Once I saw what the Arrived app did I was very interested but not really for the reasons they made the app. Arrived is a location based app that texts or e-mails friends when you have arrived at a certain place. What makes this different is that you have to set up the place in the app and then who you want to know you are there. Once you set it up (until you change it) it will text or e-mail these friends every time you go to this place. The idea is to invite friends to hang out without having to think about sending them a message. This however is not why I got excited about it.

The idea of Arrived is interesting but what I wanted to use it for is to let me wife know when I went to certain stores. This is happened more than once in my house where I go to Wal-Mart or some store during the day only to get home and have my wife tell me she wished she’d known I was going there. To solve this problem I thought I would use this app to alert my wife when I go to certain stores. The one downside to this is the text isn’t sent right away. I’m sure this app checks every 15 minutes or so to see if you are at one of the locations and then sends an alert. The problem is by the time my wife gets it and text me back I’ve been gone for awhile. This isn’t necessary a faulty app problem but more likely the way it was setup. If it constantly checked where you were it would drain your battery.

This app does have some issues that are the app’s problem. The interface is clunky. It took me awhile to figure out how to delete someone from a location or how to delete a location. If you want to add someone to a location and you already have it setup for other people, then you have to add everyone again. However I think one of the biggest problems is there is no way to setup how to notify the person you are there. Take my wife for example, I have three numbers and two emails for her. With this app I have no way of saying to text her to this number or don’t text her but e-mail her. I contacted the Arrived people about this issue and they said it was something that they would look into.

I think this is a great idea and could become a great app but it needs some work before it’s ready for primetime. It is free though and worth checking out and watching for updates. If they could get the bugs worked out and get a better response time from when you arrived to when the text goes out I think this could be a must have app.

Arrived’s Website

iTunes Store

Ever wish you could easily put pictures and birthdays on your phone contacts? If so MyPhone+ is that app that you need to see. MyPhone+ matches the names of your Facebook friends with the contacts on your phone and when it matches them it then imports pictures, birthdays, and e-mails. The first time I did this it matched most of my contacts but there was also a list of conflicts. These might be names that are slightly different than on Facebook so the app pulls them out to make you confirm that they are the same person.

After running the app all of your contact that were matched up will then show up with their Facebook profile picture. To update the pictures you have to run the app again. The other big part of this app is birthdays. This app will also pull in birthdays from your Facebook friends. If you allow notifications you get an alert when it’s someone’s birthday.

This app is a pretty simple app but it does a good job. The syncing process only takes a couple of seconds even on 3G. It’s .99 in the app store and if you like to have your contacts updated then it’s worth it.

iTunes Store

Glympse is one of the cool sounding apps that I would like to use but really don’t have a need to use. With Glympse you can send someone an email or text and they will get a link that opens a map showing exactly where you are located. This could come in handy if you are meeting someone for lunch or for a meeting. They could see exactly where you are, how fast you are traveling and what time you should be there. The nice thing about Glympse is it’s only for an allotted time. Choose from 5 minutes to 4 hours but after that time runs out they can no longer track you.

I tried this out once when I was meeting my wife for work. She could see where I was and watched me pull into her parking lot at work. It came in handy that I didn’t have to go in to get her because she knew I was already at her building. The app is free and so is the service so it could be fun to play around with for awhile. Like I said this app is a really cool idea but one that right now I don’t have much of a reason to use. However if you meet people a lot it could be a very handy tool.

Glympse’s Website

iTunes Store

Stitcher SmartRadio is an app that allows you to listen to internet radio and control your podcast without having to use iTunes. I listen to a lot of podcasts so that part caught my eye. The nice thing about Stitcher is I can start listening on my computer through their website and then continue listening to that podcast on my iPhone. So say I was listening to the PTI podcast on my computer and had to leave, I then open the app on my iPhone and refresh it, it picks up where the computer left off. This to me is a very nice feature.

Stitcher has both an iPhone and iPad app and both look and work great. The app streams the podcast but it cache them pretty quickly if on Wi-Fi. To add a podcast you search for the name of that podcast and add it to your favorites or if on your iPhone make a channel for that podcast. For example I listen to lots of tech podcast, so I could make a tech channel of all my favorite tech podcast. I like this but what I don’t get is on the iPad those channels aren’t there. This is a nice feature but the fact that the channels don’t sync up across platforms is a deal breaker for me. So instead of making channels I add everything to my favorites channel, which does sync across platforms. If you wanted to make channels on your iPhone, you can add a podcast to more than one channel so that it would show up in favorites and your custom channel.

Stitcher will also recommend podcasts. So I’m listening to the Gamers with Jobs podcast and Stitcher lets me know that I might like DGRadio podcast, Uncle Gamer Radio or Rebel FM. It looks like they get this information by what other listeners listen to in the gaming category that also listen to Gamers with Jobs. Of course you have to have a social tie in nowadays and Stitcher has that as well with Facebook and Twitter. Also an option to email a friend a the name of a podcast you’re listening too that they might want to check out.

Like I said I listen to a lot of podcast and really like the way I can go between iPhone and computer when listening. I have had the iPhone app crash on me and lose my spot in the podcast however that only happened once and I’ve been using it for awhile now. If you listen to podcast then this app is worth checking out.

Stitcher in iTunes

One thing I hate is every store seems to have a discount card that is fighting for space in your wallet or on your keyring, Card Star helps with this.  I have used this app for at least a year and love it.  Card Star allows you to input your discount card number into the app and it creates a barcode that can be scanned.  Kroger for example is a place I shop all the time, so I put my Kroger card into the app and now at check out I have them scan the phone like I would my discount card.

The app has many stores already loaded into it but even if the store isn’t in the app you can list it as other and put your info into it.  A couple of things I’ve noticed using this app, first is if they don’t have a hand scanner it will not work.  Food Lion for example only has the flat scanners and I never can get it to work there.  Also it works much better if you rotate it to landscape mode.

That’s all I’ve ever used this app for and believe me that alone is worth it however the app does more.  When you click on a store, let’s say CVS, on the bottom is an info button that will give the number to customer service, CVS’s home page, and a store locator.  Also under the extra’s button you can check into Foursquare and then there’s a deal button that, well you guessed shows you deals that they store may have.  I don’t use these features so I’m not sure how well they work.

This is an app that I would say is a must have for all iPhone and iPod owners.  No longer do I have all of those plastic tags hanging off of my keychain (I never liked them but the wife would keep putting them back on my keychain).  The app is free.

Free in iTunes

From the a little scary department is the app Been Verified. This app allows you to do background checks on people. Now true all of this information that this app pulls is public information but it’s still a little creepy. The app is free and you get one free background check a month, after that it’s $1.99 per background check.

When I saw this app I was curious how it worked and mostly how accurate it was, so I ran a test. I did a search for myself and I was the first person who came up. Well my middle name was wrong but my parents names were right. The results I got back where mixed.

When you search for someone, one of the first things that comes up is a list of their family members. My list did have my Mom, Dad, Sisters, Brother, one Uncle and one Aunt (I have 9 aunts and uncles), grandfather, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law. Then it also gave me the names of my ex-wife, her husband, her mother, father, uncle, grandfather, and someone I’m not sure who it is. Missing from this list of names where my children.

My age was right but I haven’t lived at the address they showed for over four years. My current address did show up in the previous address section. As I said earlier my middle name was wrong but under aliases they had my correct middle name listed.

This is were I would be very leery of this app, under criminal it had listed several possible matches that had me being arrested for drugs, causing a bomb to explode, and discharging a firearms. None of these were me.

I’m not sure why you would want to use this app except for being curious or maybe to do a background check on someone is around your kids, however I would not trust the information given in this app. Since I knew my information I was able to sort through what was right and what wasn’t but there was a lot of incorrect information. If for some reason you really need a background check ran on someone I would suggest doing it another way.

Free in iTunes

One of the most useful apps for doing a site like this is AppShopper. AppShopper is great for discovering new apps. There are few things this app does, first it gives you a list of all the apps that have changed and it’s a continually updated list. The updates could be a new version, price change or totally new app to the app store. There are filters that you can select so that you see only apps from certain categories, that have been updated, new, price changes, or that are free.

One of my favorite features of this app is the wish list. If there’s an app that you want, add it to the wish list and every time it gets updated you receive an alert. This is great for watching an app for a price drop. Most app (expectably higher priced apps) usually go on sale or drop in price. I’ve picked up several $6.99 apps for $.99 or even free.

I would say about 80% of the apps that I review on this site I found through AppShopper. This app is free and a must have.

AppShopper Website

If you use your iPad to read documents or would like to store documents,GoodReader is your app. GoodReader allows you to read PDF’s, documents from MS Office, iWork, HTML and Safari webarchives, look at photos and even video. I mainly use it to look at PDF’s and word documents. One of the first things I like about GoodReader is how easy it is to get the document into the app. GoodReader allows you to sync up with iDisk, Dropbox, SugarSync,E-Mail, and FTP. I have used Dropbox, E-Mail and FTP and must say it works great.

Once you setup Dropbox you then have access to any file in your Dropbox and simply click a download button to download into GoodReader. E-Mail works much the same way, once it is setup you can pull all your e-mail and see attachments in the e-mail. Simply choose the attachment you want and the file downloads into GoodReader.

GoodReader even allows you to set up folders to store your documents, now I store all kinds of documents that I may need. I do a lot of public speaking and when I get my speech I put in GoodReader and keep it there.

The feature that put this as a must have app is that you can mark up a PDF on your iPad. You can highlight things, cross them out or make notes on the side. The only downside is that I haven’t been able to get the PDF out of GoodReader with the markups. It might just be the way I’m doing it but I haven’t figured that out yet.

GoodReader has become one if not the most important app on my iPad. It’s $4.99 in the app store and for some reason isn’t universal, meaning you have to buy it on the iPad and iPhone.

iTunes Store

Star Walk is really an amazing app. In fact it could be the most amazing app I barely ever use. What you do with Star Walk is walk outside at night a lift you phone in the air, then Star Walk will show you the stars you are looking at and all the constellations around you. This app really is amazing. As you move your phone around it shows the stars that are directly behind your phone and what constellations they make up. Not only that but I lowered it and it showed my neighbors house as well. I really don’t know how it works but it does and works really well. It is a little pricey at $2.99 but if you love looking at stars then this is the app for you.

iTunes Store

Every wanted to keep a journal but didn’t have the time? Momento is an interesting way to keep a journal by doing nothing more than what you do now. This app gets your feeds for Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube, a RSS from your blog, Gowalla, Diggs from Digg, Vimeo Videos, and Lastfm and that’s where the journaling happens. Momento takes those feeds and creates a calendar showing what you posted that day.

Going back on my calendar I can see that on October 11th I went to McDonalds from foursquare and was listening the Lecrea “Used to Do It Too” off of the Rehab album. I’m not sure how far back it goes but mine shows stuff from 2009.

It looks great and has several more features like adding pictures and tagging people. It’s $2.99 in the app store and well worth it.

iTunes Store

Momento’s Website