Top Ten Best Free iPhone Apps

Top 10 Best Free iPhone Apps

Essential free killer apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

There are now well over 250,000 apps available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and, surprisingly, many of the best are free.

The following list showcases our pick of the 40 best free iPhone apps, and includes iPhone applications for social networking, travel, news, photography, productivity and more.
If your favourites aren't covered, tell us all about them in the comments.

1. Facebook
Once an ugly duckling, but now - as of version 3 - a social-network-aware swan, Facebook is a triumph. The revised grid-based 'home screens' provide speedy access to regularly visited sections (news feed, notifications, and so on) and pages, and the experience is such that it in many ways beats the browser version.


2. Gorillacam
Pretty much from nowhere, Gorillacam arrived in December 2009 from the creators of the Gorillapod tripods. It mashes together a slew of features to hugely improve an iPhone's camera (timer, multi-shot, spirit-level, on-screen grid, 'press anywhere' capture), meaning you can bin a half-dozen standalone apps that offer similar things.


3. RunKeeper Free
The prospect of Nike+ but better and for free might sound unlikely, but that's what RunKeeper Free provides. The app uses an iPhone's GPS capabilities to track your jogging route, and provides mapping and details of pace and calories burned. Activities can be shared online, and treadmill runs can be entered manually.


4. Stanza
Kindle's grabbed many 'electronic book' headlines, but an iPhone or iPod touch is a perfectly competent alternative - at least if you have the right app to hand. Stanza enables you to download books from various sources (many of which offer free titles), and you can transfer your own ePub, PDF or eReader titles from the free Stanza Desktop.


5. Dropbox
Plenty of apps exist for transferring content between your computer and your device, but Dropbox is free and easier to use than most of its contemporaries. Dump files you want to sync in a folder on your computer and Dropbox for your device will enable you to access them, download them for offline viewing, and, in many cases, view them.


6. thetrainline
For anyone commuting by train, thetrainline is the free app to beat all others. Journey planning, offline results, timetables and a location-aware 'next train home' option are available via a clean, streamlined interface. The app's not quite as good as National Rail Enquiries, but it is very similar - and five quid cheaper.


7. Skype
It's imperfect and annoyingly lacks push notifications, but Skype is still an essential download. The interface is pleasingly simple and usable, enabling anyone with a Skype account to make free calls to other Skype users and cheap calls to anywhere in the world. If you're on Pay and Go, this is particularly handy, but the app also enables iPod touch users to utilise their devices for calls.


8. Movies
Although some aspects of cinema listings app Movies are  US-centric (notably regarding details on upcoming movies and DVDs), it succeeds where it matters. Select a film and the app figures out where you're located, lists nearby cinemas, and displays times your chosen film is showing. Efficiency can be further increased by pinning favourite cinemas to the top of the list.


9. TonePad
Virtual pianos and guitars are all very well, but purely digital musical toys are more suited to Apple handhelds. TonePad is the best of them, using a grid-based interface that enables you to turn notes on and off and compose pleasing and harmonious loops; your creations can be edited, saved and uploaded to share with other users.


10. Thomson Reuters News Pro
There are many free news apps, but Reuters News Pro offers a breadth of coverage that makes it a winner. Preferences enable you to tailor the app's output to the US, and the toolbar provides swift access to news, pictures, videos and stock markets coverage.


11. Twitter (formerly Tweetie)
Tweetie was the iPhone Twitter client that other iPhone Twitter clients wanted to be. Its combination of polished interface, plentiful options and multi-account support meant everyone loved it - apart from cheapskates, because Tweetie wasn't free. Now, however, it is, because Twitter bought it, rebranded it as Twitter, and set fire to the price tag.

Top 10 SEO Tricks and Techniques to Get You Noticed!

Best SEO Tips and Techniques
1. Title Tag
Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags — the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is considered the most important of the three.

A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing.

It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go overboard – you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here, as well.

2. Meta Tags
There are two primary meta tags in terms of SEO — the description and the keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the search engines use the description tag as far as ranking your results. However it is one of the more important tags because it is listed in your search result — it is what users read when your link comes up and what makes them decide whether or not to click on your link.

Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.

Due to “keyword stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard the keyword tag. It is no longer nearly as important as it was years ago, however it doesn’t hurt to include them in your source code.

When creating your keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms people will type in when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go overboard — too many duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web designer” “web designers” “custom web designer” “html web designer” “your state here web designer” – you get the idea). Those are all basically the same, so pick one or two variations at the most and move onto the next keyword.

3. Proper Use of Heading Tags
This is a very important element to consider when writing out your site copy. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major key points of your copy are.

Your main page title should use the tag — this shows what your page is about. Use of additional tags, such as and are equally important by helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual break in the text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will automatically know what your topics are on a page. The various heading tags give a priority to the content and help index your site properly.

4. Alt Attributes on Images
Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings.

In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image.


5. Title Attributes on Links
Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good web site will have. That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for text links.

As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a person – or more importantly, the search engines — what the link is. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet – make the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio” — this will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for portfolio’s.

6. XML Sitemap
My last post referenced the sitemaps used by web visitors to help them navigate through your site themselves. However, there’s another version — XML sitemaps — that are used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well.

This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.

7. Relevant Content
Having content relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most important SEO aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags and alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt.

While it is important to include as many keywords in your page copy as possible, it is equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m sure we’ve all seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that honestly don’t make much sense from the reader’s point of view.

When creating your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever information you’re discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it make sense to the reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking your page is great — when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t make heads or tails of your information and it just feels spammy to them — you can bet they’ll be clicking on the next web site within a matter of seconds.

8. Link Building
We’ve probably all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web site owner’s dream to have as high a page rank as possible. While the algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web site.

Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to.

With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!

9. Social Media
Although technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in getting your web site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in your plan.

Social media ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more. There is a lot of relationship building involved, but as you build your own networks and build quality content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web site increasing, as well.

As with any relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site like Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly — your true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn people off.

Even if you are on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to make friends. Help out members of your network if they ask for a “retweet” or Digg, give helpful advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.

If you write a great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers in your niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give you votes on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the more likely your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often resulting in additional link backs from other blogs, etc.

10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash
Along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two of these items are splash pages (often consisting of a flash animation) and all flash web sites.

Yes, flash is pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at — their own bit of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines don’t get along well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible advancement in this area, for the most part the search engines cannot read Flash.

All that great content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the search engines if it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search engines are concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible. And if the search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of potential customers will miss out on what you have to offer, too.

Equally as “pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page should no longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages used to serve as an introduction into a web site (often with a flash animation), it is no longer seen as helpful, and often times might actually annoy visitors.

For one — it’s an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you don’t give a “skip intro” option or set of links into your main site content — because you’re essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full animation. If you’re lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just leave without giving your main web site a shot. And without an html link pointing into your site, the search engines have no way to continue either (unless you made use of a sitemap.xml file — but still…)

Top 10 Vacation Spots!

Top 10 Vacation Spots

Check out this year's list of top destinations. This list represents a mix of emerging spots, under-appreciated cities, and places we think you need to experience before they're overrun by tourist crowds. While authors and editors again contributed their suggestions, this year we reached out for some additional advice: from our readers. The one element that connects all of these? We can't wait to go

10 Best Beaches in the United States

The Best Beaches in the United States

The United States contains some of the most diverse beaches in the world, and experiences can range from quirky amusements and raucous parties to formidable volcanoes and desolate acres of sand and shoreline, depending on where you travel. Whatever your tastes, we've gathered some of the most well-reviewed and widely adored beach destinations in the United States. Choose wisely (and don't forget the sunscreen).

^#1

 Maui

Why go: Why the hell not! Writers laud Maui for its diversity of attractions and unforgettable geography; it's also got a ton of beaches. Be sure to check out the calm waters at Kapalua Beach, which are ideal for snorkeling and kayaking. If you want to watch some local surfing, check out the North Shore!

Best WoW World of Warcraft Addons

World of Warcraft Top Addons

One of the best decisions Blizzard made when programming World of Warcraft was to open the user interface (UI) to allow players to create custom modules that can display various information about the world in new and creative ways. World of Warcraft add ons let anyone with a little programming knowledge remake the interface of the game into their vision of what it should be and allow the rest of us easy access to tons of great information that wouldn't otherwise be as easily available. You can find your addons here: Curse.com WoW Addons

10. KLH Threat Meter
KLH Threat Meter is like a damage meter except that instead of showing the damage you’re taking, it records the threat that you’re generating. By monitoring all the abilities you use and checking
your talents, armor set bonuses and buffs, this add on can recreate the threat list of a mob. This makes tank transitions simple and allows DPS classes to maximize their damage output without pulling aggro.

9. Titan Panel
Tital Panel adds an entire suite of useful information and controls to bars that can be displayed on the top or bottom of your screen. This add on allows you to easily turn on and off modules like coordinate display, experience
points earned per hour, group loot type, equipment condition and cumulative bonuses, honor points, sound, volume, and much much more.

8. Atlas
WoW Atlas provides detailed maps for instances, battlegrounds, and other popular areas within World of Warcraft. These maps are high quality (like those you might find in strategy guides) and the add on has a built-in in-game map browser that loads off your existing UI map. No more getting lost in instances!

7. Natur Enemy Cast Bar
This add on not only displays who your target is focusing its attacks on but also its full casting bar including a timer that lets you see exactly when a spell is going to be cast so you can time interrupts and counter-spells with exact precision. It also displays timers for gains (buffs, heals over time), cooldowns, DoTs and debuffs like stuns or polymorphs.

6. Scrolling Combat Text
This World of Warcraft add on is a fairly simple but very configurable mod that adds damage, heals, and events
(dodge, parry, windfury, etc.) as scrolling text above your character - much like what already happens above your target. This makes it easier to concentrate on the battle without having to watch your regular combat chat window to see how much and what damage you’re taking. WoW has a built-in scrolling combat text option but this add on takes what’s good about that and adds a bunch of great features.

5. X-Perl Unit Frames
This is an enhanced version of Perl Unit Frames that completely replaces the WoW default unit frames (those boxes around your
character portrait that show your health and mana). This add on adds tons of useful information for you and your group’s unit frames including a range finder to tell where someone is in relation to you, a monitor to track heals over time that you’ve cast and list debuffs you can dispel, 3D portraits for all characters, and many cool features especially designed for raids.

4. Gatherer
Gatherer is a WoW add on for herbalists, miners and treasure hunters. Its main purpose is to track the closest plants,
deposits and treasure locations right on your minimap with definable colors, icons, and reporting distances. Gatherer doesn’t track like a tracking ability does, instead it “remembers” where you found various items in the past and alerts you on the minimap when you pass by those locations again.

3. Equip Compare
When you shop for items at a vendor or the auction house and you hover over an item, you get a comparison tooltip showing your currently equipped item so you can compare which one is best. This add on makes this feature available everywhere in the game where you can hover over items like in your bags, in a loot window, chat box, and even on the reward page of a quest.

2. Item Rack
This add on makes swapping equipment for stance changes, special monster encounters (like those for which you need to equip armor with specific resist bonuses), and just general role-playing much easier. You simply add equipment slots to a bar and a mouseover on the bar will create a menu of all items in your bags that can go in that slot. Just set up a hot key for that item rack and you’re all set!

1. WoW Auctioneer
By far my personal favorite, this World of Warcraft add-on lets you track the auction history of any item that has been up for auction and use that information to identify items that are selling below their average value, buy the auction out, then put the item back up and make huge profits.

Free Smart-Phone Security Apps on a Droid X

Best Free Smart-Phone Security Apps on a Droid X

Over a decade ago, while working on a GCN feature about the Navy, I interviewed a shipboard IT guy who told me how much the world had changed from the ships of old.

In the past, he said, sailors would get shore leave and their commanders would worry about what diseases they might bring back on board when they returned. But in the time of PDAs (this was a pre-smart phone world), which basically were enterprise clients, commanders worried more about what computer viruses they might bring back on board along with their electronics. And don’t forget, this was 10 years ago.

What is most surprising to me today is that cell phone viruses haven’t blown up the way computer worms and other malicious code have over the years. Back in 2004, Cabir.A was the first replicating cell phone virus, but it was done as a proof-of-concept project and did no harm. Since then, there hasn’t been a lot to worry about, for two reasons.

First, it’s much harder to replicate a virus from cell phone to cell phone, though going from a PC to a phone is much easier. If anyone ever figures out how to get a phone to automatically dial contacts and replicate a virus (and how to trick the phone on the receiving end to answer and install it), we will be in big trouble.

Second, until very recently the operating systems on most phones simply couldn’t support most viruses. A user would need to purposely install the code, or at least think they were installing something else, and even then getting rid of it would not be too much of a problem — simply wipe the phone down to its default settings, albeit with a loss of data.

But the potential for viruses is there, and we can’t get complacent. That’s why it’s nice to see that antivirus companies are starting to make moves to protect smart phones before hackers can get a foothold.
My favorite free AV program for PCs, AVG, is now moving to cell phones, specifically the Android. We recently downloaded DroidSecurity to a Verizon Droid X we were testing in the lab.

The program has a clean interface, stays mostly in the background, and will scan all programs before they run, looking for malicious code. It will perform daily or weekly scans on your schedule. And it’s free. Or you can pay $9.99 for the Pro version of the application, which adds in real-time scanning of all SMS traffic for full-on lockdown protection and even spam blocking.

But AVG isn’t alone. Trend Micro has an entire suite of tools aimed at protecting mobile phones from viruses. Trend Micro realizes that smart phones have advanced to the point where they are actual clients on your network, and we all know the dangers by now of having an unsecured node on a government system.
The Trend Micro suite seems to go a bit farther than the AVG one, but for a little bit higher price. We found it on sale online for around $15, with a free trial available.

There is also Lookout Mobile Security, which, like AVG, is available for free. We put the Lookout software onto the same Droid X and found that of the three, it seemed to have the cleanest interface.
And like AVG, there is a Professional version that goes beyond scanning apps when demanded. The $29 pro version will automatically scan all programs with an eye to user privacy, making sure that nothing can collect data on your phone without your permission. It also has a remote wipe feature, so if your phone is ever stolen (physical crime is still a problem in this electronic age) you can destroy all your data with a few clicks from any computer.

It’s only a matter of time before some horrible self-replicating phone virus strikes. And when it does, wherever you are on land or at sea, you better be ready to protect yourself. Given that lots of basic protection is completely free, there’s no reason not to raise your shields.

By John Breeden II
Testing smart-phone security apps on a Droid X

Best Communication App for Blackberry

Keep Twitter going with UberTwitter

App for BlackBerry

Free Twitter clients are surprisingly rare in the BlackBerry world simply because of the fact that so many companies make clients and then charge people money for them because they feel their work is worth money. Many of these clients are heavily overrated though and UberTwitter app for BlackBerry is an example of a free client that can do almost as much as the other ones that are available.