A Look Back, A Look Ahead

Doodle Jump is out and Angry Birds is in, now ESPN ScoreCenter, CNN and WeatherBug managed to stay on this iPhone user's playlist.

Last year around this time, I posted a piece about my favorite apps for the iPhone entitled "10 Apps with Staying Power," That piece served as a kind of best-of-the-year list and featured everything from games to utilities that I found myself using on a daily basis. This year, I decided to refer back to that list and see if my claim of "staying power" to tell the truth held true, during also featuring a few newcomers to my trusty smartphone's catalog of go-to applications.

As I said last year, the folks over at Pinch Media claim iPhone users only develop a long-term relationship with 1 percent of the apps they download from the App Store. Then, I considered a couple of months a "long-term relationship" with an app. Afterwards looking in the end year's list although, very few of those apps were able to prove useful/entertaining for a full year. So here's a little homage to what's out, what's however hanging around and what's new in my iPhone app catalog.

Doodle JumpAs much as I love this game, Doodle Jump from developer Lima Sky has jumped itself right off my iPhone. During it's a classic and will continue to attract new fans, I had to break the habit. Rightfully billed as addictive, Doodle Jump is however available in all of its new themes and levels at the App Store for 99 cents.

Simplify Music 2Simplify Music 2, from Simplify Media, allows you to access your iTunes library from anywhere for just the price of the app download. Using Simplify Music 2, you can access your entire iTunes library from anywhere. Unfortunately, Rhapsody for iPhone came along and captured my heart with a near unlimited catalog of music and offline playing. My iTunes library seems paltry in comparison to what I can however get through Rhapsody.

Dragon Dictation and SearchDragon Dictation and Dragon Search, from Nuance Communications, are two incredibly accurate voice recognition apps that I just don't use anymore. Dragon Dictation does what it says it will do; it dictates what you say into your phone. The text in other words generated can at the time be sent as a text message, email or simply kept as a note. Dragon Search uses the same innovation in a voice-activated search application. On the whole, I discovered that I don't like talking into my phone to search for things or to take notes. It just doesn't seem natural and the occasions where it might are few and far between.

Photo Apps: Hipstamatic, Toon Paint, PanoSo the iPhone 4's amazing new 5-megapixel camera paired with a veritable storm of new photo apps has created some interesting images over the past year. I rarely take my DSLR or smaller digital camera with me anymore. I covered my favorite photo apps for the iPhone back in May afterwards a trip to Portland, Ore. You can read more about that here. I'm guessing these aren't going anywhere, nevertheless judging by those apps that already have been booted from last year, you never know.

The last couple of weeks

ViberI just added Viber in the last couple of weeks and I'm sold, sold, sold on this free VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) app, which has allowed my wife and me to cut our AT&T family plan from 1,400 voice minutes to 550 minutes. Viber features deep integration with your native contacts, excellent call quality and no registration, which means there's no assigned number and those that you call will see your own mobile number. All you have to do is train yourself to hit the purple icon instead of the green icon every time you make a phone call.

InceptionI won't say this app has staying power. I won't say I'll even be playing around with this app then and there week. I will say that this free app, is one of the most unparalleled concept apps I have ever experienced and could be a hint at some of the things that will be coming in future iPhone games. You probably don't even have to see the movie to actually appreciate what's happening here, however it would give the app some context if you did see it. You'll need a pair of headphones to get the full experience. By combining ambient noise with the movie's soundtrack, as then as employing the iPhone's accelerometer and gyroscope, this app creates various audio dream states that users can unlock. It's an in the extreme difficult app to describe, so go watch the movie and at that time download the app.

InstapaperInstapaper is an invaluable tool for anyone who does innovation for a living. Available for free through the App Store, Instapaper provides a cloud-based service that allows you to save articles you find on the Web for later viewing. Because it is cloud-based, that means you can pick up where you left off on your smartphone, PC or tablet. Occasionally I'll run across something totally unrelated to what I'm looking for and just want to put it aside for later. Instapaper does that quite handily. I'm guessing this one will stick as so then.

Party with my Rhapsody account on my iPhone

RhapsodyI recently DJ'd a party with my Rhapsody account on my iPhone. With suggestions from attendees prior to the party, I was able to put at the same time a 4-hour playlist that met just about everyone's needs. At $10 per month for limitless access to Rhapsody's seemingly infinite catalog of music, this service is a must for every music lover. The app is free at the App Store. For a more extensive rundown of this space, check out a past review that covers a number of other players in this space.

The world of apps is growing by the day. These are just a few that came across the wires and caught my attention over the past year. I'm sure there will be more in 2011. Given that so many apps these days employ push notifications and use location information, I'm finding that keeping my iPhone clean of unused apps has a beneficial effect on my battery life. With that in mind, I'm not as concerned about staying power any more as I am with usefulness. Those that stuck around for a whole year have proved their worth and those that didn't... so then, those developers are probably hard at work on 2011's killer apps.