GuitarToolKit

guitartoolkitGuitarToolKit is one of those apps which most people wouldn’t use everyday, but when you’re about to play your stringed guitar-type instrument, its an absolute must. GuitarToolKit includes a tuner, a playable fretboard, metronome, and chord reference guide all of which can be use with support for guitars, basses, banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles.

With a clean, usable interface, and features galore, GuitarToolKit is an impressive offering. Although the price is a bit steep (for the full version), one could make the case that a non-iphone tool that does all of this so well would be much pricier. Find GuitarToolKit in the following locations:

app store homepage twitter

Instapaper

metermaidProbably my most-used app on the iPhone, Instapaper (with its bookmarklet) lets you flag webpages to read later. It fully integrates with Google Reader, and the iPhone application caches your flagged articles for offline reading. One of my most favorite features is the text-only view, which optimizes the page you’re reading for the iPhone screen and eliminates all of the unnecessary distractions.

Instapaper completely changed the way I browse the web. Although Instapaper is available for free, Instapaper Pro (the paid version) is well worth the money for anyone who reads many articles throughout the day. Find Instapaper in the following locations:

app store homepage twitter

Meter Maid

metermaidMeter Maid allows you to tell it how much time you put into your parking meter, and it will remind you (with a Push notification!) when there’s only a little time left. For those of us who are surrounded by parking meters and hourly parking, Meter Maid is essential to avoiding those costly parking tickets.

Although I have yet to forget where I parked my car, Meter Maid will also give you directions to your car, if necessary. Several things are still missing in this 1.0 release (simple method to turn off timer, etc), Meter Maid is yet another example of a simple, highly useful, and well designed iPhone application. You can find Meter Maid in the following places:

app store homepage

Color Stream

colorstreamColor Stream is an app for designers, allowing users to create custom color palettes, either manually or by extracting colors from photos on the iPhone. While beautifully designed user interface makes using Color Stream quite fun, the export options make the app quite useful. You can export either to your photo album, email it, or find Flickr images that are made up of this color scheme.

Color Stream is still a 1.0 product (I ran into some infrequent crashes, etc), and I look forward to seeing what the developer has in store for it, particularly with the release of Pantone’s seemingly inferior iPhone app. You can find Color Stream in the following places:

app store homepage twitter

my favorite apps

this is where I share with you (my two readers) my new favorite iPhone apps.

take a look around and be sure to let me know which apps work for you in the comments.