Review: StoreIt for iPhone Evanston IL

StoreIt for the iPhone and iPod touch allows you to create very simple databases of information-expense logs, time logs, invoice data, to do lists, and so forth. Within each database, you can create multiple fields to hold all kinds of information.

StoreIt

Facdatum's application leaves a little to be desired when you first launch it. There is no splash screen, help links, or information on how to get started. Instead, you start with just a blank list, which means you'll need to know the standard iPhone interface to create your first database.

You've got plenty of field types available: Text, Number, Date, Time, Date & Time, Note, Image, and Items. You can adjust the order and what information is shown with the category-I like having that flexibility. In my tests, I built an expense tracker to store where I spend money, when, how much, and a type. The Type field allowed me to categorize my expenditures from food to entertainment. I could enter "Lunch," if I wanted to track exactly what I was spending daily on lunch, instead of combining it with everything else under "Food" or "Groceries".

StoreIt contains a surprise feature that I found very ingenious-a pseudo Web server that can be used to collect your database information on a computer. When you tap the sync symbol at the bottom of the screen, you are given a screen with a URL that you can connect to on a local network via your Web browser. You will see the databases/categories you have created and links that lets you download your database as a text file, backup a StoreIt version, or restore a database. The backup version contains all of the field definition information that can be used to recreate the database within StoreIt. You also have the ability to restore a current backup to a new category, which is perfect if you need to create a copy or very similar database without entering each tedious field again.

Overall, StoreIt is a useful-if especially Spartan-way to create a simple database.

StoreIt is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.x software update.

[John Congdon is the CTO of bowlingball.com, co-host of TalkBowling.com, and a part-time blogger.]