In order for the iPhone to truly be a superb productivity tool it needs to be easy and fast to use.

Two new apps appeared in the App Store last night which have the potential to be tremendously useful in this regard.

"HurryMail" and "You’re #1" are small, simple utilities that make using the iPhone a bit more convenient.

While I wish each were free… at under a buck each, I think both are conveniences worth the money.

Both are good examples of the way in which developers are thinking, "Now what would make using the iPhone a bit faster?" It is just one more reminder of the value of personalizing your individual device- with apps of YOUR choosing.

A review of “HurryMail” can be found here. A review of “You’re #1” can be found here.
 

Answer: When It Is An eBook Or A Shortcut

Okay, this may seems like a mindless rant. It is… but this just bugs me.

With over 1000 applications already in the App Store and many added each and every day it is hard enough to sort through the applications without non-applications clogging things even more.

The degree of pollution is astounding!

Two cases in point-

According to a post over on Fortune Magazine in a little over a two weeks the App Store more than doubled the number of available iPhone and iPod Touch applications.

What began with 500 applications has now swelled to over 1000.

WOW!

The more interesting number is that, according to the article, 90% of apps in the App Store are $10 or less. At the same time the number of free apps, 25% on July 11, is now down to 20%.

As we have known all along, the real iPhone news this summer has been the App Store and clearly, as the numbers show, we’re just getting started.

With over 1000 apps available though the big question is…

A bit of friendly advice–

Always look at the free alternatives on the App Store before hitting the "Buy" button.

Yeah, I’m sure it goes without saying, but with so many apps and so many of them cost more than a dollar or two it is always good to remind one another.

Case in point…

I have the good fortune to be a contributer to the blogs Just Another Mobile Monday and Gear Diary. Both use Wordpress so it only made sense to check out the available options for blogging to them from an iPhone. What we found is yet another example in which a free app comes close or surpasses a paid app.

We tried BlogWriter, a $9.99 app and we tried Wordpress, which is free.

I won’t go into details on each since I will be posting reviews of both later today, but I will offer my conclusion…

When the App Store first opened ZDNet’s Matt Miller asked, "Why do we need 10 tip calculators"

It is an excellent question, especially since I’m not sure why I need ONE tip calculator let alone ten.

Looking around the App Store last night, though, I came up with what I think is an EVEN BETTER question. The question…

"Why do we need 1, let alone 5 (and growing), Magic8Ball apps??"

"Who better to answer such a question than the apps themselves?" I asked myself. After all, they ARE supposed to offer insight and answers.

For the sake of this website, therefore, I downloaded all of them and asked the same series of questions of each.

One of them was kind enough to share the history of this piece of American culture. Turns out the Magic8Ball was incented in 1946 by Abe Bookman of the Alebe Toy Company. The original black plastic sphere came with 20 different answers which is interesting since all of the iPhone versions seem to have far less than that.

Here are my questions… and the various answers I received…

As the App Store continues to grow the number of applications with different takes on similar functionality and/or tasks continues to grow. And it isn’t just in the arena of task management which, from the very beginning, saw multiple versions with different functionality at differing price-points.

Competition is a good thing and the more we see multiple apps that do similar things, the more opportunity we will have to compare and contrast apps in the search for the ones that work best for us and are the best value.

I posted this over on Just Another Mobile Monday but wanted to share it here (with minor edits), as well.

Since making the move from Windows Mobile to the iPhone last August I have not missed a whole lot.

There is, however, one app I would really really really love to see make its way from Windows Mobile to the iPhone. The name of the app? NewsBreak.

Newsbreak is, by far, the best RSS reader available for Windows Mobile. I started using it back when it was first in beta and swore by it as it became increasingly powerful with each new version. Nothing could/can hold a candle to it. (You can read Doug Goldring of JAMM’s review here.)

NewsBreak’s developers, Ilium did a fantastic job with it. I, for one, would love to see it brought to the iPhone.

Why do I want to see it so badly? Three reasons-

One of the nicest features of 1Password for iPhone is its ability to securely sync with a Mac over WiFi. It does not, however, do so "out of the box" since it requires the most recent build of 1Password for Mac and the application’s software updater is not currently showing its availability.

It is available and…

One of my favorite "can’t do without it" Mac OS X applications is 1Password. It is a powerhouse for guarding my passwords, makes logging into secure websites a breeze and secures data that needs to be locked down.

And that is just the start of what it can do.

I was thrilled to see that 1Password for iPhone has finally arrived and is currenty a free download from the App Store. We’ll be giving it a complete look over the next few days and will have a full review shortly.

Based on my experience with 1Password on my desktop and just a few minutes with the iPhone app, though, I would already strongly suggest getting it. 

Did I happen to mention that it is currently FREE?

MagicPad, a new notepad for the iPhone and iPod Touch that includes, among other things Cut and Paste is awaiting approval for admission to the App Store.

This is huge news for anyone who wants to use their iPhone or iPod Touch as a key productivity device. One of the biggest issues facing those of us who use our iPhones for work is the inability to quickly and easily format and edit text. All that will change with the upcoming release of MagicPad.

Gizmodo has a pre-release video of an iPhone 3G running MagicPad and all I can say is- "WOW!"

This is HUGE news and you can bet we’ll be reviewing it as soon as it is released.