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The Favorite iPhone Apps of Five Geek Rock Stars

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / July 23, 2009 11:55 AM / 16 Comments

Apps on the iPhone are a big deal, but there are so many of them that it can be hard to find the good ones. It's fun to compare your own selections with favorites from friends and we thought it could be fun as well to see what some well known geeks around the web say are their favorite apps.

Below you'll find app recommendations from the following people: Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, Chris Messina, open source community organizer, Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global, Baratunde Thurston, Web Editor at The Onion and Andy Baio, founder of Upcoming.org and now CTO at the soon to launch startup Kickstarter.com. We hope you enjoy these recommendations and we encourage you to share your own in comments.

Repeat offenders

Only three apps were named by more than one person on this list! They were smart travel social network Tripit, memory augmentation and note taking service Evernote and Twitter client Tweetie. All three are worth checking out.

Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg co-created WordPress, the world's most popular blogging software, when he was 19. He's now 25 and a man of travel, tunes and publishing.

taximagic.jpgIn addition to Tripit, Matt said his favorite apps were:

Taxi Magic lets you get taxis in major cities without making a phone call.

Shazam identifies the music your phone picks up in a room.

WordPress has an iPhone app! It lets you write and edit posts, upload images and more.

Chris Messina

Chris Messina designed the Firefox ad in the New York Times that kicked off mainstream adoption of the browser, he co-founded the international Barcamp conference series, he's on the Board of the OpenID Foundation and he's one of the leading thinkers behind the movement to create a standard format for user activity streams across social networks.

comixologypic.jpgIn addition to Tripit and Tweetie, Chris said his favorite apps right now are:

Instapaper Pro is a bookmarking app that saves a copy of articles you want to read off-line on your iPhone.

Foursquare is a popular new location-based, game-like social network.

Summizer is a multi-search tracking tool for Twitter.

Things is a to-do app that gets great reviews.

NYTimes is a beautiful off-line reader for the Times, which we've reviewed and like a lot.

BrightKite is a cutting edge location-based social network that we reviewed here as well.

Comixology is an iPhone comic book reader and library.

FlightTrack Pro checks airline flight status.

OpenTable lets you make restaurant reservations.

Marnie Webb

Marnie Webb is co-CEO of TechSoup Global, a nonprofit that distributes software to other nonprofit organizations and hosts NetSquared, a group that helps nonprofits share what they've learned about using Web 2.0 technologies. She's also a mom and her iPhone app list shows it.

have2peepic.jpgIn addition to Evernote, Marnie says her favorite apps are:

Have2Pee is key, Marnie says. "I have a 4 year old and knowing the closet public restroom is game changing."

iDialUDrive - "I spend a not insignificant amount of time commuting. Programming calls like a playlist helps me to just hit start and get in touch with the people I need to."

Ominfocus - "I'm a GTD geek and, after playing with far too many productivity tools, I've settled on this one."

The Extraordinaries does on-demand volunteerism by mobile phone. Marnie says: "not a lot in it yet, but huge potential to volunteer quickly and effectively."

Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston is a contributor to the Huffington Post, a comedian, Web Editor at humor site The Onion and the host of Discovery Channel's forthcoming show Popular Science's Future of.

boxeeremotepic.jpgIn addition to Tweetie, Baratunde says his favorite apps are:

Asphalt - a car racing game.

Boxee Remote lets you use your iPhone as a remote control for the web TV service Boxee. "It helps me bypass the cable company," Baratunde says.

CityTransit NYC Subway Map

Movies (By Flixter) - find and discuss movies.

Apple's Stock Quote app. "I launch it a lot by accident and scream out loud at not being able to delete it."

Andy Baio

Andy Baio is a social software developer and writer. He co-founded the events site Upcoming.org and has just become the CTO for soon-to-launch social project funding site Kickstarter.

rjdjpic.jpgIn addition to Tweetie, Any says his favorite apps are:

Yelp

RJDJ remixes the sounds around your phone into music. Whoa.

Touch Term SSH is an SSH access tool for your iPhone.

ZenBound a puzzle game with wooden structures and rope.

Field Runners is a Tower Defense game.

Eliss is a retro game.

Edge is a Tron-like game where tilting your phone navigates a cube through an obstacle course.


That's what these folks like to use on their iPhones. How about you? Here are some of the favorites of ReadWriteWeb's staff.


Comments

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  1. Geek? Check. Rock star? Not yet. Fav app? CardStar.

     Posted by: Danny Author Profile Page | July 23, 2009 12:48 PM



  2. Taxi magic is quite useful - like that one a lot. The golf app the gives you GPS yardages is sweet also.

    Posted by: AMH | July 23, 2009 1:16 PM



  3. I make sure I get in at least one game of Flight Control a night. It helps keep those aspirations for being an air traffic controller firmly in check. :)

     Posted by: Jared Smith Author Profile Page | July 23, 2009 2:05 PM



  4. From a geek that also loves to rock: My fav is Beer Hero.

    Posted by: Jon | July 23, 2009 4:54 PM




  5. Shazam is cool but, there are a lot of great apps out there!

    POLL TIME : http://aclevertwist.com/p/poll-which-spot-matters-most-to-you

    Posted by: Andy | July 23, 2009 6:19 PM



  6. nice apps. here are my favorite one http://appsfire.com/selection.php?cid=1246531653-306679001&title=ouriel+top+apps

    ps: marshall, if you want i can set you an account for doing this also

     Posted by: Ouriel Author Profile Page | July 23, 2009 11:37 PM



  7. In the UK, The Telegraph has an excellent News App and on the less serious side the recent Bruno App is very amusing but not for the easily offended!

    Posted by: iPhone addict | July 24, 2009 7:45 AM



  8. Great, i love the asphalt series game, stunning graphics and cool cars.

    Posted by: Anthony Morrison | July 25, 2009 8:41 AM



  9. Taxi Magic is adding a taxi provider in Oakland very soon

    Posted by: Keith | July 27, 2009 6:27 AM



  10. Definitely will check out some of these apps- I like the have2pee app - will come in handy for traveling and the rjdj sounds like a fun app to play with.

    Posted by: D. Bossert | July 28, 2009 2:31 PM



  11. Hate to disagree with Matt but the iPhone app for Wordpress sucks.

    Alex

    Posted by: Alex Rodriguez | July 28, 2009 4:20 PM



  12. Great app list! Thanks - Gotta get the have2pee app.

    Posted by: Cheap Golf Balls | July 29, 2009 2:34 PM



  13. i have followed your writing for a long time.really you have given very successful information.
    good day Thank you !

    Posted by: Chat | August 4, 2009 1:02 PM



  14. You may now submit your iPhone apps web URLs or iPhone AppStore URLs to the iPhone Web Directory under the iPhone Apps category.

    TheiPhoneWebDirector­y.com

    Posted by: TheiPhoneW­ebDirector­y | August 7, 2009 12:47 PM



  15. haha, this was my favorite:

    Apple's Stock Quote app. "I launch it a lot by accident and scream out loud at not being able to delete it."

    Great list overall!

    Posted by: Danny Schreiber | September 15, 2009 10:36 AM



  16. A very brief and well put together article for those not so savvy with web dev. Good read. Even for an experienced web dev'r like myself.

    Posted by: pondorde Author Profile Page | November 29, 2009 3:12 PM



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