Mini Reviews: White Pages, Speed Test, Vlingo

Look up local phone numbers, check the speed on your mobile internet connection, or use your iPhone hands free!  Here are some free iPhone applications that are looking to be on the cutting edge of iDevelopment.

White Pages Mobile

It's true, the phone book is dead.  The funeral is over, so you can stop
mourning.  The eventual cremation did not
come from the basic idea that the phone book was dead, but the archaic form in
which it came.  Right now you have to
look to the evolution of this basic format and see what can be maintained and
what has to go.  Conventionally phone
books are broken up into the Yellow Pages for businesses and public
institutions and the White Pages for residences.  As home phone number begin to disappear the White
Pages are becoming less and less useful, but right now any phone number
catalogue that can get right onto your iPhone is going to be the bee's knees.  White Pages Mobile, a new free iPhone application
dedicated to getting you phone numbers, uses all of the iPhone's built in
features to fork over the info you're after. 
You have a few options right from the White Pages Mobile front page.  You can search by people, business, and
reverse phone.  Right with these options
you see that the White Pages has taken over many of the functions the Yellow
Pages did and brings them right onto your touch screen.  Reverse Phone may be the most interesting as
it will look up any number on your iPhone that you simply cannot identify.  Any young person with a cell phone will tell
you that they always have a growing catalogue of missed calls or anonymous
contacts that they need to sift through. 
White Pages also utilizes the iPhone's location feature to help find the
area for whom or what you are searching for, but you can also search
cleanly.  Once you do find what you are
looking for in the search you can get the number for them, their address in the
iPhone Maps area, and the ability to create an iPhone Contact right from
there.  This is all pretty basic and to the
point in White Pages, which is why this is one of the most essential free iPhone
applications.  Everyone should get a hold
of this, especially if your iPhone is your primary phone.

Speed Test 

For anyone that has ever had problems with the speed of
their home internet service you will likely be used to the test.  You are taken to a website that has a
speedometer and you select a button to read the download or upload speed.  This is done so the service provider can see
if there is an issue with your service and whether or not you are getting what
you should be.  Speed Test, from speedtest.net is a free
iPhone application that does the exact same thing on your iPhone.  It does this very effectively with nice visuals
that really let you know what is going on. 
The only problem here with Speed Test is, well, what the point is.  When you do a test like this from your home
computer your service provider can make changes.  That is not necessarily true here.  If you are doing this with your Wi-Fi
connection at home you are not going to get an accurate reading and if you were
trying to communicate with your service provider they would tell you to go on
your computer.  I suppose you could do
this just to see where hot spots are and good free Wi-Fi connections around
you, but that is stretching a bit.  There
is part of me that wants to give this five stars because it does what it does
so effectively, and part of me wants to give it three for having limited
appeal.  I will rest in the middle on
four, and it can be up to you whether or not this seems useful.

Vlingo

More and more states are enacting laws against talking on
your cell phone while driving, and at this point texting is beyond out of the
question.  In an effort to keep you
plugged in iPhone application developers are clamoring to get you ways to use
your device hands free.  Voice control
seems to be the obvious solution, but for many people the iPhone on board voice
control is not even close to good enough. 
This is where Vlingo comes in. 
Vlingo is a free iPhone application that allows you to use voice control
for a number of different iPhone features ranging from Maps and Voice Dial to
social networking applications like FaceBook. 
Vlingo does actually require a fair bit of learning curve and you have
to set yourself up after agreeing to terms and conditions and going through
tutorials.  The main idea behind Vlingo
is that you select a place for it to look, state what you are looking for, and
it searches for those words within those parameters.  It has varying success in doing so, but it is
somewhat annoying that you still have to select a number of options on the
touch screen for an application that is based around voice control.  Some of the options are free and some of them
require you to pay, but luckily that is the minority of options.  Vlingo is not a direct revolution in voice
control, but right now it may be one of your best options if this is the route
you are looking for.