Review: iPhone apps for nearly every waking minute

PHILADELPHIA — Hi, my name is Deborah Yao, and I am an iPhone applications addict.

I didn't see it coming. I bought the iPhone because it is the Swiss Army knife of gadgets — a video iPod, phone and Web browser and more. But then I discovered what would become the source of many bleary-eyed nights: the iPhone applications store.

The apps are software programs you download to the phone to give it new features. So now my phone is a pedometer, a voice recorder, a gym coach and a budget tracker. It promises to find my parked car, give me a shoulder massage and even repel mosquitoes, for free or 99 cents and up.

Apple says there are 25,000 apps for "just about anything." I set out to test that assertion, using only free apps, over the course of an entire day. (For help I used an app, naturally — BargainBin, which tells you what apps are free and which ones are on sale.)

At 7:30 a.m., my alarm clock app, goodNite Lite, wakes me with a gentle chord. Too gentle, some might say, so it's best to turn up the volume.

As I trundle to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I tap the Public Radio app to listen to "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio through my local station.

For breakfast, I check the Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook app, which can suggest recipes based on ingredients you have on hand. I told Betty I had eggs and vegetables, and her app spit out 175 recipes ranging from an easy cheese omelet to the tougher chiles rellenos egg souffle bake.

I choose something to wear to work with a flick of my finger, thanks to Stylish Girl. That app stores images of my clothes, and I can mix and match them to create outfits to save and share. But I have to take photos of each piece of clothing I want stored in the program, which can be a pain.

Should I wear a heavy coat? The Weather Channel app says it's 42 degrees, but expected to warm up in a few hours. This app is far more detailed than the iPhone's own weather app: It has hour-by-hour and 10-day forecasts, includes weather maps and even a video featuring a cheery female meteorologist to give you the local forecast personally.

Leaving the house, I turn on StepTrak Lite, a free pedometer app. It tells me that I take 1,453 steps to my office over a span of 10 minutes and 17 seconds. (For people who drive, there are apps that give traffic updates.)

I can chat with my boss while I walk, using my Fring app that combines several instant messaging programs, such as those from Yahoo, MSN and AOL.