5 Awesome iPhone Apps You Won’t Find in App Store

The App Store is really helpful and we’ve found some nifty stuff on there. But the most frustrating thing about the App Store is what ISN’T there–a wealth of open source and non-Apple-approved products that will certainly enhance the iPhone experience for most. Here’s a sampling of some of my favorites:

1. MagicPad

Jotting notes on the iPhone is a little less than convenient.  The lack of copy/paste clipboard functionality alone is enough to make you wish you could just use a notepad.  But, with MagicPad, the RTF-based “tiny word processor,” copy and paste is handy and a real problem solver.   Check out this video of it running on the iPhone. Now all we need is a decent doodling app that doesn’t require a stylus.

2. Quake

Undeniably cool: take an old open-source game and getting running on the latest hand-held device or alien platform.  Of course, why not Quake?  The game that advanced the state of the art and gave us all pixelated nightmares can be compiled to run on the iPhone, and here’s the proof.  Not enough action?  Try Quake 3: Arena instead.

3. Qik

Still in beta, the Qik service allows users to broadcast live video over the web from the camera that’s built-in to their mobile device.  We’ve tried it on our Nokia N-Series devices, and it works awesomely. It’s like Twitter but for video.  Definitely check it out on your iPhone.

4. Flixwagon

Like Qik, Flixwagon lets you broadcast video from your iPhone, but the guys at Flixwagon have attached, as you’ll see in this demonstration video, the output to a desktop application using a jailbroken iPhone. Very cool indeed.

5. SIPGate

If you’re like most, you want to get the most bang for your buck out of your smartphone. That means using VoIP to circumvent long distance fees and cellular minutes, or using VoIP to connect your phone to your company’s VoIP phone system.  Either way, SIPGate’s got you covered. This product puts a SIP-based VoIP phone on your iPhone and then lets you configure it to use any service provider you want. SIPGate also offers cheap WiFi VoIP minutes themselves.

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Tags: appstore, flixwagon, magicpad, qik, quake, sipgate, software, voip