I thought I’d do a post about what’s on my iPhone with some brief notes about how I use it in my business.

I’m a sucker for these types of posts from other people because I always find new and interesting apps that I can try out (that’s how I found probably half of what I’m using).

These posts usually wind up costing me a few dollars for the apps I buy, but considering that most of them are under $5 it’s not going to break the bank.

I was buying apps for my Pocket PC PDAs 10 years ago that were as much as desktop apps. It was common to spend $50 or more on a good app, so I consider the iPhone apps a bargain.

Here’s my main home screen:

• Messages: This is the SMS app that comes with the iPhone. Pretty self-explanatory.
• 1Password: Stores all my passwords and syncs with my Mac so I always have them all with me. I use this to login to various sites from my iPhone without having to remember the passwords.
• Camera+: Camera+ is so much better than the built-in camera app that there’s really no comparison. One of the best features is it caches pictures in the background so I don’t have to wait for one to save before I can take another.
• Instagram: Instagram lets me add cool filters to my pictures and share them through the Instagram website. I don’t use this as much as Camera+ but it’s great for “artsy” looking pictures using the filters.
• Quicklytics: Lets me get a quick look at my Google Analytics data for various sites. I use this to check my traffic quickly, even when I’m sitting in front of my computer.
• DuckDuckGo: I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for searching lately and I’m really digging it. This is their mobile app.
• Markdown Mail: I do a lot of my writing with Markdown¹ and this lets me write an email in Markdown and then convert it to HTML when sending. But it’s also good for writing Markdown posts and previewing them before I post them on Posterous or Tumblr.
• Capture: This is a quick-capture video camera. It starts recording as soon as it opens, so I don’t have to fumble around with the video/picture selector on the camera app. Just tap and record.
• Maps: This is the built-in Google Maps app. I use it often enough that I have it on the home screen.
• Safari: The built-in web browser, obviously.
• Agenda Calendar: This is my current calendar app. I tend to jump between this and MiCal but I usually prefer the clean look of this one. It makes navigating around the calendar much quicker than the built-in calendar app.
• OmniFocus: I use OmniFocus for the Mac as my project/task/getting things done manager and this lets me sync all my data with my iPhone so I can access it anywhere. I sometimes use this iPhone version for brainstorming ideas but it’s usually more for managing the tasks and projects that I initially create on the Mac.
• Shazam: This app will “listen” to a song and tell me what it is. Whenever I hear a song playing somewhere that I want to identify, I fire up Shazam. It’s almost like magic, and it remembers the songs I’ve tagged so I can go back and buy them (or find them in my old CD collection) later.
• Phone: The reason for the word “phone” in iPhone.
• Mail: The built-in email app. Yes, I have over 2,800 messages waiting to be dealt with. If it makes it any better, they’re mostly in my Gmail account that is mainly used to sign up for things. It’s mostly junk and should probably just be archived all at once.
• Tweetbot: My favourite iPhone Twitter client. In fact, it’s my favourite Twitter client bar none. I typically use this to read and post to Twitter even if I’m sitting in front of my computer.
• Reeder: My favourite news reader. It syncs with Google Reader so I can keep up to date with all my RSS subscriptions from my phone. I typically use Reeder on my iPhone to catch up on feeds, even if I’m at my computer. Reeder lets me quickly “triage” my feeds and flag the stuff I want to read in more detail later. I use it in conjunction with Pinboard and Instapaper to flag things for later follow up.

I also have three folders on this home page where several other apps are filed. These are apps I used fairly regularly but not often enough to earn a spot right on the home screen.

• GoodReader: This app just keeps getting better. I mainly use it to read PDFs on my iPhone but it can handle almost any type of file. It interfaces with Dropbox, Box.net and various other server-based storage systems so I can access stuff from my Mac or my iPhone easily. The PDF viewer will even do a plain text “re-flow” of many PDF files so it’s much easier to read. This has saved me a huge amount in printing costs since I don’t print out ebooks nearly as often as I used to.
• Kindle: This is Amazon’s Kindle app for the iPhone. It lets me read Kindle books without having to buy a Kindle or carry around another device.
• Instapaper: Instapaper is an amazing service that will pull the content from a web page and reformat it into something that’s easy to read, with no ads or other distractions. This app lets me read all the stuff I forward for later review right from my iPhone, whenever I have a few minutes. The web-based version is free so even if you don’t use the iPhone version, I highly recommend checking it out.

• Audible: I’m a big fan of Audible.com for audiobooks (I’ve been a member since 2001) and this is their listening app for the iPhone. You can use the standard iPod player to listen to Audible books but this app has a lot of nice features that make it easier to manage your library and to listen to the audiobooks.
• Music: The built-in iPod player. Not much to say about this one, except that I use it to sort all my internet marketing related audio files into easy-to-access playlists so I can keep up with them when I’m driving or doing something else where I can listen.
• Instacast: A podcast manager and player. Again, this duplicates some of the functionality of the iPod player, since you can subscribe to podcasts through iTunes, but I find Instacast works much better to manage the subscriptions. One warning – if you subscribe to a lot of podcasts and your plan has a data limit, turn off the 3G downloading so it will only download podcasts when you’re on WiFi. I burned through over 3GB of data over 3G the first month I used this (I subscribe to a lot of podcasts) and it put me over my data limit. Kind of an expensive lesson!

• Nebulous Notes: My current favourite text editor on the iPhone. It syncs with Dropbox and has a great macro system that lets me set up shortcuts to keys like { } % # that are normally buried a level or two deep in the keyboard. It lets me type much faster without having to dig for those things.
• iThoughts: My favourite mind mapping app on the iPhone. It’s surprisingly easy to lay out big maps even on such a small screen, and once they’re done I can export the map to OPML which lets me import it into various apps on my Mac. It interfaces with Dropbox (as well as other alternatives) to make it easy to move things back and forth to my Mac.
• MindMeister: I don’t like this one quite as much as iThoughts but it’s still a great mind mapping app. MindMeister is a web-based mind mapping service that lets you share and collaborate with other people so I use this whenever I’m working on a mindmap with someone else.
• JotAgent: Another note-taking app that interfaces with Dropbox (as well as Evernote). This one doesn’t have the same features as Nebulous but it’s faster to fire off a quick note about something. I use this for jotting down notes that I want to remember, or things that I need to follow up in more detail later. It syncs with Dropbox so the file is immediately available on my Mac and even in Nebulous Notes if I later decide to expand on it.
• Evernote: Evernote is a great note-taking and filing app. I use it to keep track of various things, but business-wise the main use it gets is to capture web pages to my swipe file. Sales letters, landing pages and anything else I want to remember gets “swiped” into Evernote. The iPhone app is mainly used to review stuff I’ve captured on my Mac, it doesn’t get much use to capture on the iPhone.
• Outliner: This is an outlining app that I use for brainstorming. I tend to use mindmaps for this purpose most of the time, but once in a while I just want a change of pace and do it as an outline. My only real complaint about this app is it doesn’t sync with Dropbox so it’s not as easy to move things back and forth to my Mac. If it did that, it would probably get used a lot more often.
• Dragon Dictation: This is purely for dictating text. You hit record and start talking, then it converts that into text that you can send immediately as an SMS or email, or just paste into any other app on your iPhone. It does have a limit on the length, so you can’t dictate an entire article or anything like that, but for shorter notes it works great.
• Birdhouse: This is a sort of notepad for Twitter. It lets you write tweets, save them as drafts and then send them to Twitter whenever you want. I use this if I have an idea that I don’t want to forget or I have something to say but don’t know exactly how to say it. I can write the tweet and then go back and review it later before I send it.

So there you go – that’s all the apps that have earned a spot on my home screen. I have several other pages of apps, and a few of them get used fairly regularly but these make up probably 90% or more of what I do with my iPhone.

If you’ve got any favourites that I haven’t mentioned here, or alternatives to any that you like better, leave a comment below. As I said at the beginning, I’m a sucker for new apps so I’m always looking for stuff I can add to my workflow.

Tagged as: apps, iphone, workflow