I wasn’t really in the market for a flashlight application. I mean come on, I could do the hello world of Xcode and have a perfectly fine app. But someone asked me to check this one out and I’m pretty shocked by what I found.

Tiny Flashlight, a FREE application in the app store, is a marvel in simplicity and functionality. Firing it up, you’re in flashlight mode where you can turn on the camera’s flaw with the tap of a button. The battery left on the device is also displayed so you can keep track of your power. There are also some other modes like emergency lights, warning lights, and adjustable color/brightness. The cop lights are great because you can scare people pretty easily. Just tilt the phone towards a wall outside the window of a friend. Good times.

I’m actually going to keep this one. I have over 500 apps on my phone and want to keep the number down, but this is definitely a keeper.

Check it out on the app store.

The basic app is free but includes only economy flights.  If you need first or business class, you have shell out $1.99 for the First Class app, which seems fair enough. If you’re flying first class you can afford 2 bucks for an app.   The main navigation has 11 section and I’ve described the major ones below.

Flight Search
You can use geolocation to find your “From” airport or just start typing the city name and the autocompletion will quickly find a list of suggestions.  Depart and Return dates pull up a calendar that’s easy to use if not too aesthetically pleasing.  And the typical options of including nearby airports or limiting the search to nonstop flights are provided.  I tried it out on a flight from San Francisco to New York and used the “All NYC Airports” option.  After searching, it was easy to filter results by deselecting specific NY airports.

One drawback is that, unlike the web site, the app doesn’t allow flexible dates.  But there is a “Buzz” section that allows you to find best fares for a given month with a slick price/date graph.

Once selecting a flight from the given options, I was ultimately sent to a website (in my case United Airlines) in Safari.  And of course from here, there is no way to back into the app and it must be relaunched.

Airlines
Airlines gives fun numbers and web sites of many major airlines, sorted by popularity or alphabetically.  I could see this coming in really handy if you miss your flight or it is delayed or cancelled.

Car Rental
This feature is pretty standard with geolocation and calendar functions and a slider for the time of day to pick up and drop off.  Booking online again fired up the browser.

Hotels
Standard features here as well.  City, check in and check out dates, number of guests and rooms.  But the search results are well thought out with lots of powerful and intuitive filters.  You can easily find cheap hotels or hotels near the aiport.  You can chose by number of stars or select from a list of chains.

Preferences
This doesn’t offer much really.  You can select currency and which international Kayak website you want to view, along with a few others.  Would like to see more here.

Trips
This section lets you store complete intinerary (flight, hotel, rental car) for each trip.  You must create an account or log into an existing one.

Flight Tracker
Hidden on the second screen, this is a great feature with entire apps devoted to just this functionality. It allows you track multiple flights and gives you real-time departure and arrival status.

Airports
There is a list of all major airlines with their associated fees, mostly for checking bags. Not indispensible but interesting to see.

Overall this is a great free app that I’m glad to have found.  It will be a huge timesaver next time I travel.

The App Store is now in a total of 90 countries.

A month later, a friend and I were brainstorming games for the iPhone and were looking at the top 10 lists and Doodle Jump kept appearing, Top 10 Game, Top 10 Grossing Game, Top 10 Grossing App, WHAT?!?! Top 10 Grossing App and at $.99, there had to be more to it. So we both start playing, mocking it, and suddenly we grew quiet. The quiet is the addiction kicking in… and I’m a junky.

What seems like a stupid game is actually extremely fun, even stressful, as you bounce higher and higher. There is a set number of play variations so it is not too repetitive. There are tools to propel you higher once you get larger scores so the games don’t last too long. There are various skills you need to master – shooting, screen-wrap jumps, platform height judgment, etc – so you are always getting better, higher, then unlocking more play sequences.

The leaderboards are also a fun element. Etchings on the edge of the screen show your friends’ and your own previous records. The higher you jump, the more your adrenaline floods your system. And before you know it, it’s 4:00 am and you have to be up in 3 hours. This is a dangerous game, you’ve been warned.