iPhone apps I have known: not for me

These apps I’ve downloaded and since deleted, for various reasons touched on below. Titles link to the app store.

(See the other iPhone app reviews in the series.)

Blue Skies Lite

28.3 MB, free

A game vaguely reminiscent of Raid on Bungeling Bay (trivia: this, Will Wright’s first game, led him to develop the original SimCity).

ColorTilt

0.8 MB, $1

I got this to entertain the dude. He has better things to do with his time.

Google Earth

8.9 MB, free

Very (very) cool. But why do I need this in my pocket?

iTalk Recorder

0.6 MB, free

Voice recording app. But Evernote already does this, and then keeps track of the audio clip for me.

Jott Notepad

0.5 MB, free

This was another of those things that I thought I should use (speech recognition on the server powers notetaking, SMS, email, calendar items, etc.). Never ended up using it.

Loopt

1.1 MB, free

If I were younger and spontaneously meeting up with friends, I might find this neat.

OpenTable

0.3 MB, free

Check availability and make reservations at participating restaurants. Very neat, but I just don’t eat out enough to make this worth an icon slot (q.v. Loopt).

Pocketpedia

0.3 MB, free

Syncs with a (paid) desktop app that catalogs your books, CDs, etc. Neat idea; never used it.

Rogue

0.3 MB, free

Q.v. the other review.

ShapeWriter Free

1.1 MB, free

Basically a proof-of-concept app where you drag your finger across a keyboard to type words. Clever, and a neat demo, but not very useful. Maybe when the OS supports cut-and-paste.

2D Sense

0.5 MB, free

Scans and interprets various 2D barcode formats. I expected it to do 1D (UPC/ISBN) barcodes; I should have read the title more closely. (Turns out that the iPhone’s camera is very poor at taking pictures of barcodes, so the UPC category is still open. The current solution seems to be an iPhone case with a little macro lens that can slide over the built-in lens, in conjunction with Snappr.)

(See the other iPhone app reviews in the series.)