AppTalk

That's right, today the App Store turns two! One year ago there were 65,000 applications available that had amassed 1.5 billion downloads. Now there are over 229,000 applications available that have been downloaded over 5 billion times. That's one big toddler!!

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

I was all gung-ho to get a 4, but now I'm not so sure. Seems like major reports of glitches are streaming in, particularly regarding a yellow band on the display, and decreased reception if you hold the phone by its sides. (Is that why apple came out with its own holder for the first time?)

I think the buy signal just went to hold--as in hold off for a while.

EA Drops Prices on iPhone Games Including Madden, FIFA and SimCity to $1

For those of you with more than a page or two of apps, organization becomes important. There are many approaches, but a fairly uniform suggestion is that you keep your most used apps on your home (first) page. Here are the apps and sites that I keep up front:

First Row: Contacts, Messages, Calendar, and Maps
Second Row: Google Reader, Google Search, Gmail, Facebook
Third Row: Google Apps, The Weather Channel (NOT the iphone weather app), Shopping List (reviewed in AppTalk), Evernote (ditto)
Fourth Row: Calculator, Camera, Settings, and aNote (to be reviewed soon!)

Bottom Tray: Mail, Phone, Safari, and iPod

What apps do you keep up front?

Another solo appTalk--Ron wasn't there again, this time suffering through the boredom of JazzFest. But, we forged ahead nonetheless:

1. Dropbox (free) was mentioned in the presentation on online backups, so we added that it's available for the iPhone as well. It's a great way to share files between computers via the cloud.

2. We pointed out that many iPhone apps are better than their web page equivalents. Facebook (free) is certainly one of those, as is the Amazon (free) shopping site.

3. In honor of April 15 and tax season, we highlighted Milebug ($1.99--also a limited free version available), an app that very nicely tracks your tax-deductible mileage.

4. If the more you use an app, the better it gets, that's a good thing. And that's what happens to Shopping List. You only have to add items to the database once--the next time you shop for the same item, it's already there.

5. And finally, we briefly looked at Dragon, a great voice recognition app. It transcribes what you record, and from there you can copy it to the clipboard, email it, or text it.