Lifestyle
This is one of those Apps that I've been wondering about since Apple first opened the App Store! I even mentioned it as one of the Missing In Action Apps of 2009. Our wait is over! Apple has finally released an Apple Store App (seemingly a no-brainer). My vision for such an App was simple. You would be able to see where your closest Apple store was (especially when traveling), book appointments with the Genius Bar (classes, etc.) and maybe even buy products. Apple delivered just that yesterday. In typical Apple fashion the app is well designed and easy to navigate. The App also takes advantage of both Location Services and Push Notifications. You can even use it to reserve your shinny new iPhone 4 for pickup.
Read Customer Reviews, Check Prices and More
Although the App does a good job in letting you search the store and place orders right inside the App, it currently doesn't seem to support CTO orders where you might want to configure a system with your exact specifications. Not sure why since it seems to have everything else? However, you do get to see customer reviews and of course pricing right there in the App for comparison shipping. Besides not letting you do CTO (configure to order) systems, the only other thing that I was SHOCKED by was the fact that this NEW App is not a native iPad app. Does it work on the iPad? Yep! However, it doesn't take advantage of the iPad's screen size. I know that the good folks over at Apple Inc. are busy getting the iPhone 4 out the door, but it just seems odd that a NEW App (not an update) released in 2010 by the mothership wouldn't be iPad native. On the flip side of the argument, you could say that the iPad doesn't need this App. I was reminded by a buddy that surfing the Apple Store Online via the Safari Browser in the App is fine as is. I have to admit that he has a point. I completed one of my family member iPhone 4 orders completely on the iPad using Safari including ordering accessories and the only part of the process that was a little painful was changing the quantity in the quantity field for a couple of the items since the cursor doesn't want to go to the right of the number that's already there. Otherwise, Safari was great to access the Apple Store Online. Still seems a bit inconsistent since both iTunes and the App Store get nice big beautiful Apps for the iPad and also the fact that Apple touts how many native iPad apps there are now (10,000+).
The Apple Store App is FREE and if you buy Apple products there's no reason not to have it. Get it here: 
Times have certainly changed since I was a kid. I can remember growing up in a major city as a kid and going off to play with my friends for hours at a time. Roaming the streets and quite frankly my parents would have no idea where I was or how far I had gone. I knew to be home by the time the street lights came on and life was good! Those days are long gone. We have to be ever so careful now with our kids and our loved ones. Your neighbors can seem like the nicest most honest folks on the block, however what you might not know is that they may be registered sex offenders.
Sex Offenders Search solves the mystery of "is that guy a creep?"
Unfortunately, there is an App for that. It's actually not unfortunate that the App exists, it's unfortunate that we need it. Luckily convicted Sex Offenders are required to register and this App allows you to find them based on your Location. You can see their picture, their address and even the crimes that they were charged with and to be very honest with you, it was pretty disturbing to see the number of pin points appear on the map in my area. If you have kids, a wife, sister, mother, cousin or girlfriend, you need this App!
AroundMe is one of those applications that you simply take for granted. It just works! AroundMe is a location based App that can show you the nearest Bank, Bar, Gas Station, Hospital, Hotel, Movie Theater, Restaurant, Supermarket, Theater, Taxi and even Apple Store. I've been using this App pretty much since day one and I realized that I never really gave it a review. I did review similar apps and I remember back then that someone recommended AroundMe as an alternative. I downloaded it, installed it and have been happy ever since.
AroundMe just got a whole lot better
It's one thing for an App to work as advertised. It also cool that an App has a feature that the rest don't have such as the nearest Apple Store. However, the latest version of AroundMe adds something that just made my day. AroundMe now has the ability to hand over the address of the location you found to the Navigon GPS App for quick turn-by-turn routing. AroundMe has always featured an integrated Map, but now they've taken things up a notch by integrating with my favorite GPS navigation App, Navigon Mobile Navigator.
Grocery shopping is one the few chores that I actually don't mind so much. The reason is, I make a list, get what's on it and get out. I guess I'm a typical guy when it comes to shopping. I've been using a different grocery list until I came across Grocery iQ and the quite frankly the difference is night and day!
They had me at "barcode scanning"
Grocery iQ takes the pain out of creating a shopping list. One of the things that immediately attracted me to this app was the ability to create your list by simply scanning the barcodes of the items that you need to buy. You can of course add things manually, or even type in the barcode (great for iPod touch owners), but being able to add just about everything to my list without ever touching the keyboard was phenomenal! This is one of those few apps that I really can't find anything wrong with. Every time I went to look for a feature, it was there!
Granted, I don't use makeup. However, I can certainly appreciate what women must go through in trying different products or looks. I also have an appreciation for facial recognition software and that's what MakeUp uses. If you think about it, when you bring a photo into this app it has to figure out where your different features are to be able to apply the makeup in the right places.
Start with an existing photo, the built-in model photo or take one with your iPhone camera. Once you have the photo up you can either apply makeup to the eyes, skin or lips.
One of the things that really bugs me about the iPhone's built-in calendar is that there is no way to set an alert/alarm for Birthdays. They are already present in most of my Contacts. They appear automatically on the "Birthdays" Calendar, yet Apple doesn't allow you to set reminders for this calendar without going through some workarounds. It wasn't even until iPhone OS 3.0 that I had a way of subscribing to my Birthdays calendar on my IPhone directly. So there is still a LOT of room for improvement in this area.
Occasions
Occasions is an iPhone app that is designed to overcome this shortcoming. It automatically picks up the birthdays and anniversaries in your Contacts. You can also enter events manually if you need to. It then keeps a running list in chronological order of upcoming occasions. While there are many iPhone apps that do this including the app I was using before "Upcoming Events", this app supports the iPhone 3.0 Push Notifications feature. This means that the app can pop up alerts and sounds without being open! My old app still hasn't been updated with this important feature so I've moved on.
This is one of those apps that you should have, but hope you never have to use. Having been in a few auto accidents in the past myself, I know how much of a daze you can be in even if you're physically OK. If the police come, you're all set as they'll make a report. However, if it's a minor fender bender, then you may be on your own to collect all the details for your insurance claim.
That's where iWrecked comes in
This app aims to be the data collection point for all the relative information regarding your accident. It prompts you to enter the information that you may not be thinking about at the moment. Since your iPhone is also a camera, you can even insert the pictures you take. Also don't forget to take pictures of the road conditions and surrounding area. There is an Emergency Call area to call 911, towing in the area you're in via Google Maps and for a Taxi.
Once you complete the accident report you can preview it and then send it via email in PDF format.
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:
This one is for the trivia buffs (or to combat them 
). Cool Facts is an iPhone (iPod touch) app that now boasts 6,500+ Cool Facts. I was actually surprised by some of the entries. Not that I think I know a lot about a lot of things, but some made me go "wow, I'd never heard that before!" This app is a great conversation starter (please resist the temptation to use it on a date. You know who you are).
The app displays the facts in a random order. You can swipe your finger to go to the next fact or shake your iPhone/iPod touch to go to the next one. It seems that shaking is actually a little more responsive than swiping.
I would guess that most of the folks reading this blog have some type of membership card either in their wallet/purse or on their keychains or worse, you have them in both places. My keychain was starting to look like the shoppers section in the Sunday paper.
My keychain already has enough on it
Sometimes having these little tags do actaully help you out at check out time with discounts that appear right on your bill for that transaction. Krogers is good for this. Others add up your rebates and actually send you coupons that are as good as cash. Staples is good this. So using the cards do help you save cash. The one thing that always bugged me was having to have a different card for every single merchant. Why couldn't their be ONE card that you get when you go to any merchant and it would have YOUR number on it? When you go to a different merchant, they just add YOUR number to their system. This way each person only has to have ONE card. Oh well, that'l probably never happen. The CardStar app offers the next closest thing!
