PRODUCT REVIEW
iPhone Apps for Cheapskates

Let's face it -- most of the wares in the iPhone App Store are not exactly killer. Many are useful. Many are fun. Many are worthy of taking up space on one's smartphone. But Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) itself took care of most of the truly essential applications, the ones people really buy an iPhone for -- the Safari browser, e-mail , an iPod, YouTube and Maps.

Almost everything else is at best a nicety. Maybe it's worth a couple of bucks, and plenty of people may well download it if they happen to discover it in passing. But few apps get asked for by name, so developers have to go to great lengths to get stumbled upon, and it's not easy with so many new apps constantly joining the overall inventory. They have to game the system and get their names on the App Store's handy front-page lists.

You only get to bask in the spotlight of the "Recently Added" section for so long. If that isn't enough to give you lasting popularity, try rolling out an update. Or maybe the App Store staff will take a shine to you and give you some space in the favorites section.

Another idea: Charge less -- or nothing at all. People like cheap, they love free, and there are still ways to make money around a free app. Hook in some kind of advertising or promotion. Make it a "lite" edition that plays well enough by itself but offers additional features in the paid version. Make up whatever scheme you think will work, and see if the little-to-no-risk nature of the download gets more iPhoners to bite.

Here are some recently added -- or just plain useful -- apps for the iPhone that will cost you nothing.

The Devil's Plaything

Idle Hands (xCube Labs, free): The iPhone keypad's auto-correct feature is a friend and an enemy. It's very often saved me from looking like a third-grade dropout in the eyes of anyone I'm sending e-mail to (it is indeed spelled "Molotov," thanks for the help). Once in a while, though, I have to rein it in, mostly when it comes to typing names.

For those who want to master the skill of iTyping without relying on auto-correct, Idle Hands provides a practice pad. It shows you a phrase, usually something that looks like it came from a Douglas Adams novel. Then it times you as you type, also noting how many errors you made. When you make an error, auto-correct swoops in to fix it, but you'll still get dinged.

If you think you're the fastest iPhone gouger around, you can play the app's World Typing Challenge and compare scores. To get in on that, you have to register with Cube Labs.

A section called "Typing Tips" contains hints from other users on best techniques, most of which do little to settle debates over whether thumbs or fingers are better, where to look while typing, and exactly how long your nails can be before you're no longer an eligible iPhone user.

Cooliris (Cooliris, Inc., free): How aimless do you like your browsing to be? You've got your favorite sites, blogs, aggregators, etc., and they generally guide you to stuff relevant to your particular interests. For some surfers, a photo is all it takes to become intrigued, and from there they'll dive head-first into whatever topic the accompanying article happens to address. I'm not sure whether that's the sign of a really strong attention span or a really weak one, but those people might like Cooliris.

Once fired up, the app displays a grid of current event-related images from around the Web against a black backdrop -- sort of makes you think you're some kind of James Bond villain watching the world burn, perhaps. You can scroll through a seemingly endless array of photos until you find something that catches your eye. Click on it and see where it takes you.

You can sort by topics like Entertainment, Sports and Tech in the "Discover" view, or you can search by keyword with results culled from sites like Yahoo, DeviantArt, Flickr or Google Image Search.

Easy Writer (Saxorama.net, free): The iPhone's native mail app has its shortcomings, not the least of which is its inability to let you turn the handset sideways and let you type in the roomier landscape mode. There are several apps out there to help this, and EasyWriter does the job for free. Bring up the app, type your message in landscape mode (or portrait mode, but what's the point?) and hit "Send to Mail." The Mail app will open with your message in the body; now all you have to do is insert a subject and a recipient.

TouchType is another app that does this, though it's been on the market a little longer and it costs a buck. For that, you get the ability to save and load multiple messages, plus a spell checker that does a little more than the iPhone's own auto-correct feature, which only corrects obviously mistyped words.

Apple could render these programs moot with an update to its Mail app, though.

Say My Name

Say Who (Excuse Me Services, free): With a lot of voice-dialing devices, you have to manually assign a number and set a vocalization. They don't know how to read; they have to learn it from you. For example, to set up a way to call your spouse by voice, you have to first let the device know what phone number you're talking about, then record yourself saying his or her name so it has something to match your request against. Each time you want to make a call, it'll match the name you say against a set of original recordings.

This is apparently not so with Say Who. I expected to have to manually set profiles for my wife, my friends, family members, etc. Instead, the app just asks me to push a button while I say a name, then it figures out who I'm talking about based on the names in the iPhone's list of contacts -- no further setup required. You can also shout out a phone number.

After it's decided who it thinks you're trying to call, it displays that person's info as it appears in your contacts list, then gives you three seconds to intervene if it's not the person you intended. If you don't shut it off, it goes ahead and dials. If you prefer, you can shut off this auto-dialer feature so that you have to give explicit approval before the call goes through.

I was surprised at how accurately the app understood who I was trying to call. I tried faking accents, speaking fast, and using only first or last names. I tripped it up a few times, of course, but not nearly as often as I expected.

Shazam (Shazam Entertainment, free): This one isn't exactly new, but it is getting a lot of attention lately, perhaps due to its inclusion in one of Apple's latest iPhone ads. Start the app, put your iPhone's microphone near a speaker playing a song, and after a few seconds, Shazam will try to tell you the song's name, its artist and its album. It tags each song you look up for later reference and directs you to relevant YouTube clips -- and, naturally, to iTunes' music store.

It works incredibly well on just about any song popular in the U.S., but don't expect Shazam to know everything. It came up with nothing in test runs on Polysics, Dilinger Escape Plan and Hiromi's "Return of Kung Fu World Champion," though I do give it credit for spotting a Kraftwerk song from a very sparse sample.

Sorry, you can't sing into it and expect to get an answer. It matches the exact sound it's hearing to a database of known music, so unless you're the actual artist who sings that song, and you can manage to nail it exactly the way you did that night in the studio, you're out of luck.