Twinkle. Still at the top of the list and still one of the best iphone applications out there. Brought to us by Tapulous, it’s a great twitter app with a little bit more on top. Anything more to add to my original post? Not really, its still a great app and one that I use every day.

The Google App is, of course, still there. And still very useful even if more semantic information is not hugely available around Ireland. Handy for Dublin, not so much for everywhere else.

The NY Times iPhone application is still my source for American news when I’m on the move and there still isn’t a better news application on the iPhone in terms of usabilty and functionality. The news stories aren’t bad either…

Another news application but one a little closer to home – the BBCReader from “New Way to See News“(The website is pretty dreadful by the way). A handy application that I use to read my favorite news site. It’s very handy and once opened will download all the headline stories in the background so you can read any news story even if you are out of signal or in a EDGE(instead of 3G) area. And as this happens more you would like his is very handy.

Eirtext from Vinny Coyne’s “Lack of Concept” software. It’s a very handy piece of software and very useful. Unfortunately, you have to move back and forward between the iPhone text and this software and for that reason I don’t use it an awful lot. However with many people now on “Pay as you go” iPhones this will become even more useful for those people.

All in all, There’s a very healthy iPhone application market out there, especially on the free apps side of things. The above apps are just the ones that I think Irish users will most appreciate. However, I have been known to have been wrong in the past… so let me know if there are any apps that you think should be in the list?

Twinkle

One of the best applications out there. Brought to us by Tapulous. It is the best twitter application that I’ve come across but with the added benefit of location aware twittering. Really useful for finding local interesting people to follow – especially now that so many people are twittering. It can be quite daunting to watch that “everyone” feed on the twitter website, so many people… so many people saying not a whole lot. This cuts down on the noise while still allowing you to find very interesting people. It has a nice filter ability so that you can change the range that you allow tweets to come from. Unfortunately the recently changed to local distance measurements. It used to be 100 miles, which allowed me to see updates from Belfast and a couple of other places (I’m in Dublin). Now, however, its changed to 100km which doesn’t reach that far. Not that much of an issue though as a good few Dublin iPhone users have found this great application. I should also point out that you can change it to 500 or 1000 or everyone but out that far and you’re back to the noise of the unintelligible crowd.

Palringo

The App that saves me a fortune in text messaging bills. It allows you to log into a number of chat applications(like gchat and msn to name but a few.) and instant message your friends. An easy to use interface, and native to the iPhone so you don’t have to have the browser open to use it. Apparently it will stay active even if the screen turns off, as long as its the only third party app running(This is an Apple limitation – linkage). I can’t exactly vouch for that as I’ve only used it for short periods of time to get a good few IM’s out.

Google App

Let Google help you find the nearest hotel. Or pizza place. Or bar. The possibilities are really endless. Location aware searching along with all the normal google goodness. Need I say more?

Facebook Application

As much as I lothe it, most of my friends spend their entire days on this website. The application has a very good messaging system and its for that reason that i recommend this one as its very handy for talking to users on facebook. And the messages appear in the profile chat box so you can add multiple facebook users to the chat. Something that no other chat app does on the iPhone as far as I can tell. I have a very brief profile for this very reason. And even though Bebo still owns the lion share of users in Ireland, Facebook is growing here and most people have both so it wont be hard to convert anyone that doesn’t over to it.

NY Times App

This is going to be a controversial pick for 5th place as its for a American newspaper. However, as a regular user of this application its great for those of us here with an eye to the Americas as well as those with interests closer to home. It covers international news and sports as well as editorial features which having read a few are quite interesting and entertaining. I have used this app to get through my fairly boring commutes on the train. Easiest way to catch the world news if you don’t mind missing the local stories.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Have I missed anything? Probably. Actually – Definitely. I’d love to be able to add the Pandora iPhone app to the above list but it isn’t available here(Either is the website, technically). Which is a real pity as its one of the greatest internet applications that I’ve ever come across. Post a comment if there’s anything that you think that Irish iPhone users would be interested in or if there’s anything hugely glaringly obvious that I’ve left out.

Edit 17/08/2008: As pointed out in the comments (Thanks Michael), I should have included EirText in here. Silly me. What a nice little application. Very handy if you want to text a number of people at the same time For Free. Very handy. However i don’t believe it is a replacement for then in built iPhone SMS application as it… well… just doesn’t look as good. And you have to go back and forward between the iPhone’s messaging application and the Eirtext application. Which, although would save you quite a bit of money, would get quite annoying. However I definitely feel I should be mentioning it here after using it to organise a night out on Saturday…

I’ve been a 3 customer for a long time. Over two years. And that is really long for me as I’m probably best known for my fickle nature with regards things like this. This change to o2 will be my fourth mobile operator change – in about 7 years. So I’ll have been with every operator now. And the first 4 of those years were with Eircell/Vodafone so they don’t really count. Then I changed to Meteor when the hype moved over to the hottest young operator on the block, and then to 3 when they first launched here in Ireland too. They offered good data plans for non business users before anyone else was and that made me make the change. And it was great for checking cinema times, news headlines, etc. while on the go but proper web browsing? Nope.

But that’s not really their fault. It wasn’t until recently that we’ve seen phones good enough, with proper power to be able to view full web pages. WAP was never going to be huge, no-one was going to put a lot of money into it because I think everyone wanted more. They knew eventually these devices would come along and WAP will become essentially obsolete to all but the most basic tasks. I can see the purpose of WAP changing in the future but not doing the same job it does now.

So now we have it. Well actually we’ve had it for a long time with phones like the n95 etc. but now we have a phone that the mainstream media will pick up on. And I’ll be picking mine up on Friday.