I still love my iPhone. Got my first bill, didn’t love that, but hey. Comes with the territory.

The iPhone itself, and the applications available, continue to amaze me. I’m constantly surprised and pleasantly so by how much I can do with it. As long as I’ve got that thing with me, there’s always something to do. It’s the ultimate boredom cure, if nothing else!

Here’s a brief rundown of some applications I’ve enjoyed recently.

Tetris ($7.99)
The only app I’ve paid for recently. At $7.99, also the most expensive app I’ve bought! Hard to say if it’s worth it. I love Tetris, and this is a lot of fun. Problem is, the small screen and touch controls make it impossible on the higher difficulty levels. Once you get to level 9, you’re toast. It’s definitely a good diversion for a few minutes, though. One thing I’d like to see in an update is the music from the original Gameboy Tetris!

FS5 Hockey (Free)
This is an air hockey app, and it’s very much like real air hockey - 9 out of 10 goals are scored on random funky bounces. It’s good fun, my only complaint being that, since you have to have your finger on your “player,” it often gets in the way of your view! But it’s a minor frustration. I recommend this one.

FourFree (Free)
I guess Connect Four is trademarked, but that’s essentially what this is. Who doesn’t love Connect Four? It plays exactly like the classic game, red and black pieces, get four in a row, beautiful simplicity. It’s got a two-player mode or you can play against the computer, on medium, easy or hard. What else is there to say? If you like Connect Four, you can’t go wrong.

MarbleMash (Free)
This is another one of those Labyrinth-type games that uses the accelerometer; you “tilt” the iPhone to get a marble rolling through a maze, and try not to lose it in any of the holes. It’s fun, but hard, and not something you can easily play if you’re on the bus or something.

ESPN Cameraman (Free)
This is a fun game where you look at two sports-related pictures and spot the differences between them, and it’s not always easy. It’s got the classic NFL Primetime music which is a great touch. One complaint, when you don’t get all the answers, it just moves you to the next picture and doesn’t tell you what you missed! Another complaint is there’s only 70 pictures; I’ve already come across a couple doubles. Hopefully they’ll release more moving forward! There’s even online leaderboards if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Lots of potential for this one.

Phone Aid (Free)
This free (for now) app gives you basic first aid tips, including CPR and choking. Hopefully it’s the sort of thing you never have to use, but it sure could come in handy in an emergency. Also handy to have on hand when playing sports or anything else where an ankle sprain or nosebleed might happen. Definitely a good app to keep somewhere on the phone, because hey, you never know.

Say Who (Free)
This is a voice recognition dialer. It works VERY well, I must admit; I was shocked. You don’t have to record names or anything - it hears your voice, “reads” your contact list, and calls from there. It also hears numbers. Only problem is it takes a long time to load and to process; I guess there isn’t much that can be done, but the thing is, in that time, I could have opened the contacts and found the number myself. Plus you need to keep your finger on the phone while speaking, so it’s not exactly a car-safe, hands-free solution. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, and as I say, even though it’s a step slow, it works - a very impressive piece of technology.

WeDict and Dictionaire (both free)
Two dictionary apps that I’ve downloaded. Neither has blown me away; I mean, both do the job perfectly well but neither has a particularly nice interface or any frills. I guess you gotta buy one of the other dictionaries for that, but they run as much as $30 - no thanks! Honestly, I don’t have that much use for a dictionary application; it’s just nice to have one handy.

Units (Free)
Like the dictionary there are pay apps that convert units of measure (though they generally run a dollar or two). This one isn’t as slick as some of those pay ones, but it works perfectly well, and gives you multiple measurements any time you enter one. It does length, volume, pretty much anything I can imagine. It does currency too, although, I’m not sure where it gets the exchange rates from or how often they’re updated. I’ll have to look into that.

So that’s what’s been keeping my attention on the iPhone recently. Of course, Sportacular still gets a lot of attention from me, probably even more soon with the NBA season starting up. I also dig ESPN.com’s mobile Safari site, specifically, the fantasy section, which allows me to keep track of my fantasy football team in realtime. Facebook’s recently updated their application and it’s now a lot smoother, though the news feed still bugs out frequently, displaying some things and not others, and not always being up to date.

Finally, one last one is not actually an iPhone app, but a Web service application. It’s called Nuevasync.

What Nuevasync does is syncs your calendar, over-the-air, without you having to plug your phone in and sync through iTunes.

Now, if you’re running your mail and calendar through Exchange, you can already do this, but unless you’re a business user, you’re probably not. Or you may not want to sync your work calendar to your personal phone. Or maybe you just like the Google calendar better.

Whatever the case, Nuevasync syncs your Google calendar and iPhone calendar, and it does it VERY well. You have to sign up on the Nuevasync Web site, and give them permission to sync the Google calendar; then they walk you through how to set up the sync on your phone. (There’s also a great article explaining the process found here.)

Then presto! Anytime you add an item to your Google Calendar, within seconds it’s on your phone calendar. And vice versa! Honestly, I don’t know that I understand how this all works, but it does.

Nuevasync can also sync your contacts from Google, though I didn’t use this feature, because I don’t like the way Google manages contacts; I’ll just continue to manage mine from Windows or the iPhone itself and sync manually. I don’t add new contacts often anyway, so I don’t need real-time contact syncing.

But the real-time calendar syncing… I don’t know, I guess this has been available on smart phones using exchange for a long time now, but I’d never really seen it in action, and it kinda blew my mind. Yeah, I’m easily impressed, I guess. Whatever, I love it.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a way to sync your Google calendar to the iPhone, check out Nuevasync. The Web site and blog is pretty informative. And, you know… it’s free! Hopefully it stays that way, I don’t know how they’re making money, but they sure have my thanks for this great little service.

As an aside, I really wish Google would put some more effort into making Gmail and the Google Calendar look a little nicer - a little more modern and stylish. I appreciate Google’s stripped-out design sense when it comes to searching, but I think there’s a lot more they could do with the actual Web apps. The look and feel of Gmail and the calendar is just so… blah. It’s almost amateur-y. I really wish they’d put something together with a more professional design sense.

I know, they work very well, and they’re free, so I shouldn’t complain. But even if they allowed some user-designed templates, different colours, fonts, that sort of thing… that would be a big step up.

Alas. It is what it is, I guess.

So, yes, it’s been six weeks, and I still love the iPhone. It’s not perfect, and I do have some “wish list” items that I will post next week, but for the most part, it’s still one of the most amazing pieces of technology I’ve ever seen.