What cunty little apps should I put on my iPhone?

[jutl]

I've a little arrow pointing NE in my iphone status bar now.  What's that?  I'm sure it's something to do with the compass - it's that same arrow in the bottom left of it which seems to take you to the map.  How I get rid? 

It's telling you that an app is running that is using the GPS. You need to kill the app to get rid of the arrow.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Hey, the skin thing seems to be working! Just refreshed the page for the first time this morning (on my phone) and it reappeared in the groovy iPhone format.

Ta v. muchly boss.

[Neil]

It's telling you that an app is running that is using the GPS. You need to kill the app to get rid of the arrow.

Thanks - I figured it was Runkeeper, or even the compass, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to turn it off.  It ran my battery completely down overnight, and now it's gone. 

Hey, the skin thing seems to be working! Just refreshed the page for the first time this morning (on my phone) and it reappeared in the groovy iPhone format.

Excellent, glad it's working properly now.  There's no more need to go to the theme url, it should just pick up that you're on an iPhone or Android, and switch instantly.  Shouldn't waver between the normal and iPhone skins either, now.  Will get round to tarting it up a bit, might add tags too and see how that looks.

[jutl]

Thanks - I figured it was Runkeeper, or even the compass, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to turn it off.  It ran my battery completely down overnight, and now it's gone.

Double-click the home button to see which apps are 'running' (although most of them are actually completely dormant.) Touch and hold one of the apps in that list and they'll all gain '-' overlays. Touch the '-' on the ones you want to kill.

[Neil]

Nice one, thanks!  I never really read instructions as it takes away all the fun of working things out, but that's very handy indeed.

[Neil]

I just found out this thing cost 350 quid!  I wish I was still completely ignorant of the price. My guess, bearing in mind it was a returned one, was 150...  much vodka was spluttered. I absolutely adore it though. I got the Lomo camera app today - always wanted one of those cams, particularly after the BBC4 documentary. Worjs brilliantly, love it! 

Mafia Wars turned out to be shit, but World War is keeping me coming back. Anyone else play it?

[Steve Lampkins]

The skin thing is not sticking for me. Maybe because I have an iPod Touch, not an iPhone? Wouldn't have thought so though. Not a big deal for me. Two easy taps to load the bookmarked link.

[alan nagsworth]

I have an iPod Touch and the skin booted up instantly and has stuck ever since! Maybe it's because you're just rubbish?

Oh, and iScrobble is pretty ace for Last.fm users, too. Even if you can only get online using WiFi it creates a cache (is that the right word) for everything you listen to and Scrobbles it the next time you log in. I've heard it didn't work for some people and it's been given awful reviews but it works sweet for me.

[Ignatius_S]

The War of Eustrath is a very decent turn-based strategy game in the mould of Fire Emblem, but with giant robot suits. The touch-screen interface is great!

Ravenswood is currently 69p - http://toucharcade.com/2009/11/17/ravensword-the-fallen-king-the-review/ - seems a steal at this price, a it was favourably rated when it cost $7 last year.

[niat]

Thanks to whoever recommended TuneIn Radio, it is superb.

You're welcome.

Thanks to Neil for the iPhone skin. After some initial glitches where I ended up changing my profile and not being able to change it back, it's now working just lovely, like.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Even the Telegraph is 'advertising' Jailbreaking now.

JailbreakMe: Apple iPhone 4 hack released

[Ignatius_S]

Mmm, more one for the iOS4 thread really.

It has previously, as per the link to the earlier story - partly because of the ruling in the US that consumers are legally entitled to jailbreak their phones and partly because if there's an iPhone angle, news outlets will run it. Unless the terms of employment has changed at the Telegraph, Web hacks get financial incentives depending how many hits that a stories get - one consequence was that Britney Spears appeared in most economic news stories.

[sick as a pike]

As a newcomer to a smartphone I'd be interested to hear which practical apps people actually use.  I've got a Samsung Galaxy S and at first I played with various features and installed some apps, but have reverted now to using it 'just' as a phone with internet access, and a camera.
If anyone wants to jolt me out of my techno-complacency I'd be grateful.  Are there applications that are of every-day, real world use?

edit to clarify- what I mean is not so much those nice add-ons and games and photo enhancers &c. but applications that make the smart phone a useful tool.  e.g. I played with google goggles after it was mentioned on here, but after wandering round the house working out what it could and couldn't identify, I've not used it since.

[MojoJojo]

The Agenda Widget is handy if you use google calendar. It's what the standard calendar widget should be, in that it supports multiple calendars in a useful way.

It's bit difficult to suggest what you might find useful day to day when I don't know what you do day to day.
gvSig maps is useful if you spend a lot of time wondring around the countryside.

[waste of chops]

As a newcomer to a smartphone I'd be interested to hear which practical apps people actually use.  I've got a Samsung Galaxy S and at first I played with various features and installed some apps, but have reverted now to using it 'just' as a phone with internet access, and a camera.
If anyone wants to jolt me out of my techno-complacency I'd be grateful.  Are there applications that are of every-day, real world use?

Get Shazam; if you hear some music and want to know what it is, you fire up the app and it starts capturing the audio, then it does all sorts of marvellous technical stuff and tells you what it is. It doesn't always work but when it does, it seems like some sort of futuristic voodoo magic (it identified some music on a TV programme which had bits of dialogue over it, for example)

[MojoJojo]

If you think intellectual property is for capitalist pigdogs, you might find transdroid useful. It lets you control most major bittorrent clients from your phone, including starting new torrents. It's more convenient than a laptop and browser.

Question: I can voice dial, but I read I could compose a txt using voice too? Is this possible?

[sick as a pike]

Thanks for the suggestions- I shall try the Agenda one, as at the moment I've got an unsatisfying half-solution whereby ical updates google calendar (and vice versa)... quite a lot of the time.  Which isn't ideal.  Oh and any appointments added to the phone don't update any other calendars.
Torrents are things I engage with maybe once or twice a year so I probably don't need transandroid, but I do wander about the countryside so I'll have a look at gvSig. Thanks again.

[Utter Shit]

Does anyone else have a problem getting certain stations on TuneIn? 5 Live only works maybe once in every ten attempts.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Not had a problem with GotRadio-GuitarGenius - mellow tinkly stuff ideal for 20 minutes in the Sleep Timer at bedtime. A couple of buffering delays on a few other, US stations. No problem so far with BBC ones. I've not been caning it though and not tried 5 Live at all.

[Utter Shit]

Probably just the signal round my area is a wanker.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

I'd only used it at home, on wifi. Just tried it now, on Edge, it's buff'rin like mad. Cutting out every few seconds.

EDIT - to work out how much Usage is required is it as simple as, for example, 128kbps x amount of seconds it's on for? I guess that's a maximum, the 128kbps, but to ultra safe, is that how to work it out? This'd mean a 1gb monthly allowance wouldn't last long at all at all.

[Utter Shit]

I get unlimited internet luckily. If I was on a 1gb limit my bill would be about a billion pounds a month.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

I did with O2, but they now tend to cap at 500mb, so when I upgraded I went with Vodafone as they had no Orange 4s and the Voda deal was slightly better anyway. None of the providers offered 'unlimited' in June 2010, not at Cuntphone Warehouse with a 4. Though a fool working there, when I expressed concern at the newly imposed caps, said "If you go over (the 1gb limit) I'll pay the difference myself". I knew I shoulda got him to sign something to that effect.

[HappyTree]

I think I'm about ready to join the iTunes haters club. All I wanted to do was download the new Iain Lee app and drag it across onto my iPod Touch. Apparently that was too difficult for it to understand. I had ticked the "manage music and stuff manually" box, so felt confident that plugging in my iPod wouldn't bugger it up.

I got the Iain Lee app, dragged it expectantly over the iPod icon on the left...only to see a NO ENTRY sign saying I can't do that. Ok, so I decided that since I have all my music, videos, photos and apps replicated on this laptop anyway I could dare allowing iTunes to Sync everything automatically.

Then it suddenly started downloading the update to the iPod software and went into a loop of constantly verifying and backing up my iPod. Now it's 3 fucking hours later and it's STILL messing around. For some reason, after the software update my iPod lost 1500 audio files, it's now in the process of putting them back on. God knows how long this will take. It's currently only at 244 out of 1467 files.

All I wanted to do was put ONE new app on it, and a few new photos. This is ridiculous. I'm on the point of getting my first mobile phone. I think I may change my mind about getting a cheap one and go for a super-duper NON APPLE smartphone, then sell the iPod Touch POS. Well, the iPod itself is a joy to use but really I don't have time in my life to fanny about with iTunes any longer.

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!

[chocky909]

I sometimes think I'm missing some really obvious trick with iTunes. Other people look at me like I'm a moron when I tell them how confusing and annoying it is managing my media and syncing my iPhone. Like HT says it's a shame because the actual iPods are lovely to use. Is iTunes unbelievably faster and better on a Mac?

[Slaaaaabs]

The backup/syncing process is just a pile of cunt full stop.

iOS 4 also likes to make my 3G hang for up to a minute at a time. Possibly because I have dared not to upgrade.

[chocky909]

I've heard that upgrading the firmware to 4.0 slows the iPhone down too. I'll have to do it sometime I guess. I'll probably sell it soon anyway and get a Desire or similar.

[Zero Gravitas]

EDIT - to work out how much Usage is required is it as simple as, for example, 128kbps x amount of seconds it's on for? I guess that's a maximum, the 128kbps, but to ultra safe, is that how to work it out? This'd mean a 1gb monthly allowance wouldn't last long at all at all.

Google will handle the units for you:

1GB / 128kbps in hours

Even that's not certain as I seem to recall that the 128kbps is only the content and not the frames so in fact a little more data is sent or some such, it is a rough approximation however.

[phes]

I sometimes think I'm missing some really obvious trick with iTunes. Other people look at me like I'm a moron when I tell them how confusing and annoying it is managing my media and syncing my iPhone. Like HT says it's a shame because the actual iPods are lovely to use. Is iTunes unbelievably faster and better on a Mac?

I've never had any problems whatsoever synching from macbook to telephone handset. It's fairly simple and intuitive. Still, i'm going to get rid of my iphone anyway because i'm just not fond of it. There's just no chemistry... i'm leaving you, you cow!

[Famous Mortimer]

It's been that long since I used iTunes on a PC that I couldn't tell you if it's still awful on there, but it works a treat on a Mac.

I use MLB At Bat which allows you to listen to game-day audio and (if you've got an account) watch games either live or...well, any time.

Hipstamatic is for making your photos look like old instant camera ones, and it's a fair bit of fun. I just tried one of my computer desk and the effect's not perfect, but it's a good laugh.

If you've got Cydia then stuff like Poof! is recommended, for allowing you to hide the crap you never use like the Stocks icon. Oh, and Yourtube is awesome, even if you have to pay, because it lets you download and save Youtube videos so you can watch them where there's no signal.

Bloom, Air and Trope, the Brian Eno-created music making programs, are a blast to use too. My 7-year-old neice was fascinated by it and it kept her blissfully quiet for half an hour.

There's one which is effectively just a website skin, but is no worse for it - NFB. The Canadian public broadcaster put pretty much everything they've ever broadcast online, so you can watch an enormous variety of shows on there, including classic films like 23 Skidoo. Same thing applies to This American Life and TED.