Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

You’re at the airport waiting for a friend to show up for what seems like an eternity. You get up from your seat at the airport terminal where your friend or family member is supposed to arrive and search around to find a terminal screen showing flight departure/arrival information. The screen shows that they should be arriving soon in about 30 – 45 minutes.

Does this scenario sound familiar? Likely you have waited in an airport terminal for your friends/family and wished you had access to more accurate departure/arrival information. If so, FlightTrack is a necessary app if you want to keep up to date with the latest flight information. FlightTrack allows you to search for a flight based on the airline or arrival/departure times. The iPod Touch/iPhone App then provides detailed information on the flight status including a detailed map showing the current live map of where the plane is located in respect to its destination. The app also provides detailed information on the type of airplane as well as its present speed and altitude.

Theres no doubt that if you are a frequent traveller that you will want this application.

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore.
All Cell Phone Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

If you’re like me, bookkeeping is not something you enjoy. Saving all your receipts and either entering them into a paper based accounting system or a computer based system can be time consuming. This app takes all the effort and work out of tracking your expenses. Since the iPod Touch and iPhone are small enough to fit into your pocket, you can enter expenses into this application as you incur them.

There is a free version of the application limited to 50 entries named iXpenselt Lite and the paid version which does not have the 50 entry limitation. Once you have this app, you will be able to effortlessly track all your expenses.

The application allows you to specify the type of expense whether it is a business or personal expense. It then allows you to categorize and subcategorize the expense and show method of payment and the date the expense occurred.

Itemizing expenses on the fly has never been so easy!

Screenshots of the iXpenseIt App appear below:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore.
All Cell Phone Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

If you want to be able to view the HTML source of a web page on your iPod Touch/iPhone, you’ll want to get this application. All you do is simply launch this application and enter in the web page’s URL into WebSource and it will display the pages HTML source code. This app is perfect for web developers who want to check out their source code quickly while on the move.

Screenshots of the Websource App appear below:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore.
All Cell Phone Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

If you love to Instant message, the Fring App for the iPod Touch or iPhone is a must have app. Fring connects to multiple Instant Messaging platforms including: MSN Messenger™, ICQ™, Google Talk™, Yahoo IM™, AIM™, and Twitter™. You can even use Fring to connect to Skype™ ! There are several options located at the bottom of the app including: Buddy List, History, Dialer, Goto, and More. Buddy List is where you will spend most of your time as it shows all your friends that are online or offline. To chat with someone, you simply press on their name and then you will be presented with the options of either chatting or dialing them (i.e. thru skype). If you choose chat, you will be presented with a small text box at the bottom to enter your message and then it will be displayed on the text box at the top of the screen along with any messages your friend has written. If you want to view a history of your chat sessions, then you would choose history at the bottom of the screen. There is an easily accessible button at the top of the history screen to clear your history. Choosing dialer launches a keypad similar to a standard telephones keypad. From the keypad, you can enter the phone number of the person you wish to call through Skype. Screenshots of the Fring Mobile App appear below:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. All Cell Phone Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

So you just bought a new iPod Touch or iPhone and would like to do some searches on the Internet? Searching the Internet becomes pleasurable with Searchme. Searchme has a Coverflow™-like interface for searching the Internet. You simple type what you are trying to search for into the search box and then you are presented with all the search results which you can scroll through by flicking your finger back and forth on the screen.

The look and design of the app is amazing it allows you to choose the category and then flip through the results. To give readers of my blog a better idea of how it works, I have provided screenshots below. In the case of this mobile app, a picture really is worth a thousand words

Screenshots of the Searchme Mobile App:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore.
All Cell Phone Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Have you ever been out with friends and decided you wanted to go out for dinner but couldn’t decide where to go? You want to try something a little different from your usual dining fare but you and your friends simply can’t decide where to go. Urbanspoon is an iPod Touch/iPhone App that will come in handy for you and your friends.

After downloading and installing the Urbanspoon App, simply choose your city and then have fun with the App as it will make dining suggestions. One really nifty feature of the App is shake mode. When you choose shake, all you need to do is shake your iPod Touch/iPhone and Urbanspoon will randomly choose a place for you to dine. With your decision now made, you can enjoy your evening out with your friends! Of course, the App also allows you to search for specific restaurants or by the category of restaurant. For example, you can search only for fast food restaurants or only for local diners. Urbanspoon also allows you to view all the restaurants and establishments within close proximity to your current location. If you like eating out like I do, you’ll really enjoy this app.

Screenshots of the Urbanspoon Mobile App in action appear below:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore.
All Cell Phone Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Cooliris is a neat app that allows you to search through images found on Google, Youtube, Flickr, Yahoo, and DeviantART.
You can scroll through any images you search for by flicking through them as if turning the page of a book.

The images are arrayed in a tiled pattern across the screen. If you press on an image with your finger, the image expands for a better view. You can search for video and play it through the same interface.

Cooliris also has a service you can subscribe to in order to save favorites of your favorite media content or to save your own images.

Screenshots of the Mobile App for the iPod Touch/iPhone appear below:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore.
All AppStore Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

I just downloaded iPhone 3.0 and will detail both the steps involved in downloading it and some of the new features as viewed directly from my own iPod Touch 2nd Generation.

Installation of iPhone 3.0 on an existing iPod/iPhone
1. First, Connect the dock Connector from your iPod/iPhone to your computer.
2. Launch iTunes™ from your Mac or PC
3. Select your iPod/iPhone in iTunes and choose check for updates (as the screenshot below indicates).

4. You will be asked to agree to Apple’s license agreements and then a Buy button will appear if you are upgrading an iPod or should be free if you have an iPhone.

The software will download to your iTunes and will take awhile as it was roughly 257 megs according to the iTunes software. It took about 8 minutes to download to my computer on my 7meg dsl connection. I suspect if you wait till later in the week to download it, the download will likely be quicker without all the server load from users trying to download it on release day.

Once the software has downloaded (as long as your iPod/iPhone is still connected to your computer via the dock connector) it should begin installation. Your iPod/iPhone will show a loading bar for a good 5 or 6 minutes while the software is updated and verified and the firmware version updated. Once the install is complete, the iPod/iPhone should automatically reboot and it is important that you let the iPod/iPhone reboot without turning it off at this point as it could hinder the install.

After I installed the update, I noticed that my icons for my apps were out of order. At first, I thought the update had somehow deleted all my apps. But I suspect what happened was that the new Voice Memos icon pushed one of my apps onto the next screen all by itself. So when I scrolled over one screen from the home screen, I had one single icon on it. Because Voice Memos is a new feature of iPhone 3.0, it adds a new icon to the home screen and likely the extra icon shifted all my icons for my apps over. I suspect that other users may also have their icons shifted around due to the extra Voice Memo icon.

Another annoyance I found with the new software, when I played around with the new Parental restrictions and disabled Safari access the Safari icon disappeared as expected. When I re-enabled the Safari app using the parental restrictions, the Safari app reappeared on the home screen. However, I noticed when I rebooted my iPod Touch that the Safari icon (though enabled again) appeared on the very last page of my apps instead of on the home screen. I repeated this process twice just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke and both times after a reboot Safari ended up on the last page of my apps. So it appears when you disable an app with parental restrictions, that you may get some shuffling of your icons. This could fool users who aren’t computer savvy into thinking that the app is still disabled. You can, of course, inconveniently drag the icon back to its previous location but it seems bizarre that the icon is rearranged only upon reboot of the iPod/iPhone.

I had an opportunity to play with the new copy and paste features as well which I have provided screenshots of later on in this blog post. Overall, if you are an iPod Touch user the primary advantages of this update are the landscape keyboard, copy and paste functionality, spotlight search, Voice Memos (only if you have a set of headphones with a built-in mic which doesn’t come standard with the iPod), parental controls, auto fill in Safari, ability to hold more apps, iTunes rentals and iTunes U.

The iPhone 3G S of course sports additional features which you can check out on Apple’s web site.

To do a search using spotlight on the new iPhone 3.0, simply flick your finger to the right on the iPod Touch home screen and you should be taken to the spotlight search where you can search your entire iPod or iPhone for music, podcasts, movies, apps, pictures, or files that are stored on it. A screenshot of the new home screen and the Spotlight screen appear below:

As you can see from the screenshots, the spotlight icon is located at the bottom of the iPod Touch/iPhone home screen. Flicking your finger to the right should bring up the spotlight screen in the second screenshot above.

The Voice Memo feature is the next most obvious feature. Pressing the Voice Memo icon should launch the app and present a screen similar to the following screenshots:

If you press the record button (the button with the red dot), the Voice Memo will start recording unless you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone and do not have a Mic connected. The iPod Touch does not come with a Mic as standard equipment but you can purchase headphones with a Mic from most retailers that sell Apple hardware if you wish to use the Voice Memo feature. If you have an iPhone all the hardware you need should have come with your iPhone. Pressing the second button on the Voice Memo takes you to the screen as shown in the second screenshot above. You can choose to share or delete the voice memo.

Next up I tried the landscape keyboard in my email app and it definitely was a pleasure to use over the portrait keyboard. Though I have fairly small fingers, even I had difficulty using the portrait keyboard. So the new keyboard should make it very easy for those of us with small fingers and somewhat easier for those with fat fingers. I was able to type a whole sentence on my email without a single spelling mistake which I couldn’t accomplish before with the portrait keyboard. A screenshot of the keyboard in action appears below:

Cut Copy and Paste is relatively easy! Simply place your cursor before the word you want to select and a box will appear prompting to Select, Select all, or Paste. If you choose select, only the word immediately following the cursor will be selected. If you choose select all, all the text on the screen will be selected though you can drag the bar at the end if you want to select just specific text (i.e. more than a single word but not the whole text). The screenshots below will help you to visualize the process:

Tune into my blog for my upcoming review of the new iPhone 3.0 Parental Controls

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

App Sniper is a useful app to have since it keeps you up to date with the latest prices and deals on iPod/iPhone apps. Often app developers will offer their app at a reduced price or even for free at times. App Sniper keeps track of current prices of Apps and notifies you of any apps that are discounted or even free.

If you want to get the best deal on apps and reduce your costs, then you need App Sniper! It is relatively easy to use. Apps are displayed in a scrollable list. There are buttons at the bottom that categorize apps into “$On Sale”, “New Apps”, “Hot Apps”, “Snipes”, and a Config button for modifying the settings of App Sniper. The “Hot Apps” button, on the bottom button bar, displays various categories such as Entertainment, Games, Utilities, Social Networking, etc.

The Snipe button allows you to watch Apps you are interested in and set a price you are willing to pay for the App. App Sniper will then inform you if the App is ever on sale at the price you are willing to pay for it.

Screenshots provided below:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. All AppStore Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

I recently downloaded Text Free an SMS texting app for the iPod touch. It is relatively easy to use and seems to support the majority of Mobile providers in North America.

To send a text, you enter the mobile phone number ( including the area code ) of the mobile user you wish to send a text message. In the message box you type the message you wish to send them ( there are buttons for common emoticons at the bottom of the screen such as the smile face ), and then click send.

Once you click the send button, you are asked to choose your country from a selection list and also your Mobile provider. Text-Free then allows you to send your message through e-mail to the mobile user you are trying to contact.

Screenshots provided below:

3rd party Apps such as this one available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. All AppStore Apps we review can be found under the Mobile Apps section and the iPod Touch App Reviews section of our website