There are literally thousands of apps in the iPhone App Store, with hundreds being added each week. It's hard to keep track. In the same vein as our "iPhone Apps We Like" posts, take a look here at what stood out this week-notable for usefulness, novelty, birthing a child, whatever. Let's spend some iTunes credit.
Wikime: Hands down my favorite app of the week, Wikime takes a location reading and then queries Wikipedia's large list of geotagged articles, showing you info relevant to where you are at that very moment. It pulled a huge list of great articles for my Brooklyn neighborhood, and it's customizable to search within a given radius or search non-English Wikipedias. Awesome stuff for touring, or just learning more about your city, especially if you live in a large metro area with lots of tagged articles. And it's a buck.
Photocalc: For folks like me that still enjoy pulling out-gasp-film-based cameras every now and then, Photocalc is a great tool for doing the types of number crunching that we've grown so accustomed to letting our digicams handle that we don't even think about anymore. Even if you shoot mostly digital, this is a fun way to learn a lot of basics like depth of field calculation and exposure compensation ratios that will make you a better photographer, no matter what you're shooting with. $3 [via Gadget Lab]
Beijing Taxi Guide: If you're in town for the Olympics, first, stop reading Gizmodo. But if you're here (we love you too) and you've got Great Firewall Web, grab the Beijing Taxi Guide. It has a searchable directory of over 1,000 popular destinations picked by real people (not Frommers), and offers your cabby big, bold directions on how to get there. It works entirely offline (no roaming data), and will be updated by the devs constantly with new locations. Let's see some location-based searching, maybe? $5
More apps we looked at on Giz this week:
- Tris is Tetris, the best game to play while waiting in line, period. Free.
- Astro Ranch is a Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing clone that's in the works.
- Simplify Media streams your home iTunes library along with 30 of your friends' collections to your iPhone.
- Frotz is a text-based game emulator, for kicking it Tandy style.
- MotionX Poker remains the coolest real-physics dice simulator poker game, but now you can grab those realistic tumbling dice for free, sans game. Great for impromptu gambling.
- And, of course, the painful conclusion to the "I Am Rich" saga.
More news and apps from the novelty bin:
- GoBang Master is a Go/Othello hybrid. $2
- Freebird is the best novelty image app yet. Flash a lighter for Skynyrd, glowstick for Darude, or a candle for that renaissance lutist. Free
- Beer Counter will track your consumption as you get shitfaced. Free
- Box Office, one of our first favorite apps, is now back as "Now Playing" after being mysteriously yanked (probably for a trademark violation with the name). Phew. Still Free.
And here's a category that's been getting a lot of love in the store this week: baby apps.
Baby Tracker: Nursing: Sports timers for keeping track of when junior was last nursed, and on which side and for how long. I am not quite in the mood yet to know if this is necessary or not (some reviewers with more experience are saying it's unnecessary) but hey, if you're going to over-parent, why not do it with an iPhone! Oh, and it has a nice icon. $10.
Bishop's Score Calc: For DIY gynos, you can tell if you're about to go into labor or not with this Bishop's Score calculator. Something tells me, between the doctor and, oh, I don't know, the baby trying to get out, you won't need an iPhone for this information. Eww. $1
Pregnancy Kick Counter: Yep, pretty self-explanatory. Monitor junior as he practices Muay Thai in the womb. $5
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. Have a good weekend everybody.