Entertainment
Earlier this year Netflix released their first App for the iOS platform. It was the Netflix App for iPad. The iPad is a great platform for an App of this type and at the same time Netflix also announced that they would be releasing an iPhone version later this summer. Well it's here! I was anxiously awaiting this App not only for the obvious streaming content benefits, but I was also hoping for a great Netflix queue manager. I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed. While the App does let you manage your "Instant Queue" for streaming, it doesn't let you access your DVD queue.Now in all fairness this was never promised and even on the iPad the App brings up your DVD queue in a browser (inside the App). So we've never had native DVD queue management. Nonetheless I was hoping to finally have a Netflix branded App that allowed me complete access and management to all aspects of my account. In the meantime I'm continue use and recommend MovieFlick for Netflix queue management.
Streaming Netflix Videos to your iPhone
As with all video streaming apps you're at the mercy of your available bandwidth. Netflix is no different. On a slower connection you will experience pauses in your video while more video content buffers. On 3G, the video is watchable and GREAT quality, but I did experience a few momentary pauses. On WiFi the experience is much better. With that said, I probably won't be watching too many feature length movies on my iPhone. I'd probably watch a 30 minute TV show here and there while waiting in a line or waiting room. For that, this App is great. Netflix continues to add more and more content for streaming. This makes it easier to continue paying my monthly account fee. I also love the fact that I can start a movie on one device and finish it on another and now that they have support for so many platforms (ie. TiVo, Wii, iOS, etc.)
Downloads would be nice – One of the places that I actually watch the most movies is on planes. While WiFi is coming to more and more flights, streaming video isn't something that people should be doing as the bandwidth would come to a crawl. The ability to download a movie or two before getting on the flight would be nice. Sure I can already do that with iTunes as a rental or purchase, but I'd like to be able to do it via the Netflix account that I'm already paying for. It would be great to be able to download the same selection of streaming content right to the device and watch it offline.
The Bottom Line
The Netflix App does what it claims, but no more. It's FREE, but you need a Netflix account to actually be able to use the App. I'd love to see more account features built-in to this App as well as offline viewing.
You can download it here from the 
It's time for another look at Movies by Flixter. I had given up on and removed this App from my iPhone. Not because it didn't work. I removed it because it took too many taps to get to the one thing I wanted to know: "what time does the movie start?" What most of these Apps suffer from is that they force you to navigate between two to three screens to find your local theater and then show you the movie times. They assume you're opening the App to "choose" a movie or theater. When I go to an App like this, nine times out of ten I've already decided which movie I want to see and guess what, I'm going to the same theater I always go to. So i'm only opening the App to see the start times. For this simple reason, I went with OneTap Movies and haven't looked back. So why look at Movies by Flixter again? I noticed that the App has been updated with native support for the iPad. So I wanted to see what the experience was like on the iPad and I gotta say – WOW! They've come a long ways!
It looks great on the iPad, but that's not enough
While I am a sucker for a pretty (inter)face, I'm pretty adamant about the functionality of an App like this. It has to give me what I want without having to tap my way through several screens every time I use it. So I fired up Movies on my iPad and of course it asked to use my current location. Then after a few moments it presented me with the closest theaters. The one I go to 99% of the time was listed and I saw all the movies and there times at a glance. So far so good. The next thing I did was mark that theater as a Favorite (star) and then I closed the app. I closed it because I wanted to see if it would make me repeat this process all over again upon the next launch of the App. To my pleasure, it took me right back where I left off. This is exactly the way the App (and all others) should have worked all along. The next day I went into the App and again, my theater was right there and still selected and the show times updated. We have a winner. Sounds so simple, but this was a miss with most every other App I tried in the past.
What's up next? Now that I can move beyond my basic requirements, it was time to explore the other features of the App and there are a plenty. You can of course view movie trailers right in the App. You can also see the ever important Rotten Tomato Reviews and ratings. They do a nice job of displaying these ratings right in line with the movies and show times. Nice touch. If your theater supports buying tickets online you can do so within the App and they also added a local restaurant search that is powered by Yelp. Not a movie theater buff? No problem, you can also use the App to see up coming DVD releases. Also when you run this App on your iPhone/iPod touch (not yet implemented on the iPad) you can manage your Netflix queue and share movie ratings via Facebook with your friends.
You can get Movies by Flixter here from the App Store: 
Everyone would agree that some days can be way more stressful than others and sometimes you just need to step back from the situation and chill. Clear your mind. Relax. That's what the Koi Pond App aims to help you with. When you launch the App it turns your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad into a small Koi Pond complete with Koi swimming about and relaxing sounds that you can control. You can just enjoy the show and clear your mind or you can interact with the Koi by using your finger. If you tap the water and make a splash they swim away. If you press and hold your finger in the water they will swim towards you. If you shake your iPhone you actually drop food down and they eat. Very cute.
Lots of options
You can get to the options by tapping the lower right corner of the screen. You can do just about everything including changing the background and volume of the various sounds. You can even sleep timer if you want to drift off to the sounds of the fish swimming about. I wish that I had more to say about this App but that's pretty much it. It does what it says.
You can get Koi Pond for $0.99 here from the App Store:
I've been wanting a Native Netflix App since day one! Don't get me wrong, I know that there are lot's of good Netflix Queue managers out there for iPhone and iPod touch, however the one thing that they all suffer from is the ability to get in and manage your account. It's not their fault. They can only give you access to what Netflix allows them to give you access to. That being said I knew that a "Neflix" branded app would give me what I wanted. I was very pleasantly surprised to see the Netflix App introduced on the day the iPad shipped!
More than just a queue manager
Although I got what I wanted from a queue management and account access stance, the added bonus and probably the biggest reason to use the App is that you get the ability to stream Netflix movies directly to your iPad. That's right you have access to your "Instant Watch" queue and you can watch any movie you want any time you want directly on the iPad. Of course an internet connection is required since the movies stream and don't download. Once I asked a movie to start playing it started in about 20 seconds. The video quality was better than I expected. Maybe slightly less than DVD due to the compression, but certainly very watchable and to date no stuttering or stopping. YMMV based on your internet connection.
The Movies – Now keep in mind that you can't watch just any movie. It has to be one of the over 12,000 that they have available for streaming. Their hands are tied by the movie studios on what's allowed to be streamed and what's not.
Get it here from the App Store for FREE.
They say that the best ideas have been captured on a bar napkin. It's 2010, think green! OK, that's a stretch. However, you do have that shinny NEW iPad with a nice large display and chances are you'll be sitting in a cafe, bar or other meeting and want sketch out some thoughts (ideas). That's where Adobe Ideas comes in. This FREE App allows you to take advantage of your iPad's larger display and using just your finger you can sketch out your ideas in multiple colors and best of all in a vector format.
Adobe Ideas, paper not included
Once you have your Ideas on the iPad you can then easily share them via email right from the App as PDFs. Those PDFs can be opened and edited in Adobe Illustrator as vector drawings. Although Adobe Ideas is vector at heart you can still do things like use an eraser right in the app. Another nice benefit is that you can grab colors from an existing photo in your Library. This is great for when you want to design something quick and you want to use an existing color scheme. It even has 50 levels of Undo and of course you can access a gallery of all your past drawings. The one thing I really like since I can't draw my way out of a paper bag, is the fact that you can bring up a photo as a layer and draw on the drawing layer over it and then turn off the photo layer to just have your sketch!
Adobe Ideas is FREE and you can get it here on the
I'm a fan of Netflix and therefore I'm always looking for a good app to manage my Netflix queue. One of the things I love to do is when I go to the movies and they are playing the trailers for movies that are coming soon, I like to add the ones to my queue right then and there that I want to see, but most likely will not see in theaters. Unfortunately Netflix doesn't offer their own native app so if you want to do this on your iPhone you'll have to use a 3rd party app.
I've tried several apps, but MovieFlick is my pick for "Best Netflix Queue Manager"
Honestly, none of the Netflix queue managers are perfect. Each one has things I like and things I don't like. So for me a Netflix app has to have a few things that I use all the time before I'll even consider it. First of all it has to have the a good, fast search. Those movie previews go by pretty quick, so I need to be able to find a movie fast and add it to my queue. I also need the app to have a good user interface that displays my regular queue and separates out my "Saved queue" for the movies I add that aren't out on disc yet. I also want to see what's available for "Instant" streaming on my TiVo HD. I should also be able to easily rearrange the order of the movies in my queue and of course see ratings, make ratings, see Rotten Tomatoes reviews, make reviews and see trailers. I also want to see if the movie is on Blu-ray vs. DVD. MovieFlick has all of this
iMoo is a simple application that fun to play with. Do you remember those cans that you turn upside down and then right side up and they make a moo sound? Well here is the electronic version of that.
For small kids?
I have to admit that when I first saw this app, I wondered "why?" What I hadn't considered was the endless entertainment that this app would provide to small children (and some larger children. You know who you are!) Sometimes, you need a few moments to think and this could provide you those moments while you keep a small child occupied. Although you probably shouldn't go to far incase they get bored and slam your iPhone/iPod touch to the ground. 
Sometimes I run across an app or someone shows me an app that like a train crash, I just can't look away from. If someone would have said, "hey go download the RunPee" app!" I would have thought they were crazy or even a little sick. Well my friend Wanda sent me an email about this app and I had to go check it out because I trust her opinion. First off get your mind out of the gutter It's not that kind of app!
I can't help but talk about this app! It's so cool. The Apple Remote app has been one of my favorites since it shipped last year when iPhone 2.0 came out. Over time it's had updates to make it better, however Apple just updated it to version 1.3 this week. With the 1.3 update you can now completely control your Apple TV. There has been Apple TV support for a while, but the support had been limited to just choosing content to play and using your iPhone's keyboard to key in text when prompted to for things like passwords and searches.
However, 1.3 now brings multi-touch to the Apple TV. You can use your finger to swipe left, right, up and down to navigate the menus. Since you have access to the menu, you can really do everything that you would do with the supplied remote. You'll need to run the latest software update (2.4) on your Apple TV before you'll see the new interface. This feature also requires the iPhone OS 3.0 update on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Not just for Apple TVs, It's all about iTunes
The main reason behind the Remote app is to give you a Wi-Fi remote to control your computer running iTunes. The concept is simple. You launch iTunes on your computer. You pair your iPhone/iPod touch's Remote app with your copy of iTunes and from that point on you can see all of your playlists, songs, movies, etc. and control their playback. If you have multiple Airtunes speakers, you can even control which ones (rooms) will play the music. Also since it's a Wi-Fi based app, it doesn't require line of sight. You don't even have to be in the same room as your computer.
I often come across great apps for the iPhone/iPod touch that work great and are very exciting to me, however there's a problem. Some of these apps are really only useful to people that have a certain piece of hardware or a certain piece of software on their computer or use a certain service such as a particular bank. If I make one of these apps the iPhone App of the Week, then chances are the app will only appeal to a small segment of my readers. So rather than profiling an app with limited appeal or ignoring the app completely (as I have done in the past), I figured I would group them together from time to time in one post so that there will be a greater chance in seeing something that you can use. So welcome to my first "iPhone App of the Week – Helper Apps!" Here are 10 of my favorite Helper Apps:
