http://www.geardiary.com/2009/04/06/stanza-ebook-reader-for-iphone-updated/

You see, Pocket Cocktails is an absolutely gorgeous drink recipe app for the iPhone.  The interface is fun and retro, which is a big plus for me…but the real beauty lies in the recipes themselves.  Each one features a painstakingly photographed drink to go along with the recipe, presumably so you know how the drink is supposed to turn out.  When we were planning my birthday party, I thumbed through all the yummy-looking drinks and landed on a pretty pinkish one that looked delicious–the French Martini.  I sent my husband out for party supplies and he came back loaded down with raspberry vodka, Chambord, and pineapple juice…the very instruments of my demise.

Despite the hangover, the drink–and the party–were both raging successes, and Pocket Cocktails became a must-have app on my iPhone.  I’m forever hemming and hawing about what drink to order at a bar, especially if I’m in the mood for something fruity.  I’ve never been a beer girl, and sometimes I’m just not feeling like having a glass of wine.  Most of the time if I’m drinking liquor, the fruitier and girlier the drink is, the happier I will be!  Pocket Cocktails is not just a reference for mixing my own drinks, it’s a great primer for ordering something a little more exotic than your typical Cape Cod or Long Island Iced Tea.  And if the bartender doesn’t know how to make it?  Just hand him your iPhone!

What really impressed me was that Pocket Cocktails was developed by Robert Maran and his fiancée out of their apartment in Toronto.  They set up their bedroom as a temporary studio to shoot the gorgeous drink photos and put the app together.  One thing I love about Apple app development is that it allows anyone who can make an application to do so, without requiring significant resource needs or overhead.   I really enjoy supporting small developers like Robert because I can tell that a lot of hard work and attention to detail went into the development.

I highly recommend Pocket Cocktails if you’re in the market for a drink recipe app for the iPhone.  For more information or to purchase the app, please visit http://www.pocketcocktails.com.

Gameplay is intuitive and uses the iPhone’s tilt sensor to great advantage.  The goal is to match at least three of the same colored pieces in a grouping, with combinations possible that create chain reactions for super high scores, special pieces that fill in all the empty spaces on the board, and pieces that let you move around on the board exactly where you want, which allows for easier diffusion of bomb pieces and matching of locked pieces.  Once you get to a certain level from matching the pieces, the bombs and locked pieces show up to throw a wrench in the works!

I was intrigued to see that Demiforce included unlockable achievements in the game, similar to the system on the XBox 360.  My husband is addicted to the achievements, and I am starting to come around to them myself.  Demiforce has even developed an achievement system called Onyx Online that will allow any iPhone game to have achievements, leaderboards, and more.  With iPhone gaming becoming so popular, I think it would be really cool to have more online gameplay and community features.

I cannot recommend Trism enough.  It’s a solid, fun game that is sure to please any puzzle game lover.  It’s on sale right now for 2.99, which is a bargain.  Go to the iTunes App Store to pick it up here.  To learn more about Trism, visit http://www.demiforce.com/games.html.

I’m not a huge fan of the built-in iPhone calendar–it is functional, and I have it syncing with my Google Calendar via NuevaSync, but otherwise it’s nothing to write home about.  I’m used to a much more robust calendaring setup, and I’ve really had to do some work to make this simplified setup useful to me.  I am looking forward to having my categories back, as well as other great PI features that I’m really missing.

Pocket Informant for iPhone won’t be as fancy as Pocket Informant 8 for Windows Mobile is, considering that it’s written from the ground up instead of being a direct port.  That’s really a benefit to the end user though, because 1) it’ll be more solid from the get-go and 2) it really shows that the developers care about the iPhone platform enough to do the work the right way.

One of the things I’m most excited about is that Pocket Informant will sync with Google Calendar for calendar sync, and Toodledo for task sync.  This is how the developers are getting around syncing issues and lack of access to the iPhone databases for the calendar.  I hate having to sync my phone up to the computer on a regular basis because I am very used to syncing to the “cloud” now.

I personally can’t wait for the program–I know that the delays are due to Alex & company at WebIS doing the best job they possibly can, and that the road to developing such a feature-rich app is never a smooth one.  Even though Alex has said on his blog that he’d love to have it 100% complete by the end of the month, it’s probably heading our way sometime right around Macworld (January 5-9) or shortly thereafter.  I think it’d make a great birthday present for me…so hopefully I’ll get an iTunes gift card from the birthday fairy that I can put towards it!

Pocket Informant for iPhone will retail for $19.99 and will be available for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.  For more information, visit http://www.pocketinformant.com.

There have been a few attempts at a proof of concept so far; the popular Notes replacement app MagicPad features copying and pasting between notes, but not between MagicPad and any other app on the iPhone.  Back in August, an open-source solution called OpenClip was introduced that allowed users to copy and paste between applications using a common folder that the apps could read from and write to.  However, firmware upgrade 2.1 broke OpenClip and I haven’t heard much about it since then.

Enter pastebud – an ingenious workaround that lets you copy and paste between Mail and Safari (really, the apps that I have wanted to copy and paste between) using a couple of handy bookmarks in Safari and a secret pastebud address that only you have access to.  Clipboards are deleted after five minutes to avoid any potential security issues, and the developers say they’re looking to make it even more secure in the future.  It does not require your iPhone to be jailbroken nor does it require anything to be downloaded from the App Store.  It is free to use, but users can upgrade their clipboard for $5 to remove the pastebud ad clip at the end of their copied text.

All you have to do is fire up Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch, or a web browser on a computer that syncs with your iTunes.  Then you follow the directions on pastebud’s website to bookmark a COPY and a PASTE link.  You have to edit a bit of the link, since pastebud had to be creative with it.  You cannot bookmark a javascript in Mobile Safari, so they had to put a bit of extra text on the front of the link that you just edit out after setting the bookmark.  Then, you just save your secret pastebud address as a contact on your iPhone or iPod Touch, and you’re ready to go!  I’ve tried it out on my iPhone and it’s pretty slick.

Pastebud reminds me a lot of the popular online clipboard service cl1p.net, which I have used quite frequently.  I’ll do a more in-depth review once I’ve had a chance to play with pastebud some more.

To learn more about pastebud, watch the demo I’ve embedded below or visit http://www.pastebud.com.

So, when I was planning my switch over to the iPhone, one of the first things I was concerned about was the availability of a good eBook reader.  I have tons of books in tons of different formats, and it was important to me that I would be able to read them on the iPhone without having to jump through a lot of hoops.

The app that caught my eye after the release of the app store was Stanza.  It promised support for almost every kind of eBook file one could imagine (txt, html, doc, lit, pdf, etc.) and retails for the low, low price of free.  It was the first app that I downloaded in anticipation of purchasing my iPhone…I wanted it ready to rock and roll when I brought my shiny new baby home!

Stanza has two components–the iPhone app, which lets you read books as well as download them OTA from various sources, and the desktop app, which lets you read books on your computer as well as share them over Wi-Fi for download to Stanza on the iPhone.  Right now the desktop app is in Beta and also free.

From the get-go, Stanza was great.  It reminded me a lot of my favorite eBook reader on the Windows Mobile platform, uBook.  I loaded the iPhone up with some books and have used it to read on an almost daily basis since getting my iPhone back in August.  It allows you to fully customize your reading experience with font size, colors, and more.  I prefer my reader to have a black background with white text, which is less hard on my eyes.

Recent updates to Stanza have been amazing.  Books now have cover art associated with them–if your book doesn’t have cover art, all you have to do is tap a few buttons and Stanza loads cover art for you directly from the Internet.  You can even choose from different covers if it brings up a selection.  The covers appear as small thumbnails next to the titles when the phone is in portrait mode, and in landscape mode you can browse your library in a Cover Flow-esque setup.

You can also now purchase and read anything from the eReader/Fictionwise catalog directly from Stanza.  I had some old books purchased from eReader that I hadn’t read, and I used Stanza to download them and put them into my book library.  This is a huge boon for me because I don’t like having multiple applications that serve the same function.  Now I don’t need eReader!  This also means that I’m no longer jealous of the Kindle owners who can buy a book from just about anywhere–now, so can I!

Random House also offered a selection of free eBooks this week, again directly accessed through Stanza on the iPhone.  I must confess, they all looked so good I downloaded every single one!  Who doesn’t love free?

Once Stanza is out of Beta, it will reportedly cost somewhere in the vicinity of $15 (I assume for the desktop application).  I personally can’t wait to give Lexcycle some of my hard earned cash, because they deserve it for writing such fantastic software.  Stanza may very well be my favorite iPhone app…it has a coveted spot on the front page!

For more information on Stanza, please visit http://www.lexcycle.com.

After that I tried Twittelator, Twinkle and TwitterFon, but none of them really did what I wanted them to do.  Twittelator flat out never worked on the iPhone no matter how many times I tried it.  The other two just didn’t really feel like they offered anything more than Twitteriffic did.

I hesitated on buying a Twitter app when Twitteriffic was perfectly functional and for the very reasonable price of free, but I decided that as much as I use my iPhone, I needed a more robust app to do my Twittering and Twitter reading.  I surfed around for a bit and did some custom searches, and decided that I would give Tweetie a try for 2.99.

Boy am I glad I did!  Tweetie has every feature I could have wanted–the ability to load as many tweets as you want, picture posting, location posting, DM and @ replies, retweets, auto-shrinking links, trend watch, custom searches, being able to follow or unfollow people right from the app, the ability to look at your followers and following screens, and MORE!  Plus, it was stable and speedy from the moment I installed it.  It’s been a day or so now and I’ve already used Tweetie more than any of the other Twitter apps I’ve tried.  I love it when an app turns out to be worth every cent of what I paid for it.

For more about Tweetie, visit http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/.