Best Hobby Apps

If you haven’t heard of Geocaching, you’re missing out on a lot of fun! Part treasure hunt and part nature hike; head over to geocaching.com to see what it’s all about. Everything you need to find over a million caches buried throughout the world is right in the app: maps, directions, pictures, hints, compass, and more. Try it out for free with the app’s Intro version; with it you can find the 3 closest caches to your location.

You get access to over 33,000 pre-mapped golf courses throughout the world in this pricey but popular app. Track your distance for any shot, keep your score, compare statistics, and lots more.

This free app is a must for anyone who knits or crochets. Search their extensive database for free patterns, bookmark them and keep notes, find stores in your area, and access Lion Brand support if you need help with your project.

Locate ski slopes, get the latest powder report, weather forecast, and view live ski cams! Publish first-hand ski reports and post ski photos as well. Coming updates will include such goodies as trail maps, lift ticket pricing, road conditions, and more countries.

Apple’s own universal book-reading app has a beautiful user interface. Read classic books for free or purchase the latest best-sellers. You can sample any book for free before you purchase it. You can even place your PDFs in this app for a more pleasant reading experience. You can make notes and create bookmarks, and they will be wirelessly synced to all of your iDevices. Alter the colors, fonts, and brightness to suit your needs, or even have the words spoken out loud to you.

Record, import and export your hikes, bikes, and jogs with this universal app. To check it out, try the free lite version, which limits you to 5 trails of 5 minutes or less.

Boaters, fishermen, windsurfers, and other water enthusiasts can keep track of wind speed, direction, gust, air and water temperature, and wave height, utilizing information from hundreds of NOAA buoys. Customize your display by “favoriting” local buoys. Choose display units for speed between m/s, mph, or knots; for temperature select celsius or fahrenheit.

Get 4000 pages of birding information, including comprehensive identification, habitat, behavior, and ecology. You also get illustrations, photos, range maps, and over 900 playable calls. If the price tag seems a bit steep, you can sample a number of their chapters for free (such as iBird Explorer 15) or cheap.

Tons of workouts and videos. Sort them by location, such as Gym, Hotel Room, or Outside. Or sort exercises by goal, such as Cardio, Weight Loss, Pilates, or Bodybuilding. You can share workouts with friends via email or print them out in PDF form. Get access to a personal trainer and ask questions in-app. Track your progress by keeping track of which workouts you’ve done, as well as your BMI, weight, measurements, and more. Purchase a premium subscription for more workouts and other goodies.

This easy-to-use, comprehensive photo editing app can vastly improve the pictures you take on your iPhone. Crop, straighten, brighten, adjust saturation and hue, sharpen, add filters, special effects, frames, speech bubbles, and more. Save to edited photos to your camera roll or share directly via Facebook, Twitter or email. For a free app that is nearly as good, try Photoshop.com Mobile.

Unleash your inner artist with this incredible free paint and drawing app. With multi-touch navigation 2500% zoom, 3 layers you can move and toggle, synthetic brush sensitivity, 10 levels of undo and redo, color wheel and customized color swatches, you can create a masterpiece. Upgrade to SketchBook Mobile for more features, or to Sketchbook Pro for iPad users.

This cool cyclometer uses your iPhone’s GPS to track your bicycle rides: distance, speed, altitude, time, and calories burned. See real-time progress on the app’s map.

This is a nice, full-featured, free recipe app. Touch “Featured” to read multi-recipe articles such as ‘10 Terrific Lunches for Work’ or ‘Father’s Day Menu: Beer and Recipe Pairings’. Touch “Search” to browse by key word, cuisine, quick and easy, holiday, budget, low cal, and more. Each recipe has one-touch shopping list creation, nutrition information, and the option to email/favorite the recipe. The “Tips n’ Tools” section is a cool bonus -- learn about kitchen equipment, herbs and spices; get a cooking time calculator, and more. No internet connection needed. There is also a paid app with 45 recipes called Woman’s Day Cookvook: Healthy Food for Everyday Living, for either iPhone or iPad, with videos and more.

This app gives you detailed checklists for different kinds of hunting (such as rifle, archery, or waterfowl), which you can add to and email to fellow hunters. Map and photo geotagging utilize your iPhone’s GPS. Get a direct link to contact your state DNR offices via phone or website

If social networking is your hobby, you can keep in in touch with your friends on AIM®/MobileMe®, MSN®/Windows Live®, Yahoo!®, GoogleTalk®, Facebook, MySpace, ICQ® and Jabber... all at the same time, all on your iPhone or iPod Touch. BeeJiveIM is easy on your battery and doesn’t use up your text messages. Chose the iPod/iPhone version or the iPad version.


Create personalized radio stations for free! Type in your favorite artist or song, and Pandora will select music that suits your taste. Pandora helped you discover a new son? A direct link to iTunes allows you to purchase it on the spot. Free and universal, it’s an app that every music lover with an iDevice should download.

Point your iPhone at the night sky and get information on the stars above you in this interactive personal planetarium. Discover over 9000 stars, constellations, planets, and more. Use the Time Machine to select a date and see what the sky will look like on that night. Sky Live lets you see the moon phases, as well as sun and planet rise and set times.

For tracking a different kind of star, check out this app for all of the latest news. Scan the headlines or get detailed information on and photos of your favorite celebrities.