I've toyed around with a few cooking apps, but if you're out and about (and have a signal) BigOven is a great way to throw a dish together based on an ingredient. BigOven basically makes everyone an Iron Chef -- at least as far as cool recipes goes. It can't help you cook things, and the text rendering could be a little more clear, but you can favorite stuff (with a BigOven free account), and copy an entire recipe for emailing. I'm not saying the interface is great, but the BigOven database is huge and stocked with what looks like good recipes.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rego said 12:56PM on 8-05-2009
Flicktunes, $0.99
Remember our chat about driving and using your iPhone? Flicktunes makes controlling the iPod in your iPhone (or touch) much easier when you have to focus on other things -- like driving. Flick your finger left or right to navigate your playlist, up or down to start or stop the music. The album art is all you see, plus a speaker icon indicating playback. It's super easy, a simple app, but very useful if you're driving or otherwise occupied while jamming out.
If you have to take your eyes of the road to use it, it makes this app a dangerous distraction. I think its irresponsible to be hyping this app.
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Ryan said 1:30PM on 8-05-2009
Rego, do you ever adjust the volume on your radio? It takes about the same amount of time to adjust your radio volume as it does to flick to the next song.....
Anyway, in the link below, you can see how Flicktunes is being restrained from submitting an update:
http://tinyurl.com/ko6wxr
Victor Agreda, Jr. said 1:59PM on 8-05-2009
The very point is that you DO NOT have to take your eyes off the road. You flick your finger in X or Y axes, which is a heckuva lot easier than having to look at the iPod interface.
Rob Usdin said 1:03PM on 8-05-2009
CardStar can be really flaky if you have a screen protector. It works well with handheld scanners, but flatbed ones used at most supermarkets don't always work. It's a nice idea, not always great in practice.
--*Rob
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L3 said 1:09PM on 8-05-2009
I wish cardstar worked as well as it sounds.
I tried it for a month. I entered 15 cards. None of them ever worked and I don't even have a screen protector.
I love the idea. I will search for another app.
FearlessFreep said 1:16PM on 8-05-2009
Ditto on CardStar. Great idea, but in practice it falls flat. I got tired of scanning it and looking like a fool when it didn't work (which was more often than it worked).
It *sounds* like it'd be great, but do you really want a cashier or people behind you laughing at you as you try futilely to get the thing to work? I got sick of it - you likely will too.
Victor Agreda Jr said 2:05PM on 8-05-2009
True, although I don't use a screen protector, older scanners won't work. You pretty much need a very recent vintage scanner.
What *always* works is having the number handy so the person has to type it in. I lost my Blockbuster cards ages ago and have just been reciting it since -- people are used to typing this stuff in anyway.
Erick said 1:31PM on 8-05-2009
Ditto on Cardstar. Was excited when I got to the paypump and tried to scan my phone for Giant Eagle. Eventually had to climb back into my car and retrieve the card itself. Oh well.
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Ryan Trevisol said 2:26PM on 8-05-2009
Soooo . . . . we don't call regular Mac Applications "apps" anymore? If someone says App then it's definitely iphone . . . good to know.
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dagaz said 5:38PM on 8-05-2009
Instead of criticising the developers of THL for the lack of an iPhone app, what about criticising Apple for not putting iCal todo sync on the iPhone out of the box? That was the number 1 thing I was hoping was going to slip in unannounced in OS 3.
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christopher carfi said 6:17PM on 8-05-2009
L3, if you are "searching for another app," would love your opinion on Scanaroo ( http://www.scanaroo.com ). We're taking quite a different approach to getting the loyalty and rewards cards into the iPhone, and actually do it via the camera (instead of via typing in the numbers). Would love to hear your opinion.
(disclosure: we developed Scanaroo)
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Avalon said 7:09PM on 8-05-2009
From the iTunes screenshots it looks like Scanaroo just uses the camera for me to store photos I take of my cards. Are you saying that a photo of my card would scan better than a digital barcode???
NutMac said 6:56PM on 8-05-2009
Although BigOven is filled with a ton of recipes, I found it to be a poor front-end to its website. It is entirely search based, essentially displaying HTML pages formatted for the iPhone, without key features such as grocery list, recipe browser, and so on.
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christopher carfi said 7:29PM on 8-05-2009
Avalon, was responding to L3's statement of "searching for other apps." (Don't have generalizable data to answer your question, unfortunately; there are many variables that drive "scan better" in this domain.)
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Avalon said 10:48PM on 8-05-2009
Thanks for the clarification, Christopher. But if Scanaroo is just a "collect my cards" app then CardStar already does that for free. IMHO you should probably collect some data to demonstrate that photos do indeed scan better -- that would make your app's 99 cent price well worth it.
David Becker said 9:09PM on 8-05-2009
Hello everyone! I'm the developer of FlickTunes and am thrilled to have made this list. I'm popping in to update people with a little bit of news:
> Rego, do you ever adjust the volume on your radio? It takes
> about the same amount of time to adjust your radio volume
> as it does to flick to the next song.....
I don't see any discussions about volume, did a post get edited or deleted? In any case, the next update that comes out features two finger up/down gestures for volume control so it'll be super easy to do that too!
> Anyway, in the link below, you can see how Flicktunes is
> being restrained from submitting an update.
Indeed. It's been a very trying situation. My bug-fix update was eventually rejected citing "duplication of the iPod app", but they gave me the opportunity to resubmit and didn't reject the app entirely (just the update, which contained no new features). Go figure. To make a very long story short, the update currently submitted now is actually v1.1 (instead of v1.0.1) and is still pending review. It's been six weeks now! I'm cautiously optimistic it will get through soon.
Thanks again for the mention!
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Midori S. said 12:20PM on 8-06-2009
I don't know about anyone else, but I love CardStar. Even with the screen-protector-film, it scans most of the time. Hand-held readers do better, of course, but even flatbed scanners will work with a little effort. When it won't scan, cashiers manually type the numbers in, and they don't seem to mind.
I love having all my cards in one place--a place that is NOT my keychain!
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christopher carfi said 1:50PM on 8-06-2009
Hi, Avalon...thanks again for the thoughts. We believe we deliver at least 99c worth of value. :-)
We're constantly innovating with Scanaroo on a number of dimensions - the photo handles cards with multiple numbers on them (like Insurance cards, which have name, group number, member number, and the like) as well as things like supporting a passcode to keep all your info from casually prying eyes. So, I hear what you're saying wrt scan quality, and I think we're going to see all boats rise on that front as scanners improve over time.
Thanks again for the feedback! We thrive on it.
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DomPaul said 10:59PM on 8-06-2009
I used my scanner to scan in all my membership cards and rewards cards, then created a separate folder in pictures to carry them around... Sounds like CardStar does pretty much the same thing... It is a great idea though!
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