New iPhone Apps Abound — on the Web

Want to chat with your pals over IM or compose Microsoft Word documents on your iPhone? Believe it or not, you can do both—and a lot more—right now, courtesy of third-party developers who are furiously writing on-the-Web applications optimized for Apple's must-have handset.

Apple has yet to throw open the door to full third-party software development for the iPhone, but that hasn't stopped scores of enterprising coders from writing clever iPhone applications that run on the Web. Indeed, a three-day developer conference dubbed iPhoneDevCamp just wrapped up in San Francisco, which resulted in more than 50 new iPhone apps. While some of these Web-based programs are little more than curiosities (iPhone Counter, for instance, counts "all the iPhones on Earth), others are pretty slick—and compelling. Here are a few cool apps that stand out from the crowd:

• JiveTalk: A reasonably slick instant messenger application that works with AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, and Jabber; the service will remember your login info, allowing you to message your pals over iChat-style threaded bubbles (so long as the Safari page running JiveTalk stays open).
• Gas.app: Looking for the cheapest gas prices in your neighborhood? Just browse to Gasapp.com and enter your ZIP code to get a list of local gas stations and prices for regular, premium and unleaded gas; click the mapping icon to find a station in the list with Google Maps.
• gOffice: A rudimentary word processor that lets you save text entries as Microsoft Word documents; you can't save the resulting Word docs on the iPhone, but you can send them to yourself or your buddies. Pretty basic (not much in the way of formatting options, for example), but more features are promised in the near future.
  
• Movies.app: Want a quick way to find out where "Transformers" is playing? Just point your iPhone's browser to http://movies.app; from there, type in a ZIP code, select a date, and browse for movies or theaters. You'll also find links for buying tickets and movie trailers, if they're available.
• Telekinesis: I saved the best for last. A still-in-alpha app from Google, Telekinesis lets you remotely log in to your Mac using an iPhone and browse your desktop, stream your tunes and videos, capture screen images or photos from an iSight camera, and otherwise snoop around your system. Exciting stuff—but fraught with security concerns (just imagine someone stealing your iPhone and hacking into your Mac), so use with caution.
  

Related:
iPhoneDevCamp wiki page