Iphone's App store: a few applications

Hi again,

even though in France we must wait until Thursday in order to get the new iphone 3G, we can at least enjoy the new 2.0 firmware for the iphone V1.
The most important addition to the firmware is the possibility to download applications through the so-called "App store". What is nice is that it can be done directly from the iphone, since upon installing the new firmware, a new icon appears on the dashboard, the App store icon. Of course, it is much quicker to use the Wi-fi to download applications.
At the the launch of the App store on Friday there were already more than 500 applications to choose from (from games to dictionaries...), most of them not free, with prices ranging from 0.79€ to more than 30.
Still, there are a few interesting free applications such as Remote and Shazam.

Remote is an application that allows you to control the use of Itunes on your computer, directly with the iphone: for instance, on the screen of the iphone, you see all your playlists, you can sort by artists, reduce/increase the volume, switch songs...When you listen to a song, the artwork even appears on the screen! Very nice!

Shazam is a wonderful free app that allows you to identify any music you are listening to be it on the radio, on TV...Simply put your iphone near to the speakers, launch Shazam, and wait around 10 seconds and voila, you've obtained the name of the artist, of the song, and even the artwork. You might even get a youtube link providing a video of the band/artist playing the song!

Well, there are hundreds of apps, and more are created by the day, so expect some updates as I discover interesting new stuff. Personnaly, I have also downloaded a free bloomberg application which allows me to follow the world financial markets as well as my portfolio. You can even enter the number of shares you own of a certain stock, so that you get the amount of money you lose/gain over the day: I lost more than a hundred euros on Friday!
Of course, it is not useful for everyone, but it is definitely an improvement over the basic Yahoo app.