recent (for me) iphone app gems

i really thought that i had all the apps that i would need on my iphone, but recently, i have found a few apps that look very promising. most of these are apps that have been around for a while, but i never really understood their usefulness until now.

mobile air mouse – turn your iphone into a remote keyboard/mouse. this is fantastic for presentations, which is the first use that i thought of for this app, but what makes it even better is the keyboard. this transforms my iphone into a remote control for my HTPC. works on macs or PCs. so cool because the tuner for my HDTV can only be controlled via keyboard right now. i had to VNC in and change the channel. such a pain.

xbmc – remote control for XBMC. now that i’ve got my XBMC media center working in the bedroom, this app becomes quite relevant. i can use this app as a remote to control my XBMC. it’s almost as good as the remote i’m actually using, but consolidation of devices makes it worth losing the tactile response from a dedicated remote.

jaadu vnc – i didn’t think that a VNC client on an iphone would be usable, but this client is surprisingly handy. i don’t do a lot of VNC access from the iphone, but this makes it usable when i need to. pretty speedy, it supports tightVNC.

umonitor – iphone app to monitor your utorrent status. very simple interface, but it’s nice to be able to just check at a glance at the state of utorrent.

galcon labs- this risk-like game in space is easy to pick up and very entertaining. i’m surprised that i haven’t heard of it before. there’s also a lux dlx port to iphone which is risk, but i kind of like galcon more.

minigore – i’ve seen this game mentioned several times, but only now have i tried it out. it’s a lot of fun, but i have no idea how people can get such high scores on it.

terk hdtva antenna

my old indoor antenna broke and it was time to replace it. i decided to try out the terk hdtva indoor antenna. i bought one on ebay for just under $30 and i am happy to report that i am able to watch HDTV OTA just fine.

this weekend i’ve been watching football in HD and it has been great. this antenna is less susceptible to interference and it appears to pick up the signal better than my previous antenna.

i live about 40 miles from the broadcasting antennas, so picking up the signals can be difficult, but so far, so good.