Does your stuff want to come with you wherever you go? iOwn, from Fifth Floor Media, is a personal inventory system designed so that you can keep track of your household possessions, hobby collections, small business inventory and other collections of stuff in your pocket.

iOwn stores data in a series of containers one inside the other. Using your home possessions as an analogy, the largest container represents the house, or what iOwn calls a “location”. Within the house are rooms, which iOwn calls “containers.” Inside each room is a collection of furniture, or what iOwn calls “items.” Each item has “attributes,” which may be the price you paid for it, the name of the place where you bought it, its serial number or any other identifier you consider relevant. You also can include photos with each item using the iPhone’s camera or photos from your library.

If you want to enter a series of attributes, say, the several DVDs in your collection, you can create a template so you don’t have to repeatedly enter the same information for each title.

iOwn works well enough but it has limited practical value. Basically, it uses the capabilities of the iPhone to answer a question that hasn’t been asked. That is, how do I keep an inventory list of what I own and carry it around with me? There are better ways to do that.

iOwn will store a backup of your data if you register (free) at its site. What I don’t need is to register at any more Web sites — I have more than I can manage as it is.

I can’t imagine wanting to store the titles and genres of all the CDs I own, either. And I don’t see much need to carry around a list of the stuff I own because without backup like receipts, it would be inadequate if I ever needed to file an insurance claim.

If I really wanted to store info-stuff on my iPhone, what I would probably do is enter it into a spreadsheet and store that doc on my iPhone. That way, I would be able to use a real keyboard to compile my list instead of laboriously pecking it into the iPhone’s tiny keyboard. That alone obviates the need for this app.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

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category: Business, Worthwhile Apps