Beau Colburn

Imagine the scene--you're at your son's first Little League game, and you promised him you'd take a video of each at-bat with your iPhone. During warm-ups you launch the Camera app to take a few shots and realize that your mobile device is rapidly running out of space. Mirage Lab'sMultiCorder is a video recording app that allows you to adjust the size and frame rate of the video captured by your iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, or fourth-generation iPod touch, so that you can have a much finer level of control over how the storage capacity on your mobile device gets used. (While MultiCorder lists the camera-equipped iPad 2 among its supported devices, note that it doesn't run natively on Apple's tablet.) The app's 2.0 update adds a number of additional features as well. And in the case of your son's game, it just might save the day.

The iPhone 4 shoots HD video at roughly 85MB per minute; the iPhone 3GS captures video at about a third of this, due to its standard definition camera. The quality is generally impressive, especially for a phone, but what if you just need to capture something that looks good enough?

Taking its name from the classic Swiss typeface, Calvetica is a calendar replacement app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Like Helvetica, the Calvetica app offers a simple and clean interface while also providing some helpful features absent from the iOS's default Calendar app.

Developed by Mysterious Trousers, Calvetica works with the many common calendars, including Google Calendar, MobileMe, Exchange, and Outlook. Since this is a calendar replacement app, all of your interaction with creating, viewing, and editing calendar events takes place through Calvetica, while all of the changes you make sync back to the appropriate calendars automatically. This also means that notifications that are created in Calvetica will open in the regular calendar app when you choose an alert pops up and you choose to view the event.

There are many ways to keep a personal budget, but Left To Spend by Unknown Artists is one of the simplest methods around. The iPhone app is designed to be as basic as possible, while allowing you to quickly keep track of your daily spending.

Left To Spend asks you to do a little work before you start using the app. When you launch the app for the first time, you'll be asked to calculate how much money you have left over after all of your monthly bills have been paid (and presumably any amount you've allotted for savings). The app then instructs you to divide that number by 31 for the days of the month. (The user can probably figure out to adjust that figure to 28, 29, or 30 for the shorter months of the year.) The resulting number is your daily budget.

From the cool white tones of Kubrick's 2001, to the vivid colors of a van Gogh painting, some of the greatest works of art have a signature feel associated with them. PhotoCopier, a universal app for the iPhone and iPad from Digital Film Tools, allows you to apply a wide variety filters to your photos, giving them a look inspired by many of masterpieces of the art world.

PhotoCopier works by applying a combination of color, tone, grain, texture, detail, and vignette to each photo. Digital Film Tools has studied the characteristics of some of the world's most beloved films, paintings, and photos, and created a unique preset for each piece of work.

Do you find yourself sending the same SMS messages to people over and over? Maybe it's a quick note telling your wife you're running late or a group message to a group of pals about where to watch the game. If so, Sky Balloon'sCanned may be very helpful.

Canned allows you a keep a list of pre-composed SMS messages that can be sent with one tap. You can have the message sent to one person or a group; anyone can be added or removed at any time. The message composition screen looks very similar to what you get with the iPhone's default Messages app, except that contacts are added on the bottom.

Tumblr has exploded as a blogging platform in the past few years. You can find a huge range of sites dedicated to everything from specific celebrities to borscht paired with Neil Young songs. Tumblr users interact with the service through the dashboard, which allows posting, as well as viewing the posts from the Tumblr sites you follow.

Tumbleroo from Hanso Group allows you to browse the Tumblr dashboard in an app that feels more like the iPad's Mail app-or even an RSS reader-instead of a Web browser. If you hold the iPad in portrait orientation, the current post you're viewing fills the screen; tapping the Dashboard button in the upper left corner launches a pop-over window that allows you to scroll to the next post to be viewed. You can also tap the up and down arrows in the upper right corner to advance posts, though being able to scroll from post to post in the main window would be a nice addition.

Boston.com's award-winning photography blog is a natural fit for the iPhone and iPad. The Big Picture presents themed groups of photojournalistic images multiple times a week on the Boston Globe's Boston.com Website. The photos are presented in a large format with little editorial content, allowing the images to tell the story.

This concept is carried over to the universal iOS app, The Big Picture from Boston.com, where the visual focus translates nicely on the Retina display of an iPhone 4 or fourth-generation iPod touch, and the larger screen of an iPad.

As enjoyable as it can be to add fun edits to your images, being able to easily manage and share your work is an important way to complete the experience of dealing with your photos and videos. The three reasonably priced applications I discuss here will help keep your work organized and ready to be shared online.

Consolidate your uploads

Owning an iPhone 4 means always having a very capable pocket and HD video camera at your finger tips. Since it's in such a small and slick package, there are many occasions that require additional accessory support to capture the image properly. Enter the Glif: a small, inexpensive plastic adaptor that allows the iPhone to be mounted on a tripod, or stood up on its own. The Glif ($20) is made of molded plastic and is about half the size of a pack of gum. It works by snaping onto any edge of an iPhone 4. The fit is snug and secure, but not so much that you worry about damaging your phone when you take it on and off. Unfortunately, this exact fit means that the Glif cannot work on top of any protective case, which means you'll have to take your iPhone out of its case (if you use one) everytime you want to use the Glif.

There is a threaded hole on the bottom of the Glif that allows it to be mounted to any stander tripod mount. If you're out shooting with a full DSLR photo kit, and want to take some quick video, you can mount your phone to the head of your Manfrotto tripod; or, if your traveling light around town, the Glif can easily hide in your pocket, and be mounted on top of a more portable Gorillapod tripod.

Taking pictures with your iPhone is only half the fun: the other half is applying a new look to those images and sharing them with your friends. Burbn's Instagram is a photo app that allows you to take photos, apply a variety of filters and easily share your work across many outlets.

There are two main areas of Instagram: the photo editing and the social. Editing photos is very simple within the app. Existing photos can be selected from your photo roll (which means they don't necessarily have to be iPhone photos), or you can capture a new image within the app itself. All images are captured or cropped into a square format.

If you like your Twitter apps like you like your typefaces-clean and minimal-HelTweetica may interest you. Taking its name from the classic Swiss font, HelTweetica is a free, open-source Twitter app for the iPad.

HelTweetica puts the core Twitter features front and center, while making other new and unique tools quickly accessible. When you launch the app from Felt Tip, the majority of your screen is dedicated to your timeline. Each individual tweet panel features small icons on the right side that allow you to reply, direct message, retweet, or add the tweet to you favorites. Tapping on a link or username will slide a new panel open with an in-app browser or a detailed view of the individual user.

Geotagging your photos-the process of adding GPS location data to the photo file itself-has a lot of fun, and practical, applications. Jindrich Sarson'sGeotag Photos Pro allows you to use your iPhone's built-in GPS to store this location data, and add it to photos taken with another digital camera later.

There are a number of ways that having location data attached to photos can be helpful. If you use iPhoto or Aperture to store your images, you can take advantage of the Places feature that shows on a map where you took geotagged photos. That's an enjoyable way to view photos from your travels, and it can also be very practical if you're ever looking for a photo taken in a specific location. If you share your photos online with services like Flickr or Picasa, the images will be tagged with their location when they're uploaded.