My first apps

Welcome fellow iDevice users. Today is the first day of my new series going through my home screens and first on my iPhone.

I'd like to start with all of the standard apps that I haven't stuck in a folder somewhere. Those first five are, the app store, calendar, messages, photos, and settings. Now I do have others that are in my dock, but those are a secret for now, we will get to those. Now however I'll go through the reasons for those five, and then get on to my first third party app.

App Store

Obviously, I love apps. And the best way to get them is through the app store. Now for all you jail breakers out there... If you wish to read and enjoy this, then fine. If not, then just go away and don't smear up my comments section with noise about how it's better to be unrestricted. If you do, then I will remind you of your freedom when a virus bricks your exposed phone. Ok, enough of my soap box.

The app store has some great features, the featured section has a lot of different areas, even one that has a small list of great free apps. I also like the genius feature. All in all it's nice, and it's always fun to explore the different categories and see what the top apps are.


Calendar

I don't have a lot of reasons for liking this one. Mostly it's the fact that it's a dynamic icon which means it changes to match the day. So if you have it on your home page, then you never have to go very far to see what day it is. Just hit your home button.


Messages

Who doesn't text these days?


Photos

Ok, I'm a doting father and I love to have pictures of my kids at the ready. I also have to travel for work fairly frequently and l like to see my wife too. So it's nice to be able to access those quickly. I also have an iPhone 4 so the display is a visual treat and the pictures are clearer than they are on my iPad.


Settings

I've always been a tinkerer. I like to constantly adjust things, and the main reason I have the setting on my home page and not foldered is because of being able to change the brightness, and access airplane mode. Now if you're wondering what airplane mode is, I'll tell you. Basically it turns all of the wireless antennae off. I like to do that because it also resets them when you are in a low speed coverage area right next to a high speed coverage area. It'll let you switch to 3G faster.


Ok, now finally, my first third party app is dragon dictation.

I LOVE this app. I've always been a voice activation guy ever since I used to watch star trek tng and captain Picard would just say, "computer" and rattle off a command. This is pretty darn close, and the vocal recognition is great. It doesn't care for loud areas too much but it's still very accurate. That however is just the surface. ( you can also throw in punctuation by the way by saying it. Ex. Hey Jimmy comma what's up question mark. It shows up like this: Hey Jimmy, what's up? )

From the app you can take your dictated text and email it, text it, facebook it, tweet it, or copy it ( for pasting elsewhere ). That's pretty cool if you ask me. I love it for when I'm driving and need to respond to a work email or something. ( I'll get into how I read the email in another post ). All I have to do is open, hit record, maybe make an edit and hit email. It opens an email draft where all you have to do is type two letters of the recipients name and it can populate for you ( thanks apple ). If you're in the city, you can hit a red light and open it up and start talking, then hit another one and send it. How's that for productivity? And the whole time you haven't had to take your eyes off the road except when stopped.

So that's why dragon dictation by nuance has a spot on my homepage. Oh and one more thing... IT'S FREE. Link below.

http://www.dragonmobileapps.com/apple/dictation.html