Jeff Merron

Number Guru is an app that does what its developer, BeenVerified, says it can do: look up phone numbers that you enter and tell you, at least some of the time, who's doing the calling. It's the kind of reverse-lookup you can do on a multitude of websites, but with a few advantages.

Number Guru's first advantage is that the app is simple, presenting a large keypad in a traditional layout with which you can enter a number, and it includes a backspace key to fix numbers incorrectly. The second advantage is that like some--but not all--of the Web sites that perform this service, Number Guru includes comments from others who have entered the same number, such as "Keeps calling my 11 year old's cell phone at least 12x day." That info can provide useful information on not only who is calling but how to block or prevent calls.

Since the iPad's release, wirelessly sharing files between the tablet and Mac and Windows computers has become easier. For the most part, this is because many apps enable you to link and sync to cloud storage services such as MobileMe, Google Docs, and Dropbox. And dedicated apps like the $30 LogMeIn Ignition enable you to not only share files, but to actually control remote machines via your iPad or iPhone.

FileBrowser resides in the middle ground between these categories: it's a standalone app, like LogMeIn Ignition. And while Stratospherix's $4 app doesn't provide the same level of control (or access) as LogMeIn, it's a while lot cheaper. Unlike apps that rely on cloud storage, you can set up your Windows or Mac machine to allow FileBrowser to browse, view, and copy to your iPad all files on your main computer (or computers) without using a storage service, either via Wi-Fi or the Internet.

Weather apps for the iPhone and iPad can be roughly divided into three categories: 1) those that provide detailed weather information and forecasts that can also be found on the Web, for free, such as the offerings by Accuweather and The Weather Channel; 2) those that provide detailed and specific meteorological information for people interested in aviation, skiing (snow reports), hurricanes, and sea conditions; and 3) those that provide basic weather info and (relatively) short-range forecasts, often served up with eye candy.

Weather+ falls squarely into the third category--the $1 offering from International Travel Weather Calculator is a beautiful, well-designed app.

Amazon has more experience with optimizing the online shopping experience than any other company in the world, and this experience is evident on its Website as well as in its Amazon Mobile app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The online retailer has expanded its iOS offerings with an iPad-only entry-Windowshop, which proves to be an intriguing addition.

When you first launch the free app, you're presented with an orderly but dense array of product images (with brief descriptions) across different categories. You can browse bestsellers, new releases, "most gifted," and "most wished for" by category and subcategory, or use a search box to seek something specific. You can also explore items more closely (with customer comments, details on the products, prices, and so on), put them in your cart, and of course, purchase items, all from within the app.

A recent update to PrintBureau removes the ability of the iPhone and iPad printing app to print from the background of other apps using AirPlay. In the release notes to version 1.8.3, developer EuroSmartz says the feature was removed to comply with a request from Apple.

EuroSmartz co-founder and CEO of EuroSmartz Ian Schenkel told Macworld that Apple asked the company to remove AirPrint capabilities because the app was taking advantage of non-public APIs to enable background printing. To get access to development tools and sell apps in the iTunes store, developers must sign an agreement with Apple in which they agree not to use such APIs. (API is a common term that stands for application programming interface, which is a set of rules that programmers must follow to ensure smooth interaction between the app, the OS, and other apps that run in the OS, as well.)

Like many baseball fans, I like the game's stats almost as much as the game itself; give me a box score, an old-fashioned back-of-the-card career summary, or just about any statistical nugget related to Major League Baseball and you've turned my head. Add some eye candy-something that can help me visualize stats and data in context-and you've got my full attention.

This is why I was prepared to love Pennant, an iPad-only app from Vargatron that takes play-by-play data from all major league games played between 1951 and 2010 (including the playoffs and World Series) and provides users with a variety of options for viewing the data. The most compelling view is one that displays each at-bat as a spoke in a nine-inning wheel (longer, if the game went into extra innings, or shorter, if the game was called early). Tap on any line in the wheel-each line represents an at-bat-and a summary of what happened with that batter, and other players (if they were on base at the time) is displayed in text. Move your finger slightly, to the next batter, and the next, and you can go through the game batter-by-batter; alternatively, you can tap an arrow icon in the center of the wheel and have the game auto-played for you, from first out to last.

Apple has perhaps done more than any other company, outside of Adobe, to make PDF the cross-platform lingua franca format it is today. It did so, in large part, by incorporating the ability to create PDF files directly into the Print dialogue box in Mac OS X, and also by adopting the PDF format as a default for previewing files before printing. This was to Apple's advantage, as well as Adobe's, as PDFs were widely exchanged among desktop publishers and graphic artists long before the development of OS X, and Apple enjoyed a major interest in that market.

But more important, it's been to the advantage of everyday users, on all platforms--for many practical purposes, PDFs have replaced faxes; the format has also enabled individuals and organizations to save files in a format that can be viewed (and sometimes edited) even when the original application used to create the document is not available.

YP--Yellow Pages for iPhone and YP--AT&T Yellow Pages for iPad are separate adaptations of the AT&T Yellow Pages in app format. The apps have different front ends but seem to (and should, logically) access the same database of businesses throughout the U.S.

It would be most fun to focus this brief review on the apps' interfaces. The iPhone version has a fairly effective voice recognition function that works very well. The iPad version lacks the voice recognition function but--well, it's on the iPad, and therefore easier to type in searches, read lists of results, and generally navigate, whether straight from from the app's interface or when the YP calls on the Maps app to help you explore business locations via virtual push-pins.

Skyfire is a Web browser that seems to be built primarily as a workaround to Apple's policy of not supporting the Flash video format on the iOS platform. Whether it's the iPhone-friendly Skyfire Web Browser or Skyfire Web Browser for iPad, the major selling point of the Skyfire Labs offering is that the browser can recognize when you have surfed to a page that includes a Flash video. And, if you ask it to, Skyfire Web Broswer will play the video for you after about a 20-second delay.

There's no real magic going on here; Skyfire accomplishes the feat by fetching the video, transforming it on its own servers to an iPhone- or iPad-friendly format, and then streaming that version to you.

Creating an app that's meant to be a mobile substitute for Microsoft Office is an ambitious undertaking, even when you're not aiming to replicate all, or even most, of the heavyweight's functionality. That Quickoffice has managed to do so with Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad is impressive in and of itself.

Quickoffice Connect allows users to create new documents in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats, and to import and edit documents in the same format. You can also view PDF files. These capabilities alone aren't unique: Documents To Go Premium is one noteworthy all-in-one competitor, while other apps, like Apple's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote support editing and saving documents in Microsoft's established formats.

TinyTube is an over-simplistic hybrid app from Katrina Read, TinyTube does just two things on the iPhone and iPad: it provides access to YouTube videos you've marked as favorites. And it strips away all information (and links) connected to the videos.

The purpose of TinyTube is to enable parents to control what their small children view via YouTube: You preview videos before you "Favorite" them, and make sure they're what you want your child to watch. TinyTube displays only the most recent 24 videos you've favorited.

Mobile developer EuroSmartz plans to upgrade its iOS printing apps to allow iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users to print from any AirPrint-enabled app to "almost every wireless printer," according to EuroSmartz CEO Ian Schenkel.

The newfound capability will be added to the 1.8 versions of PrintCentral for the iPad and iPhone and the universal PrintBureau app. The updates are expected to land in the App Store on Monday, with an official announcement from EuroSmartz set for Tuesday.