Four Australian iPhone Apps for your Australian iPhone
Some bonza blokes and sheilas who like iPhones as much as we do made some bloody good apps for us Aussies to use. We tuck into four beaut apps in the iPhone Software forum and let you know why you should plonk down your two bob for these programs. Maaate.
Pocket Weather
The weather app on the iPhone is rubbish if you live in Australia. It grabs data from Yahoo! who grab their data from The Weather Channel in the USA. Bah.
The Bureau of Meteorology is where it's at for Australian weather stats, anyone else is 2nd rate. Luckily for us, Pocket Weather is here and it grabs it's data from the BOM. It's even got a radar stashed in there so you can time when to leave the house around the rain so you don't get drenched. Does a 3 day forecast, current wind speed, direction, rain fall, humidity and UV index. If you travel often or like to keep tabs on different cities, you can view them all on the iPhone quickly as PocketWeather starts off with a list of cities to choose from and you can create a bookmark list.
It's $2.49 from the App Store. A worthwhile investment if you like your weather stats.
IceTV
You all know what
IceTV is right? You don't? Well, the best way to describe it would be that it's a TV guide on steroids. If you use a Beyonwiz or Topfield PVR or the lovely EyeTV, you want IceTV. Simply tap show you want to record and it will sync back with your PVR and tell it to record what you just selected. You can see what you've got lined up to record, see what IceTV recommends for you and see a regular 7-day TV guide for all the free to air channels. There's other TV guides on the App Store, but IceTV's is the classiest and if you're an IceTV subscriber, syncs so well to your PVR so you never miss an episode of Search for a Supermodel.
The app is free, so you've got nothing to lose.
Metro Melbourne & Sydney
I don't drive a car. Tumbling along at 100km/h in a hunk of steel that spews carbon dioxide and costs thousands to buy and maintain? No thanks. I'd rather walk and catch the train, bus or tram. If you're like me and use public transport often, Metro Melbourne/Sydney rocks. At it's core is a timetable. It lists the train times and such and tells you when the next one is or you tell it what time you want to catch the train and it tells you what's happening at that time too. Metro also has the snazzy feature of using GPS to find out where the nearest stops are for your current location and lists what services are at that stop. This is fantastic for the bus as there's often stops around you didn't even know existed.
There are free versions for you to wet your whistle with and the glorious full version for only $3.99 - right now it's just Sydney and Melbourne. Maybe bug the developers and they'll make one for where you live.
Pennytel
Pennytel are one of the cheapest VOIP providers in Australia for casual residential customers. They're also the first to have an app for the iPhone that ties directly into their service. The app does VOIP phone calls, receives phone calls to your Pennytel VOIP number, sends SMS (and sends it with the reply-to number as your mobile) and can tap into your Pennytel voicemail. You can't make or receive VOIP calls over 3G (unfortunately), phone calls are limited to wi-fi, but you can send SMS over 3G. The app is a bit rough (you can tell a Mac user didn't make it, hah), but it works well once you've got your firewall set up properly and if you make a lot of phone calls of any type, it will save you money. I use it now to replace my home phone to make phone calls with. It doesn't work in the background (unless you jailbreak your phone and use
Backgrounder), so if someone calls you while the app is closed, you won't know about it. If someone calls you on your mobile, while you're using the Pennytel app, it will quit the Pennytel app and go to the phone call. The app isn't perfect, but it's pretty useful if you're after some sort of VOIP app for your phone.
It's free to download and free to sign up, you just buy some credit and go for it.
