English: iphone Deutsch: iphone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hello there, neighbors! The past week or so has been quite the grind, and I didn’t want to end the week without a little something from the Neighborhood.
This week, Mr. D finally said adieu to his reliable Blackberry. It was a rugged little email machine, to be sure, but not much else. Anyway, I did cave (against my inner voice telling me to hang Steve Jobs in effigy) and purchased a 32-gig iPhone 5 (which is NOT pictured here). I have to admit, after a day or two of playing with it, this little doctrination device from Apple is quite a nifty little gadget.
Now to fill it with all those wonderful new tools, or time wasters, known as “apps.”
I need your help. Since I really don’t want to look on my own (nor do I have the time), I’m asking the folks in the Neighborhood for a couple of things:
1. What are the top 10 must-have apps on my phone (APART from the pre-installed ones)?
2. Are there any good, reliable…and FREE…history or social studies apps out there?
Any help on this would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Mr. D's Neighborhood 
If I give you my top iPhone apps, will you add “Falls” to your article on Margaret Corbin, as Highland, Highland Lake, Highland Mills, the village of Highland Falls, and the town of Highlands which includes the village, are all different places? (Confusing high lands west of Hudson river, grumble…)
If you Facebook, there’s an app for that. If you Twitter (seems so, yes) there’s an app for that. Dropbox is a good online storage utility, and app. There are many PDF readers, but I’m happy with Goodreader. Activate Find iPhone, so that you can remotely call or lock your iPhone if lost. Skype has an app. Weatherbug is better than Weather Channel’s app, and My Radar is good for just seeing radar, all better than Apple’s standard weather app. Netflix has an app. Fandango (for buying movie tix online) has an app. Quick Scan reads barcodes and QR codes. (Useful for price checking in a store, or getting more information from a sign— many historical sites are using these now.) Kindle, Nook and Audible all have apps, in addition to IBooks & Newstand. Overdrive can often be used to access eBooks from your local library. Stanza was the most beautiful app in the world for reading Project Gutenberg books for free, until Amazon bought them and broke their kneecaps. There are other eBook reader apps out there, but none as great as Stanza was. NPR (and CNN, but I deleted them because they updated too often) have apps. If you are religious, there are Bible apps which many find useful to keep up with daily reading plans. If you love games, Angry Birds and Plants v. Zombies are good waiting-in-the-grocery-line games. If you love music, Shazam can identify many songs after listening for a minute. If you love astronomy, Star Walk will show you a labelled night sky, with planetrises, galaxies, satellites and meteor showers thrown in. If you love photography, some people get into Instagram. If you have toddlers, the app store has a flotilla of good apps for them, Monkey Preschool Lunchbox gives seconds and seconds fo fun. If you are a fitness nut, try Runmeter, MapMyRun, or Zombies, Run! I hate iCal, but have yet to find anything perfect to switch to. There are other browsers than Safari, like Opera. Siri is a pill. Dragon has a voice recognition program, but it needs to be connected to the internet, slurping your data, in order to work. Biggest difference between Blackberry and iPhone: keyboard, stupid AutoCorrect and less helpful reminder software.