All you have to do is press the record button on the app screen and start speaking. The audio data is sent to Nuance's servers (obviously you have to be online for this to work) and the translated text is returned. The accuracy is remarkable and you can send the results to e-mail, Facebook, or or keep them as notes and edit them if you wish.

This app works amazingly well and, while its user interface is somewhat dull, it is useful and the price is right. Dragon Dictation gets a rating of 4.5 out of 5.

Now, isn't it the case that every IT person needs a set of basic network test tools on every device they use? IThings are no exception. A simple app I discovered that fills this role nicely is ($4.99) by Kevin Koltzau, which provides traceroute, DNS lookup, ping, routing tables, ARP tables, interface statistics, and a list of active connections. is also fully supported, including reverse DNS.

All of the functions are configurable so, for example, for ping you can set the payload size, send interval and TTL. My only complaint is that iThings all deliver fantastic graphics so the addition of some graphs and a more creative user interface would be a good idea.

IT Tools gets a rating of 3 out 5.