My favorite app right now is called Lose it for iPhone. It's taught me Burger King is delicious but I have to exercise about this much to offset 1 Angry burger, which is my weakness:

50 cal - 20 min weightlifting
100 cal - 20 min aerobics
200 cal - 20 min running
200 cal - 20 min swimming
400 cal - 40 min biking
-----
950 cal / 2 hours total to offset one burger at about 880 cal

Another app that looks great (but I haven't tried yet) is Layar. It's a reality browser. I'll leave that to you to figure out, but you need the GPS included in the 3GS iPhone to run it.

I have 3 observations about popularity and what people like:

There are tons of very clever apps out there, but Lose it is very popular and simple. It's a useful app.

Some apps like Layar are very unique and some are complex. People like these niche apps, too.

But, what a lot of entrepreneurs get is that you don't have to be clever or complex. You can just build a better app, like build a better mousetrap. People will beat a path to your door. And, if you build a lousy app, the incredibly simple and effective rating system used with iPhone Apps is just brutal!


So, it would be useful and interesting to hear what your favorite app(s) are. You might also add your observations about apps in general. We can filter this down as replies accumulate.

Views: 156

Replies to This Discussion

I have Lose It! as well, but I haven't really used it much. One of my most used apps right now is "ESPN Fantasy Football 2009."

Other Favorites:
Hurricane - This app is written by Kittycode. As the name implies it is an excellent hurricane tracking app. I happen to know one of the devs on this one and She is a hurricane fanatic.

Twitterrific - I love this app. I have tried others including a brief affair with Tweetdeck, but I just keep coming back to Twitterrific.

LiveATC - This is a great app if you like listening to aviation radio traffic. Using their network of members LiveATC.net provides airport traffic from all over the world.

Kindle - Simple but very nice reader with integration to amazon.com for book purchases.

Pocket Universe - I just started using it two nights ago but I like it so far. The app utilizes both the GPS and compass components of the iPhone to direct you to any stellar object you wish to see. Also has a "Tonight's Sky" feature to tell you what is currently happening in space. For example, through this app I learned that the Orionids meteor shower will be visible tonight off of Orion's arm. Very cool.

I am on the hunt for a good "To Do" program however. Any suggestions?
Without a doubt my favorite app is called The Mindless Time-Killer. It is brutally simple but still fun. It's actually a great drinking game! My high score is 751.
Here's a link to the iTunes store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mindless-time-killer/id345959504?mt=8
Kevin, I am going to check it out. Let's hear something about your iPhone development experiences...perhaps as the speaker for the upcoming GatorJUG on the second Wed of January?
I really don't have enough to say to make a presentation as such, but I can bitch and moan about the fact that apple doesn't support selling java-based apps yet, only apps written in Objective-C , and the only IDE (near as I can figure) is xCode. After working in Java with Eclipse and Netbeans, working in Objective-C in xCode is kinda rough.

I full list of the apps I've done is here:
http://user.gru.net/nemesis/iphoneAppPages/
Very well, then. We'll have an iPhone development meeting with open forum. I think that would be interesting to a broad range pf developers, especially the ones that do Java apps on the Blackberry.

Kevin Neelands said:
I really don't have enough to say to make a presentation as such, but I can bitch and moan about the fact that apple doesn't support selling java-based apps yet, only apps written in Objective-C , and the only IDE (near as I can figure) is xCode. After working in Java with Eclipse and Netbeans, working in Objective-C in xCode is kinda rough.

I full list of the apps I've done is here:
http://user.gru.net/nemesis/iphoneAppPages/
You can see my favourite apps here on myap.ps/ouriel
Ouriel, Could you please re-enter that URL? I can't get it to resolve. Best, Mike
myap.ps/ouriel


now ok?

Michael Levin said:
Ouriel, Could you please re-enter that URL? I can't get it to resolve. Best, Mike
Perfect - it looks cool. I'm checking it out. Thanks, Ouriel.
will be happy to set you your URL if you want

Michael Levin said:
Perfect - it looks cool. I'm checking it out. Thanks, Ouriel.
I'll take you up on that, Ouriel. I'm downloading it now...
look fwd to discovering your favorite apps :)

Michael Levin said:
I'll take you up on that, Ouriel. I'm downloading it now...

RSS

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Presentation: Designing for Defense: Architecting APIs with Zero Trust Principles

Renato Losio and a panel of security experts discuss designing for defense and architecting APIs with Zero Trust principles. They explain Zero Trust concepts, address challenges developers face in applying these, and highlight common API vulnerabilities.

By Nivedita Murthy, Zsolt Németh, Katie Paxton-Fear, Ben Bridts, Renato Losio

Amazon S3 Adds Sort and Z-Order Compaction to Improve Apache Iceberg Query Performance

AWS has recently announced that Amazon S3 now supports sort and z-order compaction for Apache Iceberg tables. The new features reduce scan times and engine costs, and are available for both S3 Tables and traditional S3 buckets using AWS Glue Data Catalog optimization.

By Renato Losio

Article: Optimizing Search Systems: Balancing Speed, Relevance, and Scalability

Innovative software engineer focused on optimizing search performance in dynamic environments. This article highlights key strategies from our QCon San Francisco 2024 presentation, addressing challenges faced by platforms like Uber Eats in data indexing and retrieval. Our advancements ensure swift, relevant user experiences amidst ever-growing datasets.

By Janani Narayanan, Karthik Ramasamy

Presentation: From Junior to Staff and Beyond: Lessons Learned

Bruno Rey shares insights from 17 years in tech, including his 15-year journey to staff engineer. He explains strategies for individual career growth - ambition, focus, and opportunity - and offers guidance for leaders on fostering team development. Learn to navigate the tech career ladder and empower others.

By Bruno Rey

Google DeepMind Announces Robotics Foundation Model Gemini Robotics On-Device

Google DeepMind introduced Gemini Robotics On-Device, a vision-language-action (VLA) foundation model designed to run locally on robot hardware. The model features low-latency inference and can be fine-tuned for specific tasks with as few as 50 demonstrations.

By Anthony Alford

© 2025   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service