Why the iPhone will rule the world

It's June 29, 2057. I suddenly hear a soft female voice telling me that it's 9AM, and that I must wake up. It's my state-of-the-art, state-subsidized iPhone, which then lights up the entire room (in that universal remote style, just like that Adam Sandler film, Click) to show me a hologram with video footage of the phone's history. Yes, it's now officially been around for 50 years.

Everyone's obliged by law to have an iPhone now. It acts as your ID, your passport, the keys to your house and car, your personalized remote for anything and, of course, the best government surveillance system ever invented. The global mainframe it's constantly logged onto is, of course, controlled by Google, but that's another story.

Why all of this? Because even though scores of tech geeks just like me don't really find the iPhone as being that great (and that there are a lot of much better-equipped handheld devices), its application platform is in fact becoming frighteningly useful in our everyday lives.

Besides the already downright ordinary yet, and let's not forget, fantastic features (like Maps), and even the ones most tech-friendly peeps have come to adopt (including Google Earth or various IM and social networking apps), here are some of my favorite iPhone apps (not web apps) so far, by category. And I'm not even going to start with all of those location-based goodies.

News
Apple was already doing well with its daily news podcasts (or you could just go with feed readers), but major news outlets from all over the world have already developed their very own stand-alone apps - the best ones so far are NYTimes and Le Monde.

Wikis
Which would, of course, refer strictly to Wikipedia-powered apps. The best ones, from my point of view, are Wikiamo and Wikipanion.

Dictionaries
Yes, these do come in useful quite a lot (or at least I rely on them a lot). Try WeDict or Dictionaire for those in English, although there are many in different languages as well. Those two are free, but for a reasonable amount, even the Consise Oxford Dictionary can fit into your home screen. And there are translation tools too. And as a big bonus, a lot of foreign language phrasebooks are also available (gotta brush up on my Italian for the winter holidays).

Twitter
I found this one worth mentioning. As I start sliding into the slightly cooler apps, I just have to mention Tweetsville - it's by far the best client (although I do have high hopes for TweetDeck).

There are many other very cool pieces of software though. For example: Shazam lets your iPhone dig up the name of that song you keep listening to but never know who is singing it (and it works). Remote lets you control your iTunes via WiFi. Pocket Aid gives you vital first aid information on the spot. Ocarina is a bloody music instrument designed for the iPhone. There are tons of voice memo apps, like QuickVoice. Last.fm and Deezer stream your favorite music, as long as you're hooked onto a WiFi network. Dog Whistle freaks out dogs by sending out sounds that only they can hear (haven't tested it yet). And BubbleWrap tries to cure everyone's compulsive popping disorder.

Need I say more?

[pic via]