iPhone App of the Week

Just an FYI – every Sunday I will be reviewing an iPhone app.  I download a lot of applications onto my phone, some move straight to the front page, others linger in the last pages and never get opened.  Each week I will review the apps that I love/hate.

This weeks iPhone App is Prowl.  Prowl is a great iPhone app that utilizes the new push notification feature introduced in the iPhone 3.0 software.  Put simply, Prowl is Growl for your iPhone.  For those you who don’t know what Growl is – it’s a program that notifies you of events occurring on your Mac.  Growl can notify you when you get a new e-mail, when a download completes, when an article is added to your RSS reader list, the possibilities are endless.  Growl has become a must have staple for almost all Mac users.  Zachary West (also worked on developing Adium)  is the genius behind bringing us Prowl.  Whenever you get a Growl notification you can now set it to send the notification to your iPhone.  On the road and want to know if that movie you were downloading is finished?  Prowl will notify you using push notification via a pop up message.  Basically any notification you can get on your Mac you can receive on your iPhone.  So just like with Growl the possibilities are endless with Prowl.

After using this application I have found it to be extremely useful and with 127 reviews and an average rating of 4.5 stars in the iTunes App Store others would agree.  I use it to get weather updates, notifications of completed downloads, motifications of Twitter mentions, the list goes on and on.  I would love to see it expand to be even more functional.  For example, with some Growl notifications you can click on them and they will take you to the application that is notifying you or, if there is a link in the notification, it will take you to the link.  It would be great to tap on the notifications and have them take you directly to a corresponding iPhone app or website.  Currently I have a Prowl notification set up to notify me anytime Mashable posts a new article to their RSS feed, it would be great if I could get a notification from Prowl, tap the notification and be taken directly to the linked article.  I’m sure that advanced capability will be available in the future, push notification is still in it’s infancy.  Prowl is one of the only apps that eloquently uses the new push notification system.  And for $2.99 you can’t go wrong.  If you have Growl and an iPhone, I would definitely recommend taking a look at Prowl.

Do you have Prowl?  What are you using Prowl for?  Do you like it?  Hate it?  Suggestions for next weeks app?  Leave it in the comments!