Applications

Lots of apps let you sidestep iPhone SMS to send and receive text messages for free. But in most cases the apps themselves cost at least a few bucks. Enter TextPlus, a free, ad-supported app that offers unlimited texting.

That's reason enough to celebrate, but TextPlus has one other trick up its sleeve: group messaging. You can send a text to multiple recipients, and their replies will stay grouped together like in a chat room. (Obviously this works best if everyone uses TextPlus, but even nonusers can receive messages from the app.)

When you create a new message, TextPlus … Read more

Apple has started decorating San Francisco's Moscone Center in anticipation of the Worldwide Developers Conference, which opens Monday morning.

And as has become tradition, when the banners go up, the seemingly round-the-clock guessing game of what Apple will announce intensifies. This year, the banners say "WWDC: One year later. Light-years ahead." Now the objective for many is parsing that phrase and poring over every image on the banner to extract some sort of meaning.

The phrase itself, plus all the application icons on the banners, indicate the centerpiece of the conference will be the App Store and … Read more

How many times have you whipped out your iPhone and fired up Shazam, only to have the song end too soon to get a reading?

There's a fallback app for that: ClickOnRadio Pro, which not only streams radio in real time, but also shows real-time playlists for over 2,600 stations.

In other words, if you know the name or frequency of the station, you can easily find the song you wanted to identify. For any given station, ClickOnRadio ($1.99) shows every song that played for the past 2 hours.

(Interestingly, it lists the ads as well, which … Read more

Still longing for a decent camera on your iPhone? All you need's an app and a Canon dSLR and the dream is yours. Well, not exactly, but OnOne Software's DSLR Camera Remote application lets your iPhone or iPod Touch control most Canon dSLRs going back circa the 20D.

Announced in mid-May but available now, the system is a combination of two pieces of software: the free DSLR Camera Remote Server application, which runs on a Wi-Fi-enabled host computer, and either DSLR Camera Remote Professional ($19.99 with an introductory price of $9.99) or DSLR Camera Remote Lite ($… Read more

Spotifans, it's the news you've been waiting for--Spotify has demoed the first mobile phone version of its music-streaming service, and it's certainly the most exciting piece of mobile music software we've seen this year.

The mobile version is shown running on Google's Android platform. In addition to searching and streaming the music Spotify has access to, it allows you to sync your favorite playlists to offline playback. This involves the app downloading the music to your phone (DRMed, one assumes), so you needn't have Internet access to keep playing music.

Additionally, your phone … Read more

"All your networks are belong to us." That could be the tagline for Zensify, a new iPhone app that lets you view, update, and share content from multiple social networks.

In other words, Zensify aims to take the place of standalone apps for the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr--or at least to save you the time of bopping from one to another just to read and post updates.

In addition to those three popular networks, Zensify can connect you with 12seconds, Delicious, Digg, Photobucket, and YouTube. (Support for more services is in the works, according to the … Read more

You may have already read on CNET News about how artist Jorge Colombo managed to get his work on the cover of The New Yorker. To have your art featured on the cover of a widely read national magazine is a big deal, but the coolest thing about it was that it was done with an application for the iPhone.

This week's apps include the cool painting app that was used to make The New Yorker cover and a game where you pilot a bomber high over the landscape.

Brushes ($3.99 for limited time) is an easy-to-use painting … Read more

Perhaps because the Google Android operating system is already a year old, because the Android Developer's Challenge will be kicked off after Google's I/O developer conference instead of before, or because the platform differences between Android 1.0 and Android 1.5 aren't as dramatic as those between iPhone 2.0 and iPhone 3.0, Android apps and the 1.5 Cupcake update failed to produce as much excitement this year compared to last.

However, that didn't stop a couple dozen publishers from showcasing their applications developed for Android 1.5, and it didn't … Read more

To paraphrase the old saying: Everyone complains about the government, but no one does anything about it. If you want to get more involved in the political process, "elect" Visible Vote Mobile to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The free app lets you compare the voting records of your state senators and congressional representative(s) with your votes on the issues of the day.

For example, do you agree with the bill to expand Medicare coverage? (You can read a description and highlights right on your iPhone.) Cast your vote, then see how it matches up with your … Read more