Ten iPhone Apps Worth Paying For

1. Instapaper ($3.99)

Do you ever come across a web page you’d like to read later, when you have the time? Sure, you can bookmark those pages or use Safari’s Reading list, but neither is much help if you prefer a browser other than Safari. You can save web pages to your iPhone and read them at your convenience if you just download the Instapaper iPhone app from Marco Arment.
Then, when you’re surfing the web on your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and see a page you want to read later, select the special Instapaper Read Later bookmarklet (a special bookmark that uses JavaScript). From then on, you can read the page whenever you choose with the Instapaper iPhone app.

2.  OldBooth ($1.99)

OldBooth is just plain fun. It lets you take any full-face photo and apply wonderfully goofy transformations to it. OldBooth is easy and lots of fun for less than two bucks.
If two bucks sounds like too much to pay, you can get a free version called OldBooth Lite, which has a limited number of masks.

 

3. GottaGo ($1.99)

If you’ve ever wanted a perfect excuse to leave a meeting (or anywhere else, for that matter), you’ll love GottaGo. This clever little app lets you create a bogus phone call or text message and have it appear on your iPhone at any time you choose. At the appropriate moment, your iPhone rings or chimes and you receive what looks and sounds just like a real phone call or text message.
The GottaGo Unlock screen is animated just like the real thing. You can attach an image to your GottaGo call so it truly looks like you’re receiving a real phone call. You can record custom audio that you hear when you answer the fake call. And you can select your own wallpaper and ringtone to make the effect even more realistic.

4. WordsWorth ($1.99) WordsWorth is a good word game. You form words by tapping letters on the screen. Longer words using rarer letters (such as J, Z, and Qu, for example) score more points than shorter words with more common letters.
To make things interesting, the app includes certain special tiles, such as blue wild cards, green bonuses, and red timers. A gold tile helps you grow your score. The timer tiles are the most insidious; if their time runs out before you’ve used the letter, the game is over.

5. iTeleport ($24.99) iTeleport isn’t cheap and is more than a little geeky, but it’s so cool and potentially useful. iTeleport is technically a VNC (Virtual Network Computing, also known as remote screen control) client. Put another way, it’s an iPhone app for controlling your Mac, Windows, or Linux computer “from a few feet away or from halfway around the world.”
Yes, you can actually see your computer screen and control its keyboard and mouse from anywhere in the world (as long as your iPhone can connect to the Internet through Wi-Fi, 3G, EDGE, or whatever).

6. Baseball Statistics 2012 Edition ($2.99 for latest stats) 

 

Consider Baseball Statistics 2012 Edition a dream app for a passionate baseball fan. One of the things that makes baseball such a great game is the statistics that have defined the sport since, well, the 19th century.
Baseball Statistics from Bulbous Ventures puts all those stats at your fingertips, so you can settle barroom bets or just relive memories of favorite ballplayers from when you were a kid

 

7. Glee (free but $1.99 to $2.99 for songs)

Glee is an app based on the popular Fox TV musical series Glee. It’s yet another addictive app from Smule, a company that initially burst onto the scene by turning an iPhone into an ancient flutelike instrument called an ocarina.
The instrument you use in Glee is your own voice, of course, and you get to compete globally for starbursts, which you earn every time you pretend to be, say, Sinatra, Streisand, or Freddie Mercury. You earn extra points for keeping to the melody.
If you share your songs via Twitter or Facebook, or e-mail them, you might gain a following of gleeks, as fans of the TV series are called.

8. Air Video ($2.99)

Air Video lets you stream video from your Mac or PC to your iPhone. It works over a cellular or Wi-Fi connection. You can use it with almost all common video formats, and you can convert most formats on-the-fly, so you can usually start watching your video immediately after you select it.
If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like Apple’s AirPlay or Home Sharing, you’re right. The big deal is that AirPlay and Home Sharing work only with devices on the same Wi-Fi network. Air Video works over any Wi-Fi or cellular data connection, so you can watch movies stored on your computer regardless of where in the world you happen to be.

9. My Secret Folder ($.99)

My Secret Folder, as the app’s name suggests, gives you a secret place to stash photos you want to keep at bay from nosy family members, your boss, and anyone else who might get at your phone and peep. It’s not just images either.
You can create albums for secret contacts, secret notes, and even bookmarks you can visit from a secret web browser. You can take pictures from within the app, or import them from elsewhere on your phone. (You just have to manually delete them from your otherwise public albums.)

10. TurboScan ($1.99)

TurboScan turns your iPhone into a scanner. Pixoft’s app lets you scan and spit out high-quality PDFs. TurboScan is fast — processing a page in less than four seconds — and can detect paper edges to help improve accuracy. And by tapping the SureScan 3x button, you can take three pictures of the same document, and the app processes them into a single superior image. You can process scans in color or black-and-white.