Quick review of five fave new iPhone apps

1. Jott for iPhone rocks! It allows you to take a voice note with one touch to record, one to stop, (touch *anywhere* to start and stop, you don't need to look at the phone), and does its best to transcribe (pretty good job too). And you can categorize your jotts to "work" and "home" if you want. Way more useful than the VoiceNote app I tried. Very useful for keeping notes of stuff while you're driving. Love it. EDIT: The transcriptions are really pretty good.

2. Yelp on the iPhone. Location aware, duh. Built-in obvious categories like:
*coffee and tea
*bars
*restaurants
*drugstores
*gas stations
*banks
And has an "open" filter so you can see only the ones nearby that are *open*. VERY useful app.

3. Facebook: yeah - i know Facebook has had an iPhone version for a while. I like that t allows a simple interface for facebook. The contacts list is great for finding people's info: you can dial or map them directly from here. The mini-feed is cute. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a simple, obvious way to respond to an individual directly from their "mini-feed". You have to go to Friends, find that person in your friends-list, then you can eventually compose a message. It would make more sense to be able to click on the person's name on their mini-feed, and have it bring you directly to their contact page so you can send them a message.

4. NowLocal: local headlines when you want it. Simple. But asks every frickin' time to "use local?" information. Just let me click an "always use local". There is a way to change where you want news for, when you want to do that. So - just save my preference for "use local". EDIT: pretty repetitive - not very good at updating. I suppose if I only tried it once a day, it might be better.

5. Google Mobile Apps: search is easy. Also gives a quick connection to docs, talk, iGoogle, blogger, etc. (Mostly, just brings you to the website for those, but still, it's easier to get there.) Some of the sites could be better optimized for iPhones. Blogger, for example, is just not sized correctly for the iPhone. OTOH - the gmail page is pretty nice. Easier to get to the search my mail part. Looks good. EDIT: Google Reader on iPhone is really good. I'm impressed.

Okay - that's my top 5. Gotta get some work done now. Ciao everyone. And good luck on the iPhone updates!