I’m a Catholic: in the Catholic Church it’s tradition to forgo something you like for “Lent,” a period between “Ash Wednesday (this year February 17)” and “Easter Sunday (this year April 4)” and as such I’ve given up the App Store. Well we’re down to just one day left before chocolate and apps, and I’ve kept a list of interesting looking Apps mentioned by others and on App Of The Day by Jordan Satok ( @jordansatok ), here is the list I’ve come up with (fwiw this list was kept in Evernote for the longest time):
- Boxcar (free for first service; additional services $0.99 or $1.99) – mentioned by @netspencer – Boxcar is a notification platform built on Apple Push Notifications that allows easy Twitter push (mentions, DMs, etc…), push email notifications, remote Growl notification, and soon almost anything as they’ve opened up their APIs.
- WolframAlpha ($1.99) - mentioned on TUAW lately – WolframAlpha is an awesome tool and I use it daily (it’s an awesome aid for math class) but I’ve so far had to use the desktop web version on my iPhone (not exactly thrilling user experience). In the mean time I’ve used the mobile web version which is an automatic step up!
- Pastebot ($2.99) - mentioned by AppOfTheDay – Pastebot manages clipboards for the iPhone, it allows you to save snippets of text, sync them with your Mac, then save yourself time.
- ReelDirector ($7.99) – mentioned on MBW many times - does simple video editing on the iPhone with 27 transitions, titles, trimming, and export-to-email functionality.
- Digg (free) – mentioned everywhere on Twitter – provides easy access to Digg content: allows digging/burrying, commenting, submitting, and viewing.
Although I will resume purchasing Apps, it’s been interesting to give them up — every day was a challenge to not buy apps I see people using or talking about. Just a thought: it would be interesting to give up all apps, using them, buying them, talking about them, etc.. for a month or so.

