MacResearch

Editor: Alexander Griekspoor and David Gohara contributed to this article - UPDATED

Everyone in the Universe knows the iPhone 3G and App Store open today for Europe and the US. So rather than cover that we're going to mention a few applications on the store that might be of interest to MacResearch readers.

From the Keynote at WWDC the first two are by companies Modality, Inc., and MIMVista, Corp.

Modality, Inc., was founded by Mark Williams while at Duke and is a privately held company that makes a number of applications for iPod, iPod Touch and iPhone. Their product line is built around learning tools for K-12 and University level curriculum. Modality, Inc., works with some of the largest publishers to bring their content to the platform and also includes the Brain Quest series of applications.

All Modality's offerings in the science arena Netter's Anatomy Flash Cards and Netter's Neuroscience Flash Cards, each sells for $39.99 (US). If you haven't seen the Keynote from WWDC, you can check it out on the Apple website to see a demo of Netter's Anatomy Flash Cards. The application is well done and considering the content type, $39.99 is a pretty good deal (at least when comparing to the cost of most text books that cover similar subject matter).

Modality, Inc., also has a few other apps related to travel in the App Store. That you can check out as well. To see all of their listings, click here (open in iTunes).

Next up is MIM, from MIMVista, Corp. I actually hadn't heard about this company until the Keynote, but their application is awesome, and really highlights the power of the iPhone as a graphics and multimedia device. MIM is a medical imaging application that can be used to view CT, MR, PT, SPECT scans. Since I'm not a person who works in this field I can't speak to the quality of the application. However, as a lay-person, it looks really amazing. One thing I did note, is that MIM ties into MIM Storage Server via encrypted connections that use password locks and tamper prevention measures.

The version of MIM for iPhone on the store now is free (as in beer). A fully featured MIM Pro for the iPhone will be available in the near future for physician and radiology use.

Physicians will also love Epocrates' medical drug encyclopedia called Epocrates Rx. Some might have already seen an early demo of it when it appeared in the iPhone SDK introductory keynote of Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall. It allows health care professionals to quickly find all kind of drug related information and even identify pills on the basis of their physical appearance, a great app and best of all, it's free.

One application that impresses especially with great graphics and a nice user interface is Atom-in-a-box by Dauger Research. The program exists already for a while as a Mac app, but now also appears in an iPhone version. It displays atomic orbitals in real-time and rather than just as plot of the spherical harmonics, as is shown in many Quantum mechanics textbooks, this program displays the electron orbital as a 3D cloud. The cloud's density is determined by the orbital's probability density for the electron and displayed in beautiful colours. For most of us mainly pretty, but for the more quantum mechanical types among us a great tool.

Shifting from tiny structures in a wide space to more larger structures in a just as wide space, we find Starmap made by Frederique Descamps, who touts it as the "ideal stargazing companion". It's gives you a complete planetarium in the pocket of both beginner and advanced astronomers. You can easily find any of hundreds of thousands objects in the sky, and comes with tons of information. But even cooler it makes uses of a number of really cool features of the iPhone, for example it can use the location awareness of the phone to determine where you are and show the sky right above you, and even determine your exact viewpoint by using the built-in accelerometer. And boy does it look good!

There is also a very good scientific calculator on the App store available now, called PCalc by TLA Systems. The standard iPhone calculator already gained a lot of functionality with the iPhone 2.0 firmware update; when you now turn it in landscape both you get many more options. But these options turn pale compared to PCalc's numerous features. A great calculator app!

Finally, Drew noted already that Molecules is also available for the iPhone in a posting yesterday. Molecules is a PDB molecular viewer. I tried this out on my phone last night and for small molecules it works quite well. When I tried loading in my favorite molecule (a medium sized protein, PDB ID: 1RDR), the program began behaving erratically. But, Molecules is free AND open source (BSD License). So I'd imagine that improvements to it will coming forth. And quite honestly, it represents a really nice effort by the developer. Oh and did I mention it's free AND open source.