The iPhone may be capable of doing some pretty powerful and impressive things, but sometimes you only need it for simple tasks. One of these instances is seeing in the dark, which is where Flashlight comes in.

While there are no shortage of flashlight emulators available in the app store, I’m using the free one from John Haney Software aptly titled ‘Flashlight.”

By default, it opens to a blank white screen. However, you can also switch to a variety of colors, and even create a custom shade. The brightness of each color can also be adjusted by swiping up or down. There’s even a series of ‘Special Effects’, that include many pages of blinking colors and boxes.

Flashlight is, as it needs to be, incredibly simple. At free, the price can’t be beat. So, if you’re looking for a flashlight replacement in your iPhone, download “Flashlight” from the iTunes app store.

Web development tools for the mac are vast and plenty, yet Espresso is the newcomer to the game, from software veteran MacRabbit software.

Within Espresso, websites are stored as ‘projects’, which include a folder hierarchy and Espresso project file. Existing websites can be transformed into Espresso projects by importing a folder.

The interface to Espresso is elegantly done, with a three-column design. On the left, there is an iTunes and Finder-esque sidebar, with the ‘Workspace’, ‘Project’, and ‘Publish’ categories. “Workspace’ contains the documents that you are currently working on, which is a new take on tabs. ‘Project’ contains the file and folder hierarchy for the website you’re working on, while ‘Publish’ is an FTP manager for uploading and transferring project files locally and server-side.

The central column within Espresso is the main coding window and workspace. To the left is a ‘Navigator’ pane, which shows the tags used in the current document. Below that, are the ‘Quick Publish’ and ‘Snippets’ panels. ‘Quick Publish’ is a toggle to turn on or off automatic uploading to a server, while ‘Snippet’s allows you to create frequently-used fragments of code for easily adding to documents.

Espresso also has many advanced features that speed up production time and increase usability. For instance, there is a find-and-replace function that allows you to search within a document for any text or code, and then, if requested, you can then replace found text with something else. There’s also a live preview window that shows real-time changes being made to a document.

For being a 1.0 product, Espresso is an excellent web development solution. There’s even added ability for users to expand Espresso by downloading sugars, which add support for scripting languages, and themes, which modify the look of the editor.

I haven’t used Espresso exclusively, but after receiving a license in the MacHeist bundle, I’m definitely going to use it on a new project. See more about Espresso and download a free 15-day trial from MacRabbit Software.

Growl is one of the most popular, and widely used, Mac OS X utilities for displaying system-wide notifications. Prowl will now transmit your computer’s Growl notifications to your iPhone or iPod touch.

The app takes advantage of the 3.0 software to send Push Notifications to you. Setting up the computer-to-iPhone connection is simple, you simply sign up for an online Prowl account. Then, you download ‘Prowl’ as a theme for Growl, and all notifications will be ‘pushed’ to the iPhone.

The entire system is flawless, and having Growl notifications sent to the iPhone is a genius way of getting updates. The app works fine, and the only issue I’ve found is the inability to have notifications simultaneously displayed on the computer and on the iPhone.

While Prowl isn’t free, it’s worth it for any avid Growl user and isn’t terribly expensive at $2.99. See more by visiting Prowl in the app store.

The Sims, a popular video-game franchise from EA, has been ported to the iPhone as a life simulation game.

As many fans know, The Sims allows users to create people, design their homes, and control their lives. The iPhone version allows for many of the same features, but is heavily centered around the ‘life control’ aspect of the game.

For users that are interested in building and designing homes on-the-go, The Sims 3 for iPhone won’t fill your desires. There are minor moving, rotating, and purchasing methods for furniture, but these tools can’t compare to the features of the desktop version.

While controlling your Sims’ life, you’ll need to keep them satisfied and fill their wishes. Satisfaction levels include ‘Hunger’, ‘Energy’, ‘Bladder’, ‘Hygiene’, ‘Social’, and ‘Fun’. There are up to 73 goals and wishes that your Sim could come across for you to complete.

Within the game there are mini-challenges that improve a Sims’ skill set, which include ‘Cooking’, ‘Fishing’, ‘Repairing’, and ‘Gardening’. Of course, relationships are also a huge part of the game, in which you can befriend, anger, date, or marry the other Sims.

The Sims 3 is an extremely addicting game, that has engrossed me for many hours. There are numerous features and aspects to the game, some of which were mentioned here, that make it worth the expensive price tag.

See more about the Sims 3 for iPhone.

If you’re like me, you’ll often find yourself with numerous tabs open in your web browser and an array of news articles and blog posts that you want to read. Unfortunately, it seems as though there has been no simple-solution storing place for all of these “to-read” items. On the fortunate side, there is an online service by the name of Instapaper that aims to serve as this “storing place”.

As an online service, it allows you to bookmark and import online posts from the website, or by using the handy bookmarklet. For the iPhone, there are two viewing applications for reading these saved items – a free and paid app.

The free version comes with basic functionality, allowing you to read and delete the articles saved in your account. After refreshing the iPhone app, all of your articles are then saved to the iPhone for offline viewing. The app will even strip out photos and other formatting to give you a simple reading interface.

At $5, Instapaper Pro offers a few more features, including Folders, a dark interface, tilt scrolling, article starring, adjustable font & text sizes, and background updating. The Pro version is almost a must-have with support for folders. With the free version, you do not have access to saved articles placed in folders from the website.

Instapaper is a great online service that saves time and makes reading convenient for you. Articles can be taken on-the-go, and are available wherever you have an internet connection, or anywhere, if you’ve downloaded the saved items to Instapaper on the iPhone. See more about both apps by visiting the app store.