What are your favorite free iPhone applications?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Everybody loves free stuff, and that’s as true with iPhone apps as with anything. So, what are Dopers’ free iPhone apps. Let’s restrict this one to freebies, since it’s easy to go crazy even with 99 cent apps.

Mine are:

AOL Radio, Tunin.FM, SHOUTcast, Pandora, and Slacker, all streaming radio apps.

Weather Bug, an application that gives you detailed weather forecasts for your area.

Action Bowling, a free stripped-down bowling game. You can’t customize balls or play against other players, but you can bowl a full 10 frames. It’s very easy to play. You just flick you finger up the screen to roll the ball, or you can move your hand like you’re using a Wii controller.

Shazam - Have you ever heard a song on the radio and wanted to know the title? With Shazam, you just hold your iPhone to the speaker to sample the song, and within 30 seconds, it gives you the song’s name, artist, and the album it was released on.

A couple of more that aren’t really apps:

TV.com, which puts a bookmark on your main screen. It takes you to TV.com, which is owned by CBS and has full QuickTime episodes of current and classic shows, such as CSI, Numb3rs, MacGyver, and Star Trek TOS available to stream over 3G.

NBC.com is similar. Just go there in Safari and set it as an icon for your main screen. Similar to TV.com, they also have full QuickTime episodes of shows such as Parks and Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock.

2

What’s the benefit of adding another icon to my screen over just marking them with a bookmark?

3

Epicurious - let’s me search recipes quickly, and will create a shopping list based on the recipes I select.

Stanza - good e-book reader. It lets you upload your own books in a wide variety of formats or you can search multiple catalogs online.

4

Let’s see, the free apps I use most are probably:

Word Warp: You get a set of six letters and need to make as many words from them as you can. Get the six letter word (or one of them) to move on to the next level. I think there’s a paid version, but the ads in the free version aren’t too intrusive. I’m not sure about the latest version, but my strong suggestion is to go into the options and increase the time limit per level. I think when I first got it it was one minute. Three is much more achievable, while still challenging.

Pandora: Streaming radio station “seeded” from an initial song or artist. You need to have an account on their website (also free), but it’s handy if you’re someplace with wifi or a strong 3G signal (if using 2nd gen iPhone).

Weather Channel: Weather information.

Mint.com Another app that requires registration with the website (but still free on both ends). Tracks your financial accounts, budgeting, etc. I think it may be a spin-off from MotleyFool.com, if not it is endorsed by them.

5

Why not? I can open them quickly from the main screen like an app rather than going into Safari. Whichever floats your boat.

6

Just curious. I’ve never added home screen icons before, as I tend to try to reduce screen clutter. But then, my bookmarks are a mess…

7

Wall street journal and new York times, both may go pay after 3.0 comes out

Bloomberg news

Seadragon is one that I got right at the beginning but only now really looking at it more lately

If you blog, the wordpress app

Facebook and myspace are equally good, myspace in particular is leaps and bounds ahead of it’s web site

Aol aim and yahoo messenger will probably be useful once 3.0 comes out, they need push to be effectively useful.

Declan

8

As for my favorite freebies…

**Y! Fan: ** I can’t access my fantasy teams at work, and this logs onto my Yahoo leagues. I managed to get a free Pro upgrade, which allows unlimited teams, but the free version gives you one. It’s a good program. You can’t do add/drops, but it’s responsive.

i.TV: This could be a favorite, if I had my TiVo hooked up correctly. As it is, its a TV Guide for my iPhone. A very responsive TV Guide with listings and reviews for shows, you can schedule your home TiVo to record anything you need. It also has movie times, reviews and can buy tickets for participating theaters through it. And holy cow - it connects to your Netflix queue as well. Didn’t notice that.

Lux Touch: Risk, for the iPhone. I play this constantly.

TapDefense: If I’m not playing Lux, I’m playing this tower defense game.

WootWatch: Gotta get your daily woot.com info (and shirt.woot and sellout.woot), and this is currently updating today while the woot off is going on.

9

RepairPal is a neat little app for estimating the cost of repairs on your car.

LightSaber is an obvious fun toy.

JellyCar is a pretty little game that uses the accelerometer.

Tangrams kept me busy for awhile (but has a limited amount of levels).

Cookie Solitaire is an awesome solitaire version that had me playing over and over and training the battery.

Maze Finger is a tracing game.

10

Have you opened this up recently? Last time I did, they loaded a ton of new puzzles. For free!

11

Instapaper - I just have a Touch, so this is great to load up interesting web pages to read for later when I’m away from a wireless connection.

BargainBin - What can I say, I’m a sucker for bargains. This app tracks apps that have gone on sale recently.

WordSearch - Hey, word searches are fun!

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TuxRacer - I used to play this on my old computer, and the app is even more fun. Drains the battery very quickly, though.

Stanza - Works with Project Gutenberg, which is giving me enough reading material to keep me busy. I may or may not ever buy any books through it.

And it isn’t free (it’s 2.99$), but for all the Dopers doing the C25K program, there’s an app for it that will give you cues for changing paces but you can play your own music from your playlists. Very cool.

13

Facebook
New York Times
Pandora

14

Yes, Stanza is good. I have a whole bunch of Oz books from the online Project Gutenberg through it. Getting files off my computer is more problematic though. You are supposed to open them in the desktop version of Stanza, then use the iPhone version to copy them to the phoen, but it doesn’t seem to work lately–and I’ve done it before.

(I also have some HP Lovecraft. Do NOT read HP Lovecraft just before falling asleep. You will have very ‘interesting’ dreams if you do.)

Unfortunately, many apps like Pandora and, infuriatingly, Skype, are not available in Canada.

15

Lemonade Tycoon - kills my battery too fast, though.

Facebook

Joost - though it doesn’t quite work as advertised. Many videos won’t load.

JellyCar

Wikipanion

Stanza

Pandora

KanonDrum

16

Why do you have to get the files on your computer first? I just go to the Online Catalog in the Library section of the app, then go to Project Gutenberg and search based on whatever criteria I want. No need to use my computer at all.

17

Here’s the last time we did this with lots of good app suggestions.

18

What’s the difference between the free AIM app and the $2.99 AIM app??

Other than the obvious two dollars and ninety nine cents, thank you Mr. Internet Rocket Engineer!!!

19

At a guess cause I have not downloaded it , the free app has paid advertising, while the pay version does not. A number of applications are marketed it like that.

Declan

20

The $2.99 one has a purple icon. :smiley:

(The free one has a little ad at the bottom of the page.)