7 Top Apps Your iPhones’ Home Page

Any moment now the iPhone App Store will hit an amazing 10,000 apps - and I reckon I've got most of them. Well, not really, but I have downloaded well over 100. At the moment I've got nearly 100 on my iPhone, though I really must get ruthless and cut that back to the ones I really use.

Before I progress, that reminds me, is it possible for someone to write an app that logs your usage of other apps - so you can more easily work out which ones to ditch? And, as Will Cray, a reader on iPhone Matters suggested, it'd be nice if your most used apps could (optionally) automatically gravitate to the front page or two.

I love that idea. At the moment I have to manually move my most used apps to my iPhone's home page.

So what is on my home page?

Of the Apple apps, I still have Calendar, Text (SMS), Phone, Photos, iPod, Calculator, Camera, Safari and App Store. And on my favourites bar at the bottom of the screen, Mail, Settings, and Notes.

Third party apps, I have the following:

Night Camera
Love both the idea and the ingenuity. One of the most exciting things about the iPhone is how clever developers are and the ideas they've come up with to get the most out of it

Night Camera is a good example. It takes a picture automatically (there is an also a manual option), but not until you're holding the camera still. It does this using the accelerometer to detect movement.

This means your images will be much sharper. It has become my default camera on the iPhone. In it's original version it did have some problems (which has pushed its rating on iTunes lower), but I haven't had any problems with it recently.

Price: US$0.99

TimeLogger
For logging time when working on projects, this app is close to perfect. I looked at other apps that log time and they all seemed to make the process time consuming itself. That said, TimeLogger could be streamlined even more.

It also has excellent reporting, allowing you to email a CSV file of you logged time, which with little effort, can be massaged in Calc, OpenOffice's spreadsheet app, into a report with sub-totals and totals of your hours by task and client.

Price: Currently on special at US$2.99

Pocket Weather
This is an Australian only weather app which uses the infinitely more accurate figures from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. (I don't know where the Apple weather app gets its data, but for Australia it is usually quite inaccurate, even for its current weather.)

Pocket Weather has gorgeous graphics and interface, showing current weather, forecasts and other information all on one page. Radars are also available.

I have looked at the Australian alternatives, but none of them present the weather as well as Pocket Weather.

Price: AU$2.49

Night Stand
This is another one of those apps that shows off a developer's ingenuity. It is a simple but wonderfully useful idea. It turns your iPhone into a digital clock. Therefore, you can put it next to your bed at night and not need any other clock. This does require you to connect your iPhone to power. But even that's good coz you wake up and your iPhone's fully charged.

Future releases will include an alarm with snooze, and different types of digital clocks as well as hopefully a really cool feature I suggested. (Given the quality and ingenuity of Night Stand, I am looking forward to seeing their soon to be released game "The Plateau".)

Price: Free

WordBook
With every other dictionary/thesaurus (at the time) charging an arm and a leg it was refreshing to find a more affordable one. Plus it appeared to be the easiest to use, with nice features such as definitions and synonyms appearing on the same page.

OS X's built-in, right-click dictionary has made me a bit of an addict for looking up words I don't know. And now with WordBook, I've got a dictionary where ever I am.

With its bonus features of anagram, crossword and scrabble tools, it really is great value.

Price: AU$9.99 (US price unknown to me)

Wikipanion
Wikipanion is my favourite Wikipedia lookup app. It does require internet access, but given the offline versions download 2GB data to your iPhone, it's preferable.

Price: Free

NetNewsWire
Until Mail got RSS feed reading, NetNewsWire was my favourite newsreader on the Mac. On the iPhone, it's got no competition. This is the fourth app in my favourites bar.

Price: Free

So that's my iPhone home page and therefore the apps I use the most - and of course they are all highly recommended.

What apps are on the home page of your Phone (or iPod touch)?