Resident HW Geek Gerald Seidl Talks about One of His Favorite Subjects: iPhone Apps!

Over the last year “Smartphones” have become an integral tool in the lives of many engineers. Several people here at Headworks have jumped from all sorts of cell phones to the iPhone. In this article I would like to highlight some of the amazing new applications which take full advantage of the various phone’s built in features as well as reach out to all of you to tell us about your favorite app discoveries. We will gladly share them with the readers in future issues.

Here are some of my favorite apps I’ve downloaded recently:

1. We all have to write memos and the new free Dragon voice recognition app does an amazing job translating a quick oral message into written text that can be emailed or inserted into a document.
2. Travel a lot? The Kayak travel site app gives basically all the features of the extensive website finding the perfect flight or hotel.
3. The Engadget app keeps you up to date with all the news about the digital and gadget world.
4. The NASA app lets you follow the space station or other satellites in real time on a map.
5. SkyGazer is a planetarium app. Hold up your iPhone pointed to the area of interest and you see the astronomical objects and their names in the camera view. Looking at the sky and not knowing what all these stars are will never happen again! You can even search for specific stars or planets such as Mars and the phone will truly direct you to the right location.

The latest advancement for the super smartphones are the so-called augmented reality applications. They may need the latest phone (3GS), since they use the built-in compass. Here are some examples of its use with new apps:

1. Open the Wikitude App and point your iPhone in any direction and information about points of Interest where you are will be pulled in from Wikipedia and other online sources and displayed right in front of you in the camera view. We just used this app in Egypt and it worked amazing.
2. If you are mountain fan, PEAKS will do the same thing. You point your phone in any direction and the names of the mountains you see in the camera view will be displayed right above them.

The one app we still search for is a conversion tool which handles the typical water/wastewater industry dimensions. It seems that MGD, and other typical units are not built in. If you find such an app or have any other favorite apps to share, let us know and we will publish them in one of our next issues of HeadsUp! Email me at gseidl@headworksusa.com.