5 must-have iphone/ipod touch apps

i have an ipod touch and i use it like an internet appliance.

i use it every morning to check the weather. in Japan i use it to chat with my girlfriend back home in Canada. i look up new restaurants and cafes to check out around town – all in all, it’s a great gadget and the apps certainly made it so.

here are 5 ipod touch apps that i find indispensable and hard to live without.

Skype

this one is easy – pretty much the top killer app on the platform today. and yes – skype works on the ipod touch. no longer do i have to carry a laptop around to make a VOIP call over skype. the connection is excellent and sometimes even better than on my macbook. i can’t speak for iphone performance but call quality on an ipod touch over an audio technica mic adapter is awesome. i haven’t tried SkypeOut on it – if anyone had, i’d be interested to know how well it works.

Yelp

another unbeatable app. gives urbanspoon a real run for its money. you can search and read reviews about restaurants, bars, shops and services base on your current location or criteria (cost, distance from you, is it open now?). the listings are comprehensive and there’s a really good and dedicated user base here, with the reviews generally helpful and accurate – definitely a must-have app for night owls (i’ve used this to save myself a few times when i got the late night munchies).

Weatherbug

hands down the best of the weather apps i’ve tried (other ones being weathereye and the default weather app). you can get really detailed and up-to-date weather information here, since during setup you actually get to pick the weather station closest to you, not just a generic “city” option. things like windchill and humidity is taken into account too, along with very detailed forecasts. a really handy app for planning an event or just a day outside in general.

NPR News

NPR is one of the most reputable radio syndicator and news source around – requirement for NPR membership is to be non-commercial and educational, and the organization itself is non-profit. the news are good, nothing groundbreaking – although i find them to be more objective than other sources. the real gem here is the ability to listen to certain news items and access pretty much all of the NPR created radio programs – add them to a playlist, and you’ve got yourself a quick little radio programming of your own.

Google Reader

okay, so this one is not really an app but a webapp. still a fantastic, no-frills rss reader – the entries are formatted nice and clear for easy reading on the device screen, and a nice feature that is carried over from the desktop version is the ability to share and e-mail entries – you can do so in a couple of taps. the items are neatly paginated too – only a nice, digestible chunk of entries come up at a time, and when you reach the end you can fetch more. a perfect companion for those few minutes in between that you’ve got to kill.

so that’s a quick list of some of my favorite iphone / ipod touch apps. any tips, questions or comments welcome!

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