Software
My top ten iPhone App Store applications
I still have my first gen iPhone, and don’t think I’ll be upgrading anytime soon (unless TeleNav comes through with their GPS app). 
But I, along with everyone else, have been getting apps off the App Store for a little over a week now… and here is my top 10 favorite App Store apps:
10. PhoneSaber - Yes I had to put it on the list.
As you can probably tell by the name it’s a lightsaber for your iPhone.. remember, the site is ‘Random ramblings of a geek’.
9. Pangea VR
This app is WAY too cool. It lets you view 360 degree photos on your iPhone.
You can scroll around, up, down, zoom in and out of the pictures.
They have a pretty large database and some of the pictures are just breathtaking.
8. eBay Mobile
Everything you’d expect, buy, sell, track your items.. it’s eBay in your pocket and very well done!
7. De Blob
This is a very fun game.
You control a blob (either by tilting the phone, or with your finger) and you have to go around restoring color to different zones of the world.. it’s very addicting!
6. WordPress
This just came out tonight and already it’s on the list.
It allows you to edit existing posts and create new posts directly from the iPhone.
It’s pretty basic, but it’s GREAT for posting on the go, I’m going to be writing to the blog a lot more because of it!!
5. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
This is just plain amazing.
It’s a kart racing game, with everything you’d expect in one of these games, and it really feels like your on a PSP or other gaming system.
The controls use that accelerometer to steer, and simple taps for launching weapons, drifting around corners, jumping, etc..
There’s another kart game calld ‘Cro-Mag Rally’, but this is MUCH better IMHO.
4. Shazam
When I first downloaded this I must have messed with this thing for about an hour.
You ever hear a song on the radio and don’t know the artist or song?
All you need to do is launch Shazam, have it “listen” to the song for about 12 seconds (the default setting), it will analyze it and return the artist, song, album info, etc.. it’s just friggen amazing.
3. eReader
This is an eBook reader app but is getting a lot of crap because it only uses the eReader format, but it does it REALLY well.
You can adjust the font type, font size, go to landscape mode, etc..
It will remember where you are in the book so you don’t lose your place and the books are stored locally so you don’t need an Internet connection.
If you already have a big eBook library this is not the app for you, I have no eBooks so this is working great for me!
2. Blackjack 21
I’ve already been spending WAY to long playing Blackjack on my phone.
I have to be honest, this is not the BEST Blackjack game I’ve ever played, but it’s perfect for the iPhone.
Simple, yet elegant and not overly bloated.
1. Pandora Radio
This is by far my favorite app!
If you don’t know what Pandora Radio is, it lets you create “stations” based on an artist or song.
It then uses an algorithm to automatically play artists similar to your selection.
The best part about it is that it works GREAT over Edge (like I said I have a 1st gen iPhone) with no dropouts unless you get in a weak signal area.
I’m going to cancel my Sirius subscription because of this app!
So there you have it, my top 10.
This is my opinion and obviously I haven’t tried every single app on the store, so if you have any you’d like to add feel free to leave a comment. 
First post from Wordpress iPhone app
This is very cool, the Wordpress app for the iPhone JUST came out.
It was SUPER easy to setup, so here’s my first test post.
I have a feeling I’ll be adding to the blog a lot more now.
You can even attach pictures, so here’s one of what the app looks like:
iPhone, Outlook, iCal and Google Calendar bliss.
Ok, so we use Outlook with Exchange, my phone is an iPhone and with the 2.0 update I can now sync to Exchange for mail and calendar (and contacts which I’m not doing).
The cool thing is that when you link to your Exchange calendar, you can view add and edit and changes (almost) immediately show up on the Exchange calendar.
The problem is that if you do that, it’s the only calendar you can have on your phone. Plus I use iCal on my Mac and Google Calendar from time to time… this post explains how I got around that and am now in calendar syncing bliss.
Basically the way I got everything working is I use Google Calendar as a back end for all my other calendars, meaning everything syncs to and from Google Calendar.
First iCal:
I use a program called BusySync, there is another app called Spanning Sync, but BusySync has MUCH better pricing. There is also Gcaldaemon, which is open source but kind of difficult to set up, let’s just say that that kind of app is why I don’t use Linux anymore, but if you can get it working more power to you!
This app lets you select which iCal calendar you want to share with which Google Calendar, then set a schedule to tell it how often to sync.. it works VERY well.
Now Exchange / Outlook:
There is a free sync tool from Google, but it only lets you sync your primary calendar. In my case this is my work stuff that I do not want to mix with my personal stuff, so this didn’t work for me.
What I ended up using was gSyncit. This lets you pick any Outlook Calendar and sync it with any Google Calendar.
I just created a new calendar in Outlook, called ‘Personal’, and synced it with the same Google calendar that I synchronized iCal with.
iPhone:
The iPhone was easy. I just set up a new Exchange connection, selected to sync my mail and my calendar and that was it.
Now when I go to the calendar on the iPhone I can see my calendar for work stuff, the one I created for personal or appointments for both calendars.
The best part about this whole thing is everything is bi-directional.
What I mean is that if I update my calendar on my phone (essentially my exchange calendar) it will immediately show up in Outlook, then when gSycinit runs it will sync with Google calendar and then when BusySync runs it will sync with iCal… so basically within 5-10 minutes my update will show up on all my calendars!
This goes for any of the calendars, I can update any of them and it will update all the other calendars.. a beautiful thing!
iPhone SDK download issues
Apparently Apple is having issues with the distribution of the iPhone SDK.
I signed in, updated my info and got the Email to download the SDK, when I clicked on the download link in the Email I got it said page not found.
I’ll try later and update the post if I have any luck.
Update:
Wow, that’s kind of messed up. The download link doesn’t work in Firefox, but works in Safari..
Iphone SDK released today, update coming in June.
Apple made good on their promise of releasing the iPhone SDK today.. of course we’ll have to wait until June to use any of the apps.
Update: Apple has just posted a link to the ‘March 6 Event’ .
This post has a really quick rundown of the conference Apple held today about the SDK.
