iPhone Dispatch Blog

Not everything someone comes up with for the iPhone is good. Harper Collins released previews of some of their books for the iPhone. It claims to have a nice iPhone interface, but not really. You still have to pinch and scale a lot to read them. And the selection is kinda strange. Lots of religious books for some reason. Also, when there are tons of free books online at some sites, lots of good blogs, and other good reading all over the net, it seems strange to be reading just a preview of a paper product.

I found a set of pages with some interesting iPhone tips at The Unofficial iPhone Page. I learned a few things, like you can touch and hold a link on a Web page for a few seconds to see the URL. You can also type “welll” and “helll” to get “we’ll” and “he’ll” without searching for the apostrophe.

There are lots of recipe sites out there, but your computer doesn’t sit in the kitchen. However, your iPhone is always with you, so it seems it would be the perfect device to look up recipes. The folks at 101Cookbooks have an iPhone interface. This is the only one I’ve seen so far. I’d love to see more recipes made available, though.

I like to play a game with my young daughter when I’ve got my laptop. She names anything, usually an animal, and I bring up a picture of it by searching the net. She says “buffalo” and I can instantly show her tons of buffalo pictures. She loves it, and its educational. This is also useful for adults when you want to explain or demonstrate something. You can find pictures of almost anything on the net.
With the iPhone, you don’t even need your computer. You can always use Google image search to do this. I also found a Flickr photo browser that has an iPhone interface.

I’ve been unimpressed by To Do lists applications so far. Too much pressing and typing, plus a require login. But the OneTrip Shopping List is different. Instead of typing, you just navigate quickly through lists of typical grocery items. Not only is it easy to build a list, but it helps remind you of things you might need. Neat idea. It could do with a few more categories and items, though. And the email function seems to be broken at the moment.