Back in August 2008, a mere month after the iPhone was released, I published my list of apps that I used.  I had quite a list back then and still have the personal rule that I won’t have more than 4 pages of apps since it’s too hard to find them.  I try to organize them by most used kept on the front page, especially now that the iphone allows you to use the home button to flip to that first page.  Here is what I currently have on the iPhone, other than the included apps.  You’ll find that there really aren’t any games on here.  I prefer my games full screen on my PC or plasma TV rather than shrunk down, but to each his own.

1. Todo – list and project tracking (paid app) that links with Toodledo, or optionally with Remember the Milk.  
2. Evernote – Note taking app that includes photos and allows searching photos and PDFs.  The best part is that it syncs with the Evernote web site so that your notes are safe.  Unlike the built-in iPhone Notes app that syncs with nothing and risks the loss of all your notes.  Here is just one of the many uses.
3. Nambu – Twitter and FriendFeed application that I replaced Twinkle with.  It includes posting photos via pic.im, tr.im as well as Identi.ca, Laconi.ca based streams and Ping.fm.  It’s being very actively developed along with a desktop version.  This seriously works a lot like TweetDeck, so it’s really useful.
4. Livestrong – Weight and diet tracking application.  This is part of my new year’s resolution.  My exercising is still very irregular, but adjusting my diet helped me lose almost 20lbs now.
5. Characters – World of Warcraft character tracking app.  I play it a lot, but this probably doesn’t belong on the front page anymore.
6. Facebook – Great app that complements the Facebook site for interacting with friends from high school.
7. LinkedIn – Great app that complements the LinkedIn site for interacting with professionals.  Not as shiny as the Facebook app and a fair bit buggier.
8. Mint.com – This is THE application for tracking personal finances.  I can’t rave enough about this. Put all your credit cards, loans, bank accounts, 401Ks into their secure system and get the depressing outlook all in one screen.  The web site has great graphs and stats on your usage and can really help remix your finances and identify spending habits that can be trimmed.
9. Brightkite – This is part of my flow for posting to my social networking sites.  Brightkite posts to Flickr, which is monitored by FriendFeed which posts a list to it into Twitter.
10. Phoneflix – tracks my Netflix queue for whenever someone recommends a movie.  It could use some interaction with imdb.com.
11. Amazon.com – Lets me check prices instantly while in stores.  Why pay more than I have to?  The interface is just right for quick browsing.
12. Wikipanion – This is a better interface for looking up facts than directly hitting the Wikipedia site, which is frankly half of what you are looking for when searching through Google.  Wikipedia needs to work on their mobie device interface, but this makes up for that.
13. iHaloStats (web link) – This tracks my Halo acheivements.  For linking to my Twitter account, I use http://twee60.com/.
14. DISQUS (web link) – This lets me moderate comments on my Wordpress web sites which use Disqus for comment management, as well as post replies to those comments. FriendFeed monitors Disqus as well, so these make it into my Twitter stream as well.
15. Ebay – I can do auction searches and keep tabs on my sales and account status.  You know… for when you get that mail that tells you “Your accesses has been limited.  Pleasing to click link below to updating your account.”
16. MonkeyChow (web link) – This is a web link to my RSS reader’s iPhone interface.  Very useful for catching up on the latest news when on the go.
17. Wordpress – I really only use this for composing draft posts to my various web sites.  I find that Wordpress’ real web interface is much handier for finalizing posts.  It works well for jotting down blog ideas before they escape my brain.
18. Now Playing – App for looking up reviews and movie times.  Very handy.
19. Last.fm - I don’t use this as much as I’d like, but now that WXRK has switched to pop and hiphop, I’ll be using it much more.
20. 1337pwn – Great for checking up on XBox live friends and gamer scores.
21. FriendFeed (web link) – This is just for those occassions that Nambu doesn’t render something right for FriendFeed.
22. Twitter (web link) - This is just for those occassions that Nambu doesn’t render something right for Twitter.
23. Simplify – Wonderful app that taps into my music collection at home to extend what I physically have on my iPhone.  It requires the SimplifyMedia app running on a system at home, which I have running on a Windows XP VM.
24. BofA – not as useful now that I use Mint.com, but sometimes the actual Bank of America site posts charges quicker than Mint.com can catch it.
25. Mint (web link) – (not the finance app) Web site analytics for http://www.shokk.com from haveamint.com
26. Bookmarks – Del.icio.us bookmarks app, which works well with the built-in safari browser, and posts to Twitter.
27. Remote – Very useful for controlling my iTunes playlist without going over to the computer.  I just wish it could access DAAp sources somehow, like the one streaming in my home from Firefly Media Server.
28. NewAmBible – I like to catch up on my faith every now and then.
29. Constitution – I like to catch up on the rules of the state every now and then.
30. Palringo – IM app for iPhone.  Has been sitting there waiting for Background Notifications to make it useful.  For pete’s sake, my crappy Blackberry 8700 could do it for a number of chat services, why can’t this do it?  What is broken in the iPhone architecture?
31. Easy WiFi - This came in use while traveling.  The airport had AT&T WiFi, which is free to iPhone users, but for some reason I had trouble logging in.  Luckily I had downloaded it while it was free.
32. Drinks Free – Every once in a while I like to host a get-together for friends, mostly in the summers when I can use my deck and the nice deck bar.  This has soooooo many drink combinations.
33. iTalk – Great for voice notes.  This functionality really should have been built into the phone frmo the start.  You can pull the voice notes off the iPhone with the Mac app.   Again, my Blackberry does this right out of the box.
34. Dog Whistle – We got a dog last year and this seemed like a good idea for training the dog.  Now it just serves to annoy the kids since the dog just looks at me funny.  Luckily it was free at the time.
35. Pandora – Same story as Last.fm, though I wish it linked into social networking apps more.  The service is a little too simple, but it often carries music that Last.fm might not have.
36. iBreviary – Another faith based app.
37. RK Free – I’m still looking for a replacement app for using when I run ever since I gave up my iPod nano that was used with Nike+.  I’m jealous that Apple put that functionality into the 2nd gen iPod Touch but did not make an accessory to do the same for the iPhone.  We’ll see soon how this performs.
38. iThoughts – Mind mapping tool.  I haven’t made great use of it, but it has potential.
39. ZumoDrive – this was a great alternative to all those apps that required you to share files while on a LAN.  Not only does this app mean you won’t have to store the files on the iPhone itself, but you can share between PC, Mac, and iPhone when no wireless is available.
40. Watchmen – this probably won’t be on my phone much longer, but it’s a tie-in to one of the greatest superhero movies ever.
41. Kindle – this is to keep me from buying a real Kindle.  No PDF support?
42. FlightTrack Pro – Came in very handy while traveling this month.  Also posts to TripIt.com which is monitored by 
43. TagReader – This is a curiosity that I found on the back of the Halo Wars box.  I haven’t really seen any other uses of these tags, but it looks interesting.

Recenty Apple announced that iPhone OS 3.0 would be detailed soon, probably for release in July with the new iPhone model.  I think everyone would agree that managing the apps is a giant pain in the ass.  There should be a list view in iTunes or on the iPhone itself where we can bulk delete these rather than letting them collect.  Managing the installed apps should not be this hard.

Recently Google changed the login process for Adsense, which broke the previous version of the AdsenseAgg Pepper for Mint. I’ve been able to figure out the updated login process and correct the code so that it works for a number of people now. The new version can be downloaded from the Mint Peppermill.

Update 2008-03-02: If you have any trouble displaying AdsenseAgg stats, be sure to login to Google and accept the TOS update they have just thrown up.

A while back I adapted an old Adsense pepper for Mint to a newer version of Mint. Afew versions of Firefox and IE later (and somehow convincing Google to unban my Adsense account), and that no longer worked. There are still a number of people looking to tie Adsense into their Mint install. I have been using an Adsense to RSS script for a while now, so I thought that this might be interesting to some. There is a discussion going on here about it if you would like to voice your desire for this type of info or just let me know if it works at all for you.

I’ve been using Wordpress for some time now, but with the number of plugins I use, it has always been a pretty hacked up affair for me, with functions thrown throughout the sidebar.php file. So I started investigating what it would take to move my site to using the stock default theme. Boring right? But also more secure since any third party themes are likely to lag behind when anything basic changes in the default theme. So in order to do so, I would need to have everything that I had hacked into the sidebar available in widget form.

Not everything was – first and foremost, the Mint Popular Posts plugin which links into my Mint database to show the most popular posts at the time. So I took a look at the Nike+ plugin I had worked on some time ago. It had a widget available, so I was able to learn how the widgets and the Options pages in Wordpress work. And then I spent a weekend a few weeks back adding some code to the Popular Posts plugin to add the widget. Since a number of people at the plugin developer’s site were asking for widget capability in the plugin, I submitted it for anyone else to use. A new version has just been released with the addition of my code at
http://ellisweb.net/2006/03/wp-mint-popular-posts/. As a side benefit, since all content is in the database now, I can easily move to another regularly updated theme at any time without affecting the sidebar contents.

If you haven’t gotten a copy of Mint for your web site, check out this review.

I’ve had some people report over the past couple of months that the Prank pepper was not working for their site. However, I was able to check with the same code against their site and produced a valid pagerank that other sites reported. I would look into it every once in a while but found nothing.

Strangely enough, I began to see pagerank for some of my URLs disappear this weekend, as well as some of those I had tested in the past. This was the final piece I needed to see why this had broken for some. After a little digging early this morning I found a limitation in the pagerank code that did not account for Google presenting the data slightly different for different requestors. After making an adjustment everything showed up again. Please try the new pepper code at http://www.shokk.com/downloads/prank_106.zip
and let me know what you see. This will be the version that I push to the peppermill if you are all able to see your correct data again.

Sorry, for taking so long getting some debugging in place. It seems the pepper presents issues to a number of people, so with this built into the pepper it will allow some to self-test first. I haven’t put this up on the Peppermill yet because it’s still in testing.

Please download and install over your old Prank pepper. Check off the box that enables the test URL. Enter a URL that you want to test with and let me know what you see. It will be listed before the other URLs you have in the Prank list. In all but one of the cases where someone emailed me about seeing an NA or 0 rank, I saw non-NA ranks. I want to know if you will see the same. It might be best to clear your cache before testing further – a “clear cache” option will be next.

I’m opening this new post for discussion on the site so that everyone can see the same discussion for the benefit of all interested. Please let me know any comments you have on the presentation of the debug options or how it works for you.

For those that like to track Google Pageranking for their pages comes this new pepper. I had plenty of time to think on it today while waiting in court to have my speeding ticket resolved. Luckily I got the 4 point ticket reduced to 2 points with a doubled fine. Yay.

This pepper simply displays the Pagerank for each of the top popular pages. The number of pages displayed comes from the default pepper’s rows per pane setting. Knowing that Google gets cranky about constant requests for pageranks, I figured a little caching was in order. Since pagerank does not change so often, caching is set for 7 days. I don’t recommend changing this, but the setting is in the code and if there is enough demand I can add a pulldown to the preference pane.

This has been created for Mint 1 since I don’t have Mint 2 yet, but it doesn’t do anything exotic, so it should still work. Once I have the new Mint installed, I’ll take care of any errors that anyone finds.

You can pick up the new pepper at http://www.shokk.com/downloads/prank.zip

For those of you using Mint for web site statistics, I have an Adsense Pepper plugin that some will find useful. The original author hasn’t been on the support boards for a while, and the plugin only worked for an older version of Mint, so I took the Pepper and ported it to Mint v1.2. This is still a work in progress as I am trying to work out an issue with Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox/Seamonkey browsers and multiple recordings of clicks – they do not allow a Javascript event to be attached to objects (links in this case) inside of IFrames so another method has to be used to record the click on page exit. This Pepper has been corrected for a recent path security issue brought up on the boards. If you find this useful, please consider the tipjar.

UPDATE: One word of warning. After you install this, do not click it to test the pepper. Google is extremely sensitive about this and will kick you out of Adsense when they review accounts at the end of the month. Just trust that it will do the job. Believe me, I know. Note that these stastics are only seen by the Mint administrator, so this does not violate article 7 of the Adsense Terms of Service regarding disclosure of “click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance.”

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