Stanford Students Release A Cool Batch Of iPhone Apps

Students from Stanford’s Fall 1008 iPhone class CS193P created a nice crop of apps that are now available or will be soon for the iPhone (see our Stanford Facebook apps posts here and here).

A list of them is here, and some of them I’m going to keep on my phone. My favorite is iDiscover, which gives you random content you think will be interesting (text, videos, apps). You rate them and it teaches the app to refine what it sends you in the future. It’s a sort of StumbleUpon for the iPhone, and its addicting. iDiscover is free. Air Guitar, a $1.99 app, looks like it might be another winner but I’m having issues downloading it.

Among the yet-to-be-approved apps, Site Saver looks like a useful way to store web content locally. I tend to take a screen shot of whatever I’m looking at, but this looks like a better solution if it saves the whole web page rather than just what’s on the screen. And Heydar, a location-based dating application, is being released at the perfect time.

The complete list is below.

Qingwen – Karan Misra

Qingwen is an extremely focused and streamlined Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionary designed with the Chinese reader in mind. Lookup is meant to be fast and easy. There is just one search field which accepts anything you throw at it- Chinese characters, Pinyin, and English – and figures out the most relevant results. Since Qingwen is meant for students of Chinese, you can also easily add words to word lists for future reference and discover relationship between characters by seeing which other words they occur in and which other characters have similar sounds.

Qingwen uses a modified version of CC-CEDICT as its dictionary. Free.

Air Guitar – James Anthony and Edward Marks

Air Guitar provides all the fun of rocking out with none of the talent or commitment required to play a real instrument. Unlike other guitar apps, Air Guitar uses the built-in accelerometer to let you really rock: with your iPhone or iPod touch in hand, just start strumming away at your imaginary axe. $1.99

HaveASec – Nafis Jamal and Andrew He

Do you HaveASec? If so, this is the perfect application for you. You can quickly create a short survey or poll to send out to your friends. You can also ask a public poll to see what our users think. Friends don’t have an iPhone? No problem! We have a fully functional web interface for all mobile phones and computers. Free

iDiscover – Paul Wilson and Nafis Jamal

Do you have a second? Want to read an article of interest to you but don’t have the time to find it? How about a new video to kill some time on the train? Or, what about checking out a new application that isn’t on the Top 25 list? iDiscover lets you easily discover new articles, videos, and applications customized to your interests. You and your friends can also easily share these articles, videos, and applications that you enjoy with each other. Free.

Site Saver – Vikram Oberoi

Site Saver allows you to save websites locally on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Save online references to train schedules, recipes, or product reviews to your device for quick access on the go, or keep your daily fix of online articles just a tap away! $2.99, pending App Store approval.

Abodi – Keyan Salari

Abodi allows you to search listings on Craigslist and save your favorite results for viewing access on the go. You can call or email the ad poster, map out the locations of rental/sale properties and even take notes and photos of the properties you visit. Abodi knows where you are located using the iPhone’s GPS technology, so you can find or rank listings by their distance to your current location or other points of interest! Free, to be submitted by 01/26/09

Heydar – Mark Kieling, Shahryar Khan, Matthew Pease, and Matthew Lawyer

Heydar is a fun new way to meet people. Get started by taking your own headshot. Then view headshots of nearby Heydar users. Tap “Hey” if you find someone attractive. Don’t worry… they will only find out you tapped them if they also tap you. What you decide to do next is up to you… Free, pending App Store approval.

Stress Bust – Greg Wientjes

Stress Buster provides a video of soothing ocean waves. A guiding voice assists the user in relaxing through a progressive muscle squeezing up through the body. $.99, available now.