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Despite my thoughts on “Web Apps on Mobile Devices: Yay or Nay?”, there are some great web apps for the iPhone or iPod Touch that you definitely might consider trying out. With the power of the internet and the ease of multitouch on the iPhone, web apps certainly have a lot to offer, especially with today’s advancing web technologies.

I’ve rounded up 25 of the best web apps for the iPhone, many of which are my personal favorites. And, of course, be sure to add yours to the list by leaving a comment at the end.

Mobile Web App Directories

If you’d like to browse more web apps than what you see here, be sure to check out the following two directories.

• Apple’s Mobile Web App Directory
• OpenAppMkt

OpenAppMkt has an iPhone optimized interface to make it easy to find new web apps straight from your phone. Add this site to your home screen and you have yourself a web app marketplace app!

OpenAppMkt

Gmail

1. Gmail

About Gmail: Start Gmail, compose emails and read recently read messages while offline. Enter the first few letters of a contact and autocompletion makes typing faster. Enjoy Gmail goodness like conversation view, spam filtering, starring and view labels. Perform batch actions, such as archiving multiple messages, quickly in your inbox using the floaty bar.

iPhone Link

Google Docs

2. Google Docs Mobile

About Google Docs Mobile: View your documents from anywhere on your iPhone. Check what team you’re playing against as you head to the soccer fields or reference your guest list as you meet your in-laws to be.

Documents are stored securely online and adapted for viewing on your iPhone.

iPhone Link

Google Calendar

3. Google Calendar

About Google Calendar: With Google Calendar, add, edit, delete and respond to events right from your phone. No need to sync your phone with your computer. View multiple calendars shared with you. Basic offline support – launch calendar and view events even when you’re on the subway or plane.

iPhone Link

YouTube

4. YouTube

You won’t find the YouTube web app in Apple’s web app directory because Apple already provides a native version of it but also because it’s actually much better than Apple’s native version. Get nearly full access to your YouTube account and get to watching your subscriptions!

iPhone Link

Penzu Mobile

5. Penzu

About Penzu Mobile: An online diary and personal journal that is focused on private writing. With a unique and compelling user experience, it makes writing online as easy and intuitive as writing on a pad of paper.

Also, be sure to check out our look at Penzu’s mobile app.

iPhone Link

Remember The Milk

6. Remember The Milk

RTM is a popular task and list management app available on just about every platform from the computer to variety of mobile devices. It’s free unless you want to want a Pro account at $25 per year with a few extra features.

iPhone Link

Evernote

7. Evernote

About Evernote: Lets you take notes, create to-do lists, search through images, and share your memories. Everything is seamlessly synchronized across all the devices and platforms you use, including Evernote for Mac, Evernote Web, and Evernote for Windows.

iPhone Link

Nirvana

8. Nirvana

Nirvana is GTD task management software for getting things done, based on the book by David Allen.

iPhone Link

Facebook

9. Facebook

About Facebook: Facebook is a social utility that connects you to the people around you. Facebook on iPhone and iPod touch allows you to do it all; get the latest news from your friends, upload and share photos and send and receive messages.

iPhone Link

Digg

10. Digg

About Digg: Features include native iPhone-like story scrolling, small permalink pages with top comments, login and Digging, pagination, and jump to any topic. The Digg iPhone application offers a better way to discover and share Digg content, which the Digg community voted as some of the best content on the web.

iPhone Link

WeatherBug

11. WeatherBug

About WeatherBug: Receive live weather conditions, forecast, radar, weather cameras and daily video outlook in a Web 2.0-style application designed for the iPhone.

iPhone Link

LaunchPad

12. Launch Pad

About Launch Pad: Ever wanted to be able to access Google, Wikipedia and Youtube really fast on your iPhone? With Launch Pad you can! just open Launch Pad and you’re ready to go!
iPhone Link

Zoho

13. Zoho Office Suite

About Zoho Office Suite: Offers six online applications including Email, Calendar, Online word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and database applications for iPhone users.

iPhone Link

4 Pack Card Games

14. 4 Pack Card Games

4 Pack Card Games is exactly what you’d think it is. You get four different, popular card games; Solitaire, 5-card Draw (video poker style), one player Texas Hold’em and BlackJack.

iPhone Link

Flick BasketBall

15. Flick BasketBall

About Flick BasketBall: BasketBall Game! Shoot by Flick! You have 10 times chances.It scores high with a continuous point.

iPhone Link

Reader

16. Reader

About Reader: This is like no other Web App you’ve ever used. Recoded from scratch this new eBook Reader app functions completely offline. Open Reader, sync with your account and launch books instantly.

iPhone Link

Stripr

17. Stripr

About Stripr: Your favorite comics are scattered across different websites and are only accessible while you have an internet connection. Web comic lovers rejoice! Stripr is an amazing webapp that allows you to access all of your favorite comics in one convenient place, offline.

iPhone Link

Sudoku Superstar

18. Sudoku Superstar

About Sudoku Superstar: Are you a Sudoku junkie? Then you need Sudoku Superstar, a beautiful app that loads instantly, works offline and is there to provide endless hours of frustrating fun!

iPhone Link

Flip Clock

19. Flip Clock

About Flip Clock: A simple landscape flip clock capable of showing time in either 12 and 24-hour time formats with a smooth flipping motion. This app runs in fullscreen mode and works even when you 19re offline.

iPhone Link

Pie Guy

20. Pie Guy

About Pie Guy: There’s no better home for a fast-paced, goofy arcade game than your pocket. Remember the original joy of gaming – you know, before the distraction of drawn-out story lines, tutorials, endless dialog, and complicated rules? You want to just fire up a game and go, cucumber-cool 8-bit graphics blazing under your fingers. Swipe left, swipe right, eat all the berries, avoid the angry chefs chasing you around their pie kitchen. Then repeat at a higher speed.

iPhone Link

Muscle Lab Mini

21. The Muscle Lab Mini

About The Muscle Lab Mini: We are all about building muscle and losing fat. The Muscle Lab is one of the most complete resources for tracking your fitness levels on the web, from monitoring your nutritional intake to analyzing strength increases – and a whole lot more in between. Whatever your fitness goal, the Muscle Lab has the tool for you.

iPhone Link

Muscle Lab Mini

22. Money Jump

About Monkey Jump: Help the monkey to collect all bananas jumping from one side to the other. A jump costs energy. If you hit against an enemy you will lose energy. The game is over when all energy is lost.

iPhone Link

Monkey Jump

23. Movie Times

About Movie Times: Nice, simple and quick app to get movie times based on your location (via GPS) or by suburb.

See the closest cinemas and which movies they are playing, or see a list of movies and which cinemas they are playing at closest to you. Hit the marker pin to see the location of the cinema.

iPhone Link

Orbium

24. Orbium

About Orbium: Björn Nilsson has create this addictive HTML5 canvas puzzle game based on the old Amiga game Logical.

iPhone Link

Harmonious

25. Harmonious

Harmonious is a smart sketchpad which allows anyone to easily create amazing works of art and share them with the world.

Harmonious uses clever procedural drawing techniques so that, with only a few lines, you can create something worth showing off.

iPhone Link

Share Your Favorites!

If you know of some really great web apps for the iPhone or even other smartphone platforms, share them with us in the comments below. Thanks!

Although it’s part of my job to stay current in the world of web apps, it’s also a passion of mine. I love the web, cloud-based computing and all the exciting possibilities it holds for the future. However, I’m not exactly enthralled with web apps on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. But, why not?

Let’s take a look into the wonderful world of mobile web apps, shall we?

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The Mobile Web

Remember when phones first started getting the capabilities to browse the web? It was horrible. Browsing the web on a little flip phone was a joke but it was an exciting idea. Then smartphones came along and eventually became affordable, making web browsing a little less horrible. Then came the iPhone…

With the introduction of the iPhone, everything changed. The browser was actually good; it was actually usable. At this point little effort had been invested into mobile browser compatibility, but that didn’t matter for the iPhone since it could nearly render websites the same as your desktop; the iPhone bridged the gap.

iPhone Web Apps

Shortly after the introduction of the iPhone, web developers began making iPhone optimized versions of their websites (and now Android and BlackBerry). As nice as it was to access Facebook via browser on the iPhone, it was still far better using a native app. So, while the mobile web made a huge leap forward, it still had a long ways to go (and still does).

Mobiles & the Modern Web (HTML5 & CSS3)

So the iPhone bridged the gap between the horrible mobile web and the desktop web we wanted on our phones. Then came the adoption of HTML5 and, more rapidly, CSS3. HTML5 meant properly developed mobile web apps could semi-rival native mobile apps. CSS3 reduced the load of graphics necessary to achieve some of the same beautiful interfaces and enhanced browsing speed.

Web Technology

HTML5 also meant offline capabilities, something native apps held over web apps for a long time, and to some extent still do. As new web technologies continue to advance, the gap in capabilities between mobile web apps and native web apps will likely close. So why doesn’t this sound like a promising future for web apps? Read on.

Native Apps vs Mobile Web Apps

Native mobile apps hold several advantages over web apps that I’m not sure web apps will ever be able to overcome.

Hardare & Software

For starters, native apps are much more capable of taking advantage of the mobile device’s hardware capabilities. That, of course, extends into the operating system as well. Native apps that are programmed well for the operating system they run on will likely always outperform web apps. Why? There’s not a third layer to deal with (the browser) and web technology advances much slower, so it will always lag behind (especially on mobile systems).

It’s also important to note that many web apps aren’t actually coded all that well, bringing a possibly serious quality issue aspect into the picture.

The App Store

Hardware and software limitations aside, web apps have another huge hurdle to overcome before the masses would ever really adopt them. The app store, whether Apple’s or one on another platform, is not only convenient but also easy. The app store offers a centralized location to find new apps, view reviews and ratings, purchase and install from.

Apple's App Store

Until web apps can be offered as conveniently and easily as current native mobile apps, they just won’t stand a chance at mass adoption.

Gaming

Games

One of the most enticing aspects of the iPhone or competing Android phone, is their gaming capabilities. Go dig through the Top 25 section in the app store and you’ll notice they’re almost all games. It’s doubtful web apps will ever, or at least anytime in the near future, compete in this space on mobile devices; not that they really need to.

What Do You Think?

While there’s certainly a great collection of web apps available for todays popular mobile devices, my general response to the question, “mobile devices: yay or nay?”, is almost always nay. I consistently find myself wishing some of the web apps I use occasionally were actually native (like Gmail).

What do you think? Do you use web apps often on your mobile device? Or maybe you avoid them like the plague? Let us know in the comments below, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

As we’ve stated many times before, web apps are growing in popularity and increasingly taking over their desktop counterparts. Google Documents is now widely used for text, presentation and spreadsheet documents, even though it doesn’t offer the extensive features desktop apps usually do. SlideRocket is a great example of an extensive presentation web app that arguably rivals desktop apps.

Personally, I use Google Docs when I actually need to use a normal document editor but otherwise I actually use Coda, TextEdit or another basic markup/text editor. However, I still have desktop apps installed for those times I need to view or edit documents sent by other people. They just don’t convert well in my experiences so I’ve stopped trying.

What about you? Do you want to get away from being stuck to the desktop? Have you already? Or maybe you think web apps for office documents are evil and shouldn’t be used at all? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below and, while you’re at it, let us know what apps you use for your office documents. Thanks!

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In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting MailerLite. The developer describes MailerLite as the simplest and easiest to use email marketing tool. Forget complex settings and unnecessary features. Thanks to our drag-and-drop design and content editor anyone can create great looking email newsletters just in a few minutes.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Email Design

Report

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

• Drag-and-drop design and content editor
• Subscriber management
• Industry leading mail servers
• Real-time reports
• Facebook integration: Sign-up App and Like buttons

Requirements: Browser
Price: Free
Developer: MailerLite

We’ve all seen or played those guitar-oriented video games that allow for jamming along to rock songs but they’re usually only found on traditional gaming consoles or installed as applications on computers.

Instant Jam is a browser-based game that runs on the Java platform and allows you to play along to the music library on your computer, as well as challenging your Facebook friends. Find out more inside the article.

Overview

Instant Jam is a browser-based music game that allows you to jam along to your favorite songs in good old Guitar Hero-style. It features an extensive selection of music to play along to and loads of customization for the game itself (not to mention the fact that it works with any USB-compatible guitars).

Overview

It also integrates into the popular social networking website, Facebook, to allow friends to compete easily. Because the music featured in the game is pulled directly from your computer’s music library, it means that the quality of audio is brilliant and doesn’t take time to stream the sometimes large files from an external server.

Interface

Instant Jam’s interface is generally laid out well – though at times certain parts of it can seem a bit cluttered and confusing. In terms of the menus, they seem quite outdated and don’t really go with the game. These faults aside, it is nonetheless professional and quite similar to that of other retail music video games.

Interface

Despite being developed in Java, the game generally loads pretty quickly, with relevant loading screens displaying when appropriate. Overall, putting aside these couple of design flaws, the game works great and with some tweaking of the design, could really provide a rich and engaging experience for players.

Getting Started

To get started using the game, simply navigate to the website and, after a brief loading period, you’ll immediately be able to begin playing. The game first begins by retrieving the songs on your computer to determine which ones are playable and once it has completed this, it’s now possible to begin actually playing the game.

Music Scanning

You can expect to experience some lag whilst it retrieves your music library and I found that with really large playlists, the game sometimes was very slow to respond. It’s also possible to connect with Facebook at this point to enable the multi-player functionality between your friends.

Song Selection

Controls

One of the appealing things about this game is its increased playability due to the support for using dedicated USB guitar controllers. Because of this, it’s not only possible to play the game with your computer’s keyboard, you can also do so with any USB-compatible guitar controller you purchase, thus not limiting those who perhaps use laptops where this method of game play would be made awkward.

Configuring Control Keys

The game also allows for the programming of the five game controls so that if you are using a keyboard, you can choose which buttons you’d like to use to play.

Structure

The game has a clear traditional structure that allows several difficulties to be chosen for each song that is derived from the experience or chosen difficulty level for the player. Though there aren’t full difficulties for most games, all of them offer at least two which can offer a really good and somewhat challenging experience.

Game Play

I found the actual game play, once the waiting for the game to process the songs was bypassed, to be quite enjoyable. It offers a really fun and enjoyable experience and it makes a change to be able to jam to only the songs you like, as opposed to the generally ill-sounding and frankly terrible ones that are sometimes included on other music games like this one.

Pre-Game Power-Up Options

Considering this is a web app, the graphics and animation are surprisingly good, despite them being rendered in real-time. The game is really engaging and, with their extensive library of modern (and some less-modern) songs, the fact that the high-quality files are being played directly from the computer, the sound quality is perfect. However, I did notice that at times some of the notes seemed a little out which might well be a problem with the version of the files that I had, possibly differing from the timing the level was programmed for.

Game Play

Multi-Player

The game also has support for several players and the challenging between friends. Once Facebook accounts are connected with Instant Jam, it’s immediately possible to start interacting with friends through the game by sending them challenges. Along the bottom of the screen is a leaderboard of the player’s friends and how they rank compared to each other. This is a really great way to encourage competition between friends and challenging to get the highest scores.

Multi-Player in Instant Jam

Shop

Instant Jam offers an in-game store to purchase upgrades to enhance the experience and further customize the game, leading for a better experience within the game as well as making game play more interesting. Items such as differently designed guitars and fret designs are available for purchase with coins that have been earned during the game. “Instant Bucks” can also be spent on exclusive items, though it’s required to purchase them for quite cheaply with real money for them to be acquired. Instant Bucks can also be spent on “Plays”, allowing for the performing of more songs in the game.

The Instant Jam Store

Final Thoughts

Overall, Instant Jam was quite entertaining, though it’s not one I would personally play religiously. I experienced some initial problems trying to get my larger playlist to work with the app so I had to resort to adding each song individually, which I don’t believe should be a necessity for me to play the game. This might’ve just be a problem with my version of Java.

Despite the somewhat lacking design of the menus, the game itself looks great and it is all rendered quite well within the browser. Though I’ve always been a fan of InstantAction games, this is one that although I found to be quite enjoyable, I would not feel obliged to play often. The social layer to the game, with the connection to Facebook, is executed quite well and adds some extra competition. If it were not for this and the fact that it is browser-based, the reach of the game would likely be much more limited.

I will take my hat off to the InstantAction guys because despite some of these faults, they’ve made a really good game that engages people socially and provides a great experience without leaving the browser.

Facebook is one of the very few internet behemoths that doesn’t hesitate to add new features and update existing ones at a rapid pace. In the last few days, Facebook has completely revamped their groups product and now they allow users to download all their profile data. Exporting personal data is clearly aimed at pacifying privacy advocates and is a welcome change in Facebook’s approach.

Previously less highlighted groups feature is now tightly integrated with user profile and friends list. Today we’ll take a look at how to set up a revamped Facebook group and to export your personal data.

Overview

Overview

The primary goal of Facebook groups is to be a simple and private way to communicate with family members or a select group of friends. That’s not all; there are a number of ways one can put Facebook groups to use – say online collaboration, personal social network ala. Ning (in a smaller scale), event organizing committee and so on. If you are looking to socialize and network with people around a particular topic, idea or community, Facebook is the right choice.

Groups vs Pages

In a nutshell, Facebook groups is only for personal use and cannot be used by brands. If you are a brand owner, you might still go ahead and create a public Facebook group of your brand to take advantages of features like group chat, document sharing etc. However, that group will still be a separate entity and will not add any value to the conversations happening in your Facebook Page. So, while anyone can create a Facebook group, it is ultimately designed with individuals in mind.

Creating a Group

Creating a Group

Select the Create Group option from the left pane to kick start the process. Give the group a name and select how open you want the group to be. If you select open, members and content are completely visible to public and the closed option makes content private but members will still remain public. Now, if you are planning to start a really clandestine and underground group, choose private and both member names and the content is visible only to those in the group.

Facebook Group

In all the three cases, users cannot join the group willy nilly. You are the boss and you can choose who is admitted into the Elite club. Start typing the names and you can select the names from the Facebook friends list. That’s all you will have to do and the group is set up automatically.

To change the icon of the Facebook Group, use the drop down adjacent to the icon or click on it.

Adding Content

Creating a Post

Adding content to a group is much easier and more intuitive than in comparison to brand Pages or the personal page. Links to add an image, post, link, event or video is displayed prominently and all the members can start posting content once the group has been created.

Creating a Document

Adding a document works in a different way than we expected. I thought we would be uploading documents, but Facebook lets you create one from this link. There aren’t many features to speak of but there are options to bold & italicize text apart from bullets and numbering. Members can also view the revision history of the documents they are accessing. Looks like Facebook will create its own full blown documents suite like Google Documents or Microsoft 365 in the future.

Group Features

Notifications

All wall posts are intimated to the members via group notifications so that they can comeback to the group to access the information. If users find the notifications to be annoying, they can opt out of the feature altogether. As the creator of the group, you do not have control over the opt out decision of your members.

Another interesting feature is the group chat. There is absolutely no need to ping members with email invitations before starting a chat. Just click on the group chat option and you can chat with all the members who are online immediately. Members can also join the chat even if they login after the chat begins. Consider this to be like the chat rooms in Yahoo or IRC except that there are no creepy strangers pushing malware. The downside of this feature is that you cannot kick members out if they get too noisy or rude.

Downloading Personal Data

Downloading Information

Facebook download tool lets you download a copy of all the information shared in your profile, including your photos and videos, posts on your wall, all of your messages, your friend list and other content you have shared on your profile. You can initiate the data download process from the Account Settings page. The download isn’t instantaneous and once your request is received, Facebook will put everything together and will mail you when it is ready for download.

The downloaded data is in a zipped archived and comes with a HTML file that pretty much works as a webpage. You will have all your photos, links, updates etc. in a fantastically packaged format. You can upload the contents to your web server and have a great personal page courtesy of Facebook. However, it does take an awful lot of time to get the download ready email link from Facebook.

Final Thoughts

Facebook Groups offers a more streamlined way of creating cliques and personal social networks. Just like Twitter lists, Facebook Groups help define your taste and personality. It is also a great idea on part of Facebook to showcase the groups you are member of on the sidebar.

Coming to data download, it is the same Facebook which once said all user uploaded data is theirs. The ability to download data is a clear indication that Facebook listens to public opinion and they don’t want to give undue publicity to the upcoming  opensource distributed social network Diaspora. However, unless Diaspora or a rival social network finds a way to import the Facebook data and get all your connections back again, there is no point in downloading all those status updates & funny video clip links.

Share Your Opinion!

What’s your thoughts on the new data download feature? Will Facebook Groups ever replace Yahoo Groups? Share your thoughts in the comments section.