That's How It Happened

I have been messing around with a Nokia N80 for a week now. In the process of compiling this list of the best next-gen phone apps, I've racked up a 3 figure data bill. These apps are cool, but be warned, they are all bandwidth heavy. They get expensive fast if you are on a regular $$$/Mb contract.

1. iSync is my most essential GTD app. It takes a quick hack to get it running on an N80. It combines calendar, todo, and contacts syncing. You can take notes, numbers, and appointments down from your email into iCal, and be sure to have them handy on your phone, when you need them later (and vice-versa of course).

2. Shozu are a UK start up, offering a great free service. The app downloaded onto your phone gives you "one-click" upload of photos to Flickr, videos to YouTube, or practically any file, to any place. Some of this functionality will be inbuilt in the upcoming N80 "Internet Edition", and some other phones have this pre-enabled as part of the Nokia/Flickr initiative. However there is another must-have feature: scheduled downloadable "ZuCasts", which are video podcasts tailored for your phone screen.

3. The cool kids all like GPS integration on their mobiles, but I swear Google Maps Mobile, is more useful. It produces beautiful street and satellite maps of anywhere on earth. Better still, it has integrated search results and directions. Unless you struggle to read maps, it has everything you need to never get lost again.

4. Widsets is a widget based RSS reader for your phone, with a fancy GUI. The N8O already has a nice RSS reader built into its excellent XHTML browser, but widgets are so cool, you just have to add them. More complex widget mini-apps are in development, for more show-off goodness.

5. There are VNC clients for mobile platforms available, but Soonr makes it really simple. You can remotely access files on a nominated computer running the Soonr desktop client, and use Soonr to arrange a Skype conference call between your phone and anyone else. Until an actual Skype set-up arrives on Nokia, that's an amazing feature. In fact together those two features (together with QuickOffice) might save me from taking my laptop away on trips.

6. Last on the list is SmartPox, a phone barcode scanner, trying to bring QR Codes to the gaijin masses.