Created by: OpenTable.

Out and about and wanting to make a reservation for dinner? OpenTable for the Palm Pre® will do what you need. There are over 10,000 fine dining restaurants available to view, see their menu, read reviews and make reservations, right on your phone. You also can plan ahead and book reservations in another city or country, view restaurants on a map, filter the results by cuisine, price and availability.

Once you launch the app, you can either choose your current location (allowing the app to narrow your choices to your current area) or select a metro area. The next step is to choose the date, time and party size for your meal. Tap ‘Find a Table’ and the next screen shows the results of all of the restaurants in your area or chosen metro area having tables available for your chosen day. Each restaurant listing has location, mileage from your current location, cuisine type, expense rating and available times. Clicking on the restaurant opens up a screen, where you can choose a time, read the menu, and/or read reviews and the description of the restaurant. Tapping a time then sends you to a login screen where you can login to OpenTable, if you’re a user, or skip it if you’re not. If you skip logging in, you are then prompted to enter your details (name, phone & email).

If you are unsatisfied with your first restaurant choice or the description doesn’t float your boat, simply go back and pick another. You can also refine your choice by cuisine and expense rating. There is also a world icon in the lower left hand corner, which allows you to choose a different area in which to find a restaurant.

OpenTable is a great app, especially when traveling and needing to find a place to eat. For those unfamiliar with OpenTable.com, the app is still easy to use because it contains the standard ratings and icons that all restaurant menu and rating sites use. Making a reservation is easy and your confirmation goes right to your email, in case there is a problem at the restaurant.

All in all, OpenTable for the Palm Pre is descriptive, user friendly, free and a great app to have on your phone.

Created by: Jamwam.

Ever struggle to figure out your tip at a restaurant, especially when there are many people to split it with? Then Tip Calc for the Palm Pre® is the app for you.

The interface is simple and user friendly. You type in the amount of the bill, choose how many to split the bill between, determine the tip percentage, and Tip Calc will give you the total tip and how much each person owes – just like that. You will see ads, but only at the bottom of the screen, and they aren’t too intrusive (see screenshot above for an example).

The tip percentage starts at 0 and goes up to 35%. The total number of persons with which Tip Calc will split the bill ends at 12, so parties larger than that will have to either be done in halves or on paper.

If you routinely eat out with friends and are sick of the hassle of splitting up the bill and giving the right tip, then Tip Calc is for you. I like that the app gives you each person’s total, especially when you are out with a big group of people and no one wants to do the math. The Tip Calc for the Palm Pre takes care of all of that, simply and cleanly.

Created by: MX Web.

If you are looking for a simple but addictive game involving little more than a flick of your finger, then Polar Bowling for the Palm Pre® is for you.

The game is simple. The goal is to fling the polar bear into the hole at the top of the screen. What makes it difficult is that there is a wind blowing, and it changes direction for almost every polar bear. The wind can slide your polar bear right off the screen, away from the hole, so you have to consider its direction and adjust your flick angle. The wind direction is indicated by a red arrow at the upper left hand corner of the screen.

Scoring is also simple. If you get the polar bear into the hole, your score will increase by one. It will keep going up until you miss, when your score will zero out. Once you miss, you will be prompted to enter your top score in the field provided. At the top of the screen, your top score and the #1 top score is displayed, so you always know what your aim needs to be.

The graphics of the Polar Bowling are simple. The polar bears do cheer you on, with pithy little statements, and they slide across the screen smoothly and without a hitch. There is also music for the game, which can be a little annoying and you might want to turn it off.

However, for a simple premise, Polar Bowling for the Palm Pre is surprisingly hard and addictive. You can definitely waste time at the airport or in a doctor’s office playing this game and even your kids will like it. You’ll like the free price tag too.

Created by: Jason Teplitz.

The Lemonade app for the Palm Pre® is a simple but fun game. The goal of the game is to profitably sell lemonade at a lemonade stand. Just like you would for any ‘real’ business, you do need to take into account the costs involved, the weather (and therefore the amount of time you can sell for the day), total sale days and how many cups you plan on selling in any given day.

You can either launch right into playing the game or you can watch/read the tutorial, which walks you through the game, the available preferences and it also gives you tips for how to be successful at the game. The available preferences are a choice of how difficult you want the game (easy, medium, hard) and how many days you want it to last.

The game is played by choosing how many cups you want to sell, how many lemon slices you are going to use, how many sugar pieces you plan on using, how much you want to charge, and how you plan to advertise your lemonade (with costs). All of this is decided on the screen for the day you are at (ie, you start at Day 1). After filling in all of the necessary information, you then tap ‘Continue’ and you get your daily report for how much you sold, what your profit was, how perfect your sugar choice was, etc. Gathering this information will allow you to tweak your totals for the next sale day, which will hopefully maximize your profit. Tap ‘Continue’ again and you move to Day 2 of your total days of selling, fill in the information, etc.

The interface for the game is simple, easy to understand and the daily report helps you keep track of all of your choices from the previous day. While it seems like a simple game, it is actually pretty tough and addictive as well, since who wants to admit you failed at selling lemonade (something 10 year olds can do in the ‘real’ world and be profitable)?

Lemonade for the Palm Pre is a very smart, but simple, game. And the best part—it’s free.

Created by: Fandango.

Looking to see what’s playing in your neighborhood movie theater, but out running errands? Well, the Fandango® app for the Palm Pre® is your answer.

The Fandango app is the mobile version of the Fandango.com website, which has all of the movies playing in local theaters as well as coming soon to a theater near you. The app presents movies in your area based on your location (which you allow the app to determine upon launching it). Fandango starts out with a list of movies opening in the current week. Click on a picture and you get a synopsis and where it is playing in a theater near you. There are three icons at the bottom of the screen. Tap the ‘Trailer’ icon, and you can watch the movie trailer, right on your phone. Tap the ‘Reviews’ icon, and you can read the latest reviews of the movie. Tap on the ‘Photos’ icon, and you can see photos from the movie. And the best part, you can buy tickets right on your phone, by choosing the location you want to see the movie at and tap ‘Buy’. Enter in your credit card information and the tickets will be ready for you at the movie theater.

Going back to the start screen gives you more movie viewing choices, by tapping the arrow next to ‘Opening this Week’ at the top of the screen, and a new list of movies pops up on the ‘Top Box Office’ list. Tap ‘Theaters’ at the very top of the screen and you can get a list of all of the movie theaters in your neighborhood. Then, pick a theater and it gives you a list of movies playing there, where you can choose to purchase a ticket for your show of choice.

Underneath the “Preferences and Choices” menu, you can choose your settings, such as saving purchases to the calendar, signing in to your Fandango account, editing your credit card information, or viewing your purchase history.

Fandango is a great app for your Palm Pre. It is user friendly, has all the current and upcoming movies and it makes purchasing movie tickets in advance very simple.

Created by: Inspiring Apps.

Ever need a flashlight but are only carrying your phone? Well, then the Flashlight app for the Palm Pre® is perfect for you.

Flashlight provides a light that fills your whole screen. You can change the color of the light from white to green to red to blue. You can also choose how your light appears – solid, blinking, blinking the SOS pattern, or only showing up when you tap the touch screen. All of these items can be modified on the Preferences menu for the app, located in the upper left hand corner.

I tested the light out in a dark room. It is not as intense as a flashlight and you do need to hold the light closer to the area you are searching. But, if you need to find your keys under the seat at the movie theater, this Flashlight app for the Palm Pre will do the trick. And it’s free.

Created by: Inspiring Apps.

Whether you’re looking to make sure the picture you are hanging is level or to figure out how many sugar packets to put under the rickety table leg at a restaurant, the Bubble Level app for the Palm Pre® is just the thing for you.

It functions just like a bubble level that contractors use and is also very easy to use. You have 2 level choices right on your screen – horizontal or vertical. Simply line up the bottom, top, or either side of your phone with the surface you want to check, and watch the bubbles slide into position. You know the surface is level when the bubble is between the two middle lines. There isn’t a lot more to it than that. You can change the color of the bubbles by clicking on the menu tab at the top left hand corner of the screen and choosing Preferences. You can also turn on or off the angle readouts that appear below the bubble.

The Bubble Level is easy to use and easy to read. It can be a bit tricky to line up your phone on the surface you are checking, especially since the Palm Pre has buttons on either side of the phone and has a curved shape. But, the developers of the app took that into account when calibrating the bubbles and you should still be able to cleanly and neatly hang or level whatever you wish.

For a handy way to check how level your pictures or tables are, the Bubble Level app for the Palm Pre is for you.

Created by: Handmark, Inc. (US app only)

If you are someone who checks your horoscope every day and wants to do so on the fly, then the Express Horoscopes app for the Palm Pre® is for you. Express Horoscopes provides daily horoscopes for all zodiacal sun signs as well as specific birthday readings, celebrity horoscopes, and daily ratings.

The app is fairly straightforward. The landing page lists all of the zodiac sun signs, with the daily rating of stars next to each sign. Simply tap the sign you wish to read a horoscope for and a new screen pops up with your horoscope. You can email your horoscope by clicking on the paper airplane icon in the lower left hand corner and filling in the email address of your friend. To switch to another sign without going back to the main page, you can easily just tap the left or right arrow icons in the lower right hand corner and slide through to the next sun sign for which you want to read a horoscope.

Changing the date to read your horoscope from yesterday, up to 4 days back, is done by tapping the black bar with the date information at the top of the screen and picking the date you wish to read.

To look at the Birthdays landing page, tap the ‘Birthdays’ portion of the bar at the bottom of the home page for the Express Horoscopes app. You are then given a list of celebrity birthdays for the day as well as a special birthday horoscope.

There are two downsides to this app. First, there are ads in the app, but they are mostly unobtrusive – appearing at the top of the screen. Second, you can’t get your horoscope for the next day, even though most horoscope sites allow you to do that. But, the interface is clean, easy to use and to navigate, and the horoscopes aren’t bad…if you believe in that stuff.

You can download the Express Horoscopes app for the Palm Pre at the App catalog on your phone and it’s free.

Created by: Associated Press.

AP Mobile for the Palm Pre® is the best way to get all of the top and current news stories, right on your phone. AP Mobile has more than a thousand local trusted sources, including photo galleries and videos, and is a great way to keep on top of what is going on in the world and locally, without having to buy a paper or turn on a TV.

The AP Mobile is set up to give you news stories from your region, which means you begin by allowing the phone to locate you. Once that is done, you can pick a region for your news. The choices are all countries, with several language choices for some of the multi-lingual countries (e.g., Canada English, Canada Francais). After picking your region, and tapping go, you end up on “My Frontpage,” which has all of the Top News Headlines on it. Tap an article to read about politics, or the war in Afghanistan, etc.

There are 3 icons at the bottom of the screen. The icon with the press hat in the lower left hand corner returns you back to your FrontPage, with all of the latest headlines, should you wander off in search of another story. The middle icon of folders takes you to a Categories page, with options of: Top News, Local, Sports, Showbiz, US News, World News, Wacky, Business, Technology, Travel, Health, Science, Lifestyle, Ask AP, Press Releases and Politics. The magnifying glass icon in the lower right hand corner is the search function, which allows you to search for keywords throughout all of AP’s news stories.

You can customize your FrontPage, by clicking on the menu at the top left corner of the screen and choosing ‘Customize your FrontPage.’ You are then given the option to add or remove categories of stories to appear on your FrontPage and you can also determine if you want to be notified of any new stories in a particular category. The notifications will appear on your Palm Pre desktop as an alert once the story posts to the AP website. The customize screen only has 7 choices, but you can add additional categories to your FrontPage by clicking on the plus icon on the lower left hand corner and choosing one from the menu that appears.

There is also a nice Preferences menu, which allows you to set your location for local news, set up notifications of stories falling in specific categories (which would then appear on your FrontPage), and change the region from which you are interested in receiving news.

The stories themselves include pictures and/or videos, and pop up on your screen in a very readable font. You can also choose to change the direction of the text by doing a sideways flick with your Palm Pre. You also have the option of rating the stories, by tapping the number of stars you would give it (located at the bottom of the story you wish to rate). There are a total of 5 possible stars. The stars will then appear underneath the headline on your FrontPage. You can also text or email a story to a friend, should you feel like it, by tapping the paper airplane icon in the bottom right corner and choosing your method of delivery.

AP Mobile is very easy to use, delivers all of the latest news in whatever categories interest you, and has a good interface to see it all on your phone. For someone needing to be on top of the latest headlines, or if you like to read the paper, but don’t want to drag it around with you, AP Mobile for the Palm Pre is perfect. And free.

Created by: Inspiring Apps. (US app only)

Have you ever flipped a coin to make a decision? Well, now you can flip a coin without having any change, with the CoinFlip app for the Palm Pre®.

CoinFlip is very simple. Once you launch the app, a coin appears on a black screen on your phone. Tap the coin and it flips up the screen, to land in either the Heads or Tails position.

You can change the coin, from either a Susan B. Anthony to a penny or a half dollar. The half dollar is the default coin. To pick another coin, simply tab the menu at the left hand corner of the screen and choose “Preferences” and then pick your coin of choice.

For a quick decisionmaking, CoinFlip for the Palm Pre is perfect, especially since it’s free.