Email

The easiest way of transferring a small amount of data, like a link or a single photo, is via email. Since there’s no need to download any extra apps, it’s possible to do this as soon as you set up a device. All you need is an active email account, and you can send messages to yourself. The email will be received on the other device, and then you can copy and paste the information as you please.

The downside of sending yourself emails is firstly, it can take a while to send an email containing lots of photos or a long video, even over Wi-Fi. Also, if you’re not at home or on Wi-Fi, using email will use up mobile data, since you’re connecting to the Internet. If you don’t a Wi-Fi connection, I’d suggest using the next method, which can be done with Bluetooth and doesn’t impact your data plan.

Dedicated app

Another way to transfer data is using a dedicated app, such as Bump. Bump doesn’t have an iPad app, but the iPhone version works just fine on the iPad. Bump allows you to send photos, apps, contacts and music between devices. Again, though, Bump will use your data connection if you aren’t connected via Wi-Fi. It is free however, and enables you to send more than Mail does.

Another similar app is Mover. It’s a Universal application, so it has an iPad-specific interface in addition to one designed for the iPhone. It also works over Bluetooth, saving you precious mobile data. Mover can’t send music or apps like Bump can, but it can send contacts, photos, text and videos. There are some reviews in the App Store saying Mover doesn’t work, but I’ve never had problems with it, and it has been great for quickly copying information over. Mover costs $1.99 in the App Store, and it also has a free Mac companion app that lets you transfer files from your computer to your iOS device.

Using a dedicated app isn’t only an efficient way to transfer data, but both Bump and Mover use interesting mechanics to transfer the data — bumping the phones together and flicking the data from the screen, respectively — so they’re so a nice way to take advantage of your device’s unique interface options.

If you know of a faster or easier way of transferring your data between your devices, tell us how in the comments.

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What’s that, you say? You’re looking for iPhone app recommendations alongside a smattering of the week’s Apple news? Read, on my friend, I have just the article for you…

Before I present you with my four recommendations, hand-picked from the freshest apps to launch for the iPhone, it’s time to take stock and review this week’s Apple news.

As if Monday couldn’t get any grimmer, the big news to start the week was all about Microsoft. Specs and other info about its new Zune, apparently code-named “xYz,” have been doing the rounds. Perhaps presenting a genuine challenge to the iPhone and iPod touch handheld gaming throne, the device may even play XBox Live Arcade content. Very exciting indeed, considering the breadth and quality of games on offer via Microsoft’s online service.

Speaking of which, the big surprise of the week was news that Braid, the top-rated, critically acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade title, has been released on Mac. The game is a side-scrolling platformer, incorporating a host of headache-inducing time-twisting puzzles. Good fun indeed, and a worthy workout for cerebral gamers on the hunt for a challenge.

Coming to the U.S. in the very near future is Spotify, the legal music service that’s essentially like having access to the entire iTunes Store for free. The service has already been on offer in Europe since late 2008. Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, believes it’ll be officially available stateside by the start of 2010 at the latest.

While the Spotify iPhone app is still under wraps, Digg.com founder Kevin Rose has been impressed by the desktop version, “… playing w/Spotify, hot damn it’s responsive – plays pretty much any song on earth in <1 second.” Being stationed in Helsinki, Finland, I’ve had the pleasure of using Spotify for several months now — it really is as fast as Rose describes.

My favorite news of the week concerns the latest update to the iPhone. More rumors abound, as a fresh list of specs has been released. Notable possible enhancements to the iPhone include 32GB of storage in the high-end model, built-in FM transmitter, OLED screen, rubber tread backing and discontinuation of the metal band surrounding the edge of the device.

Moving on to the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Mover, Burger King Now, Lexulous and Flashback.

Mover (free)
With Air Sharing (among others) firmly covering file-sending over the Net using the iPhone, there’s still no convincing solution for sharing with other users in your immediate vicinity. Those that are available are severely lacking in ease-of-use and appealing looks. Mover addresses both of these issues directly and, as such, is quite different from the solutions I’ve seen previously. Allowing you to share either contacts or images with other users on the same Wi-Fi network, you simply select the name or photo you’d like to send, then literally drag it across to your friend’s device. As developer Infinite Labs state, seeing is believing, so, before you pick up the app for free, check out the demo video of the app in action.

Burger King Now: Phone Ordering (free)
Back in my student days, I lived off a hearty combination of Domino’s Pizza and McDonald’s. In fact, I accrued a sizable debt due to my adoration for fast food and apparent inability to cook. These days, I love to cook and, what’s more, meat isn’t really a part of my usual diet, saved instead for special occasions — like the meatballs at Ikea. Deep down, my junk food lust hasn’t left me: Upon discovering Burger King’s new app, my mouth watered and my heart sank to think of all the glorious grease I’d be missing out on. This may not be as oddly compelling as BK’s Subservient Chicken, but it’s a time-saving app that uses your iPhone to order a tasty trans-fat treat.

Lexulous ($3.99)
Up until yesterday, I was under the impression that Scrabble-clone Scrabulous had dissolved under the threat of legal action from Hasbro. It seems, however, that the popular Facebook app has been reborn under the apparently less-libelous moniker of Lexulous. What’s more, the crossword gaming ante has been upped by the release of the Lexulous iPhone app. One of the joys of playing Lexulous via Facebook is challenging friends across the globe, something that both the official Scrabble iPhone and Facebook app don’t allow. With a solid iPhone app, Facebook integration and global challenges, Lexulous is a must-have for crossword game fans.

Flashback ($4.99)
Originally released for Amiga back in 1992, Flashback will bring memories flooding back for retro-gamers. The game featured Prince of Persia-esque rotoscoped animation, a sprawling alien jungle and a plot reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s writings. The iPhone version is pretty tough, especially given that the controls have been ported to the touchscreen. But I’m not entirely sure of the legitimacy of the iPhone iteration; the app may get pulled from the store. If you’re interested in trying out this classic platform adventure, download now.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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The lack of the ability to cut, copy, and paste and to select portions of text makes text editing on the iPhone/iPod touch an exercise in patience. So, for all you writers who are masochistic enough to use your mobile device to write, this one is for you.

Consider this scenario: You start a draft in the Notes app or in the WordPress app and write a paragraph or two. Some time later, you re-read what you’d written and think, “Well, that sentence doesn’t really belong there.” What now? You’ll have to set the cursor to a new insert point and, while referring to that sentence in its existing location, retype it in its new location. Moving just one sentence? Fine. A whole paragraph? Forget it; it’ll be easier to edit the article on your Mac later.

Sounds painfully familiar?

Today I discovered not one but two solutions: TextGuru and MagicPad. Both are text editors for the iPhone and iPod touch with one very important feature.

Cut, copy and paste.

I can cut text! I can copy text! I can paste text!

(If you haven’t already guessed, the three sentences above were copied and pasted while I was drafting this article…just because I can.)

Ten minutes into trying out both apps, I could only exclaim — and I will steal Steve Jobs’s own words — that both TextGuru and MagicPad are like “giving a glass of water to somebody in hell,” for any one who has ever cursed and swore while editing text on the iPhone and iPod touch.

Cut, copy and paste in TextGuru goes like this: first, in magnified view, you move the cursor to the start of what you want to highlight. Tapping once, then immediately again and still keeping your finger down, you drag to highlight the passage. Finally, you tap on the cut, copy or paste icon on a toolbar that appears automatically.

It is less complicated than it reads, but it is also not the most fluid of gestures. More often than not, double-tapping on a cursor point while in magnified view causes the cursor to jump to another place, or worse, causes the page to scroll. And it gets more difficult when the cursor is at the edge of the screen. Perhaps this is why the folks at Apple have yet to agree on a copy-and-paste gesture that is foolproof and to their complete satisfaction.

MagicPad’s implementation of cut, copy and paste, which is called ‘Precise Selection’, works exactly like TextGuru’s. But it has one advantage: ‘Quick Selection’. You can double-tap any word and it will be highlighted. You can then immediately drag and extend the selection. With a larger target area to tap — a word instead of a miniscular cursor — it is easier to make the right text selection.

Of the two, TextGuru is the more full-featured app. Besides cut, copy and paste, TextGuru also offers landscape mode editing and a Statistics feature that shows you character, word, and paragraph count in a pop-up window.

Another unique feature is file sharing; with TextGuru File Server, a free companion application on your host Mac or Windows, you can send documents over to TextGuru via Wi-Fi for editing and/or viewing. To access documents saved in your iPhone or iPod touch, you type the IP address of your device (as provided by TextGuru) into a web browser. This way, you can even access documents in one iPhone from another. Useful as this may sound, this feature is broken at the moment. I can get files into my iPod touch but not out.

Plain text, HTML, PHP, and JS files are editable in TextGuru, while Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers and PDF files are viewable but not editable. Also unique to TextGuru is a Web Preview feature, convenient when you are editing web-specific files. TextGuru also saves internal documents as files in .TXT, .HTML, .PHP, .BIN, .JS, .C, .H, and .M formats.

MagicPad is more of a rich-text replacement for the Notes app in iPhone OS. While it can email an entry in either rich or plain text, it does not have the ability to export it as a file. Also, you cannot edit or view entries in landscape mode. Neither app offers an Undo feature, though TextGuru can revert a document to its last auto-saved version; it’s not exactly step undo, but it’s better than nothing.

Both TextGuru (Brancipater, US$4.99) and MagicPad (Proximi, Inc., US$3.99) are available from the iTunes App Store. If you do heavy text editing on your iPhone or iPod touch, I’d recommend TextGuru. That it has cut, copy and paste and landscape mode for editing alone makes it an essential app for any writer.

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The purpose of A.I. Disk is to provide access to your online MobileMe storage via your iPhone, across any data connection (Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE are all supported). The app works much like the popular Air Sharing, allowing you to view multiple document types, including Office (both 2007 and earlier formats), PDF, iWork, and TXT files. Files are copied from your iDisk to your phone for offline viewing, and can be attached to an email and sent from within the application.

A.I. Disk’s viewer itself offers a lot of nice features, including the ability to zoom through touch and by manually setting the percentage, and to set bookmarks within documents. It’s actually a very capable eBook reader because of this last point, although it doesn’t perform that job as well as dedicated software like Stanza.

During my test run I found out just how useful it is that A.I. Disk doesn’t require Wi-Fi. My office doesn’t have wireless networking (yes, I work in the 1950s), so I haven’t been able to use Air Sharing here, and have to depend on flash drives for file transfers. Now, however, it’s incredibly easy to transfer files via iDisk over 3G, so my pockets are finally free of USB sticks. My test document was a fairly large PDF (1 MB) and the document loaded and displayed without problem. Closing the app and going back in reveals a short delay while the file is redrawn, but it’s a minor convenience at worst.

Even if you’re not a MobileMe subscriber, A.I. Disk works using the WebDAV protocol, and supports any storage service that employs it, including Box.net.

For me, this is an incredibly useful iPhone app, and at $7.99 (App Store link), quite the bargain too.

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