What iPhone apps are people using, really? [part 2]

So, ‘all this is well and good‘, I can hear you say, ‘but there isn’t much there that I didn’t know before’. Well, hopefully this will be interesting then:

For the health enthusiasts:

Cyclemeter ‘turns your iPhone into a powerful GPS stopwatch, giving you feedback and motivation to go farther, become faster, be healthier, and live longer’. Simon I’Anson at Made by Many is a keen user of this one.

iPeriod is probably a useful app for the women.

And finally a brand enters this survey: the Nike+ GPS app, which helps you track your running and motivates you to go farther and faster.

For the book lovers:

Audible allows you to choose from plenty of audio books if you’re not in the mood for reading heavy tomes.

iBooks gives you the choice of reading those books that you want, on your iPhone.

And finally McSweeney’s, advertised as one of Time Magazine’s top ten apps of the year, gives you a good selection of reading material, some of which is curated by interesting people like Spike Jonze, Catherine Keener and Miranda July. The app says it works this way ‘each week you’ll receive exclusive multimedia — stories, films, readings, interviews, art — plus new humor pieces from our website everyday. Your app purchase gets you six months of weekly Small Chair content. We’ll use Push Notifications to let you know each time a new piece is ready.’ Small Chair, for the curious, brings you a selection of articles from across the McSweeney’s publishing family.

For the music lovers:

There’s one app you may be interested in trying out: Bloom, which combines music with art and allows anyone to create both by simply tapping the screen. Intriguing.

For the gamers:

If you want to waste more time than you already do playing things like Angry Birds (!!!), Canabalt, Doodlejump, Flight Control, Miner Disturbance and Need for Speed Shift should provide you with more time-sinking alternatives. Muddled too, though I actually like the sound of that because it’s a word game :-) Last but not the least in this category, the Anorak Magazine app is fun, and includes one of the Many as a fan.

For people who want to use their iPhone for more productive tasks:For people who want to use their iPhone for more productive tasks:

I really like the look of EpicWin, which combines your usual to-do lists with role-playing and earning points. It seems to be a really good example of bringing gaming into our day-to-day lives, which a lot of people like Dan Hon from W+K and at Made by Many, Duncan Gough, often talk about.

Keynote Remote enables you to use your iPhone (or iPod Touch) to control your Mac as you present yet another keynote to yet another group of people, so if you’re one of those and you have a Mac and an iPhone, you probably should have this one.

And LogMeIn allows you to control not only your Keynote presentations, but all your programs and files, with a touch of your phone. Be warned: at $29.99, it costs a pretty penny.

For Londoners:

Most of you probably already have Tube Deluxe and London Bus, some other apps that could be useful are London Bike Hire, National Rail – which not only allows you to plan your journey but tells you which platform trains are on, so you can just dash to the train if you’re running late, and Tube Exits, which makes you a smarter Londoner simply by telling you where on the platform you should stand to get out closest to your exit at the other side. A nice addition to this list is the Museum of London: Streetmuseum app which layers pictures of old London over new and allows you to discover your city in an altogether novel way. I’m going to sneak one more in here, this one for UK residents: the National Trust app gives you plenty of choices for a nice day out with friends or family at heritage buildings in the UK.

For the people who are always in-and-out of airports:

Kayak and TripIt may help you be more efficient and/or informed.

In the lifestyle category, here are some good-to-know apps:

Eco-conscious folk should have the Good Guide which ‘helps you find safe and sustainable products while you shop’, and Seafood Watch, which was mentioned at a talk at SXSWi this year as well – the app that helps you make sustainable seafood choices when you’re eating out or shopping for seafood.

The foodies will probably like Jamie Oliver’s app, for quick recipes.

Mappiness, which some of us at Made by Many use, is a London School of Economics project to track how happy people in the UK are, and may be fun if you haven’t downloaded it already.

Nike makes an appearance yet again: the Nike True City app introduces your city to you in an altogether different way.

Thrillist is probably very similar to AroundMe, by giving you interesting options for restaurants and places to go to in your surrounding area. Currently available for 13 cities in the US, and London in the UK.

And for those who’re feeling the pinch with pay day still a while away, Vouchercloud is ‘a free to download, free to use discount voucher app delivering impressive money-saving offers from popular local and national brands direct to your phone.’ Nothing to argue with there!

Photos, photos everywhere and not one you like?

If Hipstamatic, Pano and Flickr don’t rock your boat, perhaps Gorillacam will? It gives you a whole host of features you can use to manipulate your photos to your liking.

If not, Tilt Shift Generator is again one of my favourites.

Or ShakeIt Photo may be the one to rock your boat, where you can actually see your photo develop the old way: shake it and watch it appear on your phone!

I’ll close this with some lesser-known social networking apps:

Get Glue, ‘a social network for movies, tv shows, music, and books. Check-in and rate things to discover new favorites, see what your friends are into, get stickers, and win free stuff.’

Glympse, which allows you to share your location in the background as you continue to use other apps.

Kickball, which is a completely different way to use Foursquare.

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I hope you’ve found these couple of posts interesting, and hopefully useful too. If you did, you may be interested to know about Phil Adams’ You Are What you App which crowdsources the apps people use – looks like a nice project from the point of view of this post, as he said.

And finally, a big Thank You to Heather, who worked patiently on the visualization for both posts!