iPhone – A tool for Writers

I’ve always loved getting a new cell phone.  Trouble is as soon as I have a one I’m ready for a new one.  At least until I purchased my first iPhone.  Sure there were things to get used to – virtual keyboards, small ear speaker and the “slide to unlock”; however, none of these outweigh the universe of available apps.  I even decided to develop one of my own (not a writer’s app but to determine child support in South Carolina).

Below are some of the apps I enjoy.  They are from a variety of categories –  all of which I have found helpful to my writing process.

1 –Voice Memos.  I mention this first because it is included with the iPhone.  It’s a plain and simple voice recorder with great recording quality and ease of file transfer.  If I need to quickly remember a thought, I use Voice Memo.

2 – eReaders. Both Nook and Kindle are free and with a B&N or Amazon account you can read your library on your iPhone.  Megareader is an inexpensive eReader that provides access to nearly 2 million books for your reading pleasure. 

3 – TweetDeck and Hootsuite.  So there is this website called Twitter….  TweekDeck and Hootsuite are just two of the many Twitter interfaces letting you interact on Twitter directly from your iPhone.  The two apps offer different features, but between them some of the attributes allow for grouping of tweets to make sure you don’t miss anything important – great for those of you who have lots of followers – or you can even bank tweets in advance and schedule when they are sent out on Twitter. 

4 – Evernote. This is a memo app on steroids.  You can do voice memos, take photos, do notes, grab a screen shot or even remember a web page.  If you have your iPhone and see something – literally anywhere, Evernote will remember it for you. It also has a great interface for organization and retrieval. 

5 – Jotnot.  This app turns your iPhone into a scanner using the camera feature.  Start up the app, point it at the document you want to scan and it is off to the races. 

6 – Writeroom and Writechain.  Writeroom is a straightforward clear screen writing app. Text can be exported to a variety of word processing programs.  Writechain is a program that gives you on the fly writing statistics and provides a breakdown on how frequently you write which is great for motivation.

7 – iLava and Angry Birds.  Sure they aren’t actually writing apps per se, but sometimes you just need a break from writing.  iLava is a virtual lava lamp and Angry Birds is just a fun game, but terribly addictive I should warn.

There are a ton of other apps available.  With the iPhone I’ve found with rare exception the phrase, “Yeah, there’s an app for that,” is completely true.  So if you look at the apps above and don’t like them, not to worry, there is most likely another one you will like.  As well, these apps are also generally available for the iPad and the iTouch. So get an iPhone (or iPad or iTouch) and get to writing.

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