iSmashPhone

Reach Out And Text Someone -- For Free

Those clever lads who gave us TouchType (the landscape-mode email program) may have outdone themselves...

With SMS Touch, you type out a message and send it as a regular email to anyone in your phonebook.  Here's the clever part: they receive it (and can respond to it) as a normal SMS message, BUT their response comes back to you as another email.  Considering that AT&T wants an extra US$15/month for unlimited texting -- and SMS Touch only costs five bucks (most of which goes to ongoing backend support) -- the savings are obvious.  And if they're not obvious, the following video should correct that:

[Available from iTunes]

PanoLab Lets iPhone Shutterbugs "Go Wide"

Originate Labs has released PanoLab, billed as "an elegant, free* tool that enables photographers to assemble multi-frame panoramas directly on the iPhone."

Using photos taken on the fly and/or already on your iPhone, PanoLab stitches them together into a wide-screen vista that can then be saved/edited/shared like any other photo file.  It can use as few as two -- and as many as thirty -- images to do this, and also "applies perspective correction and linear projection to make many photos from one viewpoint align into a cohesive wide-angle view."

*The "free" applies to the basic PanoLab app.  There's also a PanoLab Pro with more features -- and a US$4.99 pricetag.  One caveat: according to iTunes reviewers, neither basic nor Pro app offers a truly seamless stitching of images, so proceed accordingly.

Box.net Offers Online File Access to iPhone Users

Box.net claims to be "the easiest way to share and manage your files online"  -- and they've now extended that ease to iPhone users.

The first step is to create a Box.net account.  Pricing ranges from free (for a single user and 1 GB of storage) to US$19.95 for 15 GB and up to five sub-users.  Once that's done, download the free Box.net app from iTunes and install.  You're now ready to upload, edit, and share a variety of documents, particularly those which would be impractical -- if not impossible -- to email.  (Note: the "edit" part is limited to photos and images with Picnik, and Word and Excel files using Zoho.)

If you opt for one of the paid subscriptions, Box.net gives you fourteen days to try them out before they begin charging you.  And even if you don't have an iPhone, Box.net's web-based system still makes it an attractive way to access and share documents from just about anywhere with Web service.

[Download from the iTunes Store]

A Personal Assistant: All of your personal information in one (safe?) spot

A Personal Assistant

Need to check your email, bank account, and cell phone minutes?  You can manage all of your personal accounts at once with A Personal Assistant by Pageonce.  Simply enter your required login information, and you should be able to check your accounts, on-the-go and hassle free,

Features

• Manage accounts on Netflix, Wells Fargo, Southwest Airlines, Myspace, and more
• Should you lose your iPhone, you can disable your account at pageonce.com to keep your personal information out of sight of prying eyes 
• Registering your device's serial number ensures that only your device can access your data 

Limitations

• Those who are reticent (and with good reason) to input their passwords and personal information on a third-party device may want to avoid this App
• Accounts are not updated automatically as often as desired
• Some accounts are more compatible with this App than others 

Summary

A Personal Assistant has a good concept--an all-in-one hot spot for your personal accounts.  However, it's not in the best interest of security to relegate all of your most important information to a third-party App, regardless of how highly-touted the security system is on behalf of the developer.

Available

App Store; Free