iPod Touch/iPhone Apps

Well, I got my iPod Touch Wednesday as an early Christmas present and after extensively playing with it I would like to give you my top 5 Free Applications (Hey, i'm cheap okay).

1) Mighty Docs - With Mighty Docs you can view your documents and spreadsheets from Google Docs. The great feature about Mighty Docs is that it caches the documents and spreadsheets when you open then. That way when you don't have an internet connection you can still view your documents. I love this application, it works great and is pretty fast too. Some updates I'd like to see in the future would be ability to edit documents and spreadsheets (create them also) and save changes to server when you are connected. I'd also like to see presentation functionality which I believe is being developed now. You definitely need this app if you use Google Docs.

2) Remote - I believe this application was developed my Apple. The application is simple, connect your iPod Touch/iPhone and computer to a local network and turn on iTunes on the computer. The first time that you use the app for your library it will give you a four number passcode to enter on the computer to verify the connection. From then on it remembers the library and works like a charm. All of your playlists are shown in the application or you can browse your media by artist, album, etc. This app works great if you use a media server or a home theater PC. I really like this application.

3) Facebook - This application is nice and polished. Basically, if you like using Facebook then this app will be natural for you. If you use Facebook then there is no reason for you not to get this app.

4) Movies - Movies is a great application. The front screen brings up movies that are released that week, and then other movies still hot in the box office and then lesser known movies still playing in theaters. You can search for theaters near your location and select your favorites. Movie times are also listed for all available theaters. When you select a movie more information is given about it and some movies have the ability to play the trailer for you. This is a nice clean app that easily lets you select your entertainment choices for the night.

5) Twitterific - This is a really good Twitter app. You can view your friends' tweets and post your own. You can also view all tweets if you choose. There's nothing spectacular about this app, but it is pretty good.

Bonus: I also liked the game Fuzzle. It's a really neat free game that will take up lots of your time. The Labyrinth lite edition is pretty good also, I'll probably wind up buying the full version of that.

Post in the comments and let me know what your favorite apps are.

Microsoft Expression Blend

Until recently the way Microsoft allowed you to design windows programs with .NET was called Windows Forms and this feature set of familiar looking tools was built into Visual Studio (which is a relatively expensive program but makes editing code much easier). Now Microsoft has released Expression Blend, the new way to create Windows Applications. Guess what, Expression Blend is a completely separate program from Visual Studio. You know what else, you can't edit your code directly from Expression Blend either now. So if you want to use the newest Microsoft technologies you have to fork out the money for both programs.
Now that I've got that out of my system I'd like to introduce you to creating Windows Applications with Expression Blend through what Microsoft calls WPF or Windows Presentation Foundation. Essentially you don't need Blend to create forms through WPF but it's a lot easier if you do. CoDe magazine online has a great article that helped me get started using WPF called WPF meets iPhone. This tutorial takes you through the steps of creating a new project from scratch making an interface similar to the iPhone. The online article has everything you need except Expression Blend and C# 2008 Express or VB Express (depending on which language you prefer, the tutorial offers code samples for each) including the C# and VB source code and all the resources needed. Following the article isn't hard and taught me enough to start creating my own forms with Expression Blend.
If you like this article and use Microsoft Technologies for your programming I would highly suggest subscribing to the magazine. You can read a lot of the content online, but as usual subscribers usually get a little more content.
Try and put your own twist on the iPhone interface and