In the justice system of internet zaniness, iPhones are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. Apple, who creates cool technology, and the badapps people who put it to use. These are their stories…

First up, reader Matt pointed us towards an article on CNN.com where a passenger traveling within the US, carrying over $4000 in cash, was held for questioning and all he had to defend himself was:

a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution and an iPhone capable of making audio recordings. And he used them.

Next up, Icebike let us know about Intermittent Kevin (via Slashdot) who was attending a Lego convention in Chicago who’s iPhone was left behind at a bar, and stolen. His only hope:

I had just activated the brand-new Find My iPhone service.

(Note: while he recovered his iPhone, he might just as easily have run into Hannibal Lecter. “Hero complex” is personal protection faux-pas 101. These stories are presented for interest-sake only. No one at TiPb or SPE advises anyone to put their life in jeopardy for a gadget.)

TweetMic [$0.99 - iTunes link] puts a whole new spin on Tweeting. With TweetMic you are basically able to Twitter small podcasts via this application. What happens when you use TweetMic is you record a message via the iPhone’s built in Mic, you can play it back or post it with a short Twitter message.

Once you “Publish to Twitter” the application uploads the recording to its server and attaches a link to your post, so when your followers receive the tweet, they will see the link and the website it brings up will allow them to play the message via a computer or an iPhone.

Of course having WiFi of 3G will be better than using an EDGE connection when uploading you messages.

If you want to add audio recording to your Tweets, then this is definitely the best option out there. If you check it out, let us know what you think (or record a message for us on Twitter!)

With the joy Steve Jobs typically reserves for introducing new Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets, and a similarly Jobsian “it’s gorgeous”, iPhone Software Senior Vice-President, Scott Forstall showed off a new App for Mobile OS X at the iPhone 3.0 Preview Event.

The first new, built in App from Apple in a while, and unlike the previous two — iTunes and App Store — the first one which isn’t just a portal to buying content, Voice Memo does indeed look very, very nice.

Using either the iPhone’s built in mic or an external, plug in mic, Voice Memo can record small voice notes, lectures, meetings, interviews, or any similar audio. The included editing tools allow you to trim your recordings, and they can be sent off the device via either email or the new MMS functionality announced at the same event.

While more feature-rich voice recorders will no doubt still be offered in the App Store, it’s nice to see Apple upping the base functionality without making us hit the App Store for the free Apple Remote or inexpensive Keynote Remote this time.

[Ed: iProRecorder is Currently on sale for $1.99 in the iTunes App Store - Rene]

iProRecorder Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

Recorder apps are a popular sub-group of apps, and each of them seems to offer a slight variation on the same overall theme. Depending on what you are looking for in a recording apps (ease of use, a large number of features, online synching, etc) different recording apps are going to be good or bad. iProRecorder is an app the focuses more on features that speed of use, but the features is has are quite nice.

When you first start the app, you are presented with the recording page. To record a memo, you hit the small red record button in the middle of the page. For people (like myself) who want to have an large, easy to hit button, the relative small size of this button may be difficult to get used to.

iProRecorder offers a large array of features when recording a memo – including timed recording, appending on to the end of a recording, different playback speeds, different recording qualities, volume boosting for low volume recordings, categorizing recordings, etc. In fact, there are really too many features to go into detail in this review – suffice to say there are lots of options to customize any recording you make.

Once you make a recording, you can classify it in a category, edit the title, add a photo to the description, and sending the recording via email. In addition, there is a wifi sync option to download recordings to your computer. One interesting thing that is available – you can hide specific memos from web sharing. This means you can select a specific memo, have someone else access it on their computer, and hide all your other memos so the person can’t download them. I couldn’t find any option to automatically “hide all” or “reveal all” so you need to go through memo by memo to access this feature.

The voice quality of the recorder is very nice. I like the option of choosing between different recording qualities. Bad quality for just a short quick memo, good quality for something I may want to post for my students to listen to. I also really like the timed recording option – you can set the timer to record for a specific length of time. I find this particularly useful for long recordings (like a lecture), because I will often forget to stop the recording once the lecture is over. You can also enable a quick 3 second countdown to recording so that you can start a memo and thant put the iPhone down (without getting a big “clunk” on the recording).

The app comes with a detailed guide that goes over each of the various settings, which is useful because some of them may not be that intuitive. I wish more apps came with instructions like this. One thing you can do from every screen in the app is access the recording button (the microphone) to start a new recording. This is especially nice, because I have found it is easy to “get lost” in the screens on many apps, something that this apps tries to avoid.

The features this recorder offers are very nice, and they allow you to adjust a wide range of settings. You can’t edit a recording once it is made (it would be nice to be able to cut out or crop a recording) but that might be asking too much. If you are looking for a full featured recording app with good sound quality, this app may fit the bill. On the other hand, if you just want something to be able to record a quick memo – this app may not be focused on ease or speed of use.

Pros:

• Good quality,
• lots of features,
• wifi sync

Cons:

• Record button is a little small

Conclusion

All in all, this is a great recording app for managing your recordings, and has some nifty features for sharing recording, as well as modification when you initially make your recording. However, for people who just want to record a quick note, it might be too much. For people that are looking for a more detailed, “business” type recorder, this fits the bill pretty well. At $1.99, the price isn’t bad (although it may be going back up to $4.99)

Forum Review Rating

[iPodRecorder is available via the iTunes App Store]