Considering I only found it Thursday night/Friday morning, Balloons! is on the border between ‘a little longer’ and ‘all of the time’, but I’m pretty sure I’ll go on using it for a long while yet.

Balloons! (or Balloons! Lite if you want to try it for free) lets you write a message (twitter style – 140 characters), take a picture, attach them to a balloon and launch it up into the sky. Other people can then catch your balloon and add their own messages and pictures to it.

With the paid version, you can track your balloons, and see what other people add to them (although currently, you can’t track balloons you add to, although Dave Verwer told me that you will be able to favourite, and therefore track balloons in the next release) and it’s great to see how far your balloons drift!

If you can’t think of anything that warrants its very own balloon, you can always just catch other balloons and add to them.

Currently, the subject of a lot of balloons is…well, balloons, but when more people start using it and the app matures a little, it will be awesome(er).

Current app store price: £1.79 (Free ‘Lite’ version)

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When I heard that the iPhone would be coming to other networks in the UK, I started to get a bit fidgety. The 2 year O2 contract I signed up to in June was beginning to look a bit silly, however, I’ve read a few things today that have made me glad that I’m with O2 instead of Orange.

The first thing.. Orange’s terms and conditions:

“Not to be used for other activities (eg using your handset as a modem, non-Orange internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing, non-Orange internet based video). Should such use be detected notice may be given and Network protection controls applied to all services which Orange does not believe constitutes mobile browsing.”

Not to be used for other activities… you mean… most of the applications available for the iPhone would be redundant on Orange. Good to know. Now, admittedly, once Twitter went mad about this, Orange quickly changed the T&C’s. So now you can use the iPhone for whatever you want…as long as you don’t go over your data limit (OBVIOUSLY!)

Eh? An iPhone with a data limit? That sort of defeats the point.

Orange will give you 750MB of data for 3G (and I assume Edge and GPRS) and another 750MB for when using a BT Openzone hotspot. Ok, you’d have to download a lot to go over the 750MB limits, but for the price that Orange are charging per month, you would expect something more in line with O2, and after more abuse from Twitter, Orange are reviewing their data allowances.

So why am I glad I’m with O2? Well I pay the same amount per month as I did before June, for roughly the same contract from Orange (except I had absolutely no data allowance, and no iPhone), but even if I was paying more, O2 seem to understand that the iPhone is used for calls and texts for about the same time, or even, less time than games, web browsing, email, iPlayer etc. That said, I’m still hoping for a price was in about 18 months time.

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Seeing as I seem to be occasionally reviewing/recommending iPhone applications, I thought that I should mention the Wordpress app, an app that I am using more and more.

If you’re going to write a long post, then it can be quite frustrating, but it is a great tool for writing a quick draft, or modifying an existing post/page/comment. If you don’t have any signal, or if you’re out using an iPod Touch, you can save drafts locally, else you can save them as a draft within an online Wordpress install.

However, one of the most useful features of the Wordpress app is uploading pictures (you can choose to add existing pictures from your iphone, or take a new one). The app has no ability to edit the images in anyway, or even, postition/rotate etc. (the only option is an ‘image resize’ option to allow for faster publishing), but that’s not very important. You can take a photo when you’re out, write a bit about it, and then publish it straight away. Even if you only used it to upload photos (or in this case, screenshots) from your iPhone, it is still worth it as it is so quick, and just works.

Current app store price: FREE

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The controls are simple, hit the right side of the screen to accelerate, and the left side to brake. To rotate the bike you simply tilt the device (I’m not usually a fan of tilt controls and they can be a bit fiddly and lead to oversteering, but Moto X Mayhem does it well.)

Current price on the app store is £0.59.

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The controls are very simple and intuitive and the visuals are fantastic! Like an ever-increasing number of apps, it uses OpenFeint to compare high scores with friends, or globally.

Also, praise must be given to the guys at mountain sheep as they are continuing to update Minigore (apparently, episode 2 has been submitted to the app store, and they’re working on episode 3 – I can’t wait!)

Current app store price: £0.59.

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The idea is that you draw your racing line around the track, the faster you draw, the faster your car goes. You have to draw the set amount of laps and then the race will begin.

It is a great concept, and completely addictive. I went from not being able to sleep to forgetting that I couldn’t sleep…until it started to get light outside :-s

There are loads of different tracks (20 to be precise), and it offers multiplayer options in the form of 2 or 3 player ‘hotseat’ modes (players draw their racing lines, and then the race begins) or online against people from around the globe.

A very unique idea, and well worth the 59p!

Current app store price: £0.59.

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Well, I almost managed to resist. Last October/November I decided to buy an iPod Touch, and it was more useful than I ever imagined possible!

I had reasoned with my conscience that it would be useful, and would help me with Uni etc. but I didn’t really believe it would. The email alone made it worth buying! Then you add the web browser, and then thousands of applications…. I’d almost fogotten it played music!

Anyway, the iPod touch was great, but I started reading rumours about the next iPhone. Apparently it was set for a June release.. “Handy, that’s when my current contract expires” I said to myself. Oh, a better camera, with focusing and video capturing capabilities! A must have for any film student.

As more and more rumours surfaced (I was on Appleinsider.com and cultofmac.com at least once every day) I became certain that this new iPhone would replace my string of broken Sony Ericssons, and when it came to it, I was watching the WWDC text feed on Appleinsider. Sad. I then watched the video feed from WWDC. Ever sadder. I then rang the Carphone Warehouse to enquire about pre-ordering. You can’t get much worse really? I think I hit the sadness barrier.

Anyway, back to the point, I’ve had it for a couple of weeks, and I’m trying to work out why I didn’t get one before!

It’s brilliant. The email, as with previous models (and the touch) is so easy to use with my MobileMe (yes, I have that too) account, and my Uni Microsoft exchange account. However, the landscape keyboard is a very welcome feature (as with SMS typing).

The autofocus, and touch focus are brilliant and always seem to know what you’re thinking.

The voice commands are scarily accurate! They’re actually voice recognition too, as opposed to the voice matching that you got on some older phones (where you record someone’s name and saved it to a contact, and then you said the name and the phone matched the two recordings.) Proper voice recognition means that you don’t have to go through any of that name recording nonsense, and it actually works too! There have only been a few times when it came up with the wrong name or artist (it’s great that it works for music!) and one of those times when a younger brother had deliberately tried to disrupt it. The other times…oh yeah, they were the brother too.

The maps, coupled with auto-orient are nice, but the compass always seems to suffer with interference and so you have to wave the phone in a figure of eight like a loon. Auto-orient soon got turned off. Then so did maps as it completely murdered the battery life.

This then got me thinking about the battery. They supposedly improved battery life! It was worse than this before? I’m having to charge it daily. I’m not just topping it up, every day it’s down to less than 5%. It’s still a bit of a novelty so it’s partly understandable, and it does a lot more than normal phones do, but all the same, it’s not very practical. I’m either going to have to fix the cigarette lighter in my car, or look into getting some solar panels attached to my person.

Apart from the battery life, the iPhone is the best phone ever, although to simply call it a phone doesn’t give it enough credit. What it really is, is a fully customisable, upgradeable lifestyle/navigation/knowledge/communication device. There’s nothing else that offers the same experience.

(Now if only I put that much effort into University reports..)

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