iEarn for the iPhone is a basic income tracking application for webmasters using Google Adsense on their website or blog.  It allows the user to view basic information about their Adsense account without having to load the browser.  It displays Today’s earnings, yesterdays earnings, last 7 days, this month, and last month’s earnings. 

That’s what it does and that’s ALL it does.  If you are looking for an application that will allow you to track multiple sites, break earnings down by pages, set up your own custom reports, or anything else then you need to stick to the browser for now.

Unfortunately not only does the app not do much, what it does do it does not do well.  It is slooooooow retrieving your data,  and it often  requires multiple starts in order to retrieve your data.  In fact I started this app at the start of writing this article and I am still waiting 10 minutes later to see any data, this is on an Edge connection.  Performance was a little better on wifi but not an acceptable wait time for a minimum of information.

I was excited when I saw this app appear on the App Store and downloaded it right away, but for $1.99 it was a waste of money in its current iteration.  So if you need an app to track your Adsense earnings while on the go then keep watching the App Store for other options for now.  Hopefully the developer will continue development on iEarn and eventually make it in to a useable application.  If there is no further development on the app then I at least have a review on iPhoneAppReview that is displaying ads, it will only take a few thousand clicks to earn my $1.99 back. 

The iPhone has tons of applications available for it.  I have downloaded my share of apps, and deleted many of them.  Below is my list of essential apps for the iPhone, some are perfect the way they are, some I am using until I can find something better.  Without further ado here is my list of essential iPhone apps.

Sportacular:
I am a sports junky particularly during the football season, and this app has it all.  Real time scores, news, standings, stats, etc etc.  If it happened in sports you can find it here.  I use this app to help me keep up with the St. Louis Rams…I know, I know it has been mostly bad news lately for my team, but if you want to find the info this app has it, even when it is painful to look at.  I use it for information for my other blog, www.RamsFootball.com.

AccuFuel:
This is one of those apps that I use all the time, I just wish it had more features.  It is very good at what it does do, help you track fuel mileage for your car.  I just wish it did a lot more.  I used to carry a Treo and I had an app called Highway Manager.  Now that was an auto tracking application that would bring tears to your eyes. Highway Manager had charts, stats,  trip tracking, multiple fuel stations, and it tracked all vehicle maintenance, such as tire rotation, oil changes, wiper replacement, etc.  If you wanted to know what service was done to your car, when, and how much it cost this app would do it.  Not only that but it would track all kinds of stats based on this information.  It could show you how much per mile it cost to drive that car, both pure fuel and with all other services included.  When I find an app similar to Highway Manager for the iPhone I will drop AccuFuel off the iPhone, till then AccuFuel helps me keep track of fuel in a simple clean interface.

RedDelicious:
If you use Delicious to keep all your bookmarks on the web then you need this app.  If you are not keeping all your bookmarks on Delicious then you need to start.  RedDelicious keeps all your bookmarks locally on your phone, so you don’t need to have a web connection to search your bookmarks.  It shows recently added bookmarks, allows you to search for bookmarks, and browse your bookmarks by tags.  Apply an iphone tag to all your bookmarks and you are set to find them later on your iPhone.  The biggest drawback to this app is it does not allow you create bookmarks from your phone, if RedDelicious gets that solved they have a REAL winner in my book.

Manifesto:
Manifesto is an RSS reader for the iPhone, it synchs with Google Reader and allows you to read the complete article off line.  I’m not sure why I don’t like this app more than I do.  It has some good features, I am just not in love with the user experience, however it is the best option I know of right now.  If I find another app that does RSS better I would not be opposed to replacing Manifesto.
What I still need:

A good Shopping Application:
List makers are a dime a dozen on the iPhone but I have not found anything yet that is better than Listingly.com.  It has iPhone and desktop support so you can always update your lists no matter where you are, and it is easy to share lists with other people.  I am getting ready to test Grocery IQ, it has good ratings on the App Store.  Look for a review of that App in the near future.

A good Notes application:
I would like a notes App that allows me to type in horizontal mode.  It would also be nice to have some added features like setting a reminder to a note, being able to create a directory structure or tags to help keep track of notes, and desk top synching so I could start a note on the Mac and finish it on the iPhone, maybe some basic html so I could create hyperlinks in my notes.  If anyone knows of a notes app that does these things or a good percentage let me know, by responding with a comment.

What about you?  Are there apps that you can’t live without, or apps you are still looking for?  I would love to hear how others are using their iPhone.

Kevin

With the releases of Apple’s Dashboard and Yahoo!’s Konfabulator/Widgets programs, Macs and PCs gained the ability to run miniature applications called “widgets” that could quickly check the Internet for weather, flight information, stock prices and more. Notably, Apple developed a Movies widget for Mac OS X Leopard, capable of displaying movie and theater details, quick links to trailers and summary text, and even offering the ability to buy tickets directly from the widget. Though the iPhone received custom versions of some of the best Apple-developed widgets, it somehow never wound up with an official “Movies” program.

Third-party developers rightfully saw this as a major omission—wouldn’t users want to check show times, watch movie trailers, and perhaps even purchase tickets directly from their iPhones? Of course they would. So they first created iPhone-specific web pages to handle some of these features, and now have released downloadable apps that do the same things.

Today’s iPhone Gems is the first half of a two-part series on useful apps to have when you’re out on the town, focusing on all of the movie- and trailer-finding apps out there. They range in price from free to $4, and vary pretty dramatically in interface and features. Our top picks are Now Playing by Cyrus Najmabadi and Movies by Flixster, but you may find another app in the collection worthwhile as well. Note that the theater-finding apps in this collection currently don’t have much appeal to users outside of the United States, but their trailer-finding features and separate trailer-finding applications may be interesting to all iPhone or iPod touch users.

KickScreen Movie Trailers

Unlike some of the fuller-featured movie applications we’ve tested, KickScreen Movie Trailers ($1) by k5Software does nothing more than display movie trailers that the developer has located online. There’s a plain, scrolling interface with a list of movie titles and posters. Clicking on any of the listings brings up the movie’s trailer, available on EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi data networks, while clicking on a small arrow icon opens a short page of descriptive text.

The listings include both current and future releases, but the main page is sparse in terms of information—just name, release date, and run time. Even given how simple the application is, an obvious omission is the ability to sort the alphabetical list in any way, or even to skip through it with the condensed letter bar found in the iPhone’s Contacts and iPod/Music applications. If you try other movie applications, you’ll begin to note the other omissions: there’s no option to see larger versions of the posters, buy tickets, or go out to the web to get more information on the movie. There’s also only one trailer per film, regardless of how many may have been released.

In our view, KickScreen isn’t too exciting given what you can get from similar applications—even the iPhone’s integrated YouTube browser—but unlike YouTube, you won’t get false results, and you may also find next year’s movie trailers here—such as Terminator Salvation—that don’t appear on the near-term focused lists of apps such as Movies. Then again, you might not; the upcoming Star Trek movie, which appears in the competing application Trailers, isn’t anywhere to be found in the version of KickScreen we used. Since all of these applications will depend on their developers for frequent content updates and completeness, you’ll have to decide whether to take the risk that they won’t contain some of the movies you’re interested in seeing; KickScreen currently doesn’t offer enough functionality or other frills to be worth paying for. iLounge Rating: C-.

Movies

As one of the two most impressively developed movie finder applications for the iPhone OS, Movies (Free) by Flixster is pretty close to a “do it all” application for movie lovers. There’s a sortable list of movies that lets you know concisely what’s opening this week, what’s already open, and what’s doing well at the box office. The listings include each film’s title, a mini-poster, rating, a Flixster-generated review score, release date, run time, and key actors, plus a click-through page for showtimes at local theaters, a nearly full-screen movie poster, and web links to Flixster, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDb. Trailers are intermittently available for the movies in Movies’ database; you can see which ones are included by little triangular play icons on the movie posters. They’re viewable on EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi data networks.

Using either zip code information or the GPS location finder feature, a separate theaters button provides a list of local theaters automatically sorted by distance—including less than 3, 5, 10, 15, or 20 miles, as well as more than 20 miles—or by name, each with links to the map address and phone number. You can pick and save favorites to be displayed first. In short, the movie and theater listing features are in some ways as good as Now Playing’s, in some ways not, but they’re pretty well-implemented overall.

Two other interesting features aren’t found in any of the other applications we tested. “Upcoming” lets you see upcoming movie data pages for at least four months from the current date—currently through the end of the year—plus details and showtimes if they’re already available. Another button, DVD, provides a nicely laid-out list of new DVD releases, plus a search engine for all past DVD releases, with links to the Flixster website for much more info, photos, and even iTunes downloading if available. The latter option’s currently not useful on the iPod touch or iPhone device itself, but you can e-mail yourself a link to that Flixster page if you want to make a purchase later.

There are only a few omissions in Movies—features that could make it the best of this collection of programs without any question. The trailers and movies database isn’t as comprehensive as it could be; though you’ll find everything currently in theaters listed here, you’ll find even more future films, and trailer links, in other apps such as Trailers below. Additionally, there’s no purchasing option for movie theater tickets, which makes Now Playing more convenient once you’ve located a movie you want to see; Movies tells you to contact your local theater for purchasing options, which is an unfortunate gap. And Movies’ inclusion of a DVD release feature would similarly be even better if it provided direct ordering functionality and a comparison search engine. But if you can put these issues aside, there’s no doubt that Movies does a really solid job of making it easy to find information, reviews, and trailers for currently available movies in different formats. It might not beat Now Playing for the limited tasks that application focuses upon, but it tries to do more, and largely succeeds. It’s a very cool free app. iLounge Rating: B+.

Now Playing

Even more focused than Movies, Now Playing (Free, formerly named BoxOffice) by Cyrus Najmabadi is focused on doing two things: providing you with an easily sorted list of current theatrical movie releases, including names, ratings, run times, review scores, and release dates, plus a separate list of local theater options. It’s probably the best at the first task, and roughly tied with Movies on the second one.

What makes Now Playing unusually powerful for movies is that it automatically pulls review scores from RottenTomatoes or Metacritic, making its initial list of movies easily searchable by average overall rating—worth knowing—as well as by title or release date. The movies list is super-easy to browse for good picks, but devoid of poster-style art; this appears only when you click on a film’s title. On that screen, you get text details, a trailer—viewable on EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi—and the option to e-mail listing details to someone else. Click on the list of theaters, which is sorted by distance or name, and you can call up linked addresses quickly on the device’s Map, or call via a telephone number link. Unlike Movies, you also get fully linked ticket ordering abilities via Fandango, as each of Now Playing’s showtimes is connected to an iPhone-formatted web page to place orders. Now Playing’s approach is a turnkey solution to movie finding, previewing, and ticket purchasing—precisely the sort of thing that makes the iPhone such a powerful pocket device.

On the flip side, Now Playing isn’t flashy, and it’s just not as ambitious as Movies. It does things simply, and it works—both major positives—but we found that its list of far away theaters wasn’t as broad as Movies’, and it doesn’t try to do DVD or future releases, either. Similarly, despite the fact that it’s been localized into a wide number of different languages, there’s only theater country support for the United States; the developer notes that additional support is coming in the future. We’ll have to see how Now Playing evolves, but for right now, it’s our favorite app for finding currently playing movies in U.S. theaters. We wish we could use it for even more, but for free, it does a very good job. iLounge Rating: B+.

OneTap Movies and Showtimes

At first glance, OneTap Movies ($2) by Avantar seems to have one of the most Apple-like interfaces of the bunch—twin banners at the top of pages look like the iTunes Store or App Store on the iPhone, and scrolling lists of movies and theaters present plenty of information about what’s available without requiring lots of extra clicks. There are separate bottom-of-screen buttons for theaters, and films sorted by popularity, rating, and newness.

But when you start clicking through the pages, the Apple analogy breaks down, as it becomes obvious that the layout and interface design aren’t really Cupertino in approach. Pages for movies alternate between readable and really small fonts, use hidden scrolling boxes, and sport not so hot layouts for presenting information. Less than intuitively, clicking on certain parts of the main menu listings will produce different results; one part of a listing will bring up a description, while another part will call up a trailer—viewable on EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi—and a drop down arrow could call up showtimes. You also can’t do anything once you’ve found a movie you like, save to know what time to go to see it; there’s no ticket purchasing feature. While the basics of the interface are sound, their execution and conspicuousness could use some refinement.

The omissions and design issues relative to Movies and Now Playing are fairly obvious. Theaters are linked to map details, but not telephone numbers. There are tiny IMDb links that you might never know were there unless you tried clicking on them. Reviews consist of simple star ratings with no information on how they’ve been deduced, and there’s nothing more future focused than this week to see, either. In sum, One Tap Movie offers little for $2 that the best other apps give away for free, as it has limited information, few links, and a somewhat clumsy interface. We’d call it not so hot given its competition. iLounge Rating: C-.

On a more positive note, Avantar’s Showtimes (Free) is a free version of OneTap Movies, stripping out only a couple of its frills—movie posters and trailers—while keeping the rest of the interface almost entirely intact. It’s designed to look less impressive than OneTap Movies, and succeeds, but it was obviously created under the theory that there wouldn’t be competing free apps out there with more features. By the standards of the other free apps in this roundup, it’s only OK, but it does offer another option for those who just want showtimes and movie titles to quickly browse through. iLounge Rating: C+.

Trailers and Trailers Lite

The final two movie applications for the iPhone are Trailers ($4) and Trailers Lite (Free) by xTeo. Though it’s tempting to dismiss Trailers out of hand because of the limited functionality it provides—it’s just a trailer display application—a large database and some novel features help it do a good job of providing access to what are otherwise freely available movie trailers and posters on the Internet.

Unlike the other programs shown here, Trailers is sort of like a front end for Apple’s official QuickTime Trailers web site, including not just individual trailers for individual movies, but also downloadable movie posters and—potentially, at least—multiple trailers for individual films if they’re available. Interestingly, Trailers lets you save posters to your photos collection, using a higher resolution than the standard iPhone screen capture, and also includes trailers for both upcoming and current movies. It lets you e-mail trailer links to someone else, as well.

The problems with Trailers are several in number. First, and not discussed anywhere in its program description on the App Store, it only works when an iPhone or iPod touch is in Wi-Fi mode; it doesn’t work with the iPhone or iPhone 3G in either EDGE or 3G data mode. Additionally, besides its overly high price, it’s very bare on film details, doing little more than referring you to Apple’s trailer web page or the movie’s official site for more. All the details and links it provides are all basically just captured from Apple’s own trailers web site, and reformatted hastily for the iPhone—Apple could and probably should have done this itself. Similarly, while Trailers has a more visually-focused widescreen poster browsing mode that lets you pick films by image rather than text, it then doesn’t rotate the rest of its informational interface into the widescreen format. This is all putting aside the fact that you don’t benefit from any of the movie ticket, theater finding, and other features found in trailer-laden apps such as Movies and Now Playing.

Overall, Trailers feels like it’s not quite finished yet, but thanks to its database, there’s more to be seen here than in KickScreen above, and serious potential for this application to provide considerably more value than a mere YouTube database search could offer. We look forward to seeing what the developer does with upcoming versions, and hope that the price will become more reasonable. iLounge Rating: C.

Trailers Lite is the free version of Trailers, offering similar but slightly stripped down functionality as a teaser of what’s in the full version of the application. In addition to working only on Wi-Fi networks, Lite is limited to showing 50 trailers rather than the over 300 found in the paid version, makes it a little less convenient to play each trailer, and lacks the ability to save movie posters to your photos collection. Practically speaking, this means that Lite gives you the ability to see most of the trailers for films currently in theaters—plus some that aren’t—and get basic details and art for the movies in the directory. We view Trailers Lite as a fine add-on app to Movies and Now Playing, with the ability to sometimes fill in a gap in their trailer databases; some users may not want to clutter their iPhone or iPod touch menus with it, though, as it’s substantially overlapping the work of Movies, Now Playing, and the iPhone’s integrated YouTube functionality without doing much more. iLounge Rating: B-.

Description:
One of the best features of the iPhone is that it’s able to determine your current location. But missing is something that’s become a staple of most GPS systems: a quick way to find points of interest around you. Where To provides that in a slick, intuitive user experience.

Find food, places to shop, fun things to do and much more with just a few taps. Then quickly get driving directions to your destination through a familiar Maps user interface.

Not sure what you want for dinner tonight? Tap “Surprise Me!” to make the choice. Take a chance and find something new and exciting!

Price: $2.99

Review:

Description:

Fotomatic puts your favorite Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa photo albums in the palm of your hand with animated, captivating slideshows that are fun to watch and cool to show off! Simply enter or search for the names of online photo albums hosted on Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa, and they’ll be automatically transferred to your iPhone (or iPod touch).

From your iPhone, you can browse your photos or watch them within uniquely animated slideshow themes. View them mounted in a virtual photo book, zooming past you, part of a mural, and many more! Fotomatic also features a unique “Add Fun Album” feature, where you can instantly access public photo albums, ranging from landmarks, sports, and shoes to cars, skateboarding, and NASA!

Fotomatic is designed to meet all your mobile photo needs and combines multiple photo apps into one. Enjoy your photos on the go in a whole new way! More screenshots coming soon.

Features:

• A multitude of animated slideshow playback themes
• Seamless Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa downloads
• “Add Fun Album” offers instant access to countless public photo albums
• Intuitive multi-touch interface to browse, navigate, and manage photo albums
• Automatic updating of previously downloaded albums on startup
• Downloads photos while you view other albums

Cost: $4.99

Video Review:

I have read some of the reviews on the Google App for the iPhone over at the App store and I don’t think people quite get it.  They are blasting the app stating they can do web searches already from safari.  But the Google App does a whole lot more.  You can search your contacts, your previous searches, websites, and it provides suggestions as you type.

I have found the app to be very useful.  It has not quite found it’s way on to the front page of my iphone yet, but it is secure on the second page for the moment.

So, if you have a lot of contacts or do frequent web searches from your iPhone, then this app may be just the thing to fit the bill.  Browse to the app store and download the Google App, it’s free of charge and helps get all the google goodness to your screen that much faster.

So iPhone software release 2.0 was let loose on the masses yesterday and with it came the much anticipated App store.  Apple released over 500 applications on launch day, enough to make any iPhone fan boy’s head spin.  While it is impossible to download and try every application I present to you the apps I found to be most useful, possibly leaving some gems yet to be discovered.  If you have others, leave a comment and I will try it out.  I’d love to have some apps crack the top 5.

So without much further ado I present to you my top 5 free applications from the iPhone app store.

Application #1   Remote

Remote from Apple found an instant home on the front page of my iPhone.  It allows you to remotely control iTunes or Apple TV from anywhere in the house.  If you have an Apple TV and a lot of media, this application turns your iPhone in to the THE perfect remote control for it.  You can call up movies, songs, albums, podcasts, do searches and more…then have it displayed in HD glory right on your TV.

Applications like this will help Apple sell more Apple TV’s, iPhones, etc because the convergence of all the media and the ease of use of all of the products can not be matched by ANY OTHER manufacturer.  This is truly a killer app that with all the right pieces in place, makes the digital home that much easier to negotiate.  This App is Free.

Application #2  Yellowpages.com Mobile

Knowledge is power and Yellowpages mobile gives you knowledge about your local surroundings by the bucket load.

Want to find the local auto inspection place?  Type “auto inspection”  YP Mobile will locate you, and provide a listing of all the area shops who provide auto inspections.  You can then call them directly from the app, view them on the map or view shop hours.

The app also lists local events in your area so you always know what is going on in your surroundings.

This app is much faster than finding the same information on the web, and the data online is very up to date.  This App is Free.

Application #3 Weatherbug

This app has been around for some time on PC desk tops and for the mac.  Now it makes it way to the iPhone.  Once I downloaded Weather bug I moved the Apple weather application to the back page of my iPhone because I won’t be using it any more.

Weatherbug provides so much more information like windspeed, direction, rain, humidity, dew point, radar, live local photos, etc.  There is no comparrison between the weather information you get from this app and the information you get from app that came with the iPhone.  If you care about the temp outside, what the weather is doing, and what it is going to do you need Weatherbug.  This App is Free.

Application #4 Bloomberg

If you have a 401K you keep an eye on then this is the app for you.  All the doom and gloom of the recent markets is right there before your eyes with beautiful charts and diagrams in a fashion that only an iPhone app could pull off.  Pinch and scroll, zoom and browse as you watch your hard earned retirement shrink into pennies on the dollar.

Time to sell the iPhone so the kids can go to college.

If you can bear to look at it this a great app with all the financial information you will ever need.  Maybe you can use it to seize some buying opportunities and turn in to the next Warren Buffet.  If you do strike it rich drop a couple a bucks at iPhone app review as a way of saying thanks for pointing you to this great free app.

Application #5 OneTap

If you still like to go out to the movies instead of downloading the torrents then this app will show what is on at the theaters near you.  It will locate your position, show you the theaters near by, and list everything playing.  From there you can watch trailers, see start times etc.

The interface is really slick and can help you decide where you want to buy that $12 bag of popcorn at. Unlike the popcorn, OnTap is free to download.

That about sums it up for me, I would love to hear what you think.

At $9.99 I think this app is a little over priced.  $4.99 would be a little better price range for this app.  You can’t blame the developer though, it’s not often you get to walk on stage at an Apple press event to announce your new app…I might over price my app by a few bucks too.

The app allows you to record and lay multiple tracks down which is kind of cool.  It also has a few pre-recorded songs.  The nice thing about the pre-recorded songs is that it highlights the guitar licks or piano keys as they are played so you can learn from the sound track how to play the song.  Since I am not too musically inclined I wish there were more sound samples to help teach me a few of the ropes.

Overall this is a fun app for the musical novice, it may be more useful for someone who actually knows and understands music.  Somewhat overpriced…I give it a 3 out of 5 stars.